posted
I seem to have strong feelings both ways. I loved it AND hated it.
Loved - The complexity. Sci-fi politics has always been a favorite genre and I had never seen a comic create such a vast, thought-out universe.
Character growth in some old favorites such as Jacques and the Subs, Violet, and Cham. For the first time ever, i gave a crap about Rokk.
Realistic Villains - there were no generic villains here. Each one had distinct motives and personalities. Sure Universo was a bad guy, but now he was an enemy to the Dark Circle and the Dominators as well. Darkseid still manipulated others as he used to, but only to bring his own life to an end, not for universal conquest. Although Roxxas seemed like a Joker rip-off, he still brought a unique spin to the role of the mass murderer (remember what he did to the little kid in the library?). Mordru, Mano, Persuader, Spider Girl - all of them had different personalities that made each appearance something different. Postboot, could you really say that Mordru, Ra's al Ghul, Computo, and Roxxas are really different people? They may have different motivations, but they still seem like one-dimensional villains to me.
New Characters - Loved Kono, Kent and Celeste. Tolerated Celeste, Devlin, and Sade. Laurel Gand seemed like an old friend that I hadn't thought about for a long time suddenly reappearing again.
HATED, HATED, HATED -
The rape, mutilation, and torture of characters who had previously shown growth. Some of them weren't even favorite characters of mine, but I was still appalled at the blatent disrespect shown to the characters and to the previous cerators.
Mysa - At the end of V.3 she showed an ability to speak up for herself and to take action even if she were alone. V.4 shows us a wimpering, battered wife who is beaten and raped. She not only takes it, but stands by and does nothing when friends of hers (Rond) are mutilated and tortured. What a ridiculous, needless waste of a great character.
Jeckie - A HUGE part of V.3 was spent on the character development of Jeckie/Sensor Girl. From Queen to widow to murderer she goes on a journey of redemption that reunites her with her teammates in dramatic fashion and ultimately sees her obtaining the prestigious leadership position where she is shown to do a capable job. AND IT'S ALL IGNORED. Seriously, she gets TWO PAGES in V.4 where she is overcome by some stupid hallucination-inducing Khund gas (something that should NEVER have happened given her powers). She is then forgotten until the reunion issue where she serves as space-filler. The woman just won a reader-election for crying out loud!!!! Some people obviously cared for her!!! TMK couldn't have shown any more disrespect to these two characters if they had taken Levitz's entire Legion run and publicly urinated on it soaking it through until it was no longer readable!!
Shvaugn, Dawnstar, Wildfire, TIMBER WOLF!!! All great characters that were treated horribly under the control of TMK. Some were so terribly distorted that they have yet to recover.
Well, there you go. I loved it and hated it, which was probably the reaction they wanted all along.
From: Michigan | Registered: Jul 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Kid Quislet: 2) In a great promotion, the Legion was put on haitus for a year while the new creative (destructive) team prepared this overhaul. I remember thinking during the year long wait what kind of idiots would suspend a title (still one of the top DC titles at the time despite lowering sales) for an entire year?
I believe that the Legion only went on hiatus for a few months, if that long.
Edited a few minutes later....
Yup, the last Levitz issue had a cover date of August 1989, and the first TMK issue is cover dated November 1989. For a minute there I was wondering how I'd missed the lack of publication for a year... I was worried about my memory in my old age.
But I do agree that DC mismanaged the Legion terribly, almost to the point of annihilation.
posted
The LSH had a 3-MONTH break between the Levitz run and the Giffbaum run. Also, VALOR was ended during ZERO HOUR, not after it.
Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
The TMK marked my leaving the Legion with #42. Having said that, I did enjoy the first year or so run of TMK.
It was fun because the stories were dense and it took several readings of both the story and the "text" pages. (I liked the salute to that concept in the first post-boot story.) And there was a certain potential in letting the SW6 Legion being the "new Legion".
But.... There was so much in the v4 run to piss off almost every long-term Legion fan.
Even forgetting Sun Boy (which really wasn't too much out of character), Blok (just a pitiful waste for a plot device), and Dawny (which with a better back-story and a "Brainy figures out how to regenerate her wings and she's ok again, but troubled" would have worked), there other were major changes which I couldn't stand.
For me my top two: I hated Valor (he's Mon'el dammit!). And I wasn't overly fond of Laurel. (All because we couldn't have a "pocket universe", which amazing got recreated later?)
So, we all loved it (almost all) and we all hated it (almost all). That must mean that TMK must have been doing something right at some point (just not enough, or else we'd have all just loved it!).
posted
I'm pretty sure the Archie Legion has caused as many arguments as the TMK Legion. Although thats probably because people who loved TMK tend to hate Archie and visa versa (obviously that generalising though).
Personally I loved the TMK Legion. Whilst not perfect they really did have me on the edge of my seat. The Terra Mosaic was just amazing.
From: UK | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
I loved most of TMK but agree that it went downhill at some point (for me it was after "Terra Mosaic"). This was the era that got me hooked on Legion so I didn't have a big connection to many of the characters and was able to roll with the changes. I was buying tons of back issues at the same time though and Wildfire became my favorite but I was still able to enjoy TMK despite the fact that he wasn't brought back til the end.
From: New York, NY | Registered: Jul 2003
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Silver Age Lad
Part-time member living in another century
posted
I sit in the Greybird and Kid Quislet camp. For me the destruction of so many of the Legion's main themes and characterisations was an anathema.
Added to which, the retcons like renaming Lu as Triad and shoehorning Laurel and Kid Quantum into the Legion's past made me retch. I have never believed the 'it was all Mike Carlin's fault' excuse because Carlin was still Superman editor when Time & Time Again basically undid the 'never was a Superboy' stance after Giffen had left.
But in fairness to DC, Kid Quislet is somewhat out in his timings. There was only two months missed between the end of the Levitz series and the start of the TMK era, not a full year.
-------------------- "Our devotion to each other was unexplainable" "You were kids" "No Batman, we were Legion"
From: Ancient Kingdom of Northumbria, UK | Registered: Aug 2007
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posted
Timely thread, I recently thought that maybe I gave this era short shrift the first time around. So I (re)purchased and read 1-4. Still hated it. Sorry.
From: Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
FYI, TMK was thoroughly reviewed in this thread.
-------------------- The Semi-Great Gildersleeve - writing, super-heroes, and this 'n' that
From: The Stasis Zone | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
The TMK run was officially printed fanfic and had problems similar to what you'd get if you took normal fanfic and wrote it into continuity.
It's always going to be polarizing because there will be a certain number of rabid fans whose fan ideas are close enough to TMK's that the series will seem like manna from heaven. I'm sure that if a new Doctor Who came out where the Doctor was married to the part Time Lord child of two companions who has a fancy name, constantly talks back to him, suffers from things she's not responsible for, and sacrifices her life for him more than once, there would be polarization over that, too.
Registered: Apr 2010
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cleome46
or you can do the confusion 'til your head falls off
posted
Four years later, I still haven't read enough of 5YL to comment on it as a whole. I've collected enough scattered bits of it to feel positive towards some of the things that happened in it, though.
Certainly at least as positive as I feel about some of the cringeworthy stuff that Levitz (or his editors) decided to inflict on the team last year.
-------------------- Hey, Kids! My "Cranky and Kitschy" collage art is now viewable on flickr. Drop by and tell me that I sent you.
From: Vanity, OR | Registered: Dec 2008
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cleome46
or you can do the confusion 'til your head falls off
posted
[snip]
quote:Originally posted by Super Lad Kid:
...Mysa - At the end of V.3 she showed an ability to speak up for herself and to take action even if she were alone. V.4 shows us a wimpering, battered wife who is beaten and raped. She not only takes it, but stands by and does nothing when friends of hers (Rond) are mutilated and tortured. What a ridiculous, needless waste of a great character...
Yeah, honestly. Mysa is one of my very favorite comic book characters, period. I could go the rest of my life without giving this story arc more than a cursory glance.
In fact, over all, I'm fed up with rape and DV (implied or otherwise) as storytelling devices. It's not what I go looking for when I crack open a story that's supposed to be "escapist." Particularly when it happens to female characters, who are overall scarce and often pushed to the side in narratives anyway.
-------------------- Hey, Kids! My "Cranky and Kitschy" collage art is now viewable on flickr. Drop by and tell me that I sent you.
From: Vanity, OR | Registered: Dec 2008
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posted
I think the bad stuff that Levitz did is, at least, ordinary bad writing. It wasn't retconning, and it wasn't done just to promote the author's pet theory regardless of logic.
You'll find few fans who think that having Shadow Lass sleep with Earth-Man was a good idea. But making Garth into Proty was a whole other category of bad.
Registered: Apr 2010
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