Trivia Quiz #28

The new Legion of Super-Villains team in "Legion of Three Worlds" is a collection of the worst of the worst bad guys who have plagued the Legion over the years. (Note that issue #2 is scheduled for next week, October 15th; issue #3 for Dec. 3rd; and issue #4 for Dec. 24th.) Here are some villainous questions:

1. Who was Jan Jor?

2. Which villain(s) possessed all (or nearly all) of the Legionnaires' powers?

3. We know who used the names Bob Cobb, Betsy Norcross, and Marie Elkins while in 20th century Smallville fleeing Mordru. But what were their cover stories: who were Bob, Betsy, and Marie?

4. Of the members of the LSV, who were direct (or nearly so) counterparts of Legionnaires in terms of powers?

5. Which non-Legionnaire helped the Legion defeat Mordru in his first appearance?

6. On the other hand, which two then-active Legionnaires did not help fight Darkseid in the Great Darkness Saga, and why?

7. Which Legion-centric alien races, pretty much never before seen in the 20th century, aided in the invasion of Earth in the INVASION! miniseries?

BONUS ROUND

8. In "honor" of the impending cancellation of LSH v5 with #50 and the inevitable subsequent relaunch of LSH v6 #1, name as many of the issue #1's the Legion has ever had as you can. Include series and miniseries starring individual Legionnaires, small groups of Legionnaires, or anyone closely related to the Legion.

L3W sales figures

A couple of months ago I set up a poll to see what you thought the sales would look like on the first issue of "Legion of Three Worlds". Well, the results are in.

It's a good thing that exactly 100 people voted. That makes the math much easier. The most popular vote was 60,001-70,000 with 27%, followed by 50,001-60,000 at 23%. Actual sales as reported by THE BEAT: 68,306. (I had predicted a start in the 70s, so I wasn't far off.)

Here's how the sales data for the Final Crisis spinoffs were interpreted at our official source for sales data, THE BEAT:

20 - FINAL CRISIS: LEGION OF 3 WORLDS
08/2008: Legion of 3 Worlds #1 of 3 — 68,306

22 - DC UNIVERSE: LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT
08/2008: Last Will and Testament #1 — 67,063

26 - FINAL CRISIS: SUPERMAN BEYOND
08/2008: Superman Beyond #1 of 2 — 63,137

29 - FINAL CRISIS: REVELATIONS
08/2008: Revelations #1 of 5 — 58,434

Following the pattern established by Final Crisis and Final Crisis: Rogues’ Revenge, August’s new set of spin-off titles all come in with underwhelming sales.

They seem to be in the same league as the competition’s Secret Invasion: Thor, Secret Invasion: X-Men and Secret Invasion: The Amazing Spider-Man, granted, but let’s keep in mind that those books provide random and repetitive punch-’em-ups which are cursory at best to Secret Invasion proper. The Final Crisis spin-offs, on the other hand, were promoted as major parts of the storyline and are by the company’s top-flight creative personnel.

That none of them managed to crack 70,000 units certainly supports the notion that the market was tired of Final Crisis long before the first issue shipped. The fact that their debut issues are all cuddling up within 10,000 units of each other also suggests that retailers didn’t quite know what to do with them, mind you, so it’s still possible that we’re going to see some major corrections in the next few months.

Record of gimmicks: All of these comics were supported with 50/50 variant-cover editions. All of them had a $ 3.99 price tag, except for Final Crisis: Superman Beyond #1, which was $ 4.50 and came with a set of cardboard 3D goggles.

Polls are still open for your prediction on the final issue.

More other stuff

More stuff:

• Slay, Monstrobot of the Deep!! on the LSH v5 cancellation:
  

  But I still think DC treated [Shooter] badly. After months of rumors that he was being canned from Legion, and months of speculation that Legion of 3 Worlds meant that Geoff Johns' version of the Legion was taking over, DC made only the most terse and non-committal of public denials. And now the other shoe drops--he's not being replaced, Legion is being canceled. Before Shooter's storyline is fully finished. Just coincidentally immediately after LO3W finishes.
  
  ... So. After all the fanfare about hiring him, it's buh-bye. Go peddle your wares elsewhere. DC used Shooter as stunt casting, and then tossed him aside. Whether it's because the sales were too low, or because Geoff Johns cleared his throat, Shooter deserved better.
  
  Secondly, we should note that the while Legion has been on "hiatus" before, the was usually an intervening mini-series, such as Legion Lost or Legion Worlds. DC may already have something planned, and is just playing this pretty close to the vest until they're ready to announce. But if they don't, this "hiatus" will mean that, for the first time in almost half a century, DC won't be publishing any Legion of Super-Heroes. Happy 50th, Legion!!

  
  
• Howard Chaykin interviewed Adam Hughes at Baltimore last weekend. One topic that came up was the alternate cover Hughes did of Supergirl for the Legion book:
  

  Hughes explained why he was drawn to comics as opposed to advertising, where his slick artistic style could make him a lot of money. The answer for Hughes? Total creative freedom. “DC asked me for a cover of Supergirl at one point,” Hughes said. “But they didn’t tell me anything else. I was like — any editorial direction, please? Is she in a bikini? A parka? What?” Hughes then said that very cover soon became a poster and a print.

  
  
  
• Wizard has a quick look at the main good guys and bad guys in "Legion of Three Worlds".
  
  
• I missed it here, but last month's issue of Comics Buyer's Guide #1646 (Oct. 2008) had the Legion on the cover, for an L3W story. The article has a history of the Legion, interviews with Johns and Perez, and an article by Andrew "Captain Comics" Smith on the Legion Roll Call (for the Legion up to the Crisis). Smith's roll call is very impressive, including not only the Legion of Super-Pets but also False Pretenses Lad (named "Some Guy in a Yellow Jumpsuit" here).
  
  
  
  Part 1 of Smith's roll call can be found on the CBG site as a pdf download. Part 2 is also available and covers the post-Zero Hour reboot and the current version, plus an explanation of the publishing history (and all those titles named "Legion of Super-Heroes").
  
  This is last month's issue so you might not be able to find it on the newsstand. Here's a copy on eBay.
  
  
• Tim Callahan checked out some of Jim Shooter's scripts in Baltimore.
  

  But I did get a chance to thumb through a few of Shooter's Legion of Super-Heroes scripts at the Baltimore Comic-Con, and I found them to be fascinating. Not because of the quality of the writing, necessarily, but because of their density, and their length. I've seen a few scripts by some of today's top writers -- Morrison, Fraction, Aaron -- and all of them have relatively short panel descriptions and just maybe a few quick links to online reference material. Shooter's scripts are not quite Alan Moore thick, but they're close. Each one must have been about 50 or 60 pages, including extensive panel descriptions and lengthy supplemental material with images and descriptions of the look Shooter was going for.

  
  

Cancellation followups

Kevin Melrose at Blog@Newsarama asked me yesterday if I had anything to say about the LSH v5 cancellation. He ultimately didn't use anything I said, choosing to run some good quotes by the Legion Abstract's Matthew Elmslie instead.

“The Threeboot Legion never really lived up to its potential,” said Elmslie, who contributed to Timothy Callahan’s Teenagers From the Future: Essays on the Legion of Super-Heroes. “Mark Waid, followed ably by [Tony] Bedard and Shooter, built a lot of strengths into it, including a plausible, well-conceived premise for the Legion’s place in the world, and the strongest and most subtle characterization the Legionnaires have ever had. (And Kitson’s art — followed ably by [Dennis] Calero and Manapul — was tremendous.) But the stories were too long and slow, the villains were mostly ciphers, and fans were split on whether Waid’s innovations were any good or not. Still, if we had to pick one of the three Legions to star in a comic book … the Threeboot version has the most story potential going forward.”

Meanwhile, remember how Rich Johnston kept insisting that "the New York bar scene" said that Shooter had quit the Legion? Apparently, not so much, actually. Shooter says he was notified last month of the impending cancellation (in time to wrap up his 16-issue arc in 12 issues).

And remember how he said that Tony Bedard would be writing the Legion after Shooter's run was over? Oops, what he really meant was that Bedard would be writing a L.E.G.I.O.N. book. Slight difference.

In the wake of the “Legion Of Superheroes” cancellation LITG’d back here, I can confirm that Tony Bedard is writing a new “L.E.G.I.O.N” series based on the eighties/nineties series.

At that older link, he wrote:

More San Diego creator talk tells me that the Jim Shooter’s "Legion Of Super Heroes" title ends with issue #50.

It will be replaced with a new Tony Bedard LSH project, and the Levitz/Giffen Legion project will also see publication.

Here's what we discussed in this space at the time. And I'm sure that someone in the comments here noticed that issue 50 would be roughly concurrent with the end of L3W, so it's not like it was a major stretch to link the two.

Shooter, interviewed by Newsarama as published on Aug. 19th (boldface added by me):

NRAMA: ...Do you think the Legion will be around another 50 years from now?

JS: It wouldn’t surprise me. There’s something wonderful about this series. Even if it were to go away for a while, it’ll be back.

Think he might have been hinting at something?

Some discussion over at Millarworld, ComicBloc, the DC Message Board, and LegionWorld. Jason Grey's Foenix site and Alan Kistler at ComicMix also weigh in.

Tom Spurgeon, at the Comics Reporter:

...Not that DC canceling stuff or a Legion title biting the dust is ever news, but I had to wonder: how many times out in official fashion is that for this series? Six? Seven? Eight?

Jef Peckham, over on the Legion mailing lists, wrote that he met Shooter at the Baltimore con this past weekend. Shooter told him that his arc was plotted to go to issue 54, and that almost all (but not all) of the subplots would be wrapped up by issue 50.

Other stuff

So here's a bunch of stuff I was going to get to before we heard about the latest cancellation (more on that in another post, this is for non-cancellation stuff), still trying to dig out from under my Hurricane Ike-imposed internet blackout.

• The Comic Treadmill reviews Adventure Comics 367-369. Oh noes, they're almost at the end of reviewing the entire Adventure run!
  
• Writer J. Torres explains what he had planned for the LSH31C comic, had it not been cancelled.
  
• John Kahane lists his top 5 bad ideas in Legion history.
  
• This unfortunately came and went during my down-time, but "Ordinary People Change the World" had a Legion-related auction. The group, started by author Brad Meltzer, is raising money to restore the Jerry Siegel home in Cleveland, coming from Siegel & Shuster Society Charity Auction (as seen in this CBR article). Mark Waid had donated the original Curt Swan cover to the Legion Index #2, and it sold for $7600 on eBay.
  
• ToonZone has a review of the LSH v3 DVD (that's the cartoon, not the 1980s comic series).
  
• Someone's got a couple of rare Legion promo items on eBay from the 1980s, the first being the 35th Anniversary promo from 1983 and the second being the "Flight Ring Village" promo from 1989. At this writing they're $3.99 each with no bids.
  
• Christopher "MightyGodKing" Bird has reason #45 why he should write the Legion.
  

Also coming out of Baltimore, apparently prior to the cancellation news, was this info from the Superman panel, which hints at more of the Johns post-Crisis v3-ish Legion:

The Supergirl/Superman interaction with the Legion of Super-Heroes was asked about, given that Superman now had spent time with the "original" Legion and Supergirl logged some hours alongside Waid and Kitson's “threeboot” Legion. Geoff Johns assured the fans that the overlap would be made clear.

...The current reintroduction of the Science Police was brought up and it was asked if they were tied to the Legion Science Police. Robinson promised an upcoming arc featuring the secret behind the Science Police.

...The Superman team does have plans for Mon-El.

Déjà Vu 16: Coming soon, v6 #1

Here are the first issues of v1, v2, v3, v4, and v5. Coming soon: v6 #1.

LSH v5 Cancelled with #50

As has been speculated and predicted, the current Legion series will end with issue #50, according to news out of the Baltimore Comic Con.

Via Newsarama:

DC Comics confirmed for Newsarama at Baltimore Comic Con that Legion of Super-Heroes, the ongoing series that relaunched the fan-favorite, teenage team from the future, will be canceled with issue #50 after a four-year run.

"We're going to bring a close to the Legion of Super-Heroes now," said DC Senior VP and Executive Editor Dan DiDio. "There's a lot going on with the characters. I thought that [writer] Jim [Shooter] and [artist] Francis [Manapul] have done a terrific job with the series, and '50' seemed like a really nice number to bring this series to a conclusion."

However, Legion characters aren't going away, DiDio said. "We've got a lot of plans and a lot of thought for the Legion right now, but coming out of the Legion of 3 Worlds, we're going to let the characters rest for a little bit and see where we go from there," he said.

Shooter, the current writer of the Legion of Super-Heroes ongoing comic, told Newsarama in Baltimore that he found out about a month ago that the series was canceled with Issue #50.

"It's a drag, but I get to finish most of my story. It would have finished in Issue #54, but Issue #50 is going to be a 30-page story, and I'm hoping people will be intrigued enough that they'll want to finish the story. So we'll see," Shooter said. "I understand new comics sales are not doing so well right now. Which is weird. Just look at this crowd. Everyone seems so excited about comics. They're buying something."

Shooter said his story will come to a climax in the next few issues as he finishes up the "One Evil" storyline.

...Because he's been writing the Legion so much lately, Johns has been asked frequently by fans during DC panels at conventions if he would write the team in an ongoing series. His answer has always been that he'd love to do it. So Newsarama asked DiDio: Is it possible there will be a Johns-penned series featuring the Legion of Super-Heroes in the future?

"You know what? I think we'd love Geoff to write everything right now. But realistically, he's got a pretty full slate with everything that's going on," DiDio said. "He's got Flash, Green Lantern, JSA, Action, and specials coming up because this thing called Blackest Night is looming. But I'm sure that the Legion will stay close to Geoff and near and dear to him as well, and you'll probably see some of them appear through some of his runs down the line. I don't want to give too much away. But there's always plans for the Legion. They're an important part of the DC Universe. And more importantly, I think we've done a great job with the story. I think Jim and Francis have done a great job bringing it to an end. And after Legion of 3 Worlds, there will be more opportunities, so we're going to explore those after that series concludes."

More to come, obviously.

Déjà Vu 15: What the L?

Baltimore Comic Con 08: DC Nation

At this weekend's Baltimore Comic Con, here's the Legion news from the DC Nation panel.

Via CBR:

Geoff Johns added that the Legion of Super Heroes appearance in “Smallville” will be airing in February. There will be a villain from the Legion’s time that Johns can’t believe they let him use.

Via Newsarama:

Q: Who’s in the lightning rod the Legion has?
A: Johns: “We will see that in Legion of 3 Worlds #3.”

Q: What story is Johns telling with the Legion on Smallville?
A: “If you know the origin, you know the story that’s coming,” Johns said. “But there is a villain from the Legion’s time that I can’t believe they let me put in there.”

Q: Is there any Legion of Super-Heroes news about the future of the team?
A: Johns: “The future of the Legion of Super-Heroes is in Legion of 3 Worlds - and it will have a lot of stuff in it that will affect the modern day DCU.”

Q: Is Glorith in Legion of 3 Worlds?
A: Johns: “She’s mentioned. You might now be happy about it.”
[Wonder if this is a typo, if it should be "not" instead of "now".]

Q: Will the Legion appear in more than the one episode of Smallville?
A: It’s a one episode thing, Johns said, adding that the appearance will have ramifications throughout the season.

More Bad Ideas

A few posts down, I asked you for what you thought were "the five worst ideas in the 50 year history of the Legion".

Here are mine, in chronological order:

1. "How about if we take our two top-selling books in the entire company, make them direct-sales only, and then replace the regular book with reprints?"

2. "These Bierbaums, they're long-time fans. Even though they have limited industry experience, they must have some good ideas. Let's pair them with a strong co-writer and a hands-off editor."

3. "Don't worry, the Superman reboot won't affect the Legion. We have a fool-proof plan to keep everything in continuity."

4. "Legion continuity is irretrievably broken. We have no choice but to completely reboot the series."

5. "Let's reboot the series again. We can get new readers, obliquely tie into a popular miniseries, and besides, the fans are already used to reboots."