Shooter's Legion Scripts

Now that the Threeboot Legion has been officially canceled, I finally realize how much the series meant to me.

Not much, it turns out. I don't feel all that upset about not being able to see issue #51, especially with a post-Legion of 3 Worlds incarnation coming sooner rather than later, I suspect.

I may change my mind when I read Jim Shooter's final handful of issues, but this version of the Legion has been all unfulfilled promise as far as I'm concerned. It was always an entertaining read, but it never developed into anything that leaped to the top of my pile, and, honestly, I thought the most recent issue was a step backwards and offered little hope that the book, under Shooter, would ever be anything more than standard superhuman soap opera.

But I did get a chance to thumb through a few of Shooter's Legion of Super-Heroes scripts at the Baltimore Comic-Con, and I found them to be fascinating. Not because of the quality of the writing, necessarily, but because of their density, and their length. I've seen a few scripts by some of today's top writers -- Morrison, Fraction, Aaron -- and all of them have relatively short panel descriptions and just maybe a few quick links to online reference material. Shooter's scripts are not quite Alan Moore thick, but they're close. Each one must have been about 50 or 60 pages, including extensive panel descriptions and lengthy supplemental material with images and descriptions of the look Shooter was going for.

I wonder if Shooter packed so much into these scripts because he really wanted to show Mike Marts, and DC, how much he cared. How much effort he'd put into the job if given the chance. Or I wonder if that's just how Shooter always writes scripts, and he's just using the same technique he did when he wrote Starbrand or Secret Wars.

I just found the difference interesting, between the length of his scripts and the current trend toward sleek, relatively terse writing for comics.

Does that make Shooter a maverick, or a throwback?

Shooter's Legion vs. Johns's Legion: A Few Thoughts

After reading my reviews for the newest issues of Action Comics and Legion of Super-Heroes over at CBR, Legion book contributor and Estoreal blogger Richard Bensam made the following comment:

I just wonder what you got from that Action Comics storyline that I didn't. For me, Shooter has me reading and enjoying a Legion book for the first time in nearly twenty years; meanwhile, what Johns was doing just felt hollow. It was "let's hit this plot point...and here's a moment that's meant to be evocative...and here on the diagram we insert a scene that touches on the stated thematic goal...and here, one more moment where we stop and commemorate the meaningfulness of it all." I get the impression your response was the reverse of this, and it vexes me.

I wouldn't say my response is the "reverse" of Bensam's, but I did give Action Comics a favorable review and Legion a relatively negative review (with the qualifier that I think the Shooter-penned series has great potential). So let me explain a bit more about how I feel about Johns's recent version of the Legion and Shooter's interpretation.

First of all, my CBR review wasn't evaluating Action Comics as a Legion book, but as a Superman book. So in many ways, Bensam's criticism of Johns's by-the-numbers Legion moments misses the point a bit. The Legion moments were clearly designed to illuminate Superman, to provide a dramatic context in which aspects of Superman's character can be emphasized, not to add depth to fifty years of Legion characterization. As a Legion story, Johns's tale was nothing extraordinary, but it did a more than admirable job of re-engaging the Legion with the Superman mythos. The Legion has been cast aside for too long, in my mind, and even the Abnett and Lanning attempts to connect the characters with Superboy felt like a second-rate patch job. So there's that.

Also, I have absolutely no problem with conventional storytelling as long as its done well, and Johns is one of the best at well-structured superhero narratives. You may be able to see all the beats in advance, but damn it if he doesn't hit them emphatically. There's a reason we, as a species, keep telling the same basic stories again and again. We like to see slight variations, but we like the what we like. Over and over. If you listen to a song you like, even a new version of it, you don't judge it based on what's going to surprise you, but on how well the artist performs the required moments. That's what John does, and he does it well.

I'm still not sure what to think about Shooter's Legion, though. He didn't want to reboot the series, even though he claims DiDio offered him the chance to do so, yet he isn't keeping the tone or characterizations of the Waid Threeboot, so he has basically just adopted the costumes (which he will also change in the near future, as seen on the first cover of his run--a strange image, to be sure, since we're several issues in and those costumes still haven't appeared), and the main cast of characters. But since the characters don't act like they have in the recent past, it's basically a relaunch anyway. Which is fine, I guess, since he did instill some much-needed energy into the series. Even though I liked Waid and Bedard's Legion when I reread the entire series last year, it was a bit too self-serious for me. It felt like it was trying to say something important and show the weight of the universe on the shoulders of these young men and women in the Legion, but it didn't have much life to it. Shooter has brought in some life, which is why I believe the series has potential under him.

But I do actively dislike plenty of his dialogue, much of which relies on "futuristic" slang that sounds like a 65-year-old trying to be hip. And his attempts to add conflict within the Legion is reminiscent of every team comic book since Claremont's X-Men. Or, perhaps I should say every team comic since Shooter's original Legion, which was inspired by Marvel's troubled heroes. Either way, there's certainly nothing new here, and Shooter isn't as good at hitting the marks as Johns is, but I think he might surprise me before his run on the series is over. I'm optimistic about the new direction, but I don't think the comic is all that great yet. Perhaps Shooter still needs a few more issues to position the team where he wants it. I don't know.

Of course, with the Johns/Perez "Legion of Three Worlds" this summer, perhaps Shooter won't get a chance to take the Legion where he wants them to go. I'd be shocked if a reboot or deboot (or whatever) didn't come out of this Final Crisis/"Legion of Three World" stuff. And although I'd happily keep buying Jim Shooter Legion comics, I feel that editorial forces beyond all of our control may have something different in mind for the future of the Legion.

I am really glad that someone had the foresight to pull together a useful analytical guide to the various incarnations of the Legion of Super-Heroes just in time for this huge summer event, though. That guy must know what he's doing, at least.

What does everyone else think about all of this stuff?

Legion of Super-Heroes #37 Review

This is a pretty big deal for Legion readers.

Jim Shooter has returned to The Legion of Super-Heroes with issue #37, and it signals a new (old?) direction for a series which has had as many reboots and revisions as its had members. The cover boldly indicates where Shooter is planning to take this comic, especially if you compare it to any random cover on the Waid/Kitson run which concluded a few months ago. The costume redesigns have been discussed across the internet since the first Francis Manapul images appeared, but I hadn't seen that new logo until I walked into the comic shop today. The new logo abandons the upright, formal typeface of earlier Threeboot issues in favor of a colorful and dynamic font which recalls the original, post-Superboy comic and the Giffen/Bierbaum run from two decades ago. Todd Klein blogged about Legion logos this summer, and if you take a look at the top cover and bottom cover from that Klein blog page, you'll see what I mean about this new logo being a combination of two classic looks. Obviously, someone at DC wants to signal that this new Shooter run will return the Legion to the good old days.

But is issue #37 any good? Yes, with a few exceptions.

What works? One of the reasons Paul Levitz was such a great Legion writer was that he could juggle a large cast and a variety of locations in each issue. He could convincingly shift from one group or Legionnaires to another, from one planet to the next, in a span of a few pages, and keep everything moving forward toward a climax. Jim Shooter recaptures that kind of Legion rhythm almost immediately in this issue, by jumping from a partially-botched Karate Kid operation at the Disk Region to an unstable Lightning Lad plotline at Headquarters to a group of Legion emissaries sent to Triton (Neptune's moon) on a mission of warning. The three plot threads weave together nicely, and Shooter fades the Disk Region mission out as the Triton mission ascends in importance. Meanwhile. Lightning Lad is overwhelmed by the practical requirements of Legion leadership back the the HQ.

Even though Shooter throws in some strange structural quirks that aren't seen much anymore, like scene transitions that occur in the midst of a page instead of at the end of one, he does a nice job keeping the plot clear and moving forward with appropriate swiftness.

Shooter also handles the characterizations quite well, even if they don't exactly match what Waid and Bedard had established. Karate Kid, in particular, shows more anger (and overall emotion) in this issue than the previous 36 issues combined, and Phantom Girl is established as a sexy flirt all of a sudden, but these changes work well to define these characters for a potential new audience, and they don't necessarily contradict anything that came before. Waid and Bedard hadn't done a whole heck of a lot with some of these characters, so Shooter has plenty of blank slates to work with.

Francis Manapul, as penciler, is also a great asset to the book. He brings a style that's reminiscent of mid-career Travis Charest, but with a stronger sense of fluidity. His characters are more animated than Charest's ever were, but he has a similar sense of light and shadow.

What doesn't work? Manipul's pencils are not ideally served by the inker, Livesay. Livesay may be a fine inker, but here, his penwork fails to give substance and weight to Manipul's lines. Some of the ink lines seemed either not to have reproduced well, or are too lightly feathered (or both), but Manipul would benefit more from an inker who could add lineweight, not make everything seem even less substantial.

Shooter also makes a few missteps, mostly with the dialogue. The characters speech seems a bit clunky, although that might be Shooter's attempt to sci-fi it up. Sci-fi stuff has clunky dialogue, doesn't it? Well, so does this. He's also got some cringe-worthy bits like the Triton native's favorite greeting: "Yo-d'lay!" (which is repeated so many times that you can only suspect Shooter either thought it was really funny, or that he's thinking, "no, they SERIOUSLY say that"). Also, here's Shooter's take on future snowboarding slang: "And the body on those perky yumdrops...! Makes my metab rate spike!" "Perky Yumdrops?" I think it's the word "perky" in that sentence that's the creepy part. But those characters are supposed to be creepy badguys, so it's not such a bad thing.

Overall? The cover bodes well. The characters may not actually don the costumes on the cover just yet. I assume that will come in a few issues, but this issue sets this book up as a more dynamic, active incarnation of the Legion. It's not a reboot by any means, but it's a new beginning and now that I've read the first issue, I'm looking forward to this comic more than ever.

Edited to Add: This is my 200th post on this blog! I didn't realize that until I went to compose the next one. Anyway, thanks for reading, and check back daily!