quote:Originally posted by Pariscub: Doesn't it strike you as odd that there's been more talking and curiosity about the Legion (outside of these boards) because of the JLA/JSA crossover and the upcoming Action Comics arc... which ironically don't feature the current series characters... than about the current series?
Not at all. Fans have a tough time accepting changes to their characters. I think more folks don't read this current book because it's not the Legion they remember than because it's a bad book (it's not!)
Actually, that's where you err in your reasoning. The reason for the threeboot was to attract new readers to the series. Visibly, this hasn't happened and only the fans seem to be reading it as the numbers are quite similar to what was in the shops before.
-------------------- Ze Frainch Legion fan
From: Edinburgh, Scotland | Registered: Oct 2004
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Set
There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met.
posted
quote: I'm currently rereading the Threeboot (for the third time), and it just does not work to me - the characters have no history, no personal biographies and no special characteristics (apart from Brainy and Cos) that define them.
I fear that the Threeboot wasn't really well thought out. There was a vision there, and it could have gone places, but it felt like some sort of rushing-out-the-door was going on behind the scenes. Characters changed personalities quite a bit, colorations where inconsistent, planet-of-birth was misquoted a few times and weird inconsistent crap kept popping up (issue one, Sun Boy learns from Theena Daxam is having some vote about the Legion. Later we learn that the Daxamites are all dead...).
Given that there doesn't seem to have been a 'plan,' or any sort of style guide or story bible (the only explanation I can think of for the coloration and textual inconsistencies), I'm amazed that the Threeboot didn't turn out *worse.* It meandered around, retold the same basic story, and now, mercifully, seems to be rattling out it's last breath.
The Legion is probably the *last* comic book where I'd go without a plan, without prepared characterizations, histories, a story bible, a style guide, etc. Every Legionnaire has distinctive personality traits, and a 'style' of appearance that works with them, and every single step away from those guidelines is a risk. Throwing everything away, in the belief that one's own ideas are *better than everyone else who has ever written the Legion* is just insane, IMO.
If I decided to re-write the X-Men, but made Storm white and incapable of making a decision, Cyclops an ADD-poster-child addle-pated twit who can't finish a sentence, Colossus capable of *appearing* to turn into metal, but not actually gaining the properties of metal, Iceman able to generate ice, in his hands, that only lasts 60 seconds before melting and Kitty Pryde a psycho who likes to keep body counts of all the people she kills, I'd be accurately simulating the changes that have been made to the Legion.
The Legion can be an enormous TRAP for an unprepared writer / creative team, with a thousand different points where one can completely bork things up or alienate the small, but loyal, fanbase.
It's not a job that I would want, and I'm a fan, because *I* can't even think of how to fix the mess that it's become at this point. Jim Shooter says that he doesn't want to just throw all of this away and start again, because we've had too much of that already, and I see his point, and yet, so much of what exists now kinda sucks that I'd rather see most of these characters magically swept away and replaced with a Legion that aren't a bunch of squabbling headcases.
Registered: Aug 2006
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The more I contemplate what an overall mess Threeboot has been, the more apparent the level of wasted opportunity - if only because it is virtually impossible for another 'boot to be taken seriously (even if that is the best course of action).
If anyone can make lemonade out of lemons, Shooter is as good as any, and his LSH credentials help the cause. I'd rather see Shooter do something with the real Legion, but I'll see what he does on Threeboot.
From: Vancouver, BC, Canada | Registered: Dec 2003
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I also agree with you, Set. I believe the answer lies in how DnA treated their run when they acquired the Legion duties. Instead of dwelling on or trying to reconstruct what they inherited, they just moved forward with new adventures, new villains, and conveniently 'forgot' some plot-threads (Wildfire's re-origin, Kinetix's schizo personalities, Sneckie's lame reorigin, Monstress' annoying character all come to mind).
I personally wish Mr. Shooter would go back to the mid-seventies where he left off, and pick it up from there (Pulsar Stargrave, the Controllers, the Time Trapper, Mordru, and the Fatal Five! But, we shall see what can be accomplished with the current cast.
-------------------- "My dance card was getting fuller than a contestant's at a Jandan shurg-off." - Exnihil, The Lost Klordny
From: Frederick, MD | Registered: Aug 2003
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And here I thought I was the only one who mourned for the old Legion of the Seventies. I agree about threeboot in most regards. It's not a bad book but to me it's just not really the Legion.
Old standards on the title are some of the most vital for the writers and artists to go by. The old Legion Constitution comes to mind. Like the No Killing rule. But then I'm that way about most comic books. I'm looking for a good read, not a revision of the nightly news. Legionaires do not keep body counts. Legionaires don't use phrases like "Stuff it Grandpa" as battle cries. The Legion is a team of heroes, not a street gang or a "Youth gone wild" rebellion.
Registered: Sep 2007
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The thing about the Legion is it's bigger than the writers who write the stories,Shooter and Levitz understood this Waid and Giffen did not.
-------------------- I tried to rip their soul out.I tried to make them forget Superman. But they won't.
From: Kentucky | Registered: Oct 2005
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quote:The thing about the Legion is it's bigger than the writers who write the stories,Shooter and Levitz understood this Waid and Giffen did not.
No truer words have been spoken here at Legion World.
-------------------- "My dance card was getting fuller than a contestant's at a Jandan shurg-off." - Exnihil, The Lost Klordny
From: Frederick, MD | Registered: Aug 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Kid Quislet: No truer words have been spoken here at Legion World.
I agree.
Well except maybe for Caliente's second-from-last parenthetical comment in this post: lunch I hate to be the only one to keep bringing that up!
From: Washington DC | Registered: Oct 2004
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I don't think you can compare Giffens "dark and gritty" run with the current Threeboot. Giffen invented some new stuff, but stayed true to the old Legion in most elements, even thriving on picking up tidbits from the past in the legendary "Omnicom" pages. He was forced by TPTB to erase Superboy and stuff.
Nobody forced Waid to leave out every classic Legion element; he did it with the full intention to create something oh-so-new. Don't know what his actual target audience was, but I guess he ultimately failed to reach it, leaving a pretty clean slate for Shooter to start from scratch.
From: Bamberg, Germany | Registered: Feb 2007
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I think Waid had a sound plan. I think the editors didn't. Lots of the errors were editing mistakes.
I think Waid did fine using Legion elements. I consider this a real Legion. I hated the underagers vs. adults thing. I think he focused to much on it. I know the Adventure Legion was popular but I think guys like Waid want to continue to go back to that. I'm tired after ZH and now again of starting all over. I rather read back issues of the Adventure era...they are better.
I am so glad the LS Legion is around cause that's more my style.
From: Tampa | Registered: Mar 2004
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quote:The thing about the Legion is it's bigger than the writers who write the stories,Shooter and Levitz understood this Waid and Giffen did not.
No truer words have been spoken here at Legion World.
I disagree. We don't know what Waid and Giffen, or for that matter Shooter and Levitz, are thinking. We know what shows up in the comics, and sometimes we know what they say in interviews. Let's not try to turn artistic criticism into moral or intellectual judgment.
quote:Originally posted by Ultra Jorge: I think Waid had a sound plan. I think the editors didn't. Lots of the errors were editing mistakes.
I think Waid did fine using Legion elements. I consider this a real Legion. I hated the underagers vs. adults thing. I think he focused to much on it. I know the Adventure Legion was popular but I think guys like Waid want to continue to go back to that. I'm tired after ZH and now again of starting all over. I rather read back issues of the Adventure era...they are better.
I am so glad the LS Legion is around cause that's more my style.
I think Waid falied completly. I think there is one sure fire way to tell if a writer actully gets the characters and teams he is writing or not. If you can subsitute old charcters with brand new ones and not have it affect the story in any way then to me they really dont' "get" the book they are writing. With Waids 3boot he could have set his book just a hundred years in the future and made up all new characters and the book would have read the exact same way. There was not one thing besides the names that made it feel anything like the Legion of Super Heroes.
From: Michigan | Registered: Sep 2003
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Zero Kahn has it right: Anybody could have been in that book - it would not have mattered. By sheer coincidence, they were called Cosmic Boy, Sun Boy and so on. But they could have been Magno Boss from Outer Space and "he who suddenly wants to quit the team to give his character some depth", it would not have mattered.
You can read the book as a (not so brilliant) future utopia story, and be content with it. But as a LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES, it just did not work.
From: Bamberg, Germany | Registered: Feb 2007
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