My first DC purchase for the year.
This volume covers the period from 1973 to 1976. Dave Cockrum did the pencils in the early 1970s and redesigned the Legion's costumes, then the young Mike Grell took over. Cary Bates, longtime DC stalwart, and Jim Shooter (who wrote a few Legion stories as a teen in the 1960s) wrote most of the stories. It's in this period that the Legion became the team fans know and love. The series reached a peak in the 1970s and 1980s and went downhill after that, possibly because DC scrapped Superboy from the continuity after Crisis-, and Superboy does appear in these stories a lot.
Much of the artwork - by Grell - is slapdash and immature (although it does get better). This isn't to say that it isn't great. Grell's art always has a slick veneer, ideal for science fiction, and like Cockrum, he draws lovely women.
Despite the seventies hairstyles (and the influence of seventies fashion), the book will strike many readers as surprisingly modern. Much of it could have been written yesterday. Because of the plenitude of women characters, the romances, the occasional teen (or young adult angst), the Legion would make a great live action series for teens. Are you listening, DC?
Mark Hootsen, signing off.
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