The Legion Of Superheroes - classic or dud

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Dud, obviously. I mean, the fact that they are a legion surely dimishes their super-ness ("with sheer weight of numbers we will overcome Doctor Jazz!").

― DV (dirtyvicar), Wednesday, 5 March 2003 17:11 (twenty-three years ago)

League of Substitute Heroes roXor.

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 5 March 2003 17:24 (twenty-three years ago)

I think it was admirably ambitious to start calling yourself a legion when there's only 3 of you.

― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 5 March 2003 17:32 (twenty-three years ago)

I worshipped these guys back in the day, cuz DC put out this Who's Who In The Legion Of Superheroes miniseries that let me catch up with the whole thing. Then they did that post-apocalyptic run that thankfully occured right when I was up for some Weird Superhero comics. Though I have no idea how anybody could read it if they didn't have everybody's full name memorized. It was pure in-joke and I loved it for it. Stopped caring once Keith Giffen left and once Tom McCraw (the fucking COLORIST!) took over I said fuck it and never looked back. In hindsight, it wasn't so hot, but it kept me busy in my elementary school-through middle school years.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Wednesday, 5 March 2003 17:55 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah, I loved the first 12 issues of the post-Apocalyptic LOS. I hadn't really been a reader of them before, but I really dug Giffen's art. It was just so bizarre and unlike anything else in comics. But then, I just stopped reading comics all together.

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Wednesday, 5 March 2003 18:45 (twenty-three years ago)

I love lots of the old ones, especially those written by Jim Shooter (when he was like 15) and drawn by Curt Swan. The Great Darkness storyline by Levitz and Giffen was terrific too, despite utterly misunderstanding Darkseid. I picked up a bunch of the T&M Bierbaum ones cheap once, after a friend told me they were good, and thought them pretty much representative of much that has gone wrong with Marvel and DC: edited by old fans, written and drawn by old fans for old fans, incomprehensible and uninteresting to everyone else.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 5 March 2003 19:57 (twenty-three years ago)

Misunderstanding Darkseid is a crime that requires the death sentence. But I have to nominate John Byrne for the chair first.

― ChristineSH, Wednesday, 5 March 2003 21:41 (twenty-three years ago)

The "five years later" Bierbaums/Giffen sequence I actually thought was great--it was incomprehensible to EVERYONE, Martin!--but some careful reading made it make a lot of sense...

― Douglas (Douglas), Wednesday, 5 March 2003 21:51 (twenty-three years ago)

I didn't mean those, Douglas, I meant their long run after Giffen left, which was real old-fan-fantasy material. I did think the decision to have galactic war with massive destruction and death happen between issues might have been a mistake, but there were plenty of ideas and real daring in that repositioning.

As for getting the Fourth World wrong, worst offender was surely the hapless Jim Starlin in Cosmic Odyssey, where the Anti-Life Equation turned out to be, in a great demonstration of how much Jim Starlin was bursting with fresh ideas and how carefully he had read the Kirby comics, another embodiment of death! Well done, Jim! We didn't see that one coming!

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 5 March 2003 22:11 (twenty-three years ago)

Well, I'm not so much thinking Byrne got it the wrongest (though he's up there) -- but he was easily the smuggest about it. He made a lot of detestably egotisitcal comments about 'chanelling Kirby' and being the only person who could 'do it right,' etc.

But this has nothing to do with the Legion (which I've almost never read), so I'll shuddup!

― ChristineSH, Wednesday, 5 March 2003 22:21 (twenty-three years ago)

Aw, but I liked Cosmic Odyssey! Mostly because of Mike Mignola - OK, 99% because of Mike Mignola - but the story seemed OK enough. (Note - my knowledge of the Fourth World is totally lacking, & I'd probably be up in arms as well were I more knowledgable.)

And, hey now, Anthony - don't go start start "tracer"ing the colorists. They're VERY U&K (especially nowadays).

― David R. (popshots75`), Thursday, 6 March 2003 01:56 (twenty-three years ago)

I think the fact that LSH has a big gay following says something.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Thursday, 6 March 2003 17:13 (twenty-three years ago)

what? how could anything to do with LSH be even remotely gay-esque?

http://superman.ws/superboy-lives/tomorrows-lesson/whoswho/cosmicboy.gif

― Horace Mann (Horace Mann), Thursday, 6 March 2003 17:39 (twenty-three years ago)

The Giffen one where the Earth is destroyed (no panels; just entirely full-page art) is one of the coolest comics ever.

It instant hooked me on the Legion (I had to buy that whole Giffen run), though I'm more obsessed with the sci-fi/superhero hybrid concept than I am versed in the LSH itself.

― Sam Jeffries (samjeff), Thursday, 6 March 2003 18:18 (twenty-three years ago)

The LSH played a great deal of Dungeons And Dragons as I remember. It always struck me as odd that this, out of all 20th-century pasttimes, should survive for a thousand years.

Early LSH stories are best, with this wierd, chaste fifties sensibility filtered through the bizarre viewpoint of the four-year-old Jim Shooter. I remember vividly the legion using a predicto-computer to test who would be the best snog out of all of them...

― Al Ewing (Al Ewing), Thursday, 6 March 2003 22:38 (twenty-three years ago)

And there are lots of good girls vs boys stories too, which are all hilarious.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Thursday, 6 March 2003 22:53 (twenty-three years ago)

four years pass...

I was looking at a web page for a LSH APA last night... it was listing all the members of the Legion. Even by the standards of superheroes they had stupid sounding names. Lightning Lad and Bouncing Boy spring to mind. They're like characters from our game of Champions.

― The Real Dirty Vicar, Wednesday, 25 July 2007 10:01 (eighteen years ago)

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