Legion of Super-Heroes Appreciation 2019 [Long Live the Legion!]

[Tugger]

Let's talk Legion artists!

Keith Giffen is THE Legion artist for me, whatever his style. Nobody else comes close.

[Comic-Reader Lad]

My second favorite male member of the Legion: Mon-El!

Mon-El is one of my favorite Legionnaires. He might even be my number 1 favorite. In general, I love the strong guys on a team from Superman to Thor and everyone in between.

Mon-El was mistaken for Superboy's older brother in his first appearance, but that's kind of what he was. An older, cooler version of Superboy. He was a good guy, but the writers were allowed to let Mon-El cut loose and have more fun with him than they ever could with Superboy/Superman.

Here's Mon-El going straight-up gangsta on Superboy when Kal is behaving like a spoiled brat because Wildfire was elected Legion leader. It's from Paul Levitz's very first Legion story -- Superboy 225.



It was also the first issue not drawn by Mike Grell since Grell started on Superboy 203. The above was drawn by James Sherman and inked by Bob Wiacek.

Going back to our discussion of Legion artists, James Sherman was the best of the post-Grell pencilers until Keith Giffen took over years later, but unfortunately Sherman couldn't handle the comic monthly once it went to giant size with 231, so his art appeared more infrequently. Another unfortunate thing is that they often gave him crappy inkers like Jack Abel who overwhelmed Sherman's pencils making them unrecognizable. When they gave Sherman a great inker like Bob McLeod, Sherman's art really shined like in the first 2 chapters of the Earthwar Saga (the intro splash page of which is posted on page 2 of this thread).

Here's another great Mon-El moment. It's from Legion of Super-Heroes v3 38. Post-Crisis, Superboy is revealed to be a creation of Legion enemy the Time Trapper. Superboy sacrifices his life to save the Legion and dies in Mon-El's arms.



Finally, perhaps Mon-El's most triumphant moment. It's from Legion of Super-Heroes v4 4. Mon-El has had enough of the Time Trapper and utterly destoys him. However, it's a Pyrrhic victory as this sets into motion a chain of events that undoes all of Time Trapper's machinations to the timestream, creates an alternate timeline where Trapper's old sidekick Glorith is returned to life, and allows Glorith to recreate the Trapper's original timestream, but insert herself in his place thereby becoming the new Time Trapper and a great Legion villain for years to come. As much as I didn't like the 5-Years Later direction, this development was its crowning achievement.

[Anthony Shaw]

Mon-El is one of my favorite Legionnaires. He might even be my number 1 favorite. In general, I love the strong guys on a team from Superman to Thor and everyone in between.

Mon-El was mistaken for Superboy's older brother in his first appearance, but that's kind of what he was. An older, cooler version of Superboy. He was a good guy, but the writers were allowed to let Mon-El cut loose and have more fun with him than they ever could with Superboy/Superman.

Here's Mon-El going straight-up gangsta on Superboy when Kal is behaving like a spoiled brat because Wildfire was elected Legion leader. It's from Paul Levitz's very first Legion story -- Superboy 225.



It was also the first issue not drawn by Mike Grell since Grell started on Superboy 203. The above was drawn by James Sherman and inked by Bob Wiacek.

Going back to our discussion of Legion artists, James Sherman was the best of the post-Grell pencilers until Keith Giffen took over years later, but unfortunately Sherman couldn't handle the comic monthly once it went to giant size with 231, so his art appeared more infrequently. Another unfortunate thing is that they often gave him crappy inkers like Jack Abel who overwhelmed Sherman's pencils making them unrecognizable. When they gave Sherman a great inker like Bob McLeod, Sherman's art really shined like in the first 2 chapters of the Earthwar Saga (the intro splash page of which is posted on page 2 of this thread).

Here's another great Mon-El moment. It's from Legion of Super-Heroes v3 38. Post-Crisis, Superboy is revealed to be a creation of Legion enemy the Time Trapper. Superboy sacrifices his life to save the Legion and dies in Mon-El's arms.



Finally, perhaps Mon-El's most triumphant moment. It's from Legion of Super-Heroes v4 4. Mon-El has had enough of the Time Trapper and utterly destoys him. However, it's a Pyrrhic victory as this sets into motion a chain of events that undoes all of Time Trapper's machinations to the timestream, creates an alternate timeline where Trapper's old sidekick Glorith is returned to life, and allows Glorith to recreate the Trapper's original timestream, but insert herself in his place thereby becoming the new Time Trapper and a great Legion villain for years to come. As much as I didn't like the 5-Years Later direction, this development was its crowning achievement.

Mon-EL, Superboy, & Wildfire are my favorite members. I love Mon-El as Kal's "big brother." I love Wildfire's drama. It is never a dull moment with Drake.

[Scott Taylor]

I really preferred Dave Cockrum's redesign of Timber Wolf from 1973. Didn't find it necessary to revert him back to a more human appearance.

Cockrum's version was great! He's changed a lot over the years. My preference is for him to look mostly human with a few wolf-like features.

[condoarlik]

This is an old list. Some have not been updated for years while others no longer exist.

The most comprehensive Legion site (in terms of indexing issues and every single bit of Legion merchandise) is:


https://www.facebook.com/BitsOfLegionnaireBusiness/

Here's a few:

https://www.cosmicteams.com/legion/
http://legionofsuperbloggers.blogspot.com/
http://bitsoflegionnairebusiness.blogspot.com/
www.legionworld.net
http://paulfrench.ca/losp/
http://longlivethelegion.blogspot.com/
http://legionabstract.blogspot.com/
http://www.readersadvice.com/lsh/lsh.html
http://www.idyllmtn.com/rac/dc/lsh/lsh_res.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20000608.../mmbentry.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20000519...willi/lsh.html
http://www.infiniteearths.org/lsh

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Even though this artist never drew Legion on a regular basis, it's damn hard to top the legendary George Perez!

[Sutekh]

Let's talk Legion artists!

Keith Giffen is THE Legion artist for me, whatever his style. Nobody else comes close.

I liked his style where it started out, but it became quite different as time went on and I didn't like it at all.

My favorite Legion artists would include Francis Manapul, Steve Lightle and Yildray Cinar (sp?). (And Perez, from that poster! Amazing!)

But plenty of Legion artists have been great, including early Giffen, Greg LaRoque and Dave Cockrum (I miss Dave's design aesthetic on characters like Shrinking Violet).

[Panic]

For me it's Giffen - primarily his Great Darkness style, though I thought his 5YL work with Gordon inking was good for that sort of gritty story.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Chris Sprouse on Legionnaires (1993) was pretty good I thought.

[Zero Hunter]

Even though I think the writing was lacking during the last few legion series (Pre and Post Flashpoint) I will say the Legion has had a pretty good run of artists. I thought both Vildiray Cinar and the Francis Portela had very good runs as primary artist on the books. Even the fill in artists during Portela's run were all top shelf (Scott Kolins, Walt Simonson, Keith Giffen, and Steve Lightle).

[Lee Stone]

I liked Chris Batista, too. Although, his slightly elongated characters did take a while to warm up to.

[Lee Stone]

[Lee Stone]

Shadow Lass appearances:
Pre-Crisis
Post-Crisis

[Lee Stone]

And a sketch I did of Shadow Lass:

[Panic]

That's stylish, is that Kyle Baker art?