I have never been a fan of 20th / 21st Century interference. The Legion was at its best when it kicked Superboy out of his own book. I'd be quite happy to never see Super boy, man, girl, cat, dog, moose etc. along with all Robins, Titans and other extraneous characters invading the time line.
I guess I'm just too old for the changes.
I wish it well, but for the first time ever, I won't be along for the ride.
I'm not gonna say I'm in it for the long haul. It's not that I expect it to adhere to what I want with no variation, but at the same time, I want legion. I dont' know that this IS legion, yet. I'll give it a try. Just way to many things going against the foundations of Legion. Members with artificial powers, redesigns of characters that are almost as old as Superman himself relatively speaking, another destroyed earth.
I'll try it, but not loving what I'm seeing so far. I guess sometimes you have to let things go. Gonna try it....but....
Damn you, you kids! Get off my lawn or I'm callin' tha cops!
But I remember back in the 1980s, we would often wonder what was going on with old characters who could obviously live into the 30th century. Characters like Martian Manhunter and Dr. Fate. Or we would wonder what's going on on Thanagar in the 30th century, or some other alien world visited in, say, Justice League or Green Lantern, but never on Legion. I don't mind the 21st century characters, as long as they don't overshadow the Legion in their own book.
I've always thought the Legion should just be set on their own parallel Earth.
This.
Yeah, if the 'present' of the DCU is going to be a tangled mess of relaunch after relaunch every decade, it's probably best for the Legion future to not tie into it directly, and get as far away as it can from that muddled mess. There's certainly no reason why 21st century folk can't still visit, anymore than the Earth 1 Justice League couldn't visit Earth 2 on occasion.
Call it 'Earth L' and move on. It's *a* future. It might be *your* future, present-day-character, if you don't screw it up.
It's almost as though the multiverse, an idea that was introduced specifically to solve continuity problems, is actually the most effective way of solving continuity problems!
I'm not gonna say I'm in it for the long haul. It's not that I expect it to adhere to what I want with no variation, but at the same time, I want legion. I dont' know that this IS legion, yet. I'll give it a try. Just way to many things going against the foundations of Legion. Members with artificial powers, redesigns of characters that are almost as old as Superman himself relatively speaking, another destroyed earth.
I'll try it, but not loving what I'm seeing so far. I guess sometimes you have to let things go. Gonna try it....but....
I think most of us feel some or all of what you're feeling and saying here Rick. Like you I'm going to try out this new re-boot, and I'm willing to be open minded about it all. Worse case scenario is that is bad. Best case though is that is good and interesting within the confines of its own unique little uni-bubble.
For me the bottom line is : I have my own opinion of what the Legion is …. so that will not change, no matter what this new Bendis "Legion" turns out to be.
Last edited by Catonyx; 10/27/1910:40 AM. Reason: spelling
One thing that I won’t do anymore is continue to buy a title long after I stop liking it, just for the sake of the title. Fantastic Four, for instance, is a title that I kept buying even though I hadn’t enjoyed it for a couple of years. It was a waste of my money spent on the nostalgia of when I used to love the book.
So I will be trying this book out and plan to give it a decent chance. If it turns out that I just am not liking it though, I won’t continue to buy it, just to keep a Legion title. It doesn’t do anyone any good to support a bad title. I would rather the team go away than be poorly represented.
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
I've finally decided that, no matter how good or bad it turns out to be, I will support it. Because what happened in 2013 with the abrupt cancellation of all things Legion was a very bitter pill to swallow. I will never again make the mistake of taking the very existence of a Legion comic for granted.
Seconded. Also, and I know I'm in the minority, I actually like all of the new designs and can't wait to see them in action. The differences to what we've come to expect look like interesting stories that I hope we get to see.
Originally Posted by Nightcrawler
[quote=Ann Hebistand]I've finally decided that, no matter how good or bad it turns out to be, I will support it. Because what happened in 2013 with the abrupt cancellation of all things Legion was a very bitter pill to swallow. I will never again make the mistake of taking the very existence of a Legion comic for granted.
I’m with Ann Hebistand and Nightcrawler. I’ve very much missed having a legion comic, and I like the character redesigns generally (coupla losers, but for my tastes, interesting and creative overall) and am eager to see them in action.
Millenium And the Superman appearances did not impress me, mostly because I feel like I’ve been “introduced” to the new Legion 3 times in a row, shiny happy group shots, and I just want them to get to an actual story already. I also haven’t historically attracted to Bendis works.
Yet despite all that i still feel optimistic there is going to be something for me to like in this iteration. Maybe I will be disappointed, but I’d rather look for things to like than things to not-like. 😄😇🤪
Why are you laughing at me? It's unkind, as well as puzzling!
Yeah, I'll buy it, just because it's the Legion, even if it's not *my* Legion. Heck, I'm enough of a Legion fanboy that I'll buy stuff like the Hypernaturals, or snap up any appearance by the Imperial Guard, just to get a Legion-ish fix.
Soon I'll be in a back alley, snorting up old X-Men comics, rationalizing that Nightcrawler was *almost* a Legionnaire... Sad.
But while I don't mind an occasional "Let's check out what the Amazons are up to in the 31st century!", it shouldn't really be the main focus of the book. But already we've got a Dr. Fate, a Lantern, Aquaman's trident, a whole world modeled on Gotham City... it's a bit much.
I totally agree with this. The key is to use 21st century elements sparingly. (I thought DnA did a good job with Ra's as Ghul, for example) All in row like this just makes it seem the whole point of the book is to see "how things turn out" for their big franchises. I hope this won't be the case once the book gets going and we get to actually spend time with the characters. So far, they haven't really been presented as anything other than a gaggle of colorful faces.
Karate Kid and Star Boy have distinct voices. I'm interested in looking at the new Ultra Boy The VAST majority of the cast don't have much to do, because the focus is on Superboy and a couple others.
I'm not sure if I like the redesign of an old Legion villain. We shall see...
Just read it and wish the Frichtman tags were more readable, but we did finally see that it's "White Witch" and she seems to be a she.
Also, all that build up for Rose to be ignored, was a bit weird. Plus, weren't Wildfire, Ultra Boy, Karate Kid and Star Boy in the group shot in Millennium? Maybe Rose gets another shot at talking with Jon?
The disappointment starts right at the top of page 1 with “The Bludhaven Sewer System”. I don’t think even stories set today are still using that dumb Gotham ripoff are they? And then the seemingly interesting/dangerous item they’re chasing turns out to be... Aquaman’s trident. I thought we had at least another two issues until that thing came into play.
So the very first location and the very first MacGuffin of this new Legion series are 21st century DCU elements. This is obviously NOT going to be a series for those of us who like to see their 21st and 31st century DCUs kept separate.
I thought Ultra Boy had a pretty good showing here (pretty much the only character who did in the whole issue, followed distantly by Karate Kid) but I really didn’t understand the artistic intent behind keeping his identity hidden for the first couple of pages when there was no payoff to it? I just found it distracting. (And it didn’t help that all those pages seemed to do was rob him of his cape, something that might have actually made his boring costume more interesting.)
It was also weird that one of the first things we hear him say is something “racist”, assuming “Horraz” is the race of those aliens (although I guess that is still unclear).
It was certainly a choice to have one of the most famous and powerful villains in Legion history get jobbed in one punch right at the beginning of the issue like a 3rd rate minion... but I actually didn’t mind it. I feel like that, more than anything else this issue, told me that this was a brand new Legion. I also liked the Starbreaker-ish “space vampire” look that Sook gave him.
The rest of the issue was just a lot of boring exposition and introduction that should have been either a) included in ‘Millennium’ so that we could start the story proper here; or b) if it had to occur here, revealed to us in any number of more interesting ways. Even the hated (by me) Threeboot had a better opening issue than this.
Two other things stood out negatively to me:
1) How many pages were there in this issue? It felt like half a comic! The story suddenly ended before it had even begun! Has DC reduced their page count since I last read one of their comics (back in 2011)? If this is how short comics are these days then this is NOT value for money.
2) The dialogue. I think this was my first introduction to”Bendis-speak” and yes, it was mannered and a little too “trying too hard to be natural” but I didn’t mind it and think there have been MUCH worse culprits of that type of writing over the years, but what I didn’t like/get were all those bits where the dialogue just sort of... stopped; like a word balloon was missing or something. The dull thud of a final scene was especially egregious for this:
Two new, “mysterious” (well, until the dialogue identifies one of them as the UP President and then we can glean from their interaction that the other one is some sort of underling) characters are disconcertedly discussing why the Legion brought Superboy to the 31st century and what happened to Aquaman’s trident (two things that we as readers ALREADY know the answer to) and then this uninteresting conversation suddenly stops mid-sentence(!) and we end the issue with a closeup panel of... a total nobody who happens to be UP President!
Huh?! What was the purpose of that? Neither the words nor the pictures on that final page gave the reader anything new or interesting to carry with them until the next issue. It was the very definition of an anti-climax! My only conclusion is that that final panel is supposed to have a word balloon from the underling saying something like “- - working for, PRESIDENT LANE!” since, other than the vaguely Lois Lane-ish hairstyle, I can’t think of why we should know or care who this new character is.
To end on a small positive, the art is quite nice (though the coloring seems a little flat to me) and this might be my favorite Brainiac 5 ever, in both design and personality (thank God asshole-Brainy seems to be a thing of the past).
Yeah, I had the same reaction to the last page. It seemed like it was supposed to be some sort of dramatic reveal... but wasn't.
And between the overuse of splash pages and two-page spreads, and the dialogue which takes several pages to say what could have been said in one panel in the Silver Age, this is definitely feeling like not much bang for the buck.
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