Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities DC c. 1988-1992 (Post-Alan Moore, Pre-Death of Superman)

Last night, I read Secret Origins Annual 3, from 1989, the 66-page Teen Titans origin, for the first time.

What a hideous mess that issue is. It reads like it was edited by a cross-eyed, incontinent chimp, and looks like it was drawn by a bunch of preschoolers.

Except...in its own awful way, it's actually kind of awesome!

Here I'll admit a bias. I got into superheroes in the early 90s, in my late teens. My gateway into the DCU was 1991's Armageddon 2001 event -- which, despite some really good Imaginary Stories set in alternate timelines, is mostly remembered for having its ending changed at the very last minute, after the original ending was leaked to the media.

My point being:

This was one weird and wacky era for DC. It was the tail-end of Dick Giordano's tenure as Executive Editor, and there was all sorts of gossip that the company was rudderless and how everything was shipping late (lots of books with multiple inkers, and even multiple pencilers!)

At the same time, there was the Proto-Vertigo stuff, like Doom Patrol and Hellblazer and Sandman and Shade. Also, Timothy Truman's Hawkworld, which I consider the best example of Post-Crisis revisionism (but only by ignoring the continuity mess that resulted from editorial incompetence. And some of the mainstream newsstand stuff was very underrated, such as Alan Grant really coming into his own as the top Bat-Writer, and the Superman franchise really jelling.

Ironically enough, it would be the aforementioned Super-Franchise that would bring this era to an end, thanks to The Death Stunt, the commercial success of which would, in turn, pave the way for Mike Carlin replacing Giordano after the latter voluntarily stepped down and went back to doing what he did best -- drawing full-time.

So, lots of mixed emotions on my part about this seldom-discussed era of DC. I'd be interested to know what others think of it.

My collecting started just a couple of years before you, with the Man of Steel miniseries. I had read several black&white reprint collections over previous years, mostly of Superman, Batman, occasional Justice League, Green Lantern & Flash - oh and another group called Legion of Super-Heroes, so I had familiarity with those characters, but it was MOS that started me down collecting particular titles from 1986/87 onwards.

My main ones were the Superman titles, Wonder Woman by George Perez, and Justice League International when that started. (There were some from Marvel as well.) A few others that I started at that time were Flash - Wally West, and Green Lantern Corps, and Suicide Squad, but I didn't end up continuing with any of those.

I quite enjoyed those Armageddon alternative stories, though the main event series was less engaging. Waverider was an interesting character and the setup appealed, but the progress was just average. Never read that Secret Origins Annual, nor did I read Teen Titans, apart from some of the Spotlight series - I particularly remember the Jericho tales.

Wonder Woman was great for the first few years but I dropped off when Perez stopped doing the art, even though he was still writing it. JLI I stuck with right through to the end of Breakdowns but didn't get very far into the revamp following it.

Superman was my main DC set of titles. It was fun having a new Superman comic out every week (4 main titles and a 5th for the 5 week months) and the first years following Byrne's departure had some excellent stories. This is also known as the Triangle era because each Superman title had a numbered triangle to indicate the order to read them and while each title had a different focus and different main plot, they all acknowledged and include interactions form the other titles. (This was the inspiration for the later L-numbers on the Reboot Legion titles.) Reportedly it was Paul Levitz in his Editor role who pushed for expanding the original 3 titles to 4 and later 5. Jerry Ordway really came out as a star artist as well as writer in this period. Dan Jurgens had some amazing artwork, but looking back they seem a bit over-posed to me these days and the writing was not as strong.

The success of the titles with its frequent focus on the characters surrounding Superman was one of the inspirations for the TV series Lois & Clark. Ironically it was that TV series success that led to the whole Death thing. The comics were at a point where a Clark-Lois marriage looked positive but the TV series for various reasons was not and so the comics were asked to put it off, so when they were looking for something big to replace that they came up with killing Superman. The titles were still selling but not as many as at their peak - reportedly at this time about 150,000 copies of each title, so that many every week. Juggernauts like Spider-Man were over 500,000. The rise of the anti-hero was also blamed for the decrease. There was a feeling amongst the writers that Superman was taken for granted so they wanted to shake things up and focus on what the DC Universe would be like without him. You can see this when you read through Death of Superman and even more with Funeral for a Friend. Superman acts as the self-sacrificing hero but much of the focus is on the people around him, and what his actions mean to them, some of the regular cast but also some new bystander characters.

I know the Death is mostly viewed as a big event/cash grab by many comic fans, but at the time to me and even looking back I can see that at least initially the focus of the creative teams was to dive into the value of Superman by taking him out of the picture and focus on the characters around him, and I think in many ways they succeeded. Of course it was hyped for sales (that is how you run a business) and in hindsight it did set an unfortunate precedent for future attempts to hype big events, but I still like the story itself. (The Wikipedia article on it makes for fascinating reading with lots of source links throughout. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Superman)

As for Legion it was the dramatic cover of Volume 4 that made me pick up issue #1 and then it was they intriguing mystery of 5YL that not only made me committed to buying every issue but also to go back and collect all the issues and series leading up to it. Again I was basically familiar with the characters from reprints, mostly Silver Age but the Computo/Foccart Annual was a highlight. Still this was where I became an LSH fan, so for me that is another plus for this era.

Thanks for the thoughtful and detailed reply, Stile.

Overall, I'd say that 1986-1987 accomplished DC's main Post-Crisis goal of bringing in new readers. The problem arguably turned out to be keeping the wheels on over the long run.

With one exception: Wally as Flash got off to a very bad start. Thankfully, the book switched editors, to the awesome Barbara Randall-Kesel, and she overhauled the creative team, hiring William Messner-Loebs and Greg LaRocque. Their four-year stint together on Flash was, in my opinion, one of the few consistently good series of this era (after Loebs left, LaRocque stayed another 1.5 years, exiting just as Loebs' successor, Mark Waid, came into his own with The Return of Barry Allen storyline.)

Now, I know you think Watchmen is overrated, which is fine, because I feel more or less the same. But it could be argued that the loss of the services of people such as Alan Moore (which was Dick Giordano's fault) and Rick Veitch (which was Jenette Kahn's fault) had to have been a blow to office morale, and ultimately to the company's creative output.

I differ from you on Jurgens and Ordway. I think the former's Superman is the definitive look, while the latter's was a bit too chunky and homely for me.

And I never knew before that Levitz was the one who encouraged the franchising of Superman. Thanks for the information.

In many ways I agree with you here. When I was first reading the stories with Ordway's art they seemed to almost clash with the art in the other books. Over time I came to appreciate its depth and detail.
If we are looking for a beautiful look for Superman, Jurgens is better. There is a reason he was the artist on the book for so long and is still brought back for special issues. Still that's the thing, so many of his panels look like posed portraits - gorgeous but setup. Ordway's art came to tell a better flow of story in my opinion. Still enjoy both.

This is the era during which I got into the DCU. I was exclusively Marvel for most of my reading years, and I knew DC characters to a decent degree because I had friends that collected DC and we used to swap comics to read regularly, but I hadn't been a DC Buyer.

What got me into it was the loose-leaf Who's Who. Gorgeous art, brilliant format. I decided to buy that, and the entries on the Legion intrigued me, and that's what got me into the Legion long-term, end eventually the rest of DC.

Who's Who was pretty great. I preferred the Marvel Handbook format (and level of detail and full recaps, and multiple artists views of some of the characters), but there's also a nice clean-ness to the short and sweet one page entries characters tended to get in Who's Who, with one 'definitive' (i.e. current) look for the character.

My absolute favorite was the Who's Who to the Legion! Such great art and subject matter near and dear to my heart!