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Post by MDG on Jun 29, 2018 12:47:20 GMT -5
ETA: I find it interesting how strongly so many of us here as kids gravitated towards the LSH (as opposed to, say, the Teen Titans of that era). It's fascinating to read everyone's stories and experiences! YES! Teen Titans was gimmicky and faddish by comparison. The future setting meant that the writers didn't feel that had to make references to current fads and "hip lingo." I never bought the Legion women as being teens, though. They all looked in their 20s, if not older.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jun 29, 2018 12:52:32 GMT -5
YES! Teen Titans was gimmicky and faddish by comparison. The future setting meant that the writers didn't feel that had to make references to current fads and "hip lingo." I never bought the Legion women as being teens, though. They all looked in their 20s, if not older. Especially Light Lass in her bouffant!
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Post by Prince Hal on Jun 29, 2018 12:56:49 GMT -5
"I'm struck by how often Sun Boy was the source of the drama in one way or another."rberman, maybe b/c Sun Boy was like the surfer-dude of the Legion! And, you're right, there was a great deal of teenage angst in the LSH stories. Just look at that picture of Bouncing Boy... even his hair is greasy-looking and poorly combed. Bland costume, jowly even when he wasn't inflating himself.
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Post by beccabear67 on Jun 29, 2018 13:04:07 GMT -5
I started buying the Legion new just a couple issues before Broderick and then Giffen joined. I did have a pile of the Adventures by then and was maybe still adding to them. I had gotten a paper route of sorts, though it was two large apartment buildings, a mall and a gas station, that helped pay for my addiction. I really got into compari8ng the current to the twenty years earlier issues which gave my imagination a lot of room. The nature of the old shop with the '60s comics meant there was a pretty wide gap between around 1969 to 1982, I had to pay more for anything in-between.
My brother had a lot of the blue-spined Hardy Boys hardcovers. I think I read two. I would've had to read all his science fiction paperbacks first though. They (my parents, him) tried to get me interested in the similar Bobbsey Twins (pink spines?) and Nancy Drew (yellow spines) but one copy of each didn't really take, and yet later as a young adult to now, I like all kinds of detective tv series (Foyle's War, George Gently, Cagney & Lacey). The same format was used for young adult fiction classics like Prince & The Pauper, Jungle Book and Toby Tyler. There was a coming of age becoming adult subtext to a lot of these things that got phased out in the youth rules culture, being young and immature became idealized and maturity was stuck in the mud or whatever.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jun 29, 2018 13:15:01 GMT -5
beccabear67I loved the Foyle's War TV series. Now I'm watching DCI Banks and enjoying that. Up next: Unforgotten
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Post by Hoosier X on Jun 29, 2018 13:26:46 GMT -5
I voted for Brainiac to be leader all the time, until Dream Girl became leader. Dream Girl is the best! There was voting again during the short-lived New 52 LSH and I voted for Dream Girl but I don't think it lasted long enough for that LSH election to take affect.
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Post by Hoosier X on Jun 29, 2018 13:29:00 GMT -5
The future setting meant that the writers didn't feel that had to make references to current fads and "hip lingo." I never bought the Legion women as being teens, though. They all looked in their 20s, if not older. Especially Light Lass in her bouffant! That is one of my top favorite LSH stories. (And I must say, Prince Hal, I'm really enjoying these LSH discussions! But I'm really busy this week (my mom and step-dad are visiting, on top of everything else) and haven't had much time to comment. Maybe next week!
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Post by Prince Hal on Jun 29, 2018 13:34:20 GMT -5
Especially Light Lass in her bouffant! That is one of my top favorite LSH stories. (And I must say, Prince Hal, I'm really enjoying these LSH discussions! But I'm really busy this week (my mom and step-dad are visiting, on top of everything else) and haven't had much time to comment. Maybe next week! Thanks, hoosier! I'll be here when you get back! Enjoy the family time!
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Post by Farrar on Jun 29, 2018 13:40:26 GMT -5
ETA: I find it interesting how strongly so many of us here as kids gravitated towards the LSH (as opposed to, say, the Teen Titans of that era). It's fascinating to read everyone's stories and experiences! YES! Teen Titans was gimmicky and faddish by comparison. And upon further reflection, I think what made the Silver Age LSH so attractive to kids is that, unlike the other teams at the time and like a school, there were so many Legionnaires. A young reader can to choose from a variety of role models or have multiple Legionnaires to identify with. Most teams at the time had the one token female member--the Legion had many female members. Most teams had the one stongman member--the Legion had many plus strongwomen (Supergirl and the Subs' Night Girl, always one of my fave characters). Most teams consisted of members with discrete powers/abilities: Reed could stretch, Sue could turn invisible, Ben was strong, etc. But with the Legion, there were a number of Legionnaires who had similar/overlapping powers, notably the "super-strength" contingent I mentioned above. There was also the cerebral/mental powers group, such as Brainy, Saturn Girl, Dream Girl and Princess Projectra. This is like school, right?-- some kids excel in spelling, some in math, but but some excel in both math and spelling. And as we all know, not everyone in the Legion had a flashy or even a power that was useful on the surface; oft-mentioned in this regard are Bouncing Boy and Matter-Eater Lad. So the Legion consisted of members with different levels of abilities...but it didn't matter. Everyone, regardless of ability, was a valued member of the team. (Of course the Legion could be cruel to the kids they rejected--unfortunately that is realistic too.)
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Post by Farrar on Jun 29, 2018 13:46:28 GMT -5
PS: While looking for a good example of Forte's forte, I found this image within a pretty comprehensive and interesting blogpost on Forte's legion art. haven't read it thoroughly yet, but as I scanned it, it seems the writer is also drawn to his art and makes the point that it was perfect for the Legion's young audience. You are referring to the excellent toobusythinkingaboutmycomics blog, right? Very interesting analysis, here's the link to some of its Forte Legion posts, here (contains the image shown above)....plus Parts 1 and 2 here and here too
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Post by comicsandwho on Jun 29, 2018 17:27:19 GMT -5
I started buying the Legion new just a couple issues before Broderick and then Giffen joined. I did have a pile of the Adventures by then and was maybe still adding to them. I had gotten a paper route of sorts, though it was two large apartment buildings, a mall and a gas station, that helped pay for my addiction. I really got into compari8ng the current to the twenty years earlier issues which gave my imagination a lot of room. The nature of the old shop with the '60s comics meant there was a pretty wide gap between around 1969 to 1982, I had to pay more for anything in-between. My brother had a lot of the blue-spined Hardy Boys hardcovers. I think I read two. I would've had to read all his science fiction paperbacks first though. They (my parents, him) tried to get me interested in the similar Bobbsey Twins (pink spines?) and Nancy Drew (yellow spines) but one copy of each didn't really take, and yet later as a young adult to now, I like all kinds of detective tv series (Foyle's War, George Gently, Cagney & Lacey). The same format was used for young adult fiction classics like Prince & The Pauper, Jungle Book and Toby Tyler. There was a coming of age becoming adult subtext to a lot of these things that got phased out in the youth rules culture, being young and immature became idealized and maturity was stuck in the mud or whatever.Great point. The 'grown-ups' were still running things, including the 'juvenile fiction' publishing business! I'm 44, so I guess that's technically 'Generation X'(although as a 20-something of the mid-90s, I never wanted to dress in flannel shirts, raggedy blue jeans and Army boots, learn to play off-key guitar chords, and move to Seattle and work as a barista to get my 'membership' in FOOG(Friends of Omnipresent Grunge);-) I read some of those Hardy Boys books(and even caught the '70s TV show, both at the very end of its original run, and in early-80s repeats), and I recall that children's fiction of the '50s and '60s(Beverly Cleary's works, the 'Danny Dunn, Scientific Detective' series, and, for the younger set, Babar and Richard Scarry's books) were still considered 'suitable' for kids in the early-mid-80s. Then...everybody got picky, 'Ew! That's OLD!' 'Ew! Talking paternalistic elephants!' 'Ew! 'Nerdy' scientist stereotypes!', etc(But 'modern, tech-savvy' nerds became acceptable, as opposed to 'pre-spider-bite Peter Parker, pocket-protector and tape on eyeglasses-wearing' nerds). Things started to change around the time I became a teenager, and stopped paying attention to some of those 'old childhood acquaintances'. Basically, around the time DC Comics started changing everything, so did some of the longer-running 'kiddie lit' franchises. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew were 'modernized'...ignoring their old backgrounds, and the fact that they'd always sort of 'gone with the times'. Joe's girlfriend got killed by terrorists, or so said a book review I dimly recall, so now the boys were 'edgier', stuff could blow up, and people could die, in the 'Hardyverse'. There was even a terribly low-budget, and mercifully short-lived TV revival of the Hardys and Nancy in the late '90s. I'm vaguely aware that the book series was 'rebooted' even more, but I have no idea if there is currently anything new in print for those characters. At least the 'blue and yellow spines' live on in recent-ish printings of the old series, at the local library.
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Post by rberman on Jun 29, 2018 17:49:34 GMT -5
I started buying the Legion new just a couple issues before Broderick and then Giffen joined. I did have a pile of the Adventures by then and was maybe still adding to them. I had gotten a paper route of sorts, though it was two large apartment buildings, a mall and a gas station, that helped pay for my addiction. I really got into compari8ng the current to the twenty years earlier issues which gave my imagination a lot of room. The nature of the old shop with the '60s comics meant there was a pretty wide gap between around 1969 to 1982, I had to pay more for anything in-between. My brother had a lot of the blue-spined Hardy Boys hardcovers. I think I read two. I would've had to read all his science fiction paperbacks first though. They (my parents, him) tried to get me interested in the similar Bobbsey Twins (pink spines?) and Nancy Drew (yellow spines) but one copy of each didn't really take, and yet later as a young adult to now, I like all kinds of detective tv series (Foyle's War, George Gently, Cagney & Lacey). The same format was used for young adult fiction classics like Prince & The Pauper, Jungle Book and Toby Tyler. There was a coming of age becoming adult subtext to a lot of these things that got phased out in the youth rules culture, being young and immature became idealized and maturity was stuck in the mud or whatever.Great point. The 'grown-ups' were still running things, including the 'juvenile fiction' publishing business! I'm 44, so I guess that's technically 'Generation X'(although as a 20-something of the mid-90s, I never wanted to dress in flannel shirts, raggedy blue jeans and Army boots, learn to play off-key guitar chords, and move to Seattle and work as a barista to get my 'membership' in FOOG(Friends of Omnipresent Grunge);-) I read some of those Hardy Boys books(and even caught the '70s TV show, both at the very end of its original run, and in early-80s repeats), and I recall that children's fiction of the '50s and '60s(Beverly Cleary's works, the 'Danny Dunn, Scientific Detective' series, and, for the younger set, Babar and Richard Scarry's books) were still considered 'suitable' for kids in the early-mid-80s. Then...everybody got picky, 'Ew! That's OLD!' 'Ew! Talking paternalistic elephants!' 'Ew! 'Nerdy' scientist stereotypes!', etc(But 'modern, tech-savvy' nerds became acceptable, as opposed to 'pre-spider-bite Peter Parker, pocket-protector and tape on eyeglasses-wearing' nerds). Things started to change around the time I became a teenager, and stopped paying attention to some of those 'old childhood acquaintances'. Basically, around the time DC Comics started changing everything, so did some of the longer-running 'kiddie lit' franchises. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew were 'modernized'...ignoring their old backgrounds, and the fact that they'd always sort of 'gone with the times'. Joe's girlfriend got killed by terrorists, or so said a book review I dimly recall, so now the boys were 'edgier', stuff could blow up, and people could die, in the 'Hardyverse'. There was even a terribly low-budget, and mercifully short-lived TV revival of the Hardys and Nancy in the late '90s. I'm vaguely aware that the book series was 'rebooted' even more, but I have no idea if there is currently anything new in print for those characters. At least the 'blue and yellow spines' live on in recent-ish printings of the old series, at the local library. I recommend this biography of Mildred Benson, who wrote many of the Nancy Drew books. It has a great overview of the Stratemeyer Syndicate which owned Hardy and Drew and farmed out their adventures to various ghostwriters. A fascinating slice of mid-20th century youth culture. www.amazon.com/Girl-Sleuth-Nancy-Women-Created/dp/015603056X
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Post by beccabear67 on Jun 29, 2018 17:56:33 GMT -5
When I was in grade 5-7 it seemed like every girl had pictures of Sean Cassidy who was in the Hardy Boys tv series, they'd even have very serious fights over them. I didn't get it because I had photos of Randolph Mantooth from Emergency and Dirk Benedict (even before Battlestar Galactica). All the teenybopper magazines had these pin-up pictures... I think the next grade or two down would've become the Scott Baio crowd. I did watch Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew on '70s tv a little, but I think I really went for the Hulk and Little House On The Prarie more as far as based on print spin-offs were concerned.
We've seen some Legion on tv as guests in some of the Super shows, I wonder if it could ever work now as it's own series? Mon-El has been in Supergirl a lot this past season, and they've had Braniac 5 and Saturn Girl (Imra, looking nothing like the comic book Stayrn Girl I've ever seen, she should've been Shrinking Violet). It might still have a lot of teen appeal in the concept.
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Post by comicsandwho on Jun 29, 2018 18:03:33 GMT -5
Good catch on 'Saturn Girl' looking more like Shrinking Violet. Having Win leave 'Supergirl' to go off with the Legion certainly makes it look like there are plans for them to appear again...maybe a universe-hopping appearance on 'Legends of Tomorrow'?
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Post by Deleted on Jun 29, 2018 19:19:47 GMT -5
Great Picture of Legion of Superheroes
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