437 – Dismember the Titans

I liked the Eternals too! It wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t the worst. The bottom of the upper half is still in the upper half.

My boomer mum still says ‘not’ occasionally. All this time, even though I cringe a little, I still can’t bring myself to tell her that slang has moved on.

My favorite run of the Legion of Superheroes is the Tom and Mary Bierbaum/Keith Giffen/Al Gordon Legion (yes, all of those writers were involved) Vol 4 of the Legion of Superheroes colloquially called “The Five Year Gap” Legion. It took the model of Alan Moore/Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen (text piece, 9-panel grid, deep references to other texts) and turned this very 1980s vision of the far future into a kind of Cyberpunk-style. It’s like the difference between Batman TAS and Batman Beyond, except that instead of following Terry McGinnis, you followed a 30-something Jason Todd as he navigated this new world.

This series is the secret sauce that have influenced a lot of today’s writers. You can see its influence in Bendis’ back-and-forth dialogue pacing, in Jonathan Hickman’s Krakoa-era X-Men (especially the text pieces), Dan and Abnett’s Annihilation and Guardians of the Galaxy, and Jeff Lemire’s Black Hammer comics. Hickman’s Krakoa era owes a special debt to the Legion of Superheroes and you can tell Krakoa is a revamped proposal for the Legion.

Between Keith Giffen’s font of ideas and attitude brought from the previous run, Tom and Mary Bierbaum’s sense of history and fandom, and Al Gordon adding in new ideas and a new flavor to the series made this version of the Legion work so well.

If you were to jump into that series, I would suggest the Legion: 5 Years Later Omnibus 1 or finding the individual issues on DC Infinite Online (they have them listed under Keith Giffen). Along with the series, I would recommend the Okay I’m a Senator website (https://itsokimasenator.livejournal.com/) that goes over parts of the Legion series and gives background to some of the character choices by Tom Bierbaum and the cosmic teams website (https://www.cosmicteams.com/) that also gives more detailed descriptions and who’s who style entries on characters. If you don’t want spoilers, I would recommend the Who’s Who in the Legion (or Mayfair Games’ Legion Sourcebooks) that were written before this series, but are heavily cited by the writers as being their sourcebooks.

I envy you. That Five Years Later Legion was one of my favorite series that takes you on a ride. I remember, in my teen years, having to travel all around Sarasota, Naples, and Tampa comic shops to get a complete run of that series.

I know this might sound like a crazy recommendation for a “core x-men” book, but what do people think about jumping in with Generation Hope? It starts with the quintessential saving young mutants to build a new team, so there’s no necessary backstory slog, it has some fun team dynamics, some which feel very teenager to me, a self-contained villain, and lead by a young female character. It doesn’t get too dark but also doesn’t shy away with some of the stuff.

The main reason I suggest it is it’s a fairly short run, but it has some grounding for a lot of different footholds into the x/marvel universe. If you like Hope you can go back and read Cable (2008). If that’s a little too dark or post apocalypse-y jump into Wolverine and the X-Men and follow Idie. If you like the crazy timetravel story; could lead to Adventures or some of the older Cable/Scott/Jean stuff. It also jumps through AvX, which idk if I can recommend, but it has ties to Hope and shows X in the bigger marvel universe and a glimpse into crossover events. This then leads to the Bendis run which also is a fairly good jumping on point, especially with the time displaced teens and Cyclops’ team who are all really just new characters everyone’s meeting for the first time.

It’s new enough that it feels more modern without getting into some of the chaos of SW or continuity heavy Krakoa.