Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Reading the Legion: Archives Volume 11

So... Invisible Kids death ... not good storytelling in my eyes. Always thought that his death was kind of the "cheapest" of all the Legion deaths, and rereading it now with my daugther confirmed my opinion. The fight with Validus was kind of lame from the beginning, the ending was forced, and the ghost dimension or whatever it was Myla came from was another of these "one hit wonders", there in this issue never to be visited again.
Invisible Kid dies to be united with his never seen before love interest to make a meaningless death even more meaningless cause he lives happily ever after in some kind of limbo afterlife.

Just like for example the fairy tale dimension Chameleon Boy nearly married into, here we have another example of a throwaway story element. Those were used way to often in that time period. Even my seven year old daughter was kind of annoyed to see Invisible Kid die and to hear from me that Myla and he would never again be mentioned...

But I was staring at the pencil and tried, I mean really tried to look beyond it and you know what I saw....tears because my eyes thought this was stupid. No limbo dimension. No IK.

Wait I will try again.

Ok, I was just asked if I was constipated. Experiment over.

For what it's worth, I offered a different take on Invisible Kid's death on my blog.

Ha now he did it again - done with Archive #11, and it was Shooter who saved the day (or the book) again. Yes, Cary Bates finally tried to do a blockbuster with Vengeance of the Super-Villains, but it felt somehow lacklustre. But I really could feel the mood changing with the first Shooter stories, Soljer Private War less so than the Karate Kid origin story or Ultimate Revenge. Those were not perfect but expanded existing back stories. They were less isolated than the stuff Bates was doing, no wonder cause Shooter probably still lived and breathed the Legion after all those years...

What hit me was how a story like "Lair of the Black Dragon", told in less than ten pages, today would be probably told in six issues - exposition, riddle, backstory, flashback, fighting, all this would be told so much longer in 2016.

I concur with a lot of the points you made, CK. Soljer is a stand-alone masterpiece, and it arguably has Grell's best art in a Legion story. Lair of the Black Dragon is a very 70s action-adventure potboiler, what with all the martial arts and exotic locales...but in a good way; and, yes, it does what it does with an economy that is impressive indeed by modern standards.

But it appears to me that I liked Ultimate Revenge more than you did; I think that one was way ahead of its time, and dealt with complicated themes better than a lot of supposedly more "sophisticated" stories from the last 10-15 years.

I'm also curious -- what did you think of the Super-Rejects story (I, personally, love it), and the one where Cos yells at Night Girl, cheats on her, and then they get back together even though I don't think either of them have gained a speck of wisdom?

Oh I did rather like Ultimate Revenge better than Soljer, I guess I was not clear enough in my words. I thought it was very well done and of course with Chemocal King in it, I am kind of biased anyway

I really thought that a major difference between the Bates and the new Shooter stories was that Shooter took more notice of the fact that there was actually a team of twenty plus heroes with, back then, ten plus years of history. Going back to Trom, expanding Karate Kids origin, this is the stuff I always liked to read. Bates stories did hardly add anything to the Legion myth, and did not really refer a lot to what had gone before...

As for the Super Rejects, yes quite a funny story, at least for introducing Calorie Queen (always loved that name). Again, Shooter took Legion Lore and added to it by giving Matter Eater Lad a new job, thus writing him out of the book but still keeping him along for future stories. But he forgot about Calorie Queen as a replacement later on - of course he did cause I guess Tenzil was written out of the book for his super power, not because he lacked personality

Night Girl is a favorite of me and my daughter, so again I'm biased. Mostly I was wondering how she managed not to fall out of her new costume