Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Mr. Waid's writing - Brave and Bold vs. Legion

I just finished reading Brave & Bold #2 and I liked the entire issue - A LOT. Both the story and artwork were fantastic.

While I was satisfied with this issue, I was also annoyed that it was better than any of the current run of 27 Legion stories. How is it that we get some great stuff for 52 and Brave and Bold from Mr. Waid's hand, but the Legion stories are plodding and dull? Ugghhh! I had such high hopes for this Legion reboot, but it really wasn't very good. Is it:

a) The Legion was a Friday afternoon job with priority after 52 and Brave & Bold?

b) The writer loving the characters so much he loved them to death (a la Keith Giffen)?

c) The writer wanting to make some kind of social comment with the series that the entertainment element was lost in the process?

d) The writer wanted so bad to make something special that he overworked it, and like a watercolor painting with too many layers it began to turn to mud?

I suspect the closest answer is "D".

I admit to being probably one of the most vocal about my negative opinion on the writing of this Legion version, but only to encourage an improvement in the quality. It's obvious Mr Waid can write excellent stories, as his resume of Kingdom Come, The Flash, 52 and now Brave & Bold testifies. Unfortunately, this latest Legion version doesn't compare to the aforementioned. Too bad for Legion fans, but best wishes to Mr. Waid.

I have to agree. The Brave & Bold #2 was the best Legion work Waid has put out to date.

If the Legion was like that I would be very happy. I know Waid is a great writer I just hate his Legion. I think he's too much of a fan of it and his ideas of what they are and should be aren't quite right.

B&B 1-2 were both great. Waid's usually good, which is why his LSH run has been for the most part disappointing.

See, I'm loving the Brave and the Bold but I wonder if it will go the way of the Legion. What I mean is that I think the new Legion started off great, some wonderful stories and fun concepts, but the war occured and it dragged on a little too far, and the book never really recovered the spark of the first few issues.

So either something happened with Waid's Legion (like a, b, c, or d) or Waid is having a hard time keeping the energy going on this book.

Me, I hope it is simply that Waid wanted to do too much and lost the focus on this book and that he is still the incredible writer we know he is and that B&B will stay golden for years to come.

I agree with Steph. The new Legion really drew me in with its start-- I absolutely loved the first 8 issues or so with their new concepts and easy accessibility. But then things started to drag and the point seemed to get lost along the way and it was just like of like... meh.

However, I think the rotating cast in B&B will help keep things fresh. Plus, Waid's load has got to be lighter without the stress of 52-- that'll probably help, too.

Mark's had long runs on titles before so I wouldn't worry about B&tB. The way its going its going to be a fun book. You can tell the writing is coming easy and free in that book.

My take on what happened to LSH is that MW, knowing the Legion fan is hard to please tried to please all of them at once and ended up pleasing relatively few of them.

He layered on funky silver age science, long plodding Levitz style subplots, the idea of generational conflict, etc, etc. Essentially he built a Spruce Goose that had trouble taking off under its own weight.

I think most of the stuff he put in was pretty good. Maybe all that's needed is a fresh set of eyes to remix it a bit. Though the potential is there for him to 'Giffen' the Earth before he goes isn't there? I suppose the chance of that is lessened with the fact that his long-time collaborator Bedard is coming on.

Of course that didn't stop Giffen.

edit: Oh shoot I just remembered that was the Dominators as well. Coincidence I think not...

I definitely think the rotating cast has to help, because it kind of forces MW to pack all of his ideas on a particular subject into one issue, rather than letting them drag on like in the Legion. So, basically, he's got to get pretty much all of his stuff regarding Ventura and regarding Supergirl and Green Lantern interacting into the one issue featuring Supergirl and GL on Ventura. Unlike with the Legion where he could have like five issues of the team sitting around headquarters arguing about who should be leader...

Shudder...shudder!

You make some good points there, Tamper Lad. Some of what Mr Waid put in the Legion was good. Except the generational conflict, which in my opinion was more like a way to attract younger readers to the Legion, than anything else. And he overdid that bit.
Other than that - and the bratty attitude of some Legionnaires not befitting super-heroes, even teenaged ones- I don't have any major gripes with Mr Waid's version of the Legion. Still, considering the quality of what he's written in the past and what he's writing even now, I find the Legion storylines rather mediocre except the current storyline and the Lemnos one.

His writing in Brave and the Bold is exceptional! #2 was one of the best comics I've read in months!

I think the problem is that Mark was trying to show the Legion as this whole 'retro youth movement' rather than tell a good sci-fi super-hero story, which he was able to do so well with Flash, and now with Brave & Bold. That idea looks good on paper, but in execution it was terribly boring when spread out over such a long period of time.

I agree with Cobalt. Infact while many enjoyed the early issues I couldn't stand them. I started enjoying it with the Cham solo story and a few issues after that.

The retro youth movement I think was the killer. Do you really think we want to see Ultra Boy drive a 57 Thunderbird? Um, no. It's the future!!! These kids think stuff our grandparents liked is cool? No kid is going to like that.

The biggest problem I had with the "retro youth movement" thing is that it ended up really limiting/defining the sorts of stories that got told with the Legion.

The Legion is huge. It's got a diverse cast, and a massive landscape (spacescape?) in which to play. We should be getting a huge variety of stories. Yet everything we've gotten for the past seven or eight years, at least, has basically been the Legion's involvement in politics and/or the alien threat that lay on the horizon.

The Lemnos story wasn't great... but then to follow it up with another story about a complex alien invasion plan, with yet another massive group of young people to rival the Legion... it was just too much.

Could the "retro youth movement" inspired by the 21st century be compared to today's rpgs? I mean, people who play DnD and other "pseudo historical + magic" role playing games are inspired by medieval and mythical worlds. It's this "romanticization" that has given rise to SCA and fantasy literature (I love both), so by the 31st century driving a 1950s car may be likened to driving a chariot or somethinng.
You're right, though. The retro youth movement is my least favorite part of the three-booted Legion.

Waid explicitly compared the Legion to the SCA in interviews.

I actually think that the basic concept of the Legion as being "historical re-enactors" is pretty groovy (and really not that far away from the original "inspired by Superboy" origin for the Legion). It's the whole political dimension/youth revolution stuff that I didn't really dig.

I mean... the SCA isn't exactly overthrowing the government or anything.

The concept of the Legion as agent of social agent isn't bad, I think. One could argue of course that that's what super-heroes do anyway. They change society for the better. They make a difference.
A planetwide organized movement for social change with the Legion at its core could have been a good extended storyline, not the focus and reason of existence for the Legion. And yes, I'm getting tired of the politics too, considering that I don't agree with the modus operandi of the "new" Legion, or their ideas about what social change is, too.

I just don't see young kids today thinking about dressing as knights or in 18th century clothing.

The closest thing I've seen is when swing got popular among kids in the mid/late1990s. These kids also weren't high schoolers but more college age. And they cool thing about it they dressed in their swing outfits with tattoos or piercings all over their bodies. They weren't exactly trying to act like 1950s conservative America.

(How cool well it be for a member to have a corny golden age costume with piercings & tats?)

Anyways if anything it was something to get the Legion off the ground and I noticed they haven't mentioned much about it lately. I could live with that.

I think it's pretty common for young people to model themselves after various social movements of the past as they try to build their own identity. Though often, as you suggest, they end up mixing different eras, like all the retro-punk kids with the piercings and tatoos and late seventies fashions going out swing dancing like it's the 1930s. Though most of the swing-dancers I know are actually pretty conservative.

I do remember when I got to college and first saw people on campus dressed in armor, calling each other "thou" and stuff, and beating each other with swords, I thought it was kind of weird, but whatever...

When I got to college in 1999 there was a whle 70's Kung-Fu retro-trend going on for a little while, all the time combined with Dave Matthews Band. I won't begin to explain how many times I raised my eyebrows to that...

The question now becomes "Where are we?" as far as the next year of Legion stories is concerned. Will the new writer Mr. Bedard try to stick to the template Mr. Waid has established, or will it go in a different direction. The extreme possibility is of course another reboot, but I for one am against that, even it comes from the JSA storylines.

Still, I can't help but expect we'll have a bunch of Elsewhere stories for the 50th anniversary year, then a completely different version from what the last three years have been (look how far we've moved away from what DnA established!)

I'd say that the issue was Mark and Barry came in w/ a relatively good, fresh concept that got muddled down with all this cross-selling #@$%# that is the mess of DC today.

It's not just the Legion's sales that are falling, it's DC in general. The direction has been poor lately.

I think they need to sack Dido.

Oh, and Kid Quislet, moving away from the mess that DnA established was probably a good thing . What did they turn zoey into again??

I really wasn't commenting on whether moving away from DnA was good or bad; I was just commenting on how the Legion and its direction has changed so much in three years. In another three years, the Legion probably will not even resemble this current version.

But it sounds cool. Taking the old and mixing with something new I don't mind. Guys like Busiek and Waid already did a cool retro feel good thing in the late nineties. I don't mind retro but from a new angle? I bet a guy like Morrisson would be able to pull it off.

I still believe that the whole plot concept to focus on the generational conflict as a kind of main plot device just did not work. it stood in the way of a decent storyline from the beginning. Add Terra Firma, a lame villain group with a major villain whose power was that everybody forgot about him - how symbolic!!! - and you see why the Waidiverse never really lifted off.

What I thought was especially weak were the huge conventuions of youngsters standing around the Legion HQ, doing nothing but waiting. The whole idea of young people going somewhere to make a political statement (which one was it???) is very idealistic but as a plot device, it just did not work. Lacking a decent plot for over ten issues, Waid really lost the book on a very primary level.

It is a pity that he is leaving now that he finally seems to get a grip in the story, even though the main Legion characters still don't seem to be right in my eyes.

Whereas in Brave and the Bold, he can do anything - because when George Perez is drawing it, everything looks better no matter what the plot :-)

Actually, the kewlest part of # 1 for me (which was my least fave of the earliest issues) was the revelation that the pseudoLegionnaires outside the HQ were there as a sort-of "human/sentient shield" of protection against the SP's.

Of course, that didn't end well, but still...

Oh my, and now that I read #2 - which I thought was way better than the first issue - I can only repeat what I wrote earlier: George Perez is simply perfect, he is a God among comic artists. This issue was pure fun. Please let there be a Perez Legion :-)