Long Live the Legion!
By Philip Schweier
June 15, 2009 - 11:51
So I find it ironic that as DC Comics is launching a new Adventure Comics title starring the Legion of Super-Heroes. My big, fat geek accomplishment has been to rebuild my collection of the original Adventure Comics run. I started with Adventure Comics #340, which features the Computo story by Jim Shooter and art by Curt Swan. Earlier issues feature the artwork of John Forte, and the storytelling is a bit juvenile.
It was around this time that young Shooter began submitting scripts to DC Comics (then National Comics), which elevated the team above mere teenagers with super powers. Somehow, the writer tapped into the youthful heroes like nobody ever had. Perhaps it was because, as National later discovered, Shooter was only 14 years old.
Cockrum left after #202 over a dispute regarding artwork. In a joint interview with Mike Grell for BACK ISSUE #14 (February, 2006), Cockrum said, “When I did the wedding of Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel (Superboy starring the Legion of Super-Heroes #200, “The Legionnaire Bride of Starfinger”), they (DC Comics) weren't returning artwork yet at that point. Marvel was, DC wasn't, and I asked Murray, I said, ‘Listen, could I have this double-page spread back, the wedding scene? I know you don't give back anything else, but I'd like to have that for my own personal collection.’ And Murray said, ‘I don't see any reason why not. Sure.’ So later on the artwork came back and he set that aside for me. The day that I was about to come in and pick it up, Carmine Infantino happened to see it on Murray's desk, said ‘What's this?’ and Murray told him and Carmine said, ‘You can't let him have that back. We're not returning artwork.’ And that was it, I didn't get it. Actually I did get it back but much later.”
Enter Mike Grell – literally. “Apparently, Dave and I passed each other in the hall,” Grell says. “I was walking in as he was walking out, and Murray Boltinoff was on vacation, destined to come back and discover he didn't have an artist for Legion of Super-Heroes. So Murray gave me the job inking – destroying – Dave's pencils on a story as a tryout and then I ended up fulltime on the book.”
Grell’s artwork was the first that made me sit up and take notice, and I became a fan for many years.
But real life has a habit of getting in the way, and as I entered college certain things had to give. My comic book budget was trimmed back and the Legion was a casualty of that. I’m sorry to say I didn’t even notice when record-setting writer Paul “100 issues” Levitz left the book, and his collaborator, Keith Giffen, took over the writing and re-launched the Legion “five years later.”
Superman’s major facelift in the mid-1980s did away with his history as Superboy, thereby reducing the Legion to a continuity anomaly. Efforts to explain it ranged from the convoluted to the ridiculous, and eventually the team faded from the DC Universe altogether.
In 2005, Mark Waid and Barry Kitson introduced a new Legion, more rebellious than before, and as one retailer described it, reminiscent of the counter-culture movement of the 1960s and ‘70s. Eventually the book became (briefly) tied to the Supergirl title, and even heralded the return of Jim Shooter to the feature.
The Legion has been around for 50 years, and has seen its popularity ebb and flow. It is my belief that we are in one of those periods when the team of heroes is on the verge of achieving even more greatness.
Praise and adulation? Scorn and ridicule? E-mail me at philip@comicbookbin.com.
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