Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! LSH wins "Most Disapponting Revamp" Award

Sequential Tart gave Waid's LSH the 2005 Tartie Award for "The Most Disappointing Revamp".

Excerpts:

"And the Legion is now a loose alliance of whiny, unpleasant, self-absorbed brats who fancy themselves the leaders of a youth movement." ......

"It's clear that Waid is attempting to comment on the current political climate, and in particular the repressive efforts by the Bush administration to crack down on alleged threats to "national security." Waid's cause is worthy, and his storylines do raise some interesting issues. But in order for readers to stick with a story long enough to think about the issues it raises, those readers have to have at least a modicum of sympathy for the story's characters. And that's where Waid's Legion (Post-Boot, Version II) fails."

You can read the whole article HERE .

Agree? Disagree? I'll voice my typically vehement opinions later, when I have more time.

I much prefer this version to Abnett & Lanning. Just like Waid's previous reboot, these are old familar characters made somewhat new. We still have to get to know them.

I think the previous reboot, reintroduced the Levitz Legion, this reintroduces the Adventure era Legion. Plus the first story isn't over yet.

Well I disagree with the article on most points.

I definitely think that Waid's Legion is light-years ahead of anything we got from DnA post-Lost and am very glad its come into existence. I certainly don't think any of the members are "whiny, unpleasant,self-absorbed brats" either. I think these Legionnaires are a lot more real and relateable than nearly all of the other Legion incarnations.

The only point I do agree with her on is that Waid's first attempt at recreating the Legion in the postboot was better than this one. I LOVED the first few years of the postboot! The characters were more likeable then and the stories were MUCH more exciting.

Please get this series moving Waid!

Abnett & Lannig make good things like :
The new origin of The Legion.
Triad 6 Umbra personalities.
Invisible Kid.
Workforce (The first team)
XS and Kinetix
And bad moves like:
Sneckie
Gim's Dead.
Emerald Vi.
Monstress.
Jarth.
Now we have anothers things changes again in the heroes origins.

A Star Boy afromerican.
A Karate Kid euroamerican?
Garth from Trom.
Projectra without Orando.
Silly origins for Tinya and Luornu.
The legionnaires don't work more like a team of pals.
It's sad, but the spirit of the group is broken.

I'll wait a little more time.
The art of Barry is wonderful no doubt!
Only for him I keep the hope.

But my Legion died many years ago in The Magic Wars.

Could someone post the article since Sequential Tart is blocked (don't ask) from work? Or at least let me know which of the gals wrote it? I have a feeling there may be some major bias on the author's part. I could be totally wrong though.

Adrienne: Best 2005 Use of a Xeric Grant: Debbie Huey is going to use her Xeric to compile her first Bumperboy minicomics into a collected trade. It comes out in July, with the help of the fine publiser AdHouse Books, and I can't wait to be able to gift it to friends.

Comic that Made Me Cry, but in a Good Way: WE3. Seriously.

Best Re-use of Someone Else's Characters: Jeff Parker's "Bear" story in Four Letter Worlds.

Best First Impression: The first four pages of Sharknife, Vol 1, by Corey Lewis. I read the first four pages — it's not even the story; it's the intro — of this at APE, put it down and literally hurried over to the Oni booth to buy my own copy. You should too. Seriously.

Best OH MY GOD FINALLY Collection: Locas — Jaime Hernandez' story of Hopey and Maggie, their friends, lives, tears and laughter. Collecting 15 years of the tale of the girls from Hoppers, this comic has had more effect on my me, my life, and my comic tastes than any other comic work.

Deanna: The "He's never coming back again ... oh wait, there he is" award goes to Colossus from Astonishing X-Men.

Yes, when Colossus kicked the bucket several years ago, nobly sacrificing his life to end the Legacy Virus, people were sure that the metallic crusader was gone for good. He did make an afterlife appearance in an issue of Wolverine, but no matter how much the fans begged, he did not return.

Fast forward to Astonishing X-Men #4, where Kitty Pryde comes upon a dazed Colossus in the basement of a research facility. He kicks, he punches, he does a fastball special with Wolverine in the following issues. I have to admit, it's good to have Colossus back. The issues really made me feel all warm and gushy inside to have one of my more favorite characters among the living once again.

So hats off to you, Colossus, for striving on behalf of all deceased comic books characters, for reaching up through the graveyard ground to the blue sky above, for showing us all that as long as a character has a sufficient fan base, we can always be sure to see him again.

Denise: Most Unsettling Use of the World Trade Center In a Comic Book (Post-9/11): Ex Machina #1. That full-page image on the final page of the issue hit me in the gut — it felt almost sacreligious. (And no, I'm not going to spoil the issue for others by describing the image.) All I could think was, "I sure hope that in this series, Brian K. Vaughn (the writer) and Tony Harris (the artist) are going to explore some pretty meaty subjects. They'll have to, to justify that image."

Ten issues later, I'm still waiting.

Most Unsettling Use of the World Trade Center In a Comic Book (Pre-9/11): Wonder Woman #287. (Yeah, I know this issue was published in 1982, but I didn't discover it — in the quarter bins — till this past year. Besides, the scene that wins the book this award is only unsettling in hindsight.)

While she and the New Teen Titans are in New York, Wonder Woman loses control of her invisible plane, which crashes right through both of the Twin Towers — that's right, both of them — and emerges, unscathed, on the other side.

People on the ground below are menaced by a few chunks of falling debris (which the Titans, who conveniently happen to be nearby, deal with easily). But the Towers don't fall. What's more, no one inside the buildings gets hurt. ("Didn't see anyone there — thank heaven it's after midnight!" Diana says to herself.)

If only the reality had turned out more like the comic book ....

Most Disappointing Revamp: Mark Waid's second attempt at rebooting the Legion of Super-Heroes. On his first crack at the Legion, back in 1994-95, Wonder Waid dumped the tangled continuity of this beloved but long-suffering team, and reintroduced the Legionnaires as three-dimensional teens with humor and heart. But Waid's run didn't last long, and after he turned the two then-existing Legion series over to his supposed co-creators, the books' quality took a nosedive as dramatic as a rocket accident. So when DC announced in 2004 that Waid would once again be writing — in fact, re-rebooting — the Legion, plenty of longtime Legion fans (like me) rejoiced.

This time, though, Waid's take on the team is completely different. The Legion is no longer a crew of occasionally-bickering, but well-meaning young do-gooders working Within The System, funded by avuncular tycoon R.J. Brande and smiled on by the United Planets. The basically-benign universe of Legion Post-Boot, Version I, has turned cold and repressive. And the Legion is now a loose alliance of whiny, unpleasant, self-absorbed brats who fancy themselves the leaders of a youth movement. Their philosophy?

"Ours is an age of peace and tranquility. By the dawn of the 31st century, an Earth-based network of worlds has created a rigidly mannered serenity throughout the cosmos — a near-utopia. All we, our parents and their parents have known is security, stability, and order.

"We're so sick of it, we could scream."

Not exactly an inspirational slogan.

It's clear that Waid is attempting to comment on the current political climate, and in particular the repressive efforts by the Bush administration to crack down on alleged threats to "national security." Waid's cause is worthy, and his storylines do raise some interesting issues. But in order for readers to stick with a story long enough to think about the issues it raises, those readers have to have at least a modicum of sympathy for the story's characters. And that's where Waid's Legion (Post-Boot, Version II) fails.

Most Hopeful News for Longtime Legion Fans: The New York Times reports that a cartoon based on the Legion of Super-Heroes is being developed. Let's hope it's based on one (or more) of the multiple previous versions of the team, and not on the current crew.

Margaret: Miniseries/crossover events most deserving of the unofficial mottos "Eating our young for fun(?) and profit" and "Trashing our creative birthright for (hopefully) obscene profits": Identity Crisis (DC) and Avengers Disassembled (Marvel).

Most over-hyped solution to a problem which should never have been created in the first place: The upcoming Return of Donna Troy miniseries (DC), which is apparently supposed to resurrect the more popular of the two heroines so ineptly killed off in the Teen Titans/Young Justice crossover Graduation Day and — among other things — turn her into some kind of moon goddess. Since Donna's older sister Diana, aka Wonder Woman, has already gone the deification route, only to be demoted from goddess of Truth back to merely (meta)human less than a year later, this almost certainly presages yet another round of mindbogglingly complicated revamps and revisions of Donna's already headspinningly convoluted history and origin.

Most impractical attempt to have one's cake and eat it too demographically: DC's darkening of the mainstream DC universe while simultaneously touting its new "Johnny DC" line for younger kids. Right now DC's most high-profile characters (beyond the basic Superman, Batman, and — to a lesser extent — Wonder Woman, whom even people who don't read comics or watch cartoons have some vague idea of) are probably the Justice League and the Teen Titans, or at least the (in some cases drastically altered) versions thereof which have been appearing in animated form on the Cartoon Network, in shows which are basically designed to appeal to pre-teens. For the sake of argument, let's grant the somewhat dubious assumption that this TV exposure will actually induce kids and/or their parents to seek out and venture into comic book stores for the first time in search of printed versions of these characters' adventures, even though this sort of hoped-for spillover from the mass movie/TV show audience to the original comics format doesn't seem to have worked out that well anytime in the recent past. (Even after all the hit movies, comic books about high-profile Hollywood-hyped characters like Spider-Man and the X-Men still sell fewer copies than comics of merely mediocre popularity did back in the Silver Age of the 1960's.)

Even if this sudden influx of DC TV-cartoon fans into comics shops actually happens, how likely is it that such hypothetical comics newbies will stumble across the few token comics featuring Justice League or Teen Titans characters which are actually designed primarily for kids, rather than such far less innocuous "adult" equivalents as the Justice League miniseries Identity Crisis, whose Sue Dibny-abuse scenes are upsetting to the point of offensiveness even to some adults, and emphatically not suitable for anyone under twelve? The "real" DC universe Teen Titans book hasn't featured anything quite this kid-unfriendly so far, although it seems doubtful how much longer this state of affairs can last, what with Dr. Light currently attacking the Titans in an attempt to vicariously exact revenge on the Justice League which had responded to his assault on Sue by subjecting him to a combination magical mindwipe and lobotomy. Even if the whole Dr. Light Teen Titans storyline is somehow resolved without any clear reference to just what it was that Dr. Light had actually done to set off this entire chain of events in the first place, the Titans' book is about to cross over with its fellow Graduation Day offshoot The Outsiders, whose co-leader Roy (Arsenal) Harper spent last month's issue imprisoning his teammates in their headquarters at gunpoint and subjecting them to lie detector tests (among other things) in order to discover which of them had been betraying the team — with what apparently amounted to fatal results for the eventually-discovered culprit. It's difficult to believe that that will go entirely unmentioned in the Outsiders' next few appearances.

It would be both undesirable and impractical at this point to attempt to return to the days when all comic books were reassuringly squeaky clean enough to be read by even the most naive and easily-traumatized young children. But does it really make sense to assume that parents and/or children who might be inspired to seek out comic books by the current cartoon series featuring DC characters will somehow spontaneously figure out that they should only buy the titles about those characters which are drawn in the more self-consciously cartoony "animated" style? Or even that comics store personnel will be alert and concerned enough to inform prospective purchasers of this, even if it means discouraging them from buying other, more mature-themed books about the same characters by providing long, eyebrow-raising explanations of why it might not be a great idea to give an eight- or nine-year-old Identity Crisis, the Donna-Troy-dies-temporarily-and-Lilith-stays-dead Teen Titans/Young Justice crossover Graduation Day, or even current issues of Teen Titans proper, as opposed to the kid-oriented Teen Titans Go! comic directly based on the TV cartoon?

Even if everyone involved somehow manages to maintain without a hitch this artificial division between the little kid-oriented Johnny DC books and the more mature "real" parallel universe of the mainstream DC characters, what happens when a kid gets old enough to be bored with the silly knock-knock jokes in the margins of Teen Titans Go!, but in most cases isn't emotionally mature enough to handle the deliberately destabilized, untrusting, ever more grim-and-grittified world portrayed in the non-Johnny DC titles? Exactly which DC comics are kids who fall into this maturational limbo supposed to read — back issues of the early, allegedly embarrassingly "unserious" periods of Impulse, Superboy, and Young Justice? Or maybe the jokey Keith Giffen/Kevin Maguire "bwa-ha-ha" incarnation of the Justice League so recently discredited in Countdown to Infinite Crisis?

And now on to items which actually have some redeeming social and/or entertainment value ....

Best comic scripted by a Hollywood movie director: Reginald Hudlin's Black Panther. Since I had never seen any of Hudlin's movies and, in fact, was uncertain what any of them were, beyond the Kid 'n Play vehicle House Party, I was somewhat apprehensive when the series' new writer was announced. As it turned out, I liked the book so much that I wound up picking up the first issue of Hudlin's run on the Marvel Knights Spider-Man title (which began with issue #13) as well. (I like Spidey, but not enough to buy the multiple books about him that Marvel puts out every month unless they're by scripters whose writing I enjoy.)

This comic also wins the Tartie award for Most Intelligent, But Newbie-Friendly, Recent Incarnation of Black Panther. I loved the previous version of this title written by (Christopher) Priest, but Priest's jumping-around-in-time non-linear storytelling style definitely didn't work as well for this more somber, political intrigue-filled series as it did for his brilliant superhero semi-parody Quantum and Woody (Acclaim), which somebody should definitely revive.

Best/most entertaining comic by a TV scriptwriter: Young Avengers, by Allan Heinberg of The O.C..

Best silk purse spun out of a crassly commercial sow's ear of an idea: Young Avengers.

Best classic Avengers/(pre-Waid) Legion of Super-Heroes hybrid: Young Avengers.

Best grimly dystopian (without wallowing in grim-and-grittiness purely for trendiness' sake) portrayal of the probable sociopolitical fallout if a super-powered alien baby were rocketed to Earth in real life: J. Michael Straczynski's Supreme Power.

Best realistically cynical, but at bottom oddly upbeat, portrayal of what might happen if an intelligent but politically quirky civil engineer who acquired machine-related super-powers from an alien artifact were elected mayor of New York City: Brian K. Vaughn and Tony Harris' Ex Machina.

Most surprisingly workable revamped version of a comic whose title team was recently trashed with great and implausible overkill in order to facilitate the book's much more commercially successful (not to mention loaded with already overextended Most Bankable Player Marvel characters such as Spider-Man and [cough] Wolverine) relaunch: Brian Michael Bendis' New Avengers. Somewhat to my surprise, considering that I found the Avengers Disassembled storyline which shut down the previous incarnation of the title so unsatisfying that I didn't bother to buy the final issue, this book is actually kind of good — at least as long as you don't think too hard about the extreme illogicality and alarmingly high body count involved in the events which brought it about.

Best line/wittiest semi-metatextual allusion to a comic-book cliche: Wolverine's "Next time, guys ... we should just rebuild this place outta Lego," as the X-Mansion is wrecked yet again in Joss Whedon and John Cassaday's Astonishing X-Men #9, this time by the X-Men's plane crashing into it at the behest of the suddenly sentient and homicidal Danger Room.

Cover design most likely to make me automatically glance past the comic in question without sparing it a second look: A team book cover which spotlights Wolverine to the exclusion of all other team members. I don't hate Wolverine, but I'm not particularly fond of him, either, and the kind of no-lighter-moments, all-blood-and-guts stories most writers tend to produce when Logan is the sole protagonist do not appeal to me. (I have a similar problem with most solo Batman books, somewhat ameliorated by the fact that Batman tends not to come within a hair's breadth of totally eviscerating his opponents every time he gets in a fight.) I never bought Wolverine's solo title except when it was written by Greg Rucka (whose writing I already liked from his novels and Gotham Central, among other titles), and when I saw the Wolverine-centric covers of Astonishing X-Men #8 and New Avengers #5, in both cases I subconsciously assumed they were simply the Wolverine comics of the week and left them on the rack untouched. As a result, I wound up having to go back to track down and buy them later after belatedly realizing that those particular team titles were supposed to have come out that week.

Most enjoyably shoujo manga-ish "mainstream" comic: Sean McKeever's Mary Jane and its sequel, Mary Jane: Homecoming (Marvel).

Most welcome return from near-cancellation: Brian K. Vaughn and Adrian Alphona's Runaways, volume two (Marvel).

Underrated miniseries most deserving of a Sleeper Season Two/Runaways volume two-style second shot, or at least striking success in trade paperback format: Peter David's frequently witty, ruefully gritty mutant private-eye noir Madrox (Marvel), which fans of the similarly characterization-heavy crime dramas Gotham Central and District X should definitely check out, if they haven't already.

Regrettably-cancelled series about an allegedly non-super-powered law enforcement officer investigating dubious metahumans in a title which was oddly reminiscent of the late lamented Chase: Dan Jolley's Bloodhound — whose title character I sincerely hope will, like his predecessor DEO Agent Cameron Chase, at least show up occasionally as a guest star in other DC comics in future.

Non-smash-hit new(ish) title most deserving of sampling by fans of kickass superheroines — or should that be antiheroines? — whose refusal to play by the traditional rules makes them peculiarly suited to the newly darkened and distrusting DC universe: Mark Andreyko's Manhunter. Kate Spencer, the take-no-prisoners prosecutor protagonist of this title, uses illicitly appropriated supervillainous high tech to enforce her "if the Joker escapes from Arkham Asylum every other Tuesday and kills x number of people during each rampage, killing him before he can kill again is the lesser of two evils" philosophy against metahuman criminals who manage to break out of prison or skate on a legal technicality.

It's difficult to describe the premise of this series without making it sound like the Punisher in drag. But between the interesting-in-itself courtroom drama of Kate's civilian identity; her conflicted, but surprisingly semi-friendly, relationship with the minor-league mad scientist-type parolee she blackmails into working on her high-tech weaponry; and her belated attempts to deal with the toll her obsessive focus on enforcing justice both in and out of costume has taken on her private life, particularly her relationship with her eight-year-old son, I find the series more reminiscent of one of the more morally complex installments of Gail Simone's Birds of Prey. Horrified as she would be to hear it, Kate Spencer actually has a surprising amount in common ideologically with the similarly-inclined-to-ruthlessness vengeful ex-Mafia princess the Huntress, even though they came to their similarly severe takes on crime and punishment from opposite sides of the law.

Sexiest Futuristic Smuggler of Narcotic-Flavored Air Arrested By Native American Space Cops: the Desert Peach's multiple-times-great-grandson "Birdman" Oiseau (aka Oysoy) in Donna Barr's webcomic (eventually to be a print comic as well) Pithed (www.moderntales.com).

Most exotic (not to mention easy on the eye) restaurant personnel: Pastry chef/onmyouji (i.e., shaman/exorcist) Murasaki Kamiya and his teenage(?) waiter/assistant Ten-chan, a shape-shifting tengu with as yet unexplained feline characteristics, despite the fact that, as the creators acknowledge in their mythological commentary, tengu are supposed to be some sort of long-nosed crow demons. Both characters, who are from Jenny Yu, Haiuka Igarashi, and Robert Howard's webcomic Cafe Tengu (www.wirepop.com), seem to spend less time serving sweet-toothed customers than they do fending off serial killers who prey on benign household spirits, and otherwise assisting the various magical creatures of Kyoto.

The Ranma 1/2 With Four-Wheel Drive Award goes to Chris Hazelton's Misfile (www.misfile.com), a webcomic about a teenage boy obsessed with racing his souped-up car, a senior girl obsessed with getting into Harvard, and the age- and gender-bending havoc wreaked on both their lives as the result of an irresponsible pot-smoking angel's clerical error in the heavenly filing department. (The first part of this series is now also available in paper and ink form in volume three of the EigoManga Sakura Pakk anthology, whose web page is www.cafepress.com/eigomanga/530003).

Best Fantasy Explanation of the Traditional Association Between Rabbits and Magicians' Hats (and how said headgear can accommodate almost as many unlikely items as Mary Poppins' magic carpetbag): Andre Richard's webcomic Jeepers (www.girlamatic.com).

Most Nonchalant Act of Necromancy in an All-Ages Webcomic (i.e., Jeepers): Little Witch Mary's demonstrating that her attempt to teleport herself and her friends out of the magic hat dimension did not fail due to her having run low on magic by pronouncing a spell, then pointing triumphantly to the ectoplasmic squirrel in a shroud which pops up a moment later and announcing brightly, "I can still summon cute li'l undead spirits just fine!" She then returns to pondering what else could be short-circuiting her exit spell, absentmindedly tuning out the protests of the undeniably cute sheeted spectral squirrel, who first moans, "Why did you awaken me from my slumbers?," then moves on to a forlorn "Curse you, Mary," and a somewhat unconvincing "Vengeance will be mine one day ..." as it finally fades back into nothingness.

Most eagerly-awaited kid-friendly former webcomic turned paper and ink miniseries: Otis Frampton's Oddly Normal (Viper Comics), the tale of a ten-year-old half-witch with olive green hair who finds herself a misfit in both the mundane and magical realms.

Most oddly accurate author's tagline description of a horror webcomic about a handful of teenagers of various sexual orientations whose high school will evidently eventually fall victim to aliens and/or zombies: Jason Thompson's The Stiff, "a disturbing romantic comedy."

Most Bizarrely Benign Relationship Between a Group of Incorrigibly Trouble-prone Underage Humans and an Eccentric Gang of Racketeering Demons: Sand & Stone (www.tentative.net/s&s/), the other webcomic by Lynn Lau, creator of Girlamatic's circus-girl-trying-to-settle-down-and-go-to-school-in-a-"normal"-town comic Jupiter (www.girlamatic.com).

The Tough-Minded Cybernetic Fairy Godparent Award goes to Cyberna, the cute-faced but no-nonsense robot "dolphin" from a secret undersea enclave, and Shiratz, the three-thousand-year-old alien A.I. in the form of a very realistic-looking pinto horse who takes one of the human heroes under his (metaphorical) wing. Both these characters are from Monique McNaughton's excellent and entertaining science fiction webcomic epic U.N.A. Frontiers (www.graphicsmash.com).

Most short-tempered — I mean choleric — teenage alchemist: Edward Elric, the title character of Full Metal Alchemist.

Underage mad scientist/magic-user most likely to grow up to be Dr. Doom or Darth Vader if not for the ameliorating influence of his more mild-mannered brother: Edward Elric.

Best manga about a nerdish small-town mad scientist and the unrobotically independent-minded nearsighted girl android he creates, who typically responds to commands like "Don't do anything robot-like!" by casually removing her head, and expresses dissatisfaction with her disappointingly normal humanoid body by exclaiming, "I can't fly? How about a tummy missile? ... What will I use to fight the forces of evil?": Akira Toriyama's Dr. Slump (Viz).

Manga most likely to appeal to cat-lovers, intelligent children, and anyone who enjoys classic fantasy novels: Aoi Hiragi's Baron: The Cat Returns (Viz), the tale of the snowballing series of magical complications which ensue when a klutzy Japanese schoolgirl rescues the oldest offspring of an officious feline royal family who are determined to reward her whether she likes it or not. (This book was also the basis for the Studio Ghibli film The Cat Returns.)

Most idiosyncratically original twist on the story of Cinderella: The (literal) fairy's tale in Sang-Sun Park's The Tarot Cafe, volume one (TokyoPop), which also wins for Most Decadently Beautiful Artwork in a Supernatural Manhwa.

Most ominous horticultural motif in a manga: Both Tokyo Babylon volume seven (TokyoPop) and Descendants of Darkness volume three (Viz) feature flashback scenes in which a young boy comes across a supernaturally-powered murderer and his latest victim at night under a cherry tree. (In Tokyo Babylon, the killer actually tells the boy that cherry blossoms derive their pinkish color from the blood of corpses buried amongst their roots.) The killer uses his mental powers to erase the boy's memory in both cases, but dire consequences ensue nonetheless.

The Samurai Who Wear Glasses Can Still Make Lightning-Fast Sword Passes Award goes to Jin of Samurai Champloo, for surviving a fire, a day-long torture session, a near-execution, and several highly kinetic sword battles against multiple opponents in the first episode alone without his glasses so much as shifting slightly out of place. (This presents a striking contrast to the numerous other bespectacled anime and manga characters who are frequently depicted manually poking their glasses back into position after they've slid down their noses, as so often happens to people who wear glasses in real life.)

Sheena: The Best Anthropomorphic Historical Fiction — Apocalypse Meow. Apocalypse Meow is an extremely well researched and crafted rendition of the Vietnam War where all the characters are animals. US soldiers are rabbits, Vietnamese are cats, etc.

Best Use of Acupuncture (to fight Lovecraftian Demons) — Tamashin. Dr. Taima uses his needles to heal the demon possessed and banish creatures like Yog.

Worst Attempt at Horror — Dark Water ... all I can say is let's hope the movie is scarier (at least that looked scary in the preview).

Best Mix of Catholicism and Zombies in a Western — Priest. Seriously. This is one of the most awesome manga out there — full of symbolic, mythological, and religious aspects that really does work well in that setting with that plot. It's gore-fest horror at it's best.

Character Most Likely to Win a Fight (against anyone) — Jessie Sanchez aka Street Angel from Street Angel. I don't care who she's up against, she will kick their butt. Ninjas? What a joke. Conquistadors? No problem. Demons from Hell? Relax, she'll handle it. She's got mad skills.

in general i think the new boot has been disappointing for me. maybe i expected too much. and i did like coipel's run on legion a lot.

but i dont find the characters whiny ...especially after all the bloodshed. if anything i wish there was more elaboration on their fascist and disconnected society and what those everyday reprecussions were.

but it's still the legion and it's still way better than most things out there. even if you loved the last legion, i find it VERY hard to believe that waid's reboot is the MOST dissapointing of 2005. come on there have been alot of bad revamps i'm sure.

waid does have some hard acts to follow on his resume, which may add to the legion's dissapointment factor.

Okay, I get some of the betrayed feelings some people get with a Legion revamp, but it has been really promising. Even my friends who have grown tired of me waxing eccentric about LSH have been reading & enjoying it.

As far as allegory to modern days goes, I feel it's more of a call-back to the older days of the Legion, including the older attitudes of kids versus adults. It's good, daft science fiction and meant firstly to be enjoyed.
The bickering is because that's what people do. The Legion is at its' least fun when everyone gets on amazingly. A more thorough look to this current continuity would be nice as we've started in medias res, but all the backstory would probably fit a few graphic novels anyway.
The Tinya & Luornu origins are weird and good for a one-off story, but if they integrate well with the characters and stories over time then I won't mind. At least neither are snakes from a royal family based on ours.
There's a lot of potential

Still, yet more people rumbling about the potential LSH cartoon. I'm still holding off from getting excited about it until something definite happens, but no matter the era it should be fun.

With the rest of the article I agree about Runaways and Madrox, I don't recognise a few of the comics out there (despite being a retailer, proving the nicheness of things like this) and Colossus returning was not a welcome return in comics. Marvel have invalidated all major character deaths by constantly bringing them back.
DC on the other hand have side-stepped this by only killing obscure characters like BB and Sue Dibny.

Charlie E/N

I think the "we're so sick of it, we could scream" is getting to be rather obnoxious, and I'm still annoyed at the fact that this team has apparently been around two years, and the members are still getting to know one another. In general, while I like elements of the Legion-as-SCA concept, I have misgivings about its long-term viability. It feels like a great idea for an Elseworlds, but I suspect it will be grating a year from now.

That said, I'm still enjoying it. Certainly a lot more than I was the previous run, and a lot more than I think would have anything that was done building off the previous run.

The author, not included in Quislet's posting of the article, is Rebecca Salek.

My take on Sequential Tart's take...

I'm forced to wonder how many issues the Tarts actually read -- their superficial complaints about "whiny, unpleasant, self-absorbed brats" seems like a knee-jerk reaction to the first issue or two. The characters we've seen up close are a disparate bunch, but by no means fatally unpleasant or unsympathetic. They have a sharp edge, some of them are ruder, more cynical or more erratic than we're used to, and their individual motives may be open to question. On the other hand, they're full of edgy humor and the hyperkinetic energy of youth, and have a lot more dramatic potential in their new roles as "agents of chaos" than as traditional U.P. nasskissers. Dumping on the characterizations because they don't all conform to idealized super-hero stereotypes is a rather lame objection, imo. One I made myself 5-6 months ago before I got to know the characters, but lame nonetheless.

I'm not a Waid gusher; I unashamedly prefer Abnett and Lanning's run to the new series. But let's focus our criticism where criticism is due, which (IMHO) must largely rest on Waid's decision to deemphasize classic action and adventures themes in order to examine the slow-moving internal machinations of the Legion and its problematic relationship to adult society. It's no wonder these kids seem bored and self-absorbed -- so far they've had little to do but bicker with the Science Police and each other!

Less socio-political rhetoric, more classic Legion derring-do. It's that simple for me. The characters themselves are not the problem.

I haven't had a chance to read the whole article yet (thanks for posting it for me Quis) but I have to say this. How in the sprockin' hell can they pick the Legion as Most Disappointing Revamp with that dredge Byrne calls the Doom Patrol and the Demon is out there?

The only thing disappointing about the new-boot, for me, is that they don't publish each and every week. I make no secret of my distaste for the Abnett/Lanning run. LSH would sit under a table for months at a time before I would get around to reading it. I just continued to read it out of habit. In fact, most comics I get now, I really don't care about -- except for the new LSH. I'm always eager to see where it's going. What I enjoy the most is the focus on the personalities and interaction between the team members. I also love the tweaks in the team member's super-powers. I don't think any other writer has been as successful in exploring these areas. And while I am a little bit resistant to change, after Sneckie, I can pretty much stomach anything.

TRUE DAT!

And as for D&A, they did not create:
Triad 6 Umbra personalities.
Invisible Kid.
Workforce (The first team)
XS and Kinetix

I don't know if they re-did an origin of the Legion or not b/c I never bothered to pick up thier first few issues. I was disappointed in the ones that I did read. All of the above items were from former creative teams.

I think Mark and Barry have done a fine job of blending old with new concepts. The series is accessible for new readers while offering a freshness and familiarity to old readers. Whoever wrote the review obviously didn't read anything past the first issue.

But to each, their own, eh? I guess that the other 40,000 people who buy the comic each month would tend to disagree.

well since he's not from earth would african-american apply. or is Xanth(sp?) a colony of earth?

Waid probably could have just made a new character who was black, asian, hispanic, bi-racial, etc, etc. but in the end it must have been easier just to change an existing charcter. which, except for sugar allergy and trouble with bombs we don't know much about.

Does this mean that they can promote this as "the award-winning Legion series"?

I am unable to compare this to previous incarnations. I like it so far. but then I enjoyed Wilcats 3.0, Alias, and Fire Fly. so what do I know.

perhaps this revamp's popularity would increase if Waid made all the team members mutants!

Sentients, sentients. The "Tart To Heart" feature at ST poses a question to its members and the various replies are published in the column. (Another recent question -- off the top of my head -- was "What comic property would you like to be made into a movie/tv series?") Sequential Tart gave an award to the LSH much to the same degree that Legion World loves Lester Spiffany and is gonna marry him.

Maybe she never expected those revamps to be any good to begin with, so she wasn't disappointed when they weren't.

Reminds me of the last issue of Too Much Coffee Man, the cover of which displayed "Winner of an Award We Made Up Ourselves".

I'm not particularly bothered by dissenting opinions, especially when people give some reasons. Not everybody likes the new Legion - or the old one for that matter. On initial reading, I also saw parallels between the current political climate and Waid's 31st century - but I really think he's working with, if not universal, recurrent themes throughout Earth history. Repressive, overcautious, façade-maintaining regimes versus idealistic or thrill-seeking young people. So, personally, I don't find it a tiresome allegory for our times. Six issues have given us more complex (and mature) characters than the Preview's rebellious teens and temper-tantruming Lyle. Perhaps this commentator didn't read beyond the Preview and issue #1 - or she just doesn't like the series.

Just how many revamps were there last year? Legion, Doom Patrol - was that it?

Disagree completely. It's my favorite Legion in a VERY long time. A VERY, VERY long time. I find the Legion's cause to be sympathetic largely because the youth movement is merely the surface of their goal. I don't see anything particularly wrong with the Legionnaires, either, especially when you compare them with Action and Adventure era Legion. THAT was a cruel Legion.

About the only thing I liked of the above was Kinetix, and not the version Abnett & Lanning used. I absolutely hated that one. She had no personality and did just about nothing.

I like the new Star Boy and Karate Kid. Garth and Projectra's changes aren't problematic for me. I like Lu's new origin a lot but don't care much for Tinya's. As for spirit, shouldn't we wait to see if the Legion finally unites before passing judgment as to whether or not it is broken?

So did mine. I liked early Five Years Later stuff, but I lost interest sometime after the first year. The reboot Legion never really grabbed me. I enjoy this new version because they're the most similar to the Legion I remember seeing in over a decade.

i think that waid made the best work possible to build a legion with whom today's teenagers could relate.

i mean, i don't think new readers could be attracted only by the sense of freedom given by the image of a flying youngster, since if they want to "feel" flying they don't have but to turn on they playstation 2.
so, waid gave to current superheroes comics' audience a reason to make them want to be a legionnaire.

given that, i'm not surprised by older legion fans who don't stick with the new series. i myself am way over with the part of my life when i couldn't communicate with my parents
i think that for the gal who gave the new legion this nice prize just wasn't enough that the current series is a good reading by itself, but she were disappointed by the fact that the legion isn't written for her anymore.

me, i'm enjoying the new series a lot! but to be honest, maybe i prefered the "star trek-like" DnA version, the one from the first year or so of the legion.

The whole "We're so sick of it, we could scream" angle is getting tired already. That's not inspiration, it's desperation -- especially when The Revolution (imagined or not) to correct the situation is long delayed.

What I'm also sick of -- sorry, Teeds -- is Lester Spiffany. Jokes, including joke characters, and catch phrases fall flat after a while.

Grey'll feel different when he (and all of LW) is married to Lester.