I don’t know what’s come over me, but I’ve been having this urge to read a Legion of Super Heroes comic. Thing is, I can’t stand the Legion (or is that LoS? LoSH?) I’ve always found them to be boring and corny. The part of my brain that allows me to unabashedly enjoy any other [arguably boring and corny] superhero comic fails me when I have a Legion comic in front of me (Well, I do like Ty Templeton’s work on those characters, so I do like some Legion*).

I asked two reliable sources (friends who know their shit) and they instantly said, “FIVE YEARS LATER”. I have to admit, gentlemen, that Legion is a train wreck of words and images.

Well, THIS sequence is nice and quiet and pretty. By “train wreck” I mean… well, keep reading.

I picked up the first seven issues of this late 80s/early 90s re-launch of the LoSH, simply known as LEGION: the Five Years Later era. Plotted and penciled by Keith Giffen and scripted by Tom and Mary Bierbaum with story assist by Al Gordon. The basic premise is that the Legion team had disbanded and are slowly regrouping in order to… be a team again, I think because… they were wronged somehow by… the govern… ment? There’s this kooky cosmic psycho who has different voices, dream sequences and “article” pages aplenty, a few people die, a few get into a fight, a new spunky girl is the resident badass. I don’t know much more than that. At this point, I don’t really care. I thought that by the seventh issue, I’d be invested in something. That didn’t happen. This is the best jumping on point for the Legion mythos?

Growing stubble and a ponytail screams angst, I totally get that. I can read all that “grim and gritty” stuff without bitching about how it was an industry trend. But this revision felt a little forced, a little too pat.

I appreciate the writing style in that it takes its cue from Howard Chaykin’s “dropping you in the middle of a conversation, keep up & learn as you go along” writing. The difference is that this story is really seeped in back story and Legion trivia. One’s enjoyment is reliant on a deep knowledge of Legion history, something I don’t have. It’s for insiders only and re-reading pages in order to clarify plot points took me out of the story. Is this what it’s like to be a non-comics reader? Holy shit, no wonder people give up easily. A story like Alex Ross and Mark Waid’s Kingdom Come is riddled with in-jokes and club house winks and nudges, but I still got a solid story from it. It was clear, it moved along, it did its job… but was it because I knew who Hal Jordan and Billy Batson were?

Speaking of Mark Waid, I had forgotten that he was actually the editor for the first few issues of “Five Years Later” and I’m curious as to how involved he was in the plotting of this series. I know that’s he’s a walking comic book encyclopedia (runners up include Kurt Busiek and the late Mark Gruenwald), but did that inform the way the story was told? It really did read like a comic book “members only” sign and I’m left to wonder if that was on purpose or if it was an experiment gone awry.

The art certainly didn’t help. I like Giffen’s art fine, especially when he does stuff like this:

I dig Ambush Bug. I even like Video Jack and Trencher. His fill in issue of New Universe’s Justice was pretty cool. As was JLI #13. My point is that no matter how faux-artsy Giffen is at times, that shit gets in the way of clarity. It’s not challenging me, though, it’s stumbling me. It’s not that I’m a novice reader, it’s that Giffen’s art is sometimes too obscure for its own sake. There’s no reveal to his storytelling, there’s just loaded mystery. Slapping a nine panel grid over a page doesn’t make it Watchmen, it just jumbles the story up. Randomly shrouding faces in black doesn’t make them look haunting, it makes them impossible to tell apart.

Did I miss out on a potentially good story due to its incomprehensible presentation? Part of this unsolicited breakdown of Five Years Later came from two things: wanting to explore what bothered me about the comic in order to learn from it… AND because I still want to read a good ol’ superhero comic that I haven’t read before, and I still think Legion may be a good source for that. Bring on the Steve Lightle art, man. I wanna see some old school Greg LaRocque. Didn’t Adam Hughes draw an issue or two?

Silver Age Curt Swan is great, but those 60s Legion stories are unreadable unless you have a nostalgic noose around your neck. As much as I like Dave Cockrum’s work, his Legion revision in the 70s doesn’t grab me. Mike Grell drew some issues, too, but that’s not really a selling point for me. I once described Grell as though he’s molesting me with his art. Y’know, with his feathery, color pencil montages of long haired heroes and horses. He is the mutton chops of comics. He is the dank basement in the Midwest. The way Grell draws lips is the equivalent of a gang of construction workers playing Duck Duck Goose with a teenage runaway. I feel wrong looking at it.

A Grell cover sans color pencil feathering. Stippling can’t be far behind.

I flipped through some of the early Giffen/Levitz stuff (the Great Darkness Saga seemed promising), but it didn’t seem like a good jumping on point. Neither did the Baxter paper re-launch from the 80s. I’m assuming that I’m missing a recent storyline that’s great. You know what I mean, right? Daredevil and Batman have whatever Frank Miller has written. The X-men have the Dark Phoenix Saga. Swamp Thing has the Alan Moore run. Jim Aparo’s Aquaman. Ditko’s Spider-Man. What story does the Legion of Super Heroes have that can convert any hater with its sheer power of awesome? Have I just missed a window of opportunity to really embrace such a series?

I like this Giffen cover a lot. I should just take the plunge and read the damn thing.

What am I doing worrying about a comic I know I don’t like? I should probably read Moomin instead, or finally give Scott Pilgrim a try. I can dig into Jim Woodring’s Weathercraft or I can revisit Simonson’s ORION or back issues of ANGEL LOVE or ZERO ZERO.

For some reason, I still want LoSH comics.

* Ty drew bunch of profiles for the “Who’s Who in the Legion of Super Heroes” and wrote a story for the 7th issue of that series (it was drawn by Curt Swan). He also wrote and drew the Legion of Substitute Heroes in Secret Origins #37, the Bouncing Boy origin in SO #49, and inked another LoSH yarn for Curt Swan in SO #46. I say Ty Templeton should write and draw THE end-all, be-all Legion story. Who is with me on this? What petition should I sign? Let’s make this happen!