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Joe-Singleton — JSA
Published: 2010-09-12 22:15:35 +0000 UTC; Views: 1630; Favourites: 43; Downloads: 12
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I've been a fan of the JSA since the early 70s, when I read a reprint of the first JLA/JSA crossover. Those were great days, when every year, you could expect a big family reunion. It's funny that, once they were on the same world, the crossovers stopped.If I was running those books, there'd be an annual every summer, with a big JLA/JSA reunion. Mostly it'd be heroes relaxing, eating burgers and telling whoppers. I think it'd be fun.
My coloring was pretty primitive, in those days.
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Comments: 10
Awesome! I've recently gotten into the JSA and have especially been reading a lot of their Golden Age adventures (and some Bronze). I especially like the camaraderie in this picture, how they all look comfortable with each other...and who cares if the colouring is simple, it works!
...Notorious
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I've loved the JSA since I read my first JLA/JSA crossover. Partly, it's a fascination with the WWII period. There's an energy to some of those old stories that really grabs you.
I had hoped, when Crisis on Infinite Earths ended and put the JSA on the same world as the JLA, there would be more interaction between the teams. I always envisioned changing the annual crossover into something like an annual family reunion. One issue every year where there's no big conflict, just people enjoying a meal, throwing the frisbee around, a softball game, ice cream and war stories to amaze and amuse the kids.
As for coloring, I totally agree. I think colorists have gone way overboard, with the coloring, to the point where it often clashes with the art and interferes with storytelling.
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Oh, totally. I would so read an issue where everybody just hangs out and has fun...and for pete's sake, if anybody deserves to just have a _break_ every now and then, it's superheroes!
I also think (warning: long ramble ahead) it'd be quite neat to have a modern cartoon done with the JSA characters _in the '40s_...if done right. My idea involves basically keeping the technology of the cartoon correct for the period instead of only the fashions, cars, etc. (it _bugged_ me the first time I saw Batman use, say, a VCR, on "Batman: The Animated Series" when the rest of it looked so properly film noir!) and not being allowed to put in modern slang or references to YouTube memes...but a bit more equal-opportunity, Wonder Woman not being the secretary, Black Canary joining a little earlier and some of the weirder/too-similar-to-each-other costumes being tweaked, is allowed. As is perhaps a smidge of unsquaring of ridiculously square jaws, etc, in the art style. I'm flexible. I wouldn't be a _complete_ purist, about this thing (there are some changes you'd HAVE to make or it'd never get past the first level of planning). Some snark would be allowed--after all, sometimes they had honestly witty dialogue and such _in_ the old comics. (Johnny's Thunderbolt is pretty much a perfect Deadpan Snarker just as he is, several decades before TVTropes was a twinkle in anyone's eye.)
But I MEAN IT about the technology--_no_ Internet, no YouTube, no looking things up, no posting on Facebook, no blogging, no making jokes about modern video games/TV shows...no _TV_. Reporters will run up and shove RADIO microphones in the heroes' faces after/during a big event. I'd like to actually show Alan Scott working at his _radio_ job from time to time, in fact, as part of the "getting to know everybody behind the scenes in their civillian lives" stuff. (Of course there would BE some of that. I insist.) If they want to know something, they can look it up at a _library_ or ask somebody, dig into archives, or perhaps use their powers. Pop-culture references in dialogue/background details can come from radio shows, books, magazines, and, if we want to be a smidge meta, comic books. But _nobody_ is to do or use modern trendy things we take for granted now. It's the 19-freaking-40s.
Okay, okay, Batman/Bruce Wayne can have a TV (one for the Batcave _and_ one for his mansion, to show off). He's rich and way into gadgets and they _did_ exist then. That is all. That's as close to modern tech as they're allowed to get--not counting various magical widgets they might have on their persons. And Batman is only an _honorary_ member of the JSA, so he wouldn't be showing up often anyway.
The plots? Probably a mix of whatever '40s stories are the most fun (the 500-years-into-the-future one, the intro of Degaton (with his altering history), and the fairy-tale one are all musts) and whatever '70s All-Star Revival ones could still work when stripped of their '70sness. The oldschool ones that had the pure anthology format would have to be rearranged quite a bit, too, as I want the characters working _together_ for fun-time personality interactions and so forth. More like the Justice League cartoon, in format. Superman and Batman would probably appear occasionally 'cos people expect them, but not very often. The actually-written-in-1977 "Secret Origin of the Justice Society" could be made into a story as a flashback, when a new character joins at some point.
Mainly I'd love to see what these characters would look like if still themselves but drawn in a somewhat more modern style, guess at who the voice-cast would be...and basically see them running around as _young_ men/women instead of, as they've shown up in modern cartoons from time to time lately, the Revered Elder Who Can Still Kick Butt. Nah, I wanna see them brash and flirty, telling bad jokes, sometimes making mistakes! With their _entire_ original hair colours. It'd also just be interesting as a social experiment--can characters this old-fashioned get _fangirls_, if drawn young and handsome and modern, but still wearing their goofy, colourful, "uncool" costumes? I bet it's possible--we've got at least three Hot Nerds (Alan, Jay, and Dr. Mid-Nite are all sciencey-science sometimes), a Woobie, a Snarker, at least one Straight Man, a couple of Hot Warrior Babes...
Yeah, as you can tell, I've put some thought into this. 
This will, of course, NEVER EVER HAPPEN. You try to pitch this idea and the second you get to "no Internet and they're not allowed to reference things from even the _'50s_" they'd throw your butt out the door before you even GOT to the part about using the less-known original versions of legacy characters and other whole characters that few modern teens have heard of at all (which is too bad--I'd LOVE to find out who would play the voices of, say, Dr. Mid-Nite and Johnny Thunder.)
But I had fun thinking of it anyway. Heh.
...Notorious
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Heh. When I was planning to do a comic series set in the 40s, I was using an old game manual to help keep me honest. It must be packed away with some other stuff, but it was a supplement for Champions that had all kinds of info about the period, including social trends and tech, even prices for common items. Fascinating stuff.
I would love to see Alan Scott show up in a cartoon series. He's my favorite GL.
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Yeah...by the way, very glad I didn't scare you off. I didn't _mean_ to do that whole huge WALL OF TEXT in one go? And actually, that's _all_ the stuff I thought up about the imaginary "Society of Justice" cartoon over time, in bits...I didn't come up with it all at once. Heh.
There's other details--such as, like you said, the social trends and so forth--I wouldn't insist that it be spot-on accurate, 'cos, ya know...politically incorrect. (Then there's the HUGE elephant in the room--_World War Freaking Two_ and how long we spend on/do we even address THAT...) I'd be perfectly fine with the feeling Batman: The Animated Series had in that department, in which (nearly) everything looked properly film noir and had that atmosphere just _down_...but you've got, say, Hispanic women on the police force. I'm down with that level of historical innacuracy.
And the characters do _not_ have to go around using '40s slang--I think that'd turn the kiddies off real fast--as long as they also don't go around using MODERN slang, especially the terms that derive from bang-up-to-date YouTube/4Chan memes/TVTropes, turned into adjective form, weird made-y up versions of words like on Buffy/Kim Possible/Young Justice and others ("awkweird", "snackage", "whelmed", etc.) You may think this'd make the characters' speech really dull, but no--if the writers want to find ways to make them talk colourfully in their own individual ways, they'll just have to be more creative about how they use normal words, that's all. (I insist on the best, for this imaginary thing that will never happen. Naturally, Bruce Timm will be in charge and Andrea Romano will be the voice-caster. 
And some characters would be more formal than others. Alan Scott talks pretty educatedly in his own comics. Carter Hall is a rich boy with his own lab built into his house, I imagine he'd be pretty "posh". Johnny Thunder, on the other hand, being officially The Kid (although technically Al is a college student and I think Jay is a couple years younger than Johnny, too--but we're talking personality here, not physical age) would be the one more likely to "GEE WILLIKERS! Isn't that _keen_?"
And YEAH, to get back on the subject slightly better: The reason I kept mentioning Alan Scott is I think he's awesome, too, and he's never gotten a proper voice on a cartoon OR--and this is the bit that especially irks me--shown up in things that have the Justice _Society_ appearing as a group, even though he's a FOUNDING MEMBER! And GL's are popular these days--what are they thinking? He didn't show up on the Smallville thingie "Society", he didn't show up the more than one time JSA members have appeared on Batman: The Brave and the Bold, especially the episode called "The Golden Age of Justice"... I'm not saying I'm like, seriously _angry_ about this in a Crusading kind of way, just, it's kinda annoying.
Especially, I'd like to point out here, that if they'd already gone to all the effort to physically make Hawkman's wings in _live action_ for Smallville (gluing on all those feathers)...wouldn't Scott's costume be LESS difficult?
Anyway, yeah--the reason I know about the Society in the first place is through Alan Scott, because my entry into the DC Universe as a _whole_ is through a sudden curiosity about Green Lantern...including when I found out that word should be _plural_. And I'm glad I looked it up because--an equal-opportunity intergalactic police force where most of them are made of aliens, and they can do _anything_ but their rings run out of charge after a while, leaving them helpless? AWESOME! Exactly the kind of setup I like.
...and it's not as if science-fiction stories never happened at _all_ in Scott's day. It isn't all magic and gangsters. My personal favourite so far is the one where, among other things, he fights a freaking GIANT ROBOT on the MOON. And then goes to the year 5,000 and change. 
Last but not least, I've heard of Champions...but only NOW, when it's old and out of print. I can't even find the sourcebooks for Paranoia: XP anymore and it's not _that_ old. Ah, well...
I would _so_ read that book you mentioned, though. I actually enjoy just reading through RPG manuals and like, absorbing the universe and making up characters. I mean, if they're well-written. It's just interesting.
Anyway.
...Notorious
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Yeah, I also use old movies as a guide for characters in that period. It helps to do some reading, so you know everyone wasn't as nice with their language as the movies seem to indicate, but it's also important to know that people were still more polite than they are, today. Something I notice in modern movies, I even noticed it in the freaking Lord of the Rings, is modern affectations in word choice. You hear it when someone says "person" instead of "man" or "woman". In LotR, it was when Theoden says, "No parent should have to bury their child." when it's far more natural for him to say, "No father should have to bury his son."
Good ideas, there. Now go write a comic, man!
also, LOVE TV Tropes. Has helped make me a better writer, I think.
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Oh yeah. I've seen a bunch of old movies (well okay, _some_) from the '30s/'40s and I've read a couple books...not like, WAY educated about it but I do have an idea. Of course, in _any_ era, people are not as well-spoken, polite, unselfish, etc. in the stories as they really are--even today, when they're trying to be all edgy and "real", it's a SCRIPT, not real people talking as themselves, so it's _still_ going to be a little off. (And when you put a camera in front of people and tell them to be themselves, just the prescence of the camera starts to bring out some kind of fake behaviour no matter how hard they try to ignore it...)
The old movies, however, _do_ have snark and witty banter in them (well, as with any era, the better-written ones, anyway), which is one thing I think would help the imaginary cartoon a lot--old fashioned doesn't always have to be _serious_. It could very easily have humour and yet stay true to the period's style.
I see what you're saying about the more politically-correct dialogue, yeah. One thing I don't think could be helped is...um...well, hard to describe. But I think people just tend to speak in a different..._voice_ these days. I mean, even remotely modernish people. Even if you strip out the slang terms, there's just something about the modern...pace? inflections? that sounds different from the overall...shape of how people talked in those old movies (or in real life back then).
And THAT is the part I would really not sweat because...it's just so _internal_ to how we all think when we talk nowadays, that NO writer could possibly keep making themselves write the dialogue against their natural habits _all the time_. If, say, Jay Garrick wants to say something at a fast-talking (of course!), modern-snarky _pace_ but doesn't actually reference "Avatar" while he's doing it, that'd be fine.
And last but not least, I don't actually _dislike_ TVTropes--aside from how it can suck away eight hours of your life at a stroke if you dare go there? I think that some of the slang terms I'm not quite on board with, I mean, they don't seem quite..._me_, but I have picked up "Crowning Moment of Awesome" and several others in my day-to-day 'net vocabulary. My only problem here is that it would be too obviously new-trendy to use those phrases in a cartoon taking place in the '40s.
I...also think perhaps some writers are getting a little _too_ meta self-referency with things. Cynical self-referencing fourth-wall-breaking meta-humour CAN be fun...but it can also be taken too far. "Young Justice" seems to be an example of that--although I LIKE the show--and I'd say New Who is partly a result of _too_ direct contact with the fans. (I dunno...call me a curmudgeon, but I think there's something to be said for having to write a physical letter to the show's writer and then not really _expecting_ them to read it, or to get a response. Feedback is fine; fan _control_ is not.)
I don't blame the _site_ TVTropes for this self-conscious "aren't we so witty" trendiness, though. It's been happening for several years now.
And ha, ME, write a comic?! As if! A fanfic, maybe, as I'm nowhere _near_ good enough at different poses, foreshortening, backgrounds, group shots, ec. to _draw_ the actual comic part. Also...my knowledge of the JSA is mainly from the personalities they show from the '40s through the '70s--but I hear that things I _never_ would have expected about them have been written into the more modern comics.
Now, _choosing_ to write a certain way, acknowledge only certain versions of the characters or setting it in a particular era because "It's my comic and I say so!" is fine...getting things actually _wrong_ because you didn't know and being laughed at, is not.
In other words, I'd have to know more about what it is I'm _not_ writing (their newer personalities) before I can educatedly choose to not write it correctly.
Anyway. SORRY. Shutting up now, really...
...Notorious
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No worries.
If you want to see snark and fast talking......like tweakers on a terminal binge, watch His Girl Friday. A lot of it is ad-libbed and it's a freaking verbal roller-coaster.
Hey, I do my web comic, all by myself, so I can be the GOD of my universe and nobody can reboot me and make me re-write my history for the same of some other writer. I used to be a terrible writer, now, I think I'm okay. I get the words out. I tell the story, such as it is. And I use every tool and trick I can think of to make it easier for me.
I always wanted to draw the Legion, but that's never going to happen. So, I wiped away my tears and put a band-aid on my skinned knee and invented my own. It's still a baby, at a little over 3 years old, but it's roots go back to the early 90s. I don't have the hundreds of thousands of readers I'd like to have, but that's okay, too. It's my baby and I'm still having fun with it.
Fanfic is cool, too. The thing is, if you feel you have stories to tell, don't bottle them up hoping someone will give you the chance someday to tell them. I did that for way, way too long. Fortunately, the internet came along before I got too old to make use of it. Still, I waited a long time to get started. But, I also started when I had the tools I needed to help me make it work. If you want to write period fiction, it's hard, lots of research and stuff. That's why I created my own "period".
Good luck!
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I _think_ I've seen "His Girl Friday". When I think of snark from that era--although these are both from the '30s, but close enough--I also think of, say, "Bringing up Baby" or "Arsenic and Old Lace". Both totally hilarious, and full of undertoned dry-as-a-bone humour throwaway lines. And I know there's at least a couple others I'm not thinking of, that I like...but anyway, I get what you mean. _Way_ fast back-and-forth witty banter.
I didn't mean so much people making me re-write stuff or whatever, not...like, bowing to fan pressure (if I had a webcomic and it _had_ any fans). More like...if asked a question, I want to know enough to have an educated answer. So, if somebody says "What about --event that happened in the newer things that caused (Character) to be like (blah), nowadays--?" I can be like "Oh, this is before (event) happened", or "In my universe, (people who caused event) never came to (place) and instead stayed (where they're originally from).", "I'm fully aware of (author's) interpretation of (character), but find I prefer (earlier author's) interpretation better" or even flat out: "I don't acknowledge (Thing). In my universe that never happened."
You know. Do things my own way out of _knowing_ both versions and choosing, rather than going with only the older one out of ignorance. I'd never let people push me around, but...if asked, I'd prefer to be able to say something more than "Buh?" Which is why I need to do a smidge more research on the newer stuff before I write anything--and hey! I may find a story/character element I like and can reverse-engineer...
I do this a lot. My version of the Paranoia universe (a darkly humourous sci-fi paper-and-dice RPG from the '80s) is _mostly_ Second Edition, but with elements of First, good wodges of the 20th-anniversary version, "XP", thrown in but under _my_ terms, and I _do_ include the "lost years" history of the Crash and Reboot that, according to Word of God nowadays, "never happened". Say what?! My most epic storyline ever from back in the day took place during the Reboot era! So yeah, I combine bits of _every_thing I like.
Drawing a comic...it's not so much being unable to get specific characters to look like themselves (although that too--I usually _can_ come at least close, but it takes a LOT of time and effort) as that I am not skilled enough at...art in _general_ to do proper visual storytelling. Angles, distance shots, being thrown backwards, upside-down, all different poses, foreshortening, backgrounds, nature objects, buildings, cars...basically I can do _semi_-decent-looking people more or less standing there. I've only recently started to try action poses at all. (And it's because I got into superhero comics that I'm now learning it--who SAYS comics can't be educational?)
I am, however, also a very, very _slow_ artist. If there were people expecting the next part of my webcomic to come out on a certain day, they'd be disappointed. My "simple" Paint-drawn pictures involve a lot of zooming in to make sure that _every single pixel_ is exactly where I want it and exactly the colour I want it, then zooming out to check the full effect so...they take longer for me to make than one might expect. (And I can't do hand-drawn at the moment 'cos my scanner isn't working.)
And as for fanfic...heh. I don't like, have any _specific_ actual PLOTS in mind to tell at the moment, with the JSA? Just random scenelets, and I'm not sure how in-character they are. Really, the reason I want this imaginary "Society of Justice" cartoon to exist is to see these characters on the screen, getting lines and voice actors and so forth, when done by _other_ people (such as Bruce Timm and whatnot) and see the stories I already know, animated out in new form. And some new ones, too, of course.
I'm not actually _upset_ about the lack of this show existing, by the way. See, I like to randomly speculate about stuff and make things up, just for a mental excercise, all the time. For fun! I'm one of those "How does (blank) work?" and "What would happen if...?" kinds of fans. Unfortunately this hardly ever leads to an actual fanfic. I get lots of vignette ideas, but rarely enough to piece together into a coherent story. I guess it could be a coherent SHORT story...
ANYway. Again, sorry--I just like talking about writing and art and whatnot. Be seeing you!
...Notorious
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Again, not a problem. I like talking about this stuff, too.
Storytelling is THE hardest thing to learn. It's the most important part of any comic, making the art and the writing cohere and drive the story forward. But, when you get it right, it feels so good!
As with all things, practice, practice, practice. Also, look for shortcuts. No artist stands totally alone. You are the sum of your influences, your raw talent and your skills. I look at it as "problem solving". Every scene, every drawing is a "problem" to work out. I want to convey the maximum amount of information in the scene, without a single word being said. As an artist, my job is to communicate the action, the emotion, whatever, of the scene. When the scene is confusing, I've failed to do my job, unless the point was to confuse. When you can read everything you need in the scene without adding a single word... that's perfect communication and I had succeeded.
For slow artists, the best thing is to build up a body of work and then publish. One of the keys to a successful web comic is regular updates. If you have a bunch of strips completed, you can dole them out at whatever rate works best for you, and always stay ahead. I update twice a week, because my production rate just isn't fast enough, doing it all myself. If you're one of the very lucky ones who can make a living at it, you can get more work done and publish more frequently. Or, you can offer e-comics, whole comics in one package, but that doesn't give you any "buffer", to get your to the next one.
I don't mind the wall of text, either. You can email me, too, if you like, I do enjoy sharing what I've learned of this stuff.
Have fun, make art.
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