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UnlikeyLass said on May 21st, 2013 at 9:36 am

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.

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Lindsey said on May 21st, 2013 at 9:53 am

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?

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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.

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Darren K said on May 21st, 2013 at 1:51 pm

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.

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Tom Galloway said on May 21st, 2013 at 3:00 pm

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.

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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.

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SilverHammerMan said on May 21st, 2013 at 8:13 pm

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.

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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).

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Or later, when Brainy pulls a “chronal howitzer” out of a deus ex machina to defeat a foe and wrap up a story.

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!

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Kid Kyoto said on May 22nd, 2013 at 4:43 pm

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’.

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Thomas Wilde said on May 22nd, 2013 at 5:57 pm

…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.

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Greg Morrow said on May 22nd, 2013 at 6:10 pm

I grew to despise v4.

I no longer discuss it, because I do not like myself when I am that angry.

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K-Box in the Box said on May 22nd, 2013 at 6:30 pm

“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.

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Tom Galloway said on May 22nd, 2013 at 6:50 pm

Googum, we’re both correct. Roxxas first used it on Jo, then Brainy passed it on to Laurel and Vi to defeat Glorith.

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Thom H. said on May 22nd, 2013 at 7:45 pm

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.

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philippos42 said on May 23rd, 2013 at 1:24 am

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.

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@JayDzed said on May 23rd, 2013 at 5:29 am

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.

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Oddstar said on May 23rd, 2013 at 2:39 pm

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).

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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.

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