So I finished reading 1982's Legion of Super-Heroes #283 and just wanted to stop in and express how I felt about it.
Now by 1982, I had already been reading comics for a about eight years or so (I had been reading since about four but I don't think I can really count my true comic reading until about age seven or eight. I think that is a good age to where I knew what was going on for the most part and not just looking at pictures and reading the odd line or two. If you were younger all I can say is I am jealous
... and holy cow did I just go off on a tangent or what?
)
ANYWAY ... !!!!
Reading comics that are published now and comparing them with the days of old is really incredible. I know this is nothing knew to anyone that has been reading comics for more than a month, but yeah, I had to say that.
The writing back then ... haha, wow. Yes, by this time you started to have some serious comics hitting the public eye, but for books like the Legion, still geared for kids for the most part, it is very much a shock to the system when you go back and read that style, especially after not reading any older comics for a good many moons. The cheezy goodness, the over exposition, those damn thought bubbles!!!
But the one thing that these older stories had each issue? Story. Yes, story. Man could they could pack a damn bit of story inside those pages back then.
This issue, not at all the best example of how compact and full the stories where at that time, or earlier, gave me more story than almost any of today's four titles combined (Or seven titles if they were written by Bendis, huh, Jimmy?
)
In this issue for example -
Wildfire spends time training 3 characters that just missed the cut in the last Legion held audition. All of their powers are shown well as they spar with Wildfire. Each one getting to showcase his and her powers as the training session goes along. During the action all of their names and code names are given so by the time the book ends, or in this case, a few pages in
, we know who these guys are and how they work.
The training session ends and Wildfire discusses how they should not give up, keep practicing and he will keep their names at the top of the list the next audition. He asks if that sounds cool and two of the girls go to give Wildfire a peck on the ... mask and Wildfire freaks out !!! Blasting the girls into the air!!! Not being familiar with the Legion Flight Rings, one of the two girls starts to fall onto the top of a building ... with a very sharp point
but Wildfire, having regain composure, swoops in, 'just in time' to save her. He then apologizes and goes to tell them, and us, why he freaked out and he begins with the story of his "true origin".
Now all of this, all the training, all the character discovery, all the "danger", all of this stuff that happens before his origin tale begins, happens in (just over) the first four pages. Just over four freakin' pages!!! Okay, honestly it is a total of five, but I am not counting the opening title/splash page. Now that is some compressed story telling.
And Wildfire's true name, Drake Burroughs? Is that not just the perfect Silver Age name? Okay, yes, in true DC/Marvel fashion he should have been called something like Blake Burroughs, to get that alliteration, but still, that name is almost perfect.
Damn, I am out of time, I have to go, but I got most of what I wanted to say out ... see ya !!!