Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Visionaries of Tomorrow Francis Manapul Interview: The Start of Something Big!

Nice picture, not I'm not really impressed. never been a big fan of Manapul. He's good at pin-ups, but his storytelling has always been lacking, I find...

Saturn Girl looks strangely like Binary and the "changed costumes" are hit and miss. Brin with bare toes is ridiculous. The only good thing is that Supergirl is absent.

Been thinking of dropping the book fore a few months now. Depending on who's writing, I may give it a chance, but I'm really not jazzed about it.

I think this version of the legion has outlived its welcome as far as I'm concerned.

That he does.

I'm glad to see Cham doing something other than just stretching. That never seemed quite right to me. Duplicating other lifeforms is more his thang

Having him in chain-mail again also seems an odd choice for a changeling.

First impression: Though I like some of the new costumes (Lightning Lad, Phantom Girl... well, OLD costumes in a way!), the artists style looks way too Manga for me. Kind of a mixture between bad Bachalo and Ramos. A little better but way too Manga definitely.

What books did this artist work on before? I seem to have heard his name but I don't know where.....

But, a positive note: The characters on the spread look way more dynamic than they ever did with Kitsons clear, but very static art. I could imagine the Mangaesque style to work better for the Legion than in the first Manga age (Jeff Moy!) because they are no longer telling kiddie stories

Or so I hope...

I was thinking, Lyle looked a little bit, "speed racer."

yeah i noticed that too, and look how Colossal Boy/Micro lad's costume kind favors Titan from the Imperial Guard.

Blegh. These designs aren't bad at all, and the artist looks OK (though I agree that his Jo is all wrong), but the Kitson designs were so pitch-perfect, by-and-large, that I'm really sad to see some of them go.

In particular, Saturn Girl's. AAAAGH I want the scruffy bangs and ponytail and short cape back.

Kinda hate the new Colossal Boy look.

Brown on Shady is not right.

This Lightning Lad isn't bad. But it's not better.

I started out hating the midriff look, but now I want to see Light Lass's navel.

Karate Kid's retro-look, like Garth's, is a zero-sum deal. Not bad, not better. But at least it's not worse (i.e., a return to the stupidly impractical Iron Fist look).

I loved Kitson's Tinya. I'm only tolerating this redesign. Not bad, not better.

But hey, there's a lot of stuff I like here.

So glad he left Lu, Jan and Thom alone. These are the best outfits these characters have had, and in Star Boy's case, that's saying something.

And can I get a joy in the morning shout for the return of Dirk in his original Kitson suit? "Here comes the Sun (Boy) and it's all right!"

The new Timber Wolf looks too feral. But the outfit is good. The open toes really is inspired. Violet in shorts is great. Cham isn't bad. Brainy, by far Kitson's worst design, gets what might be his best look yet.

And Invisible Kid at last has a costume. <marquee behavior=alternate>HALLELUJAH!!</marquee>No headband necessary, or even wanted.

Best of all, the LSH isn't taking a 20 year step back.

For those that say it's X-Menish. I think the reason is because they have a Cockrum influence. Thus, the X-Men are Legiony.

No, it isn't Cockrum's X-Men they remind me of. Its the crap X-Men that have been published for the last 10+ years.

Exactly. It looks like an X-Men spin-off title...Legion X!

Agreed. That was the first thing I thought of also.

I haven't read X-Men in way more than 10 years, and I guess to me it resonates most strongly with the Cockrum/Byrne Imperial Guard splash pages of old. Ironic, since the Legion inspired the Imperial Guard. Chemical King is right in that, unlike most LSH pinups, this one is fairly dynamic, with characters doing different things. Usually they're all standing, or flying in formation. That dynamism is Marvelesque, I think.

I also think it's interesting that the Cockrum Legion illustrations rarely had so many Legionnaires in them at a time--that's what made the Chuck/Lu wedding spread so exceptional. The stories just never had the whole Legion in them. It wasn't until Cockrum worked on X-Men that he could illustrate a real "Legion" of super-folk.

Continuing the irony, one of the things I HAVE noticed about the X-Men in the last decade or more is how MANY there are, which I sort of don't like in principle. Not that I MIND lots of characters per se (obviously!), but the X-Men to me were always a small, elite strike force, NOT a Legion.

If I was a superhero there'd be no way I'd wear the same thing day after day, so I have no problem with Legionnaires when they feel like a change.

On that I agree and I think that's why my initial reaction was more positive. There was something more to this team pose as, say, opposed to Chris Batista's gorgeous one from The Legion #26.



I still need to see how this coalesces on individual pages. Can that "dynamism" carry over to six or more panels per page for 22 pages?

- Light Lass seems to be less of a slut in this uni & looks more like the elegant young woman she is

- Element Lad seems to have the Kitson uni with a Punisher-like "this side up" arrow. I reco starting from scratch on this one...

- Saturn Girl & Brainiac 5 still have the best costumes IMO with their "convergence" re-design.

- Invisible Kid. Also like the rounded portion over the "i".

- Chameleon. In my mind it's less "chain-mail" and more "scales". It reminds me of his costume during the earlier years.

My reaction to Kitson's designs were like a previous poster's: great on some, not-so-great on others. At least here it seems we get more range on the face & body shapes.

I hope we give Manapul a chance to grow into the Legion. Even Coipel, who started out quite jarringly for some people, ended up doing a magnificent job as he grew more familiar with the team. The Legion's got a long history of debuting great artists (Giffen, Pearson, Immonen, Coipel) and it seems like the case here...it's really more about trying to hold on to them that becomes problematic.

But more than the actual pic itself, what has me stoked is that it looks like a more dynamic, more youthful Legion to me. 'Course, it goes without saying that the art's not worth anything if the story is lacking. This is also why I've been waiting on bated breath for the announcement of the new writer. It doesn't seem like DC is tapping on just anyone's shoulder to fill in the gap...there actually seems to be some thought and time being put into the decision.

Overall, it seems that DC may have stopped overlooking the Legion. It actually feels like they went out of their way to get an up-&-coming artist and possibly a big-to-middle-name writer as the long-term creative team. That bodes well in my book.

Love Invisible Kid's costume, but other than that I am not impressed.

Here are some preview pages of Manapul's latest work, "Iron and the Maiden". Not standard super-hero fare, but evidence he can draw more than pretty poses.

http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=117458

http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=115675

I've read some criticism here of Ayla and Garth's costumes. I disagree. LL's gold boots are one of the design features I liked best on the cartoon costume, and he looks more handsome and mature than Kitson's version. Ayla's softer, more romantic look is perhaps no coincidence seeing the artist drew her next to Timber Wolf. They are not juveniles anymore.

And I always wonder how they can stay on top of the box office in spite of publishing crappy stories for such a long time... even though I hated the Legion reboot and don't care much for the Threeboot, both are still way better than the X-crap since Onslaught... I sometimes believe that after Age of Apocalypse (which I liked a lot), the X-Men returned to a parallel universe where all the good stories had disappeared to Vertigo

Just saw the art for the first time.

I love it!

Very excited about this! All boots & writing laid aside, the art here is nothing short of stunning. Tinya and Imra are looking niiiiiiice . Vi too apparently (hot pants yay!). Brainy looks awesome, no Cos a good thing and I'm quite pleased. Val changing nationalities is as much a tradition as the Legionnaires being teens!

I realize I may be committing LSH-Blasphemy... but I think I'm digging Shady in the ox's-blood/brown.

Lash is correct. Blue-tinted black leather is so 3004. Chocolate-tinted black leather is so now. Notice that Shady even changed the highlights in her hair to a brown tone.

it IS very xman-ish but that's ok. Cockrum designed the xman-ish look after he left the LSH. AND it won't hurt sales.
Saturn Girl is total Binary, but that's a dynamic look. i like very much Light Lass and Brainiac 5 and Invisible Kid ( agree he needs a headband). Colassol Boy seems to be based on his Imperial Guard doppleganger designed by Cockrum. i do think he needed the head gear and padding but the brown doesn't work too well with the red and blue. Tripliicate Girl still needs a new costume as does Element Lad. i hate their costumes so much. a lot of bitching about KK as either a caucasian or asian. remember that he is mixed race. Japanese dad, Anglo mom. i know many EurAsian's and Amerasians. it's not uncommon to have brown hair and semi-asian eyes. so many boards here and elsewell talk as if it has to be one or the other. i think that most of the LSH should be mixed race rather than the Aryan army we tend to get.

I like that there's more than one body-type among the male Legionnaires. The heavily muscled Jo, muscular-but-not-too-big Garth and fairly slight Lyle are all nice touches.

I agree that Lyle needs a headband, but otherwise, he looks great.

Gim could lose whatever the brown thing on his shoulders is.

Otherwise, I like the look of most of them.

Even though I'm a big fan of Rokk's, I like the idea that his disappearance won't be solved overnight. His absence creates a huge hole and the search for him taking a long time is appropriate.

I'm really happy that there's no Supergirl. When she's around, I feel the others get overshadowed.

Didn't even think of Binary but yeah it does look alot like that. I agree the brown doesn't mix with the blue/orange of Colossal Boy. It's orange I think instead of read. I actually like the orange/blue combo (they are complimentary colors) than the red. And yes his Shiar Imperial counterpart has the orange/blue.

Good call about the Imperial Guard. The pic does remind me of them. I see Cockrum influence not 90s X-stuff. Maybe the body types are different and people see X-90s stuff. personally I also like the bodies are different. I don't mind Brainy or Lyle on the skinny side but Jo was too short in this series.