Cyborg as 7th Member of JLA Rebooted: A DC Marketing Perspective

By Jordanstine June 1, 2011 0 Comments

 

The original 7 founding members had always been Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Aquaman, and Martian Manhunter.
 
Instead, when the reboot was announced to the line-up, a little twist was thrown in revamping the team.

Of all the other original decade long lasting JLA members they could've chosen from including Green Arrow, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Captain Marvel, Atom, Plastic Man, Red Tornado, or Black Canary, DC chose to replace Martian Manhunter with Teen Titan's alumni Cyborg who's been a new JLA member (Kimiyo Hoshi's version of JLA) for what... about a year, only in 2010? 
 
I'm 50-50 since I think, in a marketing perspective, is a really good commercial move for two things (and the major reason DC is doing all this in the first place is to bring in more cash flow from new readers anyway - marketing):

 
 
 
 
1) Ethnicity

This is, in a marketing aspect, partly similar with what Justice League producer Bruce Timm had to say about choosing John Stewart as the Green Lantern in the cartoon series:

Quote:

http://jl.toonzone.net/lantern/lantern.htm Bruce Timm: He (John Stewart) is the most controversial character so far from what we’ve been gathering on the Internet. When the show’s lineup was first announced, there were a lot of people saying, “Why aren’t they using Hal Jordan? No, it’s got to be Kyle Rayner.” Obviously, we picked the wrong one, but the reason we did choose John Stewart are various — I think they’re all valid. Right off the bat, I’ll just say it: you know we did need ethnic diversity in the Justice League. We felt that the show is going to be seen worldwide and I think having a member of the Justice League who is not just “Mr. White Bread” is a good thing.

2) DC's version of Iron Man

With Iron man emerging as a major player in Marvel Universe among new generation of fans within this decade, thanks to the film, it's nice to see DC give their "iron" man some publicity in the biggest stage. Plus, it's a new set of power set to toy around among the other members.

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On the other side, I really wished they had kept Martian Manhunter though since he was one of the original founding 7th member of the JLA.  If anything, they should've just gone with 8 members instead rather than just getting him a replacement.

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