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Originally posted by MLLASH:
Agreed. No writer should be allowed near the title unless they love to write oodles of characters!

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What about writers who prefer writing just one oodle of characters?
 

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Posted by LARDLAD on :
 
I miss Roger Stern. Though his Legionnaires run was pretty forgettable, he has an outstanding body of work behind him. Personally, I think he's probably Spidey's best writer outside of Stan Lee himself.

I wish he was more specific in the interview on why exactly he'd been fired from Avengers (and basically Marvel itself).

It's too bad that some ofthe best 80s writers like him, Byrne, Simonson and a host of others have pretty much gone by the wayside in favor of "fresh" faces. Oh well....

Good interview, though.
 

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Posted by Ultra Jorge on :
 
I agree with you guys about Stern and the Legion. I remember hating the post zero hour Legion...got excited when Stern came on...and i ended up hating it even more.

But I'm a huge fan of his Marvel work. HUGE. And funny enough I just read Triumph & Torment yesterday. It was great.
 

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Posted by Ultra Jorge on :
 
LardLad, I believe Stern didn't talk about being fired from Avengers cause it basically was the only blemish on his late friend's Mark Grunewald's career.

After Roger left the Avengers sucked until Bob Harras. That was like 3 to 4 years. (and I'm not even a big fan of Harras' Avengers for that matter)

I think Mark (as editor) wanted to dismantle the Avengers and put them back together. Stern was doing an amazing job with Captain Marvel(Photon/Monica Rambeau) and the Black Knight in Avengers. I think Mark wanted to get rid of them and replace them with other members. Stern didn't.

Huge mistake by Mark and Marvel. Thank god for the Busiek run.
 

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Posted by Blacula on :
 
That was an interesting interview.

I always find it so sad to look back at that writing team's tenure because I loved the post-boot Legion so much and have made no secret of the fact that I think the PMS team were the people who killed it (at least until DnA came along and revived it for awhile before killing it all over again.)

But I've gotta completely disagree 100% with the esteemed posters before me who criticised Roger Stern for wanting to limit the number of members the team had during this period. If only he'd been successful maybe his tenure would've been worth something.

There were already around 20 or so characters in the Legion receiving heavy face-time at this time (including Shvaugn Erin, Lori Morning and Inferno) when suddenly in the space of about a year we got 8 new members - Magno, Umbra, Sensor, Ferro, Monstress, Kid Quantum II, Karate Kid and Thunder - most of whom never recieved more than a moment of screentime or characterisation (until DnA came along). And most of the Legionnaires we already had got sidelined. And let's not even get into all the pre-boot Legion members who suddenly got rebooted and then forgotten after one panel or scene - Chemical King, Catspaw, Timber Wolf, Kono, Dragonmage, the SUBS, etc.

This creative team were in such a madcap hurry to introduce characters that they just threw them in there with absolutely no clue about what they were going to do with them. So the whole comic just became a mess.

We all know the main draw of the Legion is its big cast of characters, but who wants a comic that has so many characters that none of them get used to their full potential? We as fans need to temper our desires to see our faves come back, with the needs of the story. The PMS era is a grim reminder of that.

My opinon of Roger Stern just raised a few notches after reading that comment.
 

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Posted by Nightcrawler on :
 
A good writer would take up the challenge of multiple characters and make you care about (and of course want to know more about) each one of them.

Any lazy writer can focus on one character or group of characters and make some kind of a story.

There are plenty of books out there for lazy writers. The Legion should require a great writer who can juggle a huge cast and leave you satisfied but wanting more.

Accept nothing less!
 

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Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
 
It's not clear whether Stern is objecting to the principle of a large cast (in which case he clearly wasn't a good fit for the series) or if he's objecting to the way in which characters were introduced without giving other characters the chance to be developed (in which case he was probably right).

Anyway, a little less panel time for Lori Morning probably would've helped...
 

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Posted by Reboot on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Blacula:
And let's not even get into all the pre-boot Legion members who suddenly got rebooted and then forgotten after one panel or scene - Chemical King, Catspaw, Timber Wolf, Kono, Dragonmage, the SUBS, etc.

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Catspaw (who was just an offhanded name/pic on McCauley's monitor) and the Subs (of whom only Brek and Lydda were even shown out of sillouette), I grant you without question. Condo too to a lesser extent. But Dragonmage got about four issues partially or wholly devoted to him, Kono two or three half-issues, and Timber Wolf didn't turn up until DnA's Legion Worlds #6.
 

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Posted by Kent Shakespeare on :
 
I was never a huge Stern fan. I kinda placed him in the same category as Wolfman or Conway - decent with their own creations and a handful of others, but otherwise, keep em away.
 

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Posted by Ultra Jorge on :
 
I agree we need a large cast ofcourse. Levitz did it quite nicely. Geoff Johns does it nicely with the JSA.

Maybe Stern meant a smaller cast per story which I think the post zero hour Legion did need. Levitz ofcourse was a master at rotating focus on certain characters, etc.
 

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Posted by Sir Tim Drake on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Eryk Davis Ester:
Anyway, a little less panel time for Lori Morning probably would've helped...

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Boy, do I ever agree with this. I don't think there's ever been any character, in any incarnation of the Legion, who was as annoying as Lori.
 

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Posted by Nightcrawler on :
 

 

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Posted by Blacula on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Nightcrawler:
A good writer would take up the challenge...

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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?
 

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Posted by LARDLAD on :
 
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!
 

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Posted by Igee The Mighty on :
 
i guess carmela merlo's involvement didn't really help in that instead of coming up with pro-active stories it was more reactive and filler.
 

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Posted by Nightcrawler on :
 
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 -


 

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Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
 
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.
 

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Posted by Blacula on :
 
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.
 

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