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His run on Fantastic Four suffered the same editorial influence, but to a much lesser degree. But Dwayne managed to take what he was given (Reed & Sue gone, T'Challa & Storm in) and make some great stories out of it.

JLoA, not so much.

Well, with FF I think he was given a beginning point, an endpoint, an editor he's got a friendly relationship with (Tom Brevoort), and free reign within those parameters. With JLA they seem to be changing things like "is this character alive or dead" between pencilling and printing time, so I have a feeling the game board is being shifted on McDuffie here WAY more often than it was on FF, where I believe he even received Millar's first script before starting his.

I mean, that gravesite scene: That was supposed to be the Hawks' gravesite. As in, they were supposed to be dead after Final Crisis #7, like everyone thought. Except now they're magically... not.

Also, with the FF, he got to put Black Panther on the Silver Surfer's board. Here...can he do anything close to that? I mean, once you've put the Black Panther on a cosmic surfboard, you've really climbed the mountain.

I don't think anyone is blaming Dwayne; I'd love to see him given free reign.

There's a ton of people blaming McDuffie, actually. And really, it's his name on the comic. He'll be the one remembered, unfortunately.

It's tough slog but I'm a Dwayne-iac, so yeah. And the art is consistently meh, too.

I enjoyed Dwayne's FF. Not on the top of my read pile, but I liked it. I read one issue of JLA and wondered what happened to him.

I remember when Justice League and Justice Society were launched, DC was talking about these books being the tent-poles of the DCU. After Meltzer left JLA, it seems like they made it a dumping ground for crossovers and cameos. It hasn't had room to breath and set up since the first twelve issues. Rather disappointing, too, because I wanted a DC team book to read that wasn't Titans or Outsiders. Justice Society was okay, but I never really like Kingdom Come, so I didn't stick around for the sequel. They should give McDuffie and book like Green Arrow, or something else more character driven, and see what he can do.

If even McDuffie is not enjoying what is being done, how can anyone do?

That said, I don't blame him. Sean McKeever is being accused of the same.

i don't know if he's on the book for long: len wein's name keeps popping up. and he was given the origins and omens section. To me, this isn't good news.

Just read #31 and for me the problem appears to be editorial - who thought it would be a good idea to tie in a comic published in March to one in July? a comic which doesn't even appear on the dc website for comics on sale.

The Justice League of America should be central to the DCU, like The Avengers are to Marvel, but currently it feels like it's getting published because DC feels like it should publish a Justice League comic but haven't given any thought to what's actually getting published inside it

Frankly, JLA's been off the rails since the much-hyped, little-delivered Claremont / Byrne reunion arc. After that, it's been floundering - Chuck Austen somehow got a story arc, then Kurt Busiek came in and his story flopped (both of those were also hurt by Ron Garney apparently having lost his fastball on art). Then was the Identity Crisis tie-in that was promising, but that was all killed off when the next arc led into Infinite Crisis and DC's sudden change in direction from a character-driven plot to the goofball cosmic / sequel to COIE storyline.

Then Meltzer set up an unmanageable status quo, and McDuffie's been trying to both clean that up and deal with about six crossovers at the same time.

Really, the blame can be laid at the feet of whomever decided, back when Denny O'Neil did his arc, that JLA was better off with more or less having rotating creative teams rather than one focused writer at the helm, as it was during the Morrison, Waid and Kelly eras. I mean, I didn't much care for a lot of Kelly's stuff, but he's certainly better than anything that's been published on the book since.

At first I didn't blame McDuffie for how "unenjoyable" this issue was, and really the issues leading up to it as well. It started at the editorial level obviously. He was handed lemons. They took away a lot of the characters that he could use and they shoehorned in the incredibly stupid scene with the throwaway line about Hawkman and Hawkgirl being alive.

Then I thought about it again. McDuffie could have made lemonade. Instead he just plain gave up on this book. It was an absolutely abysmal effort. It really looks like he sabotaged himself, screwed up his own issue on purpose. I don't blame him as I might have done the same thing, but then I'm not the writer for the Justice League of America.

This issue was a cop-out, plain and simple. He simply gave up. And in doing so he did a huge disservice to some of the characters in the book. My guess is that he was taking jabs at various folk at DC (editorial, etc.) via the characters:

Hal Jordan acted like a jerk and said he was taking his toys and best friends to make his own book, um, team.

Green Arrow became Hal's yes-man and followed whatever Hal said to do.

Red Arrow literally had someone else's words crammed down his throat in a very unnatural manner and was pretty damn pissed about it. (Gee, who could that be?)

All the big names said they were too busy with their own projects, um, books, um... OK, well McDuffie didn't even attempt to make that into an allegory. He just straight out wrote what the editorial staff told him to do (I'm guessing): you can't have the big characters anymore, so have Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash all say good-bye and have them literally out loud refer to what is splashed on the cover pages of their own series: "New Krypton", "Amazons", etc.

Finally, the worst of all, though was that McDuffie just got nasty at the end. He defiled Black Canary. In Final Crisis and elsewhere, Dinah has grown to be a great leader and strong female character. In this single issue he made her out to be physically abusive to her spouse. He made her stereotypically and borderline misogynistically over-emotional, flippant, flighty, flaky, and weak. In the end she just gave up on the team. In one single issue he took a character who was really quite amazing and turned her into a D-lister stereotype.

So, yeah, I blame McDuffie. He got shafted, but instead of taking the high road, he took the low road. He gave up. He wrote a terrible issue. He humiliated and defiled the character of Black Canary who was an ideal example of a strong female super hero and turned her into the opposite. He took his issues with editorial (and who knows who else, other writers?) out on the readers.

Beyond all of that, on the higher scheme of things, and perhaps more important to the DC Universe than any of these individual things is this: Final Crisis was a story that ended in hope. Final Crisis had a happy ending, even though there were a few deaths. The last issue set the DC Universe back on positive course, with heroes (such as Dinah) making great sacrifices for the greater good. And what does the first follow-up book to Final Crisis do? It rains crap all over that optimism. it is anti-Morrison. It nullifies the spirit of the ending of FInal Crisis. Instead of carrying over the strong messages of new possibilities and triumph over the ultimate evil into the post-Final Crisis Justice League, McDuffie delivers a message of despair and depression. And that really is unforgivable.

There were so many things he could have done in a post-Final Crisis world, even if editorial took some things and some characters away from him, but no, he took the low road and ran the book and its characters into the ground.