The Griffen Legion - This is Incredible

[AcesX1X]

hi everyone,

when CW announced that the dominators were going to feature in their DC shows this season, i went looking for comics that feature these alien menace. i came across the legion of super-heroes by keith giffen and tom and mary bierbaum.

holy cow! this series is the stuff of dreams. very solid storytelling, cinematic feel - great respect to the past but also taking some very daring advances. this series feels perfect for a tv mini series or even a movie. it feels very much like battlestar galactica from the sci-fi series.

there is lots of heart and humor but also so much death and destruction. very political, so it seems topical for this day and age.

my favorite issue so far has been issue #19. i was so shocked after this comic that i had to take a short break before coming back to the story.



so all that said, my question is if any of you have read this series? particular if you read it when this story was current.

what was audience reactions like at the time?

if you are a fan of legion of super-heroes, was this a true story for you or did it leave you upset?

i'm still reading the story overall, but if keith giffen ever wants to do another legion book, then please sign me up. this stuff is just so fascinating


also, last - if you are curious about the dominators and want to get to know them, i definitely recommend this to start. you don't really need to understand all the legion history to enjoy the story.

[Nomads1]

It usually is a very polarizing series. Most love or hate it (I might be an exception. Sure didn't LOVE it, but far from hate it).
It's a far cry from the mostly positive future view the Legion always presented. No cute code-names. No colorful uniforms. No youth as a simbol of unity. However, it gave us a complex story of Rebirth (which got even more complex - and some would say more confusing - after issue #4 and the re-writing of the time-line). It treated one of my favorite Legionnaries with a lot of respect (Jo "Ultra Boy" Nah), which counts as something positive in my book. I also loved the character of Kono, and her sort of father/daughter relationship with Jo. Shame she hasn't been in the spotlight ever since. Sales were not bad, but were far from the best the Legion has enjoyed. Giffen's experimental nine frame per page art was also recieved with mixed reactions. Some say it gave the story a cinematographic feel, others say it limited the storytelling. All I can say is that it's not my favorite Giffen art period (though it is without a doubt a huge improvement from the Ambush Bug/Heckler phases). Other artists that followed Giffen on art, stuck with the nine panel page. I liked the potential of the Legion on the run storyline that came after the Giffen/Bierbaums run, but it was cut short to reboot the book for the Zero Hour event, and, in many aspects, it failed to live up to it's potential. All in all, I wish DC would wise up and give us the whole series collected in TPB.

Peace

[EmeraldGladiator]

I am torn. It was some of the most dense (in a good way) I remember reading in that era. The books were packed with solid story telling. I liken it to early seasons of the "Luther" tv show where 3 episodes feel like 12 regular episodes. That is on the good side. On the bad side it didn't portray the Legion in the way that I love it. The lightness, wonder, and bright colors, were absent there was a grayness and sadness to it. He was trying to grow the Legion up but the youth and lightness that made the Legion, the Legion was lost.

[AcesX1X]

yeah i don't really understand why this series isn't collected in trade? for what its worth, you can get the issues for 1.99 on comixology and that's what i'm doing.

my favorite characters so far is jo nah and masa, and i love these messages in the back of the book....like they are documents mailed from presidents and the police, etc

[EmeraldGladiator]

they actually eventually split the baby, with the Legion batch SW6 clones which placed bright youthful Legionnaires in the middle of the grey adult Legion universe. That was an idea that could have worked but by then for the most part the die was cast. It might be the best the Legion was written post Great Darkness saga on a consistent basis, but it wasn't the 'type' of Legion folks grew up with and loved. People weren't ready for their Legion to have completely grown up issues/problems.

[Zero Hunter]

This is probably my all time favorite Legion run. Issues 1-38 are just amazing. This book was so far ahead in terms of tone and storytelling than anything DC or Marvel was putting out at the time outside of maybe the Vertigo line. Being a life long Legion fan this book is just chock full of co many cool things from Legion Lore. It made the Legion of Substitute Heroes a group of badass freedom fighters for gods sake and used their powers in ways that made sense and formidable without changing them. That is just good writing.

If issue 19 is your favorite then you should look for the Superman tie in that shows what set off the destruction of the moon. It was part of the Time and Time again storyline where Superman was bouncing back in forth through time. In the Adventures of Superman part of the crossover he kept bouncing into the time of the Legion and it was in issues 478 he bounced into the time right before issue 19 and fought a craved Dev Em on the moon before the Dominators set off their explosion to hide what they had been doing.

[Zero Hunter]

Forgot to mention that you should not sleep on these two annuals either. The second one especially since it deal with the Dominators and follows up on the Invasion event and had a major effect on the new Legion Lore set up in issue 4.

[Marvell2100]

hi everyone,

when CW announced that the dominators were going to feature in their DC shows this season, i went looking for comics that feature these alien menace. i came across the legion of super-heroes by keith giffen and tom and mary bierbaum.

holy cow! this series is the stuff of dreams. very solid storytelling, cinematic feel - great respect to the past but also taking some very daring advances. this series feels perfect for a tv mini series or even a movie. it feels very much like battlestar galactica from the sci-fi series.

there is lots of heart and humor but also so much death and destruction. very political, so it seems topical for this day and age.

my favorite issue so far has been issue #19. i was so shocked after this comic that i had to take a short break before coming back to the story.



so all that said, my question is if any of you have read this series? particular if you read it when this story was current.

what was audience reactions like at the time?

if you are a fan of legion of super-heroes, was this a true story for you or did it leave you upset?

i'm still reading the story overall, but if keith giffen ever wants to do another legion book, then please sign me up. this stuff is just so fascinating


also, last - if you are curious about the dominators and want to get to know them, i definitely recommend this to start. you don't really need to understand all the legion history to enjoy the story.

I have the entire run. Bought every issue when it first came out. This is the best Legion series ever imo. It was a shame how they ended it.

[upgrayedd]

Loved 5YL, the Matter Eater issue is one of my favorite comics. Krinkles the Friendly Swine was never shown but I have always wondered who he was and why he was a celebrity.

[j9ac9k]

I LOVED this run! As dense as it was, it was my first real exposure to the LSH and it got me wanting more! I definitely didn't have the reaction longtime fans might have had since I didn't have the emotional connection to the previous series, but I thought it was awesome.

[GlennSimpson]

This was not my cup of tea. In fact, IIRC, I stopped reading Legion regularly at this point.

I think one of my complaints was the darkness, but also frankly I couldn't keep a lot of the characters straight with none of them wearing their costumes and calling each other by their normal names.

[Superfan90]

Yes, it is one of the greatest comic book runs of all time.

[kcekada]

As a on again/off again Legion fan dating back to the Cockrum days, I had mixed feelings on the series. I didn't like Giffen's more stylized illustrations -- and really disliked the 9 panel grid. But it was an interesting series. However, it really got to the point where I felt it had gotten too far away from the classic Legion concept -- which I was missing. When DC decided to reboot -- I was ready, but the reboot should probably not have started from scratch.