Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Classics on Infinite Earths

For those interested in a scholarly take on the DCU and its crossovers, I came across this book, Classics on Infinite Earths, on Amazon. Author Julian Darius argues on that the DCU is old enough to have produced several classic stories and he tries to create an admittedly subjective cannon centered on the JLA and various crossovers.

I've read most of the Amazon preview and found it entertaining and insightful. I do note that Darius admits to what seems to be a bias by focusing on comics from the '80s on. It's not that such a focus is a bad thing (all canons have to start and end somewhere), but his reason is because few earlier comics, he claims, aspired to literary value. I'm not sure how he defines literary value at this point. However, he admits that his choices are subjective and that a canon is meant to be fluid and changing, to open a conversation instead of shutting one down. I enjoyed his overview of the JLA and discussion of Kingdom Come.

Since current discussions on LW involve Crisis, this book looks like an appropriate tie-in.

I note that this book was published in 2015, so there's a good chance some of us have read it. Any thoughts? (Sorry if this has been discussed before; I couldn't find it in the search engine.)

So, I bought this book and am enjoying Darius's commentary on the DCU and the runs of certain series. He summarizes the runs and creators of key titles and provides a context of behind-the-scenes and historical events to show how the stories were shaped by and reflected the times in which they are produced. I've enjoyed reading his overview of various JLA titles since the early '90s, when I more or less stopped reading the series. It's interesting to read about the various relaunches, including JSA (which I followed for brief time).

Among the stories he considers classic are the first 12 issues of the Giffen/DeMatteis run, the inaugural Fox/Sekowski run, the brief O'Neill/Dillon run, and Morrison's JLA. However, he also covers other eras in surprising depth, including what he considers to be spin-off series such as All-Star Squadron, Infinity, Inc., and the various JSA reboots.

The is very little Legion content; he's mentioned the Legion only a few times in the chapters I've read. Even so, the book is worth checking out.