Mark Waid
The more time passes, the more impressed I get with Mark Waid's comic books.
He keeps coming out with stuff I like. The first thing of his I read was Legion of Super-Heroes volume 5, of course, an interpretation of the Legion that I quite enjoyed. 52 was good. His run on The Incredibles was good. Haven't finished Irredeemable and Incorruptible yet, but they're both good. I'm not going to read Daredevil because, you know, because, but it's supposed to be good too, and I'm sure I'd enjoy it.
And now do you hear what Waid's got in the pipeline? A Rocketeer miniseries and a "Steed & Mrs. Peel" series. There's obviously no way I can pass either of those up. Other thing that he's doing is this website, Thrillbent, where he and John Rogers and I guess some other people are Trying Stuff in the area of webcomics. It is an admirable pursuit and the first few installments have been very worthwhile and I recommend it to you*.
* I always like it when people Try Stuff.
Labels: Links, Not Legion specific
posted by Matthew E @ 10:28 PM
17 Comments:
The first 14 issues of Legion of Super-Heroes Vol.5 is a nigh perfect super-hero story. They seriously should put all that in a Deluxe HC for posterity. Its just so good.
Too bad everything went to hell when Supergirl showed up.
Coincidentally, I was just thinking about Waid's Legion yesterday! I really liked his ideas for Tinya,Luornu and Gim (more than Levitz ever did for them, anyway.)
I didn't like his version of Jan or Brin at all and I would have liked to know the reasoning behind changing Thom's ethnicity (although that version of Star Boy looked majestic.) In any case, the first half-dozen issues were very refreshing.
...I would have liked to know the reasoning behind changing Thom's ethnicity...
Was it anything more involved than greater ethnic diversity in the Legion?
Only problem with LSHv5 #1-14 for me is that it should have been #1-13. Those backup stories in, what was it, #11 and #12? Totally threw off the pacing for me.
After that, well. I don't think I blame it on Supergirl, but the book did do a lot of meandering. Still worthwhile, though.
I did like his Timber Wolf but wasn't so much on Bedard and Shooter's continuations.
And I had no problem at all with threeboot Star Boy. No explanation necessary.
I second your praise for Waid.I discovered him in the '90s,hit by the double-barreled whammy of his work on FLASH and CAPTAIN AMERICA.Been reading his comics ever since,and I usually haven't been disappointed.
As for Waid's Legion work,I loved his time on the reboot.He was collaborating with others,of course,although it can be argued that the reboot was never as good after Waid left.The 3boot had a great premise,but the execution was sometimes lacking.So it may be,at least as far as the Legion is concerned,Waid does his best work when working with others in crafting the stories.
Well, comics are a collaborative medium. Plus, there was the theory that Waid was distracted by 52 (and maybe demoralized by the retroboot) during the last part of his Legion run.
Further to Dougie: Didn't mean to imply anything about your reaction to Star Boy; just that I thought his threeboot redesign was (largely because of the future setting) a complete nonissue and it never even occurred to me that anyone might want an explanation.
Not a problem. I was just musing about the creative process that led to altering that particular character rather than one of the others.
In any case, as I said, I was impressed by the design of the character and would have liked to see more of the Waid Star Boy.
Agreed. The fact that he was black was no more of an issue than the changes to Colossal Boy/Micro Lad or Triplicate Girl.
I always figured it was most likely to be explainable as a Kingdom Come connection. We never saw the face of that Star Boy and the legacy hero of his lineage was a black kid.
Kingdom Come. One of the few things Waid did that I didn't like.
It became an "Adult Legion Story" for the entire DCU, mined and hewed to far too heavily, with everything seeming to march in lock step toward the character, character designs, and setups.
And it set the stage for my eyes glazing over every time I saw another Alex Ross piece, to the point that I'm just over his art style.
All that said, if you can wall off all that other stuff, it's a nice enough Elseworlds story in isolation, feeling much more fully formed and thought through than most of them. (Which were usually "Batman is a vampire, now go!" or "Superman is a communist, now go!")
Actually, what you do is read the Kingdom Come novelization by Elliot S. Maggin. It's not as rushed, you can see people's points of view much better, it's not as mean. The lack of Alex Ross is just a bonus.
Any Legion content in it, just a couple paragraphs covering that one panel, or about Starman that identifies him as the grown-up Star Boy rather than just a conincidental costume?
I don't recall any Legion content of any kind. Did Maggin ever do anything that touched on the Legion?
Dunno, don't remember anything of note, although there sure could have been some 1970s stories by him in anthologies. 11 pages of in-no-order credits here to come through:
http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Elliot_S._Maggin/Writer
I'm thinking of an issue of... DC Comics Presents? Where Superman and Clark Kent get split into two people? I don't know if Maggin wrote that one, but it seems like him, and there is a Legion connection: the Miracle Machine is in the story.
That would be DCCP #50, by Dan Mishkin. DCCP #79 also featured Clark Kent, by Paul Kupperberg
There you are then. Thanks.
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