Monday, September 20, 2010

Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Read the Legion...

Everyone is all a-twitter about the announcement that Keith Giffen is returning to work with Paul Levitz on the upcoming Legion of Super-Heroes Annual.

As far as I'm cocnerned, Keith Giffen has ruined just about everything he's touched for the past two decades. I really dislike what his art has become, and I believe his storytelling skills are definitely sub-par.

Yes, the Annual will sell tremendously, because of all the fanboys who will buy it for Giffen's name. And perhaps Levitz will be able to keep a firm lid on Giffen's excesses, so it might be a passable story. And perhaps they'll have the sense to team Giffen with a competent artist or two, so readers will have some chance of telling which character is which.

In fact, I think the best way to make sure that this is a good comic is to restrict Giffen's contribution to a few preliminary conferences and the appearance of his name on the cover. The more DC can prevent Giffen from having anything substantial to do with this comic, the better story it will be.

Or maybe I'm wrong, and we'll get to witness the return of the nine-panel grid, murky pictures, obscure storytelling, ultra-violent psychopaths, and maybe even the long-awaited reveal of the (retconned) decades-old marriage of Kid Quantum and Laurel Gand.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amen, Get-A-Life Boy. I absolutely loved Giffen's art during the early Levitz years, thru the Great Darkness Saga, for example.

But he drove the Legion into the ground after Levitz' departure. It was absolutely awful and I don't buy or even look at anything with Giffen's name on it. It's awful.

At least Giffen won't be on the monthly book.

Meerkatdon said...

Let me be honest, there were a few things I liked about the Giffbaum years, most of them starting with "K" -- Kent Shakespeare and Kono spring to mind. King Jonn was okay. (I didn't particularly care for the Khund Legionnaires, though.)

JP said...

Agree. His early Legion work is crisp and distinctive, but the mind numbing sameness of those panels, the boring costumes and the seeming disdain of the Legion made the book unreadable

Brainy Pirate said...

I've never been a fan of Giffen's art, even in his early work on the Legion.

But what I don't understand is why they're turning to Jack Kirby for inspiration instead of to an artist whose style was much more central to Legion history: Dave Cockrum.

Legion Lad said...

Jack Kirby has been a long term inspiration of Giffen's (see his work on Kamandi for example) so this is Giffen 'going home' in more ways than one rather than a homage to the Legion's past.