How to win me back to a comic book series. (And how not to.)
Not too long ago, I picked up two recent comics of significance and of quite startling disparity.
First, I’d like to talk about Sergio Aragones Groo: 25th Anniversary Special.
Groo is one of the series responsible for my voluminous comic book collection. I first read Groo in a preview that appeared in Epic Magazine that I read in a grocery store while my father did the shopping. This led to me buying Groo each month when it showed up in my local 7-11. (Yes, 7-11 still had comics back then.) Eventually, I lost track of Groo after I stopped going with my dad to the store, but he was one of the first things I picked up again when I started collecting after high school. I read it faithfully through the Epic years and then followed to Image, all the while collecting the older issues I missed. (Got ‘em all except that Eclipse special).
Then something Earth-shatteringly horrible happened. In the most shark-jumping, mind-boggling move, they let Groo learn to read. Instantaneously, the comic went from being the most consistantly funny and entertaining comics to the most tedious series of dissertations on liberal political thought this side of a Warren Beatty symposium. I really wasn’t reading Groo for wafer-thinly veiled allegories on the dangers of NAFTA. (Groo helps build a bridge which leads to all the low-paying job going across the river. Yawn.) In a move matched only once in the history of my collecting (more on that later), I dropped the title.
Over the years since, Groo began appearing in limited series and I would sample from time to time. Some were good, some were better, some were boring. But thankfully, none reached the level of tedium that had driven me away. So, eventually, I started buying all the new ones when they came out again. But then came my experience with the aforementioned “Special”.
Basically, the main story is an all-out attack on two groups of people: doctors and priests, both of whom are held up as examples of greed. The doctors are attacked for not trying to cure disease because there’s more money in people being sick than in making them healthy. This is obviously meant as an attack on the “health care system”, except it actually directly attacks doctors themselves. Even most of the people foolish enough to think that “Sicko” is an accurate documentary don’t think that it’s the doctors who are the problem. I’m not even going to dignify the childish attack on clergy with a proper response. It’s too pathetic and simplistic.
I cannot think of a worse way to celebrate twenty-five years of Groo. I don’t think there are many fans who would say that they read Groo for the biting social commentary. They wouldn’t find it if they were looking for it, anyway. The early (read “good”) stories didn’t have much in the way of social commentary and the ones that did were very broad and light, not cemented to specific issues of the day. (Like that NAFTA one. Hardly a universal issue able to stand the test of time.) It’s one thing to write a story that questions the validity of war in general, quite another to write about a king (who had less support of the people than his brother, but got to be king anyway) who wages an unpopular war (without even “having a plan”). Subtle and timeless, eh? That’s the premise of the follow-up mini-series by Evanier, et. al. (I no longer believe Sergio is involved in the stories at all, they have none of his touches).
Here’s what I did with the first two issues (the only ones I bought):
I had a lot of fun doing that, but I don’t think it’s the kind of celebration they had in mind.
But then there’s that other momentous occurance I mentioned. This one goes back to that other shocking moment in the history of my collecting: the day I took “The Legion of Super-Heroes” off my list.
You see, the Legion is the real reason I started collecting comics. It started with Ambush Bug. I read the original mini-series around the same time I was first reading Groo. Loved it. Bought the “Son of Ambush Bug” series and started getting his older appearances. Then I got DC Comics Presents #59, where Ambush Bug ends up in the future and Superman brings him in with the help of the Legion of Substitute Heroes. This led to me getting the Legion of Substitute Heroes Special. Which led to my collecting the real Legion, starting with Keith Giffen’s first run.
The Legion became the backbone of my collection and collecting Legion comics was the main thrust of my efforts. One of my favorite items in my collection is my copy of Adventure Comics #353 (featuring the death of Ferro Lad) autographed by the late artist Curt Swan. I was actually trying to get every single appearance, no matter how fleeting. (One Legionnaire seen in a thought bubble? Good enough for me!)
Then the Legion had a moment similar to Groo’s shark jump: Legion Volume 4. The Legion at that point had been kicked around a bit too much by the DC powers-that-be. John Byrne had been allowed to do away with Superboy which, as he had tried to warn everyone, left a huge gap in Legion history. Various attempts to fix the continuity errors were tried, but each seemed to make things more complicated. By the time Volume 4 began, the first series to be without longtime writer Paul Levitz (who had moved up to management), the editors felt things had to be cleaned up. New creative team of Keith Giffen (artist/plotter) and Tom & Mary Bierbaum (plot/dialogue) had already decided to “age” the Legion, taking them away from their teenage (or at least “young adult”) roots and basically plop them into their thirties. Now they were forced to completely re-write Legion history without the convenience of a reboot. Good heavens it stank. It was a shock to me, who up until then had practically worshipped Giffen, to see him fail so spectacularly with a series with which he had been so successful in the past. (I still consider Levitz & Giffen’s “The Great Darkness Saga” to be one of the best comic book story arcs in the history of the medium.)
So, I dropped the book. The day I walked into my local comics shop and said “take the Legion off my list”, you could have heard a pin drop. Andy, the store owner, was flabbergasted, but it had to be done. I couldn’t even make it a year into that quagmire that Giffen and the Bierbaums had foisted on the world. Subsequent research has indicated that things only got worse. The Bierbaums, comic book fans and friends of Giffen, were not good writers. They engaged in all sorts of fanwank while simultaneously destroying any kind of fidelity to the essence of the Legion the series had left. It’s been debated as to whether this era was truly a reboot or not, but I never considered anything that happened after the history reworking began to be valid. (Just a quick hint of that era’s storylines: longtime female character reveals herself to be male - longtime boyfriend says it doesn’t matter, the Earth blows up because of pollution, a group of teenage Legion clones are found, character who died but was brought back from the dead in the sixties is shown to have been dead all along, etc., etc., etc.) Eventually, dwindling sales convinced DC that it was time to start over. The first complete reboot began.
But not the last. After gaining some traction with the “Zero Hour” edition of the team, things degenerated again and the Legion was once again started over from scratch, this time a complete rethink with the Legion some sort of youth anti-establishment movement. This approach didn’t work, so Supergirl was brought in to add a bit of sex and star appeal, but that wasn’t working much either, so DC decided to try something that I honestly didn’t think they had the guts or clear-headedness to try. They brought back Jim Shooter.
Who’s Jim Shooter? I don’t really have the time to go into all the details of his long career in comics, but here it is in a nutshell. Jim Shooter is one of the most significant figures in the history of comics. He came to prominance during the late seventies when he was named Marvel Comic’s Editor-In-Chief, replacing Archie Goodwin. The impact he had during his tenure cannot be denied.
He ruled Marvel with an iron hand, unwilling to allow even the biggest names to coast or rest on their laurels, all the while fighting with corporate brass to make things better for the creative teams. Shooter was a lightning rod for complaints. Marvel unwilling to give Jack Kirby his original artwork? Blame Shooter. No royalties on comic books sold? Blame Shooter. The “New Universe” is crap? Blame Shooter. Well, maybe you can blame him for that to some degree. The thing is, Shooter tended to take the hits for unpopular stances held by Marvel management because that was *his job*. Behind the scenes he pushed like crazy to get artists their pages back. He put together a royalty package almost as soon as he got the EIC job, but upper management refused until DC did one first. And management also crippled the New Universe by giving Shooter so little money he couldn’t attract top talent to the line.
But Shooter also put an end to the writer/editor and severley cut back on editors just giving their titles to their editor buddies. This allowed creative teams to thrive who were not a part of Marvel’s editorial department. It’s no coincidence that the Chris Claremont/John Byrne X-Men, Byrne Fantastic Four, Frank Miller Daredevil, Walt Simonson Thor and the Bob Layton / David Michelinie Iron Man all happened during Shooter’s watch. He spearheaded company crossovers with the Secret Wars series. And he oversaw the company as it pulled itself out of near bankruptcy.
Eventually, of course, he was fired. Too many fights with management over Shooter’s preference for the creative people instead of the bottom line and too littel support from the creative people who felt he was squeezing them dry for every last penny. He went on to form Valiant Comics utilizing characters from the then-abandoned Gold Key line of comics like Magnus, Robot Fighter and Turok, Son of Stone. It was a huge artistic and financial success and only went south when Shooter was ousted after fighting with his business partners. They immediately sold the company to Acclaim (the video game people) and both companies had crashed and burned within a few years. Shooter then started Defiant Comics (main title Plasm) and then Broadway Comics (main title Powers That Be), but neither got off the ground. He remains a divisive figure in comics; respected for his accomplishments, but reviled by many - often those who never even worked with him.
But what’s all this stuff about the creative and editorial control of Marvel Comics? What does all this have to do with the Legion?
You see, before he became chief-high-muckety-muck at Marvel, before he became an entrepreneur and a pariah, he was a thirteen-year-old kid sending in stories to DC Comics. What separated him from the hundreds of other kids doing the same thing is that Superman editor Mort Weisinger saw his ability and actually gave him work. Shooter began regularly contributing stories of the Legion of Super-Heroes for their title, Adventure Comics (including the aforementioned “Death of Ferro Lad” storyline), sticking with the series until the end of its run in Adventure. When Shooter tried to re-enter the comics industry a few years later, he found the atmosphere at DC didn’t quite fit his temperament and, instead, he took up with Marvel as a writer and an assistant editor, eventually leading to his taking power as EIC.
Well, in the years since leaving Marvel, Shooter has tried to return to the Legion on at least one occasion, pitching to former Legion writer then head of DC editorial Paul Levitz the idea of “Jim Shooter’s Last Legion Story”, a mini-series that would take place during the original continuity. Levitz loved the idea, but it had to be scratched when Shooter’s name caused too many waves at DC (which by then was populated by a lot of talent that had worked at Marvel under Shooter).
But now things are different and Shooter has returned to the Legion. DC head honcho Dan Didio originally offered Shooter the opportunity to either reboot (again) or to tell his “Last Legion” story and use that as a springboard. To his credit, Shooter chose neither. Feeling that Legion fans have been jerked around enough, he agreed only if he picked it up where it was, just as any other new creative team member would.
And it’s been brilliant so far. I don’t mean the “transcendant” type of brilliant. It’s not “edgy”, it doesn’t “break new ground”. It simply takes the Legion as they are and tells great stories with them. While burdened by a less-than-ideal backstory inherited from his predecessors, Shooter has nonetheless been able to instill it with a sense of the true Legion, the guys I remember; imperfect, but heroes at their core. It’s been a joy to read and it’s been great to feel good about the Legion again after all these years.
Here’s hoping he can keep it going at this level. I’ve been sucked back into series only to be disappointed before. (*cough* Wonder Woman *cough*)
So what’s the answer to regaining my loyalty? Be true to yourself, honest with your readers and don’t betray the characters you’ve been entrusted with, no matter who created them.
In researching this posting, I read a fascinating interview with Shooter (it can be found here) where I learned that these two stories coincide. When Sergio Aragones first created Groo, he took it to Jim Shooter at Marvel. Shooter gave him the go-ahead, intending it to be the first series from Marvel’s creator-owned line Epic comics. Aragones was eventually sweet-talked by Pacific Comics and took Groo there. When it finally came to Epic after Pacific’s collapse, there was a dig at Marvel in the first page concerning how they weren’t willing to let Sergio own the character when he was first created. It seems that Evanier lacked class even back then and things have only gotten worse since.