finishing up with the Legion

I just finished reading the last of the stack of Legion of Super-Heroes comics that I started reading a few weeks ago. The last issue I read was Legion 63, the final issue in Paul Levitz’s long run, and the final issue of the Baxter series. I really enjoyed reading these, though things got a little dicey near the end.

When Keith Giffen came back on the title, with issue 50, a lot of stuff about it started to change. The final storyline, The Magic Wars, was fun to read, but is obviously starting to set up stuff for the new “Five Years Later” post-Levitz series. So a lot of the charm of the earlier Levitz/LaRoque run was gone by then, with several characters departing or getting killed off, new uniforms, and other late 80s / early 90s stuff creeping in. I find Keith Giffen’s art to be interesting, but often frustrating, and likewise I’m also often frustrated with books that he’s plotted or co-written.

I really admire Paul Levitz’s long run on this book. He wrote the book for about ten years straight, pretty much all through the 80s. I don’t remember exactly when I started buying the Legion book, but it was fairly early in his run, just before the Great Darkness Saga started. So, a very good time for an impressionable teenage superhero and science fiction fan to start reading that book. Levitz was great at juggling the large cast of characters in the Legion, bringing different characters in and out of the spotlight, matching them up with each other in different and interesting ways, and just generally keeping the whole gigantic space opera of it running for so long.

I recently discovered a podcast about the Legion, that is currently talking about some of the books I’ve just finished with. It’s called the Legion of Substitute Podcasters. It’s pretty geeky and a bit rambling, but it’s fun to listen to, if you have the time and the interest. I’ve also found an episode of another podcast that talks about Levitz’s run. I haven’t listened to it yet, but I’ve got it bookmarked. It’s kind of cool that people are still talking about these books.

Well, that was a fun trip into some old comics nostalgia. I feel like I need to read something contemporary and/or high-brow next, though I’m not sure I’m ready for high-brow. So maybe just the first few issues of Civil War II or some of the DC Rebirth stuff that I’ve been picking up at the comic shop.

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