Kevin Maguire Talks Justice League International And Influence on James Gunn's DCU

This conversation occurred on August 22nd, 2024, at Fan Expo Canada.\

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What's it like to see the longevity of Justice League International and its impact on comics to this day?

Well, I'm amazed. I thought we were going to bomb when we came out because everything was Dark Knight and Watchmen back then, and I didn't think anyone would care about our goofy little team book.

So that was a surprise. I've said this many times. I see people at my conventions, and I see teenage girls come dressed up as Blue Beetle and Booster Gold, and I'm like, you weren't even born when we did this.

It does amaze me. It really does. 

When the creative team assembled the initial cast of characters, did you have free reign on what you wanted to do? Not in terms of Batman and the big guys, but you could pull stuff from smaller, lesser-known heroes such as the New Gods.

Well, I personally had absolutely no influence whatsoever on what was going on. I was the new kid. I was just lucky to have a gig. But I think we were handed the characters in the beginning because it was a spinoff from a Legends miniseries.

So the team was sort of formed before we got here. But Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis definitely fell in. I always got to give Andrew Helfer the editor, he doesn't get nearly enough credit for what that book was. He was sort of the guiding light behind the whole thing.

However, one thing that Giffen and DeMatteis found was that they preferred working with offbeat characters rather than Superman, Batman, and Green Lantern, other than the big guns, because usually, the big guns had other things going on in their comic storylines. So editors would be like, no, you can't do that because Superman's on this planet for this month. Or you can't do that because that changes something we're going to do. No one was doing anything with Fire and Ice—characters like that. You can do whatever you want, and we can do anything we want. That was creatively freeing.

And was there a character that you particularly loved to draw out of those guys?

Well, Guy was probably the most fun because he was the most, a lot was going on there!

What is it like to see JLI continue to influence other media now? James Gunn seems to be a massive fan of your work.

Yeah! Me and a bunch of other writers and artists were invited to the set of Superman for a day in May. They showed us everything. They showed us the pre-production stuff. They showed us some footage. I got to walk around the Fortress of Solitude set and watch them shoot a scene. There's definitely a JLI sort of influence there.

And it wouldn't surprise me, given, you know, Guardians of the Galaxy and Suicide Squad, that if the James Gunn universe were going to put together a Justice League, it probably wouldn't be Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash. It would probably be like the weird, offbeat characters. Like, I don't think it would be like our initial lineup. I'm sure we'd throw in, like, I don't know, any oddball character. He likes the oddball characters. So that's us. So that's great.

I'm glad he's in charge. It's unfortunate Keith isn't around to see it. But it's great to see his work live on.