This February, the just-formed Justice League of America will introduce an all-new team of superheroes to the DC Universe. And with the launch of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, another one of the members of the team’s roster will also be getting his own solo ongoing series: Cisco Ramone, a.k.a. Vibe. Hitting stores on February 20, JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA’S VIBE #1 comes to you from the creative team of writer Andrew Kreisberg and artist Pete Woods. Set in Detroit, the series’ inaugural issue is also co-written by JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA writer Geoff Johns.

 

But who exactly is Vibe?

 

“We’ve made him a really grounded person and a very realistic person,” Kreisberg explained to IGN about the series’ protagonist. “In some ways, there’s sort of a wish fulfillment for comic book fans because he’s a teenage kid that’s suddenly given superpowers and suddenly he’s in the Justice League of America working alongside the heroes that he, as a kid, had worshipped. In some ways, he’s teenage me or teenage you, and suddenly he gets to be with the Justice League. And he reacts in what we hope is a very realistic way. He has a lot of questions and he’s got a lot of fears. The DC Universe is populated with a lot of god-like characters like Superman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, and a lot of inscrutable characters like Batman. What was most exciting for us was the opportunity to create almost a real person who gets thrust into this world that the audience can really relate to and that we can really dig into as a person.”

 

“One of the smartest things Geoff said early on was, ‘It's really important we come up with a franchise for him, and it can't just be that he has powers,”’ Kreisberg continued to NEWSARAMA. “So we hit upon the idea that, since the Darkseid invasion began in Detroit, this is where the membrane is weakest between the dimensions, because this is where they punched through. And this left a crack in the fabric of reality between all the dimensions of all the Earths. Things kind of fall through, and people sneak through, and if there's going to be another invasion, this is where it will begin. Since Cisco draws his powers from the energy of these vibrational cracks, he's also able to sense these incursions. He knows when things are here that shouldn't be, or when things come through. And he says, with some irony, that he's essentially become an inter-dimensional border cop. I think that gives a strong franchise to the book. He's here to clean up Detroit from these incursions, but the people he's working for — Amanda Waller and A.R.G.U.S. — don't always, necessarily, have his best interest at heart, or the best interest of some of the innocent people who come through. So it's going to lead to a lot of interesting conflicts.”

 

To read more from Andrew Kreisberg about the launch of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA’s VIBE, see the full interviews that ran this morning with the writer on MTV GEEK, IGN, NEWSARAMA, COMIC VINE, AOL’s COMICS ALLIANCE and COMICOSITY. And don’t forget to visit each of these outlets for your first looks at Pete Woods’ interior art for JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA’S VIBE #1.