Roberson's Interminable Ramble

Hell, yes. Can't wait until this comes on the air. The world is a better place with Jay Stephens.
 

I love that Jay Stephens stuff! This sizzle reel looked terrific. "Doc Saturday," eh? Sorta like the Man of Bronze?
 

You and me both, Justin.
 

Stu, that was *precisely* my thinking on reading the name Doc Saturday, and seeing the design only clinched it.
 

Speaking of cartoons, have you been watching "Legion of Super-Heroes?" I was geeking out over the Legion of Substitute Heroes episode the other week and badly want a Porcupine Pete action figure. Would have liked more Polar Boy, but you can't have it all.
 

Polar Boy would have been nice, but dude, that episode had an appearance by Tyroc! How can you beat that?

And yes, I've been watching it religiously. I've read that it's been picked up for another season, which is terrific news. I think the series succeeds in just the same was as Teen Titans did, taking the old stories that worked for so many years and updating them just enough stylistically to make the work for a modern generation of kids. It's a shame that the comics themselves can't seem to manage it, but keep telling the same stories to all of us aging fans that read the things when we were kids. I can't imagine that many "teens" find anything appealing in the current Teen Titans comic, and the same is probably true of the Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes comics as well. Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe more kids are reading the Johnny DC versions of the animated series (which will soon included an animated version of the LSH show) than the sales figures might suggest (and I know from personal experience that kids do respond well to the "animated" comics). But if nothing else the series are on television and introducing a new generation of kids to the characters, and I suppose that should count as a victory.
 

You're right on about Tyroc. I was also geeked about Blok's appearance, since the first LSH comics I bought was #272, where Blok gets made a Legionnaire. As such, I always indentified with him and even named my zine in the Legends APA after him - Blok Party.

I too was happy to hear the LSH cartoon was renewed for a second season. What's fun about it is that my son likes the show too and is looking forward to the comic version; he already reads JLU and Teen Titans Go.
 

Blok was definitely cool. I never got a handle on the character until much later, when he started hanging out with White Witch, but I loved all of Giffen's redesigns for the character, especially the idea that he was gradually "maturing" into an ever more complicated silicon organism. And then when Giffen and company introduced Strata in Legion '89, later revealed as a female of the species, only to have her show up in V4 in Blok's dream sequence/vision-quest-thingee.

I've always thought it a shame that, ever since they started rebooting the Legion in the early nineties, they never get around to Tyroc, Blok, Wildfire, Dawnstar, and Tyroc (much less Quislet, Invisible Kid II, etc.). That the animated LSH is pulling from all eras is one of the most likeable and promising things about it.

And I'm jazzed to hear that your son is reading the animated comics. Have you tried him on the Marvel Adventures comics, by any chance? Jeff Parker's Marvel Adventures Avengers comic is first rate, and is very much the same sort of approach to superheroics you'll find in the DC Animated stuff.
 

I'm not sure how many comics you're reading in single format - it appears that Dawnstar is making an appearance in an upcoming issue of Justice Society of America. I'm wondering if the coming return of the multiverse might mean we'll get to see "our" Legion again.

As for the cartoon, I loved seeing Colossal Boy, Cosmic Boy, and Ferro Lad (!) this weekend. I loved the surprise of the Legion Leader election too - just like back in the day!

My son has not read the Marvel Adventures stuff - I was such a DC kid growing up that I haven't really paid attention to those titles. We'll check 'em out!
 

I've checked out the first few issues of the relaunched JSA, and I'm on the fence as to whether it's terrific or complete ass. It hits a lot of my geek buttons in a good way, but also does a lot of things I don't care for. That the Starman appears to be both the Levitz-era Thom Kallor *and* the Starman from Kingdom Come certainly works in its favor (but confuses me no end, since the adult Starman we saw at the end of James Robinson's run on the book of the same name was Thom Kallor, but the *Reboot-era* version, instead).

I was worried that we'd never get more than glimpses of other Legionnaires, so the fact that this was the second episode to prominently feature Colossal Boy gave me real hope that we'd see Cosmic Boy and Ferro Lad again. And given the way that Teen Titans so skillfully played with the Terra-as-Traitor storyline, I wonder if some sort of big menace isn't in the cards for Ferro Lad, somewhere down the line...