Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! The double word ballon page makes News!

http://newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24635

I am gonna chat it about it here as well. Ya know i saw some people claim confusion on here. On the first double printed ballon panel it even got me...is this an error? Oh wait..wait ah...yeah I get it now. And it's a good joke I sit next to two guys at work I IM instead of talk to. It's easier kinda.

But for those that confused I wouldn't call non brainiacs. It would be easy to get confused IMO. I would have gotten probably without knowing beforehand especially by the last panel. But the 13 year old Jor-El wouldn't have methinks.

Not so clever for a 1st issue IMO. I lent it to a bud at work who has never read a Legion comic. I wonder if he will get it? Or like it.

I shall report my findings in a few. (yes i'm at work now posting about legion!)

Jorge

Um, first attempt to post didn't take so I'll have to try this again.

I had an adult family member read it yesterday. At first, he was confused by the cut-off word bubbles. When I told him continue reading, he interpreted the "double-bubbles" as some form of mind control.

The reader is a middle-aged male with two post-graduate degrees, one of them in English literature. He doesn't read super-hero comics any more but he did when he was younger, is currently a fan of Art Spiegeleman ("Maus") and R. Crumb, and has consumed a boat-load of science fiction over the years. So, even with this background, he didn't get it at first. When I read Waid's explanation to him, he bought it immediately --- but thought Waid could use a few lessons in the way the human mind tends to work when it encounters ambiguous visual information.

Otherwise, he loved Barry's artwork and considered the story very thought provoking. His favorite character was Colossal Boy. He wants to read the next issue, but he'll have to buy his own copy.

You tell 'em Tromium!

Is the writer responsible for the visual information?

I confess, I thought it was a printing error.

Not that I cared a great deal about it. I was basically skimming these pages because they were in the preview releases. That's one of the reasons I thought they were printing errors, by the way, because I didn't recall them from the preview.

Yes, I did note that it looked like one was standing right behind the other in one of the panels. But the setting was so stark that I didn't jump to the conclusion that they were in the same room. Instead I imagined it was some netherworldy depiciton of the Science Police in general. Maybe if there had been more features to the room, I would have caught on. But, it's no big deal because the smart folks at legionworld pointed it out to me pronto.

*reads the article*

I wouldn't call a clarification of what the hell was going on in a pair of pages which were apparently borderline incomprehensible to many people "mak[ing] News!" (with the exclaimation mark)

If it's a headline at newsarama, I guess it's news for the comic book world. Maybe January 29th will henceforth be known as Double Word Balloon Day, or the issue will be described in future indexes/guides as the infamous double balloon controversy story.

I read about it here first, so can't say if it would have confused me or not.

Have there actually been printing errors like this in the past? The only error I've ever seen in comic books is colours printed outside of the lines, whatever you call that.

Recently Marvel's trade paperback division has been notorious for misplacing word balloons. In several trades the balloons from one page are repeated on the next page; sometimes they overlay the correct balloons, sometimes they simply replace them.

I remember a couple of comics when I was a kid, where a whole color plate missed the printing process. In Uncanny X-men 99, several pages were printed without the red ink. I'll have to scan my copy sometime...

I remember one printing error (don't remember the comic) where there was a word balloon either missing or out of order and they had to print the correct version on the letters pages the next month.

That was the first series of Thunderbolts. Fabian Nicziera posted an apology online as I think it actually screwed up the story in that particular issue.

That happened way back in the early 90s, in Neil Gaiman's run on Miracleman, that I can think of. And at least 1 other time, too.

I too was confused. But again, I attribute that to the fact that the double balloons were not there when we saw these pages as previews before the book was released.

A similar thing happened in the War Machine story in the Tales of the Marvel Universe one-shot. Don't think that ever got corrected anywhere.

There's the Marvel HCs & TPBs snafus someone mentioned above (this - http://images.comicbookresources.com/litg/wolverine.jpg - got third place in Rich Johnson's " Rumour Awards " as a result)

Plus, in a lesser fault, one of the Avengers Forever issues messed up all of the future Jocasta's speech balloons so that the balloon pointers went over the text.

So yeah, FC, lettering printing errors DO happen. And when you do your best to make it look like they've happened, expect some people to think it did happen

It wasn't on CNN sadly. But it's a new article on "News"rama. I wasn't trying to make it a big deal and hate on the problem. Just thought it's fun to address something like this.

Jorge

And I agree with the End. With printing errors people may have thought it was that. Thing is it's a jump on issue to attract new readers. Sure it was clever but someone who isn't a veteran comic reader may have been confused. I would have waited until issue #10 to pull off that stunt.

Jorge

Oh yeah, let's celebrate my birthday by commemoratinga non-printing error...

I got the joke right away when I saw it, but that's probably due to being online a lot, and living with folks also online a lot, and IMing folks in the next room.

Then yelling at them to check their IMs. =)

J

I got the joke from the original preview pages without the double baloons. I thought it was slightly ridiculous and hoped no one else would notice.

Kicking myself now. :rolleyes:

HAHAHA! That thread in the link rocks!


More laughable tidbits to follow...

BWAHAHAHAH!!!

So true....so true...

OUCH!!!

I don't worry about the "ouch", pov. Hal still hasn't been cancelled nearly as many times as Superman, Batman, Spiderman, or the plethora of X-men books.

As for printing errows... , Final Issue of the late, lamented Impulse. The color was severly screwed up. I just read it friday, as a matter of fact.

As for the wealth of stories, characters, and fanish fans being the weakness, i didn't read the link, but it sounds like someone missed their nappytime. Legion has worked for over forty years now, with every possible stone thrown at it to try and sink it. Some people just can't handle class or a great concept, and it comes through in their 'writing/criticism', showing them for the small, petty, shriveled souled persons that they are.

So go back and tell the sad person that dumped on legion this "fan" said that.

Depends how you count it - the only time the X-Men were genuinely cancelled were in the 1960s, and the pre-GSXM1 team wasn't very popular.

Similarly, although Superman and Batman were "replaced", neither was ever intended to stick. Spider-Man, well, they'd chickened out on that before the first month of Ben Reilly titles were out. They just kept getting delayed in doing the actual reversion for various reasons (And, FTR, I liked the Clone Saga).

And, in any event, Superman & Batman have been in continuous publication in their own titles since the 1940s, Spider-Man since the 60s and the X-Men since the 70s. Jordan never had that (I make it five times, once when he got shunted into Flash backups, once GL/GA, twice in the 80s and Emerald Twilight. Plus he got replaced by John Stewart for a year), and it's a hugely retrograde step to write off Everything He Ever Did Wrong Ever as some yellow thing.

If they've been "cancelled more times," it's only because they've been popular enough to have secondary titles to cancel, unlike Jordan.

Yep, it got me too. I went to my comic shop the day it came in all excited, headed to a nice quiet reading place and started reading, only to find out that I had a bum copy. I sighed and continued, thinking I could go back and swap it for a better one, as long as they weren't all like that. Major disappointment for the wait, then had to flip back a page or two and realised their trick.

Very cunning & fun stuff, playing with the setting and the 'fourth wall'. It's been a while since I've seen a comic toy with the readers. I hope more creators experiment with comics like that.

Charlie E/N

The only actual mistake that stands out in my memory from the Legion was S&LSH #251, where the caption "Meanwhile, back at headquarters" was repeated twice on the page. I don't know why that small mistake has stood out in my head for years, but it has. Scarred me for life, it did.