Fabian Nicieza parla di “Legion Lost”… e della neo-continuity DC

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Fabian Nicieza

Fabian Nicieza

La collana partirà solo fra tre mesi, ma Fabian Nicieza, genitore assieme a Pete Woods della futura “Legion Lost” (vol. II), ha già iniziato il consueto tour promozionale di interviste in lungo e in largo per i maggiori siti di settore d’oltreoceano.
Prima tappa Newsarama, ai cui redattori l’autore di “Red Robin” ha spiegato alcuni retroscena della serie. ATTENZIONE AGLI SPOILER!

Newsarama: Fabian, what interested you about doing a Legion comic? How did you hear about it, and why did you want this comic in particular?

Fabian Nicieza: The gosh-darned honest truth is that I was planning on saying “No” to whatever they offered. […] Between the IP management, consulting and development work I do with Starlightrunner Entertainment and being a co-founder/CCO for a kids sports-themed virtual world called FunGoPlay […], I seem to have a whole lot going on in my non-comics life.

[…] [Until] they offered me Legion Lost. And I was going to say no, I really was, but they said “Wildfire and Dawnstar and Timber Wolf,” and they kept talking, but I wasn’t listening too much because they named three of my favorite Legionnaires and I was thinking about them. Then I heard “trapped in our present day, you tell us why,” and then I looked around to see if I could get another beer… and I think they knew they had me, but I still tried to play it coy.

[…] Legion Lost is not exactly the Legion of Super-Heroes book at all. Their emphasis is on the word “Legion” while our emphasis is on the word “Lost”.
[The premise of the story is that the] characters come back in time to our present day in order to stop a future terrorist from ravaging Earth. His attempt to do so in their time failed, and he was sent into the past (which might have been the Legionnaires fault).
And even if the Lost succeed in stopping him, they might not be able to return home for fear of carrying a deadly pathogen back with them.

[…] So far, the book is this wonderful opening combination of desperation, confusion, sweat and a complete, unexpected inability to access all the common tropes the Legion have used when they’ve come to the past before. I guarantee this won’t be “business as usual” for the group in our time period.

Lo sceneggiatore ha inoltre fornito ulteriori informazioni sul progetto attraverso una sessione in progress di “Q & A” con gli utenti della message board ufficiale DC. Di seguito ho raccolto alcune sue risposte tratte da messaggi diversi, riordinandole in maniera tale che formassero un discorso coerente e compiuto:

The series takes place in the present day continuity. Of course, eventually, they will interact with established DCU characters and concepts.

I didn’t pick the title, but it’s the title of the book.
I would imagine DC’s thinking was that the Legion Lost series was 10 years ago, and there has been enough Legion water under the bridge (what does 10 years equal to the average Legion run, like 6 reboots? :-) ). The title has strong connections to a great story, but as importantly, strong connotations and evocations. It sort of trips off the tongue with just the right sense of drama.
And it fits the tone of the book.

I think maybe people have to get off the word “LOST” a little bit — they are taking the concept too literally. The book could just as easily have been called TRAPPED or PRISONERS OF TIME or THE CONTAGIOUS.
They are not Lost as in “they can’t find their way home,” they are Lost as in “they can’t go home again and therefore must create a new life in a world they can’t stand (and can’t stand them!).
To give you an idea of the complete LACK of pressure towards that, my original outline for the first arc included interaction with several present day DCU characters and editorial preferred not to do that too soon into the book’s run. We talked it all through and came out of the discussion with a much stronger definition of how the series would develop.

True conflict — interpersonal and intrapersonal — and therefore true drama, comes when characters are forced to question the very foundation of everything they believe in. Or forced to contradict their nature not for themselves, but for the greater good.
What does longterm desperation, uncertainty, alienation and isolation do to people who are not used to being treated as pariahs?
Those topics (and plenty more) are part of what makes this title both a Legion title and in some ways not a Legion title — and that’s why I said what I said.
A real heroic arc would be for these characters to start the series as Legion, slowly succumb to being Lost and then, hopefully… find their way through that desolation to become Legion again.
But that’s not a 12 issue cycle. If done right, with care and respect to the characters and the strength of sequential storytelling, it will hopefully be a 5 or 6 hundred issue cycle. :-)
Just kidding. Maybe I can do it in 100 issues…

Superboy (vol.V) #1

Superboy (vol.V) #1

Sono io, o l’idea dietro a “Legion Lost” somiglia terribilmente alla sfortunata storyline di Karate Kid apparsa sulle pagine di “Countdown to Final Crisis”?

A proposito di storie del passato, Nicieza ha rilasciato un’intervista anche al sito Comic Book Resources, nella quale oltre a ribadire i concetti di cui sopra ha chiarito un importante ed inedito dettaglio riguardo all’impatto del re-imaging  post-Flashpoint sulla continuity legionaria:

I honestly didn’t take this as a reboot. Other than tweaking the costumes and fudging their ages a bit so they’re a little younger, I approached this entire title as if the Legion team was going on a mission between issues #12 and #13 of their title and the shit hits the fan, creating “Legion Lost” #1.

Quest’ultima interessante affermazione fa il paio con le parole che Scott Lobdell – storico collaboratore proprio di Nicieza ai tempi in cui, quasi due decenni fa, i due erano alla guida delle testate mutanti della Marvel – ha comunicato a Bleeding Cool riguardo al rilancio di “Teen Titans” e “Superboy”:

[…] if you’ve been reading the characters for the past 15 or 20 years you’ll be surprised to discover most of what you know about the character is there… just tweaked.

[…] Superboy comes to Teen Titans and his own series with a lot of his DC history in place. He still showed up shortly after the Death of Superman, he is still the clone of Superman and Lex Luthor. How we reconcile his past with the opening issues of Teen Titans and Superboy? That, I’m afraid, has to remain vague for now.

In sostanza, la portata del reboot cui i personaggi del DC Universe andranno incontro il prossimo settembre pare sgonfiarsi ogni giorno che passa. Nel nuovo mondo, ad esempio, Superman avrà già affrontato storiche avventure come quella della sua morte e resurrezione, e di conseguenza le origini di character come Superboy risulteranno pressoché invariate rispetto ad oggi.
Sono certo che la cosa susciterà un sospiro di sollievo in moltissimi fan. I quali, chissà, a questo punto potranno magari iniziare a concentrarsi su quella che sarà la qualità in sè delle storie, al di là di quanto queste andranno a modificare l’album delle memorie di supertizio, batcaio o wonder sempronio.

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