Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Lardy's Roundtable (Gym'll's Ed.): Grant Morrison

Ceej, I personally plan on sticking with JSA after Johns leaves. It's personally my favorite non-Legion team by a mile. It would take the announcement of a writer I can't stand (like Winnick) to get me to leave that book. I'm not very familiar with Willingham's and Sturges's work, but I hear they've done good stuff. So I'm pretty optimistic.

I also think it's a good time for Geoff to move on and give someone else a chance. I've enjoyed the relaunch, but personally, I think Johns hit his peak with Black Reign and JSA/JSA in the old title. My opinion, at least.

Sometimes, I do jump off with creative teams; sometimes I don't. I stuck around on Iron Fist after Brubaker and Fraction left because I'd grown very fond of the title. I gambled on an unfamiliar writer and artist and kept picking it up. It paid off as the new team hasn't missed a beat.

Some people feel they have to follow characters no matter what. Longterm, the only title I've done that with is the Legion. I was like that for over a decade with the X-Men, but I eventually stopped fooling myself about them and have only sporadically picked it up since the mid-'90s. Similarly, I used to follow Batman, Superman & Spider-man through thick and thin. No more.

So I take it on a case-by-case basis. If I'm into the title and characters enough and have no beef with the next creative team, I'm likely to at least give the new team a chance. When Brubaker eventually leaves Cap and Daredevil, I'll have quite the decision ahead of me....

I take every approach possible with no real rhyme or reason. For example, I'll follow Spider-Man and over a dozen other characters no matter who is writing it.

A spectacular creative team could draw me to a comic but they really have to have *it*. Neither Dan Slott nor Willigham and Sturges would do that, but I planned on continuing those titles anyway. Particularly JSA, and I think Lardy captures why. Johns had a truly amazing run but I think the time has passed and he's moving on at the right time. Unlike many others, I feel that since the relaunch of a #1, it hasn't been as great as it once was. Not bad mind you, and in fact pretty good, just not as truly GREAT as it once was. I don't mind a little shake-up now. Plus, those are the guys on Fables, Jack of Fables and House of Mystery, so thats some grade A talent.

A switch in creative teams is enough to get me off a comic though, particulary in this scenario: I follow a run and am generally let down by a creative team I had high hopes for and then they're replaced anyway by a creative team I have even less hopes for. One example is Astonishing X-Men. Its consistently been letting me down for the last few years since the second arc, and now Warren Ellis is delivery about the most boring / yawn story in X-history. I wish I'd jumped off the new Atom and Birds of Prey after Gail left because they both basically blew chunks without her. I stuck around because I loved the characters and while I at least got to see the characters, the stories they were in generally stunk.

Wolverine is a title I only ever pick up if a great creative team comes on. I did so for Greg Rucka (let down), Mark Millar (probably best Wolverine story I've ever read) and a few others. I didn't pick up the latest Mark Millar run because it just looked like the type of story I'm sick to death of (alternate dark future? Thanks but no thanks). But if say Jeff Parker and Marcos Martin, two Marvel up and comers I'm crazy about right now, took over, I'd definitely deal myself in.

Honestly, I don't think there's any comic I'd follow indefinitely, no matter what, anymore...not even Legion. Legion would be the hardest to let go, but I wouldn't stick with it if the quality was abysmal by my standards. Of course, that's been taken out of my hands, at least for a while. But for whatever reason, the book has maintained decent quality throughout the decades I've read it, with only a few brief lulls here and there.

Like I said, I used to follow lots of titles thru innumerable highs and lows, but I suppose it comes down to the rising cost of comics and my own evolving tastes to get me to the point where that doesn't happen anymore.

I used to follow a title as a die-hard and then Swamp Thing broke me of that habit in a really bad way. After Alan Moore pretty much exploded my young brain, I stuck with the character through successively worse writers (and art teams) until I just couldn't take in anymore and walked away. I've come back to the title a few different times, but never with the commitment I had before.

I think Legion is the only thing I've followed consistently with the exception of the imposed break when "Tales" ended, and I had no Direct Market retailer. When I did find a DM retailer in our area, I was so far out of the story I didn't come back until the reboot.

Rouge, you're possibly the first poster I've encountered who experienced the Baxter series through Tales. It must have been incredibly frustrating to read those stories a year after they were published! And THEN it was cancelled after, what, around the reprinting of issue 30? Man, I can only imagine!

This is a little off-topic, but you're mentioning Swamp Thing and Des mentioning Millar makes me remember that the only time I picked up Swampy regularly (I discovered Moore's after the fact) was during Mark Millar's run with Philip Hester as artist from 140-171. Any time I think to mention it, I try to because that, in my opinion, was a terrific, underrated run! It started off with a four-parter co-written by Grant Morrison and dovetailed into an epic divided into four parts, each named after one of the four elements. Did anyone else read that run? I can hardly believe DC never collected that run, especially as Millar later became a superstar in the industry.

You've mentioned that to me in the past Lardy but I've never had the chance to read the Millar Swamp Thing stories. Like most I'd suspect, I discovered Swamp Thing well after Moore's run, like 15 years later. I'd actually already read Sandman, Hellraiser and several Swamp Thing-inspired things first.

My Dad did own a large portion of the Swamp Thing run though, so I had easy access to the Moore issues, picked them up--was blown away by them (I can only imagine how cool it was off the stands) and really delved in. The zombie comic-code story really *IS* worth going gaga over and Swamp Thing's trip to space is awesome to behold. But I digress. So I read Veitch's run thereafter and well...it was 'ok'. My Dad apparently thought so too because either he didn't finish the run or stopped sometime after Veitch, but at least several years before Morrison & Millar, my Dad cancelled Swamp Thing completely. He did this with quite a lot of Vertigo titles at this point like Sandman (he wasn’t impressed though I strongly disagree with him) and Shade the Changing Man (which I do agree with—that one got way too off the wall).

One day I'll read them. Mark Millar isn't the greatest writer in the world but he doesn't deserve the wrap he gets from so many posters here and on other websites. Some of his stories really really damn good comics. I think he experienced the same syndrome that causes people to hate Jack from Lost. He was popular and in the public eye too often at one point and there was a backlash. I don't think he's Walt Whitman, but I think he's in the 'better than most' category of modern comic book writers.

I liked Millar's Swamp Thing quite a bit, and thought it was a fine end to the series. BKV's follow-up series starring Tefe was a good offshoot, but I hated the Diggle/Dysart series after that.

Vietch started off alright, but went downhill fast. "Christ" controversy aside, I thought the time-travel story was too derivative of Moore's Space story.

Wheeler and Collins were rotten.

But yes, getting Moore's Swamp Thing off a spinner rack at the pharmacy was pretty wild.

I actually haven't read the entirety of Moore's Swamp Thing yet. Several years ago, Vertigo published a reprint series of it in black and white. I thought Bisset and Veich's art looked really stunning in B&W frankly. The series was cancelled after about 20 issues, so that's as far as I got. I also bought a random TPB that, I think, reprints the outer space story. It's here somewhere, still unread, because I wanted to make sure I read all the stories before it. One of those projects I have to get back to at some point....

As for Millar, there's one story in his run called "City of the Dead" from, I believe, the Water arc that I wish Millar had spun off into its own series. It was THAT good!

Swamp Thing has a reputation. I haven't read it, but it's always one of those books people talk about- mostly I'm assuming for Moore's work on it. There's always someone asking to get it out of the Vertigo-verse and back in DCU.

Any other runs reach that kind of status? You know- it's a must read, a high point for comics.

I'd say Sandman definitely does, if we're talking Vertigo. Several Vertigo lovers like myself try to include Preacher in that category and are often shot down by other Vertigo lovers . But definitely Sandman.

I could bore you with my picks from the Silver Age, Bronze Age and 1980's, but I won't go there (yet ).

I'm a little hurt by that, actually! I loved Shade from beginning to end! Both Shade and Sandman Mystery Theatre are two of my very favorite Vertigo titles historically. Those two and House of Secrets were incredibly good and, sadly, among the titles that were cancelled by Vertigo. Shade, though, had pretty much played out when it came to an end, but SMT and House of Secrets had plenty of life left in them.

Honestly, Peter Milligan did some great work for Vertigo. I count among them Shade, Enigma and his run on Animal Man after Morrison left.

Sandman may have been consistently excellent, but Shade was always my favourite. It was streaky though and I remember at the time noticing the quality dips seemed to co-incide with other Milligan projects coming out. When it was on, though, nothing could touch it. #50 is still one of my favourite books of all time.

Milligan just started on Hellblazer, BTW, and it looks promising so far.

Okay, Lardy, maybe you can clarify something for me. Back in the day, I read a solicitation for the first Morrison/Millar issue of Swamp Thing, that said Chester the lovable hippie had turned into a right-wing cop. Did this actually happen, and were Morrison and Millar responsible?

While we're talking about some underrated runs, I'd like to bring up a couple I thought were pretty cool. How about Batman? Two runs that stick out to me that actually were published simultaneously were Chuck Dixon & Graham Nolan's run on Detective and Doug Moench & Kelley Jones' run on Batman.

During the period between Knight's End and Cartaclysm, these titles were consistently satisfying in a way they've rarely been before or since. The stories were mostly standalone in that period except for Contagion, which I felt was done pretty well. Cataclysm and No Man's Land broke those runs, and I've never been as satisfied with those titles ever since. Those were some great comics!

Right ON, my bruthah! Shade effin' RAWKed! It's a shame it doesn't get the props it deserves. It should definitely have been collected in its entirety like some of the other books have. Even SMT has gotten that treatment...why not Shade? I swear Chris Bachalo's work on that comic is MILES above anything he's done since!


My memory's a little fuzzy on that, Stealth. I haven't read any of those issues in over a decade. And I wouldn't have recognized the character since this was my first real foray into the book.

I do remember part of the launch of the story with Morrison and Millar had him in some kind of nightmarish dream world, so it's possible there was a twisted version of the character you mention on that world.

Thanks, Lardy. Now I can rest easier in the hope that right-wing Chester was just a nightmarish illusion. I really loved Chester as written by Alan Moore (and I say that as somebody who gleefully laughed at Neil the hippie from The Young Ones, so it takes a lot to get me to love a hippie). When I read that solicitation, it struck me as if the writers were trying wind up Chester fans -- as history has shown, both writers, particularly Millar, have made a career of winding up readers, which I think is pretty sad (Cobie, does that help explain why I hate Millar?)

Another huge fan of the Vertigo Shade series. Lenny is one of my all time favorite comic book characters.

Nancy Collins Swamp Thing work is always overlooked. I really liked what she did with the book. I was spending a lot of time in New Orleans at the time. She captured the spirit of Louisiana in way that no other Swamp Thing writer has.

Welcom, Jerry! Yes, Lenny was a novelty at the time...a rare lesbian character (really, any homosexual character was rare at the time) in comics. But it wasn't her being a lesbian that made Lenny so great; it was her acerbic wit and her overall "out there"-ness that made her so great! It actually would've been pretty cool if Lenny had met Desire of the Endless at some point!

I was always interested in the storylines that involved Troy Grenzer, the serial killer whose body Shade occupied. Those were always gripping and surprising.

Damn, gotta dig out my old Shades sometime....

It was near the very end (and was just Millar). It was a satirical "What If" story, used to lampoon the rise of the Neo-Con mindset at the time. The story itself is actually well done and really funny (and sadly a little prophetic). It had all the more bite because it was Chester who made such a radical transformation.

You're not going to believe this, and in fact, our friendship may be over . I've never read (1) Sandman Mystery Theatre nor (2) House of Secrets (Vertigo version). I know, I know, forgive me! This has been on the 'must read' list for so long! Especially SMT because I love the Golden Age Sandman and so think he's work better in his original noir setting.

I need a patented Lardy brief recap / dressing down / enthusiastic post to get me started! I'm still trying to catch up on Scalped, Walking Dead, Madman & the Atomics (thanks Kent!) and pick up new things, but perhaps its time I started a new buying project?

PS - I read Shade when I was about 18 years old. Perhaps my POV has changed? I can easily give the early issues a second chance as my Dad still has them...

PPS -

This period of the Batman books is nothing short of utterly fantastic. There was a time in my life (and I'm still not that far away from it) that I was totally into Batman in the same way I am with Legion, could resite Batamn trivia chapter & verse, and completely was immersed in the books. In fact, when I originally began posting as Cobalt Kid on the DCMBs, I was posting on the Batman boards too. Anyway, I came in picking comics off the stands about a year and a half before Knightfall (and I was still in my EARLY teens at this point) and my Dad let me go back and reread the Alan Grant/Norm Breyfogle issues, the first 40 issues of Legends of the Dark Knight (GRADE A EXCELLENT) and the first few issues of Shadow of the Bat (also GRADE A EXCELLENT), and I was just blown away by the quality. I thought they were all fantastic, I thought the “Seduction of the Gun” one-shot was brilliant, “Vengeance of Bane” was awesome and then I completely was immersed in Knightfall when that finally came around. Like many, I totally bought into the trickery of Azreal as Batman and was outraged, and learned a lesson that I keep to this day—that people replacing Batman, Superman, etc. are only a passing trend and it will not last. Well, after Knightsend, I was still in my teens, still totally into Batman and in the run you mentioned, really got to see some damn great stories at the time. During this time, Chuck Dixon was writing Robin too which was also excellent.

I didn’t actually mind some of those events like Contagion, No Man’s Land, etc., as many were well done. However, they disrupted the flow somewhat by having such larger storylines. That brief era you mentioned really was kick-ass.

I’ve actually gone back and reread all of the Batman comics from the late 80’s to the mid/late 90’s. Still excellent.

Des, SMT is a must for any fan of Wesley Dodds and of the pulp/noir genre! There's a real viscerous quality, a brutality to the storytelling that fits the pulp genre very well. It also gives a very eye-opening look at the era, its social mores and its underbelly.

Plus, Wesley and Diann Belmont and the evolution of their relationship are as much fun to watch as whatever bad guy they happen to be tracking down! Wes is kind of a nerdy, endearing type who we see is often unprepared for the job. He gets shot, gadgets don't always work and he's often lucky to escape with his life. Dian is woman not content to fall into the mold that '30s society wants her to fall into--wife, mother, housekeeper--those are not for her. She's as integral to the title as Wes.

The arcs are typically broken down into 4 issues with Guy Davis as the main artist and others rotating in every 2nd or 3rd arc. The stories are superb pulp/noir akin to Brubaker's Criminal, but even better, I'd say, because of the ongoing development of Wes and Dian. And it really gets better as it goes along! Top-notch writing from Matt Wagner and Steve Seagal and genre-appropriate appearances from Hourman and the Crimson Avenger!

Make sure you put 'em on your to-read list ASAP!!!

Honestly, as good as those early issues are, I think the series gets LOTS better after the focus is off the American Scream and more squarely focussed on Shade, Kathy and Lenny. Agree or disagree, Jerry and rouge?

I think parts of the "Hotel: Shade" era were some of the best in the series, but "On the Road" is equally good. That's not to say there weren't some issues of the "American Scream" that knocked my socks off. It was a lot more spotty after the Hotel, and despite some good individual issues you could feel the momentum dissipating (Maybe I just missed KAthy too much).

I read a freiend's House of Secrets when it came out, and figured I'd wait for the TPB, if one ever came out. Only HOS I have is from one or more of the Vertigo compilation books (probably Winter's Edge #1, I'm guessing, where HOS was the framing story in which others were framed).

Shade's heyday was the Shade, Lenny and Kathy triumvirate era, especially with Bachalo art (Doran was good, too, epsecially the Hemmingway/Joyce 2-parter).

I loved the concept of SMT, but Davis coming and going was a turn-off, as fill-in artists were not of caliber, as I recall.

Aside from Dark Detective and the odd special/mini, I've found Batman pretty much unreadable since Miller/Mazzucchelli Year One.