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JUSTICE LEAGUE [2011] / 16 OCT 2014
NYCC: GEOFF JOHNS'S PLANS FOR SUPERMAN AND THE JUSTICE LEAGUE

Share. The writer talks about getting into the heads (and immune systems) of heroes and villains.

BY MELISSA GREYTo call Geoff Johns busy would be something of an understatement. Between penning scripts for both Superman and the Justice League, he serves as DC's Chief Creative Officer, but we managed to steal a few moments with him at New York Comic Con to talk about what he's got planned for (arguably) the world's most iconic team of superheroes and whether or not villains can every truly find redemption. Lois Lane fans, be sure to read on to the end.

IGN Comics: Let's focus on Justice League to start. You've got a really interesting thing going on here, with Lex Luthor acting as one of the good guys, in so far as we can call him good. He's always got an ulterior motive.

Geoff Johns: When we first launched Justice League, the intent was always to do two years with the main team we had and then I wanted to bring Lex Luthor on. I thought what's the craziest character I could bring on the team that people already know but has never been a member of the Justice League that can kind of shake it up and have us look at the team in a different way, and Luthor was the first character that came to mind. I had written him a little bit before in Superman but never a lot, and I started thinking about it, and that's where Forever Evil came from. I thought what possible scenario would have to happen in order to thrust Luthor into a position of having to save the world. And we didn't market Forever Evil or talk about it as a Lex Luthor story even though it was totally just a Lex Luthor story. If you read it from page one, everything in it is designed to challenge Lex, to pull Lex into some emotional ups and down that we haven't seen before. My favorite scene still is Bizarro scene, when he dies, and Luthor is like, "He was my monster." It's like, oh my god, he actually cares about something, and I don't know if I've seen Luthor care about anything that's not him.

And so the whole goal with Forever Evil was to explore the character a bit more and to put him in a position to save the world and get the credit for it and feel that because Luthor is all about ego, so he needs to get the credit for that. From there, how could he get on the Justice League? How could they accept him? And ultimately, if he's viewed as a hero by most of the world and the League's like, look, he's going to go out and do whatever he wants to do, OR we can say come work with us and we can watch him. And as soon as he slips up, we're going to take him down. It's been great because he brings such a different dynamic to the team, and the fact that he knows Batman is Bruce Wayne is a lot of fun.

There's issue #35 coming up that's really a Bruce and Lex issue with the Justice League as well in it, a precursor to a storyline called The Amazo Virus. Essentially Bruce has told Lex, you can come on the team but we get to see behind every door at LexCorp, so we get to go into LexCorp for the first time and see some of the failed experiments and the things he's been working on. Ultimately, the next storyline -- The Amazo Virus -- is all about how Lex thinks he can just turn over a new leaf and his past doesn't matter, but it does, and it blows up in his face in a big way. Something he worked on gets out and then he needs the League's help cleaning it up.

IGN: Any coy hints as to what it is exactly? Animal, vegetable, mineral?

Johns: Little bit of all three actually. That was a good question. It's called the Amazo virus and what it essentially does is . . . it affects humans and metahumans in very different ways.


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IGN: So, psychologically, what's going on in Lex's head? We had that scene in #34 where this little girl gives him a flower and even his hard heart has to thaw a little bit at that. And you've got these characters like Wonder Woman who, even though they're waiting for him to slip so they can pounce, she's sort of acting like the voice of his conscience.

Johns: I think the interesting thing for me is that Luthor has allowed me to crack into the characters even more. In that issue in particular, the Luthor-centric stuff focused a lot on him and Superman. Scott Collins did a great job with this one shot in particular where Superman gives him a quote about how a life worth living is a life lived for others, and Lex says, "Did you read that on a greeting card?" And Superman turns his back on him and says, "You'll never be a member of the Justice League until you believe that." And you can see that Superman's patience is very thin with this guy. He doesn't trust him, he doesn't think he's going to change, that he's going to understand the values that he embodies. Luthor is having a little fun with Superman, too. He likes getting on his nerves. Like, bullets might not hurt him but I can annoy him.

IGN: Which is the next best thing.

Johns: Yeah, exactly. And the scene with Wonder Woman I really enjoyed. It allowed me to look at Diana in a slightly different way. She might not actually believe that Lex is capable of it, but she's going to give him a chance. She gives everyone a chance. Even Lex Luthor is going to get a chance. And when that little girl comes up to them, and Luthor assumes it's to give Wonder Woman a flower, but she gives it to Lex, it is a shock to him. And it's a small enough surprise that he keeps the flower. You see in the final scene that he has it on his desk, but he's pulling it apart because he doesn't quite understand it. He doesn't understand his feelings. There's subtleties in there. And Bruce is just all about manipulation so he has a stern talk with Lex about when he became Batman that first night out, he went out and it was all about him, and my anger, my vengeance, my justice, and the very first night he realized, it's not about me. It's about that person I just helped. But he doesn't think Luthor will ever really understand that. And all that Bruce is seeing is a play; he's trying to get Lex positioned to where he wants him to be.

IGN: Do you think Luthor has it in him to be a decent human being?

Johns: I think that's the big question I'm going to ask and try to answer. The interesting thing is that I think Luthor has the capability of doing good things; whether or not they're for the right reasons or whether or not he goes about them in ways that might hurt other people is the question. What is he willing to do and will he change his behavior? Even if he can't change how he perceives things or how he projects on to people -- like the fact that he assumed that the little girl is coming up to Wonder Woman, clearly he's projecting what he assumes people think of him in the world, where a lot of people don't know him, a lot of people might just know of him. He's a big Bill Gates type character that's suddenly thrust into a heroic role and some people are willing to accept that and some never will. I don't think Superman will ever accept that, but we'll see him try. And one of the other things that Luthor brings to the team is that it reaffirms for me how other characters can say, "This is why the Justice League exists. This is why we do what we do. This is how we do what we do." And between Luthor and Shazam, there are two really different perspectives -- like Luthor takes it very seriously, and then you have Shazam who doesn't quite understand what the big fuss is about.

IGN: He's just a kid.

Johns: He's a kid! He wants to play ping pong with these guys and hang out, and I think that's refreshing to have some humor. Both of them bring humor but in very different ways. And then we're going to have new characters like Jessica Cruz, Power Ring, and I think the idea that she's looking at this item that's a curse, and Flash says to her, let's go to S.T.A.R. labs and figure out how to get it off, and she says, no, I want to figure out how to use it, teach me how to use this thing.

IGN: Which is maybe the difference between us mere mortals and members of the Justice League.

Johns: Yeah, exactly. And I think the fact that she's willing to try it, and we'll see her try, and it won't be easy, to see if she's got what it takes to be a member of the team. And then we've got Captain Cold waiting in the wings with his own plans.

IGN: Well, he's pretty shifty.

Johns: Yeah, he's got to be shifty. He's got his own agenda.

IGN: It's interesting the way you're getting into the psychology of these characters. In Superman, he has this foil now with Ulysses. In the previous issue when Ulysses' parents say, we had no choice but to rocket you into space, there's this great panel where it doesn't focus on the speaker -- Ulysses' father -- it shows Clark. It shows how you're exploring these characters through their teammates or their allies.

Johns: That's the best thing about Luthor and seeing the Justice League through his eyes or vice versa. Ulysses' whole point of being -- when I got on the book John [Romita Jr.] and I talked a lot about him and I'd read all the New 52 stuff and I really felt like the alien part of Superman was so mined, and they were really focusing on that, so I said, let me focus on something we haven't seen a lot and that's the human side of Superman. But I wanted to explore it through different characters so that we could have scenes like that. Because Superman's reuniting this guy who's similar to him with his parents and watching that happen, it's amazing it is that he can do that knowing that he can never have that for himself. Everything that's happened for Ulysses is reflecting Clark. I've written through #38, I know in #35, or #34, I keep forgetting which of these is out, we have Ulysses blowing a whole through the Machinist, or who he thought was the Machinist, and it turned out to be a puppet, and the ramifications of that will be discussed in the next issue, and we'll get more into who Superman is and what Superman does. This whole story arc is about opening up and exploring Clark.


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IGN: They're very similar in a lot of ways, but what are some of the key divergences in how they've dealt with their similar situations?

Johns: Well, one of the things that I really wanted to explore was what would happen if Clark had to help somebody else assimilate to Earth. How do you teach someone else, and ironically, they're a human being, to come home after years and years? For Clark to take someone who is like himself, who has powers, and try to help them assimilate back into the world and have a human identity helps us reexamine what Clark's process is. That was the whole point of Ulysses' character

IGN: We're just about out of time, but do you have any parting words for IGN's readers about Superman, the Justice League, life, love, teen issues?

Johns: Always love the people that love you. On the comics side, in Superman #38, it's the conclusion to this first storyline John and I are doing. We're doing three big things in that book: one that's never been done that will change Superman in a big way, and then two that have been done but we're doing them in new ways.

IGN: So shifty!

Johns: [Smirks] I know. But I'm really excited about issue #38 because there's a lot of surprises in that issue and there a lot of payoffs from what we've been building. It'll send us off in the next direction. We have issue #39 kind of the fallout from everything that's happened. Issue #40 will be a Lois Lane-centric issue -- super excited about that. I really loved writing Lois in Superman: Secret Origin and Action Comics. So, basically, Luthor will give one interview to one person and it's Lois. We're going to have a lot of fun. The opening is really funny. For big, big fans of Lois, they're really going to get a kick out of the opening. So, that's really fun. And then on the Justice League side, Jason Fabok is an amazing artist, just doing beautiful work on the book. He's taking over with issue #36, the first part of the Amazo Virus storyline, and that storyline will be exploring two things: one is what this virus is that Luthor created, what it does, why he created it, all these secrets will be revealed, and at the same time, there's someone trying to assassinate Lex Luthor for some unknown reason. The league has to decide, how can they both stop this virus, and try to cure this virus, and also protect Luthor, which is a priority.

IGN: Just another day in the Justice League.

Johns: And we've got that coming up. Next year, in '15, we have two big story lines. There's a big story line in Superman that's going to focus on this character that's been watching Superman and knows who he is, and we'll name that character I think in the next issue. And then in Justice League, we have the second coming of Darkseid so that'll be fun. The Anti-Monitor and Darkseid are on a collision course, and so we'll go kind of full circle on Justice League as we take it into the next era, and we'll see more of the Crime Syndicate and other returning members. And then Gary Frank and I are finishing up Batman: Earth One, Volume 2. Gary's on the last two pages of that, so that's exciting, and that's out next May, I think. IGN Logo

Melissa Grey wears Green Lantern pajamas to bed and writes stories for a living. She can be found on MyIGN at MelissaGrey or lurking on Twitter @meligrey.