Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Visionaries of Tomorrow Shooter: It's Official

Actually, that's where you err in your reasoning. The reason for the threeboot was to attract new readers to the series. Visibly, this hasn't happened and only the fans seem to be reading it as the numbers are quite similar to what was in the shops before.

I fear that the Threeboot wasn't really well thought out. There was a vision there, and it could have gone places, but it felt like some sort of rushing-out-the-door was going on behind the scenes. Characters changed personalities quite a bit, colorations where inconsistent, planet-of-birth was misquoted a few times and weird inconsistent crap kept popping up (issue one, Sun Boy learns from Theena Daxam is having some vote about the Legion. Later we learn that the Daxamites are all dead...).

Given that there doesn't seem to have been a 'plan,' or any sort of style guide or story bible (the only explanation I can think of for the coloration and textual inconsistencies), I'm amazed that the Threeboot didn't turn out *worse.* It meandered around, retold the same basic story, and now, mercifully, seems to be rattling out it's last breath.

The Legion is probably the *last* comic book where I'd go without a plan, without prepared characterizations, histories, a story bible, a style guide, etc. Every Legionnaire has distinctive personality traits, and a 'style' of appearance that works with them, and every single step away from those guidelines is a risk. Throwing everything away, in the belief that one's own ideas are *better than everyone else who has ever written the Legion* is just insane, IMO.

If I decided to re-write the X-Men, but made Storm white and incapable of making a decision, Cyclops an ADD-poster-child addle-pated twit who can't finish a sentence, Colossus capable of *appearing* to turn into metal, but not actually gaining the properties of metal, Iceman able to generate ice, in his hands, that only lasts 60 seconds before melting and Kitty Pryde a psycho who likes to keep body counts of all the people she kills, I'd be accurately simulating the changes that have been made to the Legion.

The Legion can be an enormous TRAP for an unprepared writer / creative team, with a thousand different points where one can completely bork things up or alienate the small, but loyal, fanbase.

It's not a job that I would want, and I'm a fan, because *I* can't even think of how to fix the mess that it's become at this point. Jim Shooter says that he doesn't want to just throw all of this away and start again, because we've had too much of that already, and I see his point, and yet, so much of what exists now kinda sucks that I'd rather see most of these characters magically swept away and replaced with a Legion that aren't a bunch of squabbling headcases.

well said, Set.

The more I contemplate what an overall mess Threeboot has been, the more apparent the level of wasted opportunity - if only because it is virtually impossible for another 'boot to be taken seriously (even if that is the best course of action).

If anyone can make lemonade out of lemons, Shooter is as good as any, and his LSH credentials help the cause. I'd rather see Shooter do something with the real Legion, but I'll see what he does on Threeboot.

I also agree with you, Set. I believe the answer lies in how DnA treated their run when they acquired the Legion duties. Instead of dwelling on or trying to reconstruct what they inherited, they just moved forward with new adventures, new villains, and conveniently 'forgot' some plot-threads (Wildfire's re-origin, Kinetix's schizo personalities, Sneckie's lame reorigin, Monstress' annoying character all come to mind).

I personally wish Mr. Shooter would go back to the mid-seventies where he left off, and pick it up from there (Pulsar Stargrave, the Controllers, the Time Trapper, Mordru, and the Fatal Five! But, we shall see what can be accomplished with the current cast.

*Faints*

And here I thought I was the only one who mourned for the old Legion of the Seventies. I agree about threeboot in most regards. It's not a bad book but to me it's just not really the Legion.

Old standards on the title are some of the most vital for the writers and artists to go by. The old Legion Constitution comes to mind. Like the No Killing rule. But then I'm that way about most comic books. I'm looking for a good read, not a revision of the nightly news. Legionaires do not keep body counts. Legionaires don't use phrases like "Stuff it Grandpa" as battle cries. The Legion is a team of heroes, not a street gang or a "Youth gone wild" rebellion.

You're not the only one Powerboy.

Shooter is back????

<faints> (almost literally)

The thing about the Legion is it's bigger than the writers who write the stories,Shooter and Levitz understood this Waid and Giffen did not.

No truer words have been spoken here at Legion World.

I agree.

Well except maybe for Caliente's second-from-last parenthetical comment in this post: lunch I hate to <span style="font-size: 9px;">be the only one to</span> keep bringing that up!

I don't think you can compare Giffens "dark and gritty" run with the current Threeboot. Giffen invented some new stuff, but stayed true to the old Legion in most elements, even thriving on picking up tidbits from the past in the legendary "Omnicom" pages. He was forced by TPTB to erase Superboy and stuff.

Nobody forced Waid to leave out every classic Legion element; he did it with the full intention to create something oh-so-new. Don't know what his actual target audience was, but I guess he ultimately failed to reach it, leaving a pretty clean slate for Shooter to start from scratch.

I think Waid had a sound plan. I think the editors didn't. Lots of the errors were editing mistakes.

I think Waid did fine using Legion elements. I consider this a real Legion. I hated the underagers vs. adults thing. I think he focused to much on it. I know the Adventure Legion was popular but I think guys like Waid want to continue to go back to that. I'm tired after ZH and now again of starting all over. I rather read back issues of the Adventure era...they are better.

I am so glad the LS Legion is around cause that's more my style.

I disagree. We don't know what Waid and Giffen, or for that matter Shooter and Levitz, are thinking. We know what shows up in the comics, and sometimes we know what they say in interviews. Let's not try to turn artistic criticism into moral or intellectual judgment.

Waid did make some comment that whenever the Legion needs polishing they call him up. eh.

I think Waid falied completly. I think there is one sure fire way to tell if a writer actully gets the characters and teams he is writing or not. If you can subsitute old charcters with brand new ones and not have it affect the story in any way then to me they really dont' "get" the book they are writing. With Waids 3boot he could have set his book just a hundred years in the future and made up all new characters and the book would have read the exact same way. There was not one thing besides the names that made it feel anything like the Legion of Super Heroes.

Zero Kahn has it right: Anybody could have been in that book - it would not have mattered. By sheer coincidence, they were called Cosmic Boy, Sun Boy and so on. But they could have been Magno Boss from Outer Space and "he who suddenly wants to quit the team to give his character some depth", it would not have mattered.

You can read the book as a (not so brilliant) future utopia story, and be content with it. But as a LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES, it just did not work.

Jim Shooter apparently disagrees with that assessment, as do I.

“I still recognized them. It was coming home.”.

And he seems to be pretty confident he can make it work -- not only as *a* Legion of Super-Heroes but as *the* Legion of Super-Heroes.

I dare say if you grew up with the Legion Shooter grew up with -- which aces the WaK Legion in every conceivable form of punkitude and super-d!ckery, you might see the current incarnation differently.

I think Waid falied completly. I think there is one sure fire way to tell if a writer actully gets the characters and teams he is writing or not. If you can subsitute old charcters with brand new ones and not have it affect the story in any way then to me they really dont' "get" the book they are writing. With Waids 3boot he could have set his book just a hundred years in the future and made up all new characters and the book would have read the exact same way. There was not one thing besides the names that made it feel anything like the Legion of Super Heroes. [/b][/QUOTE

Oh I agree he failed pretty badly. Completely? I guess I just always thought he wasn't doing anything that would screw a later writer. But I do agree with all your points. You can just remove the characters and sub them with other characters and it wouldn't change anything.

That's a tough standard. I think you could apply that to almost any story ever written.

For that matter, look at the Spirit. Most Spirit stories could easily be stories about anybody. Does that mean Eisner failed? It does not.

Mark Waid had a take on the Legion that some people didn't like, and they didn't want to look deeply enough to see the quite subtle characterization that was very much there. The sales of the book rose, but not as much as DC wanted. I am disinclined to call the experiment a failure.

It's not 'though. Saying that John Byrne is a misogynistic twit or that Stan Lee is touched in the head is a moral or intellectual judgement (right or wrong).

But saying that Waid failed to capture the Legion as spectacularly as Rob Liefield failed to capture the New Mutants is not a moral or intellectual judgement. It's purely an artistic, and therefore subjective, judgement.

And, given the 'artistic' success of figures like Kid Rock, Marilyn Manson and the Backstreet Boys, I think we can all agree that artistic judgements are very subjective. Just because *I* didn't like the Threeboot, overall (despite liking specific bits, like the Naltorian PreCops or Theena), doesn't mean that *nobody* is allowed to like it.

That's fine. If anyone wants to criticize Waid's threeboot on artistic grounds, that's cool. (If anyone entirely dismisses Waid's threeboot, on any grounds, I'll have an objection to it. But it's in bounds.)

Right, but the kind of stuff I have a problem with is statements like, "Finally, real Legion fans have something to read, because Geoff Johns has brought the Legion back and it's only a matter of time before they replace Waid's impostors." That's not criticism; it's just dismissal and self-centeredness, and I'm losing patience with it. (I made up that quote, but I didn't make up the sentiment.)

I expect that Mr Shooter will make the Legion "magnificent" again, but the past is past. I would like the Legion to be "out there" where everything and anything, any kind of story really, was possible. Science fiction,super-heroics, even mystical fantasy.
I miss that last one quite a lot. I also miss the optimism the Legion had. Its central message was, as far as I'm concerned, "Finally, humanity did something right. The universe is not perfect but it can be. Let's see what's out there and what we can do to make a difference".
As a Star Trek fan I can't help but see the 30th century as Trek's future, in some ways.

Stil, as I said above, the past is past. Comic book storytelling has evolved and what was amazing in the past may not be so amazing today.
I *am* kind of tired with the Legion being involved in endless politics and conspiracies, I *was* tired of the "military", "gritty" outlook on the future.

I don't want the Legion to be "airy-fairy" (not that it ever was)and the WaK Legion has/had some very, very good points. The Legion as a catalyst for social change was good, for one.

I happened to read a blog entry in Matthew E's excellent blog. His insights are amazing but this particular entry left me agape for like 10 minutes.

Here's the link: http://legionabstract.blogspot.com/2006_11_09_archive.html
If you don't read this blog, start reading it! You'll be glad you did!
After reading this entry I felt really dumb. I had noticed the similarity in the Klar's name to you-know-whose, but I construed the entire scene in a completely different and rather prejudiced, as it turned out, way.
This was a brilliant instance of Mr Waid's writing and the symbolism is also quite apparent if one wants to see it for what it was.

Matthew E's commentary made me see a side of WaK's Legion I had dismissed before. Shady's action was not the action of a "spoiled super-powered brat" but of a "real" Legionnaire!
On the other hand, there have been instances in WaK Legion that alienated me (and a lot of other people, it seems). The infamous "eat it, grandpa" or Sun Boy's dismissal of his parents' willingness to be part of this "revolution" almost bordered on prejudice.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I got many "conflicting signals" from the WaK Legion. Not that I ever hated it or dismissed it outright, but something never felt quite "right" and I believe it was those discrepancies I gave examples of that alienated me the most.
Were they editorial decisions or was Mr. Waid trying to make a point that was misunderstood by many fans? I have no answer to that.

Anyway, I'll definitely reread, very carefully, the WaK run more "detachedly" (is this a word?)

But I know one thing. I want/expect/hope Mr. Shooter will take the Legion where no Legion has ever gone before ( ) *without* losing all the good stuff - symbolic or otherwise - WaK Abnett/Lanning brought into the book.

What I really wish though is for DC to realise that the Legion is the Legion and let it evolve and grow without any more reboots! Yes, that's my fondest wish (and the opposite is my worst nightmare as far as my fave comic is concerned).

That's what I want the Legion to be like. Stable and evolving like it was in decades past!

Stop it! Your getting me all exciting about Geoff's LS Legion again!

And by no means do I want any Legion "replaced". With creators like Shooter and Geoff...I'm in heaven.

Dain, thanks for re-posting link to Matthew's Blog.

Matthew, I must have missed this one (I admit that I've probably read about half your blog posts). Amazingly informative, as usual. Wow, I felt like a sap

Shooter's above quote which Troumium posted continues to re-enthuse (word?) me for his run on the Legion.

I'm also greatly looking forward to John's story in Action about the 'pre-crisis Legion diverged timeline' otherwise known as the Lightning Saga Legion.

I bolded the only part of the above quote I'd have a problem with. It's one thing to be dismissive of a particular character, story arc or creative teams work (we all have preferences after all, I never cared for Matter-Eater Lad or Chemical King, for instance, and around here, them's fightin' words!), and another thing to be dismissive of *other fans.*

My creative writing teacher in college would make us read our poetry / fiction in class, and then sit quietly while the rest of the class discussed it. We weren't allowed to talk at all while they discussed it, since, as he stressed, if we had to *explain it,* it wasn't a successful piece of writing. The whole Klar thing mentioned above is a prime example. If someone needs to explain to me why Waid's writing has depth, then he didn't to a great job of showing that. I didn't need anyone to explain to me what V for Vendetta or the Watchmen or Ennis' run on Swamp Thing meant, so I don't think it was *my fault* for not 'getting' what Waid was doing.

Fans of Buffy will be familiar with this sort of thing, as Joss would have panels at conventions *explaining* why Buffy's sacrifice in the Gift didn't call a new Slayer, or why Spike wanted a soul, or why Dawn wasn't a Slayer. I like a lot of what the man has written, but in many cases, he flat-out *failed* to present his story on the screen, and so had to resort to explaining to us what we had seen, since the fans were 'getting it wrong.'

Even if I *am* a moron, and 'didn't get Waid's awesome writing,' I'm still gonna be dismissive of his work here.

It's a poh-tay-to, puh-tah-to thing, I think.

"Every conceivable form of punkitude and super-d!ckery"! Boys and girls, argue with Trom at your own peril!

She's right, though. The Legionnaires were often super-jerks, even after Shooter started writing them. It's not revisionism to view Adventure #247 as a study in elaborate cruelty. It's ALSO true that at times the Legionnaires really cared about each other and gave their all for each other (witness Lightning Lad's original death and resurrection). I DO fault Waid for not enough genuine, irony-free moments of the latter, but he was hardly violating precedent with the former. As touching as John's portrayal of Superman's recollections were in "Lightning Saga," look at what those Legionnaires were ACTUALLY doing: hatching a secret conspiracy that involved misleading their dear old friend. Again, this was completely true to form, but some seem to miss that important point.