World: Justice League

I figured it would be useful to take a minute and get a handle on some of the big story points for our world: or at the very least, answer the Five Ws (who/what/why/when/where) about them. As we get stuff figured out, this will become the basis for pages on the wiki.

First up: the Justice League!

• Usually, the Justice League has seven founding members. In classic comics, these are Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Aquaman, Green Lantern, and Martian Manhunter. The New 52 traded Martian Manhunter for Cyborg in this lineup (more on that later), while the Justice League Unlimited cartoons from the 90s/00s traded Aquaman for Hawkgirl, and went with the Wally West and John Stewart versions of Flash and Green Lantern. In live-action, this has been was dialled down to five members: Smallville introduced a team consisting of Superman, Green Arrow, Aquaman, Impulse, and Cyborg, while the DCEU movies formed the team with Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, and Cyborg.
• Beyond the founding members, the Justice League's initial comic book run added Green Arrow, Atom, Hawkman, and Black Canary in the Sixties; the Phantom Stranger, Elongated Man, Red Tornado, John Stewart, Hawkgirl, and Zatanna in the Seventies; and Firestorm in 1980. All of these characters are common in other media, and are on our radar for one reason or another. More characters come later... but in the comics, who isn't in the Justice League at some point?
• Most of the above characters are already accounted for somewhere in our story, and those who aren't are story-adjacent, which is nice.
• For our story, I would like to suggest that Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Flash are the official founding members of the Justice League, but that Alan Scott (Green Lantern) and Martian Manhunter were also there. This gives us the classic line-up, ish, but allows our version of J'onn J'onzz to have a behind-the-scenes Nick Fury vibe. Including Alan Scott isn't essential, but he is a character who would be a really useful addition to most of the stories we have going on, and it rounds out the original seven quite nicely.
• Even with Superman not becoming active until 2001, that's still plenty of time for the Justice League to have existed. Riffing off the idea of J'onn J'onzz as Nick Fury, having Black Canary and Green Arrow involved with the team (sometimes?) as the Black Widow and Hawkeye of that comparison makes a lot of sense. They would essentially become the "official" #6 and #7 members of the League, even though they're technically #8 and #9.
• Of the other first-run characters: Hawkman and Red Tornado are busy being professors/teachers, while Hawkgirl and Firestorm "aren't there yet", but may make interesting team additions as they progress. John Stewart could be an interesting facet of our Starfire/Tartarus/Area 51 stories (military+aliens). None of these characters seem like they would have been part of the Justice League yet, but it wouldn't be much of a stretch for them to evolve towards that over the course of our stuff and stories.
• Atom and Elongated Man are two characters we've not accounted for, but could be interesting. Personally, I kinda like the idea of Atom being Black Canary's partner at ARGUS, kind of a Sara/Ray meets Ant-Man/Black Widow sort of vibe, if you'd be up for that, Sarah? As for Elongated Man, he's usually some sort of PI and/or Detective: I know you don't have much experience with him, Droo, but his portrayal on The Flash right now is a delightfully Droo character, and I think you'd get a kick out of it - Mr Fantastic's powers, coupled with Kem from Krypton's personality.

• When we've talked about the Justice League before, we've drawn an Avengers comparison. J'onn J'onzz is Nick Fury, ARGUS is SHIELD, and the Avengers are a team of heroes who are off doing their own thing, but get called together for missions when they absolutely have to be. Specifically, we're talking about the Phase 1 Avengers, where it was still SHIELD making the arrangements and calling the shots: not the Phase 2 Avengers (or New 52 Justice League) who are doing their own thing financed by their friendly neighbourhood tech billionaire (hi, Bruce), and are out there creating all kinds of scary accountability issues (as seen in Young Justice).
• The fact that the Justice League works for ARGUS is narratively important, because it lends (and enforces) an element of secrecy to the team. Being a vigilante is illegal in our world, so a public version of the Justice League is a bit counter-intuitive. Making ARGUS responsible for bringing the League together (originally, and subsequently) dodges around any complications of a public hero like Superman teaming up with diplomatic immunity superheroes like Aquaman and Wonder Woman, and wanted outlaw vigilantes like Batman: it's essentially a slightly more benevolent version of the Suicide Squad.
• Of course, being the Justice League, there's secret and there's "secret". People presumably know that the Justice League exists, because they've come together to save the world from big threats. Something we need to figure out is how much is secret, and how much isn't? Is the connection to ARGUS public knowledge, or does the public believe that they're acting alone/independently? Are there fears/concerns that the Justice League has no accountability (even though it does), fears that can't really be alleviated by saying "Don't worry, we work for a shady government organisation"? Does the Justice League admit that Batman is one of its members, or is that a "no comment" situation? Are Superman, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman the only "official" members of the League (because of diplomatic immunity, etc) that the public is aware of, leaving the rest of the line-up open for fan debate, speculation, etc? Insert schoolyard arguments about "Well obviously Batman is part of the League..." "Nuh-uh! Why would they need him? He doesn't even have powers!", etc.

• The classic origin story for the Justice League is that they came together to fight aliens. It's in the comics, the cartoons, and the movies. It's even in the first Avengers movie: an origin story so potent that it has gone and infected a whole different super-team. Aliens are a good motivator for this sort of thing, because it unites heroes against a common threat, against an "other" that is entirely external, and it is such an overwhelming threat that Earth couldn't possibly save the day without the League's intervention. The governments of the world may not be happy that the Justice League exists, but the world would have ended without them, which makes them all very cranky.
• Aliens are not the only origin story option, however. When the Avengers aren't stealing Justice League origin stories, their comic book counterparts are joining forces to stop a rampaging Hulk, who had been magically enchanted by Loki. If we want to avoid a generic alien invasion, we could draw on the idea of an extremely powerful terrestrial threat, and/or a mystical one. A mystical threat is potentially an interesting one, especially if we want to play the "magic isn't real" card as a way to keep Infernal Affairs/etc a bit downtrodden: a magic foe is one that Superman can't fight solo, because he's vulnerable to magic; it makes sense that Aquaman and Wonder Woman would take part, since they are themselves mystical beings; and Alan Scott is a mystical hero, whereas Batman and/or Flash are characters who are likely to be very sceptical about magic being "real". It is also something that could have ties to The Red, or The Black, or Vandal Savage's conspiracy: some opening salvo that was meant to advance their plans, but was thwarted when the Justice League came together. (It is a bit trickier, though not impossible, for our conspiracy to be behind an alien invasion the way The Light was on Young Justice).
• On the flipside, there are a lot of advantages to an alien invasion. Magic may be something that the public can deny (it's just a meta-human in a costume), but the existence of aliens is a new reality that the public and the world's governments would have to accept. It puts Superman front and centre as the only publicly recognised alien superhero, and also opens the floodgates for characters like Starfire to have shown up. Did the Earth winning a victory over (insert alien tyrant) convince the galaxy that the Earth was a safe place to flee to, sparking an alien refugee crisis? Is the constant looming threat of alien invasion a justification for a) letting the Justice League continue to exist, because we'll need them next time, and b) escallating technological advancements, justifying Checkmate's conspiracy efforts to create better weapons/soldiers/etc? Are aliens the reason that Checkmate is so keen to dabble with magic and what-not to create all of these performance-enhancing drugs, these new metas, etc: is homeland security (homeworld security) their current justification?
• There's also the question of blame, and whether or not we want to put it on the shoulders of a specific member of the Justice League. Do we want the League to come together and fight General Zod, making it a Kryptonian threat that the public and/or governments can (illogically) blame Superman for? Do we want the threat to be from Greek mythology, so that Wonder Woman gets blamed? Do we want Atlantis as the aggressors? If our plan is to take Hal Jordan out of the equation, like we're doing with Dick Grayson, do we want that backstory element to have provoked the Green Lantern Corps, or the Sinestro Corps somehow, setting up the Lanterns as an enemy that Earth wants no part of (hence their absense from most of our stories)? Do we want Martians to be the aggressors, as a justification for why Martian Manhunter isn't openly part of the team, and perhaps as a way to set up our version of Miss Martian? Do we want something to do with the Vega system, where Starfire (and a bunch of other aliens) are from, so the story can connect to her in some way?
• If we do go with generic aliens, I think the Dominators would be a good fit. They're aliens we're all familiar with from crossovers, and I have some plans/ideas from way back that would connect them a) to Starfire and the Vega system, and b) to Mars as the "Yellow Martians". That riffs off a few of the options above, and also creates an interesting schism between Superman and J'onn J'onzz: Superman is accepted because he's an alien who "looks human", unlike these monstrous Dominators; but while J'onn can pass for human, it involves hiding what he truly is, which is closer to the Dominators than he'd like to admit.
• There's nothing to say that several of these incidents could have happened, of course, but the one that happens first is going to be at the core of who the Justice League is and why they came together. Did they save us from an unprovoked alien attack? Did they save us from an attack that one of them provoked (as far as the public is concerned)? Did they save us from a terrestrial danger of "our" own making?
• When is also a factor to be considered. Superman didn't become active until 2001, so the Justice League can't have existed before then. Was it Superman's first outing, a threat so dire (or so personal) that he couldn't justify sitting on the sidelines any longer, or is it important that Superman chose to become a hero out of a desire to inspire, and thus needs to be already active when the Justice League forms? At the other end of the spectrum, the "Young Justice" team-up of Tim, Roy, and Wally probably happened somewhere around 2015, so that gives us our window - between 2001 and 2015 - for when the Justice league first formed.

• Since we are a secret(ish) Justice League, we probably do not have a Hall of Justice or a Watchtower space station to hang out on. In fact, as things currently stand, the idea is to use the STAR Labs building from the Invasion! crossover (designed to look like the Hall of Justice) as STAR Labs Metropolis, and to use the term Watchtower to refer to the network of spy satellites that ARGUS uses.
• However, that doesn't mean we don't have a base: just that we don't have a public one. Before the Hall of Justice existed, the Justice League used to hang out at Mount Justice: that's the cave base near Happy Harbor, RI that the team uses in Young Justice. Current plans are that Aquaman lives in a lighthouse in Happy Harbor as part of his self-imposed exile: perhaps (a bit like Agents of SHIELD), the Justice League has a secret base under said lighthouse, and Aquaman is sort of the custodian/caretaker of it whenever the League isn't needed?
• Sidenote, we had talked previously about the "zeta beams" from Young Justice being a technology that exists in our world. The idea is that it would be controlled by ARGUS and/or STAR Labs, and used as an excuse for certain characters to be able to get from A to B quickly. This would be how J'onn J'onzz is able to readily show up as his various aliases in Gotham, and things like that. Aquaman's lighthouse having a zeta tube was also part of the plan. We'll have to decide where should have tubes, who should have access, which journeys we want to force to happen the slow way, etc.