Saturday, December 22, 2007

An Eye for an Eye

The newest Legion TPB, An Eye for an Eye (Amazon link), came out this week, and most interestingly it reprinted a classic Levitz/Giffen pre-Crisis story arc: the first six issues of v3 from 1984, featuring the Legion vs the LSV and the fight to the death between Queen Projectra, Karate Kid, and Nemesis Kid. Yay DC for promoting the pre-Crisis Legion!

I guess that's as good a choice as any to start with, considering that Karate Kid is (allegedly) co-starring in "Countdown" right now (though we still don't know what's up with Sensor Girl, Karate Kid being alive, and Triplicate Girl/Una's recent behavior). The Great Darkness Saga can be brought back in print, and the stories from the start of the Levitz/Giffen period could fill one trade that goes up to the GDS.

It was weird, though, seeing the cover showing the original art with modern coloring technology (below right); back then, it was the standard four colors plus a special additional "fifth color" of silver (below left).


left, via the GCD; right, via Tales From Another World


The book reprints issues 1-6 of LSH v3 (see covers here), plus the covers to "Tales of the LSH" #327-331 (see covers here), and the Legion, LSV, and Karate Kid entries from the original Who's Who. Note that the cover to issue 1 of v3 was reprinted as the cover to Tales #326, the first reprint issue in the "hardcover/softcover" experiment. It's this cover, with the old logo, that is appearing in some promotional material (even the image on the DC page shows this one, with the Tales trade dress).


left, via the GCD; right, via DC Comics


And just in case you're not sick of seeing this image, here's what it looked like when DC put out the cover as a promotional poster in 1984.



Oh, and for what it's worth, I own the original art to the very last page of issue 6 (the last story page in this trade). Click to enlarge:

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