Brad Meltzer interview podcast

Over at WordBalloon they've got an hour-long podcast interview with Brad Meltzer, author and writer of the JLA part of the Lightning Saga. The first half covers his novel writing, and the second half is JLA stuff.

Meltzer happily admits that his favorite JLA story was the JLA/JSA/Seven Soldiers teamup in the original JLA 100-102. This story (replacing the Seven Soldiers with the Legion) is, as many have noticed already, a tribute to that one.

I am so obsessed with the Seven Soldiers story... [what we did in this JLA arc] is a wink and a nod to the greatness that’s come before.

He's obviously not the first one to want to re-create this story with the Seven Soldiers of Victory - aka the Law's Legionnaires. Read more about the original story arc about the JLA and JSA teaming up and splitting up to find members of a time-lost team here, here, and/or here.

This discussion between Meltzer and the host starts at around the 34:00 mark.

Host: The mystery is there with the Legionnaires, we have Karate Kid and Starman in JSA, now brought together in JLA #8, displaced from time. Supergirl at the beginning of One Year Later is displaced in the 30th century, is that part of the connection to the story as well?

BM: No, Supergirl is not ours, that’s something different. In the JSA issue you get to see Dream Girl, and you get to see Wildfire… we had to pick “what seven do we want”, and make no bones about it, we picked our favorites. The only thing we had to fight over was which one of us got to write who.

Host: We saw the tease of Dawnstar’s wing in JSA #1 in Geoff’s book. First, let’s talk about writing with Geoff, I know you guys are friends, and Judd and you are friends as well, how has it been sharing scripting duties with Geoff?

BM: The truth is we wrote them separately, we plotted it all together, we broke it down and said “OK, I’ll do 1, you do 2, I’ll do 3, here’s where 4 will be, here’s where 5 will be, and what worked well together, and then the truth was we just wrote them separately, and then sent it to each other and let each person make comments. I can tell you on all five issues – and I don’t know if this is good or just sad – but we really didn’t have comments for each other because we do see the world so similarly. When we talk about it, when we say “who should be there when we go get Dream Girl”, it’s almost like we fight to both say “Sandman” at the same time, because of course Sandman has to be there for Dream Girl. Then we both say at the same time “Geo-Force”, because Geo-Force is going to have to talk to Sandman about his powers, because they’re both Earth-based. It’s just so sad but we really just see the world and how it broke down so similarly that it wasn’t like we went through with a fine-tooth comb and said “OK, make all these changes”, we really both understand things and we both have the same approach to these characters, which is a real embracing of their history while trying to always move it to a new ground.

That was pretty much it for the Lightning Saga stuff - no spoilers, of course. He did mention that these scripts were completed about a year ago.