Over Father’s Day weekend, there were two big comic conventions, Heroes-Con in Charlotte and Wizard World Philly. There were tons of announcements over the weekend, but the best one has to be Dwayne McDuffie taking over writing chores on Justice League of America.

McDuffie was the guiding force on the Static Shock animated series from a few years ago and also a major contributor to the Justice League Unlimited animated (and comic) series. Both of those shows were excellent and should hopefully entice fans of those former series to check out Justice League.

Recently McDuffie penned the final three issues of the Firestorm series and is currently writing the Fantastic four at Marvel. The few issues of that series have been better than any in recent memory and really captured the “family” feel the Fantastic Four should have.

With McDuffie writing flagship books at Marvel and DC, I predict a bidding war for exclusive rights to start any day now. I’ll go ahead and say that I hope DC wins, because I do like the Justice League better than the Fantastic Four and I’d expect McDuffie to add Firestorm to the team, now that his solo series has been canceled. Plus, the fact that Dan DiDio (DC Executive Editor) stated that “Dwayne is the writer of Justice League now until he doesn’t want to write it anymore,” is exciting.

Too many comic series these days have writers that stay for only a certain amount of issues. Big name writers sign up for short arcs on popular books. Brad Meltzer is finishing up a 13 issue stint on JLA just before McDuffie. Joss Whedon is finishing up a 24 issue arc on Astonishing X-Men. While I think both arcs have been great, these short runs make for uneven reading. Let’s see someone take on 110+ issues of X-Men or JLA like Brian Michael Bendis has done on Ultimate Spider-Man or the 70+ issues that Geoff Johns has done on Justice Society of America.

Comics are exciting and unique because they are a monthly, continuing work of fiction. It’s nice to see a new writer come in with fresh ideas, but even more exciting is watching a dedicated writer with a love of the character(s) continually develop those characters over years and various story arcs. I think that’s what made me love comics so much when I received my first issue (#172) of the Uncanny X-Men by subscription almost 25 years ago.