Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Visionaries of Tomorrow What would v4 have been like under Lightle's guidance?

I posted this before, but it got wiped out in one of the blackouts. With Steve hanging around more lately, I thought it might be fun.

So what would the Legion have been like had Steve rather than Keith Giffen been given creative control of the series after Paul Levitz left?* My guess is that he would have continued Levitz's pattern of developing the "next generation" of Legionnaires (Blok, White Witch, Invisible Kid II, Tellus, etc.) rather than moving the series back to a focus on the Adventure-era characters in the way Giffen did.

*Note that this isn't a thread for TMK-bashing, but rather for speculation.

I like the idea ... but, of course, it would require several issues to properly answer this question.

: )

Steve

good topic EDE !!!

and hey Steve, i'm looking forward to you thoughts on the subject .....

Matthew.

In one word - Readable!!!

I think my feelings about v4 are well known. If Steve was the man in control at that time I would most likely still own every issue of the various legion titles, as it is I sold them all about 18 months into v4. AAARRRGGGHHH!!!!

If Steve had been put in charge? Hmmm.... more non-humanoids, more skin

I imagine that I would have introduced another non humanoid Legionnaire, eventually. I am the one who suggested introducing a Khundish Legionnaire, although the story and character which I had planned would have been vastly different than what Levitz and Giffen eventually did. Likewise, my suggestion that Wildfire regain his physical body, only to eventually willingly relinquish it, would have been handled in an entirely different way.

I doubt that you would have seen many nine panel grids. Certainly, Dawnstar would not have lost her wings, Mysa would not have become Mordru's abused spouse, Dreamy would not have turned into a compulsive eater, and Dirk Morgna would not have died.

Polar Boy would have proven himself to be a pillar of the Legion. My interpretation of Brek was always a stronger, more respectful one, than Giffen's. Mon-El may very well have had to face his one true weakness ... the emotional scars he acquired as a result of his 1,000 year imprisonment in the Phantom Zone. Although the scars might never be fully erased, you can rest assured that Mon would have emerged as a stronger character as a result of having faced them. Maybe Ultra Boy and Phantom Girl would have moved to Rimbor, and become a very socially conscious superhero team on their own. They were in need of some character growth. Myg (Karate Kid 2) would have probably played a supporting role, perhaps becoming a director/trainer for the Legion Academy. The political aspect of the United Planets was due for exploration. Corruption within the Science Police might have been an issue that could have impacted the Legion of Super-Heroes, and their place in the U.P. Challenges, both personal and intergalactic, would have surely occurred ... but I have to believe that the Legion's ideals and virtue would ultimately remain intact.

I believe the greatest difference is that Giffen painted a universe ruled by chaos, while I would have focused on a positive universe frequently under attack by the forces of chaos. Ultimately, the story of the Legion must be a story of hope. We already know the dread future that awaits us if we fail to resist our destructive impulses. The Legion is about the difference that we can make if we join together, despite our differences, and reach for the best that we have in us. The Legion's future should always remain a vision created and maintained by people who have not lost the strength to dream.

Despite the many creative accomplishments of the post 5 year gap storytellers, their one fatal flaw might well have been that they remembered too late what the dream behind the Legion was all about.

Well, that is my opinion, anyway.

So, in answer to the question, "What would version 4 have been like under Lightle's guidance" ... I can only say one thing with a certainty. It would have been different in tone and message.

Steve Lightle

I would have loved to have read that. Especially on issues drawn by you.

I love your idea of sending Jo and Tinya to Rimbor, that is certainly a place where they could do a lot of good (unfortunately they would not be able to remain very active as Legionnaires, would they?). And your view of Mon-el is spot on, that also would have made for excellent stories.

Yes, I would have prefered that to what came in v4. Oh, well. But perhaps in the future you'll be able to further influence where the present Legion is going. That Khundian Legionnaire sounds promising...

Juan

WOW. Thanks for the detailed answer, Steve.

In my attempts to look at the Giffbaum era fairly, I tend to say that the ideas they had, while completely misguided, COULD have been handled well. They just WEREN'T-- on EVERY SINGLE level. (sigh)

The whole time it was going on, I never once thought "If only Steve Lightle were doing this." Probably because Steve had moved on and was doing something else (which I never got interested in enough to buy). But while it was going on, hardly a month went by when I didn't think, "If only BARRY KITSON were doing this." At the time, Barry was doing absolutely SUPERB work on L., a viscious, nasty, mean-spirited S.O.B. series-- but somehow one that had class IN SPITE of itself. (Let's not forget, THAT was keith's idea, TOO.) I just felt it criminal that such a fantastic artist was-- to my eyes-- being WASTED on the "spin-off" book, instead of the "real" one.

And then STUART IMMONEN came along, and I was in a state of shock. The whole time HE was doing the book-- at a point when it was under almost constant fire from those who loved the Giffbaum era-- I kept thinking, "If only Stuart had drawn the Giffbaum era instead of Keith." GOD ALMIGHTY, at least I could have stood to LOOK at it... and I'm sure his storytelling (like Adam Hughes when HE teamed with Keith on JLA) would have improved on what was already there.

Wow....Steve your answer is the reason why we Legion fans love your work so much. You understand the Legion more so than anyone who has worked on the book in the last 15 years. v4 under your guidance could have catapulted that version of the Legion to greatness.

IF ONLY..............

I have to interject at this point and say that V4 is still by far my favourite phase in Legion history.....

As much as I think Steve's art rocks in a big way I'm glad he didn't have anything to do with that era....

But that's just my opinion.... Please don't hate me

Chalk me up as one who LOVES the Giffen/Biernbaum Legion. I hadn't been reading them AT ALL since the Crisis, but all it took was one look at this strange new Legion... and I was THERE!

The way I saw it, once the killed off Superboy, they killed off the Legion.

That's right-- there is no Legion any more. It's dead. Without Clark (Superboy) Kent, Linda Lee (Supergirl) Danvers, Krypto and Streaky, it's not worth reading.

However, the Giffen/Biernbaum stuff was wild and different... and very cool. One of the few bright spots in the post-Crisis DC Universe.

PS: I love Steve Lightle's art, though!

Dog, thanks for dropping by to express your thoughts. Quite a few people, although far from the majority as sales showed, did like the Giffen/Bierbaum era. It did succeed in shaking up the status quo, which was probably necessary. Giving the creative team all due respect, I still strongly disagree with the negative, sometimes morbid, approach that they seemed to take.

Of course I don't expect any two Legion fans to agree on everything. For instance, I don't believe that the LSH was all about Clark Kent and his family of characters. Some of my least favorite Legion stories are those that involve Pete Ross, Jimmy Olsen, Lana Lang, and other Superboy cast members, as central figures.

There is no way that I could relegate the entire Legion cast to Kal-El's shadow. Frankly, I'm one of those people who thinks that Superboy too often steals the spotlight when he is featured in a Legion tale. I should also admit, that although I have been a Legion fan for nearly thirty years, I am not a big follower of the Superman books. Superman/Superboy always seemed just a bit too perfect, in personality and physical abilities ... almost boring. When he is working side by side with the Legion, he seems less immortal ... more like one of the guys.

I guess, that if my theory about diversity and a optimistic sense of community being central to the success of the Legion is correct, then the concept of any one member being indispensable works against that central theme.

I'll leave the topic open for others, though. What are your thoughts on the subject?

Thanks again, to Dog Boy, for taking the time to share his opinions.

Steve Lightle

I second the emotion. Whilst I found it difficult at first to adjust to such an extreme change I ended up loving the TMK era.

The 5YG was were I joined up as a Legion fan. Issue 12's announcement by Cham that "they're back!" is one of the most hopeful and inspiring bits of characterisation I've read in any comic.

I still think there's plenty of positives in this part of the Legion's history. The realistic supportive love between Jo and Furball, the power of Rokks personality that drives him to face off against Mordru, Chams determination to re-build a legend, Vi's ability to keep going and function as a wonderful loving person after all the appalling things she has had to live through etcetc

The only difference is we are shown the horrors that affect day to day lives too. Mysas abusive marriage is particularly poignant as it's something that even today a LOT of people have to live through without the hope of a gang of friends from their past coming to liberate them.

And I liked the 9 panel grid as it made the artist THINK about how to fit thestory into the page rather than just throwing big splash panels all over. I really believe that 90% of all pictures that take up a whole page are driven by laziness not by any story telling skill and as an example who wasn't impressed with the panel that heralded the return of Jan? WOW!! After such a brilliant subtle creepy inspired build up his return was incredible!

Anyway, this seems to be everyone favourite bug bear era of the Legion so I'll get off the soap box and make room for the next voice.

When I asked for comments, I certainly wasn't inviting anyone to bash previous creative teams or to flatter my own ego. I was referring to the timely question of whether or not too much Superboy is a bad ... or good, thing.

One person has already suggested that the Legion has no purpose or value without Clark, while I've suggested that maybe too much emphasis on the Superman family of characters has sometimes unfairly held deserving Legionnaires out of the spotlight.

Any thoughts on that topic? There don't seem to be very many people expressing their opinions lately, and I'd certainly like to see that change. Maybe we can draw our fellow Legion fans into a debate on this subject. It shouldn't hurt to try.

Steve

Oh, I agree with you in not needing Superboy at all in the Legion. As you (and others) have said, he tends to steal the spotlight. With no good reason, many of the Legion's characters are much more interesting than him (M'Onel, Ultra Boy and Andromeda are all infinitely more interesting than Superboy, for example!).

However, I don't think Kal is bein re-introduced into the Legion because he is needed in the story, he is being re-introduced because TPTB think he might attract new readers to the title. I don't know whether they are right or not, but if they think this is the way of getting new readers and perhaps salvaging the title from cancellation, I say go for it. I'm certainly willing to put up with Superboy if it means attracting more people to the title. Perhaps later on we can convince them to stay after Superboy has left...

Juan

While I enjoyed, loved and still do, the early issues of the 70's and 80's when Superboy was an integral part of the team, in this day that relationship just causes trouble.

I never will forgive TPTB and Byrne for rewriting history and eliminating Clark's childhood as a costumed hero without even so much as thinking about what that meant to the Legion. Were that not to have happened maybe the Legion's star would not have dimmed as it did.

Now that it appears that Superboy (Kal not Kon) may be put back into Clark's history again, they are tying back to the Legion. What happens when the next creative team decides, "Wait a minute. Superman was never Superboy and any story published with him didn't happen." I don't want to go through that again. I don't want a history of Lar replacing Superboy in the stories and Laurel replacing Kara. How are you supposed to build a fanbase with such convulted history?

Sure let's have a "guest" appearance by Kon. Let it pull in some of the Young Justice/Teen Titans fans and keep them reading the title. But don't make him integral to the group. The Legion needs to stand on its own and it has finally been doing that.

In general, I like the idea of Superboy in the Legion, and really like the character and his supporting cast (though making them honorary Legionnaires isn't necessary), but I'd prefer a Superboy who isn't clearly destined to grow up to be Superman. Something else else like the Pocket Universe idea that the Legion, when they time travel, aren't necessarily travelling to their own past, but without the whole "Time Trapper as Puppet Master" aspect that eventually developed from that attempt to fix things up.

I'd also prefer him to be less powerful, and learning to use his abilities with the Legion, though, so he isn't the story/panel hog that he was in the old days.

Thank-you, Mr. Lightle, and every one else who've responded. I've been a fan of the Legion for such a long time, it's great to finally find such a great meeting place-- and it's cool to be able to engage in conversation with some of my favorite Legion artists.

To take the discussion a bit further, I'd like to explain a little more about how I see Superman, the importance of his mythology, and the Legion's place in it. I realize these are only my opinions: I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything or prove anything-- the characters belong to DC... I'm just a Legion fan. And if it sounds like I'm taking the concepts too seriously, I'm only looking at the characters in the way I'd approach the elements of any story I was writing.

So first, I have to be straight up in saying that I think CRISIS-- a book I enjoyed at the time, I loved every issue, and the death of Supergirl hit me like Gwen Stacy dying-- was the BIGGEST mistake DC ever made. CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS destroyed the most interesting characters ever to exist in comics and replaced them with inferior copies, hollow shells of their former selves-- depowered, common, and made mortal.

The problem with the Weisienger/Schwartz Superman-- what folks usually mean when they call him "boring"-- is that few knew how to consistently write the monthly adventures a character so powerful, in such a way that we could relate to him on an emotional level. His true potential, evident in the Christopher Reeve Superman movie, was rarely tapped. One of the best examples I have of Superman "done right" is Alan Moore's "Whatever Happened to the Man of Steel?" In that story he embraced the entire mythology, and he used it in such a way as to make Superman someone we could really care about. The scene with Supergirl and the Legion really made me cry.

Superman was once an almost god-like cosmic character. He was immortal. He did not sleep. He didn't need to eat. As long as he was not under the light of a red sun, there was basically nothing he couldn't do.

But how do you write a character like that and make him interesting in the context of the DC Universe, without making all your other heroes-- Batman, Flash, Martian Manhunter-- redundant?

In working terms, if he could travel time, move planets, and move at the speed of light, why didn't he just solve all our problems? How could you do a story where he is given any trouble by a crime wave, much less a single human bank robber?

The important question is-- Why didn't Superman exercise the full potential of his powers? Why did he pull his punches? If he could construct Superman robots capable of literally taking his place when he left earth on some urgent mission, why didn't he just send them out as his emissaries at other times-- to help the cops if nothing else?

With someone portrayed as self-aware, someone who behaved as deliberate as Superman, there would have to have been a reason why he didn't, and maybe one a little deeper than shown in the classic "Must there Be a Superman?" The Silver Age Superman had a brain that rivalled Brainiac-5's. His memory was infallible. What did he know that we didn't? What stopped him from giving humanity a golden age of peace? What put those restraints on him that caused him to continue to live as Clark Kent and submit himself to the same limitations as Earth-born humans?

I submit that the solution to the problem of how to write an interesting Superman is to be found in the use of that incredible and often whacked-out mythology that built up around the Silver Age Kryptonians. The Legion is central to shaping who Superman is, but another, very important part of the larger Superman concept are the "Imaginary Stories" that once played such an important part in the comics.

If Superman were such a god-like, cosmic character, I think he'd have had a personality that was itself alien, beyond our own in the same way his strength, intelligence, and moral capacities exceeded ours. So what if the "Imaginary Stories" were not just taken to be a hokey old plot device, but a manifestation of an essential part of who Superman is? In the mythos, the Superman portrayed in the imaginary stories can be taken as a fragmentary aspect of the Kryptonian Kal-El's larger personality. These stories may not have occured in the same reality of Lois Lane's waking world, but to Kal-El, they may have been a sort of parallel consciousness which he could see into, an object lesson which prevented such actions in the "real" world.

What I found even more interesting, especially when I was the same age, was SUPERBOY. Imagine being a kid who was being raised as a normal human being, and slowly realizing that you are unlike anyone else around you, that you are one of a kind, and capable of things no one else can do. Imagine coming to terms with that. Being a boy, becoming a teenager, and already being so powerful, being so widely known for your deeds that you were ALREADY a legend throughout the galaxy-- AND a legend one thousand years into the future...!

Which is why I think the whole concept of the Legion of Super-Heroes is so pivotal in the mythology. Looking at the Legion from one side, it is the story of a strong, constitutionally-based organization inspired by the legend of this god-like boy. The Legion lived in a future utopian society that was the proof and the result of everything that Superman did and stood for-- Truth, Justice, and the American Way. And more than that, these kids-- the Legionnaires-- sought him out-- they were so inspired by him they wanted him to be one of them.

Which is the other side of that relationship: With the Legion, Superboy not only had friends, he had PEERS. As incredible and dominating a person the character of Kal-El is, when Superboy is with the Legion, when he travels one thousand years into the future for adventures in this magical time, he is among his equals. It is no longer a given that he is always going to be the smartest, the strongest, or the best. With the Legion he was one of the gang. He could also know Supergirl, giving him a cousin his own age. He could have an "older brother," in the form of Mon-El, the Daxamite (not to mention Krypto could even play with Streaky).

I don't think Superboy dominated the Legion. I think all the Kryptonians (Kal-El, Krypto, Kara Zor-El, and the real Mon-El-- who also vanished with the CRISIS) gave the Legion that extra spark that set them above and apart from all the other super teams and all the teenage groups... I think the Legion played a crucial role in shaping the personality of the character who was once the greatest star in comics history.

Let me close by saying I've been a fan of the Legion since before the Cockrum days even, him being one of my all-time favorite artists, so I hope this isn't taken as a negative posts. I also think Mr. Lightle draws a great Superboy and the Legion. I want to especially say that the covers you did for the Cosmic Boy mini-series that tied in to the LEGENDS event were really cool. Each one of those four covers was a special treat.

I know this post was long. I hope it made sense and explained where I'm coming from.

I was wondering... what would Chemical King have been under Lightle guidance?
This character had some powers I still don't understand. I've been curious what was this hero about

I am not sure how Steve would have handled Chemical King.

As for his power. It was that he could speed up or slow down chemical reactions. For example he could speed up the oxidation of a steel door and have it rust away.

I think the main reason that Chemical King was not used was because it is hard for most writers to work out how his power would work and how to use it in a story.

I think Condo, with the correct creative team, could have been one of the Legion's powerhouses. In this day with the internet to help research what he could do, he'd rank right up there with Jan.

He's very interesting to write, something I've done in role playing games. If you use a little creativity with Condo's control of chemical reactions tempered with having to also not lose control he would be a great addition to the team today.

Of course we're stuck with Kid Q now who basically can do the same thing with her quantum fields so we'll never know.

Re: Superboy
Preboot, I didn't think he overshadowed the team too much in the stories I read (aside from the ones where Clark's 2oth century cast showed up). But he didn't seem like the legendary inspiration either -- he eventually became one of the guys (though maybe the most powerful one), which kinda defeated the purpose of his presence, imo. It was kinda fun as "Superboy's buddies and their superhero club" but later on he seemed to fit less and less. Then there was the fact that since he was destined to be Superman you knew there was never going to be any great changes to the character.

Postboot, the team has gone along fine without him and aside from the fact that this isn't even Clark Kent, even Clark Kent isn't what he was -- meaning that we now have the "legendary Valor". Throwing Superboy in this book is a nice nod to the past and good for a story once in a while, but if they plan to make his presence permanent in some way, then it'd be like trying to shove a square peg in a round hole.

In general, the less of a connection that the Legion has to 21st century continuity, the happier I am. DC hasn't done a big crossover event in a while, but when they inevitably do, I'd rather that the Legion isn't involved. While I realize that such an event might bring new readers to the book (a concept I've always contested; my pull list changed not a whit after Crisis, Legends, and Zero Hour, with the exception that I dropped Legion for two years six months after ZH)I think that the intrusion into the Legion's already complex continuity is rarely worth the trouble. I enjoy the stories from the seventies and eighties when Superboy was just one of the guys, but that Legion is gone now and reintroducing Superboy just confuses things. I hope that after Foundations, Superboy is gone and the current incarnation of the team can continue to grow without him.

i've always missed not seeing Superboy in the Legion.

one of the saddest moments of comics for me was when i saw Mon-El holding the dying Superboy after the battle with the Time Trapper (right up there with the deaths of Kara, Barry, and Gwen Stacy)

one of my biggest dislikes of the 5YG era was the fact TPTB made them write out Superboy as the inspiration for the Legion, replacing him with Lar (Valor) (but don't get me wrong. i seem to be in the minority of readers that really liked the 5YG Legion)

But Seeing Kon flying with the rest of the Legion on the cover of Issue #25 and the cover to issue #27...man, i haven't been this hyped for a Legion story in a long time. i just kept thinking (like i said in a previous post) "Superboy's back!"

here's to hoping that Kon doesn't follow in Kal-El's footsteps and become a panal hog