Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Legion delayed and new artist?

Den of Geek's recent interview with Brian Bendis. LSH on hold with no ETA when the next issue will be out. Also, looks like a new artist. I will miss Ryan Sook's art work.

Den of Geek interview with Brian Bendis

Yeah, Ryan told me that #12 would be his last issue.

Aww

4 and a half full issues... He had a good run...

I'd like to think Bendis finishes the interview and thinks "I hope I got away with that" or "I hope that covered DC's rear" rather than actually believing it.

"Legion is a hard book to make." and "... some people just want it monthly. I get that, but not all books are created in the same way. It's art. Even though it's commercial art, it is art." and "There's 34 lead characters, and we try to shove as many of them on panel as often as possible because that's one of the best parts of the Legion is the scope of it."

The legion was scheduled as a monthly book. Not as a coffee table art book. Not as a mini-series. It reads like a very poor way of hiding behind the simple truth that they were not capable of delivering to even the most basic schedule for any length of time. It's also a little worrying that they don't seem to grasp that publishing comic books, historically on a monthly schedule for monthly books, is the point of the company. At least at the moment.

Yes, there are a lot of characters. But that didn't stop various creative teams delivering plenty of top quality monthly tales, containing commercial art, for 50+ years (with the odd publishing gap). This creative team and DC went into it as a monthly book, with a massive lead time too.

Saying that it's a quality issue, or there's there's a higher artistic bar they need to reach, that makes their version somehow tougher to deliver than all of their predecessors, is a bit of a slight on huge amount of talent that those people brought to the book.

Previous creative teams have been more than capable of delivering that scope monthly for decades. Perhaps not having 34 lead characters joined at the hip in order to have as many splash pages as possible, in place of a plot, would have helped there.

"I think you can kind of tell from the jam issues and the fill-ins and the level of quality, attempting to keep it at the highest quality possible, yet still delivering that very special Legion feeling, instead of fill-ins that may not be up to the quality that we were doing, we'll stop, get a story ready to go, and solicit it when it's time. There's more to come."

The jam issues were fill ins by another name too. The launch seemed to be tied with the scheduling disaster of Doomsday Clock. Ties that were seemingly jettisoned in the end.
An underwhelming Millennium 2 parter followed.
Nighty has already listed the significant number of discrepancies between preview blurb and what was actually delivered.
What was actually delivered has been well below par for Bendis, with glacial, disjointed pacing and plotting.
If 4 and a half full issues of Sook is what we got, then that speaks volumes about the wheels coming off there. It's lovely art. But this is the book that had Cockrum, Swan, Grell, Giffen, Lightle, Hughes and Immonen. Art teams hitting it out the park monthly.

Attaining the quality they were doing, should be the least of their efforts.

We're in the middle of another crossover. Bendis seems to have planned the core of the Legion story. Perfectly plausible as at least this 2-parter has something of a concise plot to it.

If/when the book comes back we're going to get tied in to the Justice League. So that's more nonsense around waiting for DC to connect the dots, possibly for another event. Looking at DCs appalling track record, it's as likely the stars will come right to release Cthulhu faster than they're capable of coherent, punctually scheduled, entertaining crossover event.

It's DC's choice to be happy with an occasionally launched series, rather than a profitable monthly book. But let's not pretend that the fate of this volume has hinged on artistic sentiments rather than a collection of poor decision making.

Your entire statement is well thought out and extremely well put, thoth lad. But this part especially sticks out to me:


It's because of this that - to me at least - it feels like Bendis has too much on his plate right now to write the Legion, but rather than let another writer take a chance with it, he wants to hold onto them just in case. So now it's stuck in limbo because he refuses to let them go.

Kind of like ex-Legion writer Jim Shooter with the Avengers during the late 70s and early 80s, where he controlled the book by proxy, either as plotter or editor-in-chief, and occasionally as full scripter. A very bad era resulted (in my opinion.)

BTW, Supragirl, I like your new avatar!

Thanks supragirl. I think you're right, as Bendis seems quite confident that he can nip in and out of the Legionverse whenever they can drag a few issues over the line. I'd have thought DC's accountants would take a different view. Perhaps they just get to cancel books that are below the line of books they feel they need to publish. Maybe they're not connected enough to ask questions such as why a once very profitable property is sitting idle, because the creative and editorial team can't do the job they were scheduled to do.

Just to put it out there, the mid 90s reboot from Peyer, McCraw, Stern, KC and the team was a bi-weekly story with the two titles plotted out well in advance. IIRC, the title went weekly for a couple months for special events. I'm just starting to read this new book now with the collected TPBs, and kind of scratching my head, TBH.

Do they still publish the sales numbers from these titles? How has this new version been selling?

For me, the above Bendis interview was full of vague half truths and lies, and sorry but I don't believe him. He did the most damage to a classic comic in the shortest period of time than any other writer has done in a long, long time.

I have been very vocal about my disappointment with the latest version of the Bendis "Legion".
I hope he does NOT have anything to do the any type of Legion book that comes out in the hopefully near future.

Brian Bendis failed the Legion.
NEXT!

So forgive me - I asked this in an earlier reply to you, but I have been off this board for so long, I forgot the basics of quoting and replying.

Do they still publish the sales & distribution information like they used to back in the day? How did this book do?

I just finished the Millenium TPB, and was just about to start picking up the rest of the run up to date, but now I'm hearing that it ends at issue 12 for this Future State LIMITED series?? And nothing after?

Holy crap, my anger at DC/WB about the Legion seems to be well founded.

They do. Michael Grabois has been reporting them and comparing to the overall sales on his site. Unfortunately, looks like he stopped at #10, at least for now.

Thanks Nighty. Yes it's 12, followed by 2 Future State: Legion issues. You don't have to know a jot about Future State to read them.

Thanks, Nightcrawler. Wow. I'm not an expert in comic book sales by any means, but those numbers don't seem to be a good look. I'm probably part of the problem, as I tend to get the collected editions, but that's a steep drop.

I guess the main question is if 30k is a decent number for ongoing for WB.

Thanks! Since its only two issues, I'll just get the digital versions to see what the fuss is about. I mean, I'd probably buy them at some point anyway.... :-)

Also, somewhat off topic, but thanks for the link to Michael's site. I did more browsing there and came across a lot of the old Usenet group posts he would curate that I would read and sometimes participate in (25 year flashbacks and all). The Usenet Legion drinking game was fun to see again. That game should probably be updated.