The Legion Is Back!

Tags

adventure, comics, heroes, pulp, science fiction, tardis, the doctor, time travel

After what seems like forever, I feel like I’ve finally hit on the final incarnation of the Legion. I am not sure how many books will be released but I worked on this series in comics for ten years, so there are at least a dozen issues already plotted out that just need to be written up and expanded as novellas.

Think of them as a cross between pulp adventures and science fiction short stories. The purpose of the Legion was never to just do superhero adventures, but to take the superhero genre into the future. Unlike the more popular superhero brands, the Legion would grow, expand and live in their world, not just in the panels on the page. As a prose novel, the team’s adventures will go beyond anything you’ve ever read in comics (except for perhaps those bizarre Grant Morrison and Brandon Graham books).

All the characters will be updated and modernized, leaving behind a lot of the “conventions” of comics and the limitations of what an artist can do. Only the bad guys wear capes. In other words the simple Canadian team of superheroes will expand globally and then they will launch out into space, into multiple dimension and have a few guest stars and cross-overs during their adventures.

The first arc is entitled “Magic” and will introduce you to a world of newly born super-beings and the sudden re-appearance of magic into the world. During the 19th century the concentration of mystical energy running through the planet was the highest it had been since the Dark Ages. Abraxas Ro, the greatest wizard of the era, knew that if mankind was to evolve, if they were to embrace their destiny, they needed to accept and embrace technology, not magic. Humanity needed a peaceful respite from the constant monsters and gods that seemed to plague them since the dawn of history. Between Earth and the realms of the supernatural was a battlefield known as Elysium. Elysium was the soil upon which the world tree Yggdrasil grew, a nexus of multiple planes of existence where the beings who called themselves “gods” were known to reside. Abraxas Ro knew if he could harness the full power of the Earth at its peak on New Years Eve, 1899, that he could seal the door between Earth and Elysium, locking out the other worlds.

Abraxas Ro brought together Edgar Case, Harry Houdini, Alestair Crowley and a young Sioux Indian boy-shaman, the last of his bloodline. The gods took insult to Ro’s arrogance and formed and alliance to storm the gate, conquer Earth and enslave humanity once and for all. Loki, Zeus, Odin and Anubis brought their magic and their armies to the plains of Elysium but they found their own kind ready to stop them.

As Abraxas Ro closed the gate from the outside, Thor and Ulysses as well as a number of other deities held back the army until the gate was sealed. The magic explosion that followed killed Abraxas Ro and Thor was thought lost in the chaos. The Gods, who lived beyond human time and space, went back to their kingdoms, knowing they could patiently wait for the locks on the gate to crumble. The spell of Binding that Abraxas Ro used lasted exactly one hundred years, then it began to fall apart.

When you first meet the Legion, the gate has not yet opened but it will in future storylines. Dimensional nexus points have already begun to appear, in the first book a Skinwalker awakens from his sleep to kill again and a displaced group of Soviet soldiers, armed with two incredibly powerful Soviet super-humans suddenly appear from an alternate Earth.

After the first storyline, I’m going to get into some “fan fiction” territory, starting with a story entitled “THE ONCOMING STORM”.

A strange red police box appears in London and having no heroes of their own, the British turn to the Canadian Legion. While trying to solve the puzzle of the dangerous looking time device, they encounter a peculiar little man known as the Oncoming Storm, Dr. J. Smith.

After this light-hearted romp, things get serious. Flying sharks begin attacking people along the pacific rim, engraved with ancient sigils. Something has awakened in the Mariana Trench, something so evil that the dolphin people of Atlantis reveal themselves for the first time to the surface world in the hopes that they can unite and stop the greatest threat the Earth has ever known.

Finally, to top off the first year of the new Legion books, the team will pursue a powerful villain into a bottle dimension; a world that repeats the same span of time over and over and over. A world you might have seen before, created by the amazing Alan Moore. It is in this story, through a precise critique and re-imagining of the Watchmen, that you see where I am going with the Legion. By putting them in the masks of another world, you can hear the message more clearly that I am trying to send.

The Legion is really about kicking ass and bringing hope. Peace through war, the next step in superhuman evolution. These are not just men with super-human abilities, these are people with new thoughts, new opportunities and new lifestyles. In the Legion I take the stories of the past and use them to smash down the doors to the future.

Hopefully you guys will enjoy it.