Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Let's talk about LSH #15 (Abundant spoilers)

Maybe the exclusion of the 5YG and postboot versions were due simply to space considerations? I doubt that Waid has anything against these eras. He edited the beginning of one and co-wrote the birth of the other.

And really it may be too soon to have stories based on the postboot/DNA Legion.

I entirely agree... This issue actually cemented my decision to drop the title. This new Legion is getting more and more disappointing. :-(

KidChaos has it exactly right: I didn't have room to include all the versions of the Legion. It made sense to concentrate on the older ones...and the Flash/Crisis on Infinite Earths sequence seemed like a good closer.

Best,
Stuart

Welcome Stuart. Nice to see you aboard, check around the forums a little if you have time you might be amused by so much Legion-y goodness.

I just want to say "thanks" for taking some of your professional time out to interact with the Legion fans here. It's one of those things that continues to keep the Legion special that almost every writer or artist that works on the book is a fan of the book.

...and everybody knows that if you're a Legion fan then sooner or later you simply MUST check out LegionWorld.



...anyway,
Welcome and enjoy LW !

...this issue just made me miss the old legion.

Pariscub, I also dropped after this issue.

This was a pretty good issue but seeing those old Legions namely the Wildfire 70's team and the Blok 80's team...just made me realize it's time to move on. I am not digging this Legion. I will wait for another creative team. The whole teenager thing I just hated from the start. They lost me at Eat it Grandpa.

Amazing cover! The Letter page continues to be fun. Nice to see the Cham trick. LOL. Got worried there wit BB bouncing around. I hope if BB does join it's really Cham in disguise!

As I've said before this cover caused more talk than the current high selling Supergirl covers. DC should've bounced on that. I just can't believe they dropped the ball so big on this new Legion. Still they've constructed enough likable things and a solid foundation for someone else to make it good. Maybe with Geoff Johns writing and Paul Levitz personally editing.

Okay, read it yesterday. Comments first then off to read this thread.

THE GOOD

Really liked the old-timey coloring effects on the "flashback" parts; you can see the dots! Connect 'em and you get-- Duo Damsel!

Adam DeKarker's art; if he's being prepped for eventually replacing Barry, I'm down with it. Loved what he and Amanda Conner have done in the book.

The Letter's Page was once again a lot of fun; I do think these sorts of "who's who in the Legion"-type thingies are necessary once in a while.

The cover.

Lots of yummy Brin/Jecks skin!

Seeing those long-lost characters was a LOT of fun.


THE BAD

Seeing those long-lost characters was TOO much fun; it made me realize that, 15 issues in, this run STILL doesn't compare to, say, the first 15 issues of TMK, DnA/Coipel, or the Zero Hour relaunch.

I'm pretty sure Bouncing Boy won't really be joining in issue 22; that was a really mean tease for his fans. If he DOES in fact join, I will happily move this to the "GOOD" column.

Dream Girl. Not even mentioned. Shame, shame, shame.

Another excellent opportunity to re-imagine a long-lost favorite character wasted (one of those campfire kids could have easily been Porcupine Pete or hell, even frickin' Fortress Lad).

OVERALL


If things don't get REALLY good when this book becomes S/LSH with # 16, I fear for its future.

Ok. My timing sucks, but I only have enough time to post mostly on the weekends now. But, what I'm about to say will sound like sucking up due to Stuart's joining up. Oh, well.

I liked the issue and quite frankly this was what I was expecting after the later solicitations and the fact that Blok, Dawny, & Tyroc were in non-Kitsonized costumes. So, no one should have expected them to join or be in the new continuity...yet!

In light of all of that, I found the first story very satisfying and well done. I was fearing another story similar to the one done in LEGIONNAIRES #61 & LSH (vol. 4) #105. This one was far better and interesting - leaving the future inclusion of these beloved characters open.

The one disappointment was the identity of the cloaked figure. It would have been even sweeter if he turned out to be a flight ring carrying member we didn't know before (perhaps Matter-Eater Lad or Boncing Boy). That would have made it all the more sweeter.

As for the "letters pages," I'm off to include the information contained within them in the sites' profile pages.

BTW, Stuart thanks for signing up and stopping by!

My problem with this issue is this:

Let's either merge all the post-Crisis Legions somehow or let's quit spending time reflecting on them.

I was a huge fan of the Levitz Legion, the Shooter Legion, and the Giffbaum Legion. I liked the start of the post-Zero Hour Legion. I like a lot of things about the current-boot.

But after a year of the new Legion, we have a flashback to previous Legions, then two issues of what really look like event tie-in fillers.

Either tell stories about the characters you just created (that would be the generic, all-encompassing DC "you"), or go write something else already.

I appreciate Mr. Moore's being here, and this has nothing at all to do with the quality of his story. I'm just tired of the meandering path my favorite team has been on for years now.

Another nitpick, the lack of information on both Dream Girl and Sun Boy in the profiles. It would have been nice.

And Bouncing Boy better show up in #22 or there will be hell to pay!

Ok I keep checking back through the issue to look up this or check that and in a way I'm starting to feel like some of the other posters here and I'm really missing those lost Legionnaires.

Seeing Sensor Girl in action reminded me of just how much I adored the 'softboot' of the Projectra character back-in-the-day. It's damned difficult to replace a character with such a history of triumph and tragedy.

I wasn't a huge Blok fan but I really loved the Blok/White Witch relationship. And I even miss the days when Wildfire was such a hot head.

It was kind of mean to tease us that way wasn't it?

Ok. Now that we have Stuart here, how about some questions -

Mr. Moore, how closely did you work with Waid on your scripts? Did he have any say on what you wrote or did Wacker make all the decisions on what you could and couldn't do?

Did you create anything unique to the WaK universe? Such as Star Boy and Dream Girl's romance to use an example.

Are you going to be writing any future Legion stories? Will Firestorm join? (Just checking if anyone is paying attention) Will you ever get to work with Barry?

The SSoSV crossover with the Legion did not occur, but was reflective of the "DC Implosion" that took place in the 1970s. Karate Kid's series and the SSoSV series were both cancelled in the implosion (right after issue #15 each, IIRC). Karate Kid rejoined the Legion in their "EARTHWAR" multipart epic (SLSH #241-245). The issue with Wildfire and company at Weber's World (an artificial planet, as noted by Woodrue) confronting Ambassador Relnic took place on the first page of issue #242. KK actually did not return to the Legion until #244 during their last ditch battle against Mordru. In this flashback, Tyroc, Saturn Girl, and Dawnstar are with Wildfire, but in the actual story in #242, it was Mon-El, Ultra Boy and Dawny.



I don't mind the substitutions, since it gets us the appearance of Tyroc we were promised, and we get to see Imra's pink disco swimsuit uniform. It was always her best fashion statement if you ask me!

The issue was a lot of fun, but I did feel like we were misled to think Blok, Tyrok and Dawny would be in the threeboot.

I worked with both of them, mostly through Steve. Mark, whom I've known for years, suggested a Lightning Lad/Saturn Girl story for #12, though the plot was all mine. Issue #15, in the finest Silver Age tradition, was written around the cover. Mark made one dialogue suggestion, and that was about it.

I think I was the first to suggest that in this version of the Legion. The planet in #12 is my creation. But really, I'm a guest in this house.

No future Legion plans right now, but I'll play any time they'll have me. And obviously I'd love to work with Barry sometime.

Best,
Stuart

I liked this issue. Normally, I'm not one for nostalgia trips, but the interesting twists in the flashbacks made it work for me.

Personally, I'm glad that the flashbacks ended at the Levitz Prestige Era, even if the real reason was space considerations. I have nothing at all against dark and violent space opera, but I prefer it when it's set in the present day, not the future. That's the reason why I love L.E.G.I.O.N. but could never get into the TMK LSH. I feel that LSH should give us hope for a brighter future, or at the very least a future that is non-pessimistic and non-apathetic. That's the reason I'm enjoying the WaK LSH.

Stuart, as long as you're answering questions:

1) Who are your favorite Legionnaires?

2) Which character would you really liked to have used but didn't get the chance to?

3) What's your favorite Legion story?

1. is a harder question than I would have thought. I like a lot of them. I will say that I'd never given Quislet a second thought till I wrote him, and now I want to do an ongoing book with him. He practically took over the story.

2. I was kicking myself for not fitting in Matter-Eater Lad. He just didn't really belong in any of the stories. Though I suppose he could have, uh, consumed Plantmaster.

3. I like a lot of them. I'm very drawn to the dark undercurrents of Edmond Hamilton's run -- considering that he was writing about an idyllic future, he had a remarkably bleak view of how we'd get there and he kept killing and mutilating Legionnaires. (I dealt with that pretty directly in THE ESCAPIST 2966, a story I wrote for Dark Horse that's in the second ESCAPIST trade paperback.)

But I also loved a lot of the later stuff. The early '70s Cockrum/Grell art was great, and I really liked Paul Levitz's epic stories. EARTHWAR was very exciting at the time because there'd never been a Legion story of that scope, and THE GREAT DARKNESS SAGA upped the ante again.

Best,
Stuart

Stuart,

EARTHWAR has always been near and dear to me too, because that is right around the time I first starting reading the Legion.

Is that the reason you included it as one of the 3 Legion eras you wrote your stories around? That segment and the Quislet stuff were the best parts of the issue!

Frankly, I'm surprised by some of the reactions to this issue. I just reread it and now I'm convinced a Legion Classified series would rock!

They could even use this format if they need to justify it to the current series. Just have various little "l" legionnaires swap stories.

Mr. Wacker, are you reading this?

***Goes and deletes all of the negative posts to strengthen my position ***

While I loved TMK's run, (aside from space limitations) the 5YG stories also don't fit in thematically since the Legion were adults by that time.

While there were several moments where the characters seemed "off", I likened that to the fact that these were second-hand stories. I wouldn't be suprised if a lot of it was intentional just to remind us of that fact.

I just want to read Stuart's series featuring Quislet!

Actually, what I think would be really cool is a series featuring the "alien" Legionnaires (Quislet, Tellus, Gates, Shikari, Blok, etc.) with Matter-Eater Lad as the token human!

And I have to love anyone who recognizes "the dark undercurrents of Edmond Hamilton's run"!

And thanks (Steve?) for bringing back the headshots! Still need several Threebooters!

I just want to crash the #15 thread with a question on #12:

Vash is an interesting planet, although we didn't get to see much of it. I hope it gets further attention in future issues. A society of teenagers, because they don't live any longer - was this a concept that just came to mind when working on the Legion or did you have it on the ideas back burner?

I've been wondering just how such a society would develop, given their short life spans. There is some suggestion that they lack certain things which contact with the LSH could supply - but they appear to have evolved a technical and socially functional world. Perhaps they could teach the Legion a few things as well.