Last month I had an interview in the Augusts Interlac regarding The upcoming Legion Companion available in October. If anyone wants a hard copy or copy in WORD format let me know. There area couple of Illustrations and picture of the cover of the book.
LLLater,
Kevin
Interview with Glen Cadigan and the 45th Anniversary Legion TwoMorrows Book
I met Glen Cadigan online early in 2002 through his LegionOnline.net website about the Legion of Super-Heroes. I immediately gravitated to his and Jo and Terri Anne Sanning's Legion Clubhouse Site which also featured the Silver Age characters which I was most familiar with after not following the Legion or comics since the late 1970s. When I put together the 30 Year Tribute to the Legion Outpost last summer, Glen was the first to submit a comment and some people asked who he was since the other contributors were mostly familiar to the Outpost or Interlac gang.
Well, Glen first got interested in the Legion back in the late Seventies, although he didn't become a regular Legion fan until the Levitz/Giffen era of the early Eighties. He created the website to fill the void of preboot Legion sites online. Late last year Glen mentioned that he was working on a "Secret Project" comparable to the one Brainiac 5 worked on when he was creating Computo. Being the typical nosey person that I am, I bugged him about it. He mentioned that he was doing a Legion of Super-Heroes book similar to the one that was done on the Justice Society of America to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the birth of the LSH in 1958 (the same year as my birth, too). Harry Broertjes mentioned in the Time Cube 161 that he has been in contact with Glen and mentioned the book, which was its first public announcement. I asked Glen if I could interview him for Interlac, and he said "Sure." Here are some questions I threw together for him on the project.
1. How did you come up with the idea for this 45th Anniversary Book of the LSH? Can you tell us what inspired you and how long have you been working on it?
I had always found it odd that no one had done this sort of project before. Legion fandom is well established, but apparently separate from the rest of fandom. It seems like the Legion has always had to beg for space in trade magazines, even though it's fairly well established that there's a market out there for this sort of material. I guess at the end of the day what makes it into magazines about comics are topics which are the preference of various editors, none of which, apparently, are Legion fans.
As for how long I've been working on it, officially and unofficially I'd say since last summer (2002).
2. How did you approach the publisher on the project, and what was their reaction?
I mentioned to P.C. Hamerlinck, who edits Fawcett Collectors of America (FCA) every month in Alter Ego that I was working on a Legion book, and asked him if he thought that TwoMorrows would be interested in it. He said yes, and as it turns out, he was right. P.C. also helped design the book's logo.
3. Once the book began, how did you determine which direction to go with it, and did TwoMorrows give you full freedom with the direction of the book?
They were pretty much hands off with the project. They knew that I knew the Legion better than they did, and so what went in it was pretty much up to me. As far as the direction goes, I started at the beginning of the Legion and worked forward from there.
4. How did you start to tackle this project and once you did, what were some of the ways that it went smooth and what were some of your biggest struggles?
I just jumped in with both feet, pretty much. I had already acquired a vast amount of information on the people behind the Legion while making my website, so most of the research was already done. Sometimes it was hard to find people, sometimes it was hard to get a response, and sometimes it was just difficult to set up a time to actually get the interview done. But it was worth it in the end; I can honestly say that there has never been a more comprehensive behind-the-scenes book on this topic ever published before. There's stuff in it which is going to make people's eyes open.
5. What was the hardest part of putting this together and what did you enjoy the most?
I'd say the hardest part was coordinating the whole thing. Getting different people on different parts of the globe to contribute artwork, give interviews, etc. could be a logistical nightmare at times. The part I enjoyed the most was "finding" people who had been "lost" for years. Some were surprised to hear that people still remembered them, and some hadn't thought about the Legion in years.
6. What have you found out through compiling this book that makes the Legion so popular over the past 45 years?
I've personally found that people either extremely love the Legion or ultimately despise the Legion, and I have never seen a following in other characters such as Superman or in the whole DC universe like the Legion has.
The thing with the Legion is that there's something there for everyone. It's both a super-hero comic and a science-fiction comic, with enough members that everyone can claim a favorite. It's mostly a self-contained universe, which encourages its readers to think outside the box. Legion fans tend to be smarter than average, so the complexity of the universe appeals to them. It's the sort of comic which stands alone and doesn't require knowledge of any other title to enjoy it. When you think about it, you could say the same things about Star Wars or Star Trek. The Legion also has it's roots in childhood, and kids aren't afraid of complicated things. If you put your imagination on a long leash in an area where there's room to roam, you usually don't get disappointed.
7. I've noticed within the past several years a reoccurrence for the "good old days" of comics, specifically the Legion with the obvious success of the Legion Archives, which I think outsold any of the other DC Archives, and for the facsimile books such as Superboy 147 which is a reprint of the origin of the Legion. Do you ever see a day where DC will go back to a format with the characters and storylines as they were originally portrayed in the Adventure series?
Anything's possible, but the current regime at DC certainly seems to have dug in their heels as far as the current continuity is concerned. If DC did restore the preboot, they wouldn't go all the way back to the Adventure days. The twenty years which followed it are every bit as legitimate as the twelve years it took to cover the Legion's Silver Age, so they wouldn't be ignored.
When you think about it, wasn't that what the reboot was all about? Making the Legion teenagers again?
8. So what can we expect to see in the book?
Will it be a chronological format from the standpoint of stories/creative standpoint, or something else?
Interviews, interviews, and even more interviews. Basically, everyone who worked on the Legion from 1958-1994 and still has a pulse was contacted for this book. There are even interviews in it with dead people, so that'll let you know how thorough I was. It's the most comprehensive behind the scenes Legion book ever published. Hopefully, it'll clear up things which Legion fans have debated for years.
9. Can you give some examples of issues which the book will clear up?
Why the Legion was really rebooted, why certain people left when they did, and what Keith Giffen's favorite color is. Hint: it's not red.
10. Is there anything else you want to add, and can you give us information for where the book can be purchased?
Just that the book will have an all new cover by Dave Cockrum, an introduction by Jim Shooter, and a never before published collaboration by Curt Swan and Steve Lightle. It's 224 pages long, retails for $24.95, and can be purchased directly from TwoMorrows at
http://twomorrows.com/books/legioncompanion.html in addition to being available at comic book stores everywhere.
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