DC has relaunched a new iteration of the Justice League of America this past week and I’m a little confused. According to Justice League of America Rebirth #1, Batman forms the team to be a grounded, more human-focused group of superheroes as opposed to the god-like regular Justice League.

Batman is a big fan of The Flash TV show

We all know the branding reason why the new comic is called ‘Justice League of America’, but after reading this prologue issue, I’m wondering what the in-story reason is for Batman being so patriotic in naming his new team. When has Batman ever been a flag-waving character?

The Rebirth issue is a prologue about Batman going out and recruiting Black Canary, Lobo, the Ray, the Atom, Vixen and Killer Frost to form his new team. This isn’t the first time Batman has formed his own, more grounded Justice League. Any comic book scholar worth her salt would see this as an obvious Batman and the Outsiders-style group.

JLA is definitely the name he picks

But no, it’s not called ‘Batman and the Outsiders’. For reasons that go unexplained, Batman just copies of the name of the regular Justice League and tags ‘of America’ at the end, as if his team is only going to fight bad guys in the continental United States. It makes zero sense.

Especially when you remember that there already was a ‘Justice League of America’ in the New 52 continuity, which I’m pretty sure still applies in the Rebirth era. That team had a reason for using ‘of America’ in their name. They were legitimately government-based.

Remember them?

Has Batman forgotten about them? Is her purposefully co-opting the name for his new squad? What reason could that possibly serve?

Batman is a superhero who knows how branding works. And he’s clearly put a lot of thought into this team — hence why he’s recruited complete newbies Ray and Atom, and why he recruited Lobo for a grounded, more human-focused group of superheroes. So it just doesn’t make any sense why Batman, of all superheroes, would call this team the ‘Justice League of America’ instead of literally anything else.

But I suppose even Batman recognizes that ‘The Outsiders’ just isn’t marketable.

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