Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Giffen or Waid: Who hated the 70's more?

I got to thinking about this after reading alot of the comments about the Legion of 3 Worlds anoucements. Some people are hating Johns for retconing out Giffens 5YL run. While I really and trully loved that run I was not at all upset about Johns using and earlier version for the Lighting Saga and then the Action arc. I couldn't put my finger on why until I really started to think about it.

It was Giffen's hate of the 70's Legion members during the 5YL. He either maimed, killed, or just ignored pretty much every member created after the early Adventure days.

Dawnstar - maimed
Timber Wolf - turned into Furball
Wildfire - killed off panel
Blok - killed in the first 3 issues
White Witch - turned into a basket case
Princess Projectra/Sensor Girl - ignored
SW6 Karate Kid and Projectra - killed within a few issues of their debut.

The funniest thing is the one member he did use and show some props to was Tyroc.

Now I thought Waid was the one with the biggest Silver Age fanboy traits until I started thinking about it since he rebooted the book twice and both time ignored pretty much all of the post-Adventure era members, but now I am thinking Giffen might have been worse than Waid when it came to silverage fanboyism.

Who do you think hated the 70's era members more?

I think it's impossible to tell who most hated the post-Adventure era additions to the Legion mythos.

The Bierbaums were very upfront in their dislike for everything created by Shooter (in Adventure) and later. That's the why of the SW6 casualties. I've never heard Giffen be as explicit as the Bierbaums -- I always conjectured that it was Giffen's inherent contrarianism. He tore down what had been most popular about the Legion for a decade or more -- Wildfire, Dawnstar, Block, White Witch, Timber Wolf, etc. He of course has just stated that he hates Karate Kid and enjoys killing him (again and again). I'd love to know if there is anything other than agente provocatearism behind this. Waid is obviously the Silver Age poster child, so it's no surprise the 1970s elements have little/no play in his Legion work. Interesting that it's taken the new generation of creators (Geoff Johns, Tony Bedard) who grew up with the 70s/80s Legion to really revive these characters.

Cetainly there's always been debate about how Dawny and Wildfire, in particular, fit in with the Legion. Were they added because the traditional characters were "too boring"? Were they too Marvel? Were they panel hogs? (That much IS certain). You can also make a legit contrarian argument that, after more than a decade of the Wildfire & Dawny show, it was time for the earlier characters to get the spotlight. Of course, why not send Drake and Dawny on a LONNGGG galaxy-spanning honeymoon or something? You didn't have to slaughter the characters. Send SW6 Val and Jeckie to Orando or something because the adult team couldn't bear to see Val die again, I don't know.

For myself, I've NEVER understood this creator urge to restrict the size of the team. The cartoon has shown how fun it is for diehard fans to catch even a glimpse of an obscure favorite. You can have inactive members, members on some far-flung assignment, etc. Blok can be busy setting up the justice system on New Dryad. Tyroc and Chemical King were asked to go on reserve status because their powers were too hard to script...I mean, too erratic and unpredictable for the rest of the team. Have everyone in, and as creative teams shift you can feature different members. You can even make it sort of an interractive game with the readers -- which characters get featured next? Remember when the Legion was sort of interractive?

First off Waid is number 1 when it comes to silveage fanboyism. Hands down.

Who hated the 70s more? Giffen. I think Giffen is just a cynical person by nature. Though I loved his 5YL and unlike Waid's Legion if Giffen loved the SA Legion he didn't show it as much...or didn't let it detract atleast. I am looking at great new characters like Celeste Rockfish, Kono, and Devlin O'Ryan.

Though now that I think about it not sure if Waid created XS, Kinetix, and Gates.

All of Waid's version though certainly had that Adventure feel to them while Giffen's didn't.

tom and mary bierbaum hated everything created by shooter in Adventure and later?? i thought they were Silver age fans.

XS was McCraw's, not Waid's (& Peyer scripted Lgs19, her first spotlight).

And if Waid played any part in Gates' creation, he intended Gates as a joke for a few pages - the character didn't reappear and join until Waid was well out of the way.

[Not sure about Zoë.]

Nebula,

While I certainly couldn't find the citation now to save my life, I think I recall reading at some point in the last 20 years (!?!?!?!) that the Bierbaum's strong preference was for the "original" Legionnaires of the early Adventure run. Although, I suppose the deaths of the SW6 KK and PP COULD have been entirely Giffen. But, if Tom and Mary had felt strongly that they belonged in the "classic" Legion, maybe they wouldn't have been offed.

While I think it's pretty clear that the Bierbaums were huge fans of the Hamilton/Siegel era, and while TMK is heavily rooted in that era in a way no other Legion run has been, I've never seen anything to indicate a knee-jerk "hatred" of other eras. There were clearly certain characters they didn't care for (Dawnstar and Wildfire especially), but they used tons of Shooter creations in their run to great effect (especially the villains such as Universo and Mordru). They set Legion headquarters on Talus, which was an obscure post-Adventure concept. Jacques Foccart and Troy Stewart both came off especially well in their run. Blok was only killed when the Bierbaums talked Giffen out of killing another post-Adventure character, Shvaughn Erin. The Devil-Fish got used for the first time in twenty-years in their run on Legionnaires. They also made use of Grimbor, and introduced a new version of Charma, who are paradigmatic 70s characters.

Plus, there were early Adventure characters that were pretty much neglected in their run as well. The adult Gim Allon was basically a non-entity, and Tinya was shifted to L.E.G.I.O.N. rather than being a part of their Legion.

As far as TMK versus Waid on the Silver Age, I think there's a huge difference in the ways in which they appropriate the material. Waid is obviously a child of the Silver Age, and shows a tendency to use Silver Age concepts, but there seems to be a kind of self-consciousness or self-referentiality to the way in which he uses them. The Bierbaums, as I understand it, read the Silver Age stuff in back issues much later than it was published, and seem approach it with the kind of wide-eyed wonder of people discovering some really cool concept from the past and then using it. So they do a much better job of capturing the spirit of the Silver Age, with all of its creativty, wackiness, and fun, whereas Waid's connection to the Silver Age seems much more superficial.

Which is how I describe the difference between Morrison's and Waid's approach to the Silver Age.

Which is, of course, why Morrison is one of my favorite writers!

'Boot, do you know who generally might be credited for Gates real creation (re: who wrote him when he actually joined the Legion).

Gates is my favorite reboot character, on par with my favorite Legionnaries with any era.

Eryk sums up what I believe to be the major difference between T&M and Waid. And I also agree with Jorg's assessment, as Morrison too is one of my favorite writers! Morrison, at least, I will never apologize for loving no matter what he's done!

He reappears & joins in LSH 76, acredited to Peyer & McCraw as co-writers (usually, when there's a script credit in the issues McCraw co-plots, it's given to his co-writer, which would be Peyer; but it's not specified in most of the LSH issues at that point), at which point Peyer & McCraw are co-writing both books and would continue doing so for the next couple of months. McCraw gave him his codename .

After that, Peyer definitely took a liking to him, which is why he went to Team 20 (Peyer's book).