Brian Michael Bendis is working on a Legion Of Superheroes show for HBO Max
Warner Bros. apparently asked the iconic comics writer if he had any ideas, and he immediately pitched the Legion
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It’s been a few years since DC Comics convinced longtime Marvel writer Brian Michael Bendis to defect, but parent company Warner Bros. is clearly still invested in keeping the guy happy—so invested, apparently, that it went to Bendis and asked if there’s anything he’d like to make for HBO Max, seemingly giving him carte blanche to pitch literally anything. His response, courtesy of his most recent newsletter: “I may have yelled the word LEGION louder than you want to in a normal adult person business meeting.”
In that newsletter (via Bleeding Cool), Bendis explains that he’s now developing an animated series for HBO Max based on DC’s Legion Of Superheroes characters, specifically the current iteration that he’s working on with Ryan Sook. The Legion Of Superheroes isn’t a household name, as far as superhero teams go, but they have intersected with more mainstream stuff like the Supergirl TV show.
The basic gist is that they’re a group of heroes in the far future, like the original version of Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy team, and they only really relate to the mainline Justice League-type characters when time travel nonsense gets involved (again, like the old Guardians Of The Galaxy). The Legion also tends to skew a little more toward weirdo characters, like Arm-Fall-Off-Boy (the guy Nathan Fillion’s The Suicide Squad character was based on).
Bendis has a more high-minded take, though, explaining that the Legion is “among the greatest franchises in the history of comics” and that he’s has honored to be working with them as he was when he was writing for Spider-Man. His goal with this animated series, like the comics he’s writing, is to push “all the ideas of superheroes forward in every direction.”
This is all very early, with Bendis even noting that “animation takes a loooong time” and that “you may not hear anything about this for a while,” but it will reportedly be an “adult animated show” whenever it does happen. (So, not like HBO Max’s Aquaman: King Of Atlantis, even though that is very good and everyone should check it out.)
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There was a children’s animated Legion of Super-Heroes series from a while ago. It wasn’t half-bad.
Ugh, no. His run on the book was AWFUL. Do not want. Hard pass.
So much empty, wow.
So how will Bendis will find a way to stretch the Pilot out to three episodes?
My first instinct was “Dr. Strange exposition monologue” but then I remembered this is DC. Who’s his DC exposition monologue guy?
I’d say that roll would probably go to Braniac-5 as he’s the designated smart guy of the Legion.The LoS is kind of in their own niche continuity that’s for the most part separate from the DCU as a whole as it takes place in the 31st Century. It also doesn’t help that ever since Death Metal, DC just kind of threw up their hands and decided everything is canon and everybody simultaneously remembers all of these separate stories. Don’t ask me how this works or solves anything. I’ve been reading comics for years know and DC Continuity is an ever expanding Gordian Knot that DC keeps trying to cut but ends up adding new knots.
I hope this ends up looking like JLU, with a each episode/arc focusing on different characters and team-ups.
Not only are they like Guardians of the Galaxy in that they’re not well-known to the general public (although they were in a terrible cartoon in the 21st century and showed up in better shows periodically), but the original Guardians of the Galaxy were created in an attempt to knock off the LSH.
Trying to knock off one of the LSH’s best heroes led to the creation of Wolverine. (You’re welcome, X-Men fans.)
Darkseid being a mainstream comics villain is also likely due to the LSH, as the New Gods were essentially forgotten after the 1970s when Kirby went back to Marvel, until Darkseid was the surprise villain in a classic 1980s LSH saga, making him terrifying, rather than kind of cheesy, as he had been in other non-Kirby appearances. (Darkseid piloting a flying car in Secret Society of Super-Villains, for instance, was a particular low point.)
It’s a franchise that’s largely beloved among actual comic book creators and has seen some of the best creators in comics work on it over the years.
Bendis’ LSH series was pretty good, other than a truly wretched Future State sequel that it looks like DC is wisely ignoring, so high hopes for this show. Of course, he only produced 12 issues of that, minus the upcoming JLA/LSH miniseries, so the show will ironically have more LSH stories than Bendis’ actual LSH comic did.
I liked the cartoon.
The Legion is a weird one in that (particularly post-Crisis), it’s failed to catch on to a wider degree, even among comics fans.It attracts a lot of high-level creators but one of the biggest problems is that, as a concept it’s interesting, but in actual practice, they’re books which are almost impenetrable to anyone but the most hardcore of fans. So many of the runs on the Legion in the past 20-25 years have focused less on telling interesting and coherent stories, they seem to dip into backwater continuity or making virtually no attempt to introduce the concept or characters to the reader.It doesn’t help that its cast is fucking enormous.Comparatively, I think DC did an incredible job with their JSA reboot with David Goyer, Geoff Johns and James Robinson from around 1999-2009/10. They managed to make the book interesting and a fun read which was steeped in continuity but was also accessible and entertaining to read.
For me as a comic reader and fan of the “Archie Legion” era from start to finish, LoSH is kind of like the original Marvel Ultimate universe. When you reboot it, you can start off and easily make the story small and accessible to new readers……but inevitably, the cast and the story will grow in scope rapidly as creators try to re-introduce new takes on old concepts and characters from previous runs. It leaves you right back where the problem started where, if you’re not willing to go out and catch up on years of ever-expanding story, you’ll always be playing catch-up if you’re a new reader joining the story in progress. It’s still generally worthwhile, but I can understand how it can be daunting and/or financially unfeasible for many. I imagine it’s even worse for readers when the reboot starts with the story already in progress with a full team (e.g. the Waid “Threeboot” and Bendis’ reboot).
The Waid reboot was the first one I tried out but found it impenetrable and dropped it after three issues.The Bendis reboot started badly as well – that Millenium two-parter was bizarre and confusing as hell.The Ultimate Universe was fantastic for the first four or five years. I’ve been re-reading those recently and they hold up quite well – Ultimate Spider-man and The Ultimates particularly are great comics.Ultimate X-men has its moments but Millar’s better work is over in Ultimates.
They’ve had a bunch of reboots since the Crisis, each time starting fresh with a new continuity, new characters (XS, whom I believe is a character on the Flash TV show, started off in one of the post-Crisis reboots) and so on, all in an attempt to get away from the continuity issues.
Of course, that meant at least a chunk of the pre-Crisis LSH fans didn’t show up for it, which meant tepid sales, cancellation and another reboot.
It’s definitely possible to handle the large cast: Levitz/Giffen handled it in the same way that classic TV shows like Hill Street Blues handled their sprawling casts: By focusing on a handful at a time for an arc, with smaller groups of characters relegated to B and C plots until the arc ended, and then rotating one of those groups to the A plot for the next arc. But there have definitely been plenty of writers over the decades who didn’t come in with a plan on how to handle the cast well, and it showed.
Even Bendis, who — whatever else you can say about his writing — clearly thinks a lot about structure, mostly featured his (again, rebooted) LSH cast in the background for 12 issues in favor of telling a story mostly centered on Superboy and Saturn Girl. Some of the new LSH characters didn’t even get named in the comic before it wrapped which was a bizarre at best way to handle things.
All that said, the latest version of the LSH is clearly designed for 21st century tastes, and is the most diverse take on the team yet, and a much more science fiction-forward approach to things, along with featuring deep links to the current era of superheroes (the first arc uses Aquaman’s trident as a McGuffin and the JLA/LSH miniseries will finally center Gold Lantern, who maybe got one word balloon in Bendis’ LSH run). I’m sure DC thought they had cracked the code this time, but it was a modest hit at best.
Maybe it’s the kind of franchise that should just be handled as a digital exclusive and when/if a new take on the team catches fire, then they worry about putting it in comic shops and book stores.
Always felt like Grant Morrison would write a good LOSH run
I loved LSH as a kid, but New Teen Titans took their corner pretty hard, with the advantages of being set in the main DC continuity and not having as much sprawl. Going from the Wolfman/Perez Titans back to LSH made the reader aware of how much work you had to do just to keep the LSH universe straight, all for a similar payoff of teen-ish superhero drama.I’m optimistic about this coming to DC Animation, because they’ve done a great job with complicated worlds and humongous casts on JLU and Young Justice. It’s amazing how many times an obscure (or not-so-obscure) character shows up in Young Justice and just does their thing for a scene or two without the narrative stopping to introduce them or even bothering to remark on the fact that they’re there.
So you know what’s going to happen…“Hey, when you write Legion make sure you make them like Guardian of The Galaxy!” – DC/HBO execsLOL!
The LSH Kicks ass. I have no idea if BB’s version will, but I will check it out.
How every dialogue written by Bendis in a post-Ultimate Spider-Man super-hero comic reads like—[Villains wait for Spider-Man or whatever, sitting in a car].VILLAIN 1: Working on what?VILLAIN 2: A show.VILLAIN 1: What show?VILLAIN 2: The Legion of Whatever thingamajig.VILLAIN 1: Bendis on a DC show? You gotta be kidding.VILLAIN 2: Swear. To. God. VILLAIN 1: You don’t believe in God.VILLAIN 2: I can swear on my mama.VILLAIN 1: Dude, you hate your mama.VILLAIN 2: I can still swear on her. Is that how you say it? Swear on her?VILLAIN 2: Shh. There he is. [Villains get out of the car and proceed to fight Spider-Man or whatever].
hahaha, all too accurate.I do like a lot of Bendis’ earlier work, especially Daredevil, Alias, and Powers. I’m not a fan of his team books but it seems like many writers struggle with team books these days. And much like Claremont and many others, Bendis’ style feels a bit played out these days.
Like Claremont, a lot of Bendis’s value at his peak was in being a more-woke-than-average white guy who helped expand representation in comics. In both cases, a big part of the lasting value of their contributions was inspiring the people who followed to do what they did, but better. In Bendis’s case, him writing women and people of color more often and slightly better than other white guy comic book writers helped inspire the big companies to hire more women and minority writers to do what Bendis was doing, just (often) better.
If you can see the background art behind all those word bubbles, it’s not a Bendis comic!
I just read Johns’ 2000’s Legion trilogy and loved them. I haven’t read Bendis’ version, which is what the TV show would be based on. I haven’t really read much Bendis at all, because what I have read of his sucks on toast, and I’m not one to read something if I don’t think I’ll like it. Someday I’ll probably give Ultimate Spider-Man a try, since that’s supposed to be his best work.Anyways, like someone here said, they could do it like Justice League Unlimited, but I always like the idea of Brainiac sending like 15 super-powered aliens at some huge problem with his usual complex plans. I guess we’ll see.
Star Trek did a graphic novel crossover with the Legion of Super Heroes
My first exposure to the LSH wasn’t from comics, but rather from some big “Encyclopedia of Super Heroes”reference thing I found in a used bookstore. When you just read about them directly, it’s hard not to think that they must suck. Every dang one of them is Something-Lad/Lass/Boy/Girl, and the majority of them don’t really have powers so much as are simply from a world where everyone turns to stone all night, or everyone can split from one person into three people.When I finally got a few comics they were sadly pretty heavily tainted with 90s comic problems, but I’ve at least always liked them when they turn up in cartoons, so hey, that’s something!
BMB is one of those guys who really showcases the peter principal, he barely was competent in comics writing and now he is going to be a television show runner? okay.
If it’s animated, I’m more likely to trust it tbh. So I’ll definitely be tuning in.
*Snicker* Bendis.