Friday, April 01, 2011

Things that make you go "huh?"

From the Home Office in Webster, Texas, here are the Top Ten Legion moments that make you go "Huh?"

10. Steve Ditko Archives: The Legion Years
9. The Omen & Prophet Saga
8. I Dream of Sneckie
7. Sure, Keith, go ahead and use those thick black markers, they're better than fine lined inking
6. A five-year gap? That could work...
5. Reboot? I guess so, that couldn't make things any more confusing
4. Reboot? Sure, why not, we've already had one, what's one more?
3. We don't need no stinking Superboy! We can write around that.
2. If we take Superboy & the Legion out of "Adventure Comics" and make them a backup strip in "Action Comics", they'll totally love Supergirl instead.
1. Despite having one of the universe's richest men as their benefactor, the Legion lets Superboy leave over a tax issue, because if Supergirl left then the Legion of Super-Pets would leave too.

Sorry, no good April Fools joke this year. But go back and read my earlier ones from when I was funny.

7 comments:

ykw said...

"2. If we take Superboy & the Legion out of "Adventure Comics" and make them a backup strip in "Action Comics", they'll totally love Supergirl instead."

If Shooter is to be believed, Weisinger's actual "reasoning" behind the move was that the solo SUPERBOY title was tanking, a fact Uncle Mortie blamed on the character showing up both there and in the LSH ADVENTURE feature.

Rather than just, y'know, not have Kal appear with the Legion for awhile (a state of affairs that Tall Boy actually tried at one point, only to be overruled late in the approval process), MW ordered the whole Legion concept into the background until such time as it became decoupled from the Teen of Steel in readers' minds. (That the Legionnaires would quickly wind up sharing, then taking over, the solo SUPERBOY title suggests that plan had a hole or two in it.)

Brainy Pirate said...

Thank goodness someone else doesn't seem thrilled with Steve Ditko's art on LSH--I find those issues visually unappealing in every way. There's a lot of LSH art from the 70s and 80s that I don't like, but Ditko has to rank as my all-time least favorite.

ykw said...

Considering Ditko was performing turnaround on those jobs in a week or less -- famously, one issue was pencilled in a single weekend -- they don't all look so bad. (They're better than what Janes was doing, especially given all the deadlines he was blowing!)

Greybird said...

Let's do the Spinal Tap thang and turn this up to ...

11. Sure, Keith, go ahead and change your entire art style in the middle of the issue, as these Legion fans will never notice.

... Ironies for me in comments above: Ditko I could generally do without, but not his depicting Dawnstar in a 20th Century shower at the Kent home!

And I've met Jim Janes, when I bought a page of his LSH v2 art (Dawny, Kal, and Tinya on 20th Century Bgztl) on eBay and picked it up at his home in The Valley. An afternoon of great conversation. He drew clearly and effectively, by my lights.

Brainy Pirate said...

Speaking of Ditko--Jim Shooter just posted a blog entry that talks about DC's dismissive attitude towards Marvel's artwork.

Shooter writes, "DC editors thought Marvel's art, especially Kirby, Ditko and Ayers', was "crude" and child-like. Mort mused that maybe kids related to it because it was like their own scribbles in their school notebooks."

Interestingly, I've always felt the same way about Kirby and Ditko--I've never found them appealing to look at, and have much preferred the work of Aparo, Giordano, Novick, Infantino, Kane, et al.

Shooter's post is at http://www.jimshooter.com/2011/04/more-questions-more-answers.html

(He's discussed his Legion work in several posts--might be a good site to add to the blogroll!)

Murray said...

(They're better than what Janes was doing, especially given all the deadlines he was blowing!)

They most certainly were not!!!

!!!!!

!!!!!!!

I've come to appreciate Ditko's work on the Legion, but Jimmy Janes' art is some of my favourite work on the Legion. He's easily in my top five Legion artists!

Skip Serpico said...

I loved the 5YG Legion.