Rumours

New JLI title?

It is the project that cannot be spoken about, but for a couple of conventions now we’ve had comments from Judd Winick that he absolutely, definitely cannot talk about what happens next in terms of the JLI characters. Well Bleeding Cool had taken a punt at the Bleeding Obvious and have put up a rumour that there will be a new Justice League International title.

Whether it’s by Generation Lost writer Judd Winick, or the classic team of DeMatteis and Giffen, I don’t know. And those pesky Non Disclosure Agreements that DC creators are currently all signing are doing everything to prevent me for finding out.

But I am intrigued. And it’s not the only exciting Justice League book I hear has been scheduled. More soon…

Unfortunately they don’t give any other details so we’re no further forward than we had been before.

We do, however, have some idea of how long we’ll have to wait. Judd Winick (who has to be the front-runner for the writer position) has recorded a Don’t Miss podcast for iFanboy where he talks about this weeks Justice League: Generation Lost #24 and in that he speculates that we should hear something (one way or another) in about a month.

What did interest me more than the “confirmation” of the rumour was Rich’s comments about the old JLI title:

It was the book that stopped me being a Marvel zombie in my tracks and opened the door fully, for me, to the DC Universe.

His co-writer Mark Seifert expands on that:

Rich is completely right about Justice League by Giffen and DeMatteis being a gateway into the DCU for a lot of people. Sure, we all read DKR, and Watchmen (and GA: Longbow Hunters, and so on), but this was the book that drew us in on a regular basis and got us to branch out into other titles.

I was always a DC fan, but the comments ring true.

Jim Lee on a JLA book?

Take everything that follows with a liberal dose of “I’ll believe it when I see it.” For sometime there have been rumours that Geoff Johns and Jim Lee are going to collaborate on a Justice League story or title. As usual these rumours come from Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool. The latest incarnation involves a question asked to Lee at a convention. From Bleeding Cool…

Jim Lee was asked by a fan during his panel at the Wizard World Big Apple Comic Con if he would be working on Justice League in the next few months. Lee replied “wouldn’t that be awesome” before saying with a glint that it would be “foolish, foolish” to suggest that a late artist such as himself be given a book with many characters in it, before mentioning that it was very cool now that Hal Jordan and Barry Allen were back… before drifting off and repeating “wouldn’t that be awesome?”

Least we also forget that Lee is now free on his executive obligations at Wildstorm so has time, in a relative sense, to spend on drawing comic books. Unless, that is, he gets hired back as DC’s Publisher (another rumour).

This puts me in mind of another question that was put to Geoff Johns at CBR about his post-Blackest Night work.

[CBR: ] Schluffy wants to know if you’ll be returning to “Action Comics” or any of the other Superman titles after “Secret Origin” is complete?

[Geoff Johns: ]I will not. My stint on Superman ends with “Superman Secret Origin.” The guys have a lot of big plans ahead, but I am going to be focused on the Flash and Green Lantern. Gary Frank and I are moving on to a different project.

So Johns is rumoured to be writing a JLA project with Lee and he’s admitted to another undisclosed future project with Gary Frank. I’d love it if those two things were actually the same project – a JLA companion title in the same vein as Johns’ Action Comics run (a single writer paired with a succession of distinctive, high-profile artists) with Frank and Lee illustrating the first two arcs. Purely fanish pie-in-the-sky, but we can at least dream.

Updated several hours later to add:

CBR have more in depth coverage of the Jim Lee Big Apple Con panel and reproduce Jim’s quote in full:

Lee was asked about rumors that he’d work on a “Justice League of America” comic book within the next year or two. “That’d be awesome,” he answered. “But it’s taken me this long to finish ‘All-Star Batman and Robin,’ so for me to even suggest that I’d work on something else with more than one character on a page would be suicide. It’d be foolish if I said that–but it’d be awesome if that happened! I would love to do it, but I want to get ‘All-Star Batman and Robin’ done first.”

That sounds far less definite than the BC story, but the self-deprecation aside I still think he could do it if his schedule was clear enough.