Warning! Minor spoilers ahead for Justice League Unlimited #3!The the events of Absolute Power brought the team back together for the most expansive incarnation of the League ever.
In the weeks new kind of Justice League. Now the team is a home to every hero who wants to help, and with strange events piling up, the heroes need their community now more than ever. Justice League Unlimited writer Mark Waid spoke with Screen Rant to discuss the team's massive overhaul and what's next for the League.
Screen Rant: Mark the last time we talked, Absolute Power wasn’t even midway through, now we’re on the other side, heavy into the DC All In initiative. Talk about the energy that you’ve witnessed and what it’s been like working on a core title at this moment in DC history.
Mark Waid: First off, the energy is like nothing I felt at DC for a long, long, long, long time. The coordination between the editors and the creative people is at an all-time high. The coordination between the creative people with each other is at an all-time high. And we are talking more than we've ever talked before in of, "How do we coordinate this and this"? And Paul Kaminski and his entire crew there is doing a great job of making sure that everybody's informed that we're all getting PDFs of each other's work in advance so that we can play off each other, whether it's The Question or whether it's Challengers or what have you. And it's showing in the books. I'm getting a lot of calls from my Marvel peeps wanting to know if maybe I can put in a good word for them at DC Comics.
The first two issues were so fun and had heroes from every era. I mean it’s go go go, but there’s nuance, there’s balance. And you’ve written the Justice League before, but this is so different. What’s it like steering this team again and kind of approaching them in such a different way?
Mark Waid: It's different in a couple of ways. First off, if you're selling a book called "Justice League Unlimited", you got to live up to that promise. So that means sifting through, I was going to say lists of old DC characters, but I guess I should just say my brain, and finding the deep-cut characters who can still add something to the story other than just being window dressing. What is an interesting take on Doctor Occult? What's an interesting take on Xanthe from Spirit World? Give them something to do other than just be window dressing. It's also different in that comics are different because when I was writing Justice League before, it was quite a while ago, and there was a little more room at that time for slower moments as well as bigger moments. You had to set the stage a little bit more. I don't think the audience is that patient anymore? I think you gotta hit the ground running, which is just fine with me, especially when you got somebody like Dan Mora backing you up, who draws just these amazing, excellent action sequences. Then yes, by all means, let's start moving right away.
I'm glad you brought him up because I feel like every time we've talked you sung the praises of Dan, who is great, and you've worked together on so many projects. You’ve made it quite clear that Dan has been the partner to work with. Do you want to talk about your partnership and how it’s evolved with Justice League Unlimited?
Mark Waid: I knew of Dan's work from Klaus over at Boom, but I wasn't a student of it, really, and so when Paul Kaminski pitched him as my partner on these books, initially World's Finest. I had to go back and look, and I saw a guy who has tremendous chops when it comes to action and the quieter moments, which is what I'm looking for. A lot of artists can do the quiet moments, but not the big, bombastic stuff or vice versa. This guy gets both. The other person I need to sing the praises of, and not enough, is Tamara Bonvillain who's doing the coloring. Every page she turns in, we are just falling all over ourselves with email, just to remind her how good this stuff is and how much we are enjoying the work.
Especially in issue three. I mean, there's so much going on between magical energies, flying fire everywhere. And you're right, colorists don't always get the same praise.
Mark Waid: Plus, the whole issue is set in the Amazon jungle. It would be very easy to just color all that green, but she finds a way to bring depth and volume to that sort of drawing.
Let’s dive into issue 3. First thing I'm really curious to talk about is Air Wave. He played such a huge part in Absolute Power as this unsure kid who helps save the day, and it made that bombshell in the first issue hit a lot harder. Why pick Air Wave for this traitor role?
Mark Waid: Well, you kind of answered your own question. I really wanted that bombshell ending to the first issue. But beyond that, as we will see in the issues ramping up, and I think culminating in issue six, there's clearly a method to the madness in all this. There's clearly a motivation for that character that we haven't touched upon before, and I think it's something that we've not seen before in comics from a character's point of view. I'm pretty sure we can nail it, but it will make you laugh and cry and be sad and be joyful and mostly just feel bad for this one kid.
No doubt. I know continuity can be a little wonky sometimes, but you did kind of connect Air Wave to his role in Stargirl: The Lost Children. I don't think enough writers have really played with those sidekicks yet.
Mark Waid: Yeah, he was basically trapped on the island of lost children. So he was a captive for decades and decades and decades. So the question is, what is his background? What is his background now that he has landed like Captain America, out of the ice in a future era? To him, how does he see the world? And that plays very heavily into his motivations.
It's also interesting that we've spent so much time seeing these new security measures on the Watchtower, the Question keeping a constant eye out. But they still have these cracks in the system that can’t suss out ill intent.
Mark Waid: Yeah, it's really a shame that Martian Manhunter doesn't have his mental powers anymore. You think he would have said something about that. What a crime.
Speaking of J'onn, he really did kind of become this hero I was immediately invested in. And you're playing with so many different characters all at once and even though I'm pulled in so many different directions, the entire time was reading issue three, I was like "What about J'onn? Where is he?" You just pulled my heart out!
Mark Waid: We touched on it in issue three, but there's so much going on. He and Batman get a really solid scene in issue four where Batman has found him traversing the earth, and he understands. He understands why J'onn hid his loss of powers. He understood. He understands more than that, what it means when John loses those powers, and how it affects the way he moves through the world, and that is another building block, frankly, in the whole Inferno saga.
That's a good segue into my next question because, beyond Air Wave, this issue also builds on Inferno, the mysterious terrorist group associated with all these catastrophes all over the Earth. Talk a little bit about your decision to use Inferno as the first big bad of Justice League Unlimited.
Mark Waid: The easy trap to fall into would be using yet another established Justice League supervillain, but I thought, let's start with something new. Let's start with something that is bigger than any one villain or any one group of villains that we've seen before. Let's start with a super-terrorist group whose goals match the breadth of the Justice League Unlimited, whose goals are not control of one country or control of one government, but rather control of the world in bigger ways. You saw in issue one, they made a play for the entire world's economy. In this issue, they make a play for the Green, which would give them control over the entire world's ecosystem. What are their motivations, or what are their goals? Are they even from here? There's clues in issues three and four in their dialog that will help point you in some directions.
You talk about avoiding those familiar traps and I will say I do appreciate how rather than the Legion of Doom or Secret Society, this is a force that feels more real in the sense that what they’re doing is what we’re seeing happening right now. In this issue they’re setting the Amazon rainforest on fire. Was it intentional to connect them with these very real world things?
Mark Waid: Yeah, their ultimate goal, as we'll see, is very contemporary,
Moving away from the antagonists, one of this book’s best strengths are these amazing character moments among the League . The first issue had a great one with Star Sapphire and learning the ropes from Black Lightning. But this latest issue brings back Plastic Man, who was involved in the big power swap in Absolute Power. Do you want to talk about the choice to bring back Plastic Man right now?
Mark Waid: I mean, the part of the trick in writing a book that big with that huge cast, at the end of the day, stories are about people. And I have done first drafts of Justice League Unlimited scripts that are action, action, action, and they're good, but they feel a little hollow, because I need to care about each and every character, and it's hard to do when you got 25 people teaming up against Starro or whoever. So the secret to me to writing Justice League, even if you look at my older Justice League work, the secret to me has been finding one or two characters, two or three characters who are not normally together, who we have not seen interact, and finding the differences and the commonalities and the new takes on what they can do and how they operate together. In issue three's case, Plastic Man and the Atoms, trying to figure out a way to reunite Plastic Man with his powers has led to something truly horrible in that those Plastic Man powers, when in the hands of somebody who is not in full control of them, gives you a real sort of South Korean horror movie moment.
It definitely was. I know you're a huge DC historian, so when you do bring these characters into the mix, like Plastic Man, little mentions of things like the Terrifics, makes these moments so much more meaningful, and it makes this world feel so lived in and like, do you think? Do you see that as a bonus to your story?
Mark Waid: I think it's like, why not play to my strengths? Why not go deep, dive into the DC Universe? It also makes sure that we're giving you as a reader, stuff that you've never seen before. Because you're probably not familiar with Dr Occult, You may not be familiar with Xanthe from Spirit World. Let's do some deep cutting here and show you the breadth and depth of the DC Universe to, like, you say, make it feel lived in.
You spoke earlier about having greater coordination with other creators. Does that inform which characters that you choose to use when it comes to Justice League Unlimited?
Mark Waid: It does with the main thrust of the book. Basically, what I do is I have three lists. I've got my main character list, I've got my B character list, which is Firestorm and the Captain and Cyborg, big characters, but not the main team. And then you get your C list, which is the deep cut characters like Dr. Occult. So as I put together the A list, at least, I make sure that everybody is ed for to make sure that we're not stepping on any other books. A good example would be Aquaman which, as a player in issues five and six, turns out he couldn't be there because of things happening in Aquaman. Fine by me. Luckily, the Justice League Unlimited is such a grand cast of characters that it's not very hard to do some switching around. But we do coordinate very heavily with the rest of the universe to make sure that, like you said, we're not breaking continuity over what's happening in other books.
I think that's what's helped DC All In be so strong, because that coordination is there. I mean, your first issue introduces the Challengers, and then we see what's up with them in the actual Challengers series. And then we see things that were set up in Justice League Unlimited in the Atom Project comic. It's not like you have to read everything, but it really plants a desire to.
Mark Waid: You have to credit editor Paul Kaminski and his editorial team and others, who are making sure that all this holds together, and are constantly brainstorming with us on how to make this thing play out, or how to make this thing tie into this thing, without in any way compromising the stories that we're trying to tell. But the energy inside the office is unlike anything I've seen in DC in probably 25 years in of the communication, in of how the creative people are encouraged to communicate and coordinate with each other, because we all, and like you said, you've seen the outcome of that, which is a greater energy in the DC Universe in general, and the DC books in general.
Let’s talk about the future. Aside from the threats the team is facing, what else are fans going to want to keep an eye out for?
Mark Waid: In issue five, the Inferno group makes its biggest play yet, when it kidnaps the entire G20 Conference, which gives you control over every main player in the world, right? And that will ultimately culminate in a reveal about Inferno and, in turn, set you up for a massive story.
We are leading into a massive Justice League Unlimited/World's Finest crossover. The secrets of Inferno spill out across time, Justice League Unlimited #5 sets it up. #6, #7, #8 are chapters. World's Finest #38 and #39 are Chapters and World's Finest Annual #2, which I'm co-plotting with Chris Cantwell, who is great, is also a chapter, and with any kind of luck, we'll be able to keep the lid on the big secrets until the very last second. Solicits always make it hard to do that, but we are working overtime to make sure that there's still some reveals.
Justice League Unlimited #3 is available now from DC Comics.
