What do you think makes Geoff Johns so respected?

Well to be fair to us mentioning his Lantern work, we aren't exactly focusing on it, we're just saying that it's what got us to respect him more. Others will respect him for his Aquaman, Flash, Arrow, etc. but the fact that so much people mention his GL work goes to show how much he's meant to the franchise as a whole.

@mysoulz: I think you're Batman fans. You might want to deny it but the way you talk is what Batman fans talk. Geoff Johns Teen Titans is second best Teen Titans besides Marv Wolfman and George Perez. Look at Teen Titans now, writer is difficult to write Teen Titans. Geoff Johns JSA is incredible and how many writer can write JSA in modern era. Look at Hawkman, Geoff Johns makes Hawkman awesome and how many writer can do that

His writing is really great and he does a great job adding character development to characters including Aquaman.

Heck, his run on the New 52 Aquaman series got me into the character.

He knows how to please the fans, he knows what they like and what they want and that is a quality that many commercial writers crave. Like a good franchise writer he plans ahead and he always has a tease or two for stories that will come way later, he is also a master of world-building. He respects the characters he writes. And while his writing isn't anything extraordinary, the way he does it is something that make him stand out.

@nickthedevil, I'll agree his run on GL was paradigm shifting for that character, whether or not you found it repetitive and tedious after he kept doing the same thing over and over. But Flash? No. Johns' run on the character pales in the light of Waid's run. Waid reinvented the character with unique concepts. Almost every original concept: the speed force, Impulse, Linda Parks, the large mega events originates with Waid's run. Morrison and Millar had one of the strongest runs, doing what Johns talked trash about making stories about speed. Flash making his costume out of Speed Force, Morrison's first issue. Johns run was alright on the original series, not adding anything that changed how I read comics but providing decent stories and pushing along the stories other writers wrote. His Flash rebirth was decent, then lead to a crappy series that killed any interest I had in the character. He essentially pushed Wally out and then gave us Barry Cardboard cutout Allen.

Boynerdgeek So what if he is? He's hardly alone in that respect.

"Geoff Johns Teen Titans is second best Teen Titans besides Marv Wolfman and George Perez. Look at Teen Titans now, writer is difficult to write Teen Titans."

That might be because Johns destroyed the DC universe and thus left those characters histories a confusing jumble, but aside it is only YOUR opinion that Johns' run on TT is the second best.

"Geoff Johns JSA is incredible and how many writer can write JSA in modern era."

To start, half of Johns run was co-written by David Goyer or Alex Ross. And a number of writers, including James Robinson wrote the JSA modern era brilliantly. JSA was a good title, and Johns did things when writing it he has not repeated, he told solid self contained stories with a beginning middle and end, and DC editorial didn't let him write whatever he wanted.

"Look at Hawkman, Geoff Johns makes Hawkman awesome and how many writer can do that"

Again, Ed Brubaker, James Robinson, Jeph Loeb all come to mind. Batman fans, calling us that isn't an insult, don't like him because he has failed to produce a single good Batman story, and yet DC continues allowing him to write the character. Imagine if Marvel, after all the hate Ennis has poured on him, allowed Ennis to write Wolverine. Ennis writes him as Daffy Duck the entire time, with characters like the WHIZZER and STILTMAN kicking him around like a punk. Finally imagine that after having every hero from Spider-man to freaking Squirrel girl shown to be more competent than him, that Marvel decided to make Ennis the next Stan Lee and that HIS interpretation is the official interpretation of that character. It would be maddening.

Do I think Johns can write, sure, why not. He's had every door opened for him though, and expectations for him are higher. People want him to do more than just giant event books and decompressed story arcs that are still going on three years later. They want timeless classics of their favorite characters. Wonder Woman, Batman, and so on. And Johns has shown that he doesn't get what makes those characters tick. When that happens a deconstructive artist like johns can't strip them down like he's done Aquaman and Green Lantern, because he doesn't understand why people loved them in the first place. I have no doubt his Superman run will be decent, but I want more. I want to see the guy who impressed me on Stars and Stripes. Who was so good on JSA that Alex Ross joined him to write a sequel to KC. For the level of input he has over DC, he should be doing more to improve the quality of individual issue story telling, rather than feeding the beast.

You're looking like a fool now,we have every right to hate Johns,that doesn't make us anti-DC, Johns is a hack,get over it.

His world building, as someone else said only Lee and Kirby are better. He pretty much defined the modern DC cosmic.

Which is probably why everyone on the internet says it sucks :)

He hasn't even touched a fraction of DC's cosmic,it was Morrison who was referred to as the revamp guy not Johns. Geoff is just a fanboy who abuses the concepts of others writers and does them "right".

@entropy_aegis: Morrison barely touched the cosmic side of DC? He was either doing the weirder side of DC (Doom Patrol, Animal Man), Multiversal or Batman.

If you're referring to John's habit of modernising old concepts, you do realise that's one of Morrison's main writing characteristicscharacteristics as well don't you...?

I meant Johns has barely touched the cosmic side. Johns doesn't modernize,he FANBOYNIZES the concepts, Johns lives in nostalgia. In his mind mostly everything that came after COIE is crap(excluding his own work ofcourse). Morrison pays tribute to every era and every writer,even one's he doesn't like,Johns just shelves them and pretends they dont exist,if he cant do that then he puts his own generic and inferior spin on them.

Geoff Johns is very, very good at making you like the villains he's writing or absolutely hate the villains he's writing, which is exactly what I want in my comic's antagonists. Sinestro? Atrocitus? The Rogues? Black Adam? Awesome -- clearly villains, but you sympathize with them and you understand where they come from and why they do what they do. Zoom? Volthoom? Superboy Prime? Black Manta? The Crime Syndicate? You hate those motherf*ckers so badly you just want to see whoever they're facing off against beat the tar out of them because screw that jerk. No one before or since has wrote The Rogues better than him, and even when he gets to snatch off a piece of The Rogues like Captain Cold and shove him into Forever Evil he's solid gold from start to finish. His Lex Luthor is similar to Azzarello's, whose mini on Luthor is one of my favorite comics ever. You can call it "giving the fan what he wants," but, hell, a lot of these guys he either created (Prime, Zoom, Atrocitus) or were really lacking in anything interesting about them in the first place (Sinestro, Manta) before he even got to them so I think it's pertinent to give him credit for writing characters well without thinking all he does is pander.

This talent does not always cleanly expand to his overly compressed team books like when he wrote Teen Titans or his current run on JL. I think he's also out of his depth in big events like Infinite Crisis or Blackest Night (Sinestro Corps war was ok but I think the quality of his GL writing became clearly worse as it got bigger and bigger) which were kind of all over the place and lacking focus only to be neatly wrapped up out of the blue. Everyone remember how unfocused Trinity of Sin was and how Forever Evil seemed to drag on with a lot of uninteresting, dead end plot points(Batman's secret weapons that didn't matter)? Stuff like that. Maybe he's just worse with a big workload, though, so that would explain being bad at team books when he's got other stuff on his plate and big events that stretch over multiple stories and require lots of plotting and progression in a short amount of time between issues to not feel rushed (a talent Grant Morrison clearly has, for instance).

I feel he sorely lacks for capturing the character of heroes he writes a whole lot more than he nails it. His Wally West was inconsistent and acted more like his teenage self than his adult self under Geoff's pen, which always bothered me. Same goes for his Green Lanterns besides Hal (who he correctly writes as a well meaning, strong willed doofus) -- I could write an essay on how I think he missed the development that Kyle Rayner or Guy Gardner had in their times, and even note some character based inconsistencies in just his own writing of the two characters. Enough people have derided his writing of Batman on this forum to make up for anything I would have to say about it. His Justice League is bland and uninteresting (though JL is very, very editorially scripted so I guess that's a decent excuse). His Barry Allen is quite possibly the dullest, stupidest character I've ever seen. He's not ALWAYS bad at writing his heroes, mind you -- while I was annoyed by Billy Batson at first(The idea of Billy Batson jumping in and out of caring foster homes because he's a desensitized brat was honestly depressing) he grew the character in the right way to make me like him, and as I mentioned, his Hal was good and so was his Jay Garrick in the moments he got to right him (Though this might just be small sample size). There's other examples of good individual hero writing he's had in his tenure, I'm sure, this is just what comes to mind.

edit -- to more closely answer the question of the thread, he's respected in the industry for doing something no one's done in quite awhile: completely relaunch a floundering franchise from a script entirely of his own making into one of the most captivating and best selling books in the market. Very few current comic writers in the business have accomplished that and even less could make it as big and encompassing (For instance, you could easily say Waid revived the Flash franchise with Born to Run + The Return of Barry Allen when it went from floundering title card to high selling must reads, but his run clearly didn't have the size or depth to it that Geoff's GL run had that allowed it to expand to multiple comics). He's also the perfect DC writer, because one of DC's strengths is its really big, really interesting roster of villains and if you can do something great with all that material then you've got a good place in the comic writing world.

You mean the character that was created and developed by Messner-Loebs? And who Waid mostly ignored in the second half of his run? His villains were pretty bad too, lol Cobalt Blue, his run went bad with his return after Millar and Morrison and of course with his return after the Bart Allen Flash series, though that had some editorial hampering.

BB

This.

I disagree again. Johns gave more character and backstory than Waid and Millar to Flash's supporting cast. johns made the Rogues what they are. He gave them rich backstory and character, even better, he gave them pieces in every book. The respect given by many to the Rogues is most in part to Johns, that can't be denied. Before, the original line-up seemed too much like comedy relief at times. Weather Wizard was never before the raw power monster with low self-esteem problems. Captain Cold wasn't the fearless leader that struggled with his inner emotions. He made Gorilla Grodd the creepy and class 100 beast he is. There was little in his book that was PIS or CIS, no part made you roll your eyes and sigh. He understood how to make Flash try his hardest using all the abilities given to him by the previous writers, while still fighting villains like the Thinker and Blacksmith, Cicada and others.

Billy Batson, Waid developed their relationship. Linda was undeveloped by Loeb when he left the character. The Cobalt Blue arc was less about the villain than about giving Wally one last goodbye with Barry. Linda being abducted led into the two flashes arc that wobbled at first but ended strong. Johns' sent Wally away during IC, but I liked Waid's third run.

nickthedevil That's your right, and I of course can disagree with you...

"There was little in his book that was PIS or CIS, no part made you roll your eyes and sigh"

Where to begin, after a decade of character development that literally involved tricking the devil, James Jesse went back to being a two bit bank robbery because Barry Allen had him mind raped. The same with Piper. Gorilla Grodd wasn't so much a heavy hitter as he was gory. My eyes rolled several times throughout his run, whether it was him mouthing off to Batman, Wally is scared to shit by Batman since he was a little kid something that pissed Barry off at Batman in some Secret Files issue, or it was Cold mouthing off, or Wally being a mechanic, or the Wonderland arc. It's perfectly fine at times, some good and some really bad. But looking back on it with perspective the bad outweighed the good.

I think Johns' simplicity is what makes me enjoy his books. Unlike some other writers who, in my opinion, often overcomplicate their work (Grant Morrison, you're on that list), Geoff is all about writing understandable yet exciting stories. In some ways he keeps to the original format of comics, the good guy has to beat the bad guy which, to be honest, is what I like. There's nothing wrong with a slightly more quirky read but, more often than not, I want to see arch nemeses battle it out to decide whether justice shall prevail.

I respect certain things that he's done but despise others. I'm a big Hal Jordan fan and I'm not especially happy with what Johns did with him. Retcon-ing Parallax would've been fine he had let Hal keep the experience and the lessons he learned during his time as Parallax/Spectre. He ignited a war between Hal Jordan fans and Several other fan bases which vexes people to this day even though it's supposedly over/fixed.He returned Hal status as a major player in the DCU but didn't really do much for Hal character wise. In fact, he caused several major regressions.

It's because of his GL run.