OK, so posting unfortunately is going to be very irregular for the next few months, but I'll hope you can bear with me.
So, in honour of their upcoming appearance of Smallville, I'm just going to talk a little bit about the Legion of Superheroes.
Truth to tell, the only reason I care about the Legion at all? Because Chris Bird taught me to care. DC, if you would like cash money from me, pay Chris Bird to write the Legion of Superheroes.
Now that said, I don't know, understand, or pretend to care about Legion continuity, or what kind of a mess it is. I simply see flying superheroes in the future and punching spaceships and I'm happy. I'm simple like that.
Now, that said, there's something about the Legion I just find baffling, and maybe one of you wise people would like to explain it to me.
Alright, let's say you're walking around downtown, and you happen to see a bank robbery become a hostage situation. The cop cars roll in, as does the SWAT van. And when the SWAT van opens up, you see a bunch of US Civil War re-enacters pour it out in period uniforms, armed to the teeth with automatic weapons, rockets, grenade launchers, and shotguns. They have badges. And not one of them is over 20 years old.
What would scare you more:
A) That they exist?
B) That they are more effective than the 'regular' SWAT team?
Because, really, that's how I see the Legion. They are a group of really, really enthusiastic young people whom have patterned themselves off a bygone era, and practice the methods of that era in the modern day. And they have the authority to go pretty much wherever they want and do as they please for the most part. And they're teenagers. Oh, and occasionally they travel through time, doing whatever they please, and they regularly bring back major historic figures to show them their clubhouse and collection of memorabilia.
Because, really, that's how I see the Legion. They are a group of really, really enthusiastic young people whom have patterned themselves off a bygone era, and practice the methods of that era in the modern day. And they have the authority to go pretty much wherever they want and do as they please for the most part. And they're teenagers. Oh, and occasionally they travel through time, doing whatever they please, and they regularly bring back major historic figures to show them their clubhouse and collection of memorabilia.
That is both fundamentally awesome and crazy.
That's why I like the Legion.
1 comment:
You might like Keith Giffen's run on the original LoSH. He tended to write the heroes as older. I really think the work he did after the five year jump was really underappreciated and unnoticed at the time.
As I understand the current incarnation, the Legion is viewed as suspicious and a little scary by the adults in that universe. In the universe that Waid established it wasn't just the people coming out of the SWAT van that onlookers didn't understand, it was the SWAT van itself.
To me, the Legion starts well as a group of youths that reignite an ethos that their time had lost. They have to establish what a superhero is and what they represent. They have more in common with the WW II JSA than the Teen Titans.
As time goes by the Legion should earn more respect and responsibility from the universe they inhabit. There are probably good stories about thirty something heroes in the far future who started a superhero movement.
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