posted
She's not alone in this. My brother and I tried the first few issues of the threeboot, and we had the same reaction.
The adults were just being set up as straw men to make the Legionnaires look "kewl". Any society that utterly afraid of change, mired that deeply in bureaucracy, shouldn't be able to connect to any other world. Let alone maintain a political union; after all, the people might be exposed to a new idea somehow... and that was practically outlawed.
Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
That just shows how realistic the book is. I want to slap most teenagers I see.
Really, I'm only half-joking. The reason parents love their teenage children is because of the emotional investment they've nurtured, the pre-existing affection that was there before the little heathens turned 13, and the shear habit of having them around. I suppose, in a way, that describes the relationship between old-timers like me and the threeboot kids. We love them from before and are willing to ride out any rough patches. New readers don't have that kind of commitment and shouldn't be expected to. I'm willing to wait through an entire ill-conceived story arch. Newbees ain't. I blame OYL for the slow pace and hope newer readers will stick in there long enough for the creaters to really start wowwing us. When that time comes, rickshaw1, I hope you can convince you wife to give it another go.
posted
I am in the same boat as your wife and some others. I think they just went a bit too old school...trying to emulate the Adventure era too much.
While it's MUCH better than the post Zero Hour stuff...and yes it is different....just feels like we went this route already.
MANY MANY fans came after the ADV era. There are a few guys called Cockrum, Levitz, Giffen that did something great with this book. I am not saying lets redo that and not the ADV era...but lets try to incorporate some of their elements as well.
Cockrum made muscular, sexy, ready for action. Hey Superman nor Clark Kent is a pencil neck geek. He's a big guy. In other words the Supermen look like gods...why do the teens look scrawny/short. They ARE super-teens.
The underager thing just doesn't do it for many. Sure they are trying to appeal to the younger audience. But have you seen what younger kids like today? It isn't capes or 1956 Thunderbird. That's what Waid liked as a kid. Kids today have Sidekicks/Blackberry that plays DVDs whenever they want.
The only thing I can think of is Waid/Kitson have really (for the most part) taken their time to do things right. And I am hoping they plan to do this underager/ADV echoes for a limited time. Like up until issue 35 or something. Then try to evolve the team a bit.
From: Tampa | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Anybody that thinks rebellion is on the minds of most teens, should spend a bit of time teaching. Kids have been and always will be, generally in accord with the way they were raised.
I'm not getting the comparison to the Adventure era though Ultra Jorge? If it were anything like that, though not my favorite era, I'd have followed though past the first trade.
The technical end was good, meaning the drawing fantastic and the story telling fine. But nothing much captured my imagination or sympathies. Though the drawing was exceptional, none of the scenes grabbed my interest. Remember when we first saw Titan, last series?
The characters weren't the same from the last two boots so I wasn't going to be too patient to garner interest in these. Projectra had the potential to be my favorite of all her incarnations, but then they blew it with the staid, blow up the home planet thing. That killed some of the dynamics I found interesting about the character. The newscaster has potential as a color character. None of the others had potential to be more special than previous boots and some (Giant Boy) I found to be trying to hard to be funny.
The underageer thing??? Well, it doesn't appeal to me and it doesn't appeal to even a significant number of 14 years olds I know into the comic book thing, so what were they going for with that? If anything, they spent too long developing that story and interest was lost.
If the book ever gets back to either of the two previous incarnations, I'll probably pick it up simply because I will have some affection with the characters but I can't see myself picking up a book about these characters.
From: East Toledo | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
I've been rereading my collection from the Giffen/Bierbaum #1 and up, and am currently up to Legionnaires Annual #2, the culmination of the post-Zero Hour era's first year of stories. And realizing, very deeply, how much more I enjoyed that than what's being put out right now.
There are individual aspects of the "Threeboot" I like better than the post-Zero Hour version: Jeckie not being a snake; Garth not being fired, jilted, maimed, and/or killed every six months or so; but on the whole I just don't like it as much as what came before. Shoving Superbrittney into it didn't help--I hate this version of the character, one half refried cornball "Superman's Cousin From Krypton"; one half Brittney Spears crack whore. Thirteen years reading the book through various versions, and I count #17 as the worst Legion comic I've ever bought.
I'm not saying I completely hate this book, but I'm not enjoying it as much as I did ten years ago, either.
-------------------- "I will drill a hole through my head. You cannot stop me."
Registered: Jun 2006
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posted
Although I do like this version to an extent, I think they tried too hard to find a niche for the Legion in the DCU, where really they didn't have to. As was written in the History of the DC Universe:
"There was a millenium of peace throughout this galaxy and others became colonized by our children's children. The future was bright and the heroic ideal flourished again. It was in the thirtieth century that the third wave of heroes came into being with what was to become the greatest of all heroic societies.
They came from planets everywhere. They were the most powerful teenagers in the universe and they called themselves the Legion of Super-Heroes."
That is the Legion concept, and it's one that has already worked. The Legion is the greatest super-team in the 31st Century DCU. They are that era's Justice League, Justice Society and Teen Titans combined. You really don't need to rework the angle.
If they didn't want to just redo the old stories, then that's fine. You can completely revitalize the concept without retreading old ground. Start with new founders if you want to. Have members join in a completely different order. Heck, even create some new members from scratch if you want to. But be true to the Legion concept. There's no need to be clever about it. Just tell good Legion stories, rather than spend over a year rebuilding the concept.
We've spent way too much time establishing the whole "olderster status quo/youngster shake things up" angle It's time to just move one from that and get down to the business of weaving good old fashioned super-hero stuff.
-------------------- Some people are like slinkys: not really good for anything, but they bring a smile to your face when you knock them down a flight of stairs
From: Penthouse atop Levitz Hall, LMBP Plaza, Embassy Row, Legion World | Registered: Jul 2003
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Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
posted
I agree with Cru that the basic concept of the Legion didn't need to be rethought. I do love the basic "Legion as the SCA" idea, because I think that captures the basic concept of reviving the heroic ideals of the past, which is an essential element of the Legion. The teens vs. adult conflict seems incredibly forced, however.
I don't really get the comparison with the Adventure era, either. The biggest complaint many had about that era is that the Legionnaires didn't act like teens at all, but more like adults in teen bodies. And I'm convinced that the entire run of Waid's Legion thus far would've been told in about three or four issues of Adventure, and we'd have actually gotten names for all the members of Terror Firma as well.
I don't know. There's a lot of little things I like about this Legion, but overall the series is just leaving me kind of "bleh". That's better than absolutely despising it, I suppose, which puts it in a better position than, say, most of the previous incarnation of the team, but it's not what I want or expect from the Legion.
From: Liberty City | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
Waid and Kitson can give us a kick-nass comic that just shoots along. They've done it before with "Empire". I think the problem here is not Mark and most certainly not Barry. It is Mr. Wacker or even higher. We can't have a Legion that just exists in its own time, there has to be a reason, an evolution, from the current DCU which is about as stable as the Joker is sane.
The only thing I have against the current series (besides not seeing enough of Barry's art, enough with the fill ins) is the pacing. I'd like to see more stories done in one or two issues while still carrying on a thread. Levitz was a master at this. Too bad he seems to think anything prior to the current Legion isn't worth taking a hint from. And that doesn't mean yet another Bizarro Legion story (although we've seen it) or a retelling of the Great Darkness. Just take the spirit of the team and create a new future.
From: Utah | Registered: Jul 2003
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Waid? Can't think of anything of his I didn't rave. Kitson, forgeddaboutit, as good as there is. Together? Naw, that can't be the problem either. Has to be higher ups. It's the man, it's always the man.
I agree, the way to go is the two or three issue arc imbedded into at least one long term thread.
How long has it been since we've a new villian worth Legion? They'll never find one with these long arcs only to find the readers not interested. That's not how they got the Fatal Five or any of the match-ups fans clamor for. Use the long thread for established villains and short threads to intro new future inhabitants of Takron Galtos and for that matter, Takron Galtos.
They need to throw out lots of villians in short arcs and see which stick with the fans and which become fodder for EDE and MLLASH threads.
From: East Toledo | Registered: Jul 2003
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Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
posted
Oh, I actually think Elysion was the best villain the Legion has faced in ages. He was kind of weakened by working for the utterly forgettable (pun not intended) Lemnos.
From: Liberty City | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
I didn't get past the first trade, but I stick with my premise, it's an awful risk to spend that many issues just to intro a villian. Actually, you make my point for me. Reader lost getting bored for something to happen. If they'd gotten to this character a bit quicker, perhaps I'd still be reading.
From: East Toledo | Registered: Jul 2003
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I wanted to like it *SOOOOOO* badly but month in, month out it was THE most boring book I read.
And it didn't help not liking a single one of the characters either, which really surprised me actually as Mark Waid had had me loving nearly every one of the post-boot members from the moment they were introduced.
Plus - every time they made a change to the established mythos (Cham's antennae, Imra's muteness) it always just seemed like a Sensor-style shock for the reader rather than anything they actually sat down and thought about as having long-term potential.
I'm so disappointed in this run I think I'd even <whisper> prefer a return of the DnA-era Legion.
From: Australia | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
I think there're legitimate grounds for criticism of this version of the Legion. I still like it, though, and I think it has the potential to be the best Legion ever, starting any issue now. (I posted a thing on the series as a whole so far on Legion Abstract just today, in case anybody's interested in my opinion.)
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