Customer Reviews

The Legion Companion

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Despite the deceptive title, this was an interesting and informative book, stirring up many memories of the Legion. Basically, the book is the transcript of interviews with virtually every writer or artist who ever wrote/drew for the series. In instances where the writer or artist is dead, articles from other sources are reprinted.

Some of the interviews are quite thorough, especially the 2 Jim Shooter interviews, the 2 Paul Levitz interviews (Shooter and Levitz are considered the greatest Legions writers) and the Dave Cockrum one (Cockrum's the artist who redesigned the costumes in the early 70s before bolting to Marvel to relaunch X-Men). Readers will learn a lot about the business of making comics and the personalities involved. For that alone, its a worthwhile purchase.

Also enjoyable is the artwork accompanying the interviews -- sometimes reprinted pages from the series, other times drawings from the artists' personal collection or fan drawings. Like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, it's more like a picture is worth a thousand memories.

On the downside, many of the other interviews, espcailly those with obscure artists or writers who only drew or wrote an issue or two, seem pointless. Also frustrating is the lack of "footnotes" to explain obscure or insider references mentioned in the interviews. On several occasions, I was left scratching my head, unable to figure out what they were talking about (and I know comics well!).

What would have made this book more user-friendly is a listing of each issue that the artist/writer drew/wrote at the beginning of the interview, along with the significant events that happened in those issues to refresh memories. Also missing is an opening article giving a detailed overview of the series in an easily digestable form.

Nonetheless, I loved reading about this inside scoop and reliving the memories of my all-time favorite comic series. In fact, after reading it, I took the plunge and bought a couple of those harback Legion Archive books reprinting the early stories in chronilogical order that I've been lusting after for years.

Though listed as the Legion Companion book I think it should have been more aptly named the "Legion Interview" book.

This book interviews everyone and I do mean everyone which in one way can be one of it's few weaknesses. I might have wanted more indepth interviews of the key Legion players even at the exclusion of some of the minor ones.

The other thing I wished for were some non-interview articles about the Legion-time line-missed story opertunities etc. Well maybe in another book.

This book is a collection of interviews with just about every Legion of Super-Heroes artist and writer from their beginnings in 1958 through the nineties. Some of the interviews are more interesting than others, but they all give insight into the process of writing and illustrating a comic series. Sadly, I did not feel that there was enough interesting new material relating solely to the LSH. I would consider it much weaker than The Legion Outpost as a source for interesting material on the LSH.

Absolutely incredible! Unseen artwork, behind the scenes anecdotes of how the issues were created as well as just fun reliving the age of The Legion Of Super-Heroes.
The Dave Cockrum section is especially interesting, including a never before seen, pencilled, 5 page Timber Wolf story. Also includes some information on how the new X-Men (Nightcrawler, Storm, etc.) came to be as well as the original sketches for some of those characters.
A great read for anybody who has ever been interested in comic books and super-heroes, not just for Legion or DC fans.

Let me start by saying if you're not a fan of the Legion of Superheroes this book will be very limited interest for you. There's some nice insights from creators like Jim Shoot, Keith Giffen and Paul Levitz. You'll get to compare how earlier creators approached comics as a job while later creators bring much more passion and interest to the subject.

BUT if you're a Legion fan, this is the motherload. Every major Legion creator from the 50s to the 90s (the book was published in 2003). While some interviews are bit dull and self-serving others offer great insights into how the series evolved and the clashes and over-sized egos involved.

With more classic Legion books being reprinted this book is more relevant than ever.