Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Lardy's Roundtable: How forgettable or unforgettable was SLSH/LSH between Earthwar and Levitz II/Giffen?

So I looked over the covers for the 250s, and realized I had forgotten that Giordano started penciling and inking the covers with 252! The opening issue of the Dark Man storyline was actually his last cover on the regular title!

Some of them look rushed, but others are really nice.

I've been harsh on Giordano in the Gymlls forum for some of his actions as executive editor in the 80s and early 90s, but I haven't one bad word to say about him as an artist. If anything, he was very UNDERRATED as a penciller!

Yes, his covers in this volume are the artistic highlight of each issue, considering the interiors are by Joe Staton. Staton is definitely not a favorite artist of mine, though I willl say that I genuinely enjoyed his work on (his co-creation) the Huntress and on the JSA/Super Squad run. He is like Don Heck or George Tuska in so far as most of the work I've seen by him is unremarkable. The coloring is genearally pretty good on these issues, so their vibrancy lifts his work here up a little. In some places his faces are very good, while that Staton trademark unattractive boxy look to the faces still pops up a lot.

The Legion in this period looked best in the Dick Dillin DCCP 2-parter in this volume. It's a shame that after the likes of Cockrum, Grell and Sherman had graced these pages that the art is uninspired for a long time until Broderick and then Giffen eventually come aboard.

No-one else seems to have given you the answer to this so I may as well.

As regards your first point, in #13 Dawnstar propelled Superman in to the future where he witnessed a titanic space battle that even he was unable to stop. It seems that this was what convinced him of Jon's fate. Still somewhat weak, I agree.

In spite of the fact that DCCP14 and 25 were 11 months apart, as far as I can tell there were no other appearances of Pete Ross. The third part of this story goeth thusly:

So there you go. All wrapped up neatly - if not exactly satisfyingly. As far as I know this is the last Pre-Crisis appearance of Pete or Jon. Jon is returned, Pete is back to normal, and it is like it never happened.

I had forgotten about that SP Patrol ship being destroyed. Only Lazon actually does the killing but I get your point. At least Blok has already been shown to be a somewhat reluctant member of their group, saying he still wants his revenge but is markedly disturbed by the blood thirstiness of the others. As to how this resolves later in to Blok joining the Legion, well if you don't want spoilers then you are just going to have to bite the bullet and read those next trades.

I will say you don't have too far to go as #270 is where Blok's story continues. However it is not too spoilerish to say that I don't think the SP ship is ever mentioned.

Staton is not a favorite of mine, either. Nor, I must confess, is Sherman, but it was still a pretty steep plunge when Staton replaced Sherman less than halfway through Earthwar. Staton never really left a positive mark on the Legion the way he did on JSA and Green Lantern. The comparisons to Heck and Tuska are well-observed, although ironically, Tuska would go on to do some surprisingly decent work on the Legion during Levitz II.

And speaking of Levitz II, that beautiful double page team pinup at the end of Baxter Legion issue 45 was pencilled by Dick Giordano and inked by Mike DeCarlo. I wish Giordano had done far, far more Legion artwork in his lifetime.

Back on topic, I agree that the interior art was mostly uninspired during this Era. Jimmy Janes has his fans, but I'm not one of them; Steve Ditko was already a legend by this time, but he seemed to be going through the motions on Legion. At least after Giordano stopped doing the covers, we still got some good ones from George Pérez and Jim Aparo.

I just re-read that segment, but it makes as much sense as it makes no sense! I guess we are supposed to see that though Superman eliminates the slaughter by insuring Nyrvyn tech advances thru war games instead of actual war but that Jon will still be needed to lead them when the actual war comes. But it's poorly explained and is executed in such a way to make it seem that Superman solved the problem and that Jon remaining is unnecessary. With this war where Nyrvyn and Earth team up happening an undisclosed (but seeming far off) time in the future, I'm wondering how Jon would even still be alive for it? It's just pretty lazy writing for our boy Levitz, who had already shown great promise during his first Legion run and who we know has great respect for Legion and Superman lore. Very disappointing as a fan of Levitz and to my younger self who was originally in awe of this story.


This summary reads like Paul himself regretted the prior story this is a sequel to and wrote #25 to kind of put the genie back in the bottle, except, I suppose, that Pete retains the knowledge of Clark's identity, and Clark knows that Pete knows.

Another moment that sticks out weirdly is when Jon tells the Legion that Superman is his friend and that Superman revealed to Jon his secret identity. There's nothing else in this story to imply that Superman and Jon have ever met (in fact the dialogue between Clark and Pete makes it seem like this is their first reunion since the Smallville days.), but research on the DC wiki reveals they did meet in Action # 457 and that Superman indeed revealed his identity to Jon to give him the will to live. It assumes prior knowledge by the reader and could have been fixed by having Jon and Supes share at least a panel of 2 in issue 13. As it stands, they don't share panels in this storyline until presumably the issue 25 conclusion.

Regarding their further appearances Jon and adult Pete appear in a backup story in Action, according to DC wiki. This is 'during' Crisis (same month as Crisis # 7), though not a Crisis crossover, so your "pre-Crisis" assessment is technically correct.

I'm not at all surprised that the SP ship isn't mentioned.

Don't get me wrong--I love me some Bok! But I've always been curious how he became a Legionnaire after belonging to a group named the LSA. Now that I know they actually DID do some killing, it tarnishes him a bit for me.

I do wonder if Gerry planned for Blok to join all along. He does show some reluctance, as you say, and goes down super easily in the end while having thoughts about 'reaping the whirlwind'. So if this was Gerry's plan all along, I feel he shouldn't have made it very clear that the LSA had lived up to their murderous nomenclature.

Staton definitely did some good work on GL, as well. Millenium and New Guardians were a big miss, though. Those character designs were AWFUL!

Honestly, some of the better faces I attributed to Staton in these Legion interiors, I have to wonder if another artist might have spot-illustrated them, like Superman and Jimmy Olsen's were during Kirby's Fourth World run. (FTR, an artist of Kirby's caliber should have been allowed to draw all the faces.)



Remind me exactly where Tuska art appeared during Levitz II. I'm drawing a blank!


I've always thought of Giordano as a great, legendary inker, but I've seen his pencils from time to time, such as on these covers. I certainly wish he had done interiors instead of Staton, based on what I've seen.


I've obviously yet to read the Jimmy Janes issues. Most of what I've read here about his work has set my expectations low. When I get to him, I'll keep an open mind.

Lardy, Tuska drew the story where Gim introduced Yera to his parents, in LSH 308. He then drew Mysa's origin story in LSH 314-316. It's not great work, but it's solid, certainly better than anything I've seen of his from the 1970s.

And sorry I jumped the gun with Jimmy Janes.

I had missed that last story In Action Comics. Thanks for pointing it out.

Looking at a couple of Jon's earlier appearances, it seems like the writers always had Jon mention at least in his thoughts that Superman had revealed to him his secret identity. He didn't turn up that often but perhaps enough so that regular Superman readers were familiar with it.

Re-reading DCP #13 it does sound like Clark hasn't seen Pete for a while, which would contradict the other stories where he makes a cameo appearance before focusing on Jon. It could be understood differently but you are right that coming in without that background it really does sound like this is the first time in a long while. Definitely could have been written better.

I hope I'm not being too self-indulgent, but I think this post is relevant to the discussion at hand:

https://www.legionworld.net/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1019043#Post1019043

Regarding Janes, I try to go into everything with an open mind, For example, the one Ditko story I read in BtD Vol 1 (the BB/DD story, I think?) was pretty charming, art included. Regarding Tuska, I don't have sour memories of the art in those stories, so when I re-read them, I expect to see some surprisingly refreshing Tuska! (I can see myself gradulally doing another Levitz II re-read soon after BtD Vol 2--I love to re-read my GDS and Curse HCs every so often anyway, and continuing beyond is a natural next step!
That's a pretty dark alternate timeline, Fick!

I think with just a few nips and tucks that this could have been the great story I thought it was as a child. Give more context, show some more of Superman's inner struggle and don't turn Pete into a slavering super-villain. To me, that iconic discovery of Clark's identity by Pete in Superboy and his decision to keep the secret and not even tell Clark deserves a much better payoff. Hell, the Legionnaires even made Pete an honorary member for this! Some greater sensitivity from them and consideration for their honorary comrade would have gone a long way. And that Paul, of all writers, dropped the ball on this one is hard to fathom!

The alternate time-line, yeah, it's clear to me in hindsight that I was really scraping the bottom of the barrel creatively. And I think it also sums up just how much the duality of this Legion Era repels me, even as I tried to find the middle ground that eluded Conway. In the end, I couldn't do any better than Conway.

On a brighter note, I'm thrilled that you're thinking of doing a Levitz Mk 2 re-read. I'll certainly chime in.

Sorry, that wasn't really meant to be critical exactly. At first blush, it reminded me how seemingly every story in the original What If? series seemed to end tragically, no matter how innocuous the premise of the title! I know that's not really accurate, but that seemed always to be the case in my childhood samplings of the series! )

It's a point. But Peter Parker's decision to select ham and cheese rather than cheese and pickle, from the deli, could really only have ended with Galactus devouring the planet.

That's more than fair. Funny thing is, I had forgotten until today that that whole thing started because I thought the story in LSH 259 where Superboy leaves the Legion had a great cover but a crummy story. I tried to come up with a story worthy of that cover. Didn't quite succeed. LOL

[tangent]

I had the same impression that at least *some* of the What If? stories seemed to be explicit 'take that!' at the fans who'd criticized some earlier stories by having any attempt to do anything differently turn out to be so much terribly worse (sort of like saying, 'the official story was the best possible outcome, so stop yer belly-achin!').

Certainly not all of them, and some, despite tragic universe-destroying outcomes, seemed to be more the writer just having fun with being able to write a story with established 'unkillable' characters and getting to blow them all up! (The one with Korvac getting his hands on the Ultimate Nullifier and using it on Eternity, for instance, just seemed like the writer having fun with the idea of such cosmic shenanigans and getting to 'cut loose' with them in a way that even a 'cosmic' event generally wouldn't be allowed to, since there's gotta be a universe to come back to next month...)

[/tangent]

BTW, Lardy, thanks to your announcement of a possible Levitz II re-read, I've decided not to sell my floppy copies of LSH v2 issues 290-325.

So...I saw a copy of LSH Before the Darkness Volume 2 available at half the cover price, and I ordered it.

Oh, Legion, the things you lead me to do!

Will review it in this thread, of course.

Oh excellent! Can't wait to read it!!

I got the Before the Darkness Volume 2 collection yesterday. My first impression was that the stories start out as mediocre but harmless, then quickly unravel into what surely must be the most interminable, directionless, and pointless Legion story ever told! Of course, I'm talking about the Reflecto Saga. I'll elaborate in my next post.

On a positive note, the trade is bookended by a couple of decent done-in-one stories: the Christmas short drawn by the great Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, and the secret origin of Wildfire, with that awesome cover by Jim Aparo.

EDIT: Hang on a minute, I forgot about the framing sequence for the digest reprint of a very good Adventure Era story, the fall of Colossal Boy and his redemption. The framing sequence is just meh, sorry to say.

Back later. Stay tuned.

More thoughts on LSH Before the Darkness Volume 2:

Even though I previously dismissed the framing sequence to the Silver Age reprint as meh, I do have to admit that the last page, with Gim and his de-crystallized mother, was sweet and cute. Also, there was a surprisingly good black & white Legion pinup by Joe Staton and Bob Smith.

Since Mordru is not my favorite villain, I didn't mind him being defeated so easily in "Lord Romdur's Castle." In addition, the fact that the previous issue ended with a plug for the Grimbor story would seem to prove that the Romdur story was a last-minute fill-in. Plus, it's loaded with lettering errors and the artwork looks rushed. VERY rushed.

Another thing that surprised me about the Romdur/Mordru issue is that it's one of the few times I've found myself actually liking Projectra! Coming from a feudal society herself (albeit a somewhat more advanced one than Planet Avalon,) it makes perfect sense that she would be the one who could resolve the communication problems between the Legion and the locals.

Funny how this last-minute fill-in issue stands out so much more to me than the overarching Reflecto storyline.

Yeah I can't help but agree here. Reflecto and the overly convoluted story around that is definitely not my favorite thing.

It's like they saw that issue from the SA that had him as a dead character, and said "hey we need to do that" then did it in such a horrible manner.

When I read this a few years ago, I just remembered being frustrated by all the false flags that were being planted and it just kept meandering. And then the pirates... OMG.