When you’re putting together your dream team, why limit yourself?
Since Absolute Power, the heroes of the DC Universe have realized that they’re stronger when they’re united. The results have been the monthly Justice League Unlimited, the Mark Waid and Dan Mora ongoing title that reimagines the Justice League as a worldwide collective of heroes featuring…well, pretty much everyone. Seriously, if you’re a crimefighter in the DCU, then you’re probably in.
Justice League Unlimited has given Waid and Mora a chance to play in a sandbox they’ve been dreaming of since childhood.
“I've been loving this stuff and studying this stuff since I was six,” Waid acknowledges. “When I was eight, DC published a big 100 Page Super Spectacular where they went through and listed, at that time in 1971, every single DC superhero with their first appearance. I think that's what made me a hardcore DC fan more than anything because I wanted to know about all of these characters.”
While Mora didn’t grow up reading comics, the DC Universe was still a big part of his childhood.
“We didn't have comics in Costa Rica, so I couldn't read comics,” he shares. “But I used to watch the cartoons. Super Friends, Justice League, Justice League Unlimited and Batman.”
Justice League Unlimited was more than a title, it was a mission statement. Waid admits that when it comes to picking the continually growing roster, he’s like a kid in a candy store.
“I keep three lists,” he reveals. “I keep the list of the A-listers: Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. I keep your second tiers, which are Mary Marvel or Star Sapphire, or whoever. And I keep a separate list of the characters that only Mark seems to know. Your Doctor Occult, your Prince Ra-Man—characters like that who are obscure, but I feel like there's something to each of them.”
As for Mora, he’s thrilled by the opportunity it provides for him to explore the more obscure side of the DC Universe.
“Every time Mark sends me a new character that I don't know, like Doctor Occult, I just get excited because maybe I don't know the character, but I get the chance to learn more about the DC Universe, do my own take on the character and change some things,” he says. “That's something that I really like to do with the book.”
Waid has even found ways to incorporate characters he had originally written off.
“I swore at the San Diego Convention, when I asked people in the audience to throw out suggestions,” Waid recalls. “Everyone was throwing out suggestions, and the only one I vetoed was Jonah Hex. That's 100 years ago. I don't know how to do that. Since then, I figured out how to do Jonah Hex. We're going to be doing some time travel shenanigans that will make it truly unlimited.”
“We did Tefé Holland,” adds Mora. “She's a character that I didn't know about. It was very interesting to draw her. There are some guys from the Swamp Thing realm, and they were interesting to draw too.”
Justice League Unlimited is also a central title of DC All In and everything happening in DC’s shared comic book universe this year. It’s a lot of pressure, especially when so many of its cast members also have their own solo ongoings. How do you coordinate all that, so that Justice League Unlimited isn’t sending Diana off to Mars or to the bottom of the ocean when she’s supposed to be training Amazons in Themyscira over in Wonder Woman.
“It takes a good editor and a good editorial team,” Waid acknowledges. “You got Paul Kaminski heading up the team with Chris Rosa, Marquis Draper, Brittany Holzer and Jillian Grant. The communication that they facilitate between the writers and artists to make sure we're all seeing what everybody else is doing. There's no real trade off to it, because it's the right group of creatives with a consistent tone in our work and a mutual respect.”
Mora echoed the sentiment, stating that editorial had given him creative freedom when it came to character designs.
“I like to do my own take on the characters, and DC has been really helpful, because they give me the liberty of doing that,” he shares.
Of course, one of the biggest challenges for any Justice League writer is juggling the ensemble cast, and Justice League Unlimited’s cast of heroes is bigger than that found in all of DC’s other ongoing comics combined. When it comes to balancing different characters and storylines, the creative team took inspiration from a surprising place: Stephen King.
“If you read a Stephen King novel, there are fourteen different character threads going on at any given time, and you have to find some way to bring it all back together,” Waid explains. “That's the challenging part.
“As Dan knows, what I really like to do with every issue is to come up with a menace that's big enough for the team, but I also find one or two characters who are not normally found together, and I put them together in a scene. That way, their interaction tells you a lot about them. Whether it's Martian Manhunter and Doctor Occult, or whether it's Wonder Woman and Mary Marvel, or whomever. That's the fun part of the book. That's the glue, because that's the emotion of it.”
Justice League Unlimited #4 by Mark Waid, Dan Mora and Tamra Bonvillain is now available in print and as a digital comic book.
Joshua Lapin-Bertone writes about TV, movies and comics for DC.com, is a regular contributor to the Couch Club and writes our monthly Batman column, "Gotham Gazette." Follow him on Bluesky at @joshualapinbertone and on X at @TBUJosh.
