Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! LSH #50 Spoilers

What really kills me is this crap was produced at the close of the Legion's 50th anniversary year! What a slap in the face to the Legion and its fans!

I want somebody's head on a pike.

I believe Legion #50 was ghost-rewritten by some Didio peon to serve the purposes of Legion of 3 Worlds, which itself has been rewritten (the delays are due to radical story revisions, not late art).

Theory: Now Legion #50 takes place *before* LO3W -- the 3boot team was originally snatched from their reality sometime between #37 and #44 -- thus ensuring that the 3boot team meets its final fate in LO3W instead of their own series.

I called my LCS and the owner told me that I could return the issue for store credit. If you were duped into buying this issue, you should call your store owner and see if you can do likewise.

I think there may be something to that. If the Princess goes over to Prime's team, I guess we'll know for sure.

Dan DiDio
DC Comics
1700 Broadway
New York, NY 10019

Don't just say it here guys (and gals) write a letter. I know I will (and I don't even have the issue yet, so I will wait until I've read it in my LCS, to decide if I want to buy it or not...)

But the sheer unprofessionalism of this stunt is pretty disgusting. Bad move on DC's part and I will let them know.

I

LOVE IT!!!



It was the perfect second (maybe third) part of a 1960's ADV Legion issue.

There were, cute aliens and and flying saucers and blasters!!! There were pretty girls who loved their guys and well just EVERYTHING!!!

That old mean Lafong got just what she deserved.

I was SOoooo scared when those monsters were tearing up the bodies and Brainy was just laying there...dead. But Brainy, he recoverd somehow in time to save the day, just like always.

You old farts looking for plots and stuff just wouldn't get it.

ps: The art, I really did like the art. I realize a new artist coming in would have difficulty with the more familiar to us characters but I thought those serviceable and everything else I thought expressive and other-worldly, and of course the coloring held true.

The cover was as awesome as I expected it to be from solicits so hopefully that held to everyone's expectations.

Ya know I read a bit of it online and..just...Enh, it was really a let down especially because i was hoping for what we were proimsed. Granted I knew what I was getting into reading the spoilers here but still >_< It kinda bugged me.

For me the worse part was not even in the main story.
It was in the next issue box which says:

We greatly appreciate the support of our loyal readers!

If this is how they reward loyalty I would hate to see what they do to everybody else!

I've just seen the key pages on scans daily.

I for one am not even going to think about paying a penny for that insult to the intelligence. The writing is awful, the plotting bears almost no relevance to what's gone before and the art is shockingly bad, even if it were rushed (which it clearly was) there is no excuse for DC to release something as appalingly bad as this. It's an insult to the buying public. Even if it weren't the last issue of a series it would be a complete slap in the face to readers. As a final issue it's just a complete indication that the high ups at DC don't give a toss about the characters, the current creators or the Legion fans.

I SHALL SAY THAT FINAL ISSUE.REALLY STUNK .THE WORST WRITTEN & DRAWN COMIC OF MY LIFETIME.YOU SHOULD ALL BE ASHAMED TO END IT THAT WAY. JUST COMPLETE JUNK.

The only thing Didio has accomplished by his latest act of fraud is to confound, enrage and alienate fans more than ever before, and eliminate any chance the Johnsboot mock-original LSH ever had of being accepted as the definitive Legion. By screwing Shooter, he also screwed himself, Geoff Johns and the very future of the franchise.

How do you figure? I mean, I'm in no position to either criticize or defend, not having read the comic yet, but I don't see how LSH v5 #50 reflects on Johns's retroboot at all. What's the connection?

dilemma:
I trust all of your opinions, and if you say this issue is a huge steaming pile of poorly-digested manure, I believe you.

... but ( and I cringe as I type this), is it bad that I still want to buy it so I have a complete run of the sreies?
After reding all yoru comments, I don't think it'd be even worth reading it, if only to experience the horror and revulsion for myself. I liek the suggestionthat the series ended with 49 and we make up our own ending.

This whole think reeks. What about rewarding fans, let alone customers? What about having pride in a quality product?

My conspiracy theory: they knocked out a deliberately bad issue to wipe 3Boot from everyone's memory so that the Post-Crisis Legion can swoop in, save the day and claim to have been the 'real' Legion all along and that the other versions were inferior multiverse copies. Oh, wat a shame, they're dead, we'll make nice statues out of them and get back to the business of being Superman's wacky future chums.

DC - go and die in a hole somewhere. Where are my copies of the X-Men?

Rocky's putting on his philosophical hat now.

I won't be able to get to the CBS till Saturday. I'll buy it and read it. I probably won't like it.

The Legion will return. It has one of the most loyal cult followings in all of pop culture, let alone comics. Sometimes it will be good, sometimes not.

As for DiDio, Time Warner, DC's parent company is a for-profit business. Clearly, if his editorial policies are alienating fans and causing dropping sales, eventually they'll give him the old heave-ho.

Having to wait patiently for these things to come to pass stinks, I realize, but what choice have we?

Meantime, we still have 50 years worth of Legion stories to enjoy and re-enjoy and this wonderful online community to sustain us.

Can I get a Long Live the Legion?

Long Live the Legion!

This is going to be the most talked about and remembered issue of this entire run...for decades.


LSH #50, an issue that will live in infamny.


And just who was Justin Thyme? More than just an inker at Marvel? A writer too?


I still stand by my comments that it takes a great deal of talent to write something this bad. There just aren't that many modern writers capable of stepping into the Silver Age like that.

Most of the guys in the industry today are incapable of anything beyond a bad Frank Miller impersonation.


So pulling off a Silver Age story, and stabbing Legion fans in the hearts, while simultaneously making it appear to be a passable story that will get by DC editorial and fufill the edicts of the re-write..

This definitely was not written by a hack though it is a piece of hacking IMHO. It was deliberately bad.

And for some reason I just get the impression that the writer had an evil grin on his face as he typed the final words.

so why nake it deliberately bad? What do they stand to gain from it?

Do they think that by making this versionof the Legion bad it will legitimise any version that comes after it? Seems like a longshot as it leaves such a bitter taste in the mouth of any Legion fan, and a non fan will probably be thinking 'wtf?' and be turned off the whole concept.

Also, doe sit seem a bit odd to do this when L.E.G.I.O.N. is being relaunched?

really, really strange.
Maybe the whole of DC is on acid and this seemd like a good idea at the time?

apologies for very bad typing skills

Could be the writer had some kind of axe to grind either with DC or the Fans.

I don't think Didio said, make this incredibly bad and alienate the fans.

I think he probably said something like, this and this have to be changed and the writer either thought that was a stupid idea and wrote the story in such a way to exploit the flaws in the request, and deliberately make Didio look bad while still technicially fulling the request(I could see Shooter doing this one easily). Or, he was just plain old sick of the Legion Fans and Didio said, look the fans hate this run so just give it a happy ending and tie up the main loose ends relevant to L03W, and the writer perhaps denfranchised with past Legion writing experiences said, you know, they're gonna hate no matter what we do, they already do, and the writer possibly is tired of hearing complaints by the Legion Fans and decided to pour some salt in the wounds behind the curtain of anonymity, just to prove his point.


This may come as a surprise to my Legion brethren, but we aren't exactly the easiest fan base to please.

Waid figured his departure would be celebrated...

Bedard I think made some sort of statement that no matter what you do, a segment of Legion fans is going to despise you.

And while Shooter was pretty concenred with fan reaction to this run he got roasted on this forum with regularity.

Giffen was the first roastee...

The segment that is going to dislike Geoff Johns' run is already pretty apparent.


The thing is, while it's definitely DC's fault, they started scrwing with the book 20 years ago and created these fragmentations, they aren't the one suffering really, we are.


But one thing I can easily see...the sales figures, the discontended fans, the continuity hassles, the legal hassles, the fact that the art requirements for this book make mincemeat of most artists...

The Legion, at least as it has been for the past 20 years, is clearly more of a headache than it is worth based on the returns it gets.


And it is all DC's fault, they were the ones who paved paradise and put up a parking lot.


I do expect them to issue some sort of apology, but really they aren't that worried about it impacting sales of future Legion projects IMHO. If anyone is worried about it...it probably is Didio, but he's the net whipping boy/scapegoat over much bigger things as well.

Anyone in the know of how the Legion works is probably not that worried


For instance Tromium predicts a backlash all the way to LO3W...Well, 20k fans read this book monthly, 60k read LO3W. If all 20k fans cease to buy L03W because of this, they still have a Legion title that sells @40k, twice as much as this current Legion title.


I wish the Legion fans worked the way Tromium predicts, but I've wished that for a long time and it's just not true in my experience. DC could relaunch this same Legion next month with Justin Thyme as the writer, and it would still sell about that 20-25k level. Sometimes a little lower, sometimes a little higher, but basically right there.

Just out of curiosity...

What would be the reaction of Legion fans if it were to turn out that Jim Shooter wrote this story and deliberately wrote it in such a way to piss off the fans and make Didio look bad?

Who is the villain then?

Because there is a very good chance that is exactly what happened and Shooter is one of the few capable of nailing the Silver Age style to a T, while simultaneously being offensive and knowing just how to outrage Legion fans...all the while technically fulfilling a contractual obligation...

And I have seen that Justin Thyme name on projects before, at Marvel.

I thinks it's been mentioned in the thread already, but Justin Thyme is the comics equivalent of Alan Smithee in films in that it's the generic name used if a creator wants their name taken off a book. It could be almost anyone, including Shooter.

If it is Shooter then he deserves to be villified for writing such a pile of rubbish but that doesn't excuse editorial letting it pass or the art being so appaling. If the creative team walked away for whatever reason before #50 was done so DC had to rush out an issue to fulfil the solicit then they should just have delayed it a few weeks and got something at least half decent out instead.

'should' being the key word there. It's not the first time a comics company have thrown out a half-arsed rush job to meet a solicitation or to complete a story they want out of the way, but it is probably the worst example of that that I have seen.

Until i hear otherwise, i will stick with my thoughts. I think whoever did it took a hatchet to Shooters storyline, gutted it and redid it to fit a 22 page book.

Shooter has been taken to task over this run, but he was also obviously putting a lot of work into it. His ideas were futuristic and inventive, he had a clear direction. I think if DC had given us the other four issues, it would have been a fine wrap.

I have all ideas that someone was told to take his stuff and pare it down, and he said "enough" knowing how bad it would be. Or, they had a contract with him and he was forced to do the cuts, but respected his name, the fans, and the book to much to want to be associated with it. I don't think that he would have stabbed those that were supporting what he was trying to do in the back.

As to the art...i haven't said and wont say anything bad about it because it looks like the artist had to do a rush job to get it out after Manipal left. Thats one heck of a tough thing to do.

Thats just the way i see it. I could be completely wrong, however.

There is NO WAY on God's green earth that Jim Shooter had anything to do with that pile of steaming dung!

As the gentleman above said, someone distilled Shooter's finale to the bare elements and finished it off.

I can't believe Paul Levitz let that go through. He obviously didn't see it before hand.

If Didio didn't want Shooter's version to see the light of day, then he should have had the common decency and some courtesy to Legion fans to allow someone the time to tie up the loose ends and get some artist with more qualifications to render that story.

Thanks to the poster for the address to DC, but I'm going over DiDio's head and writing to Mr. Levitz.

i don't think a man and a pro like jim shooter would EVER do something like that. besides, shooter knows too well what it means to "work for the team" and just do as your company says. i'm starting to believe he was just treated badly as a person, or at least that he felt so.

i agree. i just don't understand why they didn't let shooter himself write the book. maybe he was so pissed off he just left in anger.


anyway, i'm too happy for this series to be over. i hated the 3boot with all of myself and now i feel like a nightmare is over (i know it can sound like i'm overreacting, but the legion is my favourite comic franchise ever!). i'm sorry for jim shooter, though, who i still like very much as a writer.