Letters to Justice League Vol. 2 #11

This issue was fun to write, but it had to do a couple of key things, story-wise, after the threads I laid during my first burst of activity on the title. As you might have seen, there was a thirteen month gap between Justice League Vol. 2 #5 and #6-- April 2014 and May 2015-- and that was because I hit a creative bump in the road I couldn't get over. In the run up to relaunching the title, I wrote in a mad daze and wrote up to #11 over April, May, June of 2015. The only issue I didn't really write in that frenzy was Vol. 2 #12 and the upcoming #50. I wrapped #12 in October and I'm working on #50 now. Anyway.

Justice League Vol. 2 #5 featured the Global Peace Agency being dismantled in favour of Stormwatch. Chloe Sullivan got jobbed out of the number one policeman of the Earth in favour of Bendix, and I had this whole plan for Stormwatch to become this really nasty-- albeit necessary-- organisation that helped keep the growing threat of metahumans at bay. But when I came back to the DC2, I knew that wasn't where I wanted to go with the title at that time.

As the "spine book" of the DC2, I've got the ability to cover a lot of ground, but that ground takes up story space. Establishing Stormwatch would have taken a lot of legwork, so I accelerated the first stage of their story so that I could wrap it here, in Vol. 2 #11. After Kobra, we have a time jump, so Stormwatch have been operating during that six months or so, so it was cool to have that implied “pedigree” to the group.

A quick digression-- Don explained his view of the Justice League and it really stayed with me. The Justice League team up to face threats that individual heroes can’t defeat. So you don’t see the Justice League descend of Gotham is the Scarecrow is kicking about unless it gets world threatening. There’s a trust that Batman and his operation can deal with that threat. So their adventures, as a group, take place every couple of months. After Kobra was sorted (though keep reading our Outsiders back-up to see it’s not as sorted as it originally seemed) the team went back on standby, and six months passed in-universe until... the adventures continued.

So when we come back, Stormwatch are there, they’re a thorn in the Justice League’s side, and Bendix begins his ultimate plan-- and it’s mad, and we say it’s mad in the story, because why would you go up against the Justice League?-- to turn the world against the Justice League. They’ve got a savvy PR department, but the Justice League is the Justice League. Bendix takes great risks, attempts to frame the League, sends Team Achilles after them, and eventually faces off against a group of heroes in the UN Building, revealing himself to be his own final experiment in metahuman creation.

The team facing off against Bendix was all women because I’m working with Jamie. He’s always pushing for more females, but a lot of characters we have on the site are “called for” in other titles-- another Don-ism, he explained that just because we don’t see them, doesn’t mean the teams like New Outsiders and Teen Titans aren’t having adventures-- so we end up with a really esoteric group of women.

Doctor Light is a character I always come back to, same as Big Barda-- a personal favourite of Jamie-- and Wonder Woman is a character I’m always trying to “click with”. Zatanna was an addition to build up the female contingent, and Mera made an appearance in the Kobra arc and I wanted to use a character like her for the same reason as Zatanna but also because she’s amazing.

But that’s not how this is going to work, I realised. I wanted to use as many women as possible, but there has to be a place for them in the story, and the roster is already STACKED and we have so much planned. I have ‘spotlight’ stories planned for Blue Beetle (#53-56), Wonder Woman (#62-66), Majestic (#68-70), Cyborg (#71-72), a roster change we have in Vol. 2 #12 (that hit the site this weekend) and then another in #67 (which should hit, if we maintain a monthly schedule, in July 2017, yikes).

I couldn’t figure out stories for Mera and Zatanna that early on. I may figure it out and slip them-- or others-- back into the roster and into the story schedule, but I can’t just use a character for one story then let them drop into the background for witty banter. It’s not fair on the characters and I need to write the stories I can write and do what I can with the best tools at my disposal.

Anyway, there’s plenty more to talk about. The Majestic / Marlowe plot will continue for the time being (and it does in Vol. 2 #12) but I’m going to be honest, there’s a lot of plot simmering for them, but I’ll discuss that when I comment about that issue. Batman is going to continue to come in and out of the team, like Grant Morrison used him, and there’s some great stuff planned for 2016.

Jamie and I are having fun. I think I can say that! I think I can speak for Jamie there! We're redesigning costumes-- that Zatanna costume she's wearing on the cover of Vol. 2 #11 is snazzy, and Wonder Woman's skirt is something. It'll hopefully get longer over time! Jamie is always pushing for Big Barda to wear her FULL costume, again as you can see above, and there's lots more costume design, villain design, cover work, that'll keep these books both visually interesting, as well as content-interesting.

Oh, I mentioned it elsewhere, but it looks like my titles e.g. Green Lantern Corps and Justice League, are going to take January off. I’ve discussed it with Jamie and we’re going to try and build up a buffer of content again. In February we have the start of our next two-parter, and ArtTeach has agreed to do the covers for it, so that’s an interesting change. If we build up enough of a buffer, we might go bi-weekly, but there’s no real rush. Lots of fun stories, lots of Green Lantern Corps and Justice League and a few side projects that will keep the torch of the DC2 lit.

I’m still here, it doesn’t look like I’m going anywhere, and there are plenty of stories still left to tell. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

It's also cool to receive the occasional insight into the editorial discussions you have had and the different ideas each editor has given you. Very cool!

I sometimes worry that my titles are too long, especially when I have to do the “New Issues Header” on the homepage of the site. The longer a title the more it’ll throw the off the layout, which is a right ball ache to fix. So I try to be a bit more restrained nowadays, but I think evocation is the important aspect of a title. Sometimes I get too smart… for example, in the issues detailing the return of J’onn J’onzz and Ma'Alefa'Ak, I was originally going to run with the following titles: “Fire Itself”, “A Changed Martian”, “Peel Back The Skin And The Bone”, “A Conspiracy of Fools” and “Martian Manhunted” but instead, because I started thinking that two Blue Oyster Cult song titles, namely “Fire of Unknown Origin” and “Burning For You” would be perfect for certain instalments, I went all in on BOC, and that’s how we ended up with all BOC song names for the names of the issues!

Inteeestingly as an aside, “Martian Manhunted” is the name of the first ever fan fiction story I wrote (back on the pre-DC2 site I met David on), and it was about a depowered J’onn J’onzz investigating nourish crime as John Jones, while haunted by his murderous brother. The more things change…


I actually think I’ve applied that methodology to a lot of my prose. The first novel I self-published was based on the narrative structure established by the first run of the BBC’s Sherlock-- three “episodes” culminating in a finale, but utilising beginning, middle and end three times over but also in the macro of the whole run, as well as the micro of each episode.

I think it’s a fine balancing act to do, because I’ve struggled with pacing these recent arcs, due to self-imposed constraints on arc length. Once we pass #75 I’ll hopefully be able to make stories breathe more. We’ll see!


Jamie loves drawing powerful women, especially Big Barda, so I tried to pitch him cover ideas that played into his strength. What’s the point of doing this for fun if you’re not actually having fun? That’s why I quickly moved my roster away from Big Seven to something a lot more flexible. That’s why the god damn Guardian plays a massive role in my roster nowadays. Because fun. Because I love writing the guy.

Unfortunately, Jamie’s got some back problems that mean he can’t draw at the minute, but as soon as he’s healthy he’ll be back. We have something massive planned for the #75 arc, and I really want him to deliver at least one of the amazing cover ideas he had.


Introducing Stormwatch early… I do admit that I have some regrets on the execution. If the site was running at full speed I could have had the group play a role in stories across the universe, you know? Team Achilles causing issues for the Titans, maybe cracking down on the Outsiders… all in-universe things that make sense. But due to the parred back state of the site, it meant that everything starts in Justice League and has to end in Justice League, so the scale of some stories doesn’t come off like I want it to.

I’ve effectively shut down the likes of Checkmate and the DEO, and replaced them first with the Global Peace Agency, then Stormwatch, and after that another version of the GPA. Wouldn’t it be good to see that play out elsewhere as well? I’d love to write an espionage book with the likes of King Faraday, the spy master general of the DC2, having to bounce around in this new world order. Imagine him butting heads with Henry Bendix! Imagine him interacting with his once-protégé Chloe Sullivan! That would have been brilliant.

I hope I introduced some scale to the concept, because Stormwatch meant a lot to me when I was “maturing” as a comics reader. Wildstorm always had great ideas flying around in their books, even if they didn’t deliver on them due to 90s EXTREME!!! art or pastiche writing from folks who wanted to be the next Alan Moore but came up short massively.

This is just another aspect of Wildstorm “invading” the DC2, and as I write this, I’m currently taking a break from working on #72 and the debut of something (someones) else MASSIVELY Wildstorm. I also appreciate that right now, with Warren Ellis having come back to mainstream comics to work on DC’s The Wildstorm, that there’s a bit of serendipitous storytelling going on, as we’re both taking the same style of approach to the characters—remix, reimagine and release out into the world!


Ugh! It was so important for the public to not fall for Bendix’s tricks. Even in the face of overwhelming odds, the Justice League should be trusted above all else. The peoples’ faith in them was rocked by Kobra, but then they were proven right. So when it happens again… who’s going to actually fall for it? Yeah, the footage is “real”, but this is the Justice League we’re talking about. So it was important to have a “rebuttal” in-story to that narrative trick.

Bendix is such a heightened villain in all his appearances, so it was important to do him justice while also adding some layers in which you might not have expected. He’s got a secret history in the DC2 with the likes of the Guardian and others that I intend to visit some day, but he’s not gone from the book. In fact, as I write #72…


I had a bit of concern keeping Superman and Majestic around at the same time, so I made the decision very early on to ship the former off. Majestic is a really interesting character—a powerful, militaristic idealist—and him being this wild card created interesting opportunities early on. It was his head strong nature that created a problem in the first place, giving Stormwatch the chance to try and “frame” the team, but as ever in my stories, people get to talking and things get sorted out. I actually worried that I “Worfed” Majestic as the stories featuring him played out—he’s so powerful and could reasonably end every threat the team come up against by his lonesome, that he gets punked out every single second act. Hopefully I redeem that in #70-74.


If anything’s not clear then it’s the fault of poor writing so I apologise! There wasn’t a massive time jump at the end, but a sequence of events falling like dominos after the fall of Stormwatch. I can’t wait to get back to these characters again!