First: You've REALLY made me want to read the LEGION: 5 YEARS LATER run. At the time it was coming out, it was just TOO grim for me, too much taking characters that were all about hope and putting them through the Frank Miller grinder. But, given that time has passed, I can see that maybe that's EXACTLY why the LEGION were the best characters to do that with. And Keith's work is always worth looking at. Any chance there's a collection… ?
Second: I have a few rules about writing, and one is READERS LIKE TO FIGURE THINGS OUT. Readers like to be smart. Give them the right clues, they can connect the dots. It doesn't need to be spelled out every time. The most obvious example I can give of this is in my IMPOSSIBLE JONES series. I knew the character would swear, yet I didn't want to write her swearing. And I have a knee-jerk reaction to using $#!@@ in place of swearing. Hate it. So I decided to REDACT the swear-words— cover them with a black box, but with a little bit of the word showing. IMP has a sort of tongue-in-cheek meta side to it, so this approach fit. PLUS my 10-year-old son was SO PROUD when he figured out what the swear word was. And I say: good for him!
Another Rule: ASK YOURSELF "WHAT DOES THE READER NEED TO KNOW TO UNDERSTAND WHAT IS GOING ON RIGHT NOW?" Because that's all you have to share. Do we really need to know Captain Atomic once had an affair with Wild Woman and even he doesn't know the Terror Twins are his illegitimate children… WHEN HE'S ORDERING COFFEE? Chances are we do NOT. Now, maybe the Terror Twins order the exact same kind of specialized coffee Captain Atomic does— that's a nice clue there's a connection there, even if everyone laughs it off as a weird coincidence. But really, that's all you need to do right there, at that point. There is no need to explain— even to the readers in captions or flashbacks— the whole sordid story. I do this constantly when I write. "OK— *I* know this background detail, but is THIS the right place to bring it up? Is it in character for this person to bring it up? Does it help the story to bring it up?"
I think if you make sure readers have enough info to understand what is happening, that will solve all your problems— whether it's a person's first comic, of their hundred and first.
Karl, you nailed it - the "everyone's first comic" thing really just means "tell a good story and give the reader enough to understand it." And that means a lot of different things!
I think you'd dig 5YL! There's a print omnibus, but I read all of these digitally. I *think* there's a new omni coming, but I found reading digitally was easiest for so many comics!
Hey Alex, just wanted to let you know that I just finished reading Secret Identity and absolutely loved it! I picked it up because of this newsletter when I was trying to find a novel too read. Can’t wait to get Alter Ego! Cheers
It makes me SO HAPPY to see you write at length about Five Years Later - I think it's one of the great masterpieces of superhero/sci-fi comics and feel like you got across its charms very well here! And to your larger point - I read that stuff first at, like, 12-13 with zero background in Legion, I just picked it up as I went along and dug into the history when I could.
Wow, that's intense! I can't imagine reading it out of order AND not having much info to start. I just got to the final issue of Giffen's run and was blown away. I know a lot of people talk about this era but it still feels very underappreciated.
I kinda love that I'm still finding new things in that run after all this time, it's so dense! I highly recommend reading Tom Bierbaum's essays about 5YL on his Livejournal: https://itsokimasenator.livejournal.com/ - his tribute to Giffen after he died is a good place to start, gets into a lot of the mechanics of their collaboration. https://itsokimasenator.livejournal.com/42179.html
Also, drop me a line at perpetua @ gmail and I'll pass along something really cool on this topic!
Yes, Tom's post about Giffen was very sweet. I'm digging into his other stuff, too!
It's funny what a great trio they made, because it's clear the Bierbaum's wanted to explore continuity and connect dots - so clear from their solo issues - but were then kind of added as sheen to Giffen's more sledgehammer-y plots. It's fascinating stuff.
What a brilliant ‘Stack, Alex. I am not crazy about this stance of every comic is someone’s first. I took a chance on Ed Brubaker & Steve Epting’s Captain America because I was drawn to the cover of issue 11 (the reveal of the Winter Soldier.) I never read Cap prior to that issue & didn’t know the history of Cap or Bucky, but I ran back to the comic shop the next day to buy the previous issues in that run.
I think one prime aspect of storytelling is curiosity. I say put the characters into action in the first frame with a goal they are trying to achieve. I hate background story thrown in early on. I don't know the characters and I don't care. Show them doing things and I'll usually follow and the questions in my head will be answered here and there but the train keeps rolling. And readers don't like being taken by the hand. It's like when someone's telling you a story that personally happened to them and they keep stopping and filling in insignificant details. Like, get on with it! Haha. What a great article. So in-depth. Great stuff, Alex.
I think there’s a happy medium. One of the benefits older comics like the ones you mentioned had was clear panel to panel story telling, which allowed a panel or two for characters to give exposition that summed up who they were and what they did. Modern comics are a little more splashy while the digital colors tend to make things a little harder on the eyes when reading. But 100% agree we are curious. I bought detective comics 500 something and one of the first thoughts I had was cool! There are 499 more comics I need to catch up on 😂
I'll never forget the time I decided to try Quantum and Woody. I had heard good things so I picked up the most recent issue, #11. In that issue the two title characters had swapped bodies. Half the cast referred to them by their correct name while half the cast misidentified them. And the issue had flashbacks to earlier times when they were in their correct bodies and on top of that there were flashbacks within those flashbacks. It also wasn't a comedy and I had been sold on the book being funny. I could not make heads or tails of it.
I eventually got all the back issues and it's one of the all time great comic series and issue #11 is great if you've read issues 1-10.
I encountered this phenomenon just last week when I picked up DC's new Secret Six #1.
I have a fair amount of comic history behind me. I collected in the late 80s and early 90s but dropped out until rediscovering the beautiful, wonderful world of comics just last year. My collection is around 6,000 books.
But none of that history prepared me for this issue of the Secret Six. I didn't even know this wasn't the first time the Six had been around. So I was completely lost. I could guess at Dreamer only because of my love of the Legion back in the 80s and their Dream Girl. I can make assumptions about Jon Kent only because of the S logo.
I certainly didn't know who Gossamer and Black Alice were. I also couldn't understand their relationships to each other outside of Jon and Jay. There were a couple of editor notes referencing Absolute Power — which I had not read. Maybe that would have been sufficient to explain it all? But I somehow doubt it.
I didn't understand why this book didn't at least have an intro roll call. I mean, I absolutely get your point about setting up the reader with intrigue, but this issue felt like it was missing even the bare minimum for what was its very first issue.
The confusion I experienced did not translate into intrigue sufficient enough that I wanted to go do additional research. So that's fine, the book is not for me. And even though I won’t be continuing with it, I still hope it’s successful for the creators' sake.
But I do wonder if my experience would have been different had this first issue been given more of a basic setup.
I guess that's the challenge and balance that creatives have to strike - and it very much is a YMMV situation. For me, that X-Men issue gave me enough "wow cool" to allow me to overlook the questions I had, and to give me faith they would also be answered in time. On the flipside, my first experience with the Legion - LEGIONNAIRES #4 was a BEAUTIFUL book, and I love Chris Sprouse's art to this day. But the story didn't tease enough to keep me reading. The heroes were clones? There was an adult Legion somewhere? It felt like a lot of work that might not be that interesting. But that was just me!
Legion is one of those properties that I want to get into in a big way, but I've never found my "in". The post Legion Lost DnA run (THE LEGION) was great, over too soon, and it's a franchise that seems to always be on the chopping block whenever a reboot occurs.
Legion of 3 Worlds in Final Crisis tried to bring it all into line, and then we find out that all the reboots are actually different earths in the multiverse? I just can NOT. A rare Johnsian failure at consolidation. Chris Batista, by the way, an absolute pinch hitter (is that what you yanks say?) who I regret never got the assignments I think he deserved on the basis of talent alone. What could have been... so good.
Remember when Shooter came back and there was all that drama behind the scenes because Manapul kept making tweaks to the story via the art? And editorial took Manapul's side as he was an up-and-comer? Shooter got the boot, and I think that was it for him at DC... again.
But Legion is one of those properties I dream to emulate. Grand casts. Every character has something to do. An adventure. An arc. A journey. Of course I've read The Great Darkness Saga. The 90s Legionnaires and Legion of Superheroes titles that came after 5YL were always in discount boxes when I was a kid (34 now). I love vastness. I should love Legion. I should definitely try to pick up those bumper versions of their adventures.
Thanks for sharing some really interesting thoughts, Alex!
I can relate to struggling to find your "in" with LOSH - it's what I was struggling with for years! 5YL opened the door and I feel really thankful for that, as did the Silver Age stuff.
I thought Legion of Three Worlds was tidy/smart about trying to fix the continuity, and I appreciate the work Paul put into the ongoing series afterward, which ran for a good while considering the market.
I like Batista a lot, too. I do remember Shooter coming back to LOSH - I was at DC at the time, IIRC.
I think the challenge with Legion is that so much energy is spent on explaining and tweaking/fixing continuity that by the time you get to the STORY, you're at a point of diminishing returns. But it's rough! So many great creators have tried to rework the concept for the modern reader. Here's hoping the next one sticks.
I didn't MIND Bendis' version, but it fell short of his greatest work, and exhibited all the hallmarks of his latter works. I enjoyed Waid's reboot, especially the Supergirl hallucination era, because it was just different, and did something fun with the OYL jump after Infinite Crisis. Nothing will be better than the stuff I was picking up randomly as a kid though, the dual title era was just great. Plus, I'm a Starman fanatic, so seeing Thom Kallor try his best was always fun.
My take on the 5YL Legion is that it was a great story, but it destroyed the franchise, so was it worth it? It led to a seemingly infinite number of reboots, which, in turn, has made the franchise toxic. If Giffen had just picked up where Paul Levitz left off, then the next guy did the same thing (without either of them reinventing the wheel), it'd be a different story today. Traditionally, LSH was one of DC's better-selling books, and it's a far cry from that now (not even being published), and it all goes back to 5YL.
"Don't eat your seed corn," was something Giffen never understood -- he only built sand castles for the fun of destroying them later, and he never really understood the emotional attachment that readers/customers had to the characters in any comic book series (not just Legion), because he didn't have the same bonds himself. He figured, they were only drawings, so anything that was done could be undone with a pencil. But it doesn't work like that -- people have feelings, and don't like being put through the wringer. (The character we love is dead. Now they're not dead, so forget about how killing them made you feel.) He even admitted somewhere once that he didn't really know when one of his ideas was good or bad, and needed a partner to help navigate those waters. The Bierbaums were his Jiminy Crickets on 5YL, but he was still the one behind the wheel, and had the leverage of Justice League being a huge hit to do whatever he wanted, with DC's blessing. (Which lasted for about four issues.)
Tear it all down stories like 5YL and Daredevil: Born Again are compelling in the same way watching a house burn to the ground is compelling, but then what? You don't have a house anymore. (Which is why Ann Nocenti's DD run is so impressive -- she built a whole new house, and everybody really, really liked the old one!) The Legion never recovered from 5YL, and it led to the idea that the gist of the Legion was more important than the specific execution of a specific iteration of the team. Its many cancellations since then might be an argument that that's not true.
Now, you’re by far more of a LOSH expert than me, but I do know enough about the backstory of Giffen’s run (often through interviews you conducted or shared, or other historical books/mags) that I think you can pin the blame for the reboots less on Giffen and more on DC itself, particularly the desire to pull Superboy out of Legion history - and by largely disconnecting DC's "present" from the future. It’s almost like playing Jenga - you yank out one piece and the whole thing starts teetering and eventually it falls. Did 5YL help things along? Probably, but from my perspective the die had been cast pretty early in the run. The core of what the Legion was had been gutted somewhat, and while I find what Giffen and co. came up with as Band-Aids - particularly considering it was mostly done on the fly - it never felt like a permanent solution. And I say this as someone who really loved Laurel Gand and thought the Valor fix was smart if not perfect.
I do agree that the Bierbaums served as a nice balm to the thornier stuff Giffen brought to the table, but I’ll quibble as to whether Keith cared about the Legion or not. It felt like there was a love there, and often writers torture the characters they love more than others - I know I do!
I do agree with you on Born Again, which I love (though some parts have not aged well). The challenge, I think, is more in what comes after. But they’re apples and oranges, I think - 5YL lasted for almost 40 issues and featured a ton of character development and slow-burn plots, whereas Born Again was very much “let’s blow it up.” But yes, Nocenti’s run is all the more impressive for that.
To my earlier point, though - I don’t think the Legion would’ve recovered no matter what, especially if the Superboy elements were going to be removed. With that, I’m fine with the finale being what Giffen and co. crafted with 5YL.
I do, however, think there’s room for the Legion now - I just don’t think it’s the path we’ve seen already a few times, i.e. starting completely from scratch. But I’ll save my ideas if I ever get the chance to share them!
My first comic was The Vision and the Scarlet Witch #2 (of 4). I had no idea who any of the characters were, but there was enough context to figure out the character’s relationships with each other. (People really didn’t like that Magneto guy!) Thanks for highlighting those Legion articles, they’re a great look at a great team. You must’ve been a big appreciator of Giffen’s work to read The Heckler! Lol I’ve always thought that series was underrated, too. :)
My first comic when I was eight years old was part 12 of “Maximum Carnage.” Been reading comics ever since.
Right!
First: You've REALLY made me want to read the LEGION: 5 YEARS LATER run. At the time it was coming out, it was just TOO grim for me, too much taking characters that were all about hope and putting them through the Frank Miller grinder. But, given that time has passed, I can see that maybe that's EXACTLY why the LEGION were the best characters to do that with. And Keith's work is always worth looking at. Any chance there's a collection… ?
Second: I have a few rules about writing, and one is READERS LIKE TO FIGURE THINGS OUT. Readers like to be smart. Give them the right clues, they can connect the dots. It doesn't need to be spelled out every time. The most obvious example I can give of this is in my IMPOSSIBLE JONES series. I knew the character would swear, yet I didn't want to write her swearing. And I have a knee-jerk reaction to using $#!@@ in place of swearing. Hate it. So I decided to REDACT the swear-words— cover them with a black box, but with a little bit of the word showing. IMP has a sort of tongue-in-cheek meta side to it, so this approach fit. PLUS my 10-year-old son was SO PROUD when he figured out what the swear word was. And I say: good for him!
Another Rule: ASK YOURSELF "WHAT DOES THE READER NEED TO KNOW TO UNDERSTAND WHAT IS GOING ON RIGHT NOW?" Because that's all you have to share. Do we really need to know Captain Atomic once had an affair with Wild Woman and even he doesn't know the Terror Twins are his illegitimate children… WHEN HE'S ORDERING COFFEE? Chances are we do NOT. Now, maybe the Terror Twins order the exact same kind of specialized coffee Captain Atomic does— that's a nice clue there's a connection there, even if everyone laughs it off as a weird coincidence. But really, that's all you need to do right there, at that point. There is no need to explain— even to the readers in captions or flashbacks— the whole sordid story. I do this constantly when I write. "OK— *I* know this background detail, but is THIS the right place to bring it up? Is it in character for this person to bring it up? Does it help the story to bring it up?"
I think if you make sure readers have enough info to understand what is happening, that will solve all your problems— whether it's a person's first comic, of their hundred and first.
Karl, you nailed it - the "everyone's first comic" thing really just means "tell a good story and give the reader enough to understand it." And that means a lot of different things!
I think you'd dig 5YL! There's a print omnibus, but I read all of these digitally. I *think* there's a new omni coming, but I found reading digitally was easiest for so many comics!
Hey Alex, just wanted to let you know that I just finished reading Secret Identity and absolutely loved it! I picked it up because of this newsletter when I was trying to find a novel too read. Can’t wait to get Alter Ego! Cheers
Thanks so much, Dallas!
It makes me SO HAPPY to see you write at length about Five Years Later - I think it's one of the great masterpieces of superhero/sci-fi comics and feel like you got across its charms very well here! And to your larger point - I read that stuff first at, like, 12-13 with zero background in Legion, I just picked it up as I went along and dug into the history when I could.
I also first read it wildly out of order with several key early issues missing! But I was soooo caught up in Terra Mosaic it didn't matter.
Wow, that's intense! I can't imagine reading it out of order AND not having much info to start. I just got to the final issue of Giffen's run and was blown away. I know a lot of people talk about this era but it still feels very underappreciated.
I kinda love that I'm still finding new things in that run after all this time, it's so dense! I highly recommend reading Tom Bierbaum's essays about 5YL on his Livejournal: https://itsokimasenator.livejournal.com/ - his tribute to Giffen after he died is a good place to start, gets into a lot of the mechanics of their collaboration. https://itsokimasenator.livejournal.com/42179.html
Also, drop me a line at perpetua @ gmail and I'll pass along something really cool on this topic!
Yes, Tom's post about Giffen was very sweet. I'm digging into his other stuff, too!
It's funny what a great trio they made, because it's clear the Bierbaum's wanted to explore continuity and connect dots - so clear from their solo issues - but were then kind of added as sheen to Giffen's more sledgehammer-y plots. It's fascinating stuff.
What a brilliant ‘Stack, Alex. I am not crazy about this stance of every comic is someone’s first. I took a chance on Ed Brubaker & Steve Epting’s Captain America because I was drawn to the cover of issue 11 (the reveal of the Winter Soldier.) I never read Cap prior to that issue & didn’t know the history of Cap or Bucky, but I ran back to the comic shop the next day to buy the previous issues in that run.
Thank you, Kim!
Agree — even for middle grade and young adult. I love stories that allow some room for reader interpretation and imagination. 👏🏼
I think one prime aspect of storytelling is curiosity. I say put the characters into action in the first frame with a goal they are trying to achieve. I hate background story thrown in early on. I don't know the characters and I don't care. Show them doing things and I'll usually follow and the questions in my head will be answered here and there but the train keeps rolling. And readers don't like being taken by the hand. It's like when someone's telling you a story that personally happened to them and they keep stopping and filling in insignificant details. Like, get on with it! Haha. What a great article. So in-depth. Great stuff, Alex.
I think there’s a happy medium. One of the benefits older comics like the ones you mentioned had was clear panel to panel story telling, which allowed a panel or two for characters to give exposition that summed up who they were and what they did. Modern comics are a little more splashy while the digital colors tend to make things a little harder on the eyes when reading. But 100% agree we are curious. I bought detective comics 500 something and one of the first thoughts I had was cool! There are 499 more comics I need to catch up on 😂
You’re so smart :)
Ha! Game recognizes game! <3
I'll never forget the time I decided to try Quantum and Woody. I had heard good things so I picked up the most recent issue, #11. In that issue the two title characters had swapped bodies. Half the cast referred to them by their correct name while half the cast misidentified them. And the issue had flashbacks to earlier times when they were in their correct bodies and on top of that there were flashbacks within those flashbacks. It also wasn't a comedy and I had been sold on the book being funny. I could not make heads or tails of it.
I eventually got all the back issues and it's one of the all time great comic series and issue #11 is great if you've read issues 1-10.
I encountered this phenomenon just last week when I picked up DC's new Secret Six #1.
I have a fair amount of comic history behind me. I collected in the late 80s and early 90s but dropped out until rediscovering the beautiful, wonderful world of comics just last year. My collection is around 6,000 books.
But none of that history prepared me for this issue of the Secret Six. I didn't even know this wasn't the first time the Six had been around. So I was completely lost. I could guess at Dreamer only because of my love of the Legion back in the 80s and their Dream Girl. I can make assumptions about Jon Kent only because of the S logo.
I certainly didn't know who Gossamer and Black Alice were. I also couldn't understand their relationships to each other outside of Jon and Jay. There were a couple of editor notes referencing Absolute Power — which I had not read. Maybe that would have been sufficient to explain it all? But I somehow doubt it.
I didn't understand why this book didn't at least have an intro roll call. I mean, I absolutely get your point about setting up the reader with intrigue, but this issue felt like it was missing even the bare minimum for what was its very first issue.
The confusion I experienced did not translate into intrigue sufficient enough that I wanted to go do additional research. So that's fine, the book is not for me. And even though I won’t be continuing with it, I still hope it’s successful for the creators' sake.
But I do wonder if my experience would have been different had this first issue been given more of a basic setup.
I guess that's the challenge and balance that creatives have to strike - and it very much is a YMMV situation. For me, that X-Men issue gave me enough "wow cool" to allow me to overlook the questions I had, and to give me faith they would also be answered in time. On the flipside, my first experience with the Legion - LEGIONNAIRES #4 was a BEAUTIFUL book, and I love Chris Sprouse's art to this day. But the story didn't tease enough to keep me reading. The heroes were clones? There was an adult Legion somewhere? It felt like a lot of work that might not be that interesting. But that was just me!
Legion is one of those properties that I want to get into in a big way, but I've never found my "in". The post Legion Lost DnA run (THE LEGION) was great, over too soon, and it's a franchise that seems to always be on the chopping block whenever a reboot occurs.
Legion of 3 Worlds in Final Crisis tried to bring it all into line, and then we find out that all the reboots are actually different earths in the multiverse? I just can NOT. A rare Johnsian failure at consolidation. Chris Batista, by the way, an absolute pinch hitter (is that what you yanks say?) who I regret never got the assignments I think he deserved on the basis of talent alone. What could have been... so good.
Remember when Shooter came back and there was all that drama behind the scenes because Manapul kept making tweaks to the story via the art? And editorial took Manapul's side as he was an up-and-comer? Shooter got the boot, and I think that was it for him at DC... again.
But Legion is one of those properties I dream to emulate. Grand casts. Every character has something to do. An adventure. An arc. A journey. Of course I've read The Great Darkness Saga. The 90s Legionnaires and Legion of Superheroes titles that came after 5YL were always in discount boxes when I was a kid (34 now). I love vastness. I should love Legion. I should definitely try to pick up those bumper versions of their adventures.
Thanks for sharing some really interesting thoughts, Alex!
Thanks for reading!
I can relate to struggling to find your "in" with LOSH - it's what I was struggling with for years! 5YL opened the door and I feel really thankful for that, as did the Silver Age stuff.
I thought Legion of Three Worlds was tidy/smart about trying to fix the continuity, and I appreciate the work Paul put into the ongoing series afterward, which ran for a good while considering the market.
I like Batista a lot, too. I do remember Shooter coming back to LOSH - I was at DC at the time, IIRC.
I think the challenge with Legion is that so much energy is spent on explaining and tweaking/fixing continuity that by the time you get to the STORY, you're at a point of diminishing returns. But it's rough! So many great creators have tried to rework the concept for the modern reader. Here's hoping the next one sticks.
I didn't MIND Bendis' version, but it fell short of his greatest work, and exhibited all the hallmarks of his latter works. I enjoyed Waid's reboot, especially the Supergirl hallucination era, because it was just different, and did something fun with the OYL jump after Infinite Crisis. Nothing will be better than the stuff I was picking up randomly as a kid though, the dual title era was just great. Plus, I'm a Starman fanatic, so seeing Thom Kallor try his best was always fun.
My take on the 5YL Legion is that it was a great story, but it destroyed the franchise, so was it worth it? It led to a seemingly infinite number of reboots, which, in turn, has made the franchise toxic. If Giffen had just picked up where Paul Levitz left off, then the next guy did the same thing (without either of them reinventing the wheel), it'd be a different story today. Traditionally, LSH was one of DC's better-selling books, and it's a far cry from that now (not even being published), and it all goes back to 5YL.
"Don't eat your seed corn," was something Giffen never understood -- he only built sand castles for the fun of destroying them later, and he never really understood the emotional attachment that readers/customers had to the characters in any comic book series (not just Legion), because he didn't have the same bonds himself. He figured, they were only drawings, so anything that was done could be undone with a pencil. But it doesn't work like that -- people have feelings, and don't like being put through the wringer. (The character we love is dead. Now they're not dead, so forget about how killing them made you feel.) He even admitted somewhere once that he didn't really know when one of his ideas was good or bad, and needed a partner to help navigate those waters. The Bierbaums were his Jiminy Crickets on 5YL, but he was still the one behind the wheel, and had the leverage of Justice League being a huge hit to do whatever he wanted, with DC's blessing. (Which lasted for about four issues.)
Tear it all down stories like 5YL and Daredevil: Born Again are compelling in the same way watching a house burn to the ground is compelling, but then what? You don't have a house anymore. (Which is why Ann Nocenti's DD run is so impressive -- she built a whole new house, and everybody really, really liked the old one!) The Legion never recovered from 5YL, and it led to the idea that the gist of the Legion was more important than the specific execution of a specific iteration of the team. Its many cancellations since then might be an argument that that's not true.
Hey Glen!
Now, you’re by far more of a LOSH expert than me, but I do know enough about the backstory of Giffen’s run (often through interviews you conducted or shared, or other historical books/mags) that I think you can pin the blame for the reboots less on Giffen and more on DC itself, particularly the desire to pull Superboy out of Legion history - and by largely disconnecting DC's "present" from the future. It’s almost like playing Jenga - you yank out one piece and the whole thing starts teetering and eventually it falls. Did 5YL help things along? Probably, but from my perspective the die had been cast pretty early in the run. The core of what the Legion was had been gutted somewhat, and while I find what Giffen and co. came up with as Band-Aids - particularly considering it was mostly done on the fly - it never felt like a permanent solution. And I say this as someone who really loved Laurel Gand and thought the Valor fix was smart if not perfect.
I do agree that the Bierbaums served as a nice balm to the thornier stuff Giffen brought to the table, but I’ll quibble as to whether Keith cared about the Legion or not. It felt like there was a love there, and often writers torture the characters they love more than others - I know I do!
I do agree with you on Born Again, which I love (though some parts have not aged well). The challenge, I think, is more in what comes after. But they’re apples and oranges, I think - 5YL lasted for almost 40 issues and featured a ton of character development and slow-burn plots, whereas Born Again was very much “let’s blow it up.” But yes, Nocenti’s run is all the more impressive for that.
To my earlier point, though - I don’t think the Legion would’ve recovered no matter what, especially if the Superboy elements were going to be removed. With that, I’m fine with the finale being what Giffen and co. crafted with 5YL.
I do, however, think there’s room for the Legion now - I just don’t think it’s the path we’ve seen already a few times, i.e. starting completely from scratch. But I’ll save my ideas if I ever get the chance to share them!
Thanks for chiming in!
My first comic was The Vision and the Scarlet Witch #2 (of 4). I had no idea who any of the characters were, but there was enough context to figure out the character’s relationships with each other. (People really didn’t like that Magneto guy!) Thanks for highlighting those Legion articles, they’re a great look at a great team. You must’ve been a big appreciator of Giffen’s work to read The Heckler! Lol I’ve always thought that series was underrated, too. :)