It's starting to look like some Colossal Boy-sized happenings are in store for the Legion of Super-Heroes in the year to come, just in time for their fiftieth birthday. There's the whole multiple-Legions thing running through the contemporary DCU, and the current team looks like it's going to be getting more buzz thrown its way: rumor mill suggests Jim Shooter's going to be returning as writer of the Legion of Super-Heroes sometime very soon, presumably at the same time newly-DC-exclusive Francis Manapul takes over as penciller.
(Am I the only glad that Supergirl is nowhere to be seen in that picture? I'm assuming this means the title's going back to just Legion of Super-Heroes rather than Seriously Overexposed And I Mean Than In More Ways Than One Supergirl and...).
The image by Manapul excites me, if for no other reason than I like a great many of the costume tweaks and redesigns we can see in the image. Manapul has said he's looking back more to Dave Cockrum's design sense for inspiration, and I can certainly endorse that idea, what with Cockrum being one of the best costume designers the industry's ever known. I've always liked Barry Kitson's artwork, but most of his designs for the LSH for this most recent reboot left me a bit cold. Manapul's tweaks are refreshing: I especially love the Saturn Girl design, bringing back the look of her classic bikini with a twist; Phantom Girl, even if we can't see if she's got the bell bottoms of her original Cockrum costume; Brainiac 5, whose look and pose in that pic perfectly represent the attitude of the current version of the character.)
As for Shooter... well, honestly, I'm not sure how I feel there. I respect that he had such an important and influential run on the book thirty years ago, but I want to take a wait-and-see attitude toward how his work will come across these days. The presentation of comics has changed so much, the modes of storytelling -- I'm just unsure if his writing will feel contemporary or dated. I wasn't particularly a fan of his Valiant/Acclaim work, but I'm not ready to say I think he can't do it. Whether he can or not, we'll see, but anything which raises the Legion's profile at least has my interest. Here's hoping.
My big question with bringing Shooter on the book -- and all of this is supposing that the rumors are correct, and based on the investigation detailed at The Legion Omnicom I'm assuming they probably are -- is why? Yes, he wrote the book long, long ago, but he hasn't done anything notable in comics in ten years or more. His name recognition value will only matter to older readers (like, erm, me) -- younger readers might recognize the name, but nothing more. Again, I'm not saying that Shooter can't turn in some good stories nowadays -- there's no recent evidence one way or the other -- but I'm honestly wondering if he was brought in because of his name or because he had solid ideas for stories and a direction in which to take the team. I hope that it's at least the latter as much as the former; you only get a fifitieth birthday once, and it'd be nice not to have the Legion's wasted.
2 comments:
The problem, of course, is that DC doesn't give a rip whether the Legion's 50th birthday is "wasted"--they're only after the sales bump from the anniversary, the hot new artist, and presumably yet another #1 issue.
This will make the 3rd (or 4th, depending on how you count) reboot of the legion, all in the past dozen years or so (again, depending on how you count).
Because the Legion is sufficiently disconnected from the rest of the DC Universe, they don't care how many times they throw long-time fans for a loop. They only want to continuously pump out new versions of the old classic, completely disconnected from their glorious history. Hey, as long as we have characters named Rokk Krinn and Brainiac 5, and can keep re-doing the first meeting with the Fatal Five, and keep re-telling the story of the Sun-eater, etc, they assume that we'll keep buying it.
And they're right, dammit.
Not to play devil's advocate, but can we at least allow the possibility that DC prexy Paul Levitz (de facto corporate figurehead that he might be) would be at least a little protective of the Legion, a series he was no small part of for a no small amount of time?
I see the ulterior motive in bringing in Shooter, I do (if the rumors are even true). But I'm gambling on Levitz at least viewing his plans and being able to judge them on their merit.
Otherwise, he'd have announced Geoff Johns and George Perez (or better yet, the Brave and Bold dream team of Waid & Perez) taking over the title in San Diego.
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