Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities DC is making it too easy...

to not get back into comics.

I survived the killing of myu favorite character and learned to like his replacement. Now DC has taken him away as well.

We do not need another new Flash (or Flashes?). There's nothing wrong with the one they had. I thought BArry Allen was the best. Wally was a good hero. He stepped into big shoes and eventually filled them...

I survived the Legion of retcons, and loved the 5 year gap stories...

I survived the reboot, and learned over time to care about the new Legion as well,

I think this new LEgion has possibilities as well, from the few issues I have read.

The thing is... my two favorite comics have been thrown into needless changes again and again and again...

I gave up on Marvel a looong time ago, but I think my DC proper days are done for good.

There is some Vertigo stuff that I want to catch up on in trades...and there's always old issues to hunt down. Gotta finish my Flash run with some Archives and issues. My Legion collection isn't complete by any stretch, so that'll keep me busyt for years to come.

Also, have a few Image books to check out...Kirkman's stuff basically, but Image nonetheless.

Ah well, I always have some great stuff to reread...starring my favorite characters and that's what matters in the long run...

I feel for ya, Dev.

But I don't know... I must be addicted to this stuff. Every time I find myself losing interest, I've just shifted my buying habits.

When Marvel finally drove me off of the X-franchise, I found CrossGen... and it ended up I was spending -more- money than I had been.

Overall, I'm as excited as I've ever been about the comics I'm currently buying.

Were you still hooked on X-MEN by the time Chris Claremont finished his years-long stint as writer, Pov? Was that the reason you were driven off the franchise? Or did you get discouraged because of all those dangling, never-resolved plot threads?

If you think The Flash's run is an an end, then I'm not so sure how closely your reading it. Wally still has a lot left to do.

If anything is making it hard to get back into DC comics, it's that right now the DCUniverse is so thickly tied into Infinite Crisis, it's almost all or nothing, with books sharing plot threads and characters and events like they're all gonna be cancelled if they detach for just a minute. But not everybody has a guide to the DCU to keep track of what's going on.

You say needlesssay dynamic. I mean, the world only needs one Alex Ross.

Hey, LAM. Actually, I stayed with them thru thick and thin... although I thought Claremont's best stuff was behind him by Uncanny #200.

Some highlights, like Lee's Uncanny run, but I was just collecting on inertia. I finally dropped it when they killed Colossus, and the books were reworked to reflect the success of the first movie. *gag*

Methinks its high time someone did a Zombie arc and reanimate Colossus and other X-people who were shoved off our mortal coil...

Just because the series is ending, dosen't mean the characters are gone.

Flash is being relaunched yes, but lets give it a chance before you condem it. I think Wally will still be around. And yeah, the DC Universe is being heavily tied to IC, but I think that's what OYL and 52 fit in. A 'fresh'start but connected to the past.

I am liking what I am seeing.

So the changes will help the series continue whether its Wally or Barry (providing he's still alive somewhere) who ultimately emerges as the Flash?

I'm finding myself enjoying Marvel more and more these days.

She-Hulk, The Thing, The Defenders, Great Lakes Avengers/GLX, Exiles, X-Statix: Dead Girl, the upcoming Romance Redux, Daughters of the Dragon, the upcoming Ms. Marvel, Ultimates and the upcoming Squadron Supreme, Young Avengers....

I'm getting more Marvel since my mass culling of the X-books back in 96/97.

The Ultimate series - is it based in current Marvel continuity or is it forged along a divergent time-line?

*sigh*

I got disillusioned with Uncanny X-Men after Mutant Massacre but after the Siege Perilous it got really bad.

Anyways I actually think DC has created lots of buzz lately. THOUGH I do agree...they need to kill characters that need fixing. Not characters that readers relate with like Blue Beetle.

Anyways lately Marvel has some solid reads. I'll add the Ultimates. LAM, the Ultimates are an alternate reality.

Dev-Em...DC imo are doing some good things and some not very good things. I've enjoyed the heck out of them since Didio took over...but at the same time I have despised as well.

My cutoff point for X-Men is in between Pov's and Jorge's -- I personally think that the mid-1980s saw some of Claremont's best stories since he split with Byrne: introduction of Rachel, Lifedeath, Hellions, Asgardian Wars, Kulan Gath, X-Men & New Mutants encounter Mojoworld for the first time (should have been first and last time.) I think the last really good Claremont issue was #213, the Mutant Massacre finale -- on one hand, beautifully drawn by Alan Davis and Paul Neary; on the other hand, the team's newest member was Psylocke, IMO a hopeless character no matter how many incarnations she's had. The fin was circling in the water, but I think the jump came with #227, the end of Fall of the Mutants, when Claremont ripped off his own conclusion to the Claremont/Byrne Proteus story. Claremont then turned around and wrote a GREAT story, the Excalibur Prestige Format Special, and IMO that should have been his final word on mutants.

The recent news that he'll soon be leaving X-Men for a second time is yet another thing to get me more interested in the X-Books than I've been in ages.

It's weird how things change -- for most of last year, I loved DC and hated Marvel. Then (among other things), Infinite Crisis turned out to be a wet firecracker, and a few weeks later, the new X-Factor turned out to be the best mainstream superhero comic in the world, so because of that and the changes in the X-Universe, I'm leaning back towards Marvel.

I quit the X-books with Mutant Massacre, although I popped back in for a few Jim Lee issues. Gave up other Marvel books with Secret Wars II (except for Miller/Mazzuchelli DDs).

I started phasing out of being a DC addict with Crisis, gradually dropping all my faves through the late 80s, and became a Vertigo/Indie head. Each time I think about reentering DCU and buying more super-hero books than LSH, DC reminds me why I quit.

I figure anything worth getting will be out in trades.

You know many people are critics of Claremont but even when his X-Men were a mess (cause they were) it was head & shoulders of what came after he came.

What Claremont needed after the Mutant Massacre was a stronger editor I think. Someone to tell him "no" to lot of the things that happened.

I'm not sure what the official position is on this LAM but it feels as if the Ultimate universe has to be a divirgent timeline. It's similar to the original marvel universe but there are significant differences.

For the most part I agree...although I must admit to having a special place in my personal Guilty Pleasure Hall of Fame for the early 90s mega-crossover The X-Cutioner's Song. I love the irony that, once the Image Founders had left Marvel, suddenly we get this hard-action epic which actually holds together as a story, unlike what those clowns had done on the X-Books and what they were doing at the time at Image. Plus, if the original ending (Cable dies, good riddance) had not been retconned, I would like that story even more.

Actually, I think the situation was more like Bob Harras (who became X-Editor about 18 months after Mutant Massacre) kept telling Claremont "no" to a lot of what Claremont wanted to do (whether it would have been better or even worse than what saw print, we'll never know). And Harras indulged the Future Image Founders to a ridiculous extent, until they were pretty much plotting the X-Books (badly), and Claremont and Weezie Simonson were just adding words. It's understandable why they left under those circumstances.

And on the subject of Claremont Era X-Editors, I would like to add that even though I like Weezie Simonson as a writer (and I met her once at a convention and she seemed nice), I think X-Men suffered terribly when she was editing it during the early 80s, precisely because it seems to me that this was definitely the case of an editor not saying "no" to Claremont -- this is where Claremont began indulging his morbid fetishes to a ridiculous degree (i.e., first appearance of the Brood) and his obsession with turning his female characters into grim, emotionless warriors (Storm becomes Morlock leader, gets the mohawk). IMO, Claremont unbound is always a recipe for disaster. When Ann Nocenti replaced Weezie as X-Books editor, we had all those good mid-80s stories I mentioned on the previous page, plus the outstanding first dozen Sienkiwicz issues of New Mutants. I do think Nocenti stayed on the books a little too long; her writing career had been gradually taking off (Longshot, then Daredevil) and I think she lost interest in editing after the Mutant Massacre (I have an interview with her from shortly after she quit editing, where she talked about not wanting to lose what she called "that hungry edge.")

Louise Simonson - is she any relation to Walt?

LAM, his wife.

I always used to get Louise and Ann mixed up.

But WAIT this is a DC thread! My bad guys. Let's go back to DC.

Oh yes, let's do just that. I have a lot of thoughts on DC...

MUWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

In hindsight, it seems my timing with DC was really bad. I returned to comics a little less than a year ago. The first ones I bought were Green Lantern: Rebirth #6, Flash #221 (Rogue War Part Two), and JSA #72 (JSA/JSA Finale.) I loved them all. So what happens? Flash turns out to be reaching the end of the Johns Era, and JSA plummets in quality after #75. But wait, I told myself, there's a new ongoing Green Lantern by Johns and Pacheco, a new Green Lantern Corps book, a six months going on seven LSH by Waid and Kitson, and there's all these wonderful mini-series leading to a big event by Johns and Jimenez. I read and enjoyed several of the IC countdown mini-series and tie-ins (Rann-Thanagar War, Return of Donna Troy, Villains United, Johns/Heinberg's JLA, JSA Classified featuring Power Girl) and then...where's the endings? Oh dear, there are none, but of course, how naive of me. :rolleyes: Infinite Crisis turns out to be, as I said before, a wet firecracker. I have stood by it, only on the thin possibility that Johns might provide a suprising and satisfying finish. I'm probably being naive again, but I've made my bed...etcetera.

Where am I right now? Green Lantern slacked off for a couple issues, but # 7 with Pacheco back on art, Green Arrow guest starring, lots of GLC cameos, and Mongul, is IMO a return to form. GLC continues to be unremarkable but still diverting. LSH was good for half a year, then stumbled; hopefully it'll recover. After a very promising start, JLA has dissapointed me with its arc by one of my favorite writers, Bob Harras (whose unfairly ignored DC book Breach was recently cancelled); as someone pointed out to me on another forum, Harras was clearly being restricted on what he could do, because of all the Crisis nonsense. That's it for me from DC.

DC is, to me, like that crazed old relative in the attic who has moments of lucidity, but then keeps reminding you exactly why you're keeping the old loon in the attic.

Wow, I couldn't disagree more. I may be reading more Marvel now than in the past 10 years, but I'm still a DC fan-addict.

Infinite Crisis has been a blast. True, the minis left the story hanging, but they are being concluded in the Crisis series and the 1-shot specials.

Am very much looking forward to the SHADOWPACT series and the after-effects of the Infinite Crisis.

HAWKMAN had *THE* run of 2005. Great stuff there. JSA, TEEN TITANS and OUTSIDERS continue to thrill me (outside of the latter two having two crappy fill-in issues each in 2005).

So, I may be looking to Marvel these days for more FUN stuff, but DC certainly has me at attention, like never before.

Yes, and I plan to buy the Rann-Thanagar War and VU 1-shot specials, but, to me, it's not going to feel the same reading the endings a few months after they were supposed to happen. The momentum is gone for me.

That's one of those books I keep meaning to look at, and then forgetting. Thanks for reminding me.