Johns gets the very core of most of his characters – whether it’s a clever moment in Flash: Rebirth where Barry Allen explains the only reason Superman ever won a race against him was because the event was for charity, or even that fantastic confrontation at the end of Sinestro Corps War where Hal explains to Sinestro that he doesn’t win because he was born without fear, but because he can overcome it. I think Johns’ great strength has always been the way that he can boil down the decades of continuity that many heroes find themselves bogged down by, and deliver a simplified and concise little story building upon that. Certainly, he’s one of the stronger and higher-quality monthly writers at the moment, and I think that the vocal criticism he has earned derives mostly from his relative sales success. I can recognise the writer’s flaws – some of which we’ll discuss in a moment, which include a heavy reliance on childhood trauma and perhaps an over-simplification of core concepts in order to springboard his story – but I don’t think that they are significant enough to justify the attacks that he has received. The writer tends to attract a fairly strong pool of criticism on-line, with all manner of commentators crawling out of the woodwork to pour scathing criticism and hatred on the writer’s work, which seems a bit unfair. For my money, he’s easily the most accessible mainstream superhero writer working today at either of the two major companies (at least on a consistent basis).
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