Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! The Tom Peyer run?

Just in case people don't know after Zero Hour I tried the new Legion and did not like it.

I would try every once in a while over the years and still hated it. I've liked everything Peyer wrote except the Legion.

Anyone enjoy the Peyer runs? Want to give me some of the hilights? I want to give it another chance.

Which issues did he write? I am so bad with knowing who wrote (or drew) what issues.

I did like the reboot up until the anomoly story line. I liked the introduction of the new characters, Gates, Kinetix, XS, Magno, and even Monstress. I liked that the stories weren't dark and gritty (because for me the Legion isn't supposed to be dark and gritty)

Why do you want to give it another chance?

It was dreck. Dreck on a stick. I'd rather not think about the Tom-Tom era at all...

I thought the reboot was brilliant, up until the Fatal Five story. Until that point, there seemed to be some sense of organic, incremental growth of the Legion, of progress along the lines of what early Legion stories might have been like in the pre-boot, if the Legion had not been introduced as an already established team. That story was like a forced push forward, a tone that seemed to permeate the future direction of the reboot Legion even during storylines that were well executed.

I agree with Chaim. They'd probably still be publishing the Post-Boot Legion, if they had let the group grow organically rather than the forced forward and multiple (IMO unnecessary) plot twists and turns from established continuity.

XS, Kid Quantum, Andromeda and several of the "good" changes were welcome. But, the rehashing of old stories just to go into a new tangent or ridiculous changes like Sensor and team 2000 were just plain bad.

I agree with Chaim and Gary. I had actually stopped reading the Legion a year or so before the reboot, so I missed it all. When I started reading the Legion again, four years later, I was surprised that the reboot captured the innocent flavor of the early Legion stories without strictly adhering to past continuity. I, too, fell in love with XS, Gates, and many of other new characters.

I also agree that it was brilliant up to the Fatal Five story and maybe so-so after that. Too many things were happening in rapid succession: Emerald Violet, Team 20/30, Mordru, interminable crossovers (Final Night, etc.). It was as if the creators and characters were struggling to catch their breath!

And then the books lost focus completely around # 100. Still, there were some good issues and moments afterwards, right up until DnA took over. Their transformation of the Legion was regarded as necessary to boost sales, but I recall thinking that it was too dark and too sudden: an X-Men version of the Legion, perhaps. (DnA redeemed themselved with Legion Lost, in my opinion.)

I'm also not sure which issues Peyer wrote -- I've never really followed creators -- but the earliest issues, which involved team building, were the best.

Peyer wrote:

• Solo: Lgs #20-23, #54, #75; LSHv4 Annual #6 (Kinetix story), Showcase '96 #11-12 (Brainaics story), SF Shvaughn & Brande interviews & Lost Pages from #1; and the One Million issues
• with McCraw & Waid: Lgs 19 & Annual 2 and LSHv4 #67-71 & Annual 6 (Framing seq.)
• with McCraw: Lgs #24-34, #44, #47 and LSHv4 #72-104, #106-121 & Annual #7, LSH Secret Files #1 (main story)
• with McCraw & Stern: Lgs #40
• with Stern: LSHv4 #105

Allow me to clarify. I was focused on the V4 era in my "dreck" assessment earlier.

The first year or so of the reboot was actually pretty good, but I do not attribute it to Peyer at all, I give Mark Waid credit for the early reboot. The minute the White Triangle story ended in that Legionnaires Annual (the last story Waid is given any writing/plotting credit for) the books took a horrific nosedive in quality. The only saving grace during that timeperiod that followed was the artwork in Legionnaires. The stories weren't very well done, IMHO.

It was Tom Peyer's decision to kill off Gim Allon/Leviathan - so he's Public Enemy #1 in my eyes!

But seriously, I don't know what to make of Tom Peyer. Yes, he puts the 'P' in PMS which until the threeboot was the worst ever era in Legion history... but he was also the co-writer of the early issues of the reboot, which until Emerald Vi was one of the best ever eras in Legion history.

Like Omni Craig I never used to give him any credit for those good stories though, placing all the success of that period squarely on the shoulders of Mark Waid (and Jeff Moy). But then Mark Waid came and brought us the horror that is the threeboot!

So I dunno. In the end, I think Tom Peyer's probably like most Legion writers - some good stories/some bad stories.

P.S. I'm surprised to hear people dissing the first Fatal Five story of the reboot in this thread.

The issue where the team split up into pairs to find the villains was a great character-building piece I thought.

And that whole story was an integral part of the thoroughly excellent President Chu 'sting' storyline that was the focus of most of the reboot's second year.

What did people not like about it?

To me, the reboot's quality nose-dived most evidently at Emerald Vi which gave us the hideous failure that was the Team 20 storyline in LoSH and severely crippled the L* book so that (while it still had a couple of good issues post-Emerald Vi) it was well on it's way to dreckdom by the end of the Mordru story.

Hmm...how to explain it better?

I don't think the Fatal Five story was a bad one. It was very enjoyable to read, in and of itself.

But what ultimately wrong with the reboot Legion can ultimately be seen to have its origins there. Or maybe a wee bit earlier, with the Garth-Mekt story.

Essentially, the first year - plus the Dirk story and also, I felt, the Superboy story - seemed like the writers were guided by the idea of "how would the Legion have been, if written from scratch"? It gave us Ultra Boy and Karate Kid and Spider Girl in a very believable pre-Legionnaire setting. It gave us Dirk Morgna introduced not as a super-hero, but as a victim of an emergency the Legion responded to. A single throwaway line about Xanthu's replacement for Kid Quantum needing to recover from a spaceship accident was a logical way to "introduce" Star Boy. Mano was introduced as a sympathetic character. Micro, bested by Shrinking Violet, foreshadowed another villain's eventual creation....eventual. First encounter with Mysa was as the Hag.

After a certain point, it seemed that the writers were guided by "what favorite pre-boot Legion stuff can we re-introduce"? The stories weren't bad - until the Dark Circle story, I actually enjoyed the re-makes quite a bit - but after the Dark Circle story, you could look back with indsight and see that the seeds of the mind-set that gave us that, and the Bizarro Legion, and a post-boot Wildfire in a most un-natural manner, were visible as far back as the Fatal Five story.

Ok, so my gut feeling of "hating" the Peyer-McGraw-Stern stuff wasn't just me being upset they got rid of the original Legion? Good.

I used to see those Alan Davis Legion covers and I get suckered back in...until I read the issue and swore off the Legion again.

I actually liked a lot of the earlier stuff that Peyer wrote (The "Dead Earth" Wildfire annual was awesome and Gates was at his best when Peyer was in the writer's box). I noticed the sharpest dip in quality when Stern came on board and found I didn't like most of the stuff attached to his name. In the end the whole thing went south of course (and only got worse under DnA IMHO), but the early Peyer stuff was great.

I agree that it was around the Team 20 start that the books started going south. There were a few ok spots after that, but not many until DnA took over. I thought before they split the team both books were really pretty good.

The first year or so of the reboot probably had the best long-term plotting/pacing/balancing of characters and storylines that the Legion has ever had. I agree that the first signs of weakness began to show during the whole Chu sting/Fatal Five sequence, though it was still pretty solid up until the Emerald Vi storyline, after which... ick!

I suspect the change in editors from KC Carlson to Mike McAvennie had as much to do with the decline in quality as anything else.

The plotting was pretty tight. The stories didn't particularly appeal to me, but the pieces did, when all when said an done, come together.

Agree with Eryk/Gary/HWW/Chaim/etc.

After the Chu-Sting it dropped in quality. Add in a tremendous amount of changes drastic enough to feel insulting, Sensor being the main one, and it became increasingly difficult to enjoy the entire version of the Legion anymore.

I very much enjoyed the reboot LSH through the Chu sting storyline. I believe I can pinpoint the XS vs. Chronos UNDERWORLD UNLEASHED 2-parter as a defining moment of shark-jumping, and definitely the EMERALD VI/TEAM 20 storyline. LEGIONNAIRES became the better book for me following the Team 20 split, though Gates had some great moments in the 20th century.

Still, even after the shark-jump, there were some good issues prior to DnAnO's arrival.... the LEGIONNAIRES tryout issue and its followup were fun, as were the Golden-Age Legion story, the Curt Swan tribute, and the meeting/battle between the various Legions. I may be one of the only fans who actually enjoyed (iirc his name) Armstrong's "animated-style" artwork following LSH 100.

Hate the reboot because the original LSH was gone? No way... the original LSH had been made pretty unrecognizable during "Legion on the Run"... and Legionnaires (the Batch SW6 book) was suffering horrily with the dismissal of the Bierbaums... I welcomed the reboot with open arms, after I figured out what was going on, that it actually was a fresh clean slate start done very well in the beginning.

I was ready to welcome a 4boot until Shooter's first issue...

I came to the Legion with the '90's reboot and enjoyed the stories very much until the Emerald Vi story (yes, even that - but I do have to say that the only reason I think I like it is in hindsight only, as they dealt with the ongoing repercussions of that event with regards to Violet herself). So, not having read much of the earlier version, I did not have a big reaction to the whole Sensor thing (IMO, as an "outsider" I found the radical re-interpretation of the character to be the reason for massive objection to Sensor the snake).

I just finished re-reading the reboot up through Widening Rifts and found, for me, that my interest in the LSH title dropped dramatically once the 20th century storyline commenced, but Legionnaires held my interest until, ironically enough, the reunion issue (LSH 100). After that, there were a few interesting points here and there, but it didn't have any real interest until DnA came in.

Someone mentioned up above that the creators seemed to want to re-tell stories from before with a new twist, which I think is true to an extent. But they did that in the early part of the reboot and were rather successful. Post-LSH 100, there just seemed to be no spark (pun not really intended ) in the stories or the characters themselves.

LSH 100 should have been a place where the writers could have charted new territory and it just didn't happen. Whether that is because of editorial mandate or writer fatigue is (I guess) up to debate.

I'd agree with you in very nearly everything there GL - the only significant point is that I enjoyed the T20 issues a bit more, but Lgs really dropped off for me with "Sister Andromeda"'s appearance. That, a LOT more than "Emerald Violet", felt Wrong.

Hmm... in retrospect the story Lash identifies does have a lot against it... being an annoying attempt to link up with a company-wide crossover, plus the fact that it brought in Lori Morning...