What Sells a Book?

I've been meaning to watch the Chris Claremont's X-Men documentary for a while.  There were essentially two comics books that started shaping my love of comics in 1982:  The X-Men* and Legion of Superheroes.  The LSH Facebook group I'm a part of asked today what was my first Legion comic.  It was LSH #293, right in the middle of the Great Darkness Saga. This time period of course was part of the Levitz/Giffen collaboration.  The Legion seemed to have a lot in common with the X-Men to me.  Female leaders, alien characters.  Unfortunately for me, LSH was not quite as available at my local drugstore, but X-Men was.  I have went back and collected and read most of the Levitz/Giffen stories though. 

There is one line in the documentary that really got me to thinking and it deals with when Claremont was removed from the title.  He said that Marvel thought that the characters were selling the books, not the writer.  I realized he summed up Marvel's take in a nutshell, and even DC to an extent.  Wolverine was appearing everywhere.  There were multiple X-books.  And yes, many of those characters are beloved, but we see sales figures now that all the X-books combined is is nowhere near the 400,000+ units Uncanny used to sell on a monthly basis.

Now before I go too far, I acknowledge that Claremont's statement is somewhat boastful but he did help to develop many of the X-Men even though he did not create them. And if you watch the documentary, you know his artists, his editors all helped to play a role in his success. 

But I wonder what, if any of this, applies to the Legion?

So let me dissect this a bit because it's two parts.  Unlike the X-Men who Claremont started with a blank slate, Levitz had many established characters to work with, some he had a hand in developing or creating.  So you might give this a resounding yes for the creators. There were plots and subplots that spun out.  Levitz also tried to focus on more characterization as well.  Dream Girl became a developed character.  We saw more of the interpersonal relationships populate the title, similar to what Claremont was doing with the X-Men.  

When Giffen took over the title with T&M, I still think the creators were driving the story.  The Legion was doing what Claremont wanted to do with the characters:  move them forward. Obviously this changed with the Reboot.  It's no surprise that the Reboot closely resembled the SW6 Legionnaires, even just for some type of continuity.  I feel though the Reboot is also where DC started following Marvel and decided that the characters will sell the book. Don't get me wrong, I like Roger Stern.  I have always enjoyed his Marvel work, just not his Legion work. I didn't the writing to be strong at all.

Of course our next course change was Abnett and Lanning.  I feel they tried get back to what they feel worked in the past, but it was an attempt to move forward at the same time.  Eventually this era would come to a close in preparation for Threeboot.  The Threeboot didn't work for me.  Just having new versions of the characters was not enough because the story itself did not appeal to me.  I feel Threeboot was another attempt to have the characters sell the book.

Which brings us back around to Levitz's last endeavor.  Something seemed different this time.  I don't think the characters were selling the titles and it did not appear that Levitz's writing was either.  There are obviously going to be some characters in the Legion, though I am loathe to admit, that need to be there:  Mon-El, Brainiac 5, the founders.  It's no surprise that when volume 6 came out and they had a reader election, Mon and Brainy were voted as leader and deputy . Despite attempts to bring back Steve Lightle on covers and even Giffen, readers were not having it. (I think this is where the X-men is these days.) Hopefully the publishers are realizing it's not enough to have the characters if the writing isn't there. 

And people will always say which version? which Legion?  I feel if a writer gets in there are starts developing these characters again, it shouldn't and won't matter.  The Legion is not so precious that it has to return to some status quo.  Characters have died over the years.  They should continue to die.  Some characters should move on to allow new characters to come in. Maybe some characters should be revisited to see if they can be improved.  It will be no small task to revive the Legion, moving forward into 2019 and 3019.

*If you were wondering, my first X-Men comic was Uncanny #157