Monday, May 14, 2007

CBR: Talking with Mark Waid

In part 2 of his 52 "exit interview", Mark Waid talked to CBR about lots of things, including the Legion. There's a lot more there than I discuss here, so it definitely merits a read.

RT: Let's talk about "Supergirl and the Legion of Superheroes." And, more specifically, why you left so suddenly.

MW: The honest answer is because Barry got his Marvel exclusive. I didn't want to stick around without Barry there. We'd planned to wrap up with issue #36 or so, and I'm disappointed that we couldn't follow up on the threads we wanted to follow up on, and I certainly don't begrudge Barry, who has my unwavering support no matter what he chooses to do. But I think we ended on a pretty good note.

RT: So what do you think about Tony Bedard as the replacement?

MW: Tony is a great replacement.

I think that issue #29, which Tony wrote and which just came out, was really good. I read that and wish I had written it. It was a really clever take on the Dominators and a really dramatic twist in the story.

I've liked Tony's work forever and think he's a really good choice for "Legion." I know that's the obvious thing for me to say - I mean what else am I going to say, "He's gonna suck!"? - but I genuinely mean it when I say I have faith in him, and history shows it's true. I brought Tony into Crossgen, something he has almost forgiven me for. [laughs] I keep dragging him along whenever I do stuff, because I want him to do more comics.

Ouch. So basically they compressed a storyline that had 9 issues to go (28-36) into 3 (28-30). Of course it felt rushed, and Mark was busy with 52 in that time anyway. Now they've got one regular-sized issue to clean up many (some?) of the dangling plot threads that they wanted to do in seven.
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4 comments:

  1. Your Obedient Serpent5/14/2007 01:16:00 AM

    Yeah, but, um...

    Waid's right. #29 really WAS good.

    Better and punchier than the issues that had come before.

    I love Waid's work, but his Legion stuff has been one of the worst examples of "decompression" turning into "dragging the story out to tedious lengths".

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  2. Terence Chua5/14/2007 04:56:00 AM

    What's interesting, though off-topic, is what Waid says about "fun" being the death knell for a comic book. When did that happen, I wonder?

    I like fun, myself, but then again I'm in my late 30s. But that's not really about the Legion, so I won't elaboate. I hope someone brings this up on Howling Curmudgeons so I can talk about this a bit more.

    Confirmation word "bgzmb" - Bgztl's sister planet?

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  3. Matthew E5/14/2007 08:15:00 AM

    So basically they compressed a storyline that had 9 issues to go (28-36) into 3 (28-30).

    Not necessarily. They could have been planning to end the Dominator stuff when they did anyway, and Bedard's six issues might roughly correspond to what Waid was planning to do in those six issues himself. If you know what I mean.

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  4. Michael5/14/2007 12:22:00 PM

    Matthew - you're right, I wasn't thinking of it like that. When Waid said "we planned to wrap up with issue 36", I took it to mean as "we planned to end the Dominator war storyline with issue 36".

    I love the new Brave and Bold book too. "Fun" is a word I'd use as well, but in a good way.

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