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Post by spoon on Dec 30, 2015 12:03:23 GMT -5
Legends #6 "Finale!" plot: John Ostrander script: Len Wein pencils: John Byrne inks: Karl Kesel (p. 1-20) & Dennis Janke (p. 21-30) letters: Steve Haynie colors: Carl Gafford editor: Mike Gold grade: n/a The inevitable conclusion to the Legends series doesn't offer any real surprises. The villain is beaten, the idealism of children saves the day, and the characters who have been fighting throughout this series are invited to join the new Justice League: It's awkward that some characters have to refuse here, though, as it reads abruptly and is clearly more the result of editorial decisions than creative ones. Once again, why is Gar Logan here unless he was originally supposed to be part of the new team? Also worth noting that the core characters Helfer wanted and couldn't have for the League -- Superman, Wonder Woman, and Flash -- do not say yes, but they also don't give a clear no either. Helfer was still holding out for a miracle, I suppose. My guess is that the various acceptances and refusals were the plan from the beginning. First, for the purpose of suspense, even if they know a new Justice League will spin out of the series, there is still uncertainty about who will join. It's like those transitional Avengers issues where readers are left to guess which heroes will join (e.g., the "pick two" cover to Avengers #221). I also think having those additional characters helped the traditional crossover goals of bringing in characters who would drive sales of the mini, while trying to build interest of readers of the mini in other titles. Changeling and Flash would bring in New Teen Titans would bring in NTT readers. (EDIT: I see upthread, you had the same thought on Gar). I don't think there's an essentially story reason for that, but from a sales perspective, it's smart to try to draw upon a book with high sales. Also, there was a big gap between the end of Crisis and the launch of the new Flash title featuring Wally West. There was probably a desire to keep Wally in circulation and build interest. Thus, Wally shows up in Crisis and also in NTT during the gap between Flash titles.
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Crimebuster
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Post by Crimebuster on Dec 30, 2015 12:16:01 GMT -5
It's almost insensitive how quickly and easily the heroes in this issue decide to replace them without even asking "what happened?". Clearly, the goal was a new beginning with no real concern for what had come before. Yeaaaaah, about that... Justice League of America #258
written by J.M. DeMatteis, art by Luke McDonnell and Bob Smith Synopsis: The Justice League meets following their defeat in Legends #1. Ralph Dibny and Vibe get in a fistfight, but J'onn breaks it up by... preemptively disbanding the Justice League. Like, just like that. Boom. He's all, "well, the President has issued this decree in Legends #1, and since we totally suck to high heaven, let's just forget it." Then he and Ralph walk off while the new League members just stare at each other. Even they can't believe the crap way they've just been summarily disposed of. So, Gypsy, Vibe, Steel, and Vixen all go their separate ways. Vibe heads back to the barrio, where he tries to convince the neighborhood that he's not a loser. Nobody buys it. Just then! A robot assassin sent by Professor Ivo shows up and attacks. Vibe defeats him... for about one panel. Then the robot's hand flies off, grabs Vibe by the throat, and chokes him to death. So long, Vibe! One down, three to go before the necessary purge of the Detroit League is done and DC can get back to the heroes they like without these losers in their way! Justice League of America #259written by J.M. DeMatteis, art by Luke McDonnell and Bill Wray Synopsis: Martian Manhunter, Steel, and Vixen find Vibe's body. They're all like, stand ye back, citizens, we are the Justice League! Except, of course, they disbanded last issue, so I don't know why they're together. Anyway, Vibe is dead, but J'onn immediately realizes Professor Ivo is behind it. Naturally, other members of the League want to stop Ivo, but J'onn suddenly remembers they disbanded, and tells them to all scram. He's clearly planning on doing this himself, though, despite repeatedly saying they can't do any superheroics because of the president's orders in Legends. Meanwhile, he's too late anyway, because one of Ivo's murderbots has caught up to Gypsy. He kills her! The end. Except, wait, no. Actually, the murderbot tricked Ivo into thinking he killed Gypsy, but in fact he lets her go, because he has sensed that Ivo is conflicted over whether or not to kill the innocent young Gypsy. So she gets away and reunites with her family. A happy ending for one of the Detroit League! (spoilers - yeah, maybe not, as we'll find out in shaxper's review thread). Anyways, just then! J'onn catches up with the rogue murderbot! To be continued! Justice League of America #260written by J.M. DeMatteis, art by Luke McDonnell and Steve Montano Synopsis: J'onzz dismantles the murderbot. Boom. Gypsy finds out Vibe is dead and wants to help stop Ivo, but J'onn again reminds her that the president has ordered, by official editorial decree in Legends, that costumed heroes are verboten. Plus. she has to worry about her family. So she stays behind and he goes off to find Ivo's next murderbot. The next murderbot, meanwhile, is disguised as a cop. Steel recognizes him, though, and attacks. The citizens of America panic! Everything Godfrey has been saying in Legends is true! Superheroes are evil! The past 50 years of DC continuity was all just a giant setup to trick America, so let's forget everything the heroes ever did to help humanity, because an a-hole gave a bad speech one time. Anyway, the murderbot totally murders Steel. Boom. He's dead. J'onn shows up, once again a day late and a dollar short, and vows that this time, he totally is going to actually stop Ivo before someone else dies. And since Vixen is the only someone else left to kill at this point, I guess she's the next target. Let's see if J'onn can deduce this as quickly as I just did. Justice League of America #261written by J.M. DeMatteis, art by Luke McDonnell and Bob Lewis Synopsis: J'onn and Vixen both separately track down Ivo. They are both reeeeally pissed off. Vixen attacks, but is overwhelmed by Ivo's legion of robots. Just as she's about to die, J'onn shows up and is like, whoa! Vixen is here too?! So I guess he didn't quite figure out Ivo's scheme. So much for being a detective. J'onn frees Vixen, who up and rips Ivo's head clean off! Turns out it's not even the real Ivo, it's a robot Ivo; the real Ivo has gone totally starkers, so his robots threw him in a padded cell. J'onn suddenly has an epiphany: who cares what the president says, the League must continue! It's the only way to give meaning to Vibe and Steel's completely meaningless deaths. Vixen is like, yeah, but no. That's dumb. I quit. J'onn is left wondering just how he could possibly have screwed the pooch this badly as leader of the League; it's almost like some higher power was pulling his strings, making him act like an idiot in order to fulfill some arbitrary plot requirements. Just then! The Justice League alert signal rings, but since there's no Justice League, who could possibly be using it?! J'onn rushes over to the pages of Legends to find out, and that's the end of the Justice League of America. So much for 27 years of history. Suck it! THE END! Notes: Yeah, they pretty much take a giant dump on the Detroit League in this story. it's interesting that they spare the two new female members while slaughtering the male members. My guess is they thought Vixen had real potential as a character, and just like Ivo in the story, didn't think it was quite right to kill off a character like Gypsy who was portrayed as being so young and innocent. Otherwise, it's just kind of embarrassing how obvious they make it that they want to get rid of these losers. It reads kind of like fan service; it reminds me of season 3 of Lost, where they introduced Nikki and Paulo and then gleefully murdered them in the worst possible way once fans started complaining about them. The stuff in Legends itself is the real capper, though. Nobody gives a flying crap that Ivo just horribly murdered half the Justice League - or that it wouldn't have happened if the president's decree hadn't forced them to disband. It's not even brought up. Who cares, right? The important thing is that they're gone. Hurray! Ugh.
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Post by Hoosier X on Dec 30, 2015 12:39:18 GMT -5
Although I read Justice League Detroit from its start, I just stopped getting it when I heard about what "The End of the Justice League" storyline was about. I just couldn't take it.
Four or five years ago, I finally bought those issues (along with two or three other JLD issues I had missed) and finally read them. They are really bad, but bad in an entertaining way, like an Edward D. Wood Jr. film. Or Man of Steel (the recent Superman film, not the John Byrne limited series). But I haven't read them since. They're terrible.
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Post by tingramretro on Dec 30, 2015 12:44:58 GMT -5
Don't worry, contrary to appearances, Steel still has one more indignity left to suffer...
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Post by spoon on Dec 30, 2015 13:02:27 GMT -5
Legends #2 "Breach of Faith!" plot: John Ostrander script: Len Wein pencils: John Byrne inks: Karl Kesel letters: Steve Haynie colors: Tom Ziuko editor: Mike Gold grade: n/a With this issue, it becomes immediately apparent that this series' two major priorities were the launchings of both Suicide Squad and the new Justice League, and the latter becomes particularly clear as the characters that we spend most of this issue on are Blue Beetle and Guy Gardner. I'm not sure whether Giffen was asked to include Blue Beetle and Captain Marvel as a means of solidifying these recent acquisitions by DC into the core DCU spotlight or whether they were his own choice (Dematteis indicates that Guy Gardner was chosen at editor Andy Helfer's request), but Blue Beetle's presence in the League further makes it difficult to attempt a full blown reboot for the Justice League. After all, he was only on issue #6 of his own series by this point; rebooting the continuity in the pages of Justice League would mean throwing the continuity of those six issues out the window in order to make a clean start half a year after Blue Beetle had already just made a clean start. Similarly, there's a clear choice here not to reboot the Green Lantern continuity for whatever reason, as Guy clearly acknowledges in his very first panel that there is more than one Green Lantern on Earth right now. Perhaps this was done because a reboot would probably mean restarting with just Hal Jordan, whereas Guy Gardner was the Green Lantern Andy Helfer wanted to feature, and the enormous chip on his shoulder makes a lot less sense if he's the one and only chosen protector to bear the ring of the Oans. Whatever the case, it's impressive that both Blue Beetle and Guy Gardner's characterizations come through so well here, even if Giffen and Helfer weren't directly involved with the creating of this issue nor Legends as a whole (Dematteis was only marginally involved with the new Justice League at this point). Clearly, they were in the room, discussing their vision for the team with Gold, Ostrander, and Wein. I get the impression that individual editors and/or creative teams were given some latitude in the extent that they wanted Crisis to impact their title. What results is an uneven approach, in which some titles were essentially unchanged, while others get a reboot. The titles/characters for which big changes would have to be imposed would be those disrupted by having a single Earth that most closely resembles Earth-1. For instance, Earth-2 characters were going to be changed or scrapped (Huntress is Helena Bertinelli, instead of Helena Wayne). I'd guess that post-Crisis reboots/changes tended to be more common for major characters (Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman), because those are big names that could benefit by creating jumping-on points for new readers. People who didn't read comics might be coaxed to start if there was a new issue 1 of a character they know with less baggage. In contrast, a reboot clearly does more harm than good on a series like The Outsiders. You don't want to disrupt the ongoing plotlines for its core readership, and it's not going to be the series that new comics readers start with. The plan for Green Lantern was the transformation to Green Lantern Corps. Starting from scratch would foil that plan, because GLC concept depends on bringing together various GLs that have showed up on the past (plus Kilowog, who was new). Not rebooting GL fits the post-Crisis plan of allowing a variety of approaches. I think the majority of titles weren't rebooted. It seems the GLC people decided they'd allow the use of a GL who could have a separate existence in JL. Although Guy showed up in early issues of GLC, he wasn't part of the group of GLs that set up shop together on Earth. He stopped appearing in GLC partway through Legends. So JL could use Guy with minimal interference from the GLC creative team, and the GLC team didn't have to worry about trying to keep up with what JL would do with Hal or John. The rollout of post-Crisis was spread out over time. I don't know if that was intentional to allow major titles to be the focus at different times or sloppiness that the relaunches were not ready simultaneous. Whatever the case, the Blue Beetle relaunch had already been done earlier (a few months after Crisis #1). I think it makes sense that series that were ready shortly after Crisis (like Blue Beetle) were not forced into disruption to match the late post-Crisis relaunches of other series.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 30, 2015 13:08:09 GMT -5
I think the worst of is they did pretty much the exact same thing at the end of Zero Hour... when we had Justice League Task Force (J'onn's team, often featuring Gypsy and Vixen) and Extreme Justice (Captain Atom's team) along with the 'regular' League. I don't remember if anyone died, but I think they did... funny how such things cycle.
Nice job with the synopsis, Crimebuster, saves me the trouble of finding the issues tonight.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Dec 30, 2015 13:15:00 GMT -5
It's funny, I think of the Giffen-era league as Booster, Blue Beetle, Guy, Fire and Ice, ROcket Red, Martian Manhunter, Maxwell Lord and Oberon,and Mister Miracle and Barda. I know a couple of those didn't last long, but that's the roster in my head. Batman never feels like part of the team to me, and Dr. Fate still boggles my mind (and I've read the 1st story line a couple times...)
Very few of those guys are in the Legends series. I wonder if Gar was originally going to be the comic relief, with Beetle being more a Batman-lite sorta character, until the actually got to use Batman...
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Dec 30, 2015 13:20:51 GMT -5
My guess is that the various acceptances and refusals were the plan from the beginning. First, for the purpose of suspense, even if they know a new Justice League will spin out of the series, there is still uncertainty about who will join. It's like those transitional Avengers issues where readers are left to guess which heroes will join (e.g., the "pick two" cover to Avengers #221). I also think having those additional characters helped the traditional crossover goals of bringing in characters who would drive sales of the mini, while trying to build interest of readers of the mini in other titles. Changeling and Flash would bring in New Teen Titans would bring in NTT readers. (EDIT: I see upthread, you had the same thought on Gar). I don't think there's an essentially story reason for that, but from a sales perspective, it's smart to try to draw upon a book with high sales. Also, there was a big gap between the end of Crisis and the launch of the new Flash title featuring Wally West. There was probably a desire to keep Wally in circulation and build interest. Thus, Wally shows up in Crisis and also in NTT during the gap between Flash titles. I see your point, but Gar is literally the only character there who is neither a core DCU hero, a character about to launch his own spin-off title, nor a part of the new Justice League line-up. He's the only piece that doesn't fit. And while the Titans were certainly a hot property that could be used to sell an issue or storyline, when Byrne did this for the relaunch of Action Comics at the same time that Legends was happening, he brought in most of the team in order to do so. So why just Gar? It just doesn't add up for me. And btw, the Flash series was scheduled to launch pretty quickly after Legends (Gold talks it up quite a bit in each issue). I'm assuming there were unexpected delays.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Dec 30, 2015 13:27:38 GMT -5
It's almost insensitive how quickly and easily the heroes in this issue decide to replace them without even asking "what happened?". Clearly, the goal was a new beginning with no real concern for what had come before. Yeaaaaah, about that... Justice League of America #258
written by J.M. DeMatteis, art by Luke McDonnell and Bob Smith Synopsis: The Justice League meets following their defeat in Legends #1. Ralph Dibny and Vibe get in a fistfight, but J'onn breaks it up by... preemptively disbanding the Justice League. Like, just like that. Boom. He's all, "well, the President has issued this decree in Legends #1, and since we totally suck to high heaven, let's just forget it." Then he and Ralph walk off while the new League members just stare at each other. Even they can't believe the crap way they've just been summarily disposed of. So, Gypsy, Vibe, Steel, and Vixen all go their separate ways. Vibe heads back to the barrio, where he tries to convince the neighborhood that he's not a loser. Nobody buys it. Just then! A robot assassin sent by Professor Ivo shows up and attacks. Vibe defeats him... for about one panel. Then the robot's hand flies off, grabs Vibe by the throat, and chokes him to death. So long, Vibe! One down, three to go before the necessary purge of the Detroit League is done and DC can get back to the heroes they like without these losers in their way! Justice League of America #259written by J.M. DeMatteis, art by Luke McDonnell and Bill Wray Synopsis: Martian Manhunter, Steel, and Vixen find Vibe's body. They're all like, stand ye back, citizens, we are the Justice League! Except, of course, they disbanded last issue, so I don't know why they're together. Anyway, Vibe is dead, but J'onn immediately realizes Professor Ivo is behind it. Naturally, other members of the League want to stop Ivo, but J'onn suddenly remembers they disbanded, and tells them to all scram. He's clearly planning on doing this himself, though, despite repeatedly saying they can't do any superheroics because of the president's orders in Legends. Meanwhile, he's too late anyway, because one of Ivo's murderbots has caught up to Gypsy. He kills her! The end. Except, wait, no. Actually, the murderbot tricked Ivo into thinking he killed Gypsy, but in fact he lets her go, because he has sensed that Ivo is conflicted over whether or not to kill the innocent young Gypsy. So she gets away and reunites with her family. A happy ending for one of the Detroit League! (spoilers - yeah, maybe not, as we'll find out in shaxper's review thread). Anyways, just then! J'onn catches up with the rogue murderbot! To be continued! Justice League of America #260written by J.M. DeMatteis, art by Luke McDonnell and Steve Montano Synopsis: J'onzz dismantles the murderbot. Boom. Gypsy finds out Vibe is dead and wants to help stop Ivo, but J'onn again reminds her that the president has ordered, by official editorial decree in Legends, that costumed heroes are verboten. Plus. she has to worry about her family. So she stays behind and he goes off to find Ivo's next murderbot. The next murderbot, meanwhile, is disguised as a cop. Steel recognizes him, though, and attacks. The citizens of America panic! Everything Godfrey has been saying in Legends is true! Superheroes are evil! The past 50 years of DC continuity was all just a giant setup to trick America, so let's forget everything the heroes ever did to help humanity, because an a-hole gave a bad speech one time. Anyway, the murderbot totally murders Steel. Boom. He's dead. J'onn shows up, once again a day late and a dollar short, and vows that this time, he totally is going to actually stop Ivo before someone else dies. And since Vixen is the only someone else left to kill at this point, I guess she's the next target. Let's see if J'onn can deduce this as quickly as I just did. Justice League of America #261written by J.M. DeMatteis, art by Luke McDonnell and Bob Lewis Synopsis: J'onn and Vixen both separately track down Ivo. They are both reeeeally pissed off. Vixen attacks, but is overwhelmed by Ivo's legion of robots. Just as she's about to die, J'onn shows up and is like, whoa! Vixen is here too?! So I guess he didn't quite figure out Ivo's scheme. So much for being a detective. J'onn frees Vixen, who up and rips Ivo's head clean off! Turns out it's not even the real Ivo, it's a robot Ivo; the real Ivo has gone totally starkers, so his robots threw him in a padded cell. J'onn suddenly has an epiphany: who cares what the president says, the League must continue! It's the only way to give meaning to Vibe and Steel's completely meaningless deaths. Vixen is like, yeah, but no. That's dumb. I quit. J'onn is left wondering just how he could possibly have screwed the pooch this badly as leader of the League; it's almost like some higher power was pulling his strings, making him act like an idiot in order to fulfill some arbitrary plot requirements. Just then! The Justice League alert signal rings, but since there's no Justice League, who could possibly be using it?! J'onn rushes over to the pages of Legends to find out, and that's the end of the Justice League of America. So much for 27 years of history. Suck it! THE END! Notes: Yeah, they pretty much take a giant dump on the Detroit League in this story. it's interesting that they spare the two new female members while slaughtering the male members. My guess is they thought Vixen had real potential as a character, and just like Ivo in the story, didn't think it was quite right to kill off a character like Gypsy who was portrayed as being so young and innocent. Otherwise, it's just kind of embarrassing how obvious they make it that they want to get rid of these losers. It reads kind of like fan service; it reminds me of season 3 of Lost, where they introduced Nikki and Paulo and then gleefully murdered them in the worst possible way once fans started complaining about them. The stuff in Legends itself is the real capper, though. Nobody gives a flying crap that Ivo just horribly murdered half the Justice League - or that it wouldn't have happened if the president's decree hadn't forced them to disband. It's not even brought up. Who cares, right? The important thing is that they're gone. Hurray! Ugh. This is both tremendously informative and absurdly entertaining, CB. Thanks so much for this! Two points: 1. Glorious Godfrey -- Wein makes it clear a number of times that he has a hypnotic effect on people, even in the cadence of his voice. That's how he's able to dupe them so badly. Obviously though, it carries real life analogies to the moral majorities that were decreeing various facets of pop culture as being evil. Tipper Gore immediately comes to mind fo rme. 2. Interesting that Martian Manhunter shows up in Legends because the Justice League alert signal rings, as no one ever activated it in the pages of Legends. Dr. Fate is the one gathering folks up by teleporting them away, but as he's not trying to reach any of the previous Justice League members (and is even surprised when Martian Manhunter shows up because he didn't summon him), I have to wonder who activated that signal. And, come to think of it, why didn't Dr. Fate try to summon any other heroes (the Justice League included)?
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Dec 30, 2015 13:31:25 GMT -5
I get the impression that individual editors and/or creative teams were given some latitude in the extent that they wanted Crisis to impact their title. What results is an uneven approach, in which some titles were essentially unchanged, while others get a reboot. The titles/characters for which big changes would have to be imposed would be those disrupted by having a single Earth that most closely resembles Earth-1. For instance, Earth-2 characters were going to be changed or scrapped (Huntress is Helena Bertinelli, instead of Helena Wayne). I'd guess that post-Crisis reboots/changes tended to be more common for major characters (Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman), because those are big names that could benefit by creating jumping-on points for new readers. People who didn't read comics might be coaxed to start if there was a new issue 1 of a character they know with less baggage. In contrast, a reboot clearly does more harm than good on a series like The Outsiders. You don't want to disrupt the ongoing plotlines for its core readership, and it's not going to be the series that new comics readers start with. Agreed. Though I would add I'm relatively sure the higher ups (probably including Jeanette Kahn) were the ones pushing for the core DCU characters to get rebooted, especially in the wake of Dark Knight Returns, which some of the solicits for Man of Steel and the new Wonder Woman even referenced as having come "First" before them. I've argued previously in the Batman review thread that DKR was originally intended to be the basis for a Batman soft reboot, Year One and DKR providing bookends to the Post-Crisis Batman continuity. But you definitely couldn't reboot everything, both because several series had just gotten up and running in the wake of Crisis and because New Teen Titans was DC's top selling title, and it was based upon decades worth of continuity that just couldn't be rebooted from Square One without considerable risk to the property's commercial viability. It certainly helped that Helfer was editing the GL office while also getting Justice League up and running. Agreed. I'm still not clear on when, exactly, DC decided that they were going to use the events of CoIE to relaunch aspects of the DCU. Clearly, that wasn't part of the plan when Crisis was being written.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Dec 30, 2015 13:39:10 GMT -5
I've just got to say that I have NEVER seen this much excitement, response, and participation surrounding the launch of a review thread before, and I'm deeply honored, as well as grateful to both Action Ace and Crimbuster for actually contributing valuable resources to this thread. Thanks so much for helping to make this thread such a success within less than 24 hours of going live, everyone!
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Post by Deleted on Dec 30, 2015 13:59:01 GMT -5
I LOVE LOVE LOVE this era of the Justice League and cannot wait to read your reviews on them. I haven't read them in years so now is as good a time as any to do so I reckon. I will contribute my comments when I can. Love the early issues with Kevin Maguire on art. Don't forget the Justice League Quarterly issues too when they come up....but that's not for awhile.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Dec 30, 2015 14:03:57 GMT -5
I LOVE LOVE LOVE this era of the Justice League and cannot wait to read your reviews on them. I haven't read them in years so now is as good a time as any to do so I reckon. I will contribute my comments when I can. Love the early issues with Kevin Maguire on art. Don't forget the Justice League Quarterly issues too when they come up....but that's not for awhile. I plan to cover everything that wasn't a one-shot throw-away guest appearance, including the Quarterlys, the Specials, Formerly Known as The Justice League, I Can't Believe it's Not The Justice League, and even Generation Lost.
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Post by spoon on Dec 30, 2015 14:35:25 GMT -5
My guess is that the various acceptances and refusals were the plan from the beginning. First, for the purpose of suspense, even if they know a new Justice League will spin out of the series, there is still uncertainty about who will join. It's like those transitional Avengers issues where readers are left to guess which heroes will join (e.g., the "pick two" cover to Avengers #221). I also think having those additional characters helped the traditional crossover goals of bringing in characters who would drive sales of the mini, while trying to build interest of readers of the mini in other titles. Changeling and Flash would bring in New Teen Titans would bring in NTT readers. (EDIT: I see upthread, you had the same thought on Gar). I don't think there's an essentially story reason for that, but from a sales perspective, it's smart to try to draw upon a book with high sales. Also, there was a big gap between the end of Crisis and the launch of the new Flash title featuring Wally West. There was probably a desire to keep Wally in circulation and build interest. Thus, Wally shows up in Crisis and also in NTT during the gap between Flash titles. I see your point, but Gar is literally the only character there who is neither a core DCU hero, a character about to launch his own spin-off title, nor a part of the new Justice League line-up. He's the only piece that doesn't fit. And while the Titans were certainly a hot property that could be used to sell an issue or storyline, when Byrne did this for the relaunch of Action Comics at the same time that Legends was happening, he brought in most of the team in order to do so. So why just Gar? It just doesn't add up for me. And btw, the Flash series was scheduled to launch pretty quickly after Legends (Gold talks it up quite a bit in each issue). I'm assuming there were unexpected delays. My Titans collection and knowledge post-Crisis is pretty spotty. I know your one of the bigger Titans fans on the board, shax. I'm curious how you think putting Gar into the League would have fit (or not fit) with whatever was happening in Titans at that time. I should clarify regarding the Flash. The new Flash series did launch shortly after the last issue of Legends. But the new Flash series started over a year after Crisis #12. There wasn't a big post-Legends gap, but there was a really big post-Crisis gap. Having Wally in NTT and Legends kept him active for a lot of the big gap after Crisis. EDIT: Here's a chronology of Wally West appearances: www.dcuguide.com/chronology.php?name=flash3
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Post by spoon on Dec 30, 2015 14:44:30 GMT -5
I've just got to say that I have NEVER seen this much excitement, response, and participation surrounding the launch of a review thread before, and I'm deeply honored, as well as grateful to both Action Ace and Crimbuster for actually contributing valuable resources to this thread. Thanks so much for helping to make this thread such a success within less than 24 hours of going live, everyone! I'm excited to read it. It seems a lot of posters here read the series when it originally came out. I read a good number of issues over the first three years or so, but not so much later (and I largely stopped reading other DC as well). I think you picked the right jumping-on point (thanks for the shout-out ) with Legends #1. It's cool to read about the set-up for the series. Personally, I've read at least 4 issues of Legends, but never together. There are different issues I own now versus issues that my older brother owned back in the day. I think I even read one issue at a friend's house. However, I've never read them in order, so I enjoyed your recap of the series here. The end of the Detroit League seems a bit attenuated, so I think Crimebuster's brief (and hilarious) overview was a perfect way to handle that.
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