This weekend up in Toronto is Fan Expo ’11, and at the New 52 panel being hosted earlier today Dan DiDio relented and finally broke news to the fans present when, during the question and answer segment, the usual “Where is _____” questions arose…not unlike at San Diego.
Today Dan gave us all some news though. That the JSA would be returning with writer James Robinson, and artist Nicola Scott. No release date was given, but Earth 2 was confirmed and that leads me to believe that the Golden Age is going to rest in their own little reality for the time being.
“We don’t want them to just be cameos and then forgotten,” DiDio said. “We’ve waited on JSA because we really wanted to get the details right. We were hammering out the characters as late as yesterday.”
Which is absolutely fine by me. A few months ago DiDio said that they were going to rest the concept for the time being so that they could devote efforts elsewhere. Then, with the knowledge that Superman is going to be the ‘Worlds First Superhero’ in the DC Relaunch, many fans were under the assumption that the JSA would just be wiped away to find a home in our memories and nowhere else. Defeatists, I call them.
Especially when I’ve been saying for a while now that the JSA should just move back to Earth 2 and have their own self-contained little universe of stories without being shoe horned into the very modern elements of the DC Relaunch (despite books like Demon Knights and All Star Western, JSA would have much more influence over the DC Universe).
James Robinson is probably the most perfect choice for a writer that DC could look to for a project like this, especially without it being subject to the goings on of a world with the JLA. It will give him the freedom to tell his stories in his way, and possibly regain some of that magic from his runs on Starman, the first arc of JSA (the late 90’s volume that helped launch Geoff Johns after Robinson left), and even his Golden Age mini.
Nicola Scott is one of those missing female creators that people were clamoring about during the time when people were griping at a lack of female creators in the relaunch. She also just finished a run on Teen Titans that featured an extra sized issue that came out this past week, so her not being on something in September doesn’t surprise me.
All in all, I’m really looking forward to this project and can’t wait for a release date or some preview art!
