“Legends”

Some of my earliest comic buying memories involve the “Legends” trade dress on comics I was buying at the coffee shop my dad would take me to every Saturday morning – “Batman,” “Shazam,” “Superman,” etc. But, as of last month, I had never picked up the “Legends” miniseries, and this felt like a particularly interesting time to read the series. After the universe-altering effects of “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” DC needed an event to set a tone for their books going forward, and “Legends” was just that.

LEGENDS 30TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION TP
Written by JOHN OSTRANDER and LEN WEIN
Art by JOHN BYRNE and KARL KESEL
Cover by JOHN BYRNE
On sale JUNE 1• 168 pg, FC, $16.99 US
In the wake of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, the heroes of the DC Universe must find a new purpose and direction in the battle for justice! When G. Gordon Godfrey arrives on behalf of Darkseid to create a hate campaign that outlaws super-heroic activities, the world’s greatest find themselves fighting the very people they swore to protect! Don’t miss this new edition collecting the 6-issue miniseries, including the first appearance of the modern Suicide Squad!

In so many ways “Legends” reminds me of ‘Rebirth,’ the current DC publishing initiative. Just as ‘The New 52’ took the DC Universe and turned it on its ear five years before ‘Rebirth,’ “Crisis on Infinite Earths” established the ground rules for the DC Universe and allowed a fresh start on a number of ideas, characters, and titles. Once the Anti-Monitor was destroyed, DC needed an event for reasons both practical and important for the fictional universe.

Practically, DC was still rolling out its new status quos for certain characters, and needed a delivery system in which to do that efficiently. This book effectively invents the modern Suicide Squad, the “Bwa-Ha-Ha” Justice League, sets the Wally West Flash on a clear path, and introduces Wonder Woman back into the fold. All of that is done relatively seamlessly, with only Wonder Woman’s appearance being a little perplexing (she literally pops out of an alley and says something like “I wasn’t going to re-enter the world of men yet, but oh well!”).

The series also helped to, in fiction, undo certain constraints, specifically the (then) current Justice League of America. Commonly referred to as the Justice League Detroit, this team featured the likes of Vibe, Steel (not John Henry Irons, Hank Heywood), and Gypsy. The team is, essentially, trapped under a giant building and seemingly left for dead, with only Martian Manhunter escaping. I know that there were issues of “Justice League of America” that were tie-ins that, presumably, did a lot of the heavy lifting for how that team actually disbanded, because at the end of “Legends,” there’s a new Justice League formed, featuring man of the heroes that were cornerstones of this series.

The series is based around the idea of Darkseid being angered at Earth’s love for all ‘legends’ aside from himself. Heroes are at the heart of this, but supervillains also fall under his ire. Darkseid uses the word ‘legends’ an absurd number of times in his scenes, almost all of which take place in conversation with the Phantom Stranger on Apokolips. The Phantom Stranger is an anomaly in this series, as he’s the only character who has to establish who he is through his own dialogue, or through the dialogue of his conversational partner. Almost every other hero has an audience debriefing moment, but we’re all expected to just know the Phantom Stranger. I mean, I do, but I also know who Beast Boy Changeling is and, especially in 1986, far more folks knew the Teen Titans over mystical characters with tangential ties to the Justice League.

Darkseid’s plan involves having the heroes of Earth both lose their confidence/identity, and to send Glorious Godfrey – under the title of G. Gordon Godfrey – to Earth to act as a rebel rouser, getting folks to fear and hate heroes. After all the legends fall, the only legend that will be remembered is Darkseid. If you’re saying “huh, that’s an insanely vain goal for a New God?” you’re not wrong, but you’ve also probably not read much of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World stuff. We get to see a lot of those characters, specifically the evil ones, throughout the series, as the Kirby tone and roots run pretty deep here. The story is almost all Earth-bound, and the action not really cosmic, but this is a really interesting use of those characters.

The series is illustrated by John Byrne, who is about as ‘late 80’s DC’ as ou can get, style-wise, and the book looks sufficiently stylized for its era. Black Canary, in particular, looks almost unrecognizable to a modern audience, an audience that also isn’t used to such an ugly Guy Gardner. Seriously, Gardner is about as attractive as a Mr. Potato Head in this series, a weird mix of a skeletal face, a bowl haircut, and a turtleneck.

But Byrne is on his game here and, unless my lens of nostalgia is particularly skewed, creates page after page of quality. Byrne’s storytelling has always been his best quality, and it is on full display here. He’s juggling a ton of characters, plots, and settings, and he works to make each story line feel different and unique, but still fit into the overall schematic of the story. Apokolips looks absolutely different – even though we’re just in Darkseid’s lair or whatever – than anywhere else in the book, and that is due to Byrne’s attention to detail and ability to tell stories that don’t require a million dialogue boxes and descriptions to tell the story.

But syke! You’re totally going to get as much text as possible on these pages, and things will be described and recapped to death. In the first three issues, we get told the exact same story about Billy Batson thinking he killed Macro Man by calling down the lightning that accompanies his name being uttered. Each time it gets a little shorter, but it is insane that is pops up that many times.

That said, I was buying comics at this time (I was 4) and would often just pick the best cover, so perhaps DC knew that the readers of each issue wouldn’t likely be reading the series in total, so they felt it was more necessary than I’m presenting it here. But seriously, there are pages that are aching for all the text to be removed, but that are so bogged down by text that you almost ignore the artwork.

Part of that, I suppose can be attributed to Len Wein, who was scripting the series off of a John Ostrander plot. Wein is such a creature of his time that it is hard to tell whether he is particularly egregious in this way, or if he’s just following the standards of the time. Ostrander’s fingerprints are all over this in broad strokes – specifically the Suicide Squad’s introduction, which he would pick up in that series, leading to one of the best runs in modern comics history. But the series feels unbelievably like Wein.

That’s not a good thing or a bad thing, as I don’t think Wein does all that much to help or hurt the series, except for the aforementioned reliance on too many words. Wein’s characterizations are all pretty spot on, even if his Rick Flag seems a tad too dismissive of Amanda Waller, especially as it appears to be in no small part misogynistic and, potentially, racist. Now, he is presented as being absolutely a dick, so this isn’t calling into question Wein’s tacit approval of Flag’s opinion, as he clearly doesn’t. But it is pretty suspect to have a white character saying a black one has ‘cotton picking fingers,’ even in 1986.

Back to the story: G. Gordon Godfrey was almost shocking to me in this series, because he’s so accurately playing the role of Donald Trump, but replacing immigrants with superheroes. He’s riling up folks with false rhetoric and using flawed logic to turn ‘regular folks’ into an angry mob. You can practically hear a cop screaming “THEY TOOK OUR JOBS” as he kills his partner for letting Black Canary escape.

Escape what you ask? Well, the character with the fifth or sixth most dialogue in the book is none other than then sitting president Ronald Reagan, who puts together an executive order banning superheroes from fighting crime, as they are presented as fanning the flames of public distrust. Much of the series involves heroes like Blue Beetle, Guy Gardner, and Black Canary ignoring the president’s words, and continuing to fight crime.

Of course, he eventually realizes the folly of his ways, especially after Martian Manhunter poses as him, revealing some secret abs for the Gipper.

Overall, your enjoyment of this book is going to depend on a few factors. I won’t disagree with the sentiment that this is not a universally great series. It is dated, it is clearly there to set up/fix things rather than tell a compelling, front to back story. If so many books hadn’t spun out of this series, I have no idea if it would be remembered at all; a veritable “Bloodlines.” But because the book was so important for DC’s line going forward, it has a special place in DC’s canon.