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

hey guys and gals I just wanted to chime in here and hopefully clear up a couple of things. I'll try to choose my words very carefully so it can't be misconstrued into something else entirely. I wished I had been able to say something about the last issue sooner but it's not my place to do so. But I will tell you all that we were not pushed off the book. We chose to leave, both for entirely different reasons. I'm not going to claim to know why Jim left, I'm sure he had his reasons. As for why I left, plain and simple, new opportunities arose for me which demanded my immediate attention. It was not an easy decision for me and I spent hours talking to industry friends even longer days mulling over it. I knew that a lot of people would feel let down by my abrupt departure but sometimes you just gotta pull that band aid off quickly. I came to the decision I did for many reasons both artistically and professionally. I've never felt more happy about the work I'm doing than I am now and these opportunities would not have been possible without the full support of Dan and the rest of the DC editorial staff. I realize that the situation was less than ideal but I hope you guys follow me into my upcoming projects as I think you guys will be very pleasantly surprised. Again thank you all so much for the support you guys and gals have given and hopefully I can count on you guys to continue doing so.

Well, thank space I decided to read the spoilers because I was bored....

I was all ready to avenge you all by declaring that for the first time ever, I was going to intentionally NOT buy an issue of LSH.

But then Blocks' review got me thinking. Is this a case of something being so awful that it is actually good? Is it a case of one man's "Desperate Living" being another man's "Schindler's List", or what?

I'm leaning toward it being a steaming pile I won't buy, but I'm open to other points of view.

I'm going to buy it. I'm quite curious after all the nasty reviews.

Sometimes, the early posters on new issue threads throw me way off, sometimes I totally agree. We'll see.

Thank you fjm, for posting. One thing I do know is that I'll miss your art on the Legion.

i will!

i really feel like you're getting better and better one page after another, not many pencilers out there have a "grit" like that. i was really amazed by the superman/batman pics i saw at newsarama! keep up the good work!

thanks Mr. Kayak! appreciate that! I've been working even longer hours trying to learn new techniques I'm glad that you're enjoying the results!

You are a fantastic and very promising artist, and I'm very grateful to you for doing such a great job on this series.

As I think I stated above, it's not you and Jim I'm angry at; it's DC, for doing such a slapdash job with the replacement issue, and for not informing the fans that the issue wasn't going to match the solicitation.

Block's view WAS helpful and welcome!

I probably won't get my issue until Friday, though.
sigh

I can imagine LEVITZ actually doing the rewrite, himself.
I'm not saying he did, but I remember him doing something similar, changing the way the Legion, or an individual character, was going at the very last moment.
Because of that, I can't believe that anything to do with the Legion 'gets by him', either.

And I think I remember when a certain editor decided that Jean couldn't kill Asparagus People without consequences and changed the course of comics, so this isn't the first time in comic history that last minute changes happened.

In the X-Men's case though, everything was written and drawn in such a way that only the last few pages had to be redone.

It sounds like fjm wasn't able to leave a finished book behind for editing.

I feel for everyone.
We're all so invested in these characters.
Especially we old farts.

But I really don't know how the Projectra storyline could really come to some solution in one comic.
She was supposed to have KILLED Tinya!
Her only Legion friend.
If she could make Tinya remember it as a fall, why couldn't she do something like that BEFORE destroying her face and leaving her to die?
Maybe if 4 issues but never in one.

I don't even know if the idea of a bunch of Legionnaires with no souls could end with anything but a superficial 'high' of getting married.

Brainy has done some presumptuous things in the past, but to take Legionnaires into a situation where he KNEW that their souls would be destroyed is just beyond belief.

Even if HE didn't believe in a soul, which is obviously his point of veir in this boot, how could he just ignore what the others might believe?
Nura's 'soul' has been living within him for the past year of so.
He just ignored that?

If I'd have been the editor, I couldn't let those implication go, unless I just let the whole thing float away in old time Legion shallowness.

Anyway, if nothing else this issue has generated some of the most interesting and wonderful comments I can remember seeing.
Thanks.

Francis, I wish you best of luck as well. Your contributions to the Legion have been nothing but positive.

I think the reasons Jim left were pretty well spelled out in his last interview -- DC denied him the chance to complete the story he envisioned. He couldn't even come close to resolving it as intended on such short notice. I fully respect his decision and don't blame him in the slightest for leaving it unfinished at #49. Those sad, beautiful 22 pages will stick with me for a very long time.

I don't know about anyone else but the one panel that infuriated me most in #50 was the one showing Lightning Lad with his arm around a beaming Saturn Girl, as if to say "Okay, sure, you sexually assaulted a guy in your head and I banged the President of the United Planets in the back of a limo, but that doesn't mean we can't be best pals!!"

This issue was the most outrageous blow to the Legion lore EVER. Absolute cut and paste rubbish without any redeemable quality whatsoever. Even the Bedard stories or the worst issues of the reboot are better when compared to this one.
I just reread the entire Shooter threeboot run (which I liked very much, much more than Waid's) and I refuse to believe he wrote it. It is, as many have said, a slap in the face of DC's customers (and if I'm old, that only means that I've spent more money with their products than it cost them to produce this drivel): Jeckie and Brin's story is left hanging, Tinya is back in action, Brainiac takes a very morally questionable course of action, nothing happens as it was described in the solicit for the issue. I gather that some elements of Jim's story were used to 'close shop' but they were obviously compressed and disrespected.

One thing is true: the idiots responsible for this trash will be long gone and this title will still exist. Long live the Legion, yes. But never mind these bollocks.

FJM, thanks for coming by.

Anyone in the business world understands that sometimes things happen to hamstring a person in their career, and that other times things open up to advance it, but there are usually strings attached. No one can honestly fault someone for trying to make themselves into a higher paid professional. I have no doubt that "mum's the word" was the edict. After all, you still wish to work for these people.

Please understand just how shocking it was to buy, to pay for, such a level of deception and low quality work.

I suppose one of the easiest ways to describe Legion Fan loyalty is to use the Nascar example. Some fans will actually stop using advertised products when a driver changes from one team to another, following the brand the driver now represents. Legion fans are the same. We have followed what has been given us in good times and bad.

I thought that you and Jim were doing very good work. You took a reboot that was not very well liked and while hamstrung by it, were telling very good, quality stories.

Delays happen, we the fans understand this. But there is absolutely NO reason that the storyline could not have been wrapped up and run concurrently with Lo3Ws.

Then, to have a product advertised that was in no way comparable to the work the two of you had done was not only blatantly false, but insulting.

We, the fans, do not know the full story at this point. We acknowledge that. And we understand that you cannot afford to burn bridges.

What we don't understand is that there is a wealth of quality talent that could have done something, if not grand, at least not insulting in so short an amount of time.

You are a class act to come here, Sir. Good luck and congrats on your new job.

Thank you for posting, Francis. One of the nicest parts of this latter Legion arc was watching your evolution as an artist. You really added your own distinct "voice" to the Legion, and that's why it was particularly disappointing to not see your work on the finale, such as it was.

Best of luck in all your future endeavors; I think you've got a great career ahead of you.

I'm going to mail my copy of #50 back to DC. I don't want it. I'll even write and express my disdain- minus the vitriol and insults.

I don't think this issue falls into the category of being so bad that it is good. It doesn't appear to be the result of anyone trying to deliberately and cleverly make it bad to spite someone. It is the simple result of everyone involved throwing in the towel. Didio declared that the series would end with this issue because "50 is a nice round number" or something to that effect. How else would people react to that kind of logic but to cut and run? Sales were not good. Fan reaction, in general, was not good. I do believe that Shooter and Manapul could have pulled off a satisfying conclusion in the final issue if they had chosen to stick it out. Look at last issue. It was exciting and interesting. Part of the what made #49 good was that the rush to get to a conclusion brought a quicker pace than this series has never had. The series suffered from the slow pace under both Waid and Shooter. They wouldn't have had time to address all of the outstanding plot threads but they could have concluded Projectra's story. It would have been powerful.

Ah well. We got a train wreck of an ending. Let it be. Onward and upward. The Legion will be back sometime in some form. Let's hope that the next stewards can learn something from all this.

For those still debating whether to buy the issue, the deciding factor should be whether you want to pay three bucks to own Manapul's wrap around cover. You've already seen the online images. They always look better, to me, on real live paper.

I got a chuckle out of Atom Girl's line, "They must have virtual nukes right? I would". Other than that nothing much to see unless you just have to satisfy your morbid curiosity.

The connection is that since Shooter started his run, Johns' been trampling (true, with Dan Didio's blessing) over whatever the main book was doing. First it was that dreck called The Lightning Saga, one of those typical Johns plots that meander a lot to leave you hanging but it actually goes nowhere, but to another "big event". Then, Legion of 3 Worlds - in which the writer of one of those worlds was again trampled down.
I never saw a single acknowledge to Shooter (or Waid) from Johns. In fact, he seems simply not to care.

As for the rip-off and coward-writing of LSH#50, it seems very clear that this was done to allow Johns to retrofit anything he wants from the Threeboot. However, if L3W #1 is to be taken into consideration, this ending does not fit with the team presented on LSH#50, but to the team left behind by Mark Waid. But, hey, this has never stopped Johns before: he killed all JLI and transformed Max Lord into a crazy jackass for nothing but "good storytelling"...

When I answered this last post, I had not read fjm message. So a bit of numbering.

1) From fjm's words, it is clear that Shooter has NOTHING to do with this garbage;

2) Since Shooter was out, it seems to me there was no reason for fjm to do it too. I mean, it could be a whole 22-pages of cake recipes, for all I care. That would probably be better written.

2) Justin Thyme is Dan Didio. Whoever read his short stories should find similarities.

3) It's funny to see people complaining about the pace of Shooter and Waid's storytelling and longing for Johns'... It seems they forget who is the king of meandering. I mean, The Lightning Saga, Rogues Revenge (what happened there? Nothing), GL retconning origin (8+ issues just to present some badly named Red Lantern)...

4) I really wish to see the real story from Shooter. Please, whoever meets him at the NY-Con, report us! And ask him to post his true intentions online, even if it is only a braod overview. That will be the true LSH story.

5) I am surprised there was simply NO mentioning of this crap on the main comic book review sites.

6) LSH was hardly selling bad. It was still far from 15k, which seems to be the cap for cancelling books these days.

I've bought and read every Legion story for the past 40 years. That's the longest relationship I've had with just about anything other than my family. And I'm not a comics geek -- I've read a few other books for short periods and then let them go -- so I don't know how to explain this relationship with the LSH.

This story, had it been only a single story, would not be the worst Legion story I've read. But to be the conclusion of a storyline...AND the conclusion of a series...AND during the celebration of the Legion's 50th anniversary...well, all that makes it sickeningly appalling.

Unless this had something to do with the Superman lawsuit...if DC was counting their Winathian chickens before they hatched, and some didn't hatch in time...then I can't imagine a reason for this. And even so, there had to be a classier way to resolve this story. Do like Astro City and just wait until it's ready! I'd have much more respect for that.

How many potentially fine DC stories are being strangled by these crossovers? I have no idea what's happening with this multiverse business, and I don't care..and I sure don't want to buy 52 books every month to understand it. Just give me a good story for my money, dagnabbit!

Beyond this series ending being disrespectful to the readers, it's terrible business to offer such a bad product at such an auspicious time for the franchise. It's like Budweiser bottling cat urine during Super Bowl week. Well, maybe not quite to that extent...more like bottling cat urine for one of their little boutique products.

That t-i-n-y little sentence on the last page -- "We greatly appreciate the support of our loyal readers!" -- felt like spit in the face. Or perhaps they meant it as a desperate plea for the suckers among us not to leave DC. There was not a word of hope for their "loyal readers" about the future of the Legion. The message seemed to be, "We had to pretend to create a passable ending, but we've flushed it for good. Too bad for you."

Brainy's words on the bottom of the fourth page from the end grabbed my attention as soon as I read them. He had seized control of the matrix and was sitting in his force field surrounded by fallen aliens. "That goes for ALL of you, from the heart of the universe to the furthest reaches of space. Thanks for trying to 'save' us, but we'll be 'keeping it real,' nonetheless."

It had the ring of a writer's message to someone outside the story. An "F-you!" to the powers? Or to critical fans? Or was it a real "thanks" to someone?

I'm a big boy and I know this is just a comic book. I've been disappointed with the way DC has handled my friends before, but hey, it's not all about me. I'll still keep looking for the Legion to show up somewhere. After this time, though, I'm sad that I'll have to support DC to find them.

You're welcome, and yes you definately have my support. I will check out your up-coming projects and see what you've been up to since leaving the Legion.
Thanks for a VERY NICE run on the series. You were truly amazing and I'm proud of the accomplishments as a fellow Canadian.

Hopefully we'll see you on another Legion title in the near future?? Heh, heh, heh.....

That would totally rock, and would be a kick-ass payback to the bad nightmare that is #50.

Did you happen to read it by any chance?

Look at the positive side-- this issue'll provide *years* of grist for Legion-related fan joke threads. Dr. Mayavale, Ze Tongue, Legion on the Run, this issue...

The Lightning Saga was over and Superman and The Legion of Superheroes had already been announced in June of 2007.

Shooter agreed to return to the Legion in September of 2007.

The first issue of Superman and the Legion of Superheroes came out in December of 2007.

Shooter's first story was produced in January of 2008.


Sorry, but Geoff Johns didn't trample on Shooter...if anything Shooter attempted to trample on Geoff Johns.

Well as far as continuity from the previous issue, you get better carryover continuity in the typical epiosode of Sesame Street.

I have never seen such a blatant disregard for existing plotlines at the conclusion of a story, probably ever. Not this many, not this blatantly.

There is nothing clever about that. I mean they just ignored everything except for 2 plotlines.

As others have noted, a white event is actually a step up from this in some ways.


That said, it actually does have a Silver Age feel to much of it(except where Garth says Lyle can't get any) and the behavior of the characters is this surreal Silver Age parody type thing...bordering on bizarre.

I did laugh several times at just how ridiculous some of it was.

I guess you'll just have to read it at least and give us your review.

I'm not returning my issue, this one might have some value someday.


IMHO the Zero Hour whiteout was still worse.

Ok, so Johns trampled over Waid first, then Shooter. My bad.

And I don't see the connection between LSH #50 and a Silver Age book. For once, those used to be self-contained stories with an opening, some development and a conclusion. This one has nothing like that, it was just a bit of nonsensical junk, a bunch of action (hahaha) scenes and a slap on my face in the end. Characters were harder to be distinguished than Edmond Hamilton typical two-dimensional rendering (hey, at least we could understand Curt Swan's art!).

Thanks for the replies Superboy - really helpful. I often feel very ignorant as to what goes on in comics when I hear you guys talking about it as you obviously know more about it - it's really interesting to get another perspective on it. I guess no institution is exempt from the curse of politics! This feels like a political move of some sort, and they (whoever 'they' are) misjudged the reaction of the fans badly.

Can you give us some concrete evidence for this?

There is a review of this issue up on Comic Book Resources.

They did not enjoy it at all!

Here.

wait so if shooter left instead of finishing... isn't this his bad? he left a bunch of other people holding the bag so that they had to write something else at the last second?

ahhh. jeez. like sorry i can't help feeling bad for these people. as i said over on the omnicomm, making comics is HARD. it's really really hard and legion is as hard as it gets with the most impossible to please fans. literally, impossible.

try finishing up someone elses work sometime and see how well it goes. it does NOT go well sometimes. usually, when it DOES go well? you can't tell and no one knows it happened. but you mess up, and there is a nightmare! but sometimes you have deadlines, you HAVE to get the book to the printers and that's all you can do!

being an editor is HARD. being EIC is harder. now imagine being the EIC of a company with the most judgmental and tempermental and IMPOSSIBLE TO PLEASE consumers in the world. i seriously cannot think of anything with more of a crazy fan base than comics, just think about how freaking huge and insane SDCC is and how there's like NOTHING else bigger. I get dizzy just thinking about it.

so your writer jumps ship on a book after spoiling the intended ending an interview, the solicits have already been published, your artist is working on a more important project (considering he's doing all the legwork on the book plus that back up in adventure and plus some covers....).

man it sucks to be nameless writer compendium and then it sucks more for that bachs guy, whom everyone is going to be pissed at because he's not up to par but he can draw a 22 odd pages in time. hey he MIGHT be good! i can show you some really really bad crap i've made when a deadline was tight. and i mean REALLY bad.

case in point, i can't help thinking about how BAD sanford green's LOSH issue was but how NICE his LOSH31 issue was, and how much i LOVE his sketchbooks and art but how breathtakingly horrific that issue was.

yeah this was bad. it was REALLY bad. super hella mega bad bad. BUT... all things considered...

1) it got out on time
2) no one died! (sort of)
3)do you guys remember that last ending?! where it just like weren't querl and mon-el rambling at each other?! and then it ACTUALLY ended in TT?!!!
4) dream girl got her body AND POWERS back.
5)we found out what those freaky monster things were
6) DID I POINT OUT THAT NO ONE DIED?

it ended the arc... messily, but there it is. it tied up the plot lines that _I_ cared about so... hahaha, i can't be too upset.

i wonder if i would feel more warmly towards this if it'd been drawn better. my cohort's reading of what i read has led me to realize i have this crutch where i'm very forgiving of "well-drawn" thing. i will accept a lot of idiocy if it's well paneled and the people look awesome.

ok. so. that was a lot of talking but what i really wanted to say was, remember how the LAST legion didn't really end IN legion? so...maybe this isn't really the ending. i mean, i dunno if you guys remember this other little thing called Lo3W where our heroes appeared? maybe that's another reason why this was put on the back burner of the importance stove, that's what makes logical sense to me.

oh and anyways, don't worry about it that much, in final crisis <span class="spoiler_containter"><span class="spoiler_wording">Click Here For A Spoiler</span><span class="spoiler_text">superman just miracle wished them all away so it never happened <3</span></span>. anyways, BE STRONG! MAYBE THE NEXT THING WILL BE BETTER! that's our real mantra, right next to "long live the legion", right? i keep thinking of that movie "what dreams may come" and the legion is sort of like that, let's go meet our precious future friends again and again! <3