The Justice League is one of the most important teams in the history of comics. They weren’t the first team that someone put together the greatest heroes of a superhero universe, but they came at just the right time for the industry and fans. DC Comics had been bringing superheroes back to prominence in the late ’50s, and the League’s 1961 debut was a massive success, leading to Marvel getting back in the superhero game. Since then, the team has become one of the most popular of all time, although that popularity has cooled as their marvelous competition proved able to use outside media like films and TV to make their heroes more popular than DC’s greatest team.
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The Justice League have had some amazing adventures, with decades of history under their belts. Since then, many fans have developed some ideas about the team that have become gospel for many of them. However, not all of these ideas are correct, and these five Justice League ideas show how incorrect they are.
5) The Justice League Has Lost Most of Their Importance
The Justice League are positioned as the most important team on Earth, but they haven’t really been successful with fans in a long time. Here’s the cycle of the team in the 21st century since JLA ended: the team would be dusted off again for a new status quo reboot, a new roster would come together, and the team’s book will sell well for a little bit, but fade away. This has been the way of the Justice League and it shows something distressing for fans of the team — they aren’t actually all that important anymore. The team feels like a gimmick nowadays, a way for DC to show they’re serious about bringing back the glories of the past, but they haven’t able to keep the title successful or important in over 20 years.
4) DC Wasted the Post-Infinite Crisis Reboot of the Team
Infinite Crisis was the best DC event of the 21st century, and set the universe on a more classic road. Justice League of America (Vol. 2) was meant to be a big part of this, and the publisher snagged Brad Meltzer to write the first 12 issues, along with rising star artist Ed Benes. It’s a great couple of stories, and after he left, the publisher put Dwayne McDuffie, who had helped make the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited cartoons popular, on the book. However, they didn’t want to let him cook, and it led to the book falling down the ranks. The publisher tried to bring back the Satellite Era, got A-list creators, and then didn’t let those creators do the work they were capable of. It feels like the publisher torpedoed the team, trying to push them as important while not ready to allow that to happen.
3) Justice League Villains Aren’t Great
The Justice League battles some formidable enemies, but there’s something interesting about that. If you look at the team’s foes, most of the time, they’re someone else’s enemies. The vast majority of fan-favorite League villains come from the rogues gallery of the members or from other other areas of the DC Multiverse. When you look at the team’s villains who debuted to battle the team, you’re going to find a lot of bad villains. They aren’t all bad; Starro and Despero are both awesome, but then you get someone like Kanjar Ro or Doctor Light or the Key, villains that need significant overhauls to work in the modern day. On top of that, some of the good League villains, like T.O. Morrow, aren’t actually all that dangerous to the team. For every great League villain, there are a whole bunch of bad ones.
2) The Justice League International Did Immeasurable Damage to the Team’s Concept
There have been numerous Justice League teams over the years, but one of the most beloved is easily the Justice League International. The JLI brought an entirely different vibe to the team, bringing in mostly lower-level heroes to create stories that were more about superhero comedy than superhero action. It made stars out of characters like Booster Gold, Blue Beetle II, Fire, Ice, and Guy Gardner, and took readers in new directions. However, it was never going to be able to work as the main team of the DC Universe in this way. Justice League stories were once brilliant superhero spectacle; the JLI made their adventures into a sitcom. It made the group less and less important in the eyes of fans until DC had to do away with the idea of a smaller stakes team of lower-level heroes and go back to the original conception of the group. The JLI led the team to its biggest failure, despite being awesome on its own.
1) Legion of Doom Stories Are Played Out
The return of the League in 2024’s Justice League Unlimited was a cause for celebration, introducing a new era of the team and then throwing a new threat at them… that was eventually revealed to be a time-traveling version of the Legion of Doom. While we got a pretty good story out of the whole thing, there was still something cliche about the Legion of Doom showing up as their first enemies. The villain team is pretty cool and powerful, but it feels like they’re the go-to enemy for writers of the group, and they always show up sooner rather than later. There’s more to the League than just fighting the villains they fight all the time, except this time teamed up with other villains. There are so many ways to take the team that constantly taking them back to the Legion at some point feels like a mistake.
What are your favorite unpopular Justice League opinions? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
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