Spurrier's "X-Men Legacy" is Legion

[CBR News]

CBR News spoke to writer Simon Spurrier about relaunching "X-Men Legacy" with Tan Eng Huat in November and the story of Professor X's immensely powerful son David Haller AKA Legion.


Full article here.

[graffiX]

Sounds...interesting. I have never been a fan of Legion, but this might make it to issue #12. We'll see.

Good news is sounds like the Avengers won't be infecting this book.

[Mister Jerusalem]

Now that we have a bit more description on the book, it seems that Chuck does not have to be dead for the premise of the book to work.

[alf_to_the_rescue]

This still sounds wonderful, even if he can't answer a lot yet.

[CMBMOOL]

Legion vs the Scarlet Witch...now there's fight worth writing an event about.

[Liam_67]

From the start, Legion has always been a character that had storyline potential. As I understood it, Charles Xavier and Legion were not in contact with one another for the majority of David Haller's life. Admit to being a bit fuzzy on whether or not Xavier even knew he had a kid. Wonder if David knew and how he felt growing up hearing about his father? Powerful conflicting emotional stuff ~ admiring an absentee father.

I do remember that David's from Israel. Wonder how that ~ if any ~ plays into his sense of self. A chat with Kitty Pryde could be used to highlight similarities/dis-similarities on Jewish identity. Although David's major priorities are getting himself under a semblance of control before entertaining any sense of politics. Still, you have to wonder if there's someone at home who thinks David's abilities should be directed elsewhere?

[Sissel]

I'm really excited for this series. Simon Spurrier has written some crazy stories and I can't wait to see how he'll write David's thoughts.

[.A²]

I grow more excited about this book with every interview. This is truly a beacon of hope in the darkness of Marvel Now!.

So. There's a golden age mystic. There's a string of recognizable faces. There's a pair of levitating eyeballs, a killer on the loose, a delve into some pretty grand histories, some mountain-based action, a bloody enormous crow, a neon city, a miniature Cthulu-monster with ten mouths, a seething steampunk correctional facility, a liberal dollop of chaos theory, a manipulative bastard, a girl with no tear ducts crying blood, several skull-shatteringly amazing explodo fights, an insane Russian and something very, very, very nasty scuttling about in the darkness.

Sophie Cuckoo, Doug Ramsey, Layla Miller, Sage and Magik. Excellent supporting cast.

[SoupStainedTie]

I grow more excited about this book with every interview. This is truly a beacon of hope in the darkness of Marvel Now!.

Same. I've gone from "Really?" to "Eh..maybe" to "Definitely trying issue 1 at least" to "Wow, can't wait."

[MartinRedmond]

a bloody enormous crow,

Sophie Cuckoo

lol I had forgoten.

[Psycwave]

Yes! I'm really ecstatic about this book. Legion is one of my faves and Spurrier's interviews are just really keeping me up.

[Disco_Magic]

Kudos to Marvel for trying something out of the box with this one. But with such a C-List character, not sure too many people will care enough at the outset to keep it going for more than a year.

[Master of Sound]

How can people say it sounds wonderful when he is not telling anything about Legion's state of mind, support cast, villains, personalities and what it will be about>? Frankly he basicly tells us nothing new and doesn't warm me up for it at all.

[Basterdshark]

Buy #1 and see what its like? Why not. Hardly obligated to purchase the rest. Here's wishing (for no other reason other than personal satisfaction) that this mysterious place of healing and learning is a Cable-sanctioned reinvigorated Tian, instead of that Jean Grey prep school.

[Rivka]

The book sounds quite good. I love that Marvel is taking the chance with this rather obscure character. Like others have said, thinking outside the box here.

Good interview, too.

But it seems almost certain Xavier is getting killed off. Something about David being defined by his father his whole life (not entirely true) and now having to go "solo." I am not happy with Xavier being taken out. And how can Marvel do this, with the X-Men First Class sequel coming in 2014, focusing on Xavier vs. Magneto?

Some nitpicks:

David didn't even know who his father was, for most of his life. Gabrielle Haller kept it a secret. He only became obsessed with his daddy once he found out Charlie was his daddy, during the early New Mutants days.

And not one mention of Gabby Haller? Really? Like David doesn't have MOMMY issues too? He's not on his own, either, since his mother is still alive. Gabrielle Haller is a Holocaust survivor. She is from the Netherlands, and was sent to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944, and sent back to Buchenwald later that same year. She was only 10 years old and very beautiful and was sexually abused by Baron von Strucker at Buchenwald. He then implanted into her mind the map to Hydra's hidden gold, to be reclaimed years later. He developed a mix of chemicals -- serum and gas -- that would put him in suspended animation, and gave the same to Haller. We first meet Gabrielle Haller in UNCANNY #161, the story of Xavier's first meeting with Magnus in Israel. She's still young-looking but comatose, sitting rigidly, eyes open, in the same psychiatric hospital in Haifa where Magnus works as a volunteer. Xavier uses his powers to wake her up and restore her sanity, but this alerts Hydra and they kidnap her to retrieve their gold. Xavier and Magnus team up to rescue Gabby, but Magnus takes a look at that Nazi gold (much of which was taken from his people during the war) and flies off with it. Xavier meanwhile stays in Israel a while longer, and is Gabriel Haller's lover.

Haller doesn't tell Xavier she's pregnant. She gives birth without telling him. She keeps David a secret from Xavier, and Xavier a secret from David for years. David meanwhile is one of the most powerful psi talents on the planet, and at an early age, his mind begins to unravel. He develops severe DID (dissociative identity disorder) and splits into three major personalities. All the time David is growing up, Gabrielle is pursuing her own career in law, then politics, and becomes the Israeli ambassador to the UK. She doesn't have much time for David, nor does she spend much time with him. His only mentor -- David Shomron the psychiatrist who treated her, and is trying to help David -- is killed in front of David when he's still a kid. (Claremont later retconned things a little to say Shomron had actually married Haller, if I remember correctly, so that made him young David's step-father as well as doctor.)

Haller's response to David's mutancy, to David's mental troubles reaching critical mass, is to dump the boy on Moira MacTaggert, and swear Moira to keep her secret about Xavier being David's father.

Gabby is a seriously interesting, 3-dimensional character, and her relationships to Xavier (she's totally loyal to him now and tells him everything) and Magneto (she hates him after he went psycho again AFTER she got him acquitted in the World Court -- "Trial of Magneto" UNCANNY #200) has affected how these characters interact with David, too. And I don't like always making MOMMY the issue, like so many psychoanalysts try to do, but in this case, Gabby's relationship to her only son is seriously important to David's character.