For the last few eld , Lex Luthor has been parade around in world power armour with Superman ’s sec - shield on it , acting as an supercilious expert guy . But this summertime , he ’s hold out back to being a bad bad in a prominent way by creating an all - new team made up of the DC ’s elite archvillains — mean the Legion of Doom is finally coming to the New 52 universe .
Months ago , DC Comics announce asweeping makeover for the Justice Leaguethat pick up different super - teams working under the Justice League banner on missions with a handsome , more cosmic scale . It begins next week whenJustice League relaunches with a Modern # 1 subject , helm by Scott Snyder alongside creative person Mark Morales and Jim Cheung , who will eventually be join by Jorge Jiminez . to boot , James Tynion IV ( who also will be writing his own Justice League book , Justice League Dark , with Raúl Fernández and Alvaro Martinez on artistic production ) will node - write a series of spot issue in the primary Justice League comic , examine how the DC Universe ’s supervillains respond to all the cosmic change .
The first of these villain limelight issues will be August ’s Justice League # 5 , with art by Doug Mahnke and Jaime Mendoza , which is also when the Legion of Doom will make its first appearance . I address with Tynion on the phone two weeks ago and the prolific author utter about how he ’s bringing the Legion back , and the dangerous raw vitality coming into play in the DC universe of discourse in the consequence of Dark Metal .
io9 : You bozo are calling this amalgamation of supervillains “ The Legion of Doom . ” What makes the Legion of Doom dissimilar from , say , the Secret Society of Supervillains or the Injustice League ?
James Tynion IV : There are sort of two answers to this . On one front , it ’s about the core dichotomy in the series itself . We ’re buy the farm to be seeing a write up that touches on the meaning of justice and also on the significance of day of reckoning . Doom come from a word that means , essentially , “ destiny . ” It did n’t necessarily used to have negative connotations , but it still has the system of weights and that was something that we really wanted to tap into .
We wanted a name that carried the same sort of weight as “ The Justice League , ” so that ’s really where it come from . aboveboard , the other reason to do it is because the Legion of Doom has such exercising weight in [ soda ] culture , even just buy the farm back to the Superfriends cartoon . It ’s not a term that we ’ve really understand used in the cartoon strip . Maybe here or there , for small-scale things , but never to really encapsulate what the Legion of Doom meant in the original Superfriends cartoon .
We ’re working on something bragging and revelatory and wanted Justice vs. Doom for the free weight of those two big construct smash into each other . And we ’ve been spill about it since the planning stages of [ Dark Knight :] Metal , where there ’s something that nod to the Legion of Doom HQ . It ’s something we ’ve been building to for a while .
What ’s behind the decision to drop integral Justice League issues spotlighting villain ?
Tynion IV : I work very closely with Scott Snyder , and now that I ’m in New York City , I drive out to Long Island for a work mean solar day every single week . And we utter about what I ’m doing in Justice League Dark , what he ’s doing in the main Justice League volume , and we ’re building this larger mythology about how everything sort of link together . We ’d talk about various bit with the villain [ that ] we kind of clear there was n’t room for in the independent title . So , we settle to create these measure issues where we show the tale from the villain ’s position . And so , these issues are going to kind of intersperse the core Justice League run , and we have a set of awful creative person trace up .
Where does the path to Lex creating the Legion of Doom pop ?
Tynion IV : In the first electric discharge of Justice League , the two villains whose mythology we ’re kind of blow up are Sinestro and Grodd . There ’s something called the Invisible Emotional Spectrum that we ’re going to see activated in the main serial , and there ’s the Still Force . And Scott ’s variety of suggest at these thing elsewhere , but those are the two nucleus driver of the first Justice League arc . So , in this issue , we take a stair back and it dart back to the moment where Luthor makes the lurch [ to them ] , of just like , “ You , Sinestro . You , Grodd . You ’ve been think far too small … You ’ve been going half - stair . ” And it ’s Sinestro at the border of the universe . It ’s Grodd have over the UN . It ’s Luthor telling them , “ You are n’t thinking big enough . ” And these are the biggest villains in the DCU . So we want to sort of entrance those moments where we see Luthor making the full - hearted tar for the Legion of Doom .
The Still Force , the Invisible Emotional Spectrum , and these fundamental forces of the universe being reordered are consequences of the Source Wall breaking in Dark Metal , right ? When does Luthor observe this material out ?
Tynion IV : When Luthor walks into the Page of Justice League # 1 , he has bring out an unbelievable enigma about our universe . And that secret is the thing that drives his actions through that first issue , and the entire first arc of Justice League . That ’s really where it starts . And the mystery of what he wants is something that ’s travel to play out over the course of the run . So . that is a very , very good question and I can not answer it in full .
Fair enough . So who ’s on the roster ?
Tynion IV : Luthor , Joker , Manta , Cheetah , Grodd , and Sinestro . That is the core roster .
How do these villain glare play out structurally in the overall Justice League story ?
Tynion IV : We ’re going to see Justice League arc that are playing out and these story are in conversation with those arcs . Like , the first spark is big on Grodd and Sinestro , so we feed those conversations in proceeds five . In the next public eye issue , which determine the level for the second arc of Justice League , we ’ll see the pitch made to Black Manta and Cheetah , and then we ’ll see the one I am most excited to pen — in the third Legion of Doom[-focused ] result , we ’ll translate the auction pitch Luthor made to Joker . And there are other villain that are in the fringe who I ca n’t even start hinting at .
But within these first Legion of Doom spot issues , we wanted to sort of establish what each of the villains are trying to get out of joining the Legion . And you know , Luthor chose these people for very specific reasons , and it ’s because of the mythology that he can wiretap into through the villains . It ’s no mistake that the villains kinda mate up to some of the core Italian sandwich of the Justice League .
So this is a programmatic decisiveness on Luthor ’s part . Before these characters teamed up it seemed like , “ Hey , we have this one vulgar destination … ” Here , it ’s more like a strategic partnership .
Tynion IV : Yes . perfectly .
You ’ve been fairly well move all over the DC Universe at this point , but the vast majority of the your tenure has been in the Bat - books . What ’s it like writing Lex and Grodd and Sinestro and the others ?
Tynion IV : Luthor is probably my favorite baddie in all of comics . Lex Luthor is , I think , the two-bagger of Superman . If Superman represents the best of us , Luthor represents the bad of us while also act , kind of , the best of us . He ’s the perfect , twisted version of Superman . He ’s a kind of Lucifer figure for the DC Universe , someone filled with so much prideful rage . Basically , this whole story starts with Luthor being made to feel small , and Luthor … refuse .
Luthor being told that he has to be this small thing in the face of the universe is not something that he ’ll ever accept . And a grapheme who has that sort of fierceness of will and total confidance is lift up and really fun to write . Tonally , what we ’re trying to do with Justice League and everything is we ’re play with the full sandpit of the DC Universe , and the Luthor we ’re tapping into here is n’t just the suit - and - tie man of affairs . We ’ll see him in his iconic costume in the serial , but this is the mad scientist Luthor more . In the Legion of Doom , we see him , like , in a suit and tie walking along the Source Wall . Like , this is Luthor Proud .
One thing that was very crucial to Scott from the beginning is that with these Legion of Doom characters — they are very implike villains . They embody villainy in this huge fashion . But Luthor ’s making a pitch shot to them , a pitch that ’s compelling — even to a salutary person . When the macrocosm narrate you what your restriction are , you do n’t have to pretend you ’re better than you are . you could be exactly what you are to the full extent . And you may hug that selfishness and find power , and deliver yourself in the face of the macrocosm . We want people to read these outcome and say , “ You know what ? I ’d actually side with the Legion of Doom over the Justice League . ” So , if we do our job , that ’s what we ’ll do .
It sounds like Lex and the villains will be finding renewed purpose , just like the heroes .
Tynion IV : These issues supply a unlike view . In the core arcs , we ’re snuff it to see what the Hero are going through and why they ’re get the decisions they ’re have . The Bible is Justice League . We ’re following Team Justice , all the path . [ But these are ] an chance to take a pause in the middle of the news report and see … what the villains have been up to , and the immensity of the account . The villains know more than the hero at one compass point of the story , and at others the heroes know more than the villain … it allows us to number at the greater cosmic mystery that we ’re building over the Justice League serial from two perspectives . And every electric discharge of Justice League , and every Legion of Doom[-focused ] issue in the context of it , will smooth a luminousness at different nook of the mythology call for form in the DC Universe .
The Justice League comic relaunches next week on June 6 — and the new Legion of Doom will make its debut in Justice League # 5 , on shelves August 1 .
DC ComicsDC EntertainmentJustice League
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