Dan Jurgens on Justice League International #9

Justice League International

#9 sees writer Dan Jurgens and artist Aaron Lopresti forced to be pretty flexible; there are a lot of fight scenes interspersed with a few pages of dead-stops to the characters' movement, as well as a lot of new faces, both in terms of potential new teammates OMAC and Firestorm and a group of villains, some of whom we've seen before and one of whom we haven't. As usual, Jurgens joined us to discuss the issue both on its own merits and in the context of the greater series and the greater DC Universe. I'm a little worried here that by exposing Booster to data from the Rocket Red armor, both Booster and Skeets might be at risk of infection from that weird uplink hiccup that we saw Red get before he died. Am I being paranoid? Well, we really don't know if Rocket Red was getting infected with anything there. Who knows? Maybe the alien ship took something from RR and was, in turn infected. Or it could be that there was no infection whatsoever, that was just a nice, soothing, pink light. It's interesting--the dialog between Batman and Batwing suggests that even the superhero community isn't really clear on Booster's "deal." Did you want to roll back the number of people in the hero community who knew his "secret?" No. It's just that we tend to be a skeptical society now. If an individual suddenly shows up and claims to be from the future, some people are bound to be skeptical. On top of that, I think Batman, more than any other hero, would be the type to check into it on his own and make sure. Now, if you wrap that into the idea of a hero who advertises projects and tends to hype himself, well, you can see why Batwing would have assumed it was an act.

It strikes me that being from the future is, in some ways, his secret identity and so making it less well-known or well-accepted in the hero community basically does for Booster what Byrne did for Superman when the post-COIE reboot took knowledge of his identity away from so many other heroes. In many respects, that's true. It's not like anyone can go talk to his friends or family, right? It's not like anyone can actually verify whatever claim Booster might choose to make. That said, if the world's greatest detective were to do "a lot of digging" on Booster Gold, what might he find? The best he could come up with is whatever Booster has done since arriving in our time. His life before that would still be hidden. The only available information is whatever Booster might choose to tell someone. A summer home in the timestream, perhaps? Why not? Do you get royalties if DC decides to sell "Bat berets?" I'd buy one. Sadly, no. Too bad, because I'm sure they'd be quite popular in France. Actually, I hope to see any number of Bat Berets at Cons from here on out. You know, I feel like this is the first time that you've really traded on the Guy Gardner/Booster Gold football metaphor (although Geoff played with it a bit in BG vol. 2). How long til you bring Steel in for the hat trick? No plans for Steel at present, but I had been looking for a place to fit that in for awhile now. Glad we finally had a spot to do so! Did Guy transform into the Iron Lantern from Amalgam Comics?! And if so, was that scripted? No, not the Iron Lantern. But I did ask Aaron to armor him up. Really, when you think about it, it's a total natural way to go into battle.

On that note, have you seen The Avengers yet? I think Iron Man/Hulk is the only combination of fight they didn't try. Glad to see you've got that covered, DC-style. Haven't done so yet. That's on my weekend list of things to do! We know that Infinite Crisis didn't happen--and that according to Dan DiDio Ted Kord was "never around." So to what extent is Batman's connection with Brother Eye still canon? Best to ask Dan. He actually worked with us in terms of OMAC looking for Batman due to the Brother Eye connection. Speaking of Ted, it's hard not to imagine that tying OMAc and Brother Eye in with the JLI will eventually bring the team face-to-face with Chekmate and Max Lord. Hmm... it's fair to say that OMAC looking for some kind of solution is something that's going to continue. Should he happen to blame Batman, there's a lot to work with there. "All the way to France?" says the guy who routinely jaunts out to space for a beer with Kilowog? Only because going into space is likely a lot more fun that going to France! I mean, if you were offered a trip between the two, which would you pick? "Society is at a tipping point." what are the challenges of writing a book like this that inherently has political undertones without alienating the audience by making the bad guys sound too much like their "side"? I'll be the first to admit that I'm walking a bit of a fine line. I think there's a general, widely held perception out there that many things within the system are broken. The trick here is to play with that perception without assigning blame. As soon as you assign blame, a segment of readers are more interested in that rather than the story itself. These villains don't seem to have a rapport--is there something important there? I can see a parallel being formed between these guys and the JLI. It's important to convey the idea that these people are working together for the first time as well. All part of idea that, with the New 52, lots of stuff is coming together at the same time. Again with Guy's creative constructs--is that a ship from Sun Devils? Just a product of Guy's imagination. Now, as to whether or not he actually met Rik Sunn and the gang... Is Godiva's line about "we've been going at such a fast pace, we've forgotten about Gavril" a little author commentary? It seems like it's as true for the reader as for the characters. To a certain extent, perhaps. As much as anything, it was also meant to set up a couple of things that are coming down the road. It's certainly true, however, that the team has been going at a very fast pace. What was the logic of actually tying directly into a Firestorm issue when introducing the character, as opposed to just telling the story in your own book? Let's just say that it will also plant the seeds for developments down the road.