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Post by commond on May 20, 2022 16:34:55 GMT -5
I apologize for leaving out teams like the Freedom Fighters , the JLA whah , ha era and others. I was posting the thread right before I had to go to work. There are many crappy teams without mentioning the Image guys. There is no way the Bwahaha JLI belong on a list of bad super teams unless, I dunno, someone surgically removed your funny bone.
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Post by commond on May 20, 2022 16:58:26 GMT -5
Could it be that we ask too much sometimes when it comes to coming up with a good team concept? With so many superheroes running around in the MU and DCU, it could be like musicians leaving one band and immediately forming another with someone else because that's what musicians do: it's either make music as a solo act or as part of a band. So maybe we shouldn't expect that MU superheroes have any bigger motivation than, "Hey, you left the Avengers? I just left the X-Men! How about forming a new team?" Not that good concept couldn't an advantage in both cases - though it seems more obvious for musicians than for superheroes. You'd hope that the members of a band share certain ideas about what kind of music they want to make, but how many different kinds of superhero-ing are there? I think it's difficult to start a new team book in general. The hope is that you'll stumble onto the next Giant Size X-Men #1, but more often than not it's a failure. Perhaps we should have a thread celebrating low key successes like Power Pack or post-Silver Age books that actually gained some traction such as New Mutants or Defenders.
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Post by chaykinstevens on May 20, 2022 17:26:43 GMT -5
This was such an ugly, ungainly team that even Vince Colletta used a pseudonym when he inked it! That was a strange one, as Vinnie used his real name when he inked the following two issues. I think Christian Volt, who inked #12, was a pseudonym for Alfredo Alcala.
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Post by Icctrombone on May 20, 2022 18:55:56 GMT -5
I apologize for leaving out teams like the Freedom Fighters , the JLA whah , ha era and others. I was posting the thread right before I had to go to work. There are many crappy teams without mentioning the Image guys. There is no way the Bwahaha JLI belong on a list of bad super teams unless, I dunno, someone surgically removed your funny bone. Ha, I did buy and re-buy the series but I felt the humor angle made them characters into a joke.
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Post by tarkintino on May 20, 2022 19:18:08 GMT -5
Could it be that we ask too much sometimes when it comes to coming up with a good team concept? With so many superheroes running around in the MU and DCU, it could be like musicians leaving one band and immediately forming another with someone else because that's what musicians do: it's either make music as a solo act or as part of a band. So maybe we shouldn't expect that MU superheroes have any bigger motivation than, "Hey, you left the Avengers? I just left the X-Men! How about forming a new team?" Not that good concept couldn't an advantage in both cases - though it seems more obvious for musicians than for superheroes. You'd hope that the members of a band share certain ideas about what kind of music they want to make, but how many different kinds of superhero-ing are there? Well, it comes down to bad motivation leading to bad team creation. In universe, I can think of a few teams with a solid and/or legitimate reason for coming together:
The Doom Patrol The Invaders
Liberty Legion
X-Men (original) Teen Titans (original and 1980's New version)
...and i'm sure there's others, but team books were always better off when they were not sold as the biggest, toughest, end-all, do-it-all group, which (being a problem with the superhero concept in general) removes any feeling of danger to the heroes or average people, because...they are just too powerful, so what's a criminal or super-villain to a gang like that?
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Post by commond on May 20, 2022 19:18:53 GMT -5
There is no way the Bwahaha JLI belong on a list of bad super teams unless, I dunno, someone surgically removed your funny bone. Ha, I did buy and re-buy the series but I felt the humor angle made them characters into a joke. There were so many character moments in that series. I’m biased because it’s probably my favorite series of all-time, but I couldn’t read the book anymore once it returned to classic JLA adventures. To me, there’s more depth in the JLI run than in typical JLA stories. I can understand people not liking the humour, but I loved the idea that you had this team of lovable misfits that drove Martian Manhunter crazy, and who other people thought were dragging the League’s name through the mud, but whom ultimately J’ohn was very protective of. I also loved the way they tied that into his guilt over the Detroit team.
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Post by Icctrombone on May 20, 2022 20:07:34 GMT -5
Ha, I did buy and re-buy the series but I felt the humor angle made them characters into a joke. There were so many character moments in that series. I’m biased because it’s probably my favorite series of all-time, but I couldn’t read the book anymore once it returned to classic JLA adventures. To me, there’s more depth in the JLI run than in typical JLA stories. I can understand people not liking the humour, but I loved the idea that you had this team of lovable misfits that drove Martian Manhunter crazy, and who other people thought were dragging the League’s name through the mud, but whom ultimately J’ohn was very protective of. I also loved the way they tied that into his guilt over the Detroit team. It was jarring, but I respect what it did. The first JLA series never became what it should have been. At least this book was very popular.
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Post by majestic on May 20, 2022 20:13:07 GMT -5
When I was a teenager I preferred team titles over solo titles. Even the bad ones. After college I preferred solo titles and rarely read a team title unless it was really great.
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Post by MWGallaher on May 20, 2022 20:40:19 GMT -5
This was such an ugly, ungainly team that even Vince Colletta used a pseudonym when he inked it! That was a strange one, as Vinnie used his real name when he inked the following two issues. I think Christian Volt, who inked #12, was a pseudonym for Alfredo Alcala. Indeed. I was just joking with that line, really, since I don't think it was really a matter of shame, just a strange little mystery. With Ramona Fradon pencilling, that was probably the best art the Freedom Fighters were to have in their run. The Alcala pseudonym suggests "Voltar", a Filipino comic of Alcala's, and I agree it is Alfredo's brush on Dick Ayers' pencils that issue.
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Post by dbutler69 on May 21, 2022 5:55:59 GMT -5
I actually think the wort JLA version is the one from the mid-90's, between when Giffen/DeMatties left around 1992 and when Grant Morrison revamped the franchise in 1997. Both JLA and JLI were pretty lousy during that time period.
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Post by Deleted on May 21, 2022 6:47:38 GMT -5
I actually think the wort JLA version is the one from the mid-90's, between when Giffen/DeMatties left around 1992 and when Grant Morrison revamped the franchise in 1997. Both JLA and JLI were pretty lousy during that time period. Agreed. For me, there’s nothing memorable about that period.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on May 21, 2022 19:23:31 GMT -5
No mention of The New Guardians yet?
Perhaps the pain caused our memory to fail!
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Post by codystarbuck on May 21, 2022 19:43:35 GMT -5
No mention of The New Guardians yet? Perhaps the pain caused our memory to fail! It's hard to think of that as anything other than the unwanted epilogue to Millennium, from which most people bailed after the first week or two.
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Post by mikelmidnight on May 23, 2022 12:21:43 GMT -5
There is no way the Bwahaha JLI belong on a list of bad super teams unless, I dunno, someone surgically removed your funny bone. Ha, I did buy and re-buy the series but I felt the humor angle made them characters into a joke.
I loved the first twelve issues, which I thought had a good balance of humor and action … after that though it leaned too heavily into the humor aspect and I got bored (especially with the denigration of Ted Kord).
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Post by Icctrombone on May 23, 2022 14:36:42 GMT -5
Ha, I did buy and re-buy the series but I felt the humor angle made them characters into a joke.
I loved the first twelve issues, which I thought had a good balance of humor and action … after that though it leaned too heavily into the humor aspect and I got bored (especially with the denigration of Ted Kord).
Exactly.
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