Baltimore Comic Con 2018

So today I attended Baltimore Comic Con.  I was excited because I hadn't been to a Con in 18 years (due to laziness mostly).  Baltimore is mostly a comic oriented event so a fair amount of creators and studios. Both Paul Levitz and Mark Waid were going to be there, probably 2 of the most well known Legion of Superheroes writers and they were both going to be a panel discussion on Team Building.  Bascially, how to build a superteam.  The panel was being moderated by Bob Greenberger with Denny O'Neill and Ron Marz.  Denny was there for his JLA contributions and I totally had forgotten that Ron worked on Stormwatch pre-Wildstorm.  Well, I found out a couple of days ago that Levitz had cancelled.  Bummer!  He must have known I would be there so he cancelled.  Instead, they had John Ostrander on the panel, known for Suicide Squad, so they really had a good mix of team books represented.  It was  a pretty interesting panel, though Denny could get off topic a lot.  Mark noted that he was a big fan of the Legion.  

So there were some interesting takeaways:

Denny noted that DC totally wanted Claremont's secret to success of the X-Men. 

Denny and Mark both noted that having teams of your most powerful heroes, makes it difficult to create credible threats.  

Mark noted that New Teen Titans was done right, because you had a mix of old and new, characters that were mystical, alien, misfits, with different abilities. Mark commented that Wolfman/Perez brought the Marvel way of teams to DC.   Ron noted that on Stormwatch, he basically was handed a roster of characters who could all fly and shoot energy blasts which made it difficult. 

John Ostrander liked writing a bunch of 2nd tier characters for Suicide Squad because he could kill them off.  He could mix hero and villain and keep rotating in character. 

Ron noted that even in a solo book, they do become a bit of a team book when you factor in all the supporting characters. 

They did digress a bit in how they wrote multiple characters.

Ron said it was the hardest thing he had to do.

Denny also found it difficult at times.

Mark admitted to using toys, placemarkers, etc in order to rotate the use of characters, so he would not forget anyone. 

Both Mark and Denny said Paul was a master of juggling multiple characters in his method of plotting pages.

All creators stated all writers should find the method that works best for them, because it's not the same.  Each needs to discover their own formula.  Denny noted his exposition was based on so many pages of plot.

Denny and Mark both agreed that plot was the most important in a team book.  It is difficult to tell a story from each character's POV.  

Denny stated that even though a writer can't do much development with a character like Batman in a team book, a writer can still control the reactions of various teammates to Batman.  Mark mentioned his Tower of Babel story in JLA.  

Mark noted that the Legion has some of the most vocal fan bases.  He was also a fan.

Unfortunately, there was only time for 2 audience questions.  The one audience members noted 7 seemed to be the magical number for team members.  The panel pretty much agreed that it seems to be an unstated rule but generally felt it helped to have odd numbers in the teams.  

So I didn't get to ask any questions.  I went to restroom after the panel and evidently, Mark Waid also came in.  So like any good stalker, I waited till he came out to ask him about the Legion.  

I said I was a long time reader of the Legion and was there for both of his runs.  I said it's been 5 years and no Legion book.  I asked if he had any insight.  The answer was disheartening.  He said that the publisher basically is not interested in the Legion anymore.  He said it rests on a few people to use them, noting that Geoff Johns was one of their biggest advocates.  He had to run, so I met him at his table later with an issues of Supergirl and the LSH that I had him sign.  He noted that enjoyed writing Supergirl in the Legion.  

So it sounds like it's going to take a Super-fan with some pull at DC in order to get the Legion back in publication.   It sounds like it's all up to Geoff now.  

This was one of my pick-ups at the Con as well.