RIP Jim Shooter

Jim Shooter was a complicated man.

The other day, Erik Larsen (of Savage Dragon fame) wrote this about him: “Shooter’s reputation was earned. He had very specific rules of what he thought comics should be and he was not shy in imposing them. He rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. He absolutely did a lot of good but it wasn’t all good. A number of creative people left the company in his time in office” as editor-in-chief at Marvel. Shooter’s death made the Hollywood Reporter and the New York Times.

“Some people swear by him, and other people swear at him,” Bill Sienkiewicz said in the New York Times interview. “Every bad thing you’ve heard about Jim Shooter has a bit of truth to it,” said Danny Fingeroth in the same interview, “But so does every good thing you’ve heard.”

But let’s rewind.

Shooter was a 13-year old boy who read Marvel and DC comics, and wondered why DC’s weren’t as fun and dynamic as Marvel’s (just compare the Superman and Batman stories of the mid-60s with what Marvel was doing, for example). So he figured he’d sit down and write a story about one of DC’s teams that he felt had promise but wasn’t living up to its potential. He wrote and penciled a story on notebook paper for Adventure Comics featuring the Legion (because he didn’t know how comics were actually made). He got a call from editor Mort Weisinger asking for more, which he readily accepted because it meant that he could help provide for his family. That story became Adventure Comics #348. The “more” turned into Adventure Comics #346-347 (cover-dated July and August 1966), which were printed after he turned 14 years old. Weisinger asked him to come up with scripts for Superman and Supergirl stories (he co-created the Parasite and wrote the first Superman/Flash race), too. Then he stuck around for a few more years (his last issue was Adventure #380, cover-dated 1969) until he graduated high school, and left the business. Not long after, Weisinger retired and the Legion moved to the backup of Action Comics and then in the backup of Superboy.

In the early 70s, Legion fandom had just begun, with letters appearing in the comics regarding some fanzines (like Interlac and the Legion Outpost). The Outpost, run by fans Mike Flynn and Harry Broertjes (prounced “Brodges”, like “bridges” but with an “o”), decided to track down Shooter for an interview in 1974 or 1975, when Shooter was 23 years old. That eventually led to Shooter deciding to come back to DC to write the Legion again starting with issue #209 cover dated June 1975 (where the backup story had a new character as a fan of the Legion named “Flynt Brojj”), and then after a couple of years, Marvel poached him as a writer and he eventually became an editor - and by age 28, he was Marvel's Editor-in-Chief.

Shooter’s time at Marvel was simultaneously applauded and condemned, depending on who you talk to. He had Frank Miller on Daredevil, Walt Simonson on Thor, Chris Claremont and John Byrne on the X-Men, and later Byrne on the Fantastic Four. He created the first company-wide crossover miniseries with Contest of Champions, and then a couple years later he wrote Secret Wars at the request of his bosses who had a joint deal with toy makers (and co-created Spider-Man’s black costume which eventually became Venom). He launched the New Universe, and co-created the Transformers comic and storyline that influenced the cartoon series and then the movies. 

On the other hand, he was responsible (at least in part) for killing the original JLA/Avengers crossover, for instituting a “no gays in Marvel comics” (except the ones who tried to rape Bruce Banner in the shower in a story in the “Hulk” magazine, see this article for details), for driving Miller and Byrne to DC (where they did Dark Knight and the Superman revamp, respectively) along with Marv Wolfman and Roy Thomas (for not allowing writers to be editor on their own stories), and being the Marvel face of the lawsuit between Jack Kirby and Marvel about relinquishing rights to his characters in exchange for his original art (here’s Shooter’s version).

In the late 80s he was finally ousted as Marvel’s Editor in Chief, and he later went on to co-found Valiant Comics (which started with Nintendo and WWE comics, later of course featuring Magnus, Dr Solar, Turok, and many others), Defiant Comics, and Broadway Comics, with varying levels of success. He returned to DC writing the Legion with great fanfare in 2008, picking up the Threeboot after Waid and Kitson left (and after Supergirl left), only to meet his greatest foe: DC Editorial, who were more interested in pursuing the Retroboot than the Threeboot, so they told him to wrap up his 18 issue storyline several issues early, leading him to leave the book with #50 being rewritten by a still-anonymous DC person using the pseudonym “Justin Thyme” (reportedly Dan DiDio).

Apparently he spent the last few years on the convention circuit, conversing with fans (who were growing older and fewer) and pros alike, and unbeknownst to many, had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer and was undergoing treatments in between convention appearances. He finally passed away last week at the age of 73.

From Paul Levitz: “Jim was an excellent super hero writer, a character creator, an editor with an eagle eye, and a man who gave his all to what he did.  From my perspective, he was far weaker as an enterprise leader, and unfortunately that was what he most wanted to be. His sense of history was not, in my view, as good as his sense of fiction.  But what he did well, he did gloriously...and my inner child will always be grateful for his inspiration.”

From Mark Waid: “My meals and conversations with Jim were always genial, and I never failed to remind him just how inspirational his work was to me; there are storytelling choices and stylistic influences I got from him in nearly all my work.” Waid has credited the 2-part Mordru story for greatly influencing his own writing style.

Looking back at the Legion, here’s what he co-created in his three runs as writer:

• Adventure Comics #346-349, 351-380 and Action Comics #378, 380-382, 384 (1966-1970): Ferro Lad, Karate Kid, Princess Projectra, Nemesis Kid, Dr Regulus (and Sun Boy’s origin story), Universo, Rond Vidar, the Time Cube, Emerald Empress, Mano, Tharok, Validus, Persuader (all as the Fatal Five), the Sun-Eater, the death of Ferro Lad, Beauty Blaze, Echo, the Controllers, Orion the Hunter, Takron-Galtos, the Dominators, Mantis Morlo, King Voxv, Shadow Lass, the second Legion Clubhouse, the Dark Circle, the Miracle Machine, Mordru, Chemical King, the Legion Academy, Tarik the Mute, the Tornado Twins, the Taurus Gang (including Black Mace), Leland McCauley III, the Wanderers, Eltro Gand
• Superboy #209-214, 217, 220-224 (1975-1977): Soljer, Karate Kid’s origin, the Legion of Super-Rejects, Benn Pares, Leland McCauley IV, Laurel Kent, Grimbor, Charma, Pulsar Stargrave, Holdur, Quicksand
• LSH v5 #37-50 (2008-2009): Gazelle, M’Rissey, UP Young Heroes

Written when he was just 13 years old, published at 14

Further reading:

• Eulogies from lots of comics professionals
• https://bleedingcool.com/comics/jim-shooter-marvel-eic-founder-of-valiant-has-died-aged-73-rip/
• https://www.cbr.com/jim-shooter-comic-book-icon-dc-marvel-obituary/
• https://aiptcomics.com/2025/06/30/marvel-comics-jim-shooter/
• https://www.comicsbeat.com/jim-shooter-73-has-reportedly-died-of-esphogeal-cancer/
• https://comicbook.com/comics/news/jim-shooter-dies-marvel-comics-editor-in-chief-secret-wars-legion-of-super-heroes/
• https://icv2.com/print/article/59934
• https://bleedingcool.com/comics/reaction-to-the-death-of-jim-shooter-the-man-who-made-comics-grow-up/
• https://www.thepopverse.com/comics-jim-shooter-marvel-comics-avengers-legion-of-super-heroes-hulk-secret-wars
• https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/jim-shooter-dead-marvel-comics-1236304076/
• https://www.gamesradar.com/comics/legendary-comic-writer-and-editor-jim-shooter-creator-of-secret-wars-and-writer-of-avengers-superman-and-more-dies-at-73/

RIP: Keith Giffen

I never posted about Keith Giffen's passing - I had written this up but kept adding to it and forgot to post it (I last updated it in November), so I've added some tributes that came out some time after he passed away due to complications from a stroke on Monday Oct 9th. I'll have more on his Legion work separately. 

His last words to the comics community, as seen on his Facebook page and apparently put there by his family at his request, were:

He even got a New York Times obituary article on October 30, plus tributes from both DC and Marvel.

Here are some of the remembrances posted on Facebook:

• JM DeMatteis: My old friend and collaborator Keith Giffen has passed away. Keith has had his share of health issues in recent years, but he was such a feisty, tenacious guy I was sure he’d outlive us all. “Some day,” I once told him, “the Earth will be an apocalyptic hellhole, all of humanity will be gone, but you’ll still be here, sitting in the rubble, smoking a cigarette.” Keith, as anyone who worked with him can attest, was one of the most brilliantly creative humans ever to work in comics, the Jack Kirby of my generation of creators. He was a curmudgeon with a heart of gold. An extraordinarily generous collaborator. And, as my wife observed, “He was like a character out of a Keith Giffen story.”
• Barbara Randall Kesel: Keith Giffen is so tied into my early years in comics that it's hard to imagine the field without him. I saw so many of his pages up close while filling in blacks for Karl. I can't think of Keith's art without smelling india ink and hearing 80s music... That last post of his is just so very perfect. It just came too soon. RIP, you crazy creative!
• Mike Flynn: It's been a while since we chatted, but Keith Giffen has always been the source of a disproportionate percentage of my happy memories. I love that he nailed his good-bye, but I'm sad he won't be creating anything else for us. If I'm not wrong, I met him for the first time for a fan interview. Then he became a favorite creator to go to comic conventions with. His stream-of-consciousness might as well have been Robin Williams.
• Jesse Berdinka (editor): Keith Giffen was the biggest pain in my ass of anyone I ever worked with. Ever. He made my job as an editor on his work absolutely miserable with checking constantly to make sure he didn't slip in some off color joke or send something in wildly different than what he told me he was going to. However, he was easily one the most talented, funniest people I ever met. He pretended he was a curmudgeon but he was the most optimistic pessimist I ever met. He constantly fought the system and found the beauty in non conformity.
• Paul Levitz: The sad news is now official: Keith Giffen has gone off to create new worlds that are beyond our living reach. Keith was probably the most fertile creative mind of our generation in comics. He had an infinite number of ideas, pouring constantly out. Many, thankfully, never saw print as wholly insane or inappropriate. But the ones that did! We did over 60 stories together. Many of them he made far better than they might have been with any other collaborator, because of his ideas and contributions to character moments and drama. A few we had rough times on, but I think no more than could be expected in a long relationship. Keith was a curmudgeon by choice, an act he perfected and enjoyed. Like many artists, he didn’t lead a healthy lifestyle, and that led to tough times that he always laughed off. He was a family man when out of public view, and his soft moments came out there. I’ll tell a couple of stories in upcoming posts, but tonight I just want to say good night to a friend who made me look better than I was. And hugs to his kids, grandkids and great grandkids. Oh, and Anna, now that you have him back, take care of him as you always did—he was never the same after you went.
• (In another post): A quirk of Keith: world building is often most powerful in its use of detail and conformance to principles. Keith wasn't alone in thinking of graphic ways to illustrate the future, but his long run on Legion gave him added time to demonstrate it. His holographic imagery (a pain to create before the layers of Photoshop), lack of windows and wheels, or drafting the letter forms for Interlac were all his touches that I gratefully worked with.
• (In another post): One of the factors that made collaborating with Keith a joy is he had no pride of authorship. An idea was simply an idea, not his or mine, only something to serve the story. And most of the time, neither of us remembered or cared where it came from.
• (In another post): A quirk of Keith: he liked to say he''d read my plots (usually 3-4 pages long) on the bus back to Jersey,, then throw them out and start drawing. I suspect exaggeration, because his pencils generally followed my flow....except when there would suddenly be a page or two scene having nothing to do with the written plot or any conversation we had. In the good years, our sense of the characters was alined enough that I often ignored his liner notes on this pages, and wrote a scene that was neither the original idea nor his, but felt better to us both.
• (In another post): A quirk of Keith: It’s intrinsic to the writer/artist collaborations in comics that either party can make unreasonable demands of the other. Not financially, but creatively. The writer who asks for contradictory visual actions in a single panel. The artist who does a tiny panel for the scene where the big expository monologue is to happen. Keith and I rarely had that problem. But he did remind me, time after time, of my cruelest art direction: “The entire population of the planet Daxam rises as one, flying into space.” Always followed by his “and you only gave me 1/5 of a page for it!” Of course he pulled it off beautifully.
• Colleen Doran: My very dear friend, one of the best friends I have ever had. Keith Giffen. I am heartbroken. I will love you forever. You were endlessly kind and crazy, funny and awful, beyond smart, truly original.
• Rob Liefeld: Just heard the news of the passing of Keith Giffen. He was a Master of the craft. My favorite Defenders. My favorite Legion Of Super Heroes. LOBO! For years he worked his magic for me at Extreme on Bloodstrike, Supreme and Youngblood. We had so much fun. He is first ballot Comic Book Hall Of Fame. Rest In Peace Keith, you were one in a million.
• Jim Lee: Gutted to hear the passing of the legendary comic book creator Keith Giffen. He personified creativity to me in everything he did. Whether it was writing, plotting, drawing, kibitzing or creating-Keith did it like no other in the modern age. He possessed an insane abundance of talent, a fearless take on every project asked of him and created some of the most absurd, over the top, and hilarious characters ever. His body of work influenced and entertained generations of creators and fans alike and even though he had seen and done it all-he was always such a charming, sweetheart of a guy in his own Keith Giffen way. His retro nostalgic vision of the future filled with windowless buildings and omnipresent floating holographic screens made me a Legion of Superheroes fan for life. It was one of my highlights of my career to collaborate with Keith on a Scooby Doo project and watch him elevate the concept in such a fun, smart way. Truly a master of every facet of the craft of making comics and a creative dynamo like no other...he will be missed.
• Mike Carlin: Very sad to hear of the death of Keith Giffen... a prolific writer and artist for Marvel and DC who I had the pleasure of working with several times over the years! Hanging out with him and Andy Helfer and J.M. DeMatteis while they "invented" a funny Justice League was side fun for me as well! When I was working at Marvel Keith pitched me a run for THE DAZZLER that I was interested in... and then he kinda ghosted me. But you can see what that MIGHT have been since he just used his GREY MAN story in JUSTICE LEAGUE a few years later! (He had so many ideas... but he always knew the good ones no matter where they ended up!) The way Keith plotted most stories involved doing thumbnail layouts like this page from COUNTDOWN... so fun, and completely the life of the party, right there at the start of the art! I think my favorite thing about Keith was that he liked to play the "Crabby Old Guy" even when he was young... and I would just laugh-- and that would make him smile. But I couldn't tell if he liked when I called him Mon Chi-Chi when he got a new haircut... but we kept working together so I think it was okay. But, now that I think of it... he stopped getting haircuts!
• Fabian Nicieza: Keith was uniquely Keith and the world was a much more interesting place because of it. He was one of the most fascinating people I knew in this industry and he goes out the way he always went: as a delightfully confounding genius.
• Mark Waid: Losing Keith Giffen today was a gutpunch. We worked together off and on for decades, from Legion in the '80s to 52 in the '00s and many times in between. His imagination and creativity could hardly be matched, and collaborating with him in any fashion was a joy. He gave me one of the best pieces of advice I ever got. When I asked him 20 years ago what the secret was to maintaining a steady career in comics, he said, "Figure out what you do better than anyone else and own that lane. It may not always be in fashion, but when it is, they have no choice but to come to you." Rest in curmudgeonly peace, my friend.
• Me: You were his editor on the 5 Years Later version of the Legion at the beginning. What was that like, compared to working with him as a co-writer?
• Waid: Like riding a bull at the rodeo.
• Tom Galloway: Do you feel you lasted for the equivalent of eight seconds? : -)
• Waid: Nope. At best, six.
• (Later) Like a football team retiring the jersey number of a legendary player, today the comics world has little choice but to retire the word "curmudgeon." Love you, Keith.
• Al Gordon: I just heard my old Compatriot, Keith Giffen passed away a couple days ago. A few months back, Keith was in the hospital with Covid. I can only assume his death had something to do with that. The effects of Long Covid include strokes etc. I never know what to say. I feel like a hypocrite with any response I can think of... so, I'll leave it with "God Speed..." which is technically “𝑎𝑛 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑔𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝑤𝑖𝑠ℎ𝑒𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑎 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎 𝑗𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑛𝑒𝑦.” God Speed old friend.
• Tom Bierbaum: Keith has gone out in style as only he can. But for those who knew him well, this is a tough one. In my case, Keith was a mentor, a teacher, a staunch advocate, a sounding board, the most creative person I’ve ever known and, above all, a friend. For the many fans who’ve been blown away by the “Five Years Later” Legion, that was Keith’s vision and genius. For all the fans who regard the ’80s era, highlighted by “The Great Darkness,” as the Legion's zenith, I think Paul Levitz would agree that Keith was instrumental in that huge success, both as an artist and co-plotter. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of Keith's body of work. It’s no coincidence that the best writing Mary and I ever produced came while working with Keith. He was always a champion of imaginative, courageous risk-taking, both because that’s where his creative impulses took him and because he understood how important innovation is to keeping the comic-buying audience hooked and the business healthy. He chafed at any sort of platitudes and would no doubt roll his eyes at this maudlin tribute, but he will be sorely missed.
• Brad Meltzer: The flag at the Legion of Super-Heroes clubhouse is flying at half mast tonight. Same at JLA HQ. RIP to the great Keith Giffen, who was always first class.

RIP: Lee Moder

We recently lost one of the great artists of the Five Years Later run, Jason Pearson. This week we heard of the loss of one of the first great artists of the Reboot run: Lee Moder.

Moder only drew four covers for the Legion: 62, 64, 65, and 66. That's because for the majority of his run, the covers were by Alan Davis and Mark Farmer. He drew 36 issues of the Legion - 62-66, 68-69, 71-88, 90-92, 94-100, and 109 - over the course of four years (cover date 11/94 to 10/98).

As penciller on their first issues, Moder shares co-creator credits on Tangleweb, Inferno, Kinetix, Gates, and Lori Morning.

Best as I can tell, Moder's first work was the interior art for L.E.G.I.O.N. '92 #38 in April 1992. He did some work on Wonder Woman and Justice League International in 1993 and 1994 before becoming the regular penciller on the Legion book immediately following the Reboot. In 1999 he co-created Stargirl in Stars & STRIPE with Geoff Johns, and did the first 14 issues of that series. He did some work for Dynamite, DC, and Boom in the early 2000s, but was mostly out of comics by 2010. His last new work for DC was a Superman/Stargirl cover in 2015.

Here are his Legion covers:

RIP: Jason Pearson

I'm late in posting this: former Legion artist Jason Pearson passed away in December 2022, though his family withheld the information until January. 

Perhaps best known for his work on the Dark Horse series "Body Bags", Pearson started his art career on the Legion.

Via CBR:

Pearson's first regular assignment in comic books was working on Legion of Super-Heroes in the final year of Keith Giffen's epic run on the series, along with scripters Tom and Mary Bierbaum, and inker Al Gordon. The fascinating thing about this early work, though, is that Giffen famously used a nine-panel grid on Legion of Super-Heroes, and so in retrospect it is amazing seeing an artist like Pearson, whose work seemed built for splash pages, working in a nine-panel grid in each issue. He made it work, though, but I imagine that Pearson's splash page abilities played at least a small role in Giffen's final issue of his run (which features the destruction of Earth) being depicted in illustrated text pages...

The run finished in late-1992, which was a heady time for the comic book industry, especially for young hot talent like Pearson, only 22 years old at the time. There was DC, of course, but there was also Marvel calling...

In his blog, "It's OK, I'm a Senator", Tom Bierbaum mentioned Pearson a number of times:

• Catspaw was actually created by Jason Pearson during a Legion summit, and the visual was so nice there was no reason not to use her, though, admittedly, we never had a lot in mind to do with her. ... At one point he and we were trying to work out a "Legionnaires" fill-in that would have given more of her background, but  we didn't start thinking about that possibility until our time there was almost up.  Basically, Catspaw was just a woman on Earth when the Dominators were secretly nabbing people and experimenting on them.  
• Someone asked "Did you change the storyline mid-stream in regards to Bounty?  Her character seemed to change quite drastically from Giffen to Pearson." Tom replied: In fact, when Jason Pearson was pencilling the book, Keith was still plotting, so changes in the character were probably largely coincidental when pencillers changed.  As with Kent and Celeste, Al Gordon is your best source for info on Bounty, since he was the one supplying most of the ideas (he was, in fact, the creator of Kent and Celeste). But I don't recall that there was any really changes in the plans for Bounty. Probably what we ended up revealing in the Pearson-pencilled issues was different than what many readers were anticipating. And I don't think we ever took time to really explore the ideas and implications of the Bounty entity.  I remember Mary and I kicking around ideas for a story that explored the Bounty entity and showed it possessing people besides Dawnstar, but we never got the chance to pursue it.
• LSH 21: Starting with our back pages in #21, Jason Pearson began his stint penciling the Legion based on Keith’s layouts.  I don’t recall for sure, but I’m guessing these back pages during the “Quiet Darkness” were Jason’s tryout and he came through impressively.  While it was an adjustment to switch from Keith’s very distinctive style to Jason’s, I think the switch was worthwhile.  While Jason probably didn’t capture quite the grittiness and mundane detail that really set the tone for Keith’s Legion, Jason’s cleaner style probably made the storytelling clearer.  And most importantly, the arrangement kept the book a lot closer to a regular schedule, with much less interruption for fill-in issues.  That allowed us to tell the upcoming “Terra Mosaic” storyline in a much more consistent, uninterrupted manner than had been the case for our earlier arcs (which I guess were formally titled “Five Years Later” and “The Legion of Super-Heroes”).
• LSH 29: [Sade is] a character Jason Pearson created, but I don’t quite remember how exactly her ability was supposed to work. She could essentially disappear and blink back in somewhere else.
• LSH 32: I should mention that I really like the Jason Pearson cover of this issue. It shows a group of five Legionnaires being blinded by a flash of light (the explosion of the chambers), with the shadow of the five characters filling most of the cover. Most effectively, the shadow of Devlin O’Ryan’s hand is cast across his face. Really a nice imaginative piece by Jason.
• LSH 35: This is the issue where young SW6 Sun Boy confronts what’s left of the original Sun Boy, whose powers are burning him alive.  It’s an impactful scene that’s depicted on this issue’s cover, probably one of Jason Pearson’s best.
• LSH 38: The Sandman character Death makes a cameo when the destruction comes, as the planet is lost in a blinding flash.  Jason Pearson does powerful work in this issue and the two-page spread that shows the actual destruction really has a lot of impact.

Pearson only drew a dozen issues of the Legion book (22-24, 26-30, 32, 34, 36, 38), plus 11 covers (26-30, 32-36, and the 2995 Sourcebook) and some of the Skybox trading cards featuring Legionnaires. Here are his covers:

The Legion Forever

In mid-November, when we heard about the passing of Carlos Pacheco, who drew, among many other cool things, the Avengers Forever miniseries with Kurt Busiek. As a sort of tribute, I proposed on the Subs podcast that we come up with our own version of a Legion Forever team. The only ground rules were that it includes members or Legion-related characters from any timeline or any continuity, and the pitch had to include a rationale as to why they were together. Here's what I came up with: 

THE SETUP

Back in LSHv2 Annual 1, Computo discovered alternate realities via the tesseract storage portals when it possessed the entire Legion Clubhouse. When it realized it was going to be defeated, it uploaded a copy of itself in an unused tesseract that was later activated. It has been leaping through realities, setting wrong what once went right and trying to destroy the Legions of other universes. Enter Dr. Mayavale, who has gone straight and has chosen the following heroes to help him atone. We don’t learn until much later why he chose these particular people (I never figured out the reason, I'm leaving that as a problem for Future Me to get to). Mayavale recruited the team's leader, Threeboot Cosmic Boy, to his team via the Knights Tempus (and thus closing that plot point that got dropped).

THE TEAM

It's confusing who knows who. We have four females, four males, and two robots (one female-presenting and one male-presenting).

1. Silver Age: Hate Face
• Never met anyone else on the list
2. Bronze Age: Brainiac 5’s Supergirl sex robot
• Might have met Wildfire or M-E Lad
3. Bronze Age: Wildfire, in his original ERG-1 containment suit which allowed him to mimick the powers of various Legionnaires
• May have met the Supergirl robot but didn't know at the time she was a robot, although he would surely have heard about after she was destroyed
4. 5YL: BION (after it had been reprogrammed by Brainy)
• Would have fought M-E Lad as BION, fought and killed Duplicate Girl as Computo, had their powers as well as Wildfire's when it emerged and took over Danielle Foccart
5. 5YL: Matter-Eater Lad, with the innate power of the Miracle Machine
• Would have known about Hate Face but never met him, may have met the Supergirl robot when she was impersonating Supergirl, worked with Wildfire briefly, worked with Duplicate Girl (although she is a different version of the one he worked with in the 5YL timeline)
6. Reboot: XS (prior to the first L3W meeting)
• Doesn't know anyone else
7. Animated: Jordana Gardner, the Teen Lantern
• Doesn't know anyone else
8. Retroboot: Duplicate Girl
• Would have heard of Hate Face, maybe met the Supergirl robot, worked a bit with Wildfire but she got married and left the Legion at the same time as he joined (he would barely know her, but she worked with him periodically), hates BION because it's a version of Computo which killed one of her bodies, worked with M-E Lad in the Silver Age and with XS in L3W
9. Threeboot: Cosmic Boy
• Post-L3W, would have met and worked with an older Wildfire, probably didn't work too closely with M-E Lad in L3W, would have met XS and Duplicate Girl in L3W
10. Rebirth: X-Ray Girl
• Doesn't know anyone and nobody knows a thing about her so she's a blank slate to do whatever the writer wants with her

The Legion Forever team:

top row - Hate Face, Supergirl Robot, ERG-1, BION, Tenzil Kem

bottom row - XS, Jordana Gardner, Duplicate Girl, Cosmic Boy with the Knights Tempus, X-Ray Girl

Computo, the antagonist, vs Dr Mayavale, the savior of the universes

Let me know in the comments who your Legion Forever team might be, and why they have gotten together?

RIP George Perez

Coming so soon on the heels of the loss of the great Neal Adams, is the loss of the great George Perez. This was not unexpected, but even though after his December diagnosis he said he had a few months left, just because you know it's coming doesn't make it easier.

So like with Adams, I'm not going to eulogize Perez, you can read the many tributes around the internet, all of which say he was a genuinely nice guy. Instead, I'll present a gallery of his Legion work from 1980-2013.

I just wanted to post this picture up top as one of the great "FUCK YEAH!" moments in Legion history, which was drawn by George.

In general, while doing my research, I'm breaking this down into three categories, though only showing the covers to the first set:

1. Covers of Legion books
2. Covers of books that a Legionnaire or two may be on, but it's not a Legion story
3. Interior art

In 1980-81, shortly after arriving at DC from Marvel, Perez did a great number of covers across all titles, among which were six issues of LSH v2 (268, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281). He also drew Colossal Boy on the jam cover to LSH v2 300.

In 2007, Perez joined with writer Mark Waid for a six-issue story arc called "The Lords of Luck", featuring Batman, Green Lantern, Supergirl, Blue Beetle III, Lobo, and the Threeboot Legion versus the Luck Lords and the Fatal Five. The Legion cover-starred in issue 5 but the Luck Lords and the Fatal Five were throughout the whole arc. There was a new cover for the reprint collection.

In 2008-09, while the rest of the DC Universe was going through a Final Crisis, the Legion was involved in a side-story that involved the Retroboot, Reboot, and Threeboot versions of 3 worlds. The DC Universe #0 issue was a prelude that had a tease of "Legion of 3 Worlds" that didn't otherwise appear in the miniseries. The first printing had the Retroboot Legion in the center, while the second printing had the Threeboot Legion. An unused version of the cover of DC Universe #0 became the cover to the collected edition of the series, which had all three Legions.

Each of the issues of the miniseries had a variant cover (one full cover and one "sliver" cover). Issue #1 had a couple other versions, the first being a pencils-only version of the full cover (as the RRP variant) and one with that image as a sliver, as the second printing. 

After it was all over, Perez was at the Baltimore Con in 2009 and had this to say about working on L3W:

First, when asked about his "wish list" for future projects, Perez discussed the creators with who he wanted to work rather than characters. Basically, L3W fulfilled his last wish from his fandom days. For him, working with creators is what is interesting when considering new projects. He volunteered that having known Paul Levitz since their days in fandom, he would enjoy drawing a Legion project for him.

Perez did an interview in 2019 saying that this miniseries was basically the last thing on his bucket list that he wanted to draw.

Well, the irony is that the Legion, when I was growing up, was one of my favorite comics. I mean even over The Avengers because I loved all of the characters, all of the costumes, all the color.

I thought, one of the first comics I would ever do if I got the chance — other than well, I knew I wanted JLA, I knew I wanted The Avengers — but I really wanted the Legion of Super-Heroes. And then it took so long in my career to finally do a Legion of Super-Heroes story. I did a few covers, I did a few little pinups… but I’d never worked on a Legion story. They appeared in Crisis on Infinite Earths, but then again, who didn’t?

Finally, Perez drew the cover to LSH v7 #20 in 2013 - and although I own the issue, I have no recollection of ever seeing it before today when I discovered it while researching this blog post. One final "new" (to me) cover on Free Comic Book Day and the day it was announced that he had passed away.

He also drew a number of covers that had a Legionnaire on the cover, though it wasn't a Legion book:

• Crisis on Infinite Earths 1-10
• Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe 3-5, 13-18
• DC Universe: Legacies 5, 6

And finally, issues that had interior art featuring (or at least guest-starring) the Legion:

• DC Comics Presents 38
• Best of DC Digest 24
• Superman v1 423
• History of the DC Universe 2

RIP Neal Adams

Neal Adams needs no introduction, and many people will write elsewhere lots of good things about him and what he did for the industry over the years. So instead, I'm just going to recap his Legion work.

In the late 1960s, Adams drew a lot of covers for DC, including Adventure Comics, for which he pencilled and/or inked 13 covers towards the end of the Legion's run.

His first cover was #365, introducing Shadow Lass. It’s not that the previous covers by Curt Swan were not good, it’s just that Adams’ covers were that much better. He then did #366 (Validus blasting Superboy in a boxing ring, a precursor to his later Superman vs Muhammad Ali tabloid), #367 (surrounded by shadowy members of the Dark Circle), #368 (the mutiny of the super-heroines), #369 (intro Mordru), #371 (Superboy leaves the Legion), #372 (Superboy is smashed as a glass statue), #373 (the Tornado Twins), #375 (Bouncing Boy is the most powerful Legionnaire), #376 (the execution of Chameleon Boy; inks over Swan pencils), #377 (the Legionnaires are for hire; inks over Swan pencils), #378 (the Legionnaires are dying; inks over Swan pencils), and #379 (the dead Superboy is ejected into space; inks over Infantino pencils).

Jim Shooter recalled working with Adams in this 2008 interview:

JS:  By the way, it was great working with Neal, although I only worked with him on covers.  In the old days with Mort, with every story Mort required a cover sketch or a detailed cover idea if the writer in question could not sketch.  As a matter of fact, he required two cover sketches for each story.  What he would do is he would take the better one and make it the cover and make the other one the splash page because he used to do the symbolic splashes, rather than splash panels that started the story.  He’d call it the second cover.  So, I did two cover sketches. 

When I did the interior stuff I just did it in pencil, but with the cover sketch, I colored it, because they taught me how to color, so I did a whole color comp of this cover.  I put the logo and everything.  And usually they’d pick one of my designs and follow it.  I can’t think of an instance where they didn’t pick one of them.  What was really, really cool was the first time the book comes out and I see the cover and it was Neal Adams.  It was like, “Whoa!”  It was amazing.  Because more than any other guy, Neal would look at my crude little drawing and he would know what I meant.  And he would say, “All right.  I’ve got it.”  And then he would do this brilliant thing that was like he was reading my mind.  (Chuckle.)  And I would look at it and say, “Yeah, I meant that.”  (Mutual laughter.)  “That’s what I meant.  Yeah, good work, man.”

Stroud:  Just knocked it out of the park.

JS:  Oh, unbelievable.  Doing those covers with him…I just couldn’t wait to see what he did.

Stroud:  Sure.  You and the rest of the world.  He’s a formidable talent. 

Adams also did a wraparound cover for Batman #238, which inexplicably contained a Legion reprint story (from Adventure 324, the Legion of Super-Outlaws aka the Heroes of Lallor) and featured on the cover all of the characters inside the book.

Adams pencilled a famous group shot of the Legion for the 1976 DC Calendar, inked by the late great Dick Giordano, and this was later reused (with some cropping and rearranging of characters) as the cover to the 1978 Tempo paperback book with Legion reprints.

Finally, a few decades later, Adams provided what would turn out to be his final Legion cover, a variant for issue #44 of Jim Shooter's Threeboot run (LSH v5) cover-dated Sept. 2008. In the above interview, Shooter continued:

JS:  He’s doing a cover for the new series, by the way. 

Stroud:  Oh, is he?  I hadn’t heard that.

JS:  Yeah for issue #44.  Yeah, he asked to do it.  He actually sent an e-mail to Levitz and Didio saying, “Hey, good move hiring Shooter and I want to do a cover.”  And they asked me, “Would that be okay with you?”  I said, “Oh, sure, let’s give the kid a break.” 

Stroud: (Laughter.)  Yeah, I guess we could do that.

JS: “We could see our way clear.”  So anyway, he insisted I give him a sketch, and so I did, and now I’m sitting here and can’t wait to see it.  I can’t wait to see it.  It’s going to be cool.  I’m not going to get many covers from him, he’s a busy guy, but it’s a very, very cool that he wanted to do one. 

Stroud:  Absolutely.  I can feel the chills down your spine from here. 

JS:  It’s going to be good.