First Look: JUSTICE LEAGUE 3000 #1

Yeah, and what's up with the weird glowing rope Batman uses?

@quantumvertex: Ugh, with Greg Land's art? It's pretty much the same white girls and guys, just colored differently.

@lvenger: I don't think being a person of color results in clouded judgement. There is quite a bit of white, male, and straight privilege within such statements as "diversity for diversity sake" and "why does color matter?" If they are a displaced JL that's one thing. But if this is a non-canonical work for which the writer and artist have been given significant creative license, then yeah it sucks that every hero is white, mostly male, and heteronormative. We can't take the fun of seeing someone like you/having your identity validated for granted. Even if it is in a work of fiction.

@captain13: I'm a minority too, so I kinda get what your saying, but I think this series is about the present day JL getting sent to the future. The just happen to be all white. I would like some diversity as well, but the writer did say he would be adding to the team, so hopefully we'll get some then.

I will probably stick to beyond 2.0.

That's what it looks like

Totally agree. It was awesome.

@captain13: People complain about Bendis and Millar all the times its just not about racial issues. I do not get where you are coming from possibly because I have never found myself not being able to connect to a character because he or she was a different race, gender or sexual orientation to me. It never mattered what I want is good stories with good characters and morals, I think those things are something everyone can relate to and that is what truly matters when picking up a comic book.

Did Batman put an explosive device on Supermans face in the top panel and detonate it?

Another book that I thought did pretty well with their diversity was the, cancelled way too soon, Paul Cornell written Captain Britain and MI13. I mean the book had a devout Muslim woman wielding Excalibur and MF'ing Blade, who is about the most underused character in Marvel.

I pretty much converted when Marvel announced their diverse Netflix series, lol

pass

Not true. There is a reason no one complains about Brian Bendis, Mark Millar, Chris Claremont, Marv Wolfman, George Perez, Bruce Timm, etc. when it comes to race. They write in-depth minorities, give them lots of screen time, and constantly try to include them in major stories.

@captain13: did you see what that other commentor said about the Mighty Avengers having a multi racial group? Maybe you should go over to the marvel side. Shoo...

To me, X-men felt natural because of the nature of mutants being a worldwide phenomenon and Xavier needing to recruit the best people possible to rescue his original students and form a new team. And I can't speak for other people so my issue with McDuffie is the same I have with this team being all white. And to be fair you can't say that only Wolverine was white simply because he was from the North American continent. Colossus is Russian and Nightcrawler is German, and while neither looked "white" while fighting, it doesn't change what they are. To me things like Mighty Avengers feel unnatural because I would think and hope that Luke Cage would recruit Iron Fist first and foremost for a team. And unless the writers are super clever about gathering the team it is going to come off as transparently gratuitous as it seems from the solicits.

@batshrine: I know I should not get involved with this because it's a debate that cannot be won or lost. When I hear people complain about no diversity in comics it just make me want to bang my head against a wall. Look at the new characters that are getting major pushes at DC and Marvel many of them are as diverse as they come. The companies are trying to evolve or catch up with the times the problem is no matter what they do its ether not enough or pandering, People do not know what they want because when they get it they want to complain. DC and Marvel can not help it if people want to see their top guns support some of these new heroes like the new Ms. Marvel and maybe one day they will get to those ranks.

I will disagree with that statement because ironically there are people who have no issue with 0 black people on the team, 0 latinos, 0 muslims, 0 arabs, 0 africans, 0 filipinos, etc. There are all white teams that people have no issue with. But a team without a single white person all the sudden is a crime...These are double standards that make 0 sense (especially for a team defending the world, which is not primarily white, nor male).

And I agree diversity should seem natural, but I really want to know why people think X-Men felt natural. It went from an all white team fighting a jewish guy to a team made up of foreigners with only one of them being actually white (Wolverine). I am sure people at the time had huge issue with it because it was beyond obvious. The only catch was the writing was amazing, and X-Men was Marvel's number 1 priority at the time so they made sure the best writers were on it.

@theblackhood: Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, and other whites would have still been on the roster...

According to McDuffie's own posts, the 3 characters he wasn't interested in writing were "Red Tornado, Hawkgirl, and Red Arrow". His posts went on to say there were 3 characters he was "off the team" and that he planned to have Kendra "break up with Roy rather painfully" which would remove him from the book. So yeah, not to speak ill of the dead but he wanted an all minority team which is no better or different than an all white team.

http://asylums.insanejournal.com/scans_daily/249674.html?thread=5453386

That bit about McDuffie is totally false, as he wanted Hal over John. Also, reading MA, I didn't think the team's formation felt forced--at all. Anyway, the X-Men has always done diversity well. You're right about that.

Edit- I may sound confrontational, but I don't mean to be. I appreciate the discourse.

@lvenger: I agree, I think for someone to reject a book(issue one few pages no less) based on such an assumption is kind of ridiculous.

Obviously there are no doubt different races, aliens etc in the future I'm sure.

I don't know why people think there's no diversity in comics, there's plenty(and I'm a latino saying this) We've had asian, latino GL's for the guy who has issues with it, arab GL's now, black, white need I say more? How much more diverse do you want?

I mean JLA from DC we've seen tons of diversity, I mean as oppose to a bunch of mutants living in a mansion with different abilities, let's see JL members. The core JL characters, a last son of krypton that blew up(alien), a Martian who had his entire race destroyed(alien), Amazon(Daughter of Gods), Green Lanterns(humans among other races throughout the universe), Batman(a human yes but with more issues then playboy) and a guy who should be dead in Flash but is a cop by day, hero by night due to a lab accident... not to mention all having different abilities...Oh and an atlantean that cares more about environments and fish more then anything else ultimately. Sure, that's totally not diverse remotely lol.

Anyway, this looks good and I'm curious to see who they are and what their powers are. Really curious who Flash, Batman and GL are. It would be so cool if Flash was Wally West or maybe Wally Allen? :P

I think, perhaps, we've gotten off on the wrong foot. I agree that the creators of this book could and should have easily made the team more representative of a future society with a better mix of ethnicities. My point is simply that I like books that do this more naturally like certain periods of the original X-men book rather than making something overly forced or gratuitous like Might Avengers or MacDuffie's run on Justice League where the editors had to fight to keep Red Arrow on the book because MacDuffie wanted zero white men on his team.

@the_stegman: It's because its an important thing to recognize since racism is still prevalent to this day.

The main argument that why the main superhero's are white is because they were created in a time that was much more "racist" but their popularity grew and changing them would create more disdain and would actually be backwardly productive because it would make people more racist (disliking diversity for diversities sake is a product of that).

So you have the formula then to introduce sub characters to introduce diversity while still retaining the popular character (i.e. batwoman, batgirl, simon baz, john stuart, now Alan Scott, supergirl) to try to balance the disparities whether it is in gender, race, religion, sexuality, etc. This is also why you don't see a Wonder Lad, or a White Panther.

So here you have a completely new team, and its back to the same racist/classist/sexist habits as before. Not that these habits don't exist (watch any super hero movie these days, including x-men, and casting is still white male centric, yes I'm looking at you Avengers, but not only you), but you would hope that modern day comics are more progressive (since you see the creation of all female X-Men team, and DC trying so hard to maintain Batwing and less so Batwoman).

Now visually we see the gender and racial disparities are the same. But maybe there is diversity in class or sexuality or maybe even religion. I am gonna argue that it's doubtful. They already have a gay green lantern (and god forbid DC makes two...or even worse maybe a trans or bi character) and we have a gay Superman and Batman (Apollo and Midnighter). So the chances of them making Wonder Woman or Flash homo/bi/pan/poly/transexual is very very unlikely. Religion wise they already made a muslim Batman and well DC got rid of that character fast, and I think DC is more likely to see how successful the new Ms. Marvel is before they try to touch that again. As far as class there may be diversity in that, but there are no signs of any of them being very poor. Plus DC (and marvel) tends to enjoy making the poor and unfortunate turn into sympathetic villains than heroes (unless the misfortune is a rich person losing all their money like Green Arrow).

So diversity really isn't apparent. And I am not going to get too deep into why Diversity is important in comics (since I already blogged about it) but I will bring up one pertinent social reasons and one practical one.

1. It humanizes people that are different than you. If you read and are exposed to people that you view as an out group or people you do not identify with, then you are much more likely to view those people in a positive light. (I can sight plenty of studies done proving this if anyone wants).

2. Studies also show people that identify with a specific group are more likely to read about that group. So if you are latino and you hear about a latino hero, you are more likely to read their book. This has been mistreated in the comic book industry because many times A list writers are given to the A list heroes making the newer heroes have not as strong writers and artists and a smaller fan base (a formula to die out).

So it's sad when you see DC had an opportunity to increase diversity but has missed their chance. I mean how epic would it be to see a Hindu Wonder Woman, or a Bisexual Batman. The characters could be written the exact same, which will help prove the point that even though they may be racially (or sexually, etc.) different they are still just as valuable as characters and they wouldn't have been tokenized. Oh well...

Race refers to continental-based physical features--Black, White, Asian, etc.

Ethnicity refers to cultural background--African American, British, Filipino

Hispanic refers to peoples colonized by Spain--usually these are Spanish speaking societies

Latino/a refers to people from countries in the Americas colonized by any country with a romance language--Brazil, Haiti, Mexico, etc.

Of course, these are all social constructions, so they may be different where you are from. But, like the value of currency, enough people believe these distinctions exist that they cannot--and should not be ignored. Certain groups are not treated the same, and burying your head in the sand only propagates the issue by allowing it to go on. I can either pretend there is no **** in my toilet or I can flush it.

Sold.

Please stop calling white or black or Asian or Hispanic or whatever a race? It's called ethnicity. Only one race guys. Human.... And maybe mutants. Filthy lower life-form mutants. And Aliens... Master race aliens... But yeah. Colour ain't 'race'. It's ethnicity.

looks dope and people please stop hating without even reading it

This too.

Because it doesn't affect you, you don't have to care. Plenty of readers want to have characters they can visually relate to. Comics are about escapism, which means representation a lot of the time. Why do you think almost every video game has a white male lead with dark hair and stubble? That's who the creators and suburban kids wish they were.

Is it me or does JL 3000's Superman look like he is going to be a total douche based on that picture with him and Wonder Woman? And why does the JL 3000 Flash costume look like an awful attempt by the CW to give the TV version of Flash a new costume because they're afraid his regular one might look too campy!?

"In the grander scheme..." You're really trying to force your definition, which does not make sense regarding the Mighty Avengers team.

And Stan Lee centered Marvel in New York to create a cohesive universe. But it's not like they don't have heroes from other countries.

I don't see how this can be the JL of today in the future. Barry doesn't have red hair and green eyes, Hal doesn't have black hair, and Wonder Woman isn't a muscular looking brute. I think what they mean by saying "heroes of today -- tomorrow" is that they all have the same names. Which gives me hope that Flash is Wally, Wonder Woman is Donna, GL is either Sadom Yat or Rond Vidar, with Bats and Supes being other people. I'll be reading this book because it interests me.

This looks stupid. First image shows Batman blowing up Superman's face? That is really lame.

Who gives a sh*t about race? Jeez, that's all people seem to want to complain about nowadays.

@captain13: exactly, no diversity on the team at all. I don't care if Superman was Hispanic, that would still be more realistic than 7 white people forming the JL 897 years from now.

@captain13: Lol i just realized that. I'd expected more diversity, since you know...it's the future?!?! ;D.... but dude/dudette, that Green Lantern design is too damn good to pass up =D

Oh Uncanny Avengers is beyond forced but not in a racial way which is what we are talking about. And yes the book is a "token" book in the grander scheme of what Marvel publishes from month to month. I don't understand why they can't have a truly mixed team with people from all over the globe. Marvel needs to get over the idea that New York is the only city on the planet that matters.

Mighty Avengers is forced and New Avengers or Uncanny Avengers are not? Yeah, right.

Also, you have NO idea what "token" means.

Dude, I think I see dirt on your Klan hood. Time to go wash it and while you're in the garage feel free to hang yourself.

Batman's costume looks to much like Terry's.

That's because the blacks and hispanics will end up killing each other. And the Muslims will end up being the main villains in the future.

Heh. And by multi-racial you mean a predominately black and hispanic team with Spiderman shoe-horned in an attempt to try to make it sell more than 4 issues. From my point of view no book has ever done diversity better than X-men right after Giant Size came out and introduced Storm, Colossus, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Sunfire, and the rest. X-men seems to be the one setting that is able to really have a diverse team without it seeming forced or token as in the case of Mighty Avengers.

If you don't look like a diverse team and people of color cannot visually relate to your characters, what is the point of diversity, again?

Clearly having an all white team wasn't hard to conjure up. I doubt conjuring up an Asian or a Latino wouldn't be hard either.

You're jaded dude.

Who is that superman ?

Everyone is a zombie in the year 3000? Sh#t art.

i guess batman is the only one that cares about secret identities 1000 years from now

@trevel8182: It's a 1000 years in the future . . .

I can't lie i'm really digging this Bat suit, but thats pretty much it! Wonder woman looks like a manly She Hulk, Supes looks like a Nazi in training! Flash is ok! I can't wait to read the actual panels and see if it's worth reading. Disappointed in the non John Stewart Lantern!