The calendar has turned to 2016 and with that comes some resolutions.
Fridays have come to mean 5YL Fridays here on this blog but those reviews have ended. I have a couple of more posts in mind to wrap up my thoughts on that series.
But I hereby resolve to review the Threeboot Legion as my Friday contribution for the site.
I liked this series. I thought Waid and Kitson brought back some classic sensibility to the group. It certainly helped that Supergirl joins the book for a major section.
But it was another reboot, chipping away at the foundation of Legion mythology that old time Legion fans still liked to lean on.
So before I get started, I'd love to hear, even broadly, what people thought of this series.
I thought it was awesome. In theory. The art was great, the premise was brilliant, and the characterization was best-ever for Legion comics. I'm no fan of reboots, but the comics that result from reboots can often be tremendous.
ReplyDeleteIn practice, though, the pacing was often too slow, the villains undeveloped, and Waid got distracted by _52_ during the Supergirl story and then DC pulled the rug out from under the title by bringing in the retroboot Legion in the Lightning Saga. DC and a lot of the fans chose nostalgia over innovation and got some retroboot comics that had some old-timey characters and no interesting stories. I'm no huge fan of what Bedard or Shooter did on the title but at least they were trying to do new stuff. But Waid and Kitson's run, especially the first arc, was top notch.
I liked the Waid-Kitson run of the Threeboot as well. While it felt more like an alternate universe than what you'd expect from a regular LSH story, there were a lot of good concepts & ideas that are worth exploring (or finding a way to incorporate into the standard LSH). However, once they left, it went downhill; Bedard's run was weirdly generic, and the politest way I can describe Shooter's run is appallingly oversexed. But the start was strong enough that I wish it could be revisited for something other than cannon fodder.
ReplyDeleteI thought the Waid/Kitson from the ground up retooling of the entire concept of the Legion was very interesting, but was sometimes not very entertaining. I've got a sense we weren't allowed to experience a fraction of what W & K were cooking up.
ReplyDeleteAs the periodic rebooting of the 30th/31st centuries weakened (exponentially) the Legion, as previously stated, in retrospect, I wish W&K had somehow brought their great ideas to the previous iteration of the team, thereby consolidating continuity.
I thought Bedard's arc was pretty good, he wrote the best Tenzil Kem this side of the Bierbaums. And Shooter - I was so excited to see his name once again attached to the Legion. His run didn't quite live up to that excitement, but I suspect I don't find it as distasteful as other Legion fans. I'm actually looking forward to revisiting the stories that closed out the Threeboot era.
Of course, just as was the case with the Reboot team, this Legion got nothing like a fair shake in the so-called Legion of 3 Worlds, and I totally agree with Mela, they seemed to serve as nothing more than fodder.
I'll be on board for these recaps, this era of Legion history certainly deserves the attention.
Mark Waid gave a bunch of interviews when the threeboot started, and revealed a couple of ideas that I think are key to understanding his run. One was, what society would use teenagers as the centrepiece of its defenses? None, that's who, so he set up a situation where that could arise. And two, this is a team of aliens, so they should be wildly different from each. He said something like, leading the Legion is like forming an effective fighting force out of a mulberry tree, a cumulus cloud, and a sugar cube. Both of which I considered to be excellent points.
ReplyDeleteI guess I'm in the minority because I thought the start-up was slow and dull, but that eventually the series figured out what it wanted to do and did it. I agree that the menaces were too non-descript and hard to understand. I wasn't a fan of the whole "We Are Legion because we're young and it's against the law to be young," or whatever the motivation was. The Invisible Kid intro and Shrinking Violet/Atom Girl things were also confusing.
ReplyDeleteIt usually looked real nice, though. Looking forward to reading these reviews and better remembering the good stuff....
I'm approaching the end of a full reread of the threeboot. I appreciated that it mostly tried to be its own thing, telling mostly new stories with familiar characters instead of the reboot's approach of retelling the old stories in different ways. The Waid/Kitson issues were the strongest, if only because as creators they had the strongest feel for exactly what set this iteration apart from the first two. Bedard's run felt like a fill-in, though as Mark Sweeney mentions his portrayal of Tenzil Kem was outstanding. Shooter's run ... there's some stuff I really like in there -- the introduction of M'Rissey, Manapul's art -- but his overuse of "futuristic" slang always bugged me.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was mostly unmemorable. Good in concept, beautiful art, some good characterizations but it never came together for me.
ReplyDeleteI skipped this series as I did the reboot. The only Legion I followed and collected was the original/retroboot Legion series. I never liked the idea of rebooting and starting all over again and again. It just made the Legion confusing.
ReplyDeleteI liked the first few issues where a Legionnaire or two would get spotlight time. Great characterization and artwork. I especially loved Waid's take on Phantom Girl, Starboy, Colossal Boy and Triplicate Girl. However, the villains left a lot to be desired. They were pretty forgettable. I think I stopped reading the series around #14 and didn't pick it up again until Jim Shooter took over with #37.I stayed on for about 5 or 6 more issues then dropped it again.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all the comments!!
ReplyDeleteThis book drew me back into being a Legion fan. I thought it was good not great. And so I look forward to reviewing it in depth!