In email, Michael Paciocco asks:
So, I’m reading this.
And there’s a lot of reference and reverence for the “Five Years Later” Legion stuff. Which is sort of before my time (didn’t even start reading DC regularly until post-Zero Hour – exceptions being Waid’s Flash, the Superman stuff, and the beginning of the Kyle Rayner era). As the biggest Legion guy I know, would you mind explaining it to me because I don’t get it.
From what I’ve read in bits and pieces from blogs and everywhere else, the 5YL is the Legion’s “Grim and Gritty” phase – the UFP is more Dystopic, Cosmic Boy’s lost his powers, the Legion is basically shattered, Richard Kent Shakespeare, Shrinking Violet has a bionic leg or something, etc etc. And then there’s whole thing where they find a bunch of bright and happy clones (who may or may not be the real deal) and Earth is destroyed? How does that not conflict deeply with the whole thing of “LOSH should be bright and happy and heroic”?
The first thing you have to understand about the v4 era Legion is that it was almost certainly one of the most ambitious superhero comics undertakings of all time. The blogpost Michael references rightly describes it as a “post-Watchmen comic book” in the proper sense, which is to say it took away far more in the storytelling toolkit from Watchmen than simply the grim tone. Indeed, calling v4 “grim and gritty” oversimplifies it greatly; after all, this is a run which had some of the greatest comedy issues of all time.
What Keith Giffen took from Watchmen was the concept of whole-world-building and the idea that the greater world beyond one’s protagonists matters, but his use of it was expressly in opposition to the core thesis Alan Moore advanced, which is that, all things considered, superheroes in and of themselves are basically powerless to stop society’s self-destructive urges (Dr. Manhattan is only a stopgap, Nite Owl and Rorshach are meaningless, and Ozymandias only succeeds because he abandons superheroism for conspiratorial means). v4 Legion, in comparison, is set against the backdrop of a full-fledged galactic war between numerous enormous space empires – the United Planets, the Khunds, the Dominion, the Dark Circle, et cetera – but time and again, the Legion mostly succeeds in its goals. Where it does not are usually disasters of immense scope rather than the result of others’ agency.
As comics have grown more cognizant of the belief that superheroes could only “realistically” operate as agents of state authority (see the Marvel Universe, where currently most of the major superhero teams either are explicitly state agents like the Avengers or operate on a wink-nod basis with the state), Giffen’s Legion went entirely the other way: he had the Legion reform under conditions as hostile as possible, with only their own resources keeping them afloat (and although Chameleon was at this point ridiculously wealthy, the series made clear that individual wealth really only goes so far more often than not) and with most of the established power actors either disinclined to cooperate with the Legion or actively hostile towards their re-inception. It’s an overwhelmingly pro-superheroic, deeply idealistic run of comics. To call it “grim and gritty” because a lot of characters die misses the point – after all, the series takes place mostly within a war, and whenever the focus shifts away from those wars, the most striking thing about the story is how much care it takes to show that the Legion is an extended family more than anything else.
And, as a writing accomplishment – getting back to the technical side of things – even though it does not entirely succeed (Giffen tries to juggle an enormous number of balls, and frankly he drops a few here and there) it is staggering in its scope. What Giffen did (along with the Bierbaums, who I think at this point are widely acknowledged as being the weaker writers in the v4 team, particularly when their eventual run without Giffen was so much… less than his) was to apply Watchmen‘s use of wider-world story to the Legion universe – IE to apply it to over thirty years of comics. Giffen had done this before with Paul Levitz, of course (see the Great Darkness Saga and the Legion of Super-Villains story, both of which were massive callbacks to practically the entirety of Legion history) but v4 is so dense at times it practically begs for annotations – not that they are necessary, for the most part, to follow the vast and ambitious swirling plot. And Giffen did all of this while creating a new status quo to explain how the Legion came to be in a universe where Superboy was never a member to boot (a task at which he was mostly successful, creating Laurel Gand in the process – a Supergirl replacement who became quite popular in her own right).
It doesn’t entirely succeed. Some elements were controversial at the time because neckbeards hate change (the Ayla/Vi gay relationship, the Shvaughn/Sean Erin de-transgendering story, Sun Boy’s character arc). Some elements were controversial because they just sucked (Kid Quantum, a bad idea all around). But on the whole it is far more successful than not, and where it fails it is forgivable because of the furious attempt by Giffen and his co-creators to do something new in superhero comics. And that is worth commemorating.
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5YL Legion was what really turned me into a Legion fan. I’d dabbled enough to know, roughly, who the players were, but the amazing texture Giffen and co. Managed to pull off was great.
I mean, the highlights? Tenzil Kem! My favorite Darkseid. Loomis and Cos as, essentially, Vietnam veterans. Kent Shakespeare as Ultra Boy’s straight man. Those creepy eyeless communication drones.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Svaughn. As a trans woman, it’s rare enough to see ‘myself’ in any mass media. Svaughn wasn’t perfect, but I knew who she was/had been in the continuity, so for me the reveal of her status felt like it had more impact than it otherwise might have if she’d been a new character. And Element Lad’s reaction was, to me, both sad and very much emblematic of a situation that’s all too common for trans people who come out in.
Of course, the fan base hated it. But like you said — Giffen was trying something *new*. I thought it was great.
Because of 5YL I can’t see a Lexus without thinking of the Legion.
I always found the Legion a bit daunting due to its vast scope (among other things) but the Giffen-era has interested me; is it collected anywhere as a whole?
I really disliked V4. I found the hell-or-high-water nine-panel grid restrictive (especially when the scenes spanned that grid anyway), thought the text pages especially banal and manipulative (Alan Moore could foreshadow without explicitly saying “Except for Black Dawn, and you know what that cost us,” when obviously, no, we don’t know what that even is, but we’re sure you’ll leave that plot thread for your successors to explain), Giffen’s art had gone usually abstract to the point of carved-from-rock and lit-only-from directly-above faces that gave us hair, foreheads and seas of absolute darkness beneath, and for large spans of the illustrated story, I couldn’t even guess at what was being illustrated. The world-building was truly ambitious, but I didn’t get to see much of it. (And someone missed the point that nine seemingly identical panels in Watchmen actually had distinct variations to indicate narrative progression; they weren’t photocopies of the same damn thing.)
I did like the ambition of the storytelling, but the fanfed revisionism (rebooting Triplicate Girl into “Triad” before even getting out of the single digits) and the constant cacophony of cataclysms — let’s destroy all the major cities! Now the moon! Now the whole planet! The apocalypse became tedium. And there’s nothing they loved more than knocking down the basis for the stories they loved so much to continue in the first place — Shvaughn/Sean and Garth/fuckingProty being two of the most emblematic knees to the nuts of lore (run and ruin your own narrative if you must, but it’s uncouth to pull revisionism of that level on stories people actually liked.
It eventually reached a point where I didn’t feel the slightest spark of the Levitz LSH anymore, and I gave up until about halfway through the Archie Legion, which was an entirely different kind of mess.
It was *so* good. One of the great things about it, that you didn’t mention, was that it took an obsession with continuity and made it a good thing – something to build your world on, but not being afraid to develop and change. Continuity was used to grow the series not stifle it.
However, it quickly became clear on v4 that medium term plotting was extremely weak. For example, early on you’ve got Cham, a depowered Cosmic Boy, Jo, and some randoms you had no reason to expect to be around and who have significant drawbacks (Kono and Furball) to being used in combat…and Cham’s going to go up against Mordru with this team when there’s no critical time limit to doing so. When asked what his plan is, he responds that it’ll be the “ol’ Daggle charm”…and he’s serious. That’s it.
Or later, when Brainy pulls a “chronal howitzer” out of a deus ex machina to defeat a foe and wrap up a story. Way too many endings of promising stories happened solely and obviously due to writers’ fiat, rather than being solutions that grew organically from the story.
The 5YL run is my favorite Legion run. It was also the first I read in any serious way, so that probably colors my expectations.
When reading it (borrowed the whole run from a friend with better taste in comics than I have, and more disposable income) I alternated between being annoyed at how opaque it was to new readers and being enthralled at the ambition on display.
All the Legion I’ve read since has felt watered down and simplistic, sadly.
I was wondering if you had any more thoughts on the current prevalence of government backed teams in comics.
It’s happening over at DC as well, but their the govt is cast in a distinctly corrupt or at least ambiguous light, whereas it feels like modern Marvel is developing a kind of weird “Big Brother is your friend!” quality to it, which feels very out of place in superhero comics, since as a genre it’s always been about altruistic individuals doing what’s right.
I mean, Marvel first live action TV show is Agents of SHIELD, a show about the shadowy government types, and the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon has cast THE loner, outcast hero as a government trainee.
I mean, maybe it’s just me, but it’s a kind of weird trend that I’ve been noticing lately.
Right now I’m imagining some other Legion fan saying Kid Quantum was only controversial because of those damn neckbeards.
Arguing that people resented v4 solely for being not-v3 is an oversimplification. I’m sure at least some of them would have embraced changes, just not necessarily the changes they got. One can hate New Coke without hating the idea of changing Coke’s flavor altogether. If one’s rejection of New Coke happens to take the form of “old Coke was better,” that says less about one’s orthodoxy than the lack of known alternatives.
Giffen’s “5 Years Later” remains my favorite version of the Legion and I really don’t think anything that came afterward even comes close to being as entertaining or as deep emotionally. While everyone after Giffen has tried to rewrite Legion history making what is basically glorified fanfic) Giffen milked 30 years of history and was one of the few DC writers who tried to fix the problems that COIE gave us with a rebooted Superman.
While I agree with Jim Smith’s point above, I greatly enjoyed the Legion. I had a similar reaction to it MGK did–it wasn’t “grim and gritty” because the Legion still had hope they could save the universe, just like they always did (in contrast to Xmen, for example, in which grim and gritty meant thee would never be any happy ending for mutants). As I’m rereading my entire Legion run, I’m hopeful I’ll still enjoy them when I get there.
Also, Giffen’s art had changed a great deal from his previous Legion run, as he had started mimicking Tetsuo Hara at this point. The cover to LSH v4#4 is so obviously Hokuto No ken’s Kenshiro with Mon-El’s uniform. Not a gripe mind you since I love Tetsuo Hara but Giffen wasn’t even trying to hide it.
Didn’t Roxxas use the chronal howitzer–which is the best name for a gun ever–on Ultra Boy, to send him back in time thousands of years? I wouldn’t correct you, except that’s one of my favorite parts!
I loved the 5 Year Later Legion, I’d rank it as #2 after the first Levitz/Giffen run myself.
One thing to keep in mind is the staggering amount of editorial meddling and inconsistancy. Before issue 5 they had to do a timeline rewrite story to eliminate Superman entirely, Editorial was not satisfied with just never referring to him, they had to reboot the timeline and purge him.
later Giffen planned to retell the Legion’s early days in a series called Legionnaires but instead had to integrate them leading to the Batch SW6 Legion, clones/chronal duplicates/whatever of the young Legion.
However the SW6 did lead to one of my favorite moments when the older Legion met the younger, it was literally ‘what would your 15 year old self say to your 30 year old self’.
…whereas it feels like modern Marvel is developing a kind of weird “Big Brother is your friend!” quality to it, which feels very out of place in superhero comics, since as a genre it’s always been about altruistic individuals doing what’s right.
Marvel’s been moving in that way for a while, though. There’s an essay I’ve been meaning to write about the morality of Marvel superheroes in the post-Quesada era, where every single one of them operates in a gray zone that’s all the more striking if you go back to the Shooter-DeFalco-Harras periods.
I don’t get “Big Brother is your friend” out of it, however, as much as I do a sort of left-wing fantasy of effective organization: with characters like Daisy Johnson or comics-verse Maria Hill, it’s almost explicitly the government as superhero.
I grew to despise v4.
I no longer discuss it, because I do not like myself when I am that angry.
“I don’t get ‘Big Brother is your friend’ out of it, however, as much as I do a sort of left-wing fantasy of effective organization: with characters like Daisy Johnson or comics-verse Maria Hill, it’s almost explicitly the government as superhero.”
Brian Michael Bendis put Norman Osborn in charge of America, compared Osborn to Dick Cheney in ways that were intended to be COMPLIMENTS to both Osborn AND Cheney, and flatly stated that Osborn was a superhero “hero” to both Spider-Man and Captain America BECAUSE he was evil.
Googum, we’re both correct. Roxxas first used it on Jo, then Brainy passed it on to Laurel and Vi to defeat Glorith.
The thing I love most about the 5YL Legion is that it changed everything without starting over. It came along not too much later than Byrne’s Superman and Perez’ Wonder Woman, both of which started from scratch. Giffen’s Legion made the whole thing feel new while *foregrounding* the team’s long history. I thought that was brilliant, and it made me a life-long Legion fan.
I probably would like it better if not for a) “Sean Erin”–give me a break! and b) blowing up the Earth.
But yeah, as someone who just looked in on it a little, it seemed dark and dense. Glad to hear it was also clever.
So, there you go Michael Paciocco. The 5YL/v4 Legion incites a lot of very strongly and/or deeply held opinions.
For myself, I mostly agree with our host, though I confess to never having examined the idea nearly as deeply.
I love the v4 Legion, as I love almost all of the Legion.
And if anyone can suggest a reason to love the most recent version, please share, I’d really like to love that one too.
Or even hate it, anything is better than finding it less interesting than used dishwater.
I loved the Giffen-Bierbaum Legion. It was the only version of the Legion I ever really got into (I really liked The Great Darkness Saga, but that was one story arc).
I’ve heard so much about this era and would love to read a collection, if one ever comes out.
MGK made me a Legion fan. I never thought I would come to care so much for these uncountable characters with their dorky names, but now I can easily list around 30 of them.
By the same token, however, I’ve found most of the Legion stories I’ve read to be ultimately unsatisfying. MGK’s “I should write…” vignettes may have skewed my perception of all Legion stories, so that I’ll always be longing for the stories he would have written.
Maybe next time they’ll let him reboot it?
We live in hope.
Meanwhile… long live the Legion.