Geoff Johns and Mikel Janin Talk Bringing New Characters to the JSA (Exclusive)

Justice Society of America #1 is out now with the new monthly title picking up from The New Golden Age one-shot and delving into the biggest threat and mystery the iconic superhero team has ever faced as a mysterious enemy invades the team's full history and kills every iteration of the team. While a lone survivor from a future iteration has to find a way to stop them, the series also introduces new characters to the story as well, expanding the beloved team's roster in new and interesting ways with fresh, original characters, including Ruby, the daughter of the Golden Age Red Lantern. Now, in an interview with ComicBook.com, writer Geoff Johns and artist Mikel Janin talk about creating new characters for the JSA.

"I used to love reading Roy Thomas's work on the team because he would introduce new characters that we never heard of. Amazing Man. And those characters were cool and then they stuck, and they became part of the history and the tapestry of the teams. And I think there's room to do that still. I think there's room to expand The Golden Age out and say there were more characters we haven't seen there. And this was in a way to unify it all and say how special it is. Because when you introduce a character like The Golden Age Red Lantern, or you say, 'Hey, there was a Golden Age Mr. Miracle that established Justice Society Dark, what was that?' There's suddenly these stories you can tell, and they don't just sit in the forties, they affect the stories today so that we can have characters like Ruby show up or Harlequin, something there can be stories about that took place in the forties that had their roots there but also affect today and affect the future like we did here," Johns said. "And that to me is one of the reasons that Ruby is such a present character and she's so cool. I love Mikel's design for her. That's a cool design. And she's got a great hardcore personality. Clearly her dad, she idolizes her dad and really learned from him in a lot of ways. And the idea though is if we introduce all these characters in the past, it's not just saying, 'Oh look, all these characters are in the past.' That affects the present day. That affects the future. Now there's Ruby who's a character who wouldn't have existed without The Golden Age Red Lantern."

Janin spoke about the design for Ruby, and how she has a look a bit like that of a video game character.

"It was one of the characters that we didn't have another design. So, I had more freedom to play with her," Janin said. "And we had the inspiration of the design that Brad Peterson did for her, The Golden Age Red Lantern. So, we used this like a base, the color palette and all this. But we play with her. So, I wanted to give her a futuristic touch and a modern bit like a video game character. So, I put a lot of detail in the costume, and I think it worked."

Johns also explained that he hopes that the new characters that are being introduced in Justice Society of America #1 end up being taken into other stories as well.

"That's the hope that we... or you take characters like John Ostrander introduced Mister Terrific. Grant Morrison introduced you Jakeem Thunder who was called JJ Thunder back then and we took him in JSA and ran with them," he said. "And you want that with some of these characters. Someone might come along and take one of these characters and make them into something bigger. And that's always the hope is when you're working in a shared universe is that you're always adding to it and you're pulling to it and you're pulling from every era and trying to make it continue to grow and live and breathe and be exciting. I think new characters are always exciting to me because their stories haven't been told yet."

Justice Society of America #1 is on sale now.