Tuesday, November 15, 2016

EPISODE 253 - LEGENDS...30 YEARS LATER PART 1



Welcome, one and all, to a Views From The Longbox event!  Starting with this episode and going for at least two more I will be celebrating the 30th anniversary of the DC Comics crossover...Legends.  Legends is one of my favorite DC crossovers and I thought it would be fun to cover it here on the show but I wanted to do it right.  I wanted to do it justice.  So instead of simply covering the main series and paying lip service to the crossover issues I got together with the best and the brightest in the comic book podcasting realm to cover each and every main issue and crossover associated with Legends. 

 Some may call this insane or mad or a colossal waste of time but for me it was the only way to go.   

This time out I cover...



 Be sure to check out the links next to the names of my guests for this episode.  They all host or co-host fantastic shows that are well worth your time and attention.

Speaking of links I mentioned during my talk with Andy that he and I discussed Batman #400 on an episode of Bailey's Batman Podcast.  Click on this link to check that out if you are so inclined.

 A HUGE thank you to the people that took time out of their busy schedules to talk about Legends with me.  The only reason these episodes are as epic as they are is because I had a great group of  knowledgeable podcasters to talk to.  

 Next Time: Legends...30 Years Later Part 2!
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4 comments:

  1. Mark Baker-WrightNovember 16, 2016 at 11:53 AM

    When discussing Legends #1, Shag questioned Jenet Klyburn's judgement by praising Professor Stein as having been behind the Hudson Nuclear Power Plant, which as Shag rightly notes, blew up.

    But consider this: Stein's main purpose behind the Hudson Plant was to attempt to demonstrate a "safe" nuclear power plant. While that might be considered a failure because... well, it didn't exist for very long, the very fact that it *was* blown up, yet the surrounding area is not considered a radioactive wasteland, can easily be considered proof that Stein's claims of safety were sound. (The fact that Firestorm absorbed all of that radioactivity into himself need not be commonly known to the general populace)

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  2. UnknownNovember 16, 2016 at 2:52 PM

    This is quite an undertaking...on both sides! lol I'm sure it wasn't easy to put it all together to record, and if this episode alone is any indication, it's going to be a bit of work to get thru...but amazing work it will be! I covered the Blue Beetle crossovers on my blog a while back, and have always had great memories of Legends as a whole myself. I started collecting comics right after Crisis, so Legends provided many firsts; my first crossover "event", first introduction to the Legion (via the Cosmic Boy mini which I covered over at the Legion of Super-bloggers), my first "new" Justice League (I was just getting to know the Detroit League when they were offed), my introduction to the Suicide Squad...I could go on and on...

    Anyway, great stuff which I have to get back to listening to! Can't wait to hear the rest of your coverage!

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  3. Michael BaileyNovember 27, 2016 at 12:29 PM

    Mark: You bring up a great point. To the general public the process would look safe considering there wasn't a huge fallout cloud poisoning the area. So it was more a Three Mile Island and not a Chernobyl.

    Tim: Thanks for the kind words. Hopefully you made it through the first part and noticed the second part is a bit shorter. Also, thanks for the memories and I now need to check out your coverage of the Blue Beetle issues now that my coverage is done and dusted.

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  4. Ward Hill TerryDecember 28, 2016 at 2:03 PM

    Hi Michael! I've just listened to this episode, my first of Views from the Long Box. I've been exploring other podcasts since the end of Ryan Daly's Secret Origins 'cast, and finally go here! This was a terrific listen! (Glad I didn't have to go to work today!) I got to hear the secret origins of Ryan, and Chad, and Siskoid! There a couple of things I'd like to comment on. I'm a pre-Crisis DC fan. Legends pretty much marks the end of my regular monthly collecting. I really liked Earth-2 and the 30th century and a Superman who was Superboy and who could bend his knees and elbows. (Byrne's S-man almost never did. Also his Phantom Stranger bugged me. I prefer my Stranger to have his eyes in complete shadow, no white eyes.) A lot of the very fine folks doing these podcasts seem to have very little knowledge of the stories from the late 70s-early 80s. When you were discussing The Penguin, you claimed that he was in need of updating. I recall that Doug Moench had tried to do that in a couple of stories in 1984, but like other ideas and concepts, it was ignored or forgotten by subsequent writers. re: Captain Marvel; I was just listening to Rob Kelly's Treasury podcast and he was wondering aloud why Billy's lightning never caused any damage, and here in this Legends story it does! But, I say it can't. It is magic lightning. Non-flammable. So there. I didn't much like Legends. Even then it felt contrived and forced. One final thing re: Cosmic Boy. I really like Siskoid, at least as much as I know him as a blogger and podcaster, but I disagree with him about the use if the Challenger disaster. That panel has really stayed with me all these years. (That never happened! That never happened!) It is true that 1986 was already not matching up to the future envisioned in the early 60's, but that event really seemed to put a halt to "big progress." As the editorial future had now been changed as a result of The Crisis, it seemed appropriate that such a recognizable event could used so effectively in this story.
    Legends was meant to make sense of the new unified DC universe, but the timeline was still messed up at this point. Man of Steel, a contemporaneous book, was supposed to have taken place years earlier. But how many years? Did Superman go public before Batman? How old does that make Dick Grayson? What adventures had they had? Wonder Woman is brand new at the end of Legends. So are ALL Justice League Stories void? They never did satisfactorily settle on who or what Hawkman was. And yet, and yet...Mr. Terrific remained murdered. Even though there may never have been a Justice League satellite or JLA/JSA teamups!
    Okay. I'm done for now. I look forward to hearing the rest of this series and exploring some of your older 'casts!

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