UNCANNY X-FORCE

[snickfic]

I'm excited to have found this comm! I hope it's cool if I link to this post I just made on my journal: Why I love Remender's Uncanny X-Force. I would love to talk another person or two into reading it. :D

LAR GAND: recommended reading list

[taichara]

Lar Gand -- as Mon-El, Valor, M'onel, and so on -- has always been one of my favorite Superman- and LSH-associated characters. Regardless of the exact form of his background and just how he winds up in the straits he's in prior to Legion membership, his personality stays steady, and it's that personality I find appealing: as selfless as Superman, but with a push to explore and a peculiar combination of naivety and snark. Some of that gives way to a -- not darker, but more shadowed -- undertone that deepens after his stint in the Phantom Zone (or equivalent). Lar is more solitary than Clark by his LSH years, and he's marked by what he's experienced. All one thousand years of it.

The character can also be a bit tricky to nail down in suggested reads for earlier material, because he's always been very much a secondary character in the mythos despite his importance to Superboy/man. After the post-COIE order from editorial to remove all Superman mythos from the Legion, Lar gets more development as the replacement goldfish inspiration of the LSH, and as Valor, Seeder of Worlds, is the foundation for the United Planets (and in post-Zero Hour continuity, worshiped).

Since (especially as pre-v4 Mon-El) Lar pops up anywhere and everywhere, gets a scene or two and then wanders off, this is just a sampler and, yes, it skirts around the pre-v4/pre-Crisis On Infinite Earths version because there's just so much of it and all scattered around. That, and of two prominent stories off the top of my head, one was so out of character Mon-El was later retconned to have been possessed at the the time, and the other? Well, the other is listed here.

Hope these are helpful, and I'm happy to field any questions including "what is up with all these other weirdos" X3~

( some sample recommendations )

These are just samples, of course -- Mon-El has several smaller stints of story in post-IC Legion of Super-Heroes v5, for example -- but it's a decent working overview, I think ~

[Series Rec] THE MAXX

[anarchicq]

*Violently hammers fist into palm with each word* I will take every chance I get to recommend Sam Kieth's THE MAXX to anyone who will listen!

WARNING: This comic deals with triggering subjects and delves into violence quite a bit! Animal death is a plot-point. You have been warned!

You might remember a late 90's cartoon on MTV (Or YTV here in Canada) called THE MAXX, about a big purple homeless guy who lived in a box in the alley and traveled between the real world and the subconscious.

What you may not know is that it was adapted pretty darn faithfully from a comic book series that ran for about 35 issues. The cartoon pulled from the first dozen episodes, and changed the ending, and a few crossovers were changed, but otherwise the animated mini-series was spot on.

THE MAXX is the creation of Sam Kieth, the original artist of Neal Gaiman's SANDMAN and character designer of Morpheus. It was co-written by Bill Messner-Loebs and it was helped along by Alan Moore for one issue.
( THE MAXX is a subversion of the super-hero genre )

If you want something more surreal and thoughtful, subversive and satirical that wasn't seen a lot in the 90's, I urge you to hunt down THE MAXX and give it a try. The art is beautiful, the story's intriguing and the run is short so you can't get lost.

Recommended Reading

• Darker Image (First real appearance)
• The Maxx #1-35
• Gen 13/The Maxx #1 (one shot)
• Batman/The Maxx: Arkham Dreams (5 part mini-series)