Teenagers from the Future

"Teenagers from the Future" has got to be the best book containing critical commentary about the Legion since, well, ever. (You can use that as a pull quote, Tim!)

[Full disclosure: that's an Amazon link above, just like all the books listed at the bottom of the left-hand side of this page. If you click it and order the book (or anything) I get something like a dollar credit (4%). If I can just get 27 people to buy one via this link, I can get one for free!]

As Tim said, it will also be available via Diamond, but once it's in Diamond's catalog there's a chance it might get pulled from the bookstores. So order now, or wait and order later!

Here's the press release from the publisher, Sequart. I've linked the author's name to their blog or web page, where I could find it.

Teenagers from the Future: Essays on the Legion of Super-Heroes is now available from Sequart Research & Literacy Organization.

The book, edited by Timothy Callahan (Grant Morrison: The Early Years), sports a foreword by Matt Fraction and an afterword by Barry Lyga. The collection includes the following essays:

• "The Perfect Storm: The Death and Resurrection of Lightning Lad," by Richard "RAB" Bensam [Estoreal]
  
  
• "Liberating the Future: Women in the Early Legion," by John G. Hemry
  
  
• "The Silver Age Legion: Adventure into the Classics," by Christopher Barbee
  
  
• "The (Often Arbitrary) Rules of the Legion," by Chris Sims [The Invincible Super-Blog]
  
  
• "Shooter's Marvelesque," by Jeff Barbanell [Intergalactic Vigilante Squadron]
  
  
• "The Legion's Super-Science," by James Kakalios [The Physics of Super-Heroes]
  
  
• "Bridging the Past and the Present with the Future: The Early Legion and the JLA," by Scipio Garling [The Absorbascon]
  
  
• "Decades Ahead of Us to Get it Right: Architecture and Utopia," by Sara K. Ellis
  
  
• "Those Legionnaires Should Just Grow Up!" by Greg Gildersleeve
  
  
• "Thomas, Altman, Levitz and the 30th Century," by Timothy Callahan [Geniusboy Firemelon]
  
  
• "The Amethyst Connection," by Lanny Rose
  
  
• "Revisionism, Radical Experimentation, and Dystopia in Giffen's Legion," by Julian Darius
  
  
• "Pulling Back the Curtain: Gender Identity and Homosexuality in the Legion," by Alan Williams
  
  
• "Diversity and Evolution in the Reboot Legion," by Matthew Elmslie [Legion Abstract]
  
  
• "Fashion from the Future, or 'I Swear, Computo Forced Me to Wear This!" by Martin A. "MaGnUs" Perez [The Dissector]
  
  
• "Generational Theory and the Waid Threeboot," by Matthew Elmslie
  
  
• "A Universe in Adolescence," by Paul Lytle
  
  
• "The Racial Politics of the Legion of Super-Heroes," by Jae Bryson

This essay collection, from fans and scholars alike, is as diverse as Legion history. No Legion fan or comics scholar should go without this critical celebration of the Legion.

Legal Disclaimer: the Legion of Super-Heroes and related characters are trademarks of DC Comics. This book is not endorsed or authorized by DC Comics.

About the Publisher: Sequart Research & Literacy Organization is a non-profit devoted to the study and promotion of comic books as a legitimate art. This is the organization's third book, following Timothy Callahan's Grant Morrison: The Early Years (solicited in July's Previews) and Tom McLean's Mutant Cinema: The X-Men Trilogy from Comics to Screen.

Chris Sims at The Invincible Super-Blog raves about the book:

Teenagers From the Future, the collection of essays on the Legion of Super-Heroes that I contributed to that also features an introduction by Matt Fraction, is now on sale at Amazon, and I don’t think I’m overstating it to say that it is the single greatest book ever published in the English Language.

Barry Lyga, who wrote the Afterword:

The Legion has a large, faithful (and, some say, mentally disturbed) fan base, as well as a decades-long string of some great comics (and some crappy ones, too -- let's be honest).

Sequart is publishing a special collection of scholarly essays about the Legion and I was asked to contribute the Afterword, which I was only too happy to do.

Matthew Elmslie at the Legion Abstract:

I'm proud of both articles and think they're both worth your time. And then there are all the other articles! Some damn fine work has gone into this book, and no Legion fan should be without it. I'd be highly recommending it even if I had nothing to do with the thing.

No, I didn't contribute anything to the book, though I probably should have.