Festivus 2010

Today is December 23, and you know what that means... it's Festivus time!

Festivus, which originated on an episode of "Seinfeld" in 1997, is a non-denominational holiday celebrated on Dec. 23 (or sometimes earlier, to avoid the Christmas rush). Instead of a tree, a simple unadorned aluminum pole is displayed, in opposition to the highly decorated Christmas trees. Two of the main elements of the holiday that involve people are the annual Airing of Grievances and the Feats of Strength. There are Festivus Miracles too, but they're not officially required.

So to celebrate, here are my list of Legion grievances. Please add your own in the comments, but remember they only can cover calendar year 2010 (so no whining about anything that happened last year). In no particular order:

Airing of Grievances

1. The Superboy lawsuit is STILL not settled (and with the judge's recent retirement, there doesn't seem to be much hope on the horizon). Unless they come to some conclusion that can provide a precedent on the Jerry Siegel side of things, there are going to be more problems in just a couple years when the Joe Shuster rights revert to his heirs.
2. A lack of support for a flight ring giveaway like they did for Green Lantern and the revival of The Flash. A missed opportunity after seeing what the promotion did for sales of Blackest Night tie-ins, and a Legion flight ring was a natural since (a) it's the start of a new series and (b) the flight ring has been around as long as the Flash and Green Lantern rings (give or take).
3. The CD put out by DC covering 75 years of TV theme songs doesn't include the Legion cartoon's theme.
4. Still no season 2 DVD of the cartoon, nor are there any plans to release it or a multi-season box set.
5. Sales of the Legion books are not what they should be.

Festivus Miracles

1. A new Legion book, written by Paul Levitz.
2. A second Legion book, also written by Levitz, taking over the revival of "Adventure Comics" and renumbering to continue the 500+ issue history.
3. Sad to have lost Francis Manapul as the regular penciller of the main book, but what a job Yildiray Cinar has done!
4. The Jim Lee/Paul Levitz Legion story in the "ICONS" book finally shipped, though two years late. 
5. Legion elections return
6. The announcement of Phil Jimenez as co-creator on the Legion Academy series.
7. The announcement of Keith Giffen as co-creator on the Legion Annual with the new Emerald Empress. Without a strong writer or editor to reign him in, Giffen can be creatively out there, but under Karen Berger (editor) and Paul Levitz (plotter, scripter) their work was so good that the title became DC's #2 book in sales (behind Wolfman/Perez on New Teen Titans).
8. (Relatively) high profile co-starring roles for the Legion and Mon-El in the 21st century Superman and JLA books
9. The Great Darkness Saga deluxe re-release with extra story and extra extras.
10. Action figures - a new Tyr (out this month) and Validus as a build-a-figure (out last month), and the announcement of a huge 12-figure box set, all from Mattel, and a new-costume Mon-El from DC Direct.
11. Jim Lee variant covers for the new series
12. The Dragon*Con cosplayer gathering
13. Tyroc! Written by Levitz! Never thought I'd live to see the day.

Feats of Strength

The last of the Festivus traditions is the Feats of Strength, in which the guests wrestle with and try to pin the host to the floor. Usually I cap this off with a few extra trivia questions, but this time the Feat of Strength is the fact that last month I hit the five-year blogiversary mark. My first post was in November 2005 and although I haven't posted as much this year as previous years, at 1,187 posts I'm still going and I plan on being here for a while.

(And for bonus Omnicom coverage that doesn't always make it here, don't forget to follow me on Twitter and Facebook.)