Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Are Legion Fans More Difficult Than Other Comic Fans?

I read this repeatedly, that we Legion fans are so hard to please. We're critical and negative. Some creators dread working on the book because of the potential fan reaction.

It may be difficult to objectively judge our own behaviour, and I'm not too familiar with other books' message boards. I've heard of nasty battles going on at the Green Lantern boards, and how various other comics discussion forums are full of hostility - directed at the product as well as at the participants.

There isn't a whole lot of senseless, ungrounded negative reaction here - so I wonder if this reputation we have acquired is justified. Maybe we're just more vocal in general, for better or worse.

Personally, I seem to be slobberingly slavish in my devotion to the Legion and question if I shouldn't exercise the old critical faculties a bit more often.

One of the key characteristics of the Legion: there's a lot. A lot of characters, a lot eras, a lot of everything.

This probably serves the message board well. Unlike a solo-star title, here it seems there's so much to debate/discuss/argue that one thing can't capture full attention and become a polarizing topic.

That's the MB community, though. Feedback to the creators (let's say letters to the editor) is similar, but not necessarily the same, is it? And let's face it: if you write a story that focuses on Tinya, Ayla, and Jan, you might please their particular fans. You might get great reviews in general from most of the readership for an excellent story. But you that doesn't mean you're not going to hear from the people who liked it BUT... when are you going to feature (MY favorite Legionnaire)? When are you going to bring back (one of the hundreds of other characters)? Why can't we go back to the Adventure stories? I'm a big Tinya fan, but she isn't like that, why did you have her say that? Jan couldn't have ______, because back in issue ____ he ________, remember? And so on.

Lack on consensus seems to keep the peace, in a way, here on the boards. I'm not sure it's that helpful for editorial, however.

The Legion fandom may suffer from the same thing the book does...many things. Any comic book title is going to have fans that are complaining about this or that...

Legion has many fans, many eras, many versions, much obscurity, etc, etc, etc.

Creators really can't get annoyed at us complaining. I've seen creators complain about comics why can't we...we pay for them. I know many creators know this about fandom cause many of them are fans...and think some creators understand the complaints (though may/may not agree with them), etc.

ohwell

Long Live the Legion

Jorge

I'm not hard to please at all as long as I get what I want.

I have yet to see a forum where Legion fans get as nasty as Green Lantern fans do. And most of the troll posts I've seen on Legion related threads elsewhere seem to be started by non-Legion fans.

I really think its the rest of fandom who has the problem. We are the only ones that are right in the head. For the most part.

I think Legion fans are some of the luckiest of comic book fans. Since the LSH isn't a huge seller we almost always get new talents that are trying to make their name in the business and -think about it- some of the youngsters are really (really!) bad but over the course of the last 3 and a half decades we've been blessed with the early work of some incredibly creative minds.

-LLL-

Let's not forget that "fan" is short for "fanatic," and that term already suggests someone who is difficult to please and irrational in their demands. I think this is an inescapable aspect of fandom, no matter how polite and self-controlled we all are. And that means that trying to please the "fans" of any particular endeavor (whether it's a comic book or a rock band or a TV show) is next to impossible.

Let us also not forget that when things such as the Legion began, they had no fans. There was an artistic vision, instead, or a promise of one, that lured people to it in the first place. If Otto Binder and Al Plastino (and Mort Weisinger) had sat down in the winter of 1957/58 and asked themselves, "We're going to create this thing called the Legion of Super-Heroes. How do we please the fans?" likely they would never have accomplished anything. If they were sane, they would have given up instantly.

Fandom is an important part of what defines the Legion or any other pop culture phenomenon. It lets the creators know that people care and care a great deal. But creators can do themselves (and, oddly enough, their fans) a great disservice by paying too close attention to what we want. If David Bowie had listened to his fans and continued to bang out his Ziggy Stardust-era material ad nauseum, it may have pleased the fans, but it wouldn't have satisfied him as an artist. Bowie instead chose to make a clean break with his past every so often and start over -- much like the Legion, ironically. This move no doubt irritated a lot of his fans, but probably preserved his own sense of identity in the long run: If Bowie is not happy making music, then how can he expect to please anyone else?

For this reason, this current shakeup -- or "reimagining," as Waid calls it -- has an air of both excitement and foreboding to it. Many fans are going to be unhappy (some already are) because they have to say goodbye to old friends (albeit fictional ones) and others because they can't get their way. (Being a fan also has a selfish component to it, let's face it.) But if Waid and Kitson as creative artist are to create work that has any meaning to us and to a wider audience, it must first have meaning to them. To that extent, it's exceedingly generous of Barry (as well as other creators) to solicit feedback directly from us. But adhering too much to that feedback could be distastrous to them and the Legion in the long run. At some point, they simply must turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to fan demands and say, this is the Legion WE want to produce.

I think its also worth mentioning that the Legion has had, at least to my understanding, a very high level of fan involvement since its earliest days.

Between leadership elections, APA articles that fleshed out the legion universe--and in some cases were reprinted in the actual comic--and a large amount of crossover between fan and creator communities--I'm think of the Biermbaums specifically--Legion fans are used to mattering. I think that contests to design new costumes and characters along with picking as crucial a part as the team leader has fostered a deep sense of ownership over the characters on the part of Legion fans. I really think that Legion fans love and feel more proprietary about the title than many other comic book fans. Thus when changes, good or bad, come creators must know that they will face the wrath of at least some of Legion fandom.

On the matter of fan ownership, this is an important point, and one that DC has certainly fostered, as mentioned above.

But it is also an illusion. We do not own the characters any more than we own the Star Trek characters or "Smoke on the Water." If the current version of Deep Purple wants to expand the latter into a three-movement concerto with strings and the members of Hanson as backing singers, there's precious little fans who want to preserve the original version can do about it, except complain and walk away.

(The Hanson comparison was suggested by flipping through TEEN TITANS # 16, which I didn't buy. The Legionnaires are certainly looking younger these days.)