quote:Originally posted by Barry Kitson: Hi Guys Thanks again for the kind words about L.E.G.I.O.N. and my work in general.
I think one of the big differences between the run on dot-Legion and the WaK LSH was the amount of freedom we had with dot-legion. We were pretty much allowed to do whatever we wanted with the characters which gave us license to take a lot more risks and push things further than we were able on LSH itself. We would have liked to push the character side of things a lot more in LSH but there were a lot of considerations outside the book itself - characters appearing elsewhere etc - that we didn't have to contend with with dot-legion. Even when Lobo got his own book we pretty much ploughed our own independent furrow with him in dot-legion - the same wasn't really possible with Supergirl in LSH, with crossovers and continuity so important in the industry in modern times it meant we couldn't follow our own muse with quite the abandon we had on dot-legion.. or else some pretty radical plots would have been followed up I will always be so grateful for the time I was working on dot-legion, it was a pretty unique (if that term makes any sense at all) experience and it means a great deal to me that folks still look back on the series with such affection!
Thank YOU for the great work on L.E.G.I.O.N., Barry. And those were indeed other times: you stayed almost 5 years on it! And that was the norm back then!
It's interesting to find out the recent LSH was "creatively constraint" - I thought the Supergirl stunt was your own, not editorial. Can you give us a hint on what would have happened to LSH in case you were able to follow the original idea, now that threeboot is over?
From: Brasil | Registered: May 2008
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Hi Ricardo Five years was our original plan!
The inclusion of Supergirl was our choice, but we understood that our's was to be THE Supergirl in the DCU and we could do with her as we liked....as is often the way with comics things didn't quite work out that way. It is one of the reasons that our Supergirl was so different from the one in her own title, but Mark is probably the best person to ask about this topic.
Our original plan was to have Brainiac spend much of his time attempting to return her to the 20th century, but in our LSH/DCU he would have discovered that retrogressive time travel wasn't possible - you could go back to a timeline after you left it, but never back to the same future you had visited each return to the past would set up an alternate future and that was how we would have encountered alternate legions including Dawnstar, Tyroc etc with some characters crossing between alternate 'nows' but never able to change them. Of course all of this was postulated before DC decided to bring back time travel, have another infinite crisis etc.
It was also tied into how we would explain the LSH being based on DC comics as someone travelling back told the past of the LSH which then instead of creating the LSH exactly as was created a new timeline with our LSH in it. Theoretically we may have met the original LSH and exchanged a member or two - but it would have been a one off climactic event and probably envisioned as the end of our run on the book. Leaving the next team with their pick of the best of both to set up their stories with.
Probably Dream Girl's ultimate fate and/or death would have played into these quantum possiblities too - as whether she was alive or dead being a kind of existential Shrodinger's Cat if that makes any sense at all...which is unlikely as I'm the person typing it.
I think/hope it won't be doing any harm to tell what we might have done - as I don't think post Final Crisis etc it could be done now...and if it does spin out anything like the above it will be purely a matter of coincidence as I don't recall any of us ever telling anyone outside the team what our plans were.
Phew! Hope that answers a few questions and isn't too confusing to boot.
quote:Originally posted by Barry Kitson: It was also tied into how we would explain the LSH being based on DC comics as someone travelling back told the past of the LSH which then instead of creating the LSH exactly as was created a new timeline with our LSH in it.
That makes sense.
And here I had suspected that you guys just hadn't thought that part out well enough.
Thanks for clearing it up.
Sure puts a spoke in the wheels of everybody who thought that this Legion is in the future of Earth-Prime...
quote:Originally posted by Barry Kitson: Hi Ricardo Five years was our original plan!
The inclusion of Supergirl was our choice, but we understood that our's was to be THE Supergirl in the DCU and we could do with her as we liked....as is often the way with comics things didn't quite work out that way. It is one of the reasons that our Supergirl was so different from the one in her own title, but Mark is probably the best person to ask about this topic.
Our original plan was to have Brainiac spend much of his time attempting to return her to the 20th century, but in our LSH/DCU he would have discovered that retrogressive time travel wasn't possible - you could go back to a timeline after you left it, but never back to the same future you had visited each return to the past would set up an alternate future and that was how we would have encountered alternate legions including Dawnstar, Tyroc etc with some characters crossing between alternate 'nows' but never able to change them. Of course all of this was postulated before DC decided to bring back time travel, have another infinite crisis etc.
It was also tied into how we would explain the LSH being based on DC comics as someone travelling back told the past of the LSH which then instead of creating the LSH exactly as was created a new timeline with our LSH in it. Theoretically we may have met the original LSH and exchanged a member or two - but it would have been a one off climactic event and probably envisioned as the end of our run on the book. Leaving the next team with their pick of the best of both to set up their stories with.
Probably Dream Girl's ultimate fate and/or death would have played into these quantum possiblities too - as whether she was alive or dead being a kind of existential Shrodinger's Cat if that makes any sense at all...which is unlikely as I'm the person typing it.
I think/hope it won't be doing any harm to tell what we might have done - as I don't think post Final Crisis etc it could be done now...and if it does spin out anything like the above it will be purely a matter of coincidence as I don't recall any of us ever telling anyone outside the team what our plans were.
Phew! Hope that answers a few questions and isn't too confusing to boot.
Wow, much different from what the book was about, I guess. So, once again, Legion seemed to suffer from editorial decisions off the bat that toyed with time travel. I can see it would be a much headier game then it actually became - and thus why sometimes it seemed that the book was sort of going through the motions (the fill-in artists didn't help much to show unity). I'd love to have seen TMK's Legion back in the game, in fact - and this idea would actually be much better than the 52 worlds DC has established so far. I think it was a clever idea and one I would have loved to see through the end of the run. But the "eat-it-gramps" premise still doesn't convince me. We never saw a good reason for that and why this involved heroics, I guess.
By the way, when are you doing L.E.G.I.O.N. back again with Grant and Giffen?
Thanks a lot for everything, Barry. It's a pity I can't deal with Marvel at all recently (except for Milligan & Allred's X-Factor, that is).
From: Brasil | Registered: May 2008
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Isn't it time for you and Mark to do another Empire story arc? It ends in an extremely interesting place, almost like the TPB is a prologue for your "real" story.
From: Smallville Sector : Greater Metropolis | Registered: Jun 2004
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I would love to see another Empire story. One of the most unexpected panels I ever came across in comics was when the two ladies "go shopping" ... Click Here For A Spoilerfor a male sex slave. I got a good laugh out of the surprise.
posted
Barry Kitson is a class act. It's great to see you still here even after your run ended.
What are the chances DC can lure you onboard with Bedard as co-writer and penciller of the all-new all-now dot-Legion? I think that's just what it needs, what would push it over the edge and get folks REALLY excited!
quote:Originally posted by MLLASH: Barry Kitson is a class act. It's great to see you still here even after your run ended.
What are the chances DC can lure you onboard with Bedard as co-writer and penciller of the all-new all-now dot-Legion? I think that's just what it needs, what would push it over the edge and get folks REALLY excited!
As far as I know, Barry is a Marvel exclusive these days. But we could always ask: who would you, Barry, like to see drawing L.E.G.I.O.N.?
Particularly, I would like to see someone with a more realistical bend, in the veins of Greg Land. Or Pete Woods.
From: Brasil | Registered: May 2008
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I would LOVE to have been involved in a relaunch of L.E.G.I.O.N.!!!! Which may be why DC waited until I was exclusive at Marvel before doing it!
I have been dropping in regularly on Legion world ever since the run ended and trying to keep in touch with as many folks as possible. I just don't like to comment too much on others people's work in public. Always happy to answer any questions about my own though
Feel free to email me any time too either via this site or my own. I am always happy to hear from Legionworlders!!!
quote:Originally posted by Barry Kitson: in our LSH/DCU he would have discovered that retrogressive time travel wasn't possible - you could go back to a timeline after you left it, but never back to the same future you had visited each return to the past would set up an alternate future and that was how we would have encountered alternate legions including Dawnstar, Tyroc etc with some characters crossing between alternate 'nows' but never able to change them. Of course all of this was postulated before DC decided to bring back time travel, have another infinite crisis etc.
It was also tied into how we would explain the LSH being based on DC comics as someone travelling back told the past of the LSH which then instead of creating the LSH exactly as was created a new timeline with our LSH in it. Theoretically we may have met the original LSH and exchanged a member or two - but it would have been a one off climactic event and probably envisioned as the end of our run on the book. Leaving the next team with their pick of the best of both to set up their stories with.
Probably Dream Girl's ultimate fate and/or death would have played into these quantum possiblities too - as whether she was alive or dead being a kind of existential Shrodinger's Cat
I've felt for a long a time that a real problem with the DC Universe is its concept of time. Back in Pre-Crisis days, there were multiple earths, but these weren't like the Many Worlds of quantum physics. They weren't divergent, but parallel. Each had rigid predestination. Even after the Crisis, DC seemed set on the idea that there had to be one real future. I just wished that DC had been able to accept (in-story; the editors and writers seem to like changing it) that the future isn't fixed.
One thing I did like about your run as it happened, though, was that (even with Supergirl) it didn't spend much time explaining how it was connected to the DC Universe - or any previous version of Legion history.
quote:Originally posted by Ricardo: Wow, much different from what the book was about, I guess. So, once again, Legion seemed to suffer from editorial decisions off the bat that toyed with time travel. I can see it would be a much headier game then it actually became - and thus why sometimes it seemed that the book was sort of going through the motions (the fill-in artists didn't help much to show unity).
I agree with all of that. Headier, yes. I don't know if better.
-------------------- Tom Strong, on nostalgia: "I suppose it's a ready substitute for genuine feeling." - Tom Strong #6, Alan Moore
From: Calgary, Alberta | Registered: May 2008
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Barry, I just want to chime in with those who are praising your work on dot-LEGION. To date, it's my very favorite work that you've been involved with, as well as one of the most enjoyable comic book runs for me period.
What isn't said very much is that I also enjoyed those issues that you scripted solo. If I'm remembering this right, you scripted most of the issues in the forties before bringing Mark aboard to co-write. I remember there being some criticism of your solo-scripted issues, but I thought they were really good!
I hope we'll get to see you put your stamp on something longterm again as you did with L.E.G.I.O.N. I know that's what was intended with LSH and probably The Order.
So best wishes, and I hope we'll get to see more writing and co-writing from you to go along with those gorgeous pencils!
-------------------- "Suck it, depressos!"--M. Lash
From: The Underbelly of Society | Registered: Jul 2003
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