Levitz, Giffen back on the Legion
Via Newsarama, Keith Giffen talks about things he'll be working on at DC with his exclusive contract, one of which is a DC/Wildstorm crossover:
KG: I don't know when the book's coming out. I don't know what the schedule is. I will tell you it's not one of those "ten years ago" kind of books. It takes place in the Wildstorm present. And it does involve quite a few DC heroes.
NRAMA: Such as...?
KG: Well, let's see. It might be of interest to a small group of fans out there that, in this Wildstorm/DC crossover, I will – probably for the final time for the foreseeable future – be returning to the Legion of Super-Heroes.
NRAMA: Wait, so you'll be writing the Legion of Super-Heroes as part of this crossover?
KG: Yeah.
NRAMA: There are definitely fans would be interested in that, although how they show up is going to be the real item of interest. Any other characters that you want to tell us are going to appear in the crossover?
KG: At this point, not really. There are some that are kind of obvious. If you think about it, it's not hard to figure out who would show up in a crossover. You're not going to do a crossover without the big guns. You know Superman's going to be there, but it's the way Superman is there and the approach that is used to him that is going to make this stand out from other crossovers.
NRAMA: OK, and what is this tease bout a "war for control of Hell?"
KG: I think Didio got tired of telling me to go to hell figuratively. So he thought, well, let's actually send him down to DC Hell and let him thrash around like a mental patient. "Now when we tell him go to hell, he can't get offended!"
NRAMA: [laughs] Well, can you describe what the book is about?
KG: I can't really say too much about the book. I can tell you, it's sort of a meaty series. It's more than six issues but less than 12.
NRAMA: Is this something you're currently writing or just something off on the horizon?
KG: The first issue's in. The first issue of all these projects are in. I've actually seen some art for the first issue of the DC/Wildstorm project. But yeah, DC is actually sending me down to the DC version of Hell, and we're going to see what kind of trouble I can get into down there.
Meanwhile, in a separate interview with Paul Levitz:
NRAMA: Back to the imprints – let’s hit the big one – the DC Universe. By and large, both the Marvel and the DC Universes have embraced event-driven storytelling. What’s your take on that, both as Publisher and a fan?
PL: The first comic I remember buying off the rack was “Crisis on Earth-1/Earth-2”…
NRAMA: [laughs] Enough said.
PL: So part of me is a sucker for them. As a reader, I think it’s great when it works. It’s a bit of a car wreck when it doesn’t. As a writer, it’s a tremendous pain in the ass. I lived through having to make some uncomfortable adjustments in Legion of Super-Heroes because of what was going on in the multiple universes as they pulled together at different times in my career. But when it works, it’s a really great trick – and we’ve had some success with it in the last couple of years. Marvel has certainly had some success with it this past year. It’s a tough trick to keep pulling off time after time, and we have an ongoing debate here about the weight of energy put into the events versus put into making the books great on a monthly basis. And really, you want to do both tricks well.
[deleted]
NRAMA: Finally – the annual personal question…when are you going to get back to writing? And no “No one wants to read anything I have to write,” or any other of your pat answers… Jim Shooter’s back on Legion, so it seems to be old home week over there…
PL: Jim just came back on Legion so he could break the record I had on Justice Society of how long a gap it was between writing the characters. [laughs]
NRAMA: and that was the only reason Jim came back?
PL: The only one. It was absolutely personal – I can’t imagine any other reason that he took it on. [chuckles]
I’m doing a short Legion story with Jim Lee for a book that Jim’s doing as a sort of “art of Jim Lee” collection that he was kind enough to ask me to work with him on. And at the moment, that’s the only piece of serious writing on the agenda. It’s very hard – we still have one kid at home; I travelled more this year than I think in any of the last decade…the more good stuff DC does, the more places I have to be at once, and the harder it is to find serious time at the keyboard.
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And so we have the pending resolution of the "Jim Lee would like to do the Legion" tidbit from a couple years ago, on the heels of both the "Jim Shooter will write the Legion" and "George Perez wants to do a Legion story with Mark Waid" bits.
Are there any other teased creator/Legion combos out there from recent years which may still be in the pipeline?
This year at SDCC I begged Paul to write the Legion again and he's going on. So next year I guess I'll have to be more specific and beg him to write the Legion again on a regular basis.
Speaking of Giffen and Levitz, the LSH-LSV War book, Eye for an Eye, came out yesterday. After getting over being thrilled to see these issues in tpb form, I was amused to realize that they were reprinted on cheaper paper stock than the original comics. Which is doubly amusing given the issues' place in the hardcover/softcover initiative. :-)
But the printing itself looks great! And it's interesting to see Giffen's experiments in the first couple of issues, bouncing between his older style and what would evolve into the kind of stuff he'd be drawing by decade's end. I hadn't read the issues for some time, so it was fun to just look at them again!
I was really excited to read this, I'm a long time collector and Giffen's work as writer and/or artist on the Legion (both his period with Levitz as well as the later era with the Bierbaums) are amongst my all-time favourites.
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