Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Legion in the Newspaper

In yesterday's (3-13-05) Boston Globe's Ideas section, there was a paragraph about the current Legion series. It included a picture from issue #2 in which Sun Boy is explaining the problem of Naltor.

I couldn't take that section of the paper with me as Dad hadn't read it yet. The gist of the paragraph was that the comic was not like comics of the old days in that it had the added element of the youth vs the old and comparing the comic scenario with the current Bush administration.

Did anyone else see it?

read it here:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/03/13/friends_of_the_future/

Y'know, I feel daft now. I hadn't recognised the Naltor story as being metaphoric, but it's so obvious now I read the Globe article. A government stealing the dreams of its young people. interesting....

Hmmm... I wonder if the next planet to join the UP will be Lebo-Lebanon?

LOL

Actually I probably could have taken Dad.

"takes place in a dystopian, post-9/11
future in which the Legion isn't a club but a universe-wide
revolutionary movement."

Kevin Hawkins, a friend of mine in KLORDNY, was RIGHT! NO WAY is the new series set in a "utopian" future!

"so ''afraid of the future,'' as Sun Boy snarls in the
first issue, that they've swapped their liberty for homeworld
security.....Yes, there's some Bush-era paranoia in these scenarios,
admits DC executive editor Dan Didio. ''We wanted to reinvent the
Legion as a movement whose cause would resonate with today's youth,''
he said via telephone. ''Kids today are very socially aware-and they
worry that bringing a sense of security and order to society can come
at too high a price.''"

Okay, I get it now. But did they REALLY have to "reinvent" the
Legion-- AGAIN-- just to tell this kind of story? HELL NO, I say.

Just wait. As my late pal Jim predicted more than a decade ago, once
you start rewriting history, you open YOUR history up to being
rewritten. "Waid's World" will be lucky if it lasts as long as the
LAST reboot we got-- whcih, come to think of it, Waid was ALSO heavily
involved in the creation of. (What IS that guy's problem???)

Yeah while this Legion may be anti-UP they appear nothing counter culture to me.

They are as about revolutionary as a young christian youth group at a Bush rally.

I'm still waiting for the cool ones to show up. Hip hop Wildfire and heavy metal Timberwolf.

i agree jorg,

i want my punk rock legionaires

On the other hand,

What's interesting about Waid's approach is his conceit that being a Legionnaire -- in a Silver Age or Reboot sense -- IS revolutionary. Being young, brash, inquisitive, optimistic and heroic is a countercultural, subversive act.

wow. I missed that completely.

It's a good point. What is a "utopia"...all that stuff.

Dystopian allusion or not, the tagline "We're so sick of it, we could scream," with what precedes it, is already being overused. And it's giving the wrong impression to reviewers, I think, including this Boston Globe writer.

It sounds more than a bit cranky, with its immediately preceding each issue's title. And it's ironic, in how it also sounds almost "grandpa"-ish in its petulance.

I remember the few lines of Legion above-the-title introduction from the SLSH-to-v2-to-v3 eras quite fondly. They may have been hokey or overblown, especially when mentioning Superboy, but they evoked something that these new taglines don't, and that's ... heroism.

This "so sick of it" pose-making is aimed at jaded postmodern youth. I have a sneaking suspicion that they may want to be advised more about the presence in the book of actual ... well, heroes ... y'think? Maybe?

The "revolutionary" aspect of it is all well and good, but the last thing I want to read is a dark and dogmatic political allegory of post-9/11 America. So what fun and games are next, a cosmic jihad? When the new Legion was first hyped as "Intergalactic Knights of the Round Table", I was expecting conflict, but nothing this pessimistic.

And thats IF you follow along with what they are trying to present, that Bush is "evil" and stealing the dreams of the youth.

Today's Guard and Reserves tend to be older, not younger. I'm thirty seven, one of my best friends from the time i was in kindergarden is just back from a year long tour, has two weeks at home, then goes back, and he isn't doing as much bitching, whining, and complaining as those that aren't in the military, aren't going to be called, and wanna re-capture the culture of the sixties.

As for "giving up your liberties", this is nothing compared to the complete suspension of certain liberties under that american champion of liberty, Abraham Lincoln.

And once things were settled, yes, that was recinded. Life is tough, hard choices are made, life goes on.

Like hell it was rescinded . It was merely held in reserve for the next divinely inspired world-saver to use, 30 years later. And our current police State is even less likely to be rolled back, since the current "war" is open-ended, as Empire ends up being. It might implode. But that's another thread.

If this Legion provided a genuine critique of warmaking, it might get somewhere. It's just a post-punk setting of being dissatisfied with the societal blahs. Aside from a revulsion to vague threats of war, as seen through Nura, I don't see many principles in this bunch. Not yet.

Grey, i am remembering from high school history, i admit. But as i recall, many "rights" were set aside during wartime. After wartime and the great northern steal of the wealth of the south, commanly called carpetbagging, was basically done, those rights were restored. The laws empowering the use of them stayed on the books, if, again, i am recalling correctly.

I have no problem with questioning government. I think it necessary to do. At the same time, i have very little patience with those that would stop the world because they can't make up their minds to shit or get off the pot.

And as for the critique of war, well, wars are completely avertable. As long as both sides are resonable and agree. That wasn't the case here. And in case you don't know, its not all bombs and people dying. I had a chance to talk with my buddy for a few minutes and he was amazed at the onesided stories coming out of Iraq.

Nor did he sugar coat what he was dealing with. He does protection detail for convoys and has regularly been hit with mortar fire, rpg's, rifle and small arms fire... But he also understands why it is being done from our side.

Here's the thing, war ...ain't nice. But unless you lobotamize every living person on earth from the instant they are born, people are going to disagree, and some people, whether anyone wants to believe it or not, need to die. I'd say that someone that puts 8 year old kids in jail or rape rooms, installs a regime of fear, that makes husbands watch their wives be raped or murdered...needs to be put out of the worlds misery.

And yes, i would have no problem joining if i was called. Even now, with a child on the way. Freedom, even for someone other than myself or my family, isn't cheap. And you don't pay the price just once.

So criticize the war, by all means. But just remember that you are looking at it from YOUR viewpoint. As I am looking at it from mine.

Free elections were held by people that were willing to die to vote in them, Shiite, Suni, and Khurd. But they did it because the small taste of freedom it offered was infinately better than the living hell that was before. Even if prosperous, if you live under tyranny, its a living hell.

I honestly don't think that America has become the depot of despotism that so many claim it has become. At the same time, when this crisis is over, yeah, i do expect things to revert as far back to the norm as possible. If not, I am fully prepared to stand up to the government, aoltimewarner, CNN, haliburton, or whoever is responsible.

damn, didn't mean to kill the thread. Sorry.

Well, with the word "newspaper" in the subject, it was bound to turn this way sooner or later.