Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Shooter on editorial interference, production errors and Manapul

In the comments to a recent blog post, Shooter gave a list of errors that the editors and/or the artists made during the production of his ´recent Legion issues. Bleeding Cool has published a feature in which they compare Shooter's descriptions of the errors with the actual printed comics:

http://www.bleedingcool.com/forums/...er-On-Amending-The-Legion-Of-Superheroes

It seems to me that on the one hand, Shooter has some quite valid complaints; on the other hand, he expresses these complaints with little tact or regard for the feelings of others.

Some of his complaints are valid, others (such as "make Phantom Girl's legs more phantom-ey") are ridiculous.

I was actually a bit taken aback by this.

It was probably unwise to partner a rookie artist on what is possibly DC's most difficult-to-handle artistically title with a well-seasoned and notoriously perfectionist writer.

I wonder how many of his complaints were added on due to his frustration at his requests not being followed?

He sounded quite irritated, and some people become more nitpicky in that mood. Other people are more calm, and will only complain about the most important things while letting others slide.

I think his complaint on the changes in his text piece for the flight ring were very valid, though. And he phrased his complaints in a firm, but still reasonable, way.

Manapul's response:

http://francismanapul.tumblr.com/post/10684621178/mr-shooter-and-the-legion-of-super-heroes

Manapul's response was way classier than Shooter's airing-of-laundry.

I criticized Manapul for what I perceived as a strong decline in the quality of his art from the first few issues (which were friggin' *gorgeous*) to later in the run, but it increasingly seems like it was Shooters art direction that led to what I saw as a decline in quality.

(Shooter specifically asking for a more human-looking Giselle was a big one!)

I'm not a Shooter-hater by any stretch of the imagination, but he really seemed to quash Manapul's best work on this title.

I'm not surprised to hear about communications going so awry when the writer and artist have not only never even met or sat down to talk about what they are co-creating, but don't have even direct lines of communication, but have to coordinate through a third party! That's all kinds of counter-intuitive!

With the huge delays on the Bat-Books, the mess of "The Return" one shots, contradictory stories, and now these revelations about Legion, I'm convinced more than even that Mike Marts isn't a very good editor.

Projectra had been an excellent character in this series, until Shooter his own author destroyed it completely.
In addition it was trying to kill also Element Lad because it could not use like his power. Shameful!

what he said.

Manapul certainly gave a very admirable response.

Shooter's comments are pretty interesting. It would have been more politic to have kept them as internal communication with the editor and made more general comments in public about his script not being followed. However, it does give us an idea of some of the battles that go on in producing a book.

Too bad for Shooter that he wasn't the artist as well; he could have produced exactly what he envisioned. I saw an interview with Chris Ware (who does the Acme Novelty Library series) in which he described how minutely involved he was with every step of production, admitting to being very very demanding and picky. It must be pretty frustrating for creators, writers and artists, to not have things come out the way they want due to other players or, as Francis said, communication problems.

Agreed... and if he's going to play Middleman, like he apparently tried to do here to "spare" Francis from Shooter, at least do it well.

This issue came up again on Facebook in one of the Legion groups discussing Shooter's birthday. It made me realise that I miss having Ricardo around, even though we never really agreed on a single thing about Shooter's run.

What other Legion groups!?