Legion of Super-Heroes
Comix Index
Review on Hollywood Jesus
writer: Mark Waid
artist: Barry Kitson
The Legion of Super-Heroes has seen several incarnations. In its complex history, the title has been started, stopped, revamped, gone edgy and dark, gone pre-L.E.G.I.O.N. (Yeah, you don’t go a more tangled continuity, in the name of pleasing old fans while creating a jump on point for new ones, than going pre-your original self. Hello, Star Trek: Enterprise.) Luckily, you need to know none of that continuity to pick up and enjoy the latest incarnation of The Legion of Super-Heroes.
The title has a simple premise: it takes place 1,000 years from now, during a new age of heroes. After a millennium of utopian peace, there is a security, stability, and order to our united world. (Yes, for all of the Left Behind brand of theology fans, it’s literally a thousand years of peace followed by the return of an evil.) But this newfound peace is at the cost of freedom and individuality (read: it’s boring).
The young are held in suspicion. They are tracked genetically via a system known as the “public service� that also filters what under-agers (those under the age of 18) see and hear. The peace is maintained by a global “science police� and the planet is a member of the “United Planets.� All the while, the society has grown so impersonal that two people in the same room talk to one another via video screen. Okay, maybe it’s not so simple, but it’s easy to get into the swing of things.
One of the daunting tasks about writing the Legion of Super-Heroes is that you have over thirty characters to juggle. Focusing on only the most popular characters misses the point of a book like the Legion (emphasis on Legion) of Super-Heroes. Mark Waid has fleshed out their individual personalities, since with so many characters, many became generic or interchangeable. This changed the team dynamic as not all the members get along, or for that matter, even like each other. We get more of a sense of the alien-ness of the members. He went so far as to re-imagine how some of their powers work.
The members of the Legion look back on the age of heroes (Batman, Superman, etc.) through a romantic lens (since, in the eyes of the law, they were costumed vigilantes). Inspired by them (they even generate their codes of conduct from them), the members retain a lot of the charmingly retro names from earlier incarnations of the Legion, in keeping with their emulation of the old heroes (or as they put it: adjective + gender = names). Ultra Boy. Colossal Boy. Dream Girl. Sun Boy. Star Boy. Light Lass. Phantom Girl. Invisible Kid. And they invite all young people to subscribe to their philosophy of reclaiming their individuality and standing against wrong. Since this is a movement created on the backs of the young, some adults view the Legion as a (super-powered) cult.
The Legion of Super-Heroes for all intents and purposes is a church. The membership is made up of different races, with different gifts, with differing personalities and temperaments, yet they are one body. As a “church,� they struggle with this question: what does it mean to be missional? Often churches are mission-minded; that is, they put on shows or do outreach along the lines of getting the community to go to the church. This idea that the church is an attraction for the world to come see needs to be jettisoned, or at least re-thought, in light of a missional mindset. With a missional mindset, one is concerned more with getting the church to go to the community. To incarnate Christ (and the Bible) puts a new light on how Christians should see themselves, since lives modeled on the Bible may be the only Bible that people may know.
However, even this “church� has to deal with fragmented ideology that needs to be integrated, as different members pursue their own agenda and competing visions. In other words, their gospel message, their uniting vision, needs to be re-thought and figured out.
Boiled down, the gospel is about re-learning what it means to be free and fully human. To enjoy community, acceptance, while reviving the concepts of socialization and interaction. To be transformed and in so doing be a part of a generational revolution that frees people from being prisoners to the bondage of society, and the tyranny of their selfish ways. And as they grow, they realize that there is a lot to learn from history and tradition that has been forsaken in the name of expediency and progress. In so doing, they are swept up into a greater mission: to be a blessing to the world. Even the galaxy.
This book hasn’t forgotten its sense of fun, a fun not seen since the Paul Levitz, Keith Giffen—even the Jim Shooter—era of the book. Yes, it is a book featuring kids coming together in defiance of adults, emulating the vigilantes and highly individualistic “cowboy� super-heroes of the past—basically, rebelling against a society that controls every aspect of their life. Yes, those themes have a particular appeal to a new generation of readers. However, they leave room for the “older� generation of fans to enjoy this run also.
Comix Index
Review on Hollywood Jesus
Review on Hollywood Jesus
writer: Mark Waid
artist: Barry Kitson
The Legion of Super-Heroes has seen several incarnations. In its complex history, the title has been started, stopped, revamped, gone edgy and dark, gone pre-L.E.G.I.O.N. (Yeah, you don’t go a more tangled continuity, in the name of pleasing old fans while creating a jump on point for new ones, than going pre-your original self. Hello, Star Trek: Enterprise.) Luckily, you need to know none of that continuity to pick up and enjoy the latest incarnation of The Legion of Super-Heroes.The title has a simple premise: it takes place 1,000 years from now, during a new age of heroes. After a millennium of utopian peace, there is a security, stability, and order to our united world. (Yes, for all of the Left Behind brand of theology fans, it’s literally a thousand years of peace followed by the return of an evil.) But this newfound peace is at the cost of freedom and individuality (read: it’s boring).
The young are held in suspicion. They are tracked genetically via a system known as the “public service� that also filters what under-agers (those under the age of 18) see and hear. The peace is maintained by a global “science police� and the planet is a member of the “United Planets.� All the while, the society has grown so impersonal that two people in the same room talk to one another via video screen. Okay, maybe it’s not so simple, but it’s easy to get into the swing of things.
One of the daunting tasks about writing the Legion of Super-Heroes is that you have over thirty characters to juggle. Focusing on only the most popular characters misses the point of a book like the Legion (emphasis on Legion) of Super-Heroes. Mark Waid has fleshed out their individual personalities, since with so many characters, many became generic or interchangeable. This changed the team dynamic as not all the members get along, or for that matter, even like each other. We get more of a sense of the alien-ness of the members. He went so far as to re-imagine how some of their powers work.
The members of the Legion look back on the age of heroes (Batman, Superman, etc.) through a romantic lens (since, in the eyes of the law, they were costumed vigilantes). Inspired by them (they even generate their codes of conduct from them), the members retain a lot of the charmingly retro names from earlier incarnations of the Legion, in keeping with their emulation of the old heroes (or as they put it: adjective + gender = names). Ultra Boy. Colossal Boy. Dream Girl. Sun Boy. Star Boy. Light Lass. Phantom Girl. Invisible Kid. And they invite all young people to subscribe to their philosophy of reclaiming their individuality and standing against wrong. Since this is a movement created on the backs of the young, some adults view the Legion as a (super-powered) cult.
The Legion of Super-Heroes for all intents and purposes is a church. The membership is made up of different races, with different gifts, with differing personalities and temperaments, yet they are one body. As a “church,� they struggle with this question: what does it mean to be missional? Often churches are mission-minded; that is, they put on shows or do outreach along the lines of getting the community to go to the church. This idea that the church is an attraction for the world to come see needs to be jettisoned, or at least re-thought, in light of a missional mindset. With a missional mindset, one is concerned more with getting the church to go to the community. To incarnate Christ (and the Bible) puts a new light on how Christians should see themselves, since lives modeled on the Bible may be the only Bible that people may know.
However, even this “church� has to deal with fragmented ideology that needs to be integrated, as different members pursue their own agenda and competing visions. In other words, their gospel message, their uniting vision, needs to be re-thought and figured out.
Boiled down, the gospel is about re-learning what it means to be free and fully human. To enjoy community, acceptance, while reviving the concepts of socialization and interaction. To be transformed and in so doing be a part of a generational revolution that frees people from being prisoners to the bondage of society, and the tyranny of their selfish ways. And as they grow, they realize that there is a lot to learn from history and tradition that has been forsaken in the name of expediency and progress. In so doing, they are swept up into a greater mission: to be a blessing to the world. Even the galaxy.
This book hasn’t forgotten its sense of fun, a fun not seen since the Paul Levitz, Keith Giffen—even the Jim Shooter—era of the book. Yes, it is a book featuring kids coming together in defiance of adults, emulating the vigilantes and highly individualistic “cowboy� super-heroes of the past—basically, rebelling against a society that controls every aspect of their life. Yes, those themes have a particular appeal to a new generation of readers. However, they leave room for the “older� generation of fans to enjoy this run also.
Comix Index
Review on Hollywood Jesus
12 Comments:
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I have no idea why people picked this review to spam.
Oh my god. The Legion. There is no comic I've adored more in my life, even if, yes, it is quite possibly number one in most confusing continuity. And that's beating out Mark Waid explaining hypertime or trying to figure out the mess that is Hawkman's history.
I'm glad to see this get recognition. I've found the legion to be a great balance between fun and more mature-angled plot, grabbing all audiences - especially the brand new series being penned by the aforementioned Mark Waid.
I actually think it does serve some core learning lessons, a sort of influence - the legion is so very massive. I can name 30 of them off the top of my head, and that's barely scratching the surface. Still, the characters, though they generally have the same intentions, can clash, come together, all sorts of things - mostly, its learning about other people and understanding them, tolerating and loving them, perhaps best evidenced by the concept of the United Planets, species so very different forcing to come together for greater good.
I love picking up back issues of this - especially the mid-60's stuff, when DC started experimenting around. There was even a hint of a lesbian relationship between Shrinking Lass and Light Lass - handled much more tastefully back then than most authors would be now. I'd hate to have a more...immature writer try to pitch that, and insist that their body armor would consist of metal bikinis and make-out sessions every other page. God, that'd be terrible.
I wasn't aware there were collected versions of the classics. I will have to buy them.
Thanks for making me aware!
you're welcome.
i'm hoping to have a couple more comic book reviews up in the next week or so.
Maurice, why have you been deleting me at random?
I haven't been spamming!
Colin Meyer aka... milly?? (or is she your sister?)
Shall we have a little entre-nous for a change? It's worked with a guy called Sam, but I think he must be tired of me by now, because I won't give big respect to his quasi-Nietzschean notions... much as I admire some of his insights!
I read your "response to the people who think bisexuals are liars" on your site - it was VERY funny! I didn't know being a bisexual was like that... because I am not one, though as Maurice might tell you, I do believe myself to be "twin-souled". I suppose life as a bisexual is as you describe; vanilla one day... then a whole run of chocolate! I'm glad it isn't the "scientists" who always have the last word.
Yes, with regard to bisexuality in DC's old comics... Yeah, things were always HINTED at, weren't they... but never much more than a bit of that, not in the old days... What, you're saying that there was a (discernible) lesbian relationship in a mid-60s DC comic... I'd have to see that to believe that; because they WERE marketing strongly to children then, and so, I don't think that would have been acceptable at the time... It isn't even NOW, in CHILDREN's books; you aren't allowed to say anything like "gay", because of this pervading fear in various Western cultures that you can "promote" homosexuality! (Ie, get people to be able to admit it at an earlier age!)
I mean... in J K Rowling, which is very contemporary, you're not allowed to have lesbian relationships between Hermione Grainger and Ginny Weasley, for instance!!
Think what the general public reaction would be if a children's author decided that they WANTED to... have something at all like that! They would be ATTACKED from all sides for "destroying children's (or teenagers', that's a joke) innocence", everything.
I'm not even sure whether you're allowed to have it in realistic growing-up stories, like those by Judy Blume. I think some soap operas featuring young people MAY have touched on the topic.
Hm. So no youth fantasy novels about young magicians and wizards working their way through adolescence and deciding that they like the same sex, then!
I'm not expecting to see any soon.
Another theme I think could be discussed by both of us with interest would be - WHY the double standards in "mainstream" fiction, between gays and lesbians.
(NB - I have SEEN contemporary gay fiction in comic book format - there is an entire web site devoted to it which sells their own superhero comics along raunchy gay lines. But I don't expect to see anything REMOTELY similar in the "mainstream", ie, Marvel, DC (though one ASKS oneself... WHY haven't they brought out a few "adults-only imprints")...)
But what one WOULD expect to see is a broadly egalitarian approach to gay and lesbian characters; but no explicit sex. Maybe no kisses. I'm not sure here.
But this DOESN'T actually happen! What one DOES see is an occasional promotion of LESBIAN (young, nubile - NOT older!) characters, in the "bikini armour" and "make-out scenes" modes that Colin describes. Maybe they borrowed this from manga, I have no idea.
I think Marvel has had about ONE gay male character...a cowboy hero, isnt' that so - to date!
But anyway... aren't readers, and GAY and FEMALE readers respectively, particularly, ANNOYED at the constant EXPLOITATION by popular culture of the soft-porn erotic "young lesbians" scene... almost entirely for the delectation of male het readers???
For if it WEREN'T... well one would see the corresponding number of young male characters in skimpy clothes and steamy clinches!! And you DON'T. EVER. Practically. In the "mainstream".
I mean... haven't women for one SEEN THROUGH this by now? The prejudice comes through in even the best stuff... "Buffy" contained a lesbian relationship... but no gay male one... WHY NOT I should like to add?? If I ever get the chance to speak to Joss Whedon, I shall corner him on the topic.
Is it because the male viewers - the group who advertisers UNACCOUNTABLY want to target the most - presumably because they still earn the most overall... yeah, but you know what? Lots of them are paying alimony and child support, and more of them are unemployed now than there ever were, Wall Street, FYI!!
But is it - it surely IS because the TV writers/producers think that the young male segment of the viewers (the most "important" - hah! I say with scorn!) will go "eeuh" to a male screen kiss, and conversely, cheer and grab their crotches when it's two women?
I am just sick of double standards. But we've been seeing them since American soaps like LA Law.. I think it was them that started it - started making a big thing out of "the lesbian kiss" as a plot element in the late 80s/early 90s.
Name me ONE American TV serial which has "the gay male kiss" as a similar plot highlight... and I MIGHT turn down my scorn a notch.
"Six Feet Under" may just be a contender... but I've never seen this particular scene in it!
It IS true, though, that when an American TV serial shows ANYTHING with a "plot about homosexuals"... such as one, rather serious, rather toned down episode of "Quantum Leap", about gays in the military... Focus on the Family and Christian Right groups from everywhere organise telephone trees and write letters to the studio telling them they are going to boycott the firms who advertise in the slots of such programmes??
And so studios have to be quite brave, and indeed accept dips in the advertising revenue, in order to broadcast such episodes of dramas.
HENCE, I daresay, the reluctance to tackle male homosexuality. (OR bisexuality.) On TV.
But... isn't that MORAL of the Xtian groups... Of COURSE it is... then WHY, pray, do they NEVER seem to make QUITE so much fuss about "the big lesbian kiss" we see every so often, in American TV drama?
They DO make some fuss... but never enough, it seems, to get the big lesbian kiss off the air. Or to scare TV producers away from further lesbian kiss scenes.
Or IS it just because the TV studios - also all run by men - calculate that the lesbian kiss will titillate the male viewers of all ages... the ones they are REALLY trying to reach... sufficiently enough to not worry about any threats by the Christian Right to boycott advertisers?
Maybe some of those Christian Right pastors like watching lesbian kisses too.
Well, the 21st century is supposed to be the century of women, and I as a woman, say that I'd rather watch two men kissing.
THAT is erotic to ME... and to other women, I have found, browsing through something called "slash" fan fiction... probably for the same reason that 2 lesbians are attractive to men.
Anyway, I am absolutely SICK of TV studios putting in a "tasteful little vignette" of lesbians, and making out that this is "progressive", in their output. Bollocks. They do it for the soft porn value, and that is all.
Colin, I'd love to discuss this and similar issues with you.
I bet I could explain hypertime, whatever it is, much better than Mark Waid... I already had this discussion with Maurice on another of his comics blogs... and he said that DC had already "invented" this complex concept of multiple universes along the lines of the one I wanted to use... I rebel and say they haven't; most modern comics use PRETTY POOR science fiction ideas, in my view... they're not science fiction or physics experts, any of their writers... and that although a layperson, I bet I know FAR more about multiple universe theory than they do!
I've just NEVER seen a modern comic that's TAUGHT me anything!
I'd also like to discuss the "mainstream comics" treatment of gay characters - BOTH HEROES AND VILLAINS - this is very important - and whether you, Colin, believe there to be ANY POSITIVE EXAMPLE of DC's (in particular) treatment of gay male characters or gay sexuality - or sexuality AT ALL, come to that.
I would say that there isn't! Of course, I don't read masses of comics - but I haven't yet found one!
Frank Miller is a PARTICULAR ARCH-OFFENDER, in this regard. I think he's done his level best to set gay and lesbian relations back about a thousand years. In his sleazier comics!
"The Dark Knight Returns" being a case in point. Not as sleazy as the "Sin City" series, but with the definite aim of slagging off gay/bi men, in the person of the villain the Joker.
(Do you Americans use the phrase "Slagging off"?? Or is there a precise equivalent? Or does one just have to say "putting down" over there?)
In FACT.... as a Batman "obsessive" - and HATER of most modern versions - I think it would be instructive, from the gay rights point of view, to go over DC's Batman title and graphic novel output from 1986 to the 1990s... to now, if you want! But it was worse a few years ago, I think. Anyway - just go RIGHT through their Batman output and analyse their various modern "presentations" of the character the Joker for just ONE thing... who most writers have agreed is gay or bi.
Well, I think it's instructive... just go and LOOK at these various versions of "the gay Joker"... and see what most of them seem to say!
Mhmm. In the modern version, (eg. Grant Morrisson's) he hates women! And attacks women most of all... next to of course his undying hatred of the Batman. Even Paul Dini manages to catch a whiff of that... but because HIS Joker really IS "bi"... ie, he has what can only be described as a common law wife, namely Harley Quinn... so his Joker isn't so much misogyist as sexist! I've noticed that! But it hasn't seemed that out of place, because I've ALSO noticed (you MAY or may not like to know, Colin.. but being the sort of person you are you SHOULD know) that ALL modern Batman comics and cartoons are sexist!
In the 21st century - ALL these writers can think of, is sexism!
This to me is... disgusting, amazing, unbelievable?? You betcha!
Funny. Never saw that in a Golden Age comic!
Anyway, it's worth an exchange of views on.
um. okay. sounds like an interesting topic that we can talk about sometime (the issue of "homosexuality and its portrayal in comics"). however, this is a review of "the legion of super heroes". have you read this book?
Uh, yeah. I love the legion to death, and made a comment on the skillful handling of a potential lesbian relationship. That got spiralled into a mess out of nowhere. On topic would be nice, thanks. This is the Legion Of Super Heroes, as Maurice has stated, not a book on homosexuality in comics.
Milly is my nickname. Short for Milennium (Sic?). Long story involving internet handles. So I'm a guy with an effeminate nickname.
If you'd like some answers to your questions (Such as list of Marvel and DC, ie, more mainstream gay and lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, etc, characters, of which, there are many) you can direct them towards me at milly@cyberpiratestudios.com
Again, let's try to remain on topic here. This is Maurice's blog, as which he is to use as he sees fit within the regulations of the blogger terms of agreement.
In this month's LEGION OF SUPERHEROES, Colossal Lad's gay brother is introduced.
A huge, gay, cute Jew.
In pineapple boxer shorts.
Hooray for Waid and DeKraker.
Hello Maurice,
I was very interested in your observations on the Legion. As a child I always thought of them as an optimistic, highly motivated group of super-boy scouts and super-girl scouts who are an extended family. The diversity is a reminder that supermen-benevolent come in a rich variety.
I'm also glad that when you give a sound critique of some length that you don't participate in the superficial, and inappropriate soapbox chattering from those with neosocialist leanings who merely want to hear themselves pontificate.It is refreshing that you choose to hold your ground on your webpage against the selfish dominance of spamming.
Do you think that in our present era that the Legion could be classified as a classical form of retro-futurism? I'm very interested in your reply on this.
I'm always out in the open for ideas of this kind and my enthusiasm is tireless.
Sincerely,
Sam
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