5 Justice League Comics That Have Aged Poorly

The Justice League may not be the most popular superteam anymore – although there was a time when it was – but they are one of the most important. The group is based on DC’s legendary Golden Age team the Justice Society of America, bringing together the greatest heroes of the day to face threats no one hero could. Debuting in 1960, the team was so popular right off the bat that Marvel Comics took notice and decided to start doing their own superhero books again. The group has changed with the times over the decades, its adventures in the ’60s and ’70s laying the groundwork for the modern event comic, its mid ’80s incarnation giving readers the perfect superhero comedy team, and the ’90s seeing them return to prominence as the best superteam in comics, with the 21st century having some big ups and downs for the League.

Looking at the history of the Justice League, many of its older stories have aged like a fine wine. The best League stories are timeless, but not every story can have that kind of pedigree. One of the problems with comics is playing to the trends of the day and this has made it so that some comics have aged like milk in the sun. These five Justice League comics have aged extremely poorly, books that don’t stand up in the modern day.

5) “Darkseid War”

The New 52 was an ambitious reboot that failed miserably, trying to recapture the glories of DC’s post-Crisis reboot. The Justice League was an important part of the publishing schedule, but most of the stories from this era have aged terribly, mostly because they’re from the New 52. However, in my learned opinion, the one that has aged the worst is easily “Darkseid War”. The story ran through Justice League (Vol. 3) #40-50 (there’s also a bunch of one-shots starring the members of the League after they become gods, but they’re basically just mood lighting for the story, for lack of a better term), by Geoff Johns and Jason Fabok, and saw Darkseid and the Anti-Monitor begin a catastrophic war, with the mysterious new villain Grail pulling the strings of all sides. This was the last gasp of the New 52, the final League story of the era, and it just never works. The biggest problem is that it doesn’t feel like a New Gods story at all. None of the New Gods feel right and this version of Anti-Monitor is one of the lamest of all time. There’s some good spectacle in the book, but it’s just not a good story and it’s gotten worse nowadays, especially with all the peak New Gods and Darkseid stories we’ve been getting lately.

4) Extreme Justice

The ’90s were both one of the most successful decades in comics and almost completely destroyed the industry, as Marvel and Image put out style over substance stories with gimmick covers, overprinting everything, and not making comics that fans actually wanted to read. DC mostly sidestepped chasing the trends of the ’90s, but the massive success of Rob Liefeld and Extreme Studios saw them try to play to what the kids wanted with Extreme Justice. This 19-issue series looks like the worst artists of the ’90s threw up all over it, giving readers the terrible “extreme” style of superhero art that was popular at the time (I was there and I’m still mystified by the whole situation). Everyone had huge muscles, everyone was grimacing all the time, and the violence was dialed up. DC was trying to get readers to read the Justice League, but they failed miserably. While I talk about how well DC did in the ’90s a lot, Extreme Justice is an example of them making a dumb decision that led to a terrible series.

3) “Tower of Babel”

“Tower of Babel”, by Mark Waid and Howard Porter, was the first story after Grant Morrison’s groundbreaking JLA run. At the time, the book was one of the most popular in the industry, so there were some big shows to fill, and Waid and Porter dialed it up to 11 for their attempt in JLA #43-46. The Justice League is attacked by a mysterious enemy who is able to expertly use all of their weaknesses against them. Batman realizes that someone is using his anti-Justice League plans against the team, something they would discover as well, leading to the Dark Knight leaving the team. While this story was a hit back in the day and many fans still love it, it’s also the story that introduced the idea of Batman’s contingency plans against his friends, something that has played a huge role in messing up the unity of the DC superhero community. It also helped push the notion that Batman could beat anyone with prep time, something that has made the comic sections of the Internet even more annoying than they already are.

2) “I Can’t Believe It’s Not the Justice League”

The Justice League International is one of the most beloved incarnations of the Justice League. This team was more of a comedic superhero soap opera than a superhero adventure comic, with J.M. DeMatteis, the late great Keith Giffen, and Kevin Maguire giving readers some of the most fun stories you can imagine. This version of the group was brought back in the 2003’s Formerly Known as the Justice League, which was so popular it got a sequel in JLA Classified #4-9: “I Can’t Believe It’s Not the Justice League”, with former members Power Girl and Guy Gardner joining the team. This is honestly a pretty good JLI story, but it aged badly because of Guy and Mary Marvel. The amount of jailbait jokes he makes about the teen hero is a little much and younger audiences are going to find it creepy and offensive. The ’00s were a time when comics got more risque, with this story fitting perfectly into its time. It just doesn’t really fit anymore.

1) Identity Crisis

DC was amazing in the ’00s, pushing its universe forward and beginning the process of undoing Crisis on Infinite Earths‘ changes. There are numerous best of all time stories from the decade, with DC putting out the best event books of those ten years. One of the most important was Identity Crisis, by Brad Meltzer and Rags Morales. When Sue Dibney is murdered, the superhero community goes into overdrive to find the killer, who knows the secrets of the team. However, a secret group in the Justice League has a clue no one else has, from a night that they all tried to forget, leading to the reveal of one of the team’s biggest secrets. Identity Crisis has an amazing Justice League story welded to a murder mystery and it should be considered one of the best comics ever. However, the problem is its treatment of Sue. She’s fridged in the first issue and then it was revealed that she was sexually assaulted by Doctor Light. This sort of thing has been rightfully called out in the 21st century and it honestly ruins this story.

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