Saturday, December 31, 2005
Comic Art
Continuing our look at teen heroes, consider that you are a young man with extraordinary powers, perhaps the most powerful being to exist and you are virtually without peer. What do you do for fellowship? Well you could take the path of the wimpy TV show Smallville or you could go the the future (no big thing if you're Superboy) and find a whole bunch of kids, just like yourself, banded together to protect the galaxy. You'd become a part of the Legion of Super-Heroes.In "acutality" the Legion came looking for Superboy first, but once they hooked up great things were in store. The idea is pretty good. All the Legion people are, for the most part, just like Superboy, aliens -- not the result of something freakish to give them power. The possibilitie are endless and the results have some times be downright comical. "Bouncing Boy" - a guy whose power was to blow up like a basketball and bounce around the room. Come on -- That's funny, I don't care who you are, that right there is funny, get 'er done. Excuse me, I went all stand-up there for a minute.
In recent years, absent Superboy, the title has become largely a soap opera, huge drama over who's the leader and who's dating who and who wishes they were dating who, with the conflict almost being a background. But that is the way of things these days. Regardless the title has had much to recommend it, above all the variety of characters it entailed.Back to the comic aspects for a minute -- check out Cosmic boy in this cover -- Pink! He wore that outfit for years. Can you imagine a superhero, a prominent one at that IN PINK?! Think of the movie version.
Now, bear in mind, as a kid all I saw were bright colors, I mean he blended well with the rest of them, kind of like that great 64 color Crayola crayon box, you had to have pink in there somwhere. That's one of the things that I think is missing from great comics today. (The Legion is still in publication these days, but I can't find much to recoommend it) They work so hard to be "realistic" that they forget to be fun, and often they forget to be pretty.
The Legion was so huge that you ever could really tell all the players without a program, and several have been published over the years.Here is the Legion in its '80's incarnation, which seemed to have a pretty good combination of the whimsical and the dramatic. They still look pretty much like a crayon box, but the writing improved and the characters actually gained a life and some personal interest.
The Legion is a very rich legend in the world of comics and I recommend it, but do so out of the older bins at your specialty store.
