So, Jim Shooter has been announced as the new writer on Legion of Super-Heroes, and the comicblogotubes have mostly gone berserk with joy.
My reaction is twofold:
1.) Shooter’s most recent track record – discounting Defiant Comics, which he was producing at a time when he was simultaneously fighting a number of vicious legal battles more or less singlehandedly – as a writer is his collected work at Valiant, and the best way to sum up his stories there would be “excellent concepts and plotting, weak scripting.” With the exception of Archer and Armstrong (which even now remains a very entertaining read), Shooter’s dialogue on the Valiant titles he wrote could, at most, be considered workmanlike – and more realistically, hokey. The ideas behind the comics are uniformly imaginative (you can even say that about the Defiant titles, although those all fell apart rather quickly), which is great – I strongly believe that Legion has to be a comic rooted in Big Ideas.
But it also has to be reliably entertaining, and if I’m distracted by painful 80s-ish dialogue then it’ll have a hard road to run. (Of course, maybe Shooter has upped his game dialoguewise. Also of course, Chris Claremont sure didn’t.)
2.) All the Legion fans demanding that Shooter bring back the “classic” pre-Crisis Legion need to shut the fuck up so goddamned bad. No, seriously. Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up right now. There’s lots you can say about the Waid reboot Legion both good and bad, but the one enormous plus it has going for it, at a time when thanks to the cartoon Legion is better poised then ever to make a return to having a large devoted fanbase again, is that it is new and thusly much more fucking accessible.
And I know whereof I speak: I’ve been a Legion fan since I was seven years old. I literally grew up with the pre-Crisis Legion, and therefore I think I say with some authority that this self-absorbed whiny selfish self-important bullshit is the very worst side of all comics fandom, and please save it for some comic I don’t particularly care about. Go read, I dunno, Manhunter or something, and bitch about how Kate Spencer isn’t the “real” Manhunter.
Your refusal to read new Legion comics because they aren’t the “real” Legion isn’t a point of pride, understand? It’s a kid throwing a fucking tantrum. If you don’t want to read new Legion comics, that’s fine and good, god knows DC makes a shitload of money off you reprinting the Archive hardcovers at X shitload of dollars per pop. But I really, really don’t need to hear about it. If I’m not reading a comic because I think it’s not good, I don’t go around loudly proclaiming “man X-Men used to be so good, back in the day” or whatever.
Seriously. That shit pisses me off something hardcore.
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This seems like a good time for me to start reading Legion, since everything tends to change when a new writer comes aboard and it’s not so necessary to be familiar with recent events in the book (sometimes bad for consistency, but good if you’re a new reader).
Three reasons why I’m interested in this book when the last DC comic I read was some Shazam thing from when I was a kid in the ’80s:
1. I read Secret Wars and formed the opinion that Jim Shooter doesn’t totally suck as a writer! Of course, everybody’s dialogue in that story ended in an exclamation point! Or a dot-dot-dot! Or a quesion mark if it was a question! But mostly exclamation points! Everybody was exclaiming as if they were a Bismollian defending Polar Boy in court and periods were being carefully rationed! But this is the kind of thing I can overlook! I can pretend the exclamation points aren’t there and enjoy the story! Then again, Tom DeFalco used to use a lot of exclamation points too! And then he discovered the joy that is the period. (I hope nobody’s expecting a menstruation joke, because I have neither the inclination to make one nor the creativity to make one that’s any good.) So maybe Shooter has as well. Having not read anything he’s written other than Secret Wars, which is almost three decades old, I wouldn’t know anything about his current punctuational proclivities.
2. I don’t need to know everything about the DC universe. It’s annoying when you’re reading a comic book and there’s a one- or two-page interlude having little or nothing to do with the main story, and then a little blurb telling us to buy recent issues of some other book to find out what it’s all about. It’s annoying because it used to work on me, so that in the early ’90s I ended up buying something like half the titles Marvel put out. That’s not likely to happen with Legion; it’s set in the far future, so how frequently can they possibly insert a present-day character into any of the stories and try to tempt me to add that character’s book to my pull list?
3. I’m interested in the characters now, thanks to two things: the cartoon, and this blog. Since I wouldn’t have even discovered the cartoon if it weren’t for you mentioning Alexis Luthor, it really comes down to this blog.
I agree with you that they should stick with the post-Crisis Legion. I’m never happy when a new writer decides to undo some things, or everything, the last one did just to be self-indulgent. I prefer them to recognize everything that came before as continuity and keeps retcons and shit to an absolute minimum. “Hey, I think I’ll make up a whole new past for Mr. Sinister and ignore Claremont’s plan for the character!” Or “Let’s not make Adam X the third Summers brother, let’s make it this Vulcan asshole! And let’s have him be part of the first ‘all new, all different’ team that was sent to rescue the original team from Krakoa! And let’s have Xavier be enough of a dick to erase all knowledge of that team from the minds of almost everybody involved!” No. Stop. Once a story’s been published about a character, like a Claremont-penned backup in Classic X-Men showing Sinister to be a shapeshifting kid who was secretly mind-controlling almost everybody at the orphanage Scott was at, or a story written by Nicieza that stops just short of explicitly telling us Adam X is a Summers, it’s part of continuity. Don’t go in a whole new direction and hope that everybody will forget what came before. Likewise, if there’s been a post-Crisis Legion for all this time, don’t just abruptly go back to pre-Crisis just because you feel like it.
I don’t quite agree with you about not criticizing comics you’re not reading. If I’m not reading a comic because I think it’s not good, I don’t around loudly proclaiming that it’s no good either. But if the topic comes up in conversation, I’ll certainly let people know how I feel. Also, if I’ve just stopped reading something because I don’t like its new direction, I’ll probably tell people why I stopped. If somebody mentions World War Hulk: Frontline to me, for example, I’d say “Nah, I’m not interested in that. Civil War: Frontline was a disappointment, and this has the same characters and the same writer. Probably a waste of money.” Now, if the other person were able to convince me that Jenkins had stepped up his game and that Floyd wasn’t an irritating, stupid bitch in this one, maybe I’d check it out…
I’d forgotten about Archer and Armstrong! And that makes me sad.
I have absolutely no interest in this. It’s such a backward looking choice. A book about the future should feel fresh and modern. Hell my biggest complaint about Waid’s Legion was it felt a little too traditional (and that these “teens” don’t much act like teens).
You were robbed I say.
All I want back is the BBW Dream Girl…
If this means that Brainy is a little more like your portrayal of him, I’m down. Though as an aside… what the hell has happened to Claremont? I tried reading his latest Exiles arc, and… eesh. (And no, this isn’t kvetching that Exiles isn’t what it used to be. It’s “this is so completely disjointed I have no idea what the hell is happening”)
I hear ya. Up until the conclusion it kind of made sense: they were on a world where Doom became the leader of the FF and Reed became the FF’s worst enemy. Doom had ensured world peace through mind control. Some of the team realized what was happening and some of the others were on Doom’s side (although perhaps not of their own free will).
But then in this last issue, we have Miguel O’Hara and that world’s Gwen Stacy as a couple, with Miggy proclaiming his undying love for her. They JUST MET, so wtf? We’ve also got people all over the world dying, with Reed telling Doom that Doom was killing them. Uh…HOW? Why were they dying? Then Reed somehow blows up the whole world without lifting a finger.
I can tell you who that cosmic bearded guy was, though. Or, rather, I’ll give you a link to Claremont telling everybody:
http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/forums/showpost.php?p=1364027&postcount=192
Makes a little more sense, but I’m still left wondering what role he played, exactly. His dialogue suggests that he had a hand in events somehow.
Well I will continue buying the new Legion title, if for no other reason than I utterly adore the Brainy/dead dream girl relationship…
It’s not just a question whether Shooter still got some writing in him, it’s also a question whether he will be allowed to write what he wants to. It feels like the comic book industry has become so stifled and cramped that every new book I pick up leaves me feeling meh…
Where is the drama and the edge?
[…] the fuck up so goddamned bad. No, seriously. Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up right now.” Christopher Bird on Jim Shooter’s return to The Legion of […]
I’m with ya, MGK. Nothing’s ever topped the Levitz/Giffen run in my heart, but I’ve never totally given up on the versions since then. I’ve liked a little of all of them here and there, and I liked Mark Waid’s updated take. I dumped it after he left because I didn’t care for his successors, but I’m willing to give Gentleman Jim a shot. (And believe me, it ain’t ’cause of his personality.) I hope it takes: it’s been disappointing seeing lukewarm sales for my favorite futuristic folks.
As mentioned before, I’m too young to have read the original incarnation of the Legion during it’s initial release, so have no stake in the whole old vs new debate. As for Point 1, I agree with you completely (and honestly, I wish more Valiant fans would recognize it), except I would like to add that I always though “Solar” was another exception as far as dialogue goes. Sure, it had some hokey lines, but somehow, it didn’t seem as bad as, say, “Harbinger”, “X-O Manowar,” “Shadowman,” “Rai,” etc.
I think Solar still has fairly hokey dialogue, but there, the hokeyness works, just because Solar is a cosmic-level character and as comic fans we’ve been grounded to accept that cosmic godlike beings are just a little more portentous and windy by their very nature.
Thankyou for reminding me of Valiant. I am now going to go and dig out my Captain Tomorrow.