Howard Porter Replaces Kevin Maguire On ‘Justice League 3000′

Were you looking forward to the team behind the classic 1980s Justice League International getting back together for Justice League 3000? Then skip this post if you don't want to have your hopes crushed. On Thursday, artist Kevin Maguire tweeted, "I think I was just fired," and today, DC Comics confirmed it, naming Howard Porter as the book's new artist.

Porter has some history with the book already; he designed the costumes that were going to be in the comic originally solicited for October. It's been pushed back to December.

Series co-writer Keith Giffen gave Newsarama this statement:

The guy who nailed the character designs on the interior of the book? The guy who teamed with Grant Morrison to make JLA a hit? This is what they call a no-brainer. Welcome aboard Howard. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful collaboration.

In other DC artist news, CBR reports that artist Brett Booth will join the team of Batman/Superman, alternating arcs with current series artist Jae Lee.

Update: Maguire elaborated on his removal from the book on the Bleeding Cool forums, saying that DC wanted to go in a more "dark and gritty" direction. He also noted that he'd been given smaller projects at DC and received offers from other publishers -- including Marvel -- in the wake of the news.

Obviously, I was looking forward to working on a fairly high profile book. I haven’t had a top ten book since the 80s and I thought this would finally be my shot at doing one. But it’s DC‘s book, it’s their property, they can do whatever they want with it. They don’t owe me anything. I’ve been told they wanted a book that was “dark and gritty”, so I’m perplexed as to why they chose us for that. We did exactly the kind of book you would expect from us. Lots of action and humor. AND I turned down a Bendis X-Men project to do JL3K.