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The Legion Companion

The Legion Companion

List Price: $24.95
Your Price: $21.21
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Memories of Futures Passed
Review: Despite the deceptive title, this was an interesting and informative book, stirring up many memories of the Legion. Basically, the book is the transcript of interviews with virtually every writer or artist who ever wrote/drew for the series. In instances where the writer or artist is dead, articles from other sources are reprinted.

Some of the interviews are quite thorough, especially the 2 Jim Shooter interviews, the 2 Paul Levitz interviews (Shooter and Levitz are considered the greatest Legions writers) and the Dave Cockrum one (Cockrum's the artist who redesigned the costumes in the early 70s before bolting to Marvel to relaunch X-Men). Readers will learn a lot about the business of making comics and the personalities involved. For that alone, its a worthwhile purchase.

Also enjoyable is the artwork accompanying the interviews -- sometimes reprinted pages from the series, other times drawings from the artists' personal collection or fan drawings. Like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, it's more like a picture is worth a thousand memories.

On the downside, many of the other interviews, espcailly those with obscure artists or writers who only drew or wrote an issue or two, seem pointless. Also frustrating is the lack of "footnotes" to explain obscure or insider references mentioned in the interviews. On several occasions, I was left scratching my head, unable to figure out what they were talking about (and I know comics well!).

What would have made this book more user-friendly is a listing of each issue that the artist/writer drew/wrote at the beginning of the interview, along with the significant events that happened in those issues to refresh memories. Also missing is an opening article giving a detailed overview of the series in an easily digestable form.

Nonetheless, I loved reading about this inside scoop and reliving the memories of my all-time favorite comic series. In fact, after reading it, I took the plunge and bought a couple of those harback Legion Archive books reprinting the early stories in chronilogical order that I've been lusting after for years.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Great Interview Books
Review: Though listed as the Legion Companion book I think it should have been more aptly named the "Legion Interview" book.

This book interviews everyone and I do mean everyone which in one way can be one of it's few weaknesses. I might have wanted more indepth interviews of the key Legion players even at the exclusion of some of the minor ones.

The other thing I wished for were some non-interview articles about the Legion-time line-missed story opertunities etc. Well maybe in another book.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Great Interview Books
Review: Though listed as the Legion Companion book I think it should have been more aptly named the "Legion Interview" book.

This book interviews everyone and I do mean everyone which in one way can be one of it's few weaknesses. I might have wanted more indepth interviews of the key Legion players even at the exclusion of some of the minor ones.

The other thing I wished for were some non-interview articles about the Legion-time line-missed story opertunities etc. Well maybe in another book.


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