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  • Jeff Lemire Talks Building the Justice Society of America's New Era

Jeff Lemire Talks Building the Justice Society of America's New Era

Lemire is bringing his spin to the JSA

Jeff Lemire is tackling the Justice Society of America as part of DC’s All-In Initiative. The Sweet Tooth writer and artist is teaming up with Diego Olortegui for a new comic starring the 80+-year-old superteam. JSA #1 arrives at comic book stores on Nov. 6, 2024.

We spoke with Lemire about picking a roster, the characters appearing in the book, and what readers can expect from the series. Check out our conversation below!

What attracted you to doing a JSA book?

They're definitely my favorite DC characters. They have been since I was a little kid. I think the first comic book I ever got was a reprint of some of the JSA stuff from the ‘70s that Paul Levitz and Joe Staton did. And then when I was like 9 or 10, Crisis came out, and I started to figure out the whole Earth-2 thing back then, and all those kinds of these doppelganger versions of these heroes.

And it's just something that really fascinated me right away, and I fell in love with these sort of classic Golden Age characters. So I've always had this incredible love for them. So, when the opportunity presented itself for me to do this, it was just sort of a dream come true because I've always wanted to write these characters. I didn't know if things would ever line up with my schedule and where they were at with DC, so when it was offered to me, I just obviously jumped at it.

These characters are literally some of the first superheroes ever created. So their history and legacy go back to the 40s, since the birth of the American comic book, really. And so it's not something I take lightly. It's a real responsibility to keep these characters alive, keep them relevant, pay homage to everything that's come before, and sort of try to incorporate as much of that long history into my run as I can. 

Given the extensive history and different generations of heroes, how challenging was it to pick a roster of heroes?

It literally is sort of like that dream scenario where you sit down with a notebook and start writing out all the characters, and then kind of try to pick which ones are your favorites, first of all. The JSA is not the JSA without Jay Garrick, Alan Scott, or Ted Grant. So you start there, and then I have my personal favorites. Hourman, Doctor Mid-Nite, and Doctor Fate had to be in it because I love those characters.

From there, you start building out characters with interesting relationships that can create good stories or drama, like Jesse Quick and Hourman being married. So that's an interesting dynamic to have on a team. And then Jade and Obsidian are siblings, and also Green Lantern's children. So there's a lot of cool family dynamic going on there, and you start building up from there. But the list just kept getting... my list got so long. The roster of this book is kind of crazy.

Almost everybody's in it, honestly. And the people who aren't in it in the first arc or so will probably be in it later. So it's really just... it's so fun to have such a huge roster, but it's also a lot to juggle. Obviously, you don't want to just throw them in the background. You want to give everyone a reason to be there and give them a story within the story. So that's the challenge of doing a book with such a big roster.

But the fun of the JSA is playing with the generations and this whole family aspect of these characters. I've done this thing in the series where I sort of split the team into various factions and different storylines, which obviously will all come together. But at the beginning, they're not all together because it's a bit unwieldy. So you do have these different sub-teams within the team, which makes things a little easier to manage initially.

Will we see the Lost Children in this book? How do you make a story so steeped in history so accessible?

This is supposed to be a jumping-off point for new readers. So you're trying to make something with an 80-year history accessible, which is not easy. I've done my best to do that. But at the same time, I don't want to just forget everything that's been done because there's some great stuff to build on.

In terms of specifically the Lost Children, that's one element I chose not to continue. I just felt like the roster was already so big that those characters didn't really have a place in my story. So specifically, no, I'm not following directly off of what Geoff had just done. I'm not continuing it. It is a fresh start. But all that stuff happened, and it's part of the history. It's just, yeah, I'm trying to make it a fresh start at the beginning.

As the reader gets used to the rhythm of the book and all the characters, we start getting into some of the past. I will be doing things like going back to the ‘40s and having stories set in World War II because part of the fun of having that history is being able to use it.

So, I love seeing those stories from the past, but I also love weaving them into the present in a way that allows them to feed off each other and build a bigger story. 

 Are there any characters you're really excited about giving a bigger platform to?

As I started writing the book, I had one idea of who the featured characters were. But one character that really surprised me was the Beth Chappel/Dr. Mid-Nite character. I love Dr. Mid-Nite. For whatever reason, that costume is just—since I was a kid, I loved it. But I wasn't super familiar with Beth Chappel other than the old Infinity Inc. stuff from the ‘80s that I read. But as I got into the story that I was doing, she became this vital cog and became increasingly important. So she really started to shine for me and surprise me a bit.

I'm kind of a big fan of Jade and Obsidian and the whole Infinity Inc. thing. I love giving those two characters more prominence in the DC Universe again. Those three really are the ones I'm having a lot of fun with and surprised by.

For someone picking up the comic on the rack, how do you differentiate the JSA and Justice League for someone who knows nothing about legacy or continuity? What do they need to know to enjoy the book?

I've tried right from the beginning to make that clear. The JSA is much more... They're not a team. They're not put together for a mission.

They're a family of multiple generations working and learning from each other. The adventures that spin out of that aren't... I think the Justice League is put together with the purpose of being proactive. For me, if you want to boil that right down, the big difference is that one is a team, and one is a family.

How has the collaboration with Diego been going, and what can you say about their work?

He was at the top of our list of artists we wanted to approach for this, and we were lucky to have him. His work is really modern, really kinetic and energetic, but It's not so modern that you lose the sense of the heritage of those characters and the cool throwback element to them as well. He balances both in a really cool way. His storytelling is amazing, and his action is amazing.

It's rare to find an artist who can do that really energetic, kinetic-energy action stuff but also really understand the acting and emotion of the characters. He's able to do that. He's been awesome to work with and really fun.

How do you compare writing JSA vs. Absolute Flash? Those are two totally different kinds of books.

The JSA is steeped in legacy, history, and everything, and then you get the Absolute Flash opportunity, which starts at square one. It's focused on one character who's a teenager. In our Absolute Flash story, one thing we've done is remove that sense of legacy that The Flash usually has. Our Wally West is not part of the legacy of Flash. He is the first Flash in this universe. They're very different things, and they each come with their own challenges and stuff.

The JSA is super tricky because it's really fun having such a huge cast, but also it's really easy to lose characters, and it's really easy to not be able to go deep enough with any of the characters if you're trying to service everyone all the time. But I think doing Black Hammer at Dark Horse was really good training for this because in that series I had a pretty big cast as well, but a lot of issues would focus in on one or two characters at a time. Approaching this JSA thing, I'm thinking a bit less as a superhero teen book and more as an ensemble drama.

So, from issue to issue, we might focus on just a few characters at a time. Obviously, we're telling a bigger story that they're all servicing, but I guess the key is just taking time, not rushing it, and not worrying about fitting everybody in every issue. If I want to have an issue that's really focused on Dr. Mid-Nite, I can do that. And that's fun because you can get much deeper into each character and give them all a really good story within the story as well. Meanwhile, with Flash, you're obviously with the same character every month and focused on Wally West, so it's a much different beast.

Speaking of Doctor Fate, what is his role on the team, and how will Khalid play a part in this book?

I've loved every version of that character since I was a kid. This version of Khalid is crucial to the plot. He's at the center of everything in at least the first 12 issues that I'm working on.

It's great. I didn't know as much about that character, either. I knew the previous Dr. Fate’s very well, but not this one. So it's kind of fun to get into that, learn more about him, and give him more of a platform in the present-day DC universe. Give him more prominence and importance to the story and to the world. He's a lot of fun.

I think what makes him so unique from the other Fates is that he's not really in complete control of his power yet. It's still all very new to him, and he's still sort of figuring it out. And there's a lot of insecurity that comes with that and with his age. So you get to play with that a bit. And again, unexpected things happen. For some reason, Ted Grant, Wildcat, and Khalid became this duo in my storyline that I didn't really plan on. But they became this unlikely duo, this friendship that's forming between them, this mentorship that I really love. 

How fun is it to play with an Injustice Society? How was it to continue that counterbalance to the JSA? 

As if I needed more characters, you know? But it's pretty fun because if you have a big team like JSA, you obviously need something equally as big to counter them. So it's fun to think of those counterparts and how they can play in unexpected ways. And I've also thrown some new characters into the mix that we haven't seen before.

Some of the stuff that Geoff Johns was doing recently with Ruby and some of those characters come back. So it's a mixture of older classic characters like Gentleman Ghost and Solomon Grundy, but then you get the newer generation of villains as well. Yeah, and again, in a book that's already full of characters, making sure that I have time to develop them and give them a real purpose beyond being punching bags is a challenge, but it's been really fun.