Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Pre-New 52 LSH Reference in Forever Evil #7

EDE, LOL

CMK, regarding Blackest Night/Brightest Day, I thought the violence was excessive and mean-spirited, and the plots were way too simple for universe-wide events. Blackest Night could have possibly worked if they'd stuck to the original plan of having it take place only in the Green Lantern books.

I also hated the way they shoved Mera in our faces. I've never liked her much. For me, the high point of her existence was when she lost a catfight to the IMO much cooler Dolphin in an issue of Peter David's Aquaman.

Blackest Night WAS quite gory. Death toll was pretty high, lots of innocent civilians and "Red Shirt" Lanterns dying. Brrr. I do agree that keeping it in the Lantern books (with appearances by other DC heroes) might have been the way to go. Poor Damage. Poor Hawkgirl Kendra.

Mera becoming a Red Lantern during Blackest Night spoke a lot about the character. Her defining emotion is anger? Really?

To be honest I had little experience with Mera outside of her appearances in Blackest Night and in her few panels in COIE. She didn't seem like an angry woman there, though... There was also one issue where she, Aquaman, their son and Dolphin were trapped in some other dimension. They jumped through a doorway back into the DCU, only for their son to begin aging rapidly. Mera made him go back to save his life, and then she jumped back after him. That was a very good, touching panel.

Indeed. I really liked her. She reminded me a lot of myself at her age. Even if she couldn't have stayed Hawkgirl forever, she could have always taken on another identity.



I think Geoff Johns' defining emotion is anger, he just grafts it onto any protagonist he writes.



It was masterfully done, like almost everything else about the first 26 issues of Peter David's Aquaman, and also an effective way to keep her out of the main storylines.

and then chops their head off.

^

Cobalt Kid:



Yeah, I can totally hear that. I didn't have any problem with the story itself, though (except that Hal, John and Kyle settle down with the loves of their lives, and all poor Guy gets is to run a bar. Guy + Ice 4ever! XOXOXO)

Fanfic Lady:



I kind of liked the spill-overs. Just as one example, I thought the story in REBELS where Vril Dox got a yellow ring on his finger was interesting. The Question and Starman tie-ins were enjoyable too.

As for the violence, it was certainly gory, but I didn't think it was gratuitously so.



Well, everyone has their favorites and less-favorites. I loved the PAD Aquaman, which certainly de-emphasized Mera, but I never felt her character was much defined at all. One thing I've always liked about Johns's work was his ability to take characters from any corner of the DCU and work them into a story.

To each their own. I, personally, think Johns takes characters and re-works them to fit his narrow vision and twisted sensibilites, and shows a lack of respect for what previous writers had done with the characters.

Same here. His Hal Jordan and Barry Allen characterizations are, IMO, *massive* regressions into juvenile barely-competent characters that they didn't even just outgrow, they flat-out *never were.*

And his Aquaman portrayals are aimed-at-the-reader rebuttals of Aquaman being 'lame,' which is completely boneheaded, since you don't write an Aquaman story entirely geared towards people *who don't like Aquaman anyway.* That just annoys the hell out of those of us who never thought he was lame. Why are the haters getting the love? Crap writing, aimed in the wrong direction.

And yet, his fans follow him from character to character, gushing over how awesome he's made them, and how they are suddenly good, for the first time in decades, because they aren't fans of Hal Jordan, or Barry Allen, or Arthur Curry, they are fans of Geoff Johns, and will flit off in his wake to gush about how 'awesome' the next character he mangles has suddenly become.

Bah! Kids! On my lawn! <waves cane threateningly>

^^The above is why I'm thankful he didn't spend more time on the Legion.

I used to think Geoff could do no wrong. I got over it!

Like CMK, I didn't have a problem with the gory nature of Blackest Night. I thought it was alright. I was just sad about the permanent new deaths. And the poor Titans certainly lived up to their team reputation. Bye bye Garth, Damage and Holly Granger the new Hawk.

As for Johns... I like his plots, but I agree that his poor characters could very much stand to be treated better.

That was the thing that stays with me from the first issue. A really, really poor decision.

I don't think its just Johns. I think there is a particular culture that has evolved at DC, of which mindless gore-fest that is Forever Evil is only the latest manifestation.

Have you seen the video 'documentary' Necessary Evil?
(actually a 90-minute ad for DC)

Everybody at DC talks about how interesting the villains are, how boring the heroes are, how much more fun it is to write villains...

(mostly a quote, as best I remember it)

"Villains are pro-active. Heroes are reactive. Without a villain nothing happens, there is no story."

Actually, in classic literature, the hero is the one the story is about; the villain is the one who obstructs the hero on his quest: you just need to make sure you have clearly defined the heroes objectives, otherwise the hero IS boring.

(Example: What did the Silver-Age Superman really want? (1) to bring back Krypton (2) to bring back Ma and Pa Kent (3) to save everybody. Conflict: Superman is powerful enough to save anybody, but not powerful enough to save everybody. And you can't change the past. [OK, well, you can, but just say not in this example])

Saying superheroes are reactive is a sign the writers lack imagination. Why not have the hero build institutions? Pursue corrupt politicians? Create social change? Being good doesn't have to be the same as being boring.

It's interesting to compare that to the Silver Age, when half the time the stories wouldn't have a villain at all, much less a super-villain!

or possibly just reflect a culture of presumption of innocence. Something else else has to trigger an investigation or we call it fascism or big brother or some other generally not super-hero quality.

The writing seems to be to the action wanting crowd. Superheroes do not seem to have a lot of time for consensus building and investigation. Readers generally do not seem to have the patience. Reading message boards, set-up is generally not well received unless it is done as Levitz used to, a little clue here, a little build there, while the present main theme played out.

How do you build clues when these issues or going into one graphic novel and the plot they lead to in another? Few writers own a subject long enough to do this. I keep coming back to Fables. One writing team for its entire existence, they handle story transition to graphic novel excellently. I fear as they expand that world, they will have the same problems as any other comic "universe."

To be honest, some older comics make the heroes seem pretty villainous. You would think that Reed Richards would have found a way to cure Ben Grimm by now. I've become very sympathetic to Dr. Doom due to Reed's behavior.

Well, I suppose investigating criminals also counts as "reactive" rather than "proactive". And there isn't much action to be found in having heroes do charity or social work. It certainly wouldn't be much of a series if that's all the heroes did.

Invisible Brainiac:



You mean like "The Green Team" or "The Movement" or the pre-Lemiere Green Arrow? As much as there is to criticize about the New 52, the one thing that can't be said about them was that they weren't willing to experiment with new and unusual ideas. They just didn't sell.

An action comics cover with Superman leaping something in a single bound. A senator held by his ankle.

I think something similar was picked up by Morrison actually in DCNu. I can't recall if there was much follow through beyond the target (a businessman?) making a compliant to the authorities.

There's always the old:-
Mid level hero take son vicious supervillains. They are propping up a crime lord. We see lots of social injustices.

The crime lord has ties with both the police and the politicians.
More supervillains are dispatched violently as the hero makes his way up the chain of command. We see more injustice and plenty of corruption.

She's now a vigilante, and it's not long before other heroes are brought in to track her. We see what a hero is supposed to stand for against what they are actually employed to do.

The longer our hero persists, the more power is brought to bear on her, until the big guns are brought in. Will the corruption be linked to senior politicians? Will the other heroes side with our hero? Can they? Is our main villain actually untouchable?

Action, Adventure, investigation, mindless violence, betrayal, love and death and always an escalation to keep things going.

A central problem here is that the status quo can't be returned to. The heroes can become more and more proactive. Look at Squadron Supreme for an example of that. So you either know that going in or you have the hero catch one crook, but turn a blind eye to the actual causes. Super heroes are almost complicit in nothing ever really changing in their world.

I'd be happy with the ocassional escaped zoo animals story!

Not the Legion of Super Monsters?

It's a very good point you made about the Silver Age. Quality writing that worked without the fall back of caped people beating each other up. The writers then were a very versatile lot.

I wouldn't mind more stories about the hero's friends comically trying to keep the hero from guessing what their birthday presents will be!



Yeah, looking back it is very hard to sustain these sorts of things in a visual medium like comics. As thothkins also mentioned, you can't return to the status quo. The X-Men also sort of tried to explore these things, but we keep going back to the action.

Huh. Now I'm thinking back to the old Magneto and Professor X debates. Not a perfect comparison, but Magneto could be said to be more proactive and Prof X more reactive. Though one could argue Prof X was also proactive, but in a more pacifist way.

And yet Xavier was playing the longer game. Trying to win hearts and minds by turning his X-Men into the new Fantastic Four, telegenic young heroes that would invite a celebrity following and even have a built in media-friendly tie, with their mutation being (in the early years) said to stem from the atomic age and, in some cases, such as Hank McCoy, from very specific chemical or radiation-related incidents, making the mutants seem more like victims of science-gone-wrong or military experiments or faceless unaccountable government agents. (Wolverine also had elements of this.)

Magneto, in taking the 'active' role, pretty much demanded a government response that included Sentinels and internment camps and an 'us against them' and 'we have to eradicate them if we want to survive as a species' mentality, on both sides.

Yes, the 'world that hates and fears them' storyline was inevitable, because that's the storyline Marvel decided to run with, but in-story, it was the Magnetos and Mystiques of the world, and their 'active instead of reactive' approach to things that fueled that rhetoric. At a certain point, Xavier's dream (and the Avengers Unity team that seems to be following it) might seem naïve, but it's only because all of the damage done by the 'active' sorts, throwing gasoline on the fire and proving that 'Xavier was wrong' by *actively sabotaging any chance of mutant/human peaceful co-existence at every step.*

DC seems to be eager to tread those waters as well. Superman is more likely to be regarded as a dangerous accountable-to-no-one alien menace than a hero. Wonder Woman's transitioning from 'come to man's world as an ambassador of peace' to 'just killed Ares to become the new god of war.' Lex Luthor is the Magneto (or, more accurately, perhaps, the J. Jonah Jameson and Norman Osbourne) of the nu52, sowing distrust of the generation's heroes and creating a grittier sort of DCU.

In JLA/Avengers, Superman criticized Captain America for how the Marvel universe treats it's heroes, claiming that maybe they didn't fight hard enough to earn the people's trust the way the DCU heroes had, and yet, the rot has spread to DC, and that argument no longer applies (not that it ever did).

Yes, I think you expressed it very well, Set. "Proactive", if it's being preemptive and using violence to achieve your means, is not always the most effective way. Which is why I said that Prof X is arguably also "proactive" even though his methods are peaceful and built on cooperation and understanding. Being "proactive" doesn't have to mean getting immediate results, either.

That environment of trust and optimism is why I preferred DC to Marvel. Sadly, the DCU seems to have been turned on its head.

WW as the new Ares? Ugh. I liked her best when she was aligned with Athena.