Awesome Half-price books haul…found this and the excellent ANIMAL CASTLE HC. I’ve only have a couple books i can compare ANIMAL CASTLE to, BLACKSAD and KARMEN. It’s that European style that feels like an animation/comic book blend that really makes each panel wall-worthy. Beautiful.
I’m planing on finishing batman pray and journey to the center of the dark knight and rereading batman d o a
Legion of Super-Heroes: 55 issues from 1985-1989
Writers: Paul Levitz (55 issues), Steve Lightle (co-plotter on 1 issue), Keith Giffen (co-plotter on 13 issues)
I really like the new group of rookies that join around the beginning of this stretch, though I’m a little sad the Subs had to get broken up to add Polar Boy.
This is a very “everyone must be shipped” kind of book, isn’t it? To the point I’ve read as of this writing (#26), thirty-seven people have been full members of the Legion in total. Only eleven or twelve or so don’t have a long-term ship (my definition of “ship” making allowances for likely-temporary drama and will-they-or-won’t-they antics), depending on how you count the fact that none of Clark’s relationships are important to this book. Of the others, five are long since written out, dead or retired,* and four only just joined a few issues ago. Poor Chameleon Boy and Invisible Kid II are just unloved in general. Of the twenty-five/twenty-six (again, depending on Clark) who do have ships, there are eleven pairings within the team, including the recent and relatively inexplicable Shrinking Violet/Sun Boy thing that spontaneously popped into being in the middle of an unrelated scene despite the fact that they hadn’t said two words to each other before. And some of these are flimsy, but that one is flimsy.
*I almost amended this phrasing to “written out (dead or retired),” but I chose to illustrate the clarifying purpose of the serial comma. If people used it consistently, this phrasing would have no ambiguity.
Wait, after all that nonsense about Validus secretly being Imra and Garth’s mutated time-traveling Darkseid-corrupted son, Darkseid’s endgame is just… “lol, j/k, here’s your kid back.”
The Universo Project is a really good arc, though I have to wonder: Sensor Girl’s powers are poorly defined, but this hypnotism seems like exactly the kind of thing they should be ideally suited to resisting. What gives?
I like the Starfinger arc a lot, actually, but Starfinger himself is very far from a highlight of it. Absurd design notwithstanding, his identity is simultaneously painfully obvious and the least interesting thing it could possibly be. That said, between that and the concurrent “conspiracy” plot, a lot of cool stuff going on with the characters I like.
That’s a few good points near the end, though the actual last few arcs are a kind of homogenously action-focused mess, especially The Magic Wars. Doesn’t help that the art’s really bad. Giffen’s previous run didn’t look like this, so I’m not sure if it’s bad inks or he changed his style or what, but it’s hard to look at. The designs all being big boxy shoulder pads (when he’d done some good work with the character designs earlier) is annoying too.
I feel like the plot not being interesting probably goes at Giffen’s feet too; he was trying to tie a lot of magic things to the Lords of Order and Chaos around this time. While they’re not mentioned specifically in this book, that was connected to the general unpleasantness of his Amethyst run. Then the barely-foreshadowed idea that Zerox is Gemworld suddenly comes up in like the last few pages of the title as a deus ex machina to wipe out this very nonspecific bad guy with his very nonspecific goal of somehow replacing science with magic??? Um, huh.
215.
Legion of Super-Heroes: 44 issues from 1989-1993
Writers: Keith Giffen (co-writer on 1 issue, co-plotter on 29 issues, co-plotter on backup in 4 issues), Tom Bierbaum (co-writer on 39 issues, co-writer on backup in 5 issues), Mary Bierbaum (co-writer on 39 issues, co-writer on backup in 5 issues), Al Gordon (co-plotter on 14 issues, main story in 5 issues), Jason Pearson (co-plotter on 3 issues)
So, first of all, cut it out with the nine-panel grids. The obsessive dedication to these things relaxes a little in later issues, but we still only get a page or two per issue with any other layout. It’s insufferable.
Anyway, otherwise, I… have a really hard time figuring out what to think of this. Some things are really cool and great ideas; I love that they’ve made the overall interstellar diplomatic/military/political situation more dynamic and focused on some of these big factions that had been set up. There are some pretty neat ideas about making Legion history match up with the Post-Crisis timeline without breaking things too badly. Several characters really shine here. Everything involving Matter-Eater Lad is solid gold. This did a lot of surprisingly good work with Shrinking Violet, who’d been kind of… weird in the late Levitz era.
But there’s so much nonsense getting in the way of the interesting ideas. Leading off by killing Blok, objectively the best character, was not a way to get on my good side. A lot of early stuff is almost unreadably obtuse about what’s going on. The Big Twist about Garth is just… mind-numbingly stupid. They clearly had the best of intentions with Shvaughn but implemented the idea in a really uncomfortable way. Several characters just get dumped on throughout the whole run, especially Sun Boy. I didn’t even like Sun Boy; he was my least favorite character based on previous runs. But he didn’t deserve anywhere near this much abuse. Glorith is nonsense. And in general the whole thing’s just… probably edgier than the Legion ever really needed to be.
249.
February
Batgirl 60-64
Savage Hawkman 5-13
ASBARTBW- 10 issues
Superman for all Seasons 4 issues
Justice Society of America 1992-4-5
The Golden Age- 4 issues
TMNT- 7 issues
Batman and Scooby-Doo Mysteries 4
World’s Finest 11
New Champion of Shazam 4
Green Arrow 14
Kingdome Come- 1
45 issues. 135 total.
Legion of Super-Heroes and Legionnaires: 41 issues from 1993-1994
Writers: Tom McCraw (9 issues of Legion of Super-Heroes, co-writer on 2 issues of Legion of Super-Heroes, co-writer on 1 issue of Legionnaires, plotter on 1 issue of Legion of Super-Heroes, main story in 1 issue of Legion of Super-Heroes), Tom & Mary Bierbaum (writers on 8 issues of Legion of Super-Heroes, writers on 15 issues of Legionnaires, scripters on 1 issue of Legion of Super-Heroes, backup in 1 issue of Legion of Super-Heroes), Stuart Immonen & Ron Boyd (plotters on 1 issue of Legion of Super-Heroes), Mark Waid (2 issues of Legionnaires, co-writer on 2 issues of Legion of Super-Heroes, co-writer on 2 issues of Legionnaires), Ty Templeton (co-writer on 1 issue of Legionnaires)
… Holy ■■■■, the cute younger clone Legion are assholes all of a sudden. “Live Wire” and “Inferno” (I understand the reason for the different names, but they are trying way too hard) just, uh, publicly fat-shamed an applicant (despite her having legitimately potentially useful powers) until she ran away crying. What the ■■■■.
And then she… becomes the new Emerald Empress for some reason??? Oh, and this transformation slims her down, too. That’s good; I was worried the Legion would have a prominent character who was overweight for a minute. Wouldn’t want to have that.
Actually, wait, oblique sarcasm aside, these are ostensibly either the same kids from the Silver Age or have their memories, and Bouncing Boy never got this kind of abuse. Like, in terms of being offensive, I could see this clumsily fumbling its way to Garth and Dirk learning a lesson, but it’s also a continuity error.
Meanwhile, with the adult Legion, why are so many of Mordru’s zombies on Sklar 20th century Earth superheroes? Shouldn’t they be, you know, Sklarians?
Yeah, anyway, while Legionnaires continues spiraling into insanity, Legion continues spiraling into inanity. It’s just… really boring.
While it’s time travel nonsense and not really any different in plot from the other things, something about the wrap-up issues that Waid worked on just flows better. The man is good.
Also, I’ve been wondering the whole time if we’ll ever learn who invaded the Dominators’ homeworld at the end of the war back in the last section I talked about; guess there’s still no word on that. Huh.
290.
This week I read 116 comics. My total year to date is 716.
Finished Golden Age Wonder Woman omnibus 4. Anxiously awaiting news of volume 5.
Two Kull omnibuses down, one to go.
300 comics to date.
Okay, time for the long haul, I think.
Legion of Super-Heroes and Legionnaires: 134 issues from 1994-2000
Writers: Mark Waid (co-writer on 9 issues of Legion of Super-Heroes, co-writer on 3 issues of Legionnaires, scripter on 3 issues of Legion of Super-Heroes), Tom McCraw (co-writer on 14 issues of Legion of Super-Heroes, co-writer on 5 issues of Legionnaires, co-plotter on 46 issues of Legion of Super-Heroes, co-plotter on 48 issues of Legionnaires), Tom Peyer (44 issues of Legion of Super-Heroes, 16 issues of Legionnaires, co-writer on 9 issues of Legion of Super-Heroes, co-writer on 3 issues of Legionnaires, co-plotter on 3 issues of Legion of Super-Heroes, co-plotter on 1 issue of Legionnaires, main story in 1 issue of Legion of Super-Heroes), Jeffrey Moy (co-plotter on 1 issue of Legionnaires), Roger Stern (39 issues of Legionnaires, co-plotter on 1 issue of Legion of Super-Heroes, backup in 1 issue of Legion of Super-Heroes), Paul Levitz (backup in 1 issue of Legion of Super-Heroes), KC Carlson (1 issue of Legion of Super-Heroes, 1 issue of Legionnaires), Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning (8 issues)
First impression is that this is pretty good, though I have nitpicks. I hate the new names (like, yeah, the original names are goofy, but they wouldn’t feel out of place with this tone and in no universe is “Apparition” catchier than “Phantom Girl”). I kind of liked Brande’s specialty being building stars. That was still plausibly useful while being quirkier than just the FTL tech. I was kind of excited for Kid Quantum to get a chance to actually do something, and then they just immediately killed him.
Random question: Why does Shrinking Violet already call herself that (and at least they’re not calling her, like, “Microscopic” or some similarly ridiculous thing) before she leaves Imsk? That’s like if you had a human superhero called, like, Opposable Thumbs Man, or Captain Carbon-Based.
The new Laurel’s a peach, ain’t she?
You know what, I’m so confused about how space racism works. So, humans don’t like non-humans, Daxamites don’t like non-Daxamites, but apparently racist humans and racist Daxamites are on some level cool with each other? Why? It’s not just because they look similar, since the outwardly-human-looking alien Legionnaires are getting flak too.
Is… the Composite Man just the Super-Skrull?
So, okay, let’s see. We’ve had several cases of Legionnaires calling Chameleon Boy (sorry, “Chameleon”) “it” or being all “go back to Durla.” There’s Laurel’s whole deal, though I guess she’s supposed to be a jerk. (Brainy does just, uh… straight-up torture her into not being racist anymore? So… yay… character development?) But it all makes these characters just a wee bit on the miserable side to actually follow as protagonists.
Also, what do the ‘90s have against poor Phantom Girl (sorry, “Apparition”)?
I’m not sure exactly how to go about asking this, but, um… why is Mon-El (sorry, “Valor”) Jesus all of a sudden?
Let’s see what else we have here… they still think Starfinger’s interesting (or should that be, like, “Digit” or something)… and…
Wait.
Hold on.
The Fatal Five (maybe we could rename them, uh, “Quint-Essence,” yeah, that sounds dumb enough) were all the product of, quote, “nearly identical engineering processes?” I- But that- Have you seen them?
Also the new… just Empress, I guess? has the superpower of… a knife? I mean, Persuader (maybe that should be “Polearm”) just has an axe, but it’s a special axe. “Empress” just… nonspecifically likes killing people.
The whole long-con arc about proving the UP president is evil is… okay. It admittedly had me going, but I feel like it waited way too long to tip its hand that a lot of the dumb things going on were part of the ruse. And there were other, actually dumb things like whatever’s up with the Fatal Five here mixed in that made it hard to tell.
Triplicate Girl (sorry, “Triad”) keeps showing up with multiple triples wearing the same colors when they’re all supposed to be different. Which, you know, is a very easy and understandable error to make! It’s not like the colorist is one of the writers or anything, so normally I wouldn’t make a fuss about it. It just really sticks in McCraw for some reason. I mean my craw. Sticks in my craw.
You know, the old continuity gave a lot of the Legionnaires goofy expressions to shout when surprised, and it was often inconsistent about that, both between writers and often with the same writer. But the reboot has everybody but Triplicate Girl (sorry, “Triad”) (who’s switched from “sacred trinity” to worshipping Mon-El (sorry, “Valor” (sorry, “M’onel”)) consistently and nonspecifically invoke "gods” all the time.
You know… I like how Tenzil’s power is just as OP as ever, but he’s just arbitrarily not a full member of the team now. Like, poor Chuck is apparently just a guy in this timeline, but Tenzil can still chew through just about anything and just… isn’t invited.
You know, the old Legion talked a lot about integrating worlds carefully and smoothly into the UP out of respect for their cultures and development levels, and the new one is more… bigoted in general, but they still purport to be a symbol of diversity and cooperation. But suddenly when some of them are stuck on 20th Century Earth, it’s all “barbarians” this and “savages” that. Charming.
I- I- okay, this is amazing. Check this out:
They renamed Arm-Fall-Off Boy.
Why? It’s not like he isn’t still a one-off gag character! What possible gain could you have hoped for by changing his name to “Splitter?!” The name is half the joke, you insufferable tryhards!
Also, why is Princess Projectra (sorry, “Sensor”) a snake now? I feel like I should have more to say about that, but she’s… she’s just a snake and that’s that.
At least Phantom Girl (sorry, “Apparition”) got brought back via deus ex machina. Or, uh, Rama Kushna ex rat, as the case may be. This joke would be funnier if the Latin word for “rat” weren’t just “rat.”
You know, I was reading elsewhere online that the reason Shrinking Violet is inexplicably the Emerald Empress is because they decided that Kinetix would be too obvious (which may have something to do with the fact that there was remotely any kind of actual setup for Kinetix to get the Eye). And that, I think, is an overarching problem for this era: It’s so obsessed with not doing what you expect that it’s perfectly content to do things that are monumentally stupid as long as they’re surprising.
So, um, I have a question. Why do Legionnaires get shipped with Mordru so much?
God, the plot about half the team being stuck in the 20th Century goes on forever. Never have I been so desperate for the protagonists to stop screwing around in the present and go back to the future already.
OK, I need to just quote my attempt to explain a plot point elsewhere:
Well, it turns out they did explain Phase! Apparently, Tinya is half-Carggite and Phase is her double! This… raises so many questions. Why would it work like that? Why isn’t she in danger from being separated for too long like Triplicate Girl (sorry, “Triad”) is? Can she split again? Will she split again? Does Phase have an opinion on being pulled away from everyone she’s connected with in the 20th Century? This is our resolution!
One of the attempts to cure Magno’s power loss is putting him in an “electrolyte bath,” which I choose to interpret as dunking him in a giant tank of Gatorade.
So we’ve had the White Triangle and the Dark Circle. I wonder who’s next; the Grey Heptagon? The Lightish Red Trapezoid? The Almost Kinda Purplish but Really More Sorta Blue but It Depends on the Lighting a Little Pizza Slice Type Shape?
I haven’t been sure how to go about asking this, either, but since it survived the reboot, let me give it a shot. Um, so… why… exactly… does Atmos not have armpits? Or just invisible ones? Or something?
So, after all the cutesy little editorial notes about “We’ll tell you how Lori got the H-Dial later, lol," the answer is just… the Time Trapper lobbed it at her between scenes with no other explanation? Also, I haven’t mentioned Lori at all yet, which should tell you about how necessary Lori is.
Hm… a Gil’Dishpan (sorry, “Gil’Dan”—cowards) telepath named “Ar’by,” huh? Would you say he’s… thinking Ar’by?
The Dark Circle arc was… actually sort of not bad for the most part, but it had a really unsatisfying conclusion. The whole thing was just masterminded by… Brainy’s mother, who did it… basically for the hell of it!
This may be the Shazam title’s fault, but… why, exactly, is Fawcett City an entire planet in the 30th Century?
I’m not sure what possible purpose the “Everywhere Machine”—a gadget Brainy whipped up in his spare time that allows any Legionnaire to see what’s going on anywhere and anywhen, whenever they want to—could serve other than immediately breaking every single possible plot. But, you know, other than that, not that useful.
The last couple years of the McCraw era were… somewhat more readable than the bulk of the era.
On Abnett and Lanning’s stuff, it certainly flows in a way I was missing from much of the preceding run, but it’s a very Five-Years-Later-esque surge of grimdark. Can’t quite gauge whether they’re going somewhere with this or this is just the point.
424.
Legion Lost: 12 issues from 2000-2001
Writers: Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning
Ten issues of boring, two issues of what-the-■■■■-were-you-thinking. Next.
436.
I need to get back to the Legion. And SPLITTER is a crap name.
February
Batgirl 60-64
Savage Hawkman 5-19
ASBARTBW- 10 issues
Superman for all Seasons 4 issues
Justice Society of America 1992-4-5
The Golden Age- 4 issues
TMNT- 14 issues
Batman and Scooby-Doo Mysteries 4
World’s Finest 11
New Champion of Shazam 4
Green Arrow 14
Kingdome Come- 4 issues
All Star Squadron-31-35
Stargirl Spring Break
Stargirl 1-3
71 issues so far for a total of 161. I just finished Return to New York, so time for a break from TMNT except for maybe the occasional issue.
The Legion: 38 issues from 2001-2004
Writers: Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning (33 issues), Keith Champagne (1 issue), Gail Simone (4 issues)
Gosh! “Mr. Venge” was up to no good? I never would’ve guessed!
I love how hilariously random of a coincidence it is that they find out McCauley is an impostor. They just kind of stumble across his skeleton in a random drain pipe. I mean, theoretically it’s where Fake McCauley has been dumping bodies, and they were brought to the general vicinity by his henchmen, so it’s not completely insane, but they clearly were not supposed to be able to get into that pipe.
Also, wow. A secretly evil UP president. What a shocking twist. I’m sure that’s never once happened in the history of the Legion.
You know, it’s not like Ra’s al Ghul (it’s still the reboot, so maybe they should rename him, like Brimstoneface) ever made sense in the first place, but his plan here makes distinctly little sense. He’s suddenly trying to… evolve everybody? But… faster? Why? Also, evolution does not work like that, you clowns.
And… this “hypertaxis,” uh, thing, apparently turns some people into super-evolution-bots who are responsible for “evolving” people. And this is presented as, just, a natural process that could happen to any world that’s, um, in enough danger? As a “biological safeguard?”
I have seen some utterly, mind-numbingly incomprehensible concepts of what evolution is and how it works in comics, but this… this beats them all, handily.
The “Robotica” arc displays a similarly rigorous understanding of computers and robotics.
…
I also didn’t realize Abnett and Lanning invented the ending of Mass Effect 3. Interesting!
Timber Wolf appears out of nowhere, joins the Legion the minute they set eyes on him, and beats up half the Fatal Five on his first mission. Gosh, I wonder who these guys’ favorite Legionnaire is.
Why is the O in the title stylized like the Legion symbol? That sounds like a stupid question, except the Legion symbol is an L. It looks like “The Legiln.” … Okay, it’s still a stupid question, but it’s bugging me.
So, question. How does Ra’s al Ghul keep 1v1ing Mon-El (sorry, “Valor” (sorry, “M’onel”)) in hand-to-hand and, like, winning? He has some kind of weird innate healing factor now, but there’s no given reason he should be that strong.
I cannot express how sick I am of “Darkseid is” as a catch phrase. It… wasn’t really interesting when Morrison created it, but in a less boring story it might’ve been a passable one-off thing. But every. Single. Story. Since then has insisted on spamming it every two pages, at least. And even then, I could see it as some kind of weird mantra that Darkseid’s own servants use, but this book has even the Legion punning on it.
You know what was neat in the Great Darkness Saga back in the Levitz era? Most of the Legion had no clue who Darkseid was, and even the ones who were dialed in only knew the very general summary. Now it’s like “Oh, yeah, it’s that Darkseid guy. Funny, we were only just fighting another random 21st Century villain five minutes ago.”
Time stories often resort to this weird sense of kind of… meta-time, I guess. Like, here, “The past is vanishing, and the effect will reach us in thirty minutes.” Shouldn’t it reach right now before it reaches thirty minutes from now? If the effect is working on the time stream as a whole, why does it progress relative to a specific, much narrower timeframe in the 31st Century? This isn’t unique to this book, I’ve just finally settled on the vocabulary to articulate the problem. In-universe time is treated like physical places while things that are theoretically traveling through time are subject to the narrative’s time. Basically, it’s subtly but necessarily breaking the fourth wall. Legion does this with some frequency, usually in the form of people acting like they have an urgent need to time travel when there’s no actual time pressure at their point of origin.
How suddenly was this book canceled? They redesigned everybody’s costumes *checks notes* four whole issues (Simone, at least, is in one of her more sane/readable moods in these) before the title got canceled and hard-rebooted. Or… I guess these outfits are supposed to be formal wear, but it’s hard to tell with some of them.
474.
I have multiple books that have different comics in the one book. I wanted to know if it counts as 1 comic or the amount of different comics it has in the one book?
Welcome to the forum! Personally, I tend to count them based on how they were originally published. If it is a collection of issues, such as The Death and Return of Superman Omnibus, I counted it as 47 issues. If it was published as a graphic novel, such as Wonder Woman Earth One, I counted it as one issue even though it is 130 pages long.
But others might count it differently. I don’t think we are all that formal about it.
Welcome! And yeah, I also usually go by issue count as originally published, even in collections.
Legion of Super-Heroes: 15 issues from 2005-2006
Writers: Mark Waid (14 issues), Barry Kitson (co-plotter on 1 issue), Stuart Moore (1 issue, backup in 2 issues)
Oh god. Okay. Where to start.
First of all, a very small part of me kind of likes the sort of deconstructed utopia here, just because utopian fiction tends to annoy me. But the Legion’s a bad forum for that, and the overall commentary is… vacuous.
It’s just really weird that they’re this nonspecific youth social movement protesting… something…? It’s really vague what their actual ideology is supposed to be in the first place, and the United Planets’ ostensible repressiveness is often a lot more telling than showing. It’s also inconsistent from… page to page, really, whether they work with, for, or against the UP? Or I guess the Science Police and United Planets are just entirely different factions now?
Meanwhile, the individual characters have enough different-for-the-sake-of-being-different antics to put most of the reboot to shame. I say “most” of the reboot because at least none of them are snakes.
But, like, okay, Colossal Boy isn’t human anymore. He’s a giant whose power is shrinking, and he’s named after Micro Lad for some reason. It’s funny. But it’s not really Gim, it doesn’t prove much, and something to this effect would really make more sense as a concept for Shrinking Violet, because her size-shifting actually is a trait of her species. There are a lot of things like this or Luornu being the entire population of Cargg that are sort of… witty things to do with their superpowers, but not actually derived from the characters.
Shoutout to the villain group’s name being “Terror Firma.” Terror Firma.
My understanding was that this wasn’t originally supposed to be Superboy Prime’s earth, and yet there are constant references to real DC comics as comics from right off the bat. It’s a weird amount of meta stuff and fourth-wall breaking.
I’m supposed to feel bad that the team falls apart, but it happens in issue 8, when I’d had just barely enough time to start disliking most of them.
Lemnos was already pretty sad because of just how utterly inconvenient his powers would be (the villain is basically Forget Me Not from X-Men), but my ability to take him seriously was fully destroyed the first time I misread his name as “Lemons,” because now I can’t unsee that.
Then it starts getting gory. Why? Because we’re in the 2000s, baby! If it’s not absurdly gory, it’s not worth publishing!
You know, if Colossal Boy has, for whatever stupid reason, been calling himself Micro Lad from the beginning… why does everyone else think his name is Colossal Boy?
This book is so bad, I can’t even get excited about another Star Rovers reference in one of the letter column thingies.
My opinion of this book so far, in conclusion? I’m so sick of it, I could scream.
489.
Welcome to the community @Tatty! 
I think that’s up to you to decide - no need to be super formal.
Please don’t hesitate to let the moderator know if you need anything!