Legion of Super Heroes #2-7 Review. Not

What Happened That You Have To Know About:

The Writer's Guild of America went on strike. The main issue of the strike is whether or not writers for movies and TV should be paid residuals when their work is shown on the internet. (Answer: Yes, they should.) The writers figure that, like the Legion of Super-Heroes, they're going to be spending the rest of their lives in the future, and in the future there's going to be more and more going on on the internet. Therefore it's going to be more and more important to have a piece of that pie. The studios, on the other hand, would rather keep all that money for themselves, and so we have a strike.

I am not a member of the WGA. I can legitimately call myself a writer (in the sense that I have written something that has been published, and I have been paid for it) but I am not (yet?) the writer I sometimes dream of being. Nevertheless I do support the WGA. Now, Legion of Super Heroes, the cartoon, is not (to the best of my knowledge) a WGA show. It does, though, run on a network, and the characters are owned, ultimately, by Time-Warner, which is a member of the AMPTP, the organization the WGA is striking against.

I have some options for just how I could show my support for the WGA. (This guy has some ideas for just such options.) Some of 'em I know I'm going to be exercising. For instance, I'm not asking for DVDs for Christmas, like I normally would, and I'm not going to buy any for anybody else either. I haven’t decided what else. (Note: the most important thing about gestures of this kind is that you tell the people you're boycotting that that's what you're doing, and why! Do not omit this step! Letter mail, written in a civil tone, is best.)

Now, Time-Warner owns DC Comics. I considered not buying DC comics for the duration of the strike, and also not watching the cartoon. For the moment I have decided not to take those steps. But we’ll see.

This blog is, has always been, primarily about superheroism. Now, I'm no superhero. I think that the life lessons and moral teachings one can usefully absorb from the superhero genre are somewhat limited. But I would be disappointed in myself if I couldn't do the right thing even if it was difficult, inconvenient, or unpleasant. I think I can live up to the example of the characters I blog about to that extent. I am prepared to stop buying DC Comics, if I decide that's what I should do.

This much I can say, at this stage: I'm not going to write a word about a single episode of the cartoon until the strike's resolved. When it's over, maybe I'll find a way of coming back and filling in the gaps.

And if there's anybody out there who's disappointed in this, who wants me to get back to reviewing this cartoon... take it up with the AMPTP.