Adventure Comics #524

Nel progettare il look dei nuovi membri della Legion Academy, protagonisti del serial iniziato a febbraio sul #523 di “Adventure Comics”, il penciler Phil Jimenez ha saputo dimostrare un gusto del design davvero notevole, degno della mano di un grande stilista.
Se n’è accorta anche Vaneta Rogers di Newsarama, che ha intervistato l’artista su questo aspetto chiave del suo attuale impegno legionario. Di seguito, ecco una sintesi dell’interessante colloquio, che è possibile leggere per intero a questo link:

Newsarama: Phil, how involved were you in the creation of the new Legion Academy?

Phil Jimenez: When I received the script for Legion #6, there were several characters in the new Legion Academy, but they were essentially just names and powers, with a few suggestions for backgrounds. I had the opportunity to run with them, because they were new. I changed their backgrounds a little bit as well.

Nrama: How did you approach their costumes and overall design? Was it more about giving them a modern spin, or honoring the established look of the Legion? Or was it both?

Jimenez: A little bit of both. I tend to be really inspired by fashion, particularly European fashion, couture fashion. I think in designing costumes, particularly for the future, two things occurred: First, I used the costume sensibility that existed previously, the one established by Mike Grell and later elaborated on and transformed by Keith Giffen. Then I used fashion to sort of tweak the costumes to make them look, I’d like to say, a little bit more “hip.”

Nrama: So when you came up with the designs for the new characters, you had specific colors assigned to each of them?

Jimenez: Oh, yeah. That’s a design thing. If I have a certain amount of characters, I want to be very, very careful that there aren’t too many with the same color palette and that the colors themselves bring out some quality of the character.

Nrama: Are there any of the supporting characters that really stand out to you, with the way you designed them?

Jimenez: There are old time Legion characters, like Duplicate Girl and her husband Bouncing Boy, who are teachers at the Academy. And we get to play with them a lot. I’ve really, really grown to like them, especially a character like Bouncing Boy who is kind of absurd, but when you draw him and really play with him, he’s actually a really terrific mentor character. Part of it is because he does seem so absurd and yet he’s so even-keeled.

We’re also going to address a little bit of what happened with the other Academy members, including Power Boy, and Lamprey, and Nightwind, and they actually have interesting stories, because they’ve been with the Academy for years and they’re finally starting to realize they’re probably never going to be Legionnaires.

I think people can relate to being in school and having things you’ve always wanted to do, and then you realize it’s probably not going to happen. You’re not going to get that dream job. What do you do and where do you focus those energies? What happens to kids who dream about being Legion superheroes and they realize they never will be Legion superheroes? When you have to adjust your dreams, how do you do that? Where do you begin?