Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Legion #16 Preview

This pretty much sums up my feelings about the whole run of both books.

In the spirit of saying nothing if you can't say something nice: I did like seeing that Power Boy and Gravity Kid were definitely a pair-- and definitely going to stay one, at least for awhile.

I just read this issue. In about 5 minutes. What. utter. crap. I was just telling my comic shop owner that I wished Marvel would just buy out DC so that we could have some decent talent on Legion and other DC books. Marvel must pay a LOT better than DC is all I can think of. If this is the best Paul Levitz has left in him, I want a new writer and definitely a new artist.

Though I haven't read #16 yet, I really have to second your feelings about this run getting worse those last few issues. I thought the first storyline was okay, the Annual was great but when there was nothing left than constant fighting for over four or five issues, I really started to think "What a weak story". Especially compared to the phantastic first Levitz LSV storyline (v3 ##1-5).

The Legion needs room for characterization and interaction. This was nearly totally left out those last few issues, and I don't know if it's only me but an issue filled with nothing but fighting is not what I want to read these days...

...especially when I have totally lost track of who is fighting where and which Legionnaire is supposed to be in which subteam. And who all those bad guys are. And who all these Mon-Els are

I really do hope that Levitz will reduce speed after this storyline. The new members might be a good focus to show the Legion in other ways than constant battling. I also have some hopes for the Secret Origins series.

Levitz needs to shed some light on the characters, on their relationships and their differences. This can't be all about fighting - I got a share of bad X-Men comics from the 90s in my collection, if I want to read about constant fighting I'll pick up those I did not manage to sell yet...

I'd have been totally cool with a big running fight over several issues, if the Legionnaires present had made innovative or cool use of their powers. If Jacques had actually, maybe, for once in his life, *turned invisible and done something,* or if Timber Wolf had remembered that he was a non-invulnerable, non-regenerating super-acrobat, who is supposed to be fighting like Nightwing or Spider-Man, and not a second-rate Wolverine-clone, and Element Lad used his powers in a way that didn't do more harm to him than the guy he was fighting...

They really came across as keystone cops, instead of experienced and competent heroes.

I want to see scenes like Cham beating the shapeshifter on Durla through a *smart* use of his powers, or threeboot Dreamy kicking butt with combat precognitive abilities, or Element Lad putting up a lead shield *to protect Superboy from his powers,* when he created gold K to stop the Superman-clone that Darkseid sent.

I wanna see some Crowning Moments of Awesome, and not from friggin' Earth-Man!

.. yeah there was no tension ... no thrill or pace .. . just big images of 'so and so' punching 'so and so'.

Ugh, not only was this the worst Legion story I have ever read, I'm pretty sure it was the worst comic book I've ever read period. I mean...what even happened?? We still don't know who the bad guy is or his origin. What did Earth-Man even DO?? How did Star Boy fulfill Dream Girl's prophecy about his power saving the day? Are we meant to believe that Harmonia Li is gonna join the Legion now? Does she have any powers aside from being immortal??

This series has been pretty uninspiring as a whole, but the final issue was just plain horrible.

At this point I am gonna give the relaunch a chance, but Paul Levitz has pretty much exhausted any faith I had in him, he is gonna have to start actually writing something decent and not just relying on the fact that he did that 25 years ago.

I'm not spending any more of my money on a comic that is at best mediocre just because I have an investment in the characters that are in it.

The only thing good in this issue is Earth Man is dead!

Good point!

PLEEEASE let this be the end of shoehorned-in Green Lantern stuff and rampant xenophobia on Earth stories now and can we get back to the actual real Legion everyone came for in the first place?

did not like this issue and it was a weak ending to the LSV story line. still i'm still scratching my head as to the identity of the final planet, was it the remains of Mogo? or was it Maltus the birth planet of the Guardians? and the Bad guy was he some reborn form of Krona?
this entire run started out strong but it had a weak ending i hope the new series fairs better than this one.

I picked the issue up yesterday after having already read most of the comments on this thread. No, it wasn't a great issue but my reaction wasn't nearly as negative as most here. Things were wrapped up pretty neatly, at least by comparison to the Durlan story. The art was actually pretty good. Earth Man is dead and Mon-El is no longer a Green Lantern. These are both developments I'm happy with.

Good thing I read this thread. When I finished this book, I thought "What the heck happened with Sodam Yat?" It wasn't clear to me what he had done to E-Man.

Man, this was not a good story. I thought it started out well, but the conclusion has been a mess.

Let's hope we get at least one good Legion series come September!

I'm here to defend Mr. Levitz. I totally believe he has not been allowed to do his job by TPTB. In sixteen issues of LSH, he's had to deal with the shortened page count, rookie artists, and a sudden conclusion deadline for the company wide reboot. I am sure his original scripts when this series first started no where near resemble the final printed product.

I hope someone will put a helmet on Dan Didio and stop feeding him candy bars so his sugar frenzy will calm down and the creative teams can actually be allowed to build up some kind of storytelling momentum without interference.

What DID Yat do?
I don't get it.
sigh

And I think that Levitz knew about the 52 at least as long as the other writers and artists who were assigned the new books, probably longer.

It's probably why we've seen Tyro, Tellus, Gates and Yera used since the retroboot began.
We always see Brin, Dawny and Wildfire, really, but they've been prominent, too.

What they would do to a Shooter, they wouldn't do to a Levitz.
imo

What happened to Earth Man certainly leaves lots of unanswered questions...what did Sodam Yat do?? And how much did the effects of a fixed flight ring continue to alter his personality? Too many unanswered questions....but maybe Levitz partially wanted that?

I expect so, but I think Levitz probably had a good part of the first year of LSH plotted out before he even left his publisher position. The shortened page counts and the 52 reboot news surfaced after and he had to spend extra time rewriting, condensing and editing down his story most of the way thru. This is of course only speculation on my part.

I am not cool with B5/Li so far. Not cool at all.

[snip]



I agree that there was too heavy a stench of editorial meddling this time out, KQ. It would be really nice at this point if they kept their word and let the Legion book exist in its own sphere-- mostly detached from the rest of the DC-verse and the never-ending supply of Big Events. But it's unlikely, I suppose.

Hear, hear.

To be fair, Levitz has thrown in some nice character moments in his run. Hopefully we'll see more of that later on.

I have to say that both the story and art on my book are better than this crap and I'm not a paid professional with 30 years of comic book writing experience.

I think Mr. Levitz has squandered whatever street cred he ever had with this book. Next writer please.

Well, so long as we're blowing our own horns, I'd like to categorically state that my collages are about a million jillion times better than anything by that overexposed hack Anne Taintor. The market for trained professionals cares not one whit what I think, sad to say.

Also, your project is your own and you have nobody else you need to answer to in order to get it published (so long as you can pay to do so), which is not the case for anyone who works in a large organization like DC. Frankly, the current run had the heavy hand of Editorial visibly all over it from the first issue. (Lantern-mania. Yawn.) And I suspect the crummy, muddled ending we got to this arc is directly attributable to there being yet another retooling of the books.

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I think Mr. Levitz has squandered whatever street cred he ever had with this book. Next writer please.

This strikes me as unduly harsh, TBH. "Street cred"? What does that even mean in this context? I'll be interested in reading Niceza's work, just as I would have checked out Johns' writing had he stuck around instead of Levitz. I don't know whether it will matter, though, since my problems with how DC operates go way deeper than an individual creator's style.

This issue was one of the low points of Paul's career as a Legion writer. It was confusing, poorly drawn, and boring. The only thing I liked about it is that it got rid of a horrible character.

I think, though, that the poor quality of this issue was not entirely Paul's fault; it's almost certainly the case that like every other recent Legion writer, he's had to revise his original plans due to editorial interference. Hopefully Paul will have more creative freedom when the new series begins.