Oui, la Légion des Superhéros va être à nouveau arrêtée par DC. Via MGK
La Légion des Superhéros, groupe à part dans son contexte de Science-Fiction, a une réputation de complexité. Cette image la place dans un piège dangereux depuis au moins vingt ans (le premier Reboot de 1994, une révision assez radicale en 2000, un second Reboot de 2004).
Soit elle tente de continuer ses anciennes histoires et ellle conserve alors sa réputation d'être incompréhensible en raison de ses douzaines de personnages (bien que les X-Men continuent d'être un succès en ayant encore plus de membres et de paradoxes temporels).
Soit elle tente de rompre avec son passé, ce qui a généralement pour effet de faire perdre plus d'anciens fans sans en attirer assez de nouveaux.
DC Comics ayant toujours oscillé dans ses stratégies, comme la tentative actuelle de néo-classicisme et de retour à la version pré-reboot a encore échoué, ils vont sans doute aller vers de nouveaux reboots pour 2014, comme tous les dix ans... En attendant, on parle d'une "Justice Legion" (pour capitaliser sur le succès de la Justice League).
(Bon, on ne leur demande pas nécessairement de conserver l'intégralité de la version classique comme la Légion des Super-animaux)
Je vais radoter et reexpliquer pouquoi la Légion est un peu à part dans les comics de superhéros.
La SF populaire américaine est née en partie avec John Carter (1912), humain normal qui devient un surhomme en étant plongé dans un autre monde exotique. Ce modèle fut imité dès la toute première bande-dessinée de science-fiction, Buck Rogers (nouvelle en 1928, bande-dessinée en 1929, il est envoyé dans un lointain Futur) ou Flash Gordon (1934, il part vers une lointaine Planète).
Superman (1938) est l'inversion de ce modèle de John Carter, avec un héros inhumain, anormal, plongé dans un environnement quotidien, banal. Le superhéros n'est plus un conquérant de l'Autre Monde, mais l'irruption de l'Autre Monde dans le nôtre. Le modèle profondément colonial de la SF (nous devons aller exploiter les autres mondes ou les "sauver") commence une crise. C'est Superman qui pourrait nous coloniser comme John Carter pacifiait les indigènes martiens, mais il se dévoue à la démocratie en crise contre l'idéologie du Surhomme.
La Légion des superhéros (1958 - mais il y a des précédents dans la SF de l'Âge d'Or comme les Lensmen, modèle du Green Lantern Corps, ou la Légion de l'Espace, tous les deux de 1934), qui se déroule au XXXe siècle, est la synthèse de ces deux modèles. Ce ne sont plus des humains auxquels on s'identifieraient, ni des personnages isolés dans un contexte normal, ce sont des héros inhumains dans un cadre exotique de science-fiction où c'est maintenant leurs super-humanité qui est devenue banale, d'où ce vertige où l'anormal devient le quotidien. Ce fut le premier comic-book de superhéros à insister sur cette distanciation totale avec tout environnement réaliste pour constituer son propre univers séparé.
Au fur et à mesure, tous les univers de superhéros (même Marvel, censé être un peu plus "réaliste" au départ) se sont écartés de notre réalité au point qu'on peut même se demander s'ils peuvent encore avoir vraiment une fonction de métaphore comme ils ont une tendance à devenir absorbés par leurs propres références internes. Mais dans le cas de la Légion, cette distance (temporelle) définissait le projet depuis le début. A chaque fois qu'ils veulent gommer cette distanciation en mettant les Légionnaires dans le Présent, on voit qu'ils n'ont pas compris la fonction même de leur comic.
Et une petite REDIFF (message du 21 Mai 2007) :
BECAUSE YOU DEMANDED IT!
THE CLASH OF THE MILLENIUM!!
THE CLASH OF THE MILLENIUM!!
THE LEGION OF SUPERHEROES
VS
Le PETIT PRINCE
Oui, je crois bien que Gim Allon (Colossal Boy/Leviathan) est en train de piétiner la Rose.
Tant mieux, ça lui fera les racines à cette pimbêche.
Qu'il essaye donc, ce monarque monadique, de demander à Lone Wolf de lui dessiner un mouton.
Princess Projectra ou Saturn Girl peuvent le noyer sous une illusion d'un océan d'ovidés. Chameleon peut devenir un Mouton Géant Norstrilien, et qu'il essaye donc d'apprivoiser ça.
Element Lad peut transformer tout son planétoïde en inertron pour qu'on comprenne enfin sa stabilité, et Starman pourrait même transformer cet astéroïde à la gravité ridicule en un Trou noir.
Ah, ah, ON RIT MOINS, Môssieur le Roitelet -Autoproclamé- Extraterrestre Horticole qui vient harceler nos aviateurs égarés de Sol III.
6 commentaires:
Legion of Space series
The story takes place in an era when humans have colonized the Solar System but dare not go farther, as the first extra-solar expedition to Barnard's Star failed and the survivors came back as babbling, grotesque, diseased madmen. They spoke of a gigantic planet, populated by ferocious animals and the single city left of the evil "Medusae". The Medusae bear a vague resemblance to jellyfish, but are actually elephant-sized, four-eyed, flying beings with hundreds of tentacles. The Medusae cannot speak and communicate with one another via a microwave code.
The Falstaff character is named Giles Habibula. He was once a criminal, and can open any lock ever made. In his youth he was called Giles The Ghost. Jay Kalam (Commander of The Legion) and Hal Samdu are the names of the other two warriors. In this story, these warriors of the 30th Century battle the Medusae, the alien race from the lone planet of Barnard's Star. The Legion itself is the military and police force of the Solar System after the overthrow of an empire called the Purple Hall that once ruled all humans.
In this novel, renegade Purple pretenders ally themselves with the Medusae as a means to regain their empire. But the Medusae, who are totally unlike humans in all ways, turn on the Purples, seeking to destroy all humans and move to the Solar System, as their own world, far older than Earth, is finally spiraling back into Barnard's Star. One of the Purples, John Ulnar, supports the Legion from the start, and he is the fourth great warrior. His enemy is the Purple pretender Eric Ulnar, who sought the Medusae out in the first place, seeking to become the next Emperor of The Sun.
The Medusae conquered the Moon, set up their bases there, and went on to attempt conquest of the Solar System. The Medusae had for eons used a reddish, artificial greenhouse gas to keep their dying world from freezing. The Medusae learned from the first human expedition to their world that the gas rots human flesh, and the Medusae use it as a potent chemical weapon, attempting ecological destruction by means of projectiles fired from the Moon. Their vast spaceships also have very effective plasma weapons, very similar to those the Romulans had in a Star Trek episode called Balance of Terror.
The Legion works also featured a force field called AKKA which can erase from the Universe any matter, of any size, anywhere, even a star or a planet. AKKA was a weapon of mass destruction and the secret of it was entrusted to a series of women. AKKA was used in the past to overthrow the Purple tyranny. It was also used to wipe out most of the Medusae, though they had tried to steal the secret. When they were wiped out, the Moon where they had established their base was erased out of existence. At the end of the story, John Ulnar falls in love with the keeper of AKKA, Aladoree Anthar, and marries her. Aladoree Anthar is described as a young woman with lustrous brown hair and gray eyes, beautiful as a goddess.
Jack Williamson next wrote The Cometeers which takes place twenty years after The Legion of Space in which the same characters battle another alien race, this one of different origin.
In this second tale, they fight The Cometeers who are an alien race of energy beings controlling a "comet" which is really a giant force field containing a swarm of planets populated by their slaves. The slave races are of flesh and blood, but none are remotely similar to humans. The Cometeers cannot be destroyed by AKKA, as they are incorporeal from the Universe's point of view and exist for the most part in an alternate reality. The ruling Cometeers feed on their slaves and literally absorb their souls, leaving disgusting, dying hulks in their wake. It is said that they do so, as they were once fleshly entities themselves of various species. Hence, the ruling Cometeers keep other intelligent beings as slaves and "cattle". They fear AKKA, though, as it can erase all their possessions.
They are defeated by the skills of Giles Habibula. Giles broke into a secret chamber guarded by complex locks and force fields that the incorporeal Cometeers could not penetrate. In it the ruler of the Cometeers had kept its own weapon of mass destruction, one that would cause the Cometeers to disintegrate. The ruling Cometeer kept this weapon to enforce its rule over the others of its kind. Once the Cometeers were destroyed, their slaves were ordered by the Legion to take the comet and leave the Solar System, and never return.
Another novel, One Against the Legion, tells of a Purple pretender who sets up a robotic base on a world over seventy light years from Earth, and tries to conquer the Solar System via matter transporter technology he has stolen. In this story robots are outlawed, as they are in Dune. The story also features Jay Kalam, lobbying to allow the New Cometeers to leave the Solar System in peace, as many people were demanding that AKKA be used to obliterate the departing swarm of planets once and for all.
In 1983, Williamson published a final Legion novel, The Queen of the Legion. Giles Habibula reappears in this final novel, which is set after the disbanding of the Legion.
Lensman series
The series begins with Triplanetary, beginning two billion years before the present time and continuing into the near future. The universe has no life-forms aside from the ancient Arisians, and few planets besides the Arisians' native world. The peaceful Arisians have foregone physical skills in order to develop contemplative mental power. The underlying assumption for this series, based on theories of stellar evolution extant at the time of the books' writing, is that planets form only rarely, and therefore our First and Second Galaxies, with their many billions of planets, are unique.
The Eddorians, a dictatorial, power-hungry race, come into our universe from an alien space-time continuum after observing that our galaxy and a sister galaxy (the Second Galaxy) are passing through each other. This will result in the formation of billions of planets and the development of life upon some of them. Dominance over these life forms would offer the Eddorians an opportunity to satisfy their lust for power and control.
Although the Eddorians have developed mental powers almost equal to those of the Arisians, they rely instead for the most part on physical power, which came to be exercised on their behalf by a hierarchy of underling races. They see the many races in the universe, with which the Arisians were intending to build a peaceful civilization, as fodder for their power-drive.
The Arisians detect the Eddorians' invasion of our universe and realize that they are both too evenly matched to destroy the other. The Eddorians do not detect the Arisians, who begin a covert breeding program on every world that can produce intelligent life, with particular emphasis on the four planets Earth (Tellus), Velantia III, Rigel IV, and Palain VII, in the hope of creating a race that is capable of destroying the Eddorians.
Triplanetary incorporates the early history of that breeding program on Earth, illustrated with the lives of several warriors and soldiers, from ancient times to the discovery of the first interstellar space drive. It adds an additional short novel (originally published with the Triplanetary name) which is transitional to the novel First Lensman. It details some of the interactions and natures of two distinct breeding lines, one bearing some variant of the name "Kinnison", and another distinguished by possessing "red-bronze-auburn hair and gold-flecked, tawny eyes". The two lines do not commingle until the Arisian breeding plan brings them together.
The second book, First Lensman, concerns the early formation of the Galactic Patrol and the first Lens, given to First Lensman Virgil Samms of "Tellus" (Earth). Samms and Roderick Kinnison are members of the two breeding lines and they are both natural leaders, intelligent, forceful, and capable. The Arisians make it known that if Samms, the head of the Triplanetary Service, visits the Arisian planetary system he will be given the tool he needs to build the Galactic Patrol. That tool is the Lens. The Arisians further promise him that no entity unworthy of the Lens will ever be permitted to wear it, but that he and his successors will have to discover for themselves most of its abilities.
The Lens gives its wearer a variety of mental capabilities, including those needed to enforce the law on alien planets, and to bridge the communication gap between different life-forms. It can provide mind-reading and telepathic abilities. It cannot be worn by anyone other than its owner, will kill any other wearer, and even a brief touch is extremely painful.
Using the Lens as a means to test mental qualities and identify individuals able to help him, Virgil Samms visits races and species in other star systems, recruiting the best of them and forming the nucleus of a Galactic Patrol. Their opponents are discovered to be a widespread civilization based on dominance hierarchies and using organized crime merged with crony capitalism to assume control of new planets.
The series contains some of the largest-scale space battles ever written. Entire worlds are almost casually destroyed. Huge fleets of spaceships fight bloody wars of attrition. Alien races of two galaxies sort themselves into the allied, Lens-bearing adherents of "Civilization" and the enemy "Boskone".
Centuries pass, and eventually the final generations of the breeding program are born. On each of the four "best" planets, a single individual realizes the limits of his Arisian training and perceives the need to return to seek "second stage" training, which it is later shown to include the ability to slay by mental force alone; a "sense of perception" which allows seeing by direct awareness without the use of the visual sense; the ability to control minds undetectably, including the ability to alter memories untraceably and imperceptibly; the ability to perfectly split attention in order to perform multiple tasks with simultaneous focus on each; and the ability to better integrate their minds for superior thinking.
As the breeding program nears its conclusion, humans are selected as the best choice; at the same time, the breeding programs of the other three planets are terminated, and their penultimates never meet their planned mates. Kimball Kinnison meets and marries the product of the complementary human breeding program, Clarissa MacDougall. She is a beautiful, curvaceous, red-haired nurse, who eventually becomes the first human female to receive her own Lens. Their children, a boy and two pairs of fraternal twin sisters, grow up to be the five Children of the Lens. In their breeding, "almost every strain of weakness in humanity is finally removed." They are born already possessing the powers taught to second-stage Lensmen. They are the only beings of Civilization ever to see Arisia as it truly is and the only individuals developed over all the existence of billions of years able finally to penetrate the Eddorians' defense screens.
After undergoing advanced training, they are described as "third-stage" Lensmen, transcending humanity with mental scope and perceptions impossible for any normal person. Although newly adult, they are now expected to be more competent than the Arisians and to develop their own techniques and abilities "about which we [the Arisians] know nothing".
The key discovery comes when they try mind-merging. They discover they can merge their minds to effectively form one mental entity called the Unit. The Arisians describe this as the "most nearly perfect creation the universe has ever seen" and state that they, who created it, are themselves almost entirely ignorant of its powers.
The Children of the Lens, together with the mental power of unknown millions of Lensmen of the Galactic Patrol, constitute the Arisians' intended means to destroy the Eddorians and make the universe safe for Civilization. The Galactic Patrol, summoned to work together in this way for the first time, contains billions of beings who in total can generate immense mental force. The Arisians add their own tremendous mental force to this. The Unit focuses the accumulated power onto one tiny point of the Eddorians' shields. The Eddorian shields are destroyed along with the Eddorian High Council. It is stated that this was the only thing the Arisians could not have done by themselves, but without its accomplishment the Eddorians would have eventually turned the tide and beaten the Arisians.
The Arisians remove themselves from the Cosmos in order to leave the Children of the Lens uninhibited in their future as the new guardians of Civilization.
La Légion des Super-Héros est une bande dessinée américaine appartenant à DC Comics racontant les aventures d'une équipe de super-héros au troisième millénaire. Elle est apparue pour la première fois en avril 1958 dans Adventure Comics # 247. Superman en est un des principaux éléments.
La Légion a été fondée au troisième millénaire par le philanthrope R.J.Brande. Elle réunit Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl et Lightning Lad sous une même bannière. Plus tard, Lightning Lad devint Live Wire, et de nombreux membres viennent grossir les rangs de la Légion, parmi lesquels Triade, Chameleon Boy, Apparition, Shrinking Violet ou encore Brainiac 5, Blok, WildFire et XS (cousine d'Impulse, membres des Teen Titans). Ensemble, ils assurent la sécurité des Planètes-Unies, évitent les guerres et apportent la prospérité.
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