The Legion of Night #1

The Legion of The Night #1

by Steve Gerber (Script), Scott Williams (Inks), Whilce Portacio (Pencils)

Part I of II.

Genres: Comics

52 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Steve Gerber graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in communications and took a job in advertising. To keep himself sane, he wrote bizarre short stories such as "Elves Against Hitler," "Conversion in a Terminal Subway," and "...And the Birds Hummed Dirges!" He noticed acquaintance Roy Thomas working at Marvel, and Thomas sent him Marvel's standard writing test, dialoguing Daredevil art. He was soon made a regular on Daredevil and Sub-Mariner, and the newly created Man-Thing, the latter of which pegged him as having a strong personal style--intellectual, introspective, and literary. In one issue, he introduced an anthropomorphic duck into a horror fantasy, because he wanted something weird and incongruous, and Thomas made the character, named for Gerber's childhood friend Howard, fall to his apparent death in the following issue. Fans were outraged, and the character was revived in a new and deeply personal series. Gerber said in interview that the joke of Howard the Duck is that "there is no joke." The series was existential and dealt with the necessities of life, such as finding employment to pay the rent. Such unusual fare for comicbooks also informed his writing on The Defenders. Other works included Morbius, the Lving Vampire, The Son of Satan, Tales of the Zombie, The Living Mummy, Marvel Two-in-One, Guardians of the Galaxy, Shanna the She-Devil, and Crazy Magazine for Marvel, and Mister Miracle, Metal Men, The Phantom Zone , and The Immortal Doctor Fate for DC. Gerber eventually lost a lawsuit for control of Howard the Duck when he was defending artist Gene Colan's claim of delayed paychecks for the series, which was less important to him personally because he had a staff job and Colan did not.

He left comics for animation in the early 1980s, working mainly with Ruby-Spears, creating Thundarr the Barbarian with Alex Toth and Jack Kirby and episodes of The Puppy's Further Adventures, and Marvel Productions, where he was story editor on multiple Marvel series including Dungeons & Dragons, G.I. Joe, and The Transformers. He continued to dabble in comics, mainly for Eclipse, including the graphic novel Stewart the Rat, the two-part horror story "Role Model: Caring, Sharing, and Helping Others," and the seven-issue Destroyer Duck with Jack Kirby, which began as a fundraiser for Gerber's lawsuit.

In the early 1990s, he returned to Marvel with Foolkiller, a ten-issue limited series featuring a new version of a villain he had used in The Man-Thing and Omega the Unknown, who communicated with a previous version of the character through internet bulletin boards. An early internet adopter himself, he wrote two chapters of BBSs for Dummies with Beth Woods Slick, with whom he also wrote the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "Contagion." During this period, he also wrote The Sensational She-Hulk and Cloak and Dagger for Marvel, Cybernary and WildC.A.T.s for Image, and Sludge and Exiles for the writer-driven Malibu Ultraverse, and Nevada for DC's mature readers Vertigo line.

In 2002, he returned to the Howard the Duck character for Marvel's mature readers MAX line, and for DC created Hard Time with Mary Skrenes, with whom he had co-created the cult hit Omega the Unknown for Marvel. Their ending for Omega the Unknown remains a secret that Skrenes plans to take to the grave if Marvel refuses to publish it. Suffering from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis ("idiopathic" meaning of unknown origin despite having been a heavy smoker much of his life), he was on a waiting list for a double lung transplant. His final work was the Doctor Fate story arc, "More Pain Comics," for DC Comics'

Reviews

[Gianfranco Mancini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Storyline was a bad mess, but it had some good ideas, Portacio was at his best, and turning Fin Fang Foom into dreaming Cthulhu was a real nice touch.

[Lightwhisper · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit better than the first part, still a bit disapointing for me.

[Devero · Rating 3 out of 5]

La trama di questa seconda parte mi ha ricordato un racconto di Zelazny, in cui dei draghi addormentati sognano il mondo ed il tempo, Strada senza fine in pratica cercando di governarlo.
Il viaggio nel sogno del drago che è il nostro mondo ha alla base alcune interessanti idee, ma rispetto al primo albo, nel quale le interazioni tra i protagonisti sono limitate, qui c'è più azione e alcuni degli enigmi vengono risolti, altri no, e porte lasciate aperte per dei seguiti.
Seguiti che, a quel che mi risulta, non ci sono mai stati.
Ritengo ancora che volesse essere una prova Marvel per vedere se fosse possibile creare un propria linea Vertigo. Steve Gerber, visto il suo lavoro su Man-Thing (che qui fa un cameo, nella mente dell'addormentata Jennifer) poteva essere l'autore giusto ma evidentemente o non ha venduto oppure chi era a capo del progetto non ci ha creduto a sufficienza.

Quando la Marvel tornerà ai suoi personaggi horror, di qui a poco, cercherà di trasformarli sempre in super eroi. A volte snaturandoli anche pesantemente.

2 stelle e mezza per questa seconda parte.

[Jerry · Rating 2 out of 5]

It turns out there were some neat ideas in this story about the re-release of Fin-Fang-Foom, often treated (somewhat justifiably) as a joke in Marvel’s canon. The basic idea, which was introduced, though not explained, on the very last page of The Legion of Night, Part 1, is that the dragon was created to take the world into its dream; now that it has awakened, the world is a dream of the dragon; whoever controls the dragon controls the world. This is pretty cool, except that what this actually means for the world is completely undeveloped.

This is really too bad, as this series resurrects several secondary Gerber characters; there’s also a cameo by another Gerber creation, the Man-Thing, who appears to have followed a cosmic evolution similar to that of DC’s Swamp Thing. But there’s so little space that nobody gets enough time to matter.

This two-part series seems to be a setup for a Legion of Night series; if it happened, I’m unaware of it, and am not motivated to look for it.

[Matt Graupman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I gave the first half of this two-part series a pretty lackluster review, noting that the second part had a lot of heavy lifting to do to make the story anywhere near coherent, and this book didn’t disappoint- Oh wait, it COMPLETELY disappointed me. Yeesh. The two halves of “The Legion Of Night” seemed to be hinting at an ongoing series for the main characters - sort of a metaphysical Avengers - but, as far as I can tell, that never came to fruition. Good thing. The protagonists were all instantly forgettable (seriously, I just read this book and I can’t recall a single character’s name), Steve Gerber’s writing was a bunch of incomprehensible dreamworld gobbledegook, and Whilce Portacio’s normally steady artwork was muddy and chaotic. What a letdown.

[Nicolo · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

Easily 3.5 stars for the art alone. Portacio showed how good he was in drawing a horror comic, and Williams proved to be his best inker during this era. The best proof for this superb collaboration was the cover on part one of this story.

The cover has an illustration of a mysterious dragon man with a scantily clad lady beside it. It sold this book.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I tended to relish anything Steve Gerber wrote, so I was tickled when I found this old 2 part GN. Let's just say I was disappointed. Fin Fan Foom was a poor idea to begin with and remains so after these books. There is a reason this series went nowhere!

[Egghead · Rating 2 out of 5]

violent cult wants
to resurrect fin fang foom
grogg busy that week