Editor: Glen Cadigan
Publisher: TwoMorrows Publishing
The Legion of Super-Heroes, that teenaged battalion that patrols and defends DC Comics’ 30th and 31st century, recently celebrated its 45th anniversary. To coincide with the anniversary, in December 2003 TwoMorrows Publishing released The Legion Companion, a 222 page softcover book of interviews of various professionals who wrote and drew the adventures of the LSH throughout its publication history. Edited by Glen Cadigan (who also conducted nearly all of the interviews), The Legion Companion starts with an interview of Otto Binder (who in 1958 created the futuristic team in an Adventure Comics Superboy story) and ends with an interview of K.C. Carlson (who edited Legion of Super-Heroes and Legionnaires when they were “re-booted” in 1994). With the intervening interviews taking us chronologically through the publication history of the Legion, this book provides invaluable insight to how each contributor viewed, approached, and admired the Legion of Super-Heroes. Those fans who only recently began reading The Legion should buy this book to grasp the creative roots of the title. On the other hand, all long-time devoted fans of the LSH *MUST* have this book on their shelf. It’s THAT important a contribution to the appreciation of the comic.
What would interest long-time readers the most are the interviewees’ account of DC’s office politics that have affected (sometimes drastically) the creative course of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Besides all of the great anecdotes about Mort Weisinger’s bullying and condescending attitude, Jim Shooter illuminates two qualities of Murray Boltinoff, the editor of Superboy starring the Legion of Super-Heroes in the early 1970s. First, Boltinoff refused to incorporate continuity into the tales of the Legion. Second, Boltinoff had such bad memory that he’d often forget which assignments he had doled out to Jim Shooter and Cary Bates, and he’d often forget the characters’ powers! We also learn that in 1992 Steve Lightle was assigned to both write and draw the Legionnaires title when it was launched, but he opted out when he been told the Legionnaires he’d be handling were the infamous SW6 clones. The interviews of Keith Giffen, Tom Bierbaum, Mark Waid and K.C. Carlson also thoroughly describe how they all had to deal with the intrusive Superman editors of the early 1990s who wouldn’t allow them to use or even allude to Superboy, the character who inspired the team’s creation but at that point had been completely written out of continuity. These are only a few of the “behind-the-scenes” stories presented in this book.
I often wondered why the writers and artists of the LSH left the title when they did. This book provides the answers. John Forte quit comics altogether in the mid-1960s due to his losing battle with colon cancer. James Sherman abandoned drawing comics regularly by the early 1980s in order to pursue far, FAR more profitable work in the advertising and movie industries (he created Major League Baseball’s logo, which is still used today). Keith Giffen had to leave the Legion in 1984 because he burned himself out drawing a remarkably crowded Legion of Super-Heroes poster which contained just about every character associated with the Legion up to that point. By the late 1980s Paul Levitz stopped writing the title in order to spend more time with his children. Finally, K.C. moved away from New York in the mid-1990s to tend to his dying parents.
Two interesting themes develop over the course of this book. First, the interviews establish a dichotomy of Legion creators. Writers and artists like Al Plastino, Curt Swan, Joe Staton, Gerry Conway, and Roy Thomas tackled the Legion as “just another assignment.” The others, however, (like Paul Levitz, Keith Giffen, Dan Jurgens, Steve Lightle, Greg LaRocque, Tom Bierbaum, and Mark Waid) were already devoted Legion fans and approached the title as a dream opportunity. Second, once someone stops drawing or writing the Legion, he shows little interest in what happens to the team after their tenure. Most interviewees describe themselves as doting parents whose young child has been taken away from them and raised in a manner different than they intended.
Beautiful Legion artwork adorns every page of this book. With the help of some very generous Legion fans who lent their private holdings, Cadigan showcases here an impressive collection of comic book covers, interior pages, convention sketches, and artists’ character designs and “tryout pages.” Some of the art appears exclusively for this book, like an unpublished Timber Wolf story by Dave Cockrum.
Although I praise this book highly, I must admit I have a couple of minor complaints. First, I scratched my head a bit at the inclusion of certain Legion contributors and the exclusion of others. For instance, why did Cadigan feel the need to interview Roy Thomas, Terry Shoemaker, Pat Broderick and Ernie Colon, whose contributions to the LSH were not substantial and whose interviews really provide minimal (if any) insight to the history of the publication of the Legion. Why didn’t Cadigan interview other meaningful contributors to the legacy of the Legion like Al Gordon, Tom McCraw, Jeffey Moy, Lee Moder, Mike McAvennie, or Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning? I can imagine not everyone was available to be interviewed and/or other interviews were conducted but discarded because they either repeated information provided by other interviewees or they brought nothing new to the table. However, Cadigan’s selection of interviewees reveals his bias for the Legion that was presented between the early 1970s and late 1980s (before the launch of “TMK”’s loved and loathed Legion of Super-Heroes, Volume 4). Dave Cockrum, James Sherman, Jim Shooter, Paul Levitz and Steve Lightle provide the longest interviews, and the book neglects to provide extensive interviews of the LSH contributors since the re-boot (which occurred about 10 years ago—nearly 1/4 of the time the LSH has been in existence).
Giffen’s 1990 relaunch is treated a bit harshly in the book too. The questions directed to Giffen and Bierbaum about Volume 4 are, in my view, confrontational and perhaps reveal Cadigan’s distaste for that particular Legion run (Questions directed to Giffen: “Do you think that the work which you did during that Legion era has affected your chances of returning to the title one day?” “Do you admit that you pushed the envelope?”). When Cadigan asks Bierbaum “Do you think that your run on the Legion was treated fairly by the fans?”, his question presumes TMK’s run was universally disparaged, and I’m glad Bierbaum defended himself by saying, “anyone who implies that the consensus is that era of the book just didn’t work, that era of the book was a failure, that era of the book wasn’t good, I will try to very persistently put out that a lot of people disagree with that evaluation, and those people’s opinion count as much as the people who didn’t like it.”
All in all, this is an important book for readers who cherish the Legion and for those interested in learning about the history of its publication. It provided entertaining interviews which will considerably expand anyone’s knowledge of the creative course of the Legion of Super-Heroes, and for that, Glen Cadigan deserves a mountain’s worth of praise for his hard work.
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