[Legion Fan Club] Monthly Reader Y2 M2A Legion and Legionnaires – Post Zero Hour, 90s Style! June 4, 2020

[Don-El]

Calling all who have childhood or grown up memories of the mid-90s, we’re serving up a heaping yummy bowl of Legion / Legionnaires goodness from the end of 1994 to the crack of dawn of 1995!! You can still see the effects of the recent Zero Hour event in the horizon. Where were you in 1995??? What comics were you purchasing back then? Was Legion among the pull list? (Comics Published January 1995)

June 4 – 16 2020: LEGIONNAIRES (1993-) # 21-23, LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES (1989-) #65-66

LEGIONNAIRES (1993-) # 21 (11/94) LEGIONNAIRES 21 Tom Peyer The Legion faces its greatest challenge yet when a rival team reveals itself, composed of an ultra-powered boy, a master of many ancient fighting arts, a wielder of tremendous heat, and a rampaging beast. Hmmm….sounds very familiar…could it be???

LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES (1989-) #65 LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES 89 #65 Mark Waid A mass jailbreak occurs on a vast maximum-security prison planet. In the thick of the ensuing riot, nine stranded Legionnaires struggle to survive against thousands of the most dangerous criminals in the galaxy.

LEGIONNAIRES (1993-) # 22 (12/94) LEGIONNAIRES 22 Tom Peyer The Legion of Super-Heroes is captured and incarcerated on the prison planet.

LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES (1989-) #66 LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES 89 #66 Mark Waid The United Planets government forces new and more powerful heroes into the Legion, among them a bitter young teenager from the planet Daxam—who may turn out to be the Legion’s biggest nightmare.

LEGIONNAIRES (1993-) # 23 (1/95) LEGIONNAIRES 23 Tom Peyer The Legionnaires face their greatest challenge: a Saturday night with nothing to do!

Questions to Ponder (spoilers ahead!)

1. After Zero Hour, Mark Waid and Tom Peyer attempted to basically write the same series about the same cast of characters using two Legion titles published at the same time. How smooth does this work for you as you read through these issues? Do the characters seem the same between the two writers?

2. Once again, Andromeda / Lauren Gand is introduced, this time post Zero Hour. What seems to be the same and what is different about who she is this time? Which “Andromeda” did you prefer, the clone in earlier pre Zero Hour Legionnaire issues or this more complex one?

3. Which scene was your favorite in the “Girls Night Out” issue 23 of Legionnaires?

4. Which of the two writers of this period of Legion stories is better in your opinion in 1994-5: Peyer or Waid? Why?

Next time: we dare to go visit the pre-Giffen early 80s again!

[Meisaj]

I want to say this was a time, the mid-90’s I stopped reading as many comics.

It was late High School / Early College for me. Although strangely enough when I rummage back through my hundreds and hundreds of comic books from this time, I always find a few of these Legion books mixed in even though I don’t ever remember buying them.

[Don-El]

This was the year the comic book industry began to implode and collapse. You weren’t alone in reducing purchases.

[Don-El]

Finally after a long delay, Legion of Super-Heroes #6 by Bendis and Sook has been published today. I’m looking forward to covering this series in a year with this club.

Very much like what we’re reading currently with the Legion and Legionnaires in the mid-90s, the new 2020 series does a nice job of blending the old classic Silver Age Legion with the newer stuff that happened later, along with current sensibilities about culture and futurism, as you can see on this cover.

And of course there’s the great theme of new recruits that’s always fun.

Hey, I wonder if they’re going to do the Legion of Substitute Heroes or even an Academy on here as well…

[Meisaj]

That’s on my pull-list. It will probably be another week before I make it out to my shop though.

It’s a little tough for now, because I’m more hesitant to bring my 14 month old along with me to the comic shop. I

[Don-El]

Things are changing rapidly. I get the sense that once the infections go way down, it’ll be a whole new day.

[Green.Lantern]

A “brightest day”, would you say?

Sorry. I couldn’t resist.

[Meisaj]

So I’ve only read the first two comics. I love that there is a team called Workforce. Isn’t this about the same time Marvel had a Force Works? They are both awful team names

[Meisaj]

So I think I’ve made it pretty clear in this club that I’m not a fan of the “One story across two series” that the Legion does on occasion, but here I felt like it was a smoother transition than other times. The art, the writing, the character voices all felt pretty similar across both books, making it more of a bi-weekly series than a monthly. So I enjoyed much and felt like the writing team worked well in this moment.

Andromeda is one of those characters I don’t have a great grasp on. But I feel like she was handled well here.

Phantom Girl being dragged away by her mother was a great scene. That whole issue was done pretty well.

Overall I think these issues were a pretty easy read, nothing super fantastic about them, but a smooth story across two titles with two different writers. If there was any weak spots in the issues, I think it was Work Force. As a separate team of characters within a book about a team of characters, they just don’t get fleshed out because they aren’t villains. They are like tertiary characters.

Otherwise, I enjoyed it, particularly the recruitment issue. It did a good job showing recruitment as driven by the UP as opposed to the Legion themselves.

[Don-El]

I was surprised at how well the two series blend because the two writers are very distinctively different and yet somehow it worked. I’ll be curious to see how many months they can pull it off, stay tuned of course.

Mark Waid has impressed me with how well he writes about older teens and young adults, especially over at Marvel with Champions and what he did with the various Archie series over at Archie comics the past couple years.

When I think of Tom Peyer’s work, I think of more science fiction leaning stuff and more middle-aged adults interacting well (Hourman and R.E.B.E.L.S.,).

[Jay_Kay]

Yep, back on my “trying in vain to catch up on this club” crap again. Here it goes!

1. After Zero Hour, Mark Waid and Tom Peyer attempted to basically write the same series about the same cast of characters using two Legion titles published at the same time. How smooth does this work for you as you read through these issues? Do the characters seem the same between the two writers?

I didn’t notice anything too different between the two books – it sounds like both writers were rather collaborative and that the editorial team was close as well. From what I understand, they were all involved in this Reboot project and I imagine they all collaborated and worked to make what is at this point still a pretty new take on the Legion work. Really it’s no different from a writer’s room on a TV show.

2. Once again, Andromeda / Lauren Gand is introduced, this time post Zero Hour. What seems to be the same and what is different about who she is this time? Which “Andromeda” did you prefer, the clone in earlier pre Zero Hour Legionnaire issues or this more complex one?

It’s been a minute since I read the pre-ZH Andromeda, but I did read through the posts in this club to see where I left off and from what I gathered, Andromeda then was basically a mix of Supergirl’s sweet and compassionate side and Power Girl’s boisterous nature. I could see this iteration of Laurel getting to that place, but she has some work to do on herself before she gets there.

I think there’s potential to this Laurel, but I’m confused about what happened in that scene with the guys in the “Girl’s Night Out” issue. Were they committing a crime? Why did she just let them go? Did she know them? Did she agree with them? Hopefully, that’s something that’s further explained in these issues.

3. Which scene was your favorite in the “Girls Night Out” issue 23 of Legionnaires?

Seeing everyone excited about their flight rings was really fun, especially since everyone complained about the jetpacks during the sun arc. The running gag of the morpher girl changing Violet’s outfit was also fun.

4. Which of the two writers of this period of Legion stories is better in your opinion in 1994-5: Peyer or Waid? Why?

I don’t know – they both seem so collaborative that I can’t tell which issue was written by whom if I didn’t have a credit page handy.

@Don-El

This was the year the comic book industry began to implode and collapse. You weren’t alone in reducing purchases.

Is it now? That’s interesting – I wonder if that’s going to affect the Legion books in any way going forward.

@Don-El

Finally after a long delay, Legion of Super-Heroes #6 by Bendis and Sook has been published today. I’m looking forward to covering this series in a year with this club.

And I’m looking forward to a year from now when I finally get to that for this club! Probably. Hopefully.

@Don-El

Mark Waid has impressed me with how well he writes about older teens and young adults, especially over at Marvel with Champions and what he did with the various Archie series over at Archie comics the past couple years.

That’s funny because I got the exact opposite from his time at Marvel. His Champions run to me was basically him going:

I think he does a little better with the Legion here – for one thing, this was him like 30 years ago, so that helps, and I think the fact that it’s the far future and he’s dealing with slang that he invented also helps.

[Don-El]

It’s funny, four years later 2024 and I honestly don’t remember what Mark Waid did with the Champions. But I do still remember vividly his work with the Archie series, which I thought was pretty good.

[Jay_Kay]

Yeah, I remember liking his Archie work too – but I think the difference there is that while Waid was trying to make his version modern, it also felt steeped in the past. Meanwhile, his Champions was fully contemporary and you could tell that this was a 50+ year old white guy trying really, really hard to sound hip.