After studying film at Michigan State, then working as an assistant to director Richard Donner, Geoff Johns began writing comic books in 1998 and hasn't stopped since. Johns made his debut with Stars And S.T.R.I.P.E., a new take on DC Comics' Golden Age character The Star-Spangled Kid. He still considers it his favorite book, although it lasted just over a year. Maybe readers weren't accustomed to the approach that would become Johns' trademark: retrofitting classic characters for the current moment while making sure they maintained the elements that made them classic in the first place. They got used to it, however. Johns has written for Marvel (most notably on a long Avengers run), but has done more for DC, on titles like Hawkman, The Flash, JSA (first co-writing with Batman Begins screenwriter David Goyer, then going solo), and Teen Titans, a title he revamped and re-launched in 2003. Johns also recently reworked Green Lantern, resurrecting classic Silver Age hero Hal Jordan in the miniseries Green Lantern: Rebirth, then in a new ongoing series.
While continuing to develop film and television projects, Johns has also served as a DC editorial consultant, helping plot the direction of the DC Universe, which is set to alter radically through Infinite Crisis, a sequel to the classic, drastic 1985 maxi-series Crisis On Infinite Earths. Infinite Crisis launched this spring with Countdown To Infinite Crisis and a quartet of related miniseries, but the project's direction and destination is being carefully guarded. Johns has the answers, but he remained tight-lipped about them when he spoke to The A.V. Club.
The A.V. Club: If there's one thing that's characterized your work in DC, it's the way you've helped put pieces of the universe back together. Why take it apart now?
GJ: We kind of do take it apart a bit, but the purpose of Infinite Crisis is to rebuild the DC Universe and try and propel it into the next heroic age. We're saying, "Let's move it to the next level, deconstructing some of it now and reconstructing it within the story of Crisis."
AVC: So where the first Crisis was kind of about hitting the reboot button and starting over...
GJ: This is kind of the rebirth.
AVC: So it's kind of a continuation of what you have done with Hawkman and some of the other characters, where you've modernized them while restoring them to their classic status.
GJ: Yeah, that's what we're trying to do, because there's a lot of new stuff coming out of Crisis, and it's sort of the bridge to get us there. But we're definitely trying to make it new but still iconic, if that makes sense. We don't want Dr. Fate to have a gold knife, but Dr. Fate will get completely overhauled during Crisis.
AVC: The ostensible reason behind the first Crisis was that the universe was a mess and it needed to be put back into order. What's spurring this one?
GJ: We can look at the universe as in a spiritual and emotional mess, and because the heroes are going to be at such odds, and so fractured, and relationships are all over the place—it's almost like the mess is internal and reflecting on the external. It's a little more about the characters than I think the first Crisis was.
AVC: How much has that been set up over the past couple of years, and how much was a natural progression?
GJ: I think equal parts. There are things that have obviously been purposely set up for a long while, and then there's other things that are kind of like, "Hey, that would actually play right into this." Whereas you're on one path, and that path... You know where you're going, but sometimes that path will veer left and right more than you thought it would. But it's almost always a good thing.
AVC: A bigger question is, how much of it is coming from stuff that you and the other DC writers have set up, and how much is it a corrective for the direction comics were going in the '90s?
GJ: I don't know if I'd call it a corrective, I just call it "different." It's something that we're all trying to do, something different—different than what was done in the '90s and the '80s. It won't be going back to the status quo of 1985 or 1975 or '65. Hopefully we'll have something totally new for '06, but still have that flavor. Superman's Superman. Some characters will go through some radical changes, but at their very base, the themes and iconic aspects of that character will hopefully stick around.
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