Justice League: A Midsummer's Nightmare

Justice League: A Midsummer’s Nightmare - Mark Waid, Fabian Niieza, Jeff Johnson & others (DC Comics, 1996)

Intro by Grant Morrison

When future histories of the super-hero genre are written, I have a feeling that 1996 will be seen as a watershed year. Forty years previously, in the pages of DC’s Showcase title, a revamped version of the Golden Age Flash character inaugurated what came to be known as the Silver Age of Comics and fired a new appetite for the outlandish exploits of science-fiction supermen with extraordinary abilities. The original Justice League of America in 1960 grew out of that forward looking, inspirational sensibility and paved the way for a veritable Mardi Gras of colourful costumes, bizarre powers and breathtakingly imaginative adventures.

The Silver Age was, of course, superseded in its turn by what, in hindsight, can only be called the “Dark Age” of super heroes, when optimism couldn’t cut the mustard and costumed characters were unmasked as creatures with flaws and problems just like the rest of us. It was good while it lasted and produced at least two authentic masterpieces in Miller’s Dark Knight Returns and Moore and Gibbon’s Watchmen, but what began as an era of bold experimentation and adult themes soon grew tired and repetitive, as the decade from 1986 on became characterized by a relentless tide of unsmiling, uptight mental cases in trench coats. The new “heroes” were deranged psychos, mother-fixated perverts and cold-eye killers, barely distinguishable from the villains they so callously dispatched with a dazzling array of brutal weaponry. There was a growing feeling among readers and creators alike that something had been lost and, given the speed at which culture and technology is currently accelerating, it was hardly surprising that the Dark Age, too, would find itself outmoded with ruthless rapidity. Now it’s 1996 and here we stand, on the cusp of the next transformation, the next explosion.

History lessons aside, however, what I’m really here to say, I suppose, is that you now hold in your hands what will, I’m sure, come to be seen as one of the seminal texts of the current super-hero renaissance. This year has seen the publication of a number of projects that share a common desire to restore some sense of nobility and grandeur to the super-hero concept and I, for one, am relieved and gratified to see the circle finally turn away from the darkness and into the light.

Almost single-handedly, über-scribe Mark Waid – in books like Flash, Impulse and Captain America – has rescued the super-heroes finally from the Ghetto of Grim ‘n’ Gritty. His recent best-selling collaboration with Alex Ross in Kingdom Come firmly established the new zeitgeist with epic panache. Now in Justice League: A Midsummer’s Nightmare, he and Fabian Nicieza – undoubtedly one of the best and most thoughtful writers to have emerged from Marvel Comics in recent years – recreate the Justice League as a pantheon of iconic figures for the twenty-first century. The World’s Greatest Super-Heroes.

As in Kingdom Come, there’s a fresh and powerful sense of renewed vigor and positivity here. Waid and Nicieza – admirably aided by Jeff Johnson, Darick Robertson, Jon Holdredge and Hanibal Rodriguez – understand exactly what makes each of the icon characters tick and they go about establishing the new team dynamic with admirable brevity and clarity. The names are the same but these are no longer the bland, untroubled characters of the Silver Age. The new Justice League has to justify its existence in a more sophisticated and suspicious world. And, as in Kingdom Come, the emphasis on heroism and hope is tinged with a bracing hint of end-of-the-world paranoia. We can no longer blindly accept the super people as our saviours. Their very presence in the world raises moral and ethical questions which Midsummer’s Nightmare attempts to explore.

It’s been an exciting year for mainstream comics, and as the last decade’s dour “realism” begins to mutate into something strange and magical, Justice League: A Midsummer’s Nightmare stands as a boundary marker and offers a glimpse of the possibilities ahead.

Our heroes are back, no doubt about that. It’s up to us now to decide whether or not we want them.

Grant Morrison

Glasgow, August ‘96