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The Justice League is finally back in DC Comics. Only this time, this isn’t a simple “Justice League” or the Justice League of America. This is Justice League Unlimited from Mark Waid and Dan Mora, a brand new take that brings together the entire DC Universe to face threats so huge even the big seven can’t handle them alone. And as the first Justice League title from DC in several years, the book is going big, too.
“This is the nexus of the DC Universe for the foreseeable future,” Waid teased to Comic Book Club in an interview over Zoom. “Everything that happens in the universe revolves around what’s happening [here]. We are the driver of the DC Universe for the time being.”
While the first issue of the series doesn’t hit until the end of November, we do know that it spins right out of the DC All In Special, after the seeming death of Darkseid and the birth of the Absolute Universe. And yes there’s that dangling plotline of a crack in the DC Universe leading into the Absolute Universe… But Superman and his amazing friends have a lot of other things on their plates in the meantime.
That includes a new villain group called Inferno, something called Darkseid’s heir, a Parademon infestation and so much more. To find out what to expect from the book, as well as what it’s like for Waid and Mora to continue their partnership from World’s Finest, read on. Plus, check out preview pages and multiple covers for the book, below.
Comic Book Club: This is you, once again, working with Dan Mora. How has the relationship grown and changed over time? And has it changed at all, specifically, when you’re trying to tackle this book?
Mark Waid: It hasn’t really changed specifically for this book. I mean, it’s a chance for Dan to draw whoever the hell he feels like drawing, which is part of the remit for him. The rule of thumb is the same as it was with Kingdom Come. If they’ve got a line of dialogue, it’s probably somebody I asked for in the script. If it’s somebody standing around the background, that’s probably something that Dan wanted to drop in, or somebody he’s always wanted to draw. But beyond that, there’s a trust that’s there that I get in terms of my scripts. I can be a little a little looser. I can certainly let Dan take the reins with pacing a lot more often now that we have built up a relationship.
You always hear people pitch teams in different ways. They’re co-workers, they’re a dysfunctional family, etc. They’re a military force, whatever you’re going for. So what is your take on the Justice League in general? Because obviously you’ve written it extensively before. And what’s different about Justice League Unlimited?
The difference is, normally it is all-stars. That’s basically your baseball all-star team. This is all-stars, plus everybody else in the DC Universe. Anybody who wants to be a hero and passes muster is automatically a member of the Justice League. So that makes them co-workers as much as anything else. Everybody still looks up to Superman in awe, looks up to Wonder Woman in awe. The core players of the DC Universe are still the heart of it. But I really like the idea that anyone is available at any time.
You’re an old hand at this now, but this is an extraordinarily large cast in this book. So logistically, how do you start tackling that? How do you break that down in your process?
We’ve got our Alpha Team, which is the people you see on the cover of issue one. You’ve got Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, The Flash, so forth. The standard bearers of the Justice League. There will always be two or three of those in every issue. On a second tier, you’ve got characters like The Captain or Black Canary or Green Arrow, whoever. There will always be someone of that second tier in every issue. And then there’ll always be someone in every issue who is some obscure character who you would have to spend days and nights going through DC’s Who’s Who to find that we’ve dug up, and I’ve got some new spin on them that we can show you.
I like using this book as a showcase for forgotten characters, as well, to remind you that they also have real potential. So that’s the logistics of figuring out who’s going to be in every issue, and then in terms of what they’re doing, it really is mission-specific. It is, “This is happening over here. Hey, Mark, who’s best to handle a situation like this? And… There are some plots going on with Ryan Choi and Ray Palmer trying to figure out how to recapture some of the powers that are still loose and running around out there. That also involves pulling in certain DC characters to that subplot, in and out. So there’s plenty going on.
Do you start then, with this book, with the overall plot, like, here’s the mission, and then piece out the characters from there? Or is it a little bit of both?
In terms of the main plot, yes, it’s that. Here’s the big threat, who can we throw up against that? But in terms of the subplots, it has a lot more to do with here’s somebody I want to use. I haven’t seen Atom Smasher in a long time. Maybe there’s something we can do with him in a subplot. Here’s our payoff of the Plastic Man stuff that we seeded in Absolute Power #4, what can we do with that?
…And do you have a tier list somewhere of the A team, the B team, the C team, or is it all up here? [Points to head]
[Laughs] Oh yeah. I mean, a lot of it’s up here. But even I, with my vaunted DC brain power, must have a written list. And luckily, I’d already worked up something for Absolute Power where I needed to keep track of every single DC superhero in the existing continuity. So that’s the starting point. And then it’s all broken down in a master list somewhere that I consult with alarming frequency.
You know somebody is going to come in and try to steal that list and be like, “How dare you make this person C-tier!”
[Laughs] Good luck with that. You don’t know the secret code, dude.
This is sharing a name with the classic animated series, Justice League Unlimited. Did you look to that at all for inspiration? Or are they two entirely separate things?
No, it’s definitely inspired by that. The whole concept of Justice League Unlimited as a comic was the editor, Paul Kaminski. He made the offer because it fit nicely with wanting to do something that is [like] what we’ve done in World’s Finest, which was to open the doors to every single superhero that I might want to use or that Dan might want to draw. And we’ve done that in World’s Finest, but we’re still limited to some degree because that’s set in the past. So there’s a lot of characters that are off limits. With Unlimited, the idea was, okay, we get to have that same sort of World’s Finest freedom, but now everyone is available to us.
One of the things that could really characterize Justice League Unlimited the cartoon for me was the interpersonal relationships. So to put it simply: is this a kissing book?
[Laughs] I’m still looking for characters that need to kiss, but there’s certainly relationship stuff here that’s part of the fun of writing Justice League in any incarnation. I can’t, as the writer of Justice League… I don’t own Aquaman, right? In the sense of, I don’t get to do the big, important world-changing things with Aquaman, because that should be in his own book. I don’t own Wonder Woman, but what I do as a writer own is their relationship and how they relate to each other. And so taking characters like Black Lightning and Star Sapphire, and finding what it is they have in common, what it is they disagree about, what it is that makes them, the two of them, a dynamic, is the fun of it. Not all the characters are going to get along. Not all of them are going to be all kissy-face, either. There’s a wide range of relationships that you can tap into.
It’s interesting to hear you say that, because there’s certainly a school of thought that would say that Justice League should be the spine of the DC Universe, the thing that’s leading the way.
It is. It’s actually set up to be exactly that. This is the nexus of the DC Universe for the foreseeable future. Everything that happens in the universe revolves around what’s happening [here]. We are the driver of the DC Universe for the time being. So yes, we can have big, gigantic, world-shaking, universe-altering things happening in this book. But you know, as anyone will tell you, if Flash loses an arm, or whatever, that should be happening in his own book.
In the first issue, and I feel like that’s such a crucial aspect of a first issue with such a big cast, there is a window character — Air Wave — being shown around. I’d love to hear you talk about that structurally, why that’s important.
It really is important because, I know it’s a cliche, but every issue is somebody’s first, and this will be especially because the Justice League has been off the publishing schedule for a couple of years. This is the first time a lot of readers will encounter the Justice League. We’re also launching so many enormous, huge things and concepts in the Watchtower, with this room, and that room, and this concept, and that concept, that we needed a point of view character to take all this stuff in. And Air Wave really fits that bill for me. Teenager, “Gosh, wow!” a fairly blank slate, and eager to please and eager to step up… So therefore he is the perfect point of view character for the readers.
You wrote some of the most vaunted runs on Justice League of all time. What is it like coming back? Does it feel like putting on an old pair of shoes? Does it feel nerve-wracking?
It’s really not like putting on an old pair of shoes, because the DC Universe is so much broader than it was the last time that I wrote the Justice League. And the remit here is different in that I have such a sprawling cast of characters that need to be served, and I look forward to serving them. I mean, it’s not a burden, but that’s what makes it a completely different feel. If anything, it feels more like when I was writing Brave and the Bold with George Pérez, pulling all these disparate characters together to have adventures. That’s more what it feels like to me, but on a bigger scale, because you’ve got so many different characters that need to be served. You’ve got your Alpha Team, you’ve got your Beta team, you’ve got your third stringers, and mixing and matching those is a challenge I haven’t really had to face before. And it’s fun.
Justice League Unlimited #1 hits stores on November 27, 2024, featuring a four-page prelude to Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee’s Hush 2. Check out interior unlettered pages and a Hush 2 cover, below.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
“]] Mark Waid teases what to expect from his new DC Comics book Justice League Unlimited in this interview, as well as revealing preview pages. Read More