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

Thanks, FJM, for coming on this site to explain what happened to the ending of this particular Legion series.

I would have personally preferred if the story had been left unfinished. It actually was as it were. The ending that was presented to us, the followers of this title, was NOT the actual ending for Jim Shooter's legion story.

As I mentioned earlier, I have been following and collecting the Legion of Super Heroes for nearly 50 years. I don't post on this site as a rule, but I was so upset over what happened and I knew others would be as well, because it felt like my home had been broken into and something I really liked was stolen.

Often over the years I have considered writing a letter of comment to a particular comic I was enjoying but never did. Well, today is the day. DC comics will be getting a hand written letter addressed to Mr. Paul Levitz expressing my extreme disappointment about the way this situation was handled. I will not be returning my copy of Legion #50 as I did enjoy Francis' double cover. I will probably never look at the interior again.

I look forward to reading more comments on this subject over the next few days. If Dan DiDio has any courage whatsoever, he will come here personally or to one of the comics review sites and offer an apology for what transpired. Good Lord, the least they could have done was remove or alter the January solicitation so it wouldn't have been such a shock!

I'm stunned. Stunned that we're all so united! Like FC said, this is probably the most universally condemned issue ever in Legon history! Even moreso than the Jamm issue!

I'll be getting it, as I have just about every other Legion story, but I'm not sure 'so bad its funny' will even apply.

Damn DC; I've been saying for sometime we should get pitchforks and start a slaughter

PS - Francis, you rawk and I'm following your artwork to wherever you go next (can't wait for your Superman/Batman story).

After reading LSH#50 more throughly I think that my original assessment was in error.

Very, i cannot agree with you. We are hard to please because we expect quality. We may not always agree, and will endlessly debate, but this is nigh universal condemnation. Its not one or two people that autamatically say "this sucked".

Reasons are given. Solid, valid, provable reasons.

I do not have any empathy or sympathy for them because we are hard to please. I cannot accept that we, the customers, are to blame in this instance. There may be other instances where a customer is to blame, but this isn't one of them.

Sorry. I respect your postings, and that you obviously put thought into them from your perspective, but this is a DNC that should not have taken place.

They could have ended it with 49 and been much better off.

hm. do u think dc will issue an apology? that would be funny.

not as funny as the issue they put out.

Which was about as funny as the taste of a bottle of Corona that'd been left in the sun the entire summer served with a week old potato salad.

Hell no bro, they are way too into themselves to apologize to us. Who are we after all? Just the reason DC's been in business all these years AND 50 of those as loyal Legion fans.
Then they go and "reward" us with this sack of sh*t in the form of the much-anticipated, anniversay year special, series ending product.

I wish I didn't hate X-Men these days (past few years actually). I'd stick with Marvel exclusively.

For a final issue, it did little to wrap up any lose ends. One of the worst books I have read in a long time.

Lets hope Adventure Comics is better.

On the side:

A good issue NEVER gets this many posts.

Well, from MY perspective, they could have ended the series BEFORE #49. Somewhere pre-Princess Projectra's (& Brin's) reputation being tossed in the gutter.

Or for that matter, sometime BEFORE Brainy used a surrogate filled with Nura's soul, for a date. Which, seemingly, PROVES that her presense IS a soul, rather than just a download of 'Nura' informantion.
That alone makes what happens in #50 an atrocity!

I would have happily settled for the issue with Star Boy and Light Lass channeling power to Brainy and destroying the planet.

Then, they could have made jfm's last covers into beautiful posters for us to rave over!

Candle...i am one of if not the biggest of Brin's Fans, and folks here can tell you how much i love the princess, so believe me, i understand.

I cannot help but think there was much more to Brins and the princess' story that could easily have been finished in another four issues. In fact, we know there was, because shooter told us he had written it out, including a shortened ending for 50.

I gotta agree with Blockade Boy. In my short time here, I've never seen us so united and so many different people posting.

Remember awhile back, the "I sent an email to Dan DiDio" thread? I sent him several. Well, a few days ago I tried again and I got one of the "undeliverable" mailer daemons. Guess he got tired of hearing from me. Or us.

I did send fjm an e-mail yesterday, first of all thanking him for his work. Then I asked him 1) if he knew and could tell who wrote issue #50, and I sincerely, sincerely promised him that I would not tell who said it, or, 2) I gave him a list of 4 groups of 3 creators each , with the likes of Jim Shooter, Mark Waid, Keith Giffen, etc. randomly mixed in, to ask if he could at least tell me which group the creator was in--the final choice was "None of the above/unknown."

I got a reply earlier today, and yes, I realize I was very naive to believe he would/could tell me the answer, or at least narrow it down. I REALLY would not have given his name out as the source. I'm only writing this now because his reply is no cause for damage to his reputation. Anywho, his reply essentially said he really, honestly did not know, that since he <strike>and Shooter</strike> left the book, he hasn't looked back.

First of all, everything I have read from him leads me to believe he is a young man of integrity. I don't believe it was Shooter, middle fingers blazing or otherwise. My email is currently down, and I'm *84th* in the queue for Tech Support, so I can't cut and paste it here exactly. If I can later I will.

Still hate the issue. Except for the cover.

Please don't post private emails in the public forum. I've met Francis in person and I'll guarantee he spoke the truth.

Frankly, I don't think it matters who wrote this issue. I would like Francis (or Jim even) to maybe, later down the road, tell us the real ending to the storyline we were reading up until #50. That would be fascinating. I also hope Francis has another opportunity to work on the Legion under better circumstances than this.

I was being very sarcastic here. My apologies for not indicating it.

Unless someone in DC editorial etc... says something, its doubtful Shooter will be able to say anything either. At some point, the crew in charge will be gone, and the may be a possibiity of work for him again, which he has earned with his run here. There may have been ups and downs, and the basic characters were not liked at all, but Shooter turned crap into fertilizer and started something growing.

The only way we ever know is if DC realizes that it was indeed cow diareahea and apologizes and gives us the story.

In fact, we also should give a big thank you for Barry Kitson, who also came forth and told us here how much more different (and interesting) the book would have been had it not being trampled by DC Editorial and Geoff Johns disregard for other creators' franchises.
Hopefully, we will see something like that from Jim Shooter. He is the kind of guy who sincerely loves the Legion. Which is not the case of Dan Didio or Mike Marts for all we know/read about.

Well....

I don't think the art was as bad as many here have stated. There has been worse art in Legion books. It is too bad we didn't get a true farewell issue from fjm. I bet it would have had that extra ....oomph!

Storywise...hey, I think it kinda follows 3boot trends of having a big, long build up with an anti-climax. That didn't surprise or bother me.

I will echo those who found this to be a let down for a series ender. A cameo of Wildfire is kinda nice. Anyone who knows me knows it's hard for me to criticize the return of Dream Girl, especially after her horrid treatment in this boot. My heart is pleased to see her and Drake, my head feels like it was a cheap attempt to get on my good side.

Leaving all the other plots un-resolved is just painful. It does make one anticipate some sort of resolution in the book(s) ....whatever they may be... that the Legion will appear in in the future-- Lo3W, Adventure, whatever.

As I said in my comments about #49, it's hard to feel connected to this boot of the Legion knowing that it's over, but somehow, TPTB managed to bring out some emotions.... outrage.

Wow.

So, I'm mildly entertained by the fact that 'Justin Thyme' didn't know how to spell 'sprock...' He got it wrong twice that I noticed!

The art had moments that I didn't hate (the virtual reality aliens looked kinda neat, for instance) but other moments (Invisible Toddler, for instance) that made me wince at how bad they were. Given a full month to work on a story that wasn't being kludged together at the last moment by a scab who was too ashamed of what he'd produced to even use his real name on the project, it's possible the artist's work would be far more fairly represented.

These last six or so issues have been boggling. The Tryouts issue was amazingly cool, with tons of attention to detail from both Jim and Francis, which led to subthreads speculating why characters had voted the way they had, and posts commenting on how each of the Legionnaires had different physical / visual reactions to events in the story, adding to their characterization, and then there's this sort of awful cobbled-together drek.

I wouldn't mind seeing Dream Girl back, too, but not as some soulless simulacrum of herself that has transformed from the ass-kicking former PreCop that Waid gave us into some fainting flower that has to constantly be saved by her big brave (green) man and wastes most of her appearances either being victimized, being rescued or nattering on about her big, big love and upcoming nuptials. Bah, humbug.

'Justin Thyme' didn't know how to spell 'sprock...'

That should rule out Levitz as writer and Karate kid wasn't killed so that should rule out Giffen.

Excellent points, BB.

As for private e-mails, NC, it was basically what I stated here, but gotcha. No problem.

Do I have to buy this to gripe too? 'Cause I still don't want to. I never enjoyed the 3boot much, but even it deserved better than this. I mean, they could have put a little better effort forth, it's not like people expect comics to ship on time any more do they? DC's really pulling out the stops for the Legion these days.

In a personal email, Shooter said that he had nothing to do with this issue. It's someone else's hack job.

Also, Francis told me via email that he doesn't know who wrote it either, and that he didn't do any pages for the issue before he left.

rickshaw: it's cool. i'm not saying it was good, it's just that i want people to understand how hard it is! it's like herding cats that are hopped up on crystal meth! you see lots and lots of books on the stand but it's very rare that people think about how hard it is to make that book get there. i wish MORE fans actually tried to make comics and understood how hard it is to make one page!! just working on a very very casual side comic is soul destroying, last night i was especially sad at how a couple pages i did looked and then i was feeling guilty because i was so harsh on the art... like... i SUCK A LOT and here i am being super mean to some guy who got this stuff dumped on his lap. it's bad but you know, at least it's not traces of photographs crappily shoved together and passes as a comic *cough calero *cough*.

i just feel guilty ragging on it so much.

Guys (and gals), my email is back up and I goofed and misquoted Francis. He said "I" not "Jim/Shooter and I." Very sorry about that.

I shall look before I leap with my feet into my mouth next time.

So, what you say, veryvery, is that it is difficult to do such a crappy issue. I can sympatize with that.

I don't think anyone here is BLAMING the artist (but I do blame the writer, who was too coward to put his name on it, though I tend to think it was a "multiple writers" thing, because it is SOOOOO awfully patched together). Most of all, I guess it is a consensus that we must blame DC Editorial for letting such garbage be printed with their name on it. It offended fans of the 3boot, it offended the artists involved (and I bet fjm and Shooter are too polite to ever acknowledge that), it offended the Legiondom... In essence, it was VERY offensive! Better not to print it, or to call it a "imaginary story", it doesn't matter.

I am one of the harshest critics of the Reboot/Archie Legion, even though Legion on The Run was clearly good stimuli to that event. However, it was never offensive, in the sense that they simply revoked or ignored whatever came just one issue before. They really tried to tell a decent goodbye story (they failed, but they tried) and move forward.

Not this time: this time, the idea was to put out LSH #50, no matter what, just to give us a big middle-finger for sticking up to the Legion, even though DC itself created this huge mess of it. There was no intention of:

1) Selling a good/decent product;
2) Wrapping up a storyline;
3) Respecting its 30k customers (and more so on the net), who were falsely advertised of a completely different product.