It’s been almost two years since the Justice League disbanded in February 2023’s Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths #7, and now, finally, Superman is pulling out all the stops to assemble the Justice League Unlimited which brings in nearly every hero in the DC Universe to form a massive new team.
Starting with November 17’s Justice League Unlimited #1, writer Mark Waid and his longtime creative partner artist Dan Mora will launch a new era of the venerable team as the heroes of the DC Universe try to pick up the pieces of the recent Absolute Power event.
Newsarama spoke with Waid in anticipation of the launch of Justice League Unlimited, digging into the new team’s mission, its enemies, its surprising members, and how Justice League Unlimited forms the backbone of the ‘All-In’ era DC Universe.
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Newsarama: Mark, I’m really excited to see you and Dan Mora taking on Justice League Unlimited. Does this feel like the next level of your long running creative partnership?
Mark Waid: It does feel like a level up, because it gives Dan an entirely new roster of characters to play with. We’ve enjoyed working on World’s Finest, but this opens him up to everything going on in the DC Universe currently, and he’s really up to the challenge.
On that note, you’ve written the Justice League plenty of times over the years in all kinds of different contexts. But this is a story that’s set in the modern era. What’s different about tackling this team in the main contemporary DC Universe versus a different time period or setting?
Waid: There are a couple things. One is that the potential roster is bigger than it ever has been before, and there’s just more going on in the DC Universe and more characters in the DC Universe than there has ever been. And the other difference would be, this time, Justice League Unlimited is really the nexus of the DC Universe right now. It really is the big place where all the big things are happening. Everything else happening in this universe sort of revolves around the events in JLU, so that’s a big responsibility, but it’s also a great opportunity for me.
You brought up the roster. It’s a massive roster, basically any hero in the DC Universe is fair game it seems. What are the strategies you use to determine which characters are appearing when, with so many heroes on the table?
Waid: There are a couple of factors. On one hand, it depends a lot on what the menace is, what the threat is, because it’s very mission specific. If the mission is something like a fire in the Amazon rainforest, you look to see which characters would most most naturally fit, and whose powers would be most useful at that moment.
And then on the other hand, when it comes to a real world level, when it comes to speaking characters, it’s always going to be a handful of the core main DC players like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Aquaman – the characters you see on the cover of JLU #1. And there will always be a couple of characters who aren’t as associated with the League, like the Captain or Robin or whoever it may be, that aren’t necessarily the main, traditional Justice Leaguers.
And then, on top of everything else, the third level will always be making an effort to bring in a DC hero that we either haven’t seen for a long time, or most readers aren’t as familiar with them, bringing them on and giving them a chance to shine too. So there’s always three levels of characters that I’m gonna have in every single book.
It helps that there will be running subplots. For the first six issues or so, there’s gonna be a running thread with Ray Palmer and Ryan Choi about recapturing the powers that have been missing since Absolute Power. And there’s some other smaller stuff that will be happening. By the end of Justice League Unlimited #1, I think you’ll have a sense of that.
Speaking of those lesser known characters, I really enjoyed Airwave as our kind of POV character in the first issue of Justice League Unlimited. What made you decide on using Airwave? He’s a character that, if you know you know, but he hasn’t really been around a lot in recent years.
Waid: That is a deep, deep cut character my friend. But I’ve always liked the costume, I’ve always liked the character. I like the fact that he’s a generational hero, that his dad was also Airwave. Again, we’ll get into this in the main JLU book as we go.
And I really wanted, as you said, a point of view character for the readers, and I think he fit the bill really nicely. I needed somebody who is a little green, a little naive, who’s a little “Gosh, wow!” to put in the mix, so it’s not just a bunch of heroes who have always worked together before.
Without getting into spoiler territory, I want to ask about the villains that the JLU are going to be facing as the title kicks off. What can you tell us about this new threat?
Waid: The big running threat is going to be Inferno, which is a terrorist group that seems to have infinite resources, and who seem to be about control, more than smashing stuff. They’ll be popping up quite frequently as we roll toward the end of our first year. And if you’re a longtime Justice League fan, there’s a clue there hiding in plain sight that hopefully will give you some insight as to what or who might be behind some of this stuff.
This new League has Superman front and center. He is the one who has decided there has to be a League. He’s organizing this. What does putting him in that role do for the new League, and why was it important to center him as the guiding force for the new era of the team?
Waid: Because everybody trusts Superman. Not that they don’t trust Wonder Woman, not that they don’t respect Flash, but everybody trusts Superman. So if Superman asks you to join the team, the answer is automatically yes. It’s it’s different than if Aquaman invites you to join the team,
You’re intimately familiar with writing Superman at this point, having worked on him in many different iterations. How do you approach writing him as part of the Justice League versus in a title like World’s Finest?
Waid: One of the big differences is that, in the field, he’s not the leader. In the field, if Wonder Woman’s on the scene, she’s the leader because she’s got the military strategy mind that Superman doesn’t necessarily have. So it’s an interesting dynamic, cause I mean, he’s not a chump to be ordered around, but at the same time he’s not calling the shots, which I think confuses some of the leaders sometimes, because they tend to look up to Superman.
But again, use everybody to the best of their ability, and use everybody’s abilities to its fullest. And one of Wonder Woman’s abilities is, she’s a warrior. She’s bred for this sort of thing. She’s born for this sort of thing. Superman is a good at that, but Wonder Woman is the best.
I want to circle back a little bit to Dan Mora’s art. I really loved seeing what he’s doing with a title of this caliber. How much are you letting him just kind of take free reign with which characters are on the page?
Waid: Basically, if they’ve got a line of dialogue, it means I asked for them in the script. If they don’t have a line of dialogue, it probably means that Dan just popped them in the background somewhere, which is fine with me.
Luckily our editors keep up with that stuff very closely and make sure we’re not putting dead characters on the page or what have you. But that’s kind of the rule of thumb. If they have a line of dialogue, it’s from me. If not, it’s something that Dan threw in.
I also want to make sure and mention our colorist Tamra Bonvillain. She’s been working with Dan for a long, long time, and Tamra is just terrific in embracing the challenge of this book really nicely.
Are there any characters that you’re finding yourself surprised to be connecting to as you write this huge roster?
Waid: I never in my life thought that I would become a Doctor Occult fan. But much to my surprise, throwing him in issue #2 and #3 made me really like that character. And again, if I’m doing my job right, I will make you like that character too. I will convey my love for these characters in a way that hopefully will catch on for you as a reader.
One of our first glimpses of the new Justice League came in the recent DC All-In one-shot, which established this kind of elemental Superman Vs. Darkseid dynamic. How is the Darkseid of it all going to play into Justice League Unlimited as the title continues?
Waid: It’s a big part of the back half of the first year. We will start to see the repercussions. There are actually some Darkseid connections right away in JLU #2. But as far as where we left the Superman/Darkseid relationship at the end of the All-In special, it was a looming threat, and it will not continue to loom – it will start to manifest in the back half of the year.
I spoke a little while ago with Jeff Lemire about his JSA run, and he mentioned that the two of you have had some discussions about getting the JSA and the JLU together. Why is having a crossover like that already in the wings important to this era of the Justice League and its place in the wider DC Universe?
Waid: It really is a tradition as much as anything else. It’s been happening since 1963 every year or so, the Justice League and the Justice Society have gotten together. It’s something we haven’t done for a while because there hasn’t been a JSA book, but it’s something that Jeff and I both have a fondness for.
And it’s not just about tradition. It’s also about the fact that this gives us an opportunity to really establish why the JSA has a different role in the DC Universe than the JLU, right? I mean, yes, everybody’s under the umbrella of Justice League Unlimited, but that doesn’t mean that as a team they’re somehow subservient to the League, or an also-ran team. It just means that you have the resources available to you that the League can provide, that the Watchtower can provide.
So doing a team-up between the JLU and the JSA is the perfect opportunity to really underscore how those relationships work and how each sub-team is related to the main team.
I want to talk about the title, Justice League Unlimited. Obviously it has its origins in the beloved animated series. What was the motivation to choose that as the title and the mission statement for this team? How does that play into the story?
Waid: That was all my editor, Paul Kaminsky. That was him saying “This is the tack we should take.” And he was right. He was thinking about what we’ve been doing in World’s Finest, which is throwing the open the doors in that book to everyone who was in the DC Universe a few years ago, and being able to take that same energy where you can play with whatever toys you want to play with, and which you feel strongly about. So Justice League Unlimited is the umbrella under which it gives us an excuse to pull in the Doctor Occults of the world.
The new Justice League is forming in the wake of Absolute Power which, in many ways, shows why it’s important for the DC Universe to have a Justice League, from a practical standpoint and even a philosophical standpoint. Why do you think it’s so important to get back to that now?
Waid: That’s a good question. Whenever we have a Justice League active in the DC Universe, and it’s full of the heaviest hitters, it’s really just a testament to how amazing and how awesome the DC universe can be, because the characters work across the universe in general. So this is the epitome of that. This is the the DC Universe distilled into one book.
You’re continuing to work on Batman/Superman: World’s Finest alongside Justice League Unlimited. We’ve previously seen elements from World’s Finest that are shown as part of the history of the DC Universe come into present day continuity. Will we be seeing some of those temporal connections between World’s Finest and Justice League Unlimited?
Waid: Oh yeah, definitely. There’s a connection between the upcoming Aquaman arc of World’s Finest and what’s going to be happening in Justice League Unlimited #3 and #4. That’s deliberate, and I enjoy playing that card. I enjoy reminding people that World’s Finest is not just siloed in its own universe, it’s part of the DC Universe. It’s just set, you know, a few years in the past. But anytime I can do something in that book that pays off in the main universe shortly thereafter, to reinforce that connection, I’m happy to take that advantage.
Before we wrap up, I want to ask, what are you looking forward to in Justice League Unlimited, and what are you looking forward to the fans seeing as the title rolls on?
Waid: I think the answer to both is the same. It is being able to put characters together that we don’t normally see together, to create relationships between characters like Star Sapphire and Black Lightning, or Mary Marvel and Superman, and creating unique and interesting dynamics between characters that we don’t normally get to see in their own books.
It’s a great time to dig into the best Justice League stories of all time.
