Johns leaving "Adventure Comics"

Buried in a DC Source Blog post at THIS LINK you will see some rather troubling news — Geoff Johns is leaving "Adventure Comics" after six issues.

This is troubling on two levels. The first is, obviously, Johns is enormously talented, so he was the guy I was thrilled to have handling both Superboy and the Legion.

But the second reason is, this is the second time in the last year that DC and Johns have seemed to use the writer's popularity for a bait-and-switch. For almost a year DC has been hyping "Adventure Comics" and Geoff Johns as a package deal. As far as the content goes, Johns has been including the Legion in several projects over the last few years, teasing us on a possible Legion ongoing, which was to be "Adventure." He then shoehorned Kon-El's return into "Legion of Three Worlds," in a distracting move which could only be deemed acceptable because of the promise of Johns writing Kon-El in an ongoing again. Johns then proceeded to give interview after interview on how much he cherishes Superboy and the Legion.

And yet, now he's leaving. All of that buildup, only to have Johns move on and another (yet-to-be-name) writer step into his place. That's not even mentioning the fact that DC let Johns completely reshape Legion into his own image, despite its fairly-successful "Threeboot."

All of this only about a year after we were teased non-stop on Johns' "New Krypton" idea, only to have Johns leave the Superman world right when the buildup ended and the event began.

I love Geoff Johns' writing. If the man said he could write an ongoing based on the phone book, I would believe him and buy it. But all of this teasing has to stop. For every "Justice Society" there's a "Booster Gold." For every "Green Lantern" there's an "Adventure."

And sure, this may not be DC's doing. The company may not be deliberately teasing us with Johns' ongoings, maybe Johns legitimately just keeps getting offered projects he doesn't want to pass up.

Well, that's not flying with me. When you tell your fans all about the marvelous ideas and plans you have for a comic, you don't duck out on that promise just because a slightly more attractive book opens up. Johns is a great writer, he'll have those opportunities again down the road. For now, he should be working on keeping his promises.