This Was the Weirdest (And Maybe Worst) Justice League Era

There have been plenty of iterations of the Justice League over the years. From the great versions like Grant Morrison’s JLA, to the regrettable Justice League Detroit, to the hilarious Justice League International, DC’s premier superhero team is constantly reinventing itself for whatever era it finds itself in. If you look at the Justice League, you can typically judge the attitude of that era of comics by how the League acts and is presented, given it’s usually packed with most of DC’s flagship characters. However, there’s one particular era for the League that is infamous for not only for unnecessarily splitting the League into three separate teams, but also giving us one of its worst incarnations. The early ‘90s gave us the Wonder Woman led Justice League of America, the Justice League Task Force, and the ever regrettable Extreme Justice.

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The Dark Age of Justice

The ‘90s are infamous for being extremely edgy and over the top, and that is no clearer than in comic books, where that edge was pushed to the absolute limit. From the meteoric rise of antiheroes to the grittier incarnations of heroes taking over, including the Jean-Paul Valley Batman (who was meant to critique this excessive violence and darkness), nobody in comic books was safe. The Justice League had reached a new height of popularity as the comic book industry boomed like it never had before, and the executives at DC asked how best to handle the situation. The times demanded that a broodier, moodier version of the League be created, but DC was a superhero company, and making their number one team follow this trend did risk upsetting older fans who weren’t keen on it. Unfortunately, the massive influx of readership allowed them to make a compromise; different teams. One traditionally heroic, one edgier, and one that was somewhere in between. And it was horrible.

Extreme Justice was the dark, gritty, and “mature” Justice League book, being led by Captain Atom and featuring a much less comedy focused Booster Gold and Blue Beetle, along with Maxima, who is only here to have a child with the Captain. This comic is the most gloriously, disgustingly ‘90s thing I have ever seen. It is over-the-top in every capacity, from its art to the sheer intensity of its dialogue. If it were made today, then people would assume that it was built around some kind of irony, but this entire thing is played straight, and I love how terrible it is. This team specifically operated as a team unrecognized by the United States, while fighting predominantly threats to the US that they couldn’t openly deal with, which is the most ‘90s thing ever. This series actually has Booster Gold and Blue Beetle cut their top tier comedy act and try to be straight-laced hardliners, which speaks volumes about how this comic structured itself. Unfortunately, while this is definitely the least rereadable of the three books, this is far from the only one with problems.

Disjointed Justice and Too Many Leagues

Justice League Task Force started as a rotating-cast book, with each arc having a different team led by Martian Manhunter. This never really took off, and the book failed to have an audience as it couldn’t stick to a cohesive cast or set of stories. It definitely improved when it established itself as a Justice League training team, where they send heroes who can’t quite cut it in the big leagues yet, and stood with a single line of people, but that might have come too late, and it didn’t erase the rest of the issues. Simply put, this series was the middle man between the traditional JLA and Extreme Justice, but that made it the worst of both worlds. It was too edgy for fans of traditional superheroes, and not edgy enough for either fans or people who loved to laugh at that sort of thing. It feels like a book that never reached its full potential.

And then, of course, we have the Wonder Woman led Justice League of America, which by all rights should have been great. Yet even this awesome idea for a comic was plagued with issues. For one, Wonder Woman and the Flash were the only A-listers on this cast, which isn’t a dealbreaker in and of itself, but it unfortunately has some of the most regrettable storylines and designs of any Justice League team. Not only did this run force us to live with the abysmal “Power Girl had a magic baby” storyline, but it was during the era where Wonder Woman wore a full denim suit and went only by Diana, having lost the Wonder Woman title, and how could we ever forget the Warrior Guy Gardner design? This run was plagued by all of this, and the quality of the stories are not nearly strong enough to carry through the peculiar choices it made.

Overall, despite the fact that there were more Justice League books than ever before on the shelves, the League had more problems than ever before. It’s the best example of how quantity does not equal quality. The era of the early ‘90s is definitely one of the weakest for the Justice League, but I’m not saying that it has no redeeming qualities. Far from it. All of these books are worth looking into, if for ironic laughs at the laugh of irony, if not for anything else. Every era of comics has its charm and reason to go back to it. It’s just that this one has less reasons to return than the average one. Which era of the Justice League do you think is the weakest? Let us know in the comments below!