Comments on: A Year of Cool Comic Book Moments – Day 299

By: Ricardo

Ricardo — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:41:40 +0000

That’s what makes for a great comic book: discussions about it are always done in high levels. Can’t say that about Legion of 3 Worlds.

By: danjack

danjack — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:46:08 +0000

@Joe Rice: Of course the eventual point of the run was “No matter how awful things get when you reach adulthood, real friendships and joy will eventually shine through.” It was a long-form “Yeah, things got awful. Let’s fix it” and I loved that.

i totally agree with you. However, the QDS is precisely where LSH v4 confused me, as i couldn’t follow the story at all. After this, i found that the book went downhill for me. i agree with Dean: Yeah, the 5YG Legion was amazing. It was a great run by Giffen and the Biernbaums.

Although the annual where Proty has taken over for Lightning Lad was totally awful and most definetely vomitting on the past [as was the Element Lad/Shavagn Erin story]
DFTBA

By: Callum

Callum — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:41:58 +0000

Yep, a lot of talking about stuff I don’t know anything about. But the art is pretty fantastic.

By: wwk5d

wwk5d — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:21:47 +0000

It depends how you define mature…

Plus, it wasn’t about wanting to keep the title in the 60s. To me, and to quite a few others, I imagine, the Levitz/Giffen/Lightle/LaRoque era was one of the best eras of the title. It was an older, more mature Legion which had a nice balance of the lighter, earlier, more fun days and darker, more mature stories and issues.

As for the muddy art, yes, it is annoying when many times, through this run, it was hard to figure out what the hell was going on. Just as the stories themselves had interesting ideas but failed (for me and others) in the execution, it was the same for the art. Whatever points Giffen may get for new ideas and trying to push the envelope, he loses them with confusing, sometimes indecipherable sequences and panels that make you have to reread the damn thing many times. Not to discover new things you didn’t get the first time, but just to understand what the hell was going on.

By: Ricardo

Ricardo — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:45:10 +0000

As Joe Rice said – that’s exactly the point. While before that run characters surely evolved, they had not MATURED. As for “pissing”, it sounded just the opposite: they tried to respect everything that came before, even though DC was having them re-write their whole chronology several times during the 4 year original run.
It was never about “not getting it”, but most of complaints were in the way that “Legion is supposed to be fun AND teenage-y” or “I don’t understand this ‘muddy’ art”. Meaning: people wanted to have the same food they had in the 60s.
I like all Legion eras (maybe except for the awfully bad T&M Biernbaum solo era and Tom McCraw’s disastrous “return to spandex” suite. Oh, and the reboot…), so I can see that Silver Age was good… at that time. Giffen took Legion’s concept to contemporary issues (just like Legion was contemporary… in the 60s). But it is hard to fight the good fight when people believe there is just one way to have Legion. The awful Legion of 3 Worlds proves that it seems people would rather have slugfests over what we see up here.

By: Josh

Josh — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:06:41 +0000

I love the little coda (hee) to this story too, with Jo asking Brainy if he was gonna publish on it. Especially because you got to see the OmniCon page with some of Brainy’s notes later (“make copy for Jo; delete all overs over three syllalbels”).

One of the really cool parts about this story is just how truly terrible and beyond us Darkseid really is here. For all the trappings of civility around him, there’s a part of him that is monstrous and terrifying.

It’s also not a story about conflict or the Legion solving a problem, but of understanding and that’s kinda rare. Of course, I also love the dialogue and humor (Ultra Boy is freakin’ awesome).

By: Joe Rice

Joe Rice — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:35:12 +0000

Of course the eventual point of the run was “No matter how awful things get when you reach adulthood, real friendships and joy will eventually shine through.” It was a long-form “Yeah, things got awful. Let’s fix it” and I loved that.

By: wwk5d

wwk5d — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:17:57 +0000

I’m sorry, I really tried to like this volume but…I just can’t. I don’t like the writing, and Giffen’s art is just too confusing. The central idea is interesting, but the execution just didn’t work for me.

It had nothing to do with seeing characters grow, we had seem them grow before. Characters got married, fell in and out of love, had kids, buried their lovers, went through hardships and ended up becoming stronger people, etc. But this era just seemed to enjoy pissing all over everything that came before, and the creators all too often hid behind the “Well, you just don’t get it, and you need to grow up and leave the previous era’s behind blah blah blah” argument.

YMMV, of course.

By: Dean

Dean — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:43:43 +0000

@ Ricardo:

That is a shame. I love the whole DC Silver Age, but it really puts a heavy historical weight on the DCU. Giffen’s post-Lapsarian take on the Legion was a really smart response to that. It felt like the difference between the early ’60s and the ’90s.

By: Brian Cronin

Brian Cronin — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:02:02 +0000

Affirmative.

By: djsweet

djsweet — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:46:51 +0000

Who was the kid at the end? her brother?

By: Ricardo

Ricardo — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:15:59 +0000

Dean wrote:

“Does anybody have any idea why DC treats it like it never happened?”

My best bet is on the outcry of Silver Age Legion fans who could never get past the idea their characters could (gasp) grow, leave spandex (argh!) and become adults and more complex (“that’s too difficult!”). Moreover, some of these fans were in very high positions and basically tried for a long time to get rid of Giffen’s brilliant take (he left the book a couple of times during that run). When KC Carlson took over as editor, Giffen had to leave for good.

By: Dean

Dean — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:01:21 +0000

Yeah, the 5YG Legion was amazing. It had everything from the poignancy Mon-El re-booting his universe to the absurdity of “Tenzil for the Defense”. It was a great run by Giffen and the Biernbaums.

Does anybody have any idea why DC treats it like it never happened?

By: buttler

buttler — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:06:05 +0000

Oh, and add me to the chorus of testimonials: This was far and away my favorite run of Legion, and I wish DC wasn’t so insistent on pretending it didn’t happen.

By: buttler

buttler — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:03:39 +0000

Death also showed up in an issue of Captain Atom, Ricardo, but it wasn’t nearly as cool as the other appearances you mention because, well, it was in Captain Atom, and it pigeonholed her as just one of many aspects of death (along with Nekron and others).

She also showed up in a Lobo comic, which is probably about as “canon” as Ambush Bug, although again nowhere near as cool.

By: Ricardo

Ricardo — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:56:47 +0000

By the way, one VERY cool comic book moment can be found in Legion of Super Heroes #37, with the appearance of Death (probably one of the 2 appearances in a DCU book – the other being on Ambush Bug) at the end of Earth. Jason Pearson rips on artwork.

By: Ricardo

Ricardo — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:45:09 +0000

It’s so great to see I am not alone in the world…

By: Joe Rice

Joe Rice — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:21:44 +0000

Oh, man, awesome. Thanks, Brian! Now I gotta find this run and reread it (again)! Damn, maybe my favorite long-term run on any superbook.

By: Pedro Bouça

Pedro Bouça — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:05:06 +0000

I loved v4 and think that particular story is quite underestimated. Never in a million years I thought it would be one of these moments. Congrats, Warlord Cro!

Best,
Hunter (Pedro Bouça)

By: Jacob T. Levy

Jacob T. Levy — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:24:51 +0000

The QDS is precisely where LSH v4 lost me. Not “confused me,” but “lost my interest.”