As a Lifelong Justice League Fan, DC Has Me More Excited Than in the Last 20 Years

For me, the Justice League was never better than when superstar writer Grant Morrison wrote the team in 1990s, with their groundbreaking run on JLA. Morrison’s run left such an indelible impression on me that I must confess I’ve found it difficult to get into any further adventures of DC’s premiere super-team in the years since Morrison wrote their last issue in 2000.

That all changed late last year with the release of Justice League Unlimited #1 – written by Mark Waid, with art by Dan Mora – DC’s latest revamp of the biggest super-team in comics, which has me truly excited for the Justice League for the first time in decades.

Justice League Unlimited revamps the team by expanding its roster to include nearly every hero in the DCU. In short, it is everything I want in a DC comic, and takes me right back to the days of reading JLA as a kid and falling in love with comics for the first time.

Grant Morrison's "JLA" Revamped The Justice League Into DC’s Top Book In the 1990s

JLA #1 – Written By Grant Morrison; Art By Howard Porter

To fully explain why Grant Morrison’s work in the 1990s on JLA was so groundbreaking, I should probably establish a little context first. I remember first learning about the concept of the Justice League when I was very young, I believe through re-runs of the old Super Friends cartoon. Excited to discover that there was a superhero team with Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and more, I was eager to check out some Justice League comics and learn more. Unfortunately, DC’s premiere super-team was on its last legs in the mid-90’s, with the team made up primarily of forgettable D-listers.

That all changed when Grant Morrison and artist Howard Porter relaunched the team with the newly-abbreviated JLA #1, bringing together DC’s “Big Seven” for the first time in decades. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman and the Martian Manhunter gathered together to form a super-team that would handle nothing short of the biggest threats facing the DC Universe. From an invasion by White Martians to an attack by rogue angels from Heaven, Morrison and Porter’s stories kept getting bigger and bigger, and JLA quickly became DC’s top-selling title.

I didn’t jump in until JLA #12, part 3 of the 6-part “Rock of Ages” storyline, which centered around Lex Luthor forming an Injustice Gang to challenge the JLA, making use of the powerful artifact the Philosopher’s Stone to subdue the heroes. It’s eventually revealed that the Philosopher’s Stone is actually the Worlogog, a map of all space and time that originally belonged to the New God Metron. Luthor winds up not realizing just how powerful the Worlogog is, inadvertently altering the future where Earth is a hellscape ruled by Darkseid.

Grant Morrison’s "JLA" Putting The “Great” In the "World’s Greatest Superheroes"

Expanding The Scope Of Justice League Stories

Needless to say, I was hooked. I made sure I had $1.95 every month so I could buy the latest issue, and I quickly snapped up the collections of previous issues. What truly captured my attention during Morrison and Porter’s run on JLA was the sheer audacity of imagination on display. The only limits were the bounds of the creators’ imaginations, resulting in a world where anything was possible. Perhaps the best example of this was Morrison and Porter’s final story “World War III,” which concluded in JLA #41.

To deal with the apocalyptic threat of Mageddon, the League concocts a way to unlock the hidden meta-gene in humanity for a short time, after which they recruit everyone on Earth as “Justice League Reserves” for a desperate last stand. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Morrison and Porter’s work on JLA had a profound effect on me; the best way I can describe reading JLA is having my head taken off my shoulders and screwed back on in a completely different fashion. I became a Grant Morrison fan for life, but perhaps more importantly, I started down the path of what became a lifelong journey of appreciating comics as an art-form.

After that, though, I found it hard to get into any further Justice League comics. While there were some great Justice League stories and runs followeding Morrison’s, nothing ever grabbed my attention in quite the same way. Flash-forward to nearly twenty-five years later, where I find myself picking up Justice League Unlimited #1 last year. While flipping through the pages, I got a familiar tingle of excitement. Finally, there was a Justice League comic that took me back to being an eleven-year-old kid, falling in love with a medium that would come to define my life, in many ways.

Justice League Unlimited: A New Standard of DC Comics Excellence

Justice League Unlimited #1 – Written By Mark Waid; Art By Dan Mora; Available Now From DC Comics

What is it that makes Justice League Unlimited so exceptional in my eyes? I believe it’s the same thing that first caught my attention reading JLA over twenty-five years ago. Mark Waid and Dan Mora have created a title that allows them to tell literally any story they can think of. Much like the excellent cartoon with which it shares a name, Waid and Mora can use their “unlimited” cast of heroes on an unending host of adventures; the only limits once again being the bounds of their imaginations.

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Much like the JLA book when it relaunched in the late nineties, Justice League Unlimited shines because it has assembled the right creative team at the right moment. Mark Waid’s career should speak for itself at this point, and the long-time comics writer has seemingly caught a second wind since returning to DC in 2022 with Batman/Superman: World’s Finest. Waid has simply been on fire lately, and Justice League Unlimited feels like the culmination of a lifetime spent dreaming up adventures for everyone’s favorite superheroes.

Joining Waid is rising superstar Dan Mora, who paired well with the writer on the previously-mentioned Batman/Superman: World’s Finest. Mora has the uncanny ability to cut to the core of what makes each hero iconic, while also drafting them in a style that is uniquely his own. The artist is able to capture all the spectacle and bombast required of a superhero story, with his energetic linework just begging to reach across the page into a double-page splash. Quite simply, there’s no artist working in comics today who does superheroes better than Dan Mora.

"Justice League Unlimited" Made Me Realize It Is The Best Time To Be A DC Fan In Decades

A Rennaissance For The League

For me, the true power of superhero comics has always been about the power of imagination; it’s a lofty comparison to make, but humanity would never have made it to the moon if someone hadn’t first imagined it as a possibility. This is a key theme running throughout nearly all of Grant Morrison’s superhero work – bullets may not bounce off of your chest in the real world, but you can certainly take Superman’s example of strength and humility and apply it to your own life.

In a similar fashion, reading Grant Morrison’s work opened up the bounds of my imagination, showing me there was more to the world than I initially thought by showing what was possible on the comic book page. All of a sudden, the possibilities of what could be opened up considerably, changing my perception of the world around me. From Grant Morrison to Mark Waid, from Howard Porter to Dan Mora, from JLA to Justice League Unlimited, comics continue to show what is possible by first imagining within the panels of a comic.

Superman

Created By

Joe Shuster, Jerry Siegel

First Appearance

Action Comics

Alias

Kal-El, Clark Kent, Jonathan Kent

Alliance

Justice League, Superman Family

Race

Kryptonian

Franchise

D.C.

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