Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Greg Larocque ROCKED!

Anybody else love his Legion. I feel in love with his Phantom Girl...literally.

Some issues were better than others...also depending on the inker. The backgrounds weren't as groovy as Giffen's...but man his characters just jumped out at me.

I'm a fan of his Power Man & Iron Fist as well...which is really different than his Legion stuff. He drew PM & IF right or am I confusing my childhood memories again? I remember a more sleek style which I am suprised didn't make it into the Legion. Then again PG wasn't sleek and I loved it. I remember the Controller kidnapping them (2nd time) to fight Tyrazz as a highlight!

Any other guys grew up loving Greg's work?

Ya think I would spell his name right even. GREG LAROCQUE!

Psst!...

I'm definitely a fan of his. Check out his Legionnaires !

Ah! The memories! I have all those issues. As a kid it was pretty exciting having the little flash cards in the back.

Thanks NC!

Sorry to disagree but I think he was one of the worst Legion artist's since I started reading in 1978. His style was not imaginative enough for the future. All his legion looked a like. Hated his turned up "pig" noses and the inker at the time was poor at best. The biggest problem I had with him was he followed Steve Lightle who did an outstanding job!

Greg Larocque draw the most beautiful girls in the Legion history.
Shadow Lass, Phantom Girl, Dream Girl, Sensor Girl, Saturn Girl and don't forget the wonderful Sarya.
Only the men has all the same face.

I do seem to recall there were mainly 2 inkers over LaRocque. The first was quite good, but then Mike DeCarlo took over for most of his run, and it was always just average. (Still, much better than a LOT of DeCarlo's inks on BATMAN over Jim Aparo, which somehow seemed to get "muddier" as he went. Too much work or just really bad stats?)

What surprised the heck out of me was when Keith Giffen came back. Giffen-DeCarlo was a MUCH better team than LaRocque-DeCarlo. DeCarlo just "worked" better over Giffen, but particularly on #50. Almost immmediately after his return, Keith started DISTORTING his faces, making everybody look like they had square heads and fat lips. (Too much LSD? Or was that just Marshall Rogers...?) Then Al Gordon took over (a MUCH more talented inker than ALL his Legion work combined would ever, ever suggest) and the slide to art hell really commenced. (But that's just MY opinion... heehee)

Greg got to draw possibly the most important Legion story ever, The Death of Superboy. I never loved his work but I liked it a helluva lot better than I did Joe Staton's.

I've recently seen some of Laroque's pencils and he's really good. I wish (oh I wish) there'd been a better skilled inker (or at least an inker more to my artistic tastes) for that story arc. I've always felt Supes should have gone out with a lot of fanfare and a big sendoff.

Different tastes, I suppose... I always thought Lightle's early work on LEGION was pretty run-of-the-mill. You could've swapped him out with early Jurgens or Shoemaker and I would've been hard-pressed to tell them apart. It wasn't until his coverwork that I really noticed his style... and then, he didn't seem capable of meeting a monthly schedule.

LaRocque wasn't my favorite artist on the LEGION, by any means... but since '78? I'd easily put him above Jim Janes, and Lightle's early work. As prof mentioned, DeCarlo really didn't do the work any favors. And Yeller- however much I agree with you about the classic Superboy's send-off, LaRocque definitely pulled out the stops for that final 2 page funeral scene. That might be my favorite of all his LSH pencils, and even DeCarlo couldn't muddy its significance and power.

I liked Greg's work, although I agree that there wasn't a great deal of diversity in his figures (I kind of have that problem myself ). However, he is still in my Top 10 favorite Legion artists. Part of it may be because I associate his art with one of my favorite times of Legion history (Levitz in his heyday).

Tru'dat,Poverty Lad. I don't mean to complain about the Superboy story arc. I was pleased to see him back with the group and Levitz/Laroque kept us in the dark about the end until we got there the hard way -one page at a time-
That IS (btw) my favorite story from his run as the LSH artist and that's counting the Quislet/Wildfire friendship stuff.

LaRocque is one of my own favorites. He was notably more diverse in body types and visible features for women than for men ... but, yes, those women! All of them held the balance that nobody quite managed as well, before or since, of being athletic in build without being musclebound. Especially notable on his Dream Girl, but also on his elegant Dawnstar -- Greg's own favorite to draw, and he did the best and most realistic wings for her.

His other distinction for me was that he could convey unique and informative facial expressions on Legionnaires who were some distance away, in the middle- to background. With so many in fight scenes, this is often needed in Legion plots, but was rarely achieved. (Some, such as the later Giffen, got lazy and omitted facial features entirely from middlegrounds, except, barely, for eyes.) That facial adeptness does also add majesty to scenes such as Superboy's funeral, already mentioned.

LaRocque doesn't suffer by comparison with any Legion artist in other respects, especially Lightle -- less warmth of line, less fluid, but more clarity and slightly better anatomy. (Sorry, Steve, but the eye spacing still gets to me ...)

IMO, he drew he DEFINITIVE
Dawnstar!

I looked it up... OH, of course-- Larry Mahlstedt. DAMN he was good. His inks made Giffen look probably the BEST he ever has, before or since. And he did a fine job over LaRocque, too. At the time, losing him hurt the art more than losing Giffen or Lightle!

On the other hand, Larry STILL owes me a sketch I PAID for in advance and never received... (never again!!)

Hmm...if the Legion's artists of the first rank are people like Swan, Giffen, Cockrum, Lightle (?), the guy who did Green Arrow whose name is completely escaping me, (any others?), then I have to say that LaRocque may be the best of the second tier (later Giffen, Kitson [it's still early!], Coipel, Immomen, Moy [Archie, I know, but I thought his stuff was good and he was around for a long time], others?). Most of the best stories of the Baxter years were during his run.

Mike Grell is currently doing a brand-new 6-issue mini for IDW Publishing of JON SABLE FREELANCE. Yee-hah!

I have to agree Mahlstedt was awesome over Greg's work. Ofcourse I'm a HUGE Mahlstedt fan. Giffen, Larocque, and Bagley (New Warriors) all benefitted from this guy. (Karl Kesel is my other favorite inker).

Anyways the Larocque/Mahlstedt are for sure my fave. I have to go back and look but i don't remember the guys looking too much the same. Atleast Cham and Blok didn't. And the women were beautiful. It was during my favorite Legion era so I may be biased.

(Did he draw Power Man & Iron Fist? And who inked him? Thanks.)

My index is not quite finished yet... but I show Greg LaRocque did PM/IF #103, inked by Andy Mushynsky-- whose style was similar to Joe Sinnott. I'm guessing Greg did more issues... one of these days I'll have to dig those out.

Greg was also the 3rd artist to draw O M A C: One Man Army Corps!!! He had the bad luck (I suppose) to follow Jim Starlin, whose run was cut short by the infamous "DC Implosion". Together with writers Mishkin & Cohn and inker Vince Colletta, he did 6 8-page episodes in the back of WARLORD #42-47. After the ultra-ULTRA-violent turn Starlin put the series through, LaRocque & co. tried to drag things back to a more Jack Kirby view of things... to mixed success. I believe that was the first time I saw Greg's work (1981); he turned up on PM/IF in '84.

Greg I think did # 73, #103, #108 thru #113.

I remember #113 the best he drew one of my fave Marvel villains Bres. A character he also drew in Avengers. He draws the definitive Bres (who actually would make a good legion villain)

I always thought that Greg Larocque held the legion back during the second half of Levitz's run. He drew the girls alright but all of his guys had these weird sloping noses. He also lacked the unique, interesting depiction of the 30th Century that all of the great legion artists have had (IMO Swan, Cockrum, Grell, Giffen and Coipel)which I have always felt is the main criteria for who should or shouldn't draw the legion.

I took a closer look at that (unfinished) index...

POWER MAN / IRON FIST
#73 / Sep'81 -- Wraith, Color Or Creed // Duffy / LaRocque / Villamonte

#91 / Mar'83 -- Paths And Angles // Steven Grant / GREG LaROCQUE

#103 / Mar'84 -- Doombringer // Goodwin / LaRocque / Mushynsky


The 1st was a fill-in during the terrific Duffy-Gammill period. The 2nd was a fill-in near the end of Denys Cowan's run (I was always SEVERELY disappointed in his art, compared to Kerry Gammill's). The 3rd followed a whole set of issues by Kurt Busiek & Ernie Chan. And that's as far as my index goes! Talk over overdue for updating...

i liked Larocque's run on Legion but i always thought that Mike Decarlo's inks imo made Greg's work look sort of Kirby-ish to me.

"Mike Decarlo's inks imo made Greg's work look sort of Kirby-ish"

That's odd-- I never noticed that. However, when Keith Giffen came back (LSH #50), he had definitely shifted BACK into his earlier "Kirby" mode (like back when he drew THE DEFENDERS). Teamed with DeCarlo, it was the best that style of Keith's had ever looked, and I was reminded very much of Kirby-Sinnott-- or maybe Kirby-Stone. (If only Keith hadn't decided to distort his faces more and more with each issue...)

I did a pin-up of the Giffen-DeCarlo era for KLORDNY some time back, which I recently posted at my website.

http://www.webspawner.com/users/zodiaccomics/klordny.html

Greg LaRocque, IMO the greatest, grandest, most glorious, gigantic artistic talent to work on LSH.

Even when Levitz's writing went into a nosedive post-Universo, LaRocque kept getting better and better. To give one example, the Luck Lords story may not be much of a story, but LaRocque creates some breathtaking panoramas.

Hmp. Coulda sworn Grell returned for that issue.

I'm lukewarm on him. Don't dislike him, but he never stood out to me. Some of his eyes/faces seemed a bit off as well.

But to each their own.

It didn't help him any that colorists hadn't caught up to how to color on baxter paper, either - colors were still quite garish in those days.