About whose idea it is to bring the JSA into SMALLVILLE? GEOFF JOHNS replies:
I did episodes for them last season with Legion and they went over really well and they were happy with it, so I had lunch with the showrunners, and they said, "Hey, do you want to do another episode? Do you have any ideas?"
I thought the Justice Society of America would be really interesting to play against the characters. I did the team from the future, so how about a team from the past? They really liked the idea, and liked the idea of Hawkman quite a bit, so we chatted about what the story would be and they signed on pretty quick.
Relationship between Smallville Characters and the Justice Society
Well, it’s tenuous at first. They don’t know who these guys are, and because of the circumstances of the story, they’re led to believe a few things that aren’t exactly true about them. So, it starts off tense. And it remains tense with Hawkman and some of the other characters for most of the show.
On the approach of having a Magic-based character in Dr. Fate
He was actually the most fun, because in the comic books Kent Nelson hasn’t had a whole lot of stories — modern day stories — told about him. So he’s more of a blank slate than the other two. They did the Zatanna episode last season, so magic had already been introduced in the show. But with Dr. Fate, bringing him in and working with the magic was actually... It was fairly straightforward, really. He’s a guy with a helmet that’s inhabited by a mystical spirit that guides him to protect the world from supernatural evil or whatever he’s going to run across.
On how he came up with the JSA roster to use in Smallville, did he stand look up pictures on the table?
[Laughs] It was pretty easy, because I knew right away it was going to be Hawkman as the leader and the guy who once led this great team. He'd since retired and gotten out of the superhero business, so to speak, but he was always front and center. He was going to have a very kind of gruff attitude, as he does in the comics.
Having Green Arrow there with his attitude and what he’s gone through in the show, which is a similar attitude in the comics, that was very easy. Right away I knew that and I wanted to have a legacy character to represent where the JSA was going to go next. There was no question it was going to be Star Girl.
I wanted one other character that was going to be an example of how far some of these heroes had fallen. It won’t be very clear until you see what’s happened to Kent Nelson and Dr. Fate. There was discussion about Wildcat, but it felt like Wildcat was a little too gruff, like Hawkman, to be one of the main characters. So we just kind of went through it and Dr. Fate has that great visual — that gold helmet with the eyes glowing behind it— I love it. So he was up there pretty fast.
It really wasn’t that difficult. It didn’t take days to figure out who were going to be the members we were going to use. It fell into place pretty quick.
Johns talked about easter eggs. We will see something of Hourman's then we went and say that there are about four dozen easter eggs that we fans should look out for. As he went into great details in enriching the Smallville universe with DC elements. Johns said that the only thing he got props-wise from the Absolute Justice episode is the JSA painting. He then talks about the inclusion of one of the characters close to his heart - Stargirl. He said he was involved in casting and choosing the costumes. They initially wanted Stargirl in highheels but he says that the character is little young for that. Johns said that there's not much difference in writing this character for Smallville and writing them in comics.
Head off to MTV to read the whole interview.
I really hope they let Geoff Johns do more episodes for Smallville. He really knows how to make Smallville really really GOOD!
-ACCESS out. Godspeed and MABUHAY!