quote:Originally posted by Nightcrawler: A good writer would take up the challenge...
With respect, I disagree. Only an exceptional writer would've been up to the task of telling a great comic that did justice to the more than 30-35 Legionnaires (including preboot ones) and the dozen or so supporting characters that were floating around in the Legion-verse during that time.
Does such a writer exist? Not in my opinion. Not even Jim Shooter and Paul Levitz (most peoples' choices for top Legion writers) were juggling casts anywhere near that large during their hey-days.
Reboot - That same issue that gave us Catspaw also gave us a Timber Wolf analogue didn't it? He was never named as such but I always took it as PMS's pretty lame attempt at rebooting Brin that was so lame everyone ignored it. Forgot that Dragonmage got a bit of exposure later on, and that Kono got even less so, but really - for every Kono or Dragonmage I could name a Dev-Em, Comet Queen, Gas Girl, Beast Boy, Invisible Kid II and so on.
Ultra Jorge - JSA's cast has never been anywhere near as large as the Legion's. And as much as I enjoyed Johns' JSA (for the most part), even he wasn't that great at writing a large cast. When was the last time Sand did *anything*? Dr Mid-Nite got one story in the last 70 or so issues. And Comicbloc's JSA board used to be full of people complaining about the absence of Alan Scott.
If even DC's #1 writer has trouble juggling a cast of about 12, what hope would any other writer have of juggling a cast of about 35?
From: Australia | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
Having read the interview, I saw nothing to suggest that Stern wanted to make the Legion a smaller team. I interpreted it like Ultra Jorge did in that he wanted to focus on smaller groups per story or story arc. Even Levitz did this most of the time as did DnA, TMK and most of the other notable writers including Waid in his current run. It's hard to have character development with 20+ characters all getting face-time per issue. Save that for the mega stories like GDS (but even that had a bigger spotlight for certain characters at times).
That said, several of the PMS stories like Mantis Morlo and Bizarro Legion sucked big time no matter how you look at them!
-------------------- "Suck it, depressos!"--M. Lash
From: The Underbelly of Society | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
I guess we'll have to disagree about large casts in comics and whether or not people are capable of writing them. I don't think they each need to be spotlighted in each issue, but I do think that there are writers who can write a large cast of characters on a rotating basis without focusing on 2 or three each and every issue.
Every time I hear a writer complain about the large cast, I think of Dave Cockrum talking about Cary Bates having only a couple Legionnaires save Lournu from Starfinger at her own wedding in which the entire group and most of the allies were present. I find it lacks imagination on the writer's part, which isn't a great trait in a writer.
Catspaw's friend was called Lupine -
From: San Diego, CA | Registered: Jul 2003
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Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
posted
I'm fairly certain if you actually counted up the number of supporting characters (Academy, Subs, SPs, Legion family members, etc.) in Levitz's run, the cast that he was dealing with is probably similar in size to that of the PMS era. Plus they had two books per month, whereas he had only one (except for the one year where Tales was still original stories).
I think the problem was that they tended to introduce characters for the sake of "Hey, guess who we're rebooting now?" and then didn't have a clear idea what to do with many of them once they'd reintroduced them, and then moved on to the next person they decided to reboot. This may be what Stern is pointing out.
From: Liberty City | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
Just to clarify - I don't dislike large casts in comics either. I wouldn't be a Legion fan if I did. (And that Luorno/Chuck wedding issue is a great example of how NOT to write a large cast I agree Gary.) Though I do think once a regular/steady cast goes beyond 30 then some things will start to suffer.
I think EDE sums up Roger Stern's meaning pretty well and it was his objection to the throwing of more and more characters into the series with no real planning that I agreed with and respected him for.
From: Australia | Registered: Dec 2003
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