Comics / Spotlight

Membership in the League

By Hervé St-Louis
March 6, 2003 - 12:01

The latest revival of the Justice League franchise has featured DC Comic's dream team, the Big Seven. The membership of this dream team is controversial. There is a constant debate on whether to expend the team's membership to make it less culturally homogeneous.

No character's worth to the big seven lineup has been so contested as that of J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter.

One problem raised with who belongs in the League or not concerns the Post Crisis/Crisis. Some argue that Black Canary is a JLA founder. Others argue that she only replaced Wonder Woman in a retcon.

For some, the original League is the big seven. For some it is a big five. Some even distinguish two set of Big Five. There is the Big Five that excludes Aquaman and J'onn and the Big Five that excludes Batman and Superman. I believe, DC favours the Big Five without world's finest.

This is reinforced in the toys they sell, such as the Justice League DCDirect five pack, the Brave and the Bold classic Justice League statue, the reprints of the Brave and the Bold stories featuring the Justice League and son on.

In the Justice League cartoon the "Justice League" proper, is a franchise where the second level of DC characters after Batman and Superman aggregate. Batman and Superman join this group proper but are independent properties who can exist outside the League. The other cannot exist without the League.

Since Crisis, Wonder Woman was has been stripped of her founding status. This has diminished her presence. The credibility she lost, the Black Canary, her replacement, gained. Even in the Post Crisis origin of the League, the Big Five rules, only Black Canary replaces Wonder Woman in the chair.

Other criterion for who is an ultimate leaguer exist. For example, the Super Friends changed Aquaman's status forever. In the past, Aquaman was bellow Flash and Green Lantern in stature, equal to Green Arrow but above Hawkman, the Atom and J'onn.

There used to be a triumvirate of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. They were there because they were the top of DC.

Then there were the two dukes, Green Lantern and Flash because they could hold their series and were the heirs of two successful Golden Age franchises and consequently, successful revivals.

Then we had the two old stalwarts who had survived the storm as backup features from the Golden Age, Aquaman and Green Arrow. Make no mistake, even to this day, this history, which fans tend to dismiss and ignore, is very dear to DC. Everybody else, be it J'onn, Hawkman and the Atom were bellow the above mentioned.

Because of the Super Friends and the Filmation series, Aquaman is better known than Flash and Green Lantern outside of comic books. While they also featured on television and merchandise, other comic book Leaguers such as Green Arrow, Flash and Green Lantern's exposure is not as extensive. People know Aquaman well.

Because they did not feature Aquaman as a regular member of the Justice League, the creators had to make "amends" and put him in a major storyline as after dealing with other important problems, such as establishing Stewart as the main Green Lantern in Blackest Night.

I know many of my arguments are straight outside the actual comic books' stories, but it is important to see how DC itself sees the situation when arguing about the big seven.

Grant Morrison created a League that consisted of the character families and symbols used when the book was created. The primacy of this lineup was last reestablished forcefully in JLA 200 and the second Annual when Aquaman disbanded the team.

In JLA 200, the original roster defeated the newer members in each encounter. It reestablished the supremacy of the originals, much the same way the Avenger's do every few years and have done in the Ultimates by using the original members and Captain America. Unlike the Avengers, Green Arrow, the first new member, was never given a founding status. At most he is a senior statesman status.

Aquaman crushed whatever pretense at seniority Green Arrow had when he disbanded using his founding member's prerogative. All those years, we thought that all leaguers were equals. It was not so. J'onn, the only Leaguer who could have opposed him, did not.

In fact he joined the new team (Detroit) right after. This time, instead of the Big Five interpretation being promoted, the Big Seven lineup was. Effectively, the "weaker" members of the Big Seven, traditionally excluded from the Big Five lineup including Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash and Green Lantern, took over the Justice League.

Morrison's Big Seven League was reactivated with updated characters and histories. Characters who were not founders of previous incarnations of the League, because of legacies and Crisis, became founders of this new team. Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman, former founders, stripped of their founding status, returned. Flash and Green Lantern, were given the opportunity of being real founders.

I'm definitely not arguing that the Big Seven is important or should be kept. I'm saying that Morrison's lineup ran deeper and has a special meaning for the League. Now, whether the team will be stuck on just one of its incarnation eternally or will it change is another matter and what we arguing here.

Now, the tough question. Who deserves membership? There are three types of demands. There are those based on ethnicity and gender, those based on characters with historical claim to membership in the League, and those of popular and strong characters never associated with the JLA in the past.

In the latest JLA lineup DC has taken aggressive steps to find a mix of responding to the demands of all fans, while balancing the needs for an entertaining mix of character. DC used the Obsidian Age to temporarily adding both fan favourites and some former Leaguers, such as Nightwing, Green Arrow, Firestorm and Hawkgirl.

After the storyline, DC kept some former members, created a new female, an ethnic characters and added an element of surprise as former villain, Major Disaster. Meanwhile, J'onn was removed from active duty, although, he remains a presence in the book.

I think the current lineup of the JLA, while not my personal favourite is good for the time for now. It adds creative possibilities fans would have unforseen with their ideal lineups. Yet, this doesn't address the issue of the Martian Manhunter's worth to the League. Is he really the heart and soul of the league?

My view about heart and soul line is that it is neither a retcon nor something forced. It's true. It has been since J'onn returned from space and helped Aquaman in Detroit. It was reinforced in the Justice League International where J'onn J'onzz became part of an intricate mix formed the by the Blue Beetle/Booster Gold, Fire/Ice combos, and Guy Gardner. Remove one of the pieces and the thing fell apart.

Without Jonn J'onzz, the Justice League International would have never been as popular. J'onn held the fort when the other "real" leaguers were away. Notice that J'onn J'onzz could only be relieved when Superman, Aquaman and Green Lantern came back. J'onn earned his spot by holding the League when all the other originals left. He is the only founder who held the League by himself for so long.

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12