I played American Legion ball starting when I was 14. But I didn't catch until I was 17. I was 75-3 as a high school pitcher, but it was like everybody knew that I was supposed to be a catcher. When the scouts would come around, and I was pitching, they'd make me take infield practice so the scouts could watch me throw.
The first comic book I ever read was an issue of 'Legion of Super-Heroes' where the earth was surrounded by all of these chains. I remember the cover; I got it at a birthday party.
As a kid, I always wanted to be lots of things. I was a Walter Mitty type. I wanted to be in the French Foreign Legion, a detective, a doctor, a test pilot with a scarf, a fisherman who hauled in a tremendous marlin after a 12-hour fight.
'The Stars are Legion' is part space opera, part thriller, about two warring families battling it out for control over a legion of organic starships.
I went to Washington, D.C, for the first time my senior year as part of Girls Nation, put on by the American Legion Auxiliary, which sends high school students to D.C. to form a pretend federal government. There was an energy about the city that made me feel like I just had to come back there.
It was a fear we had when we started 'Legion,' that there were too many comic-book series out there, and how do you stand out. Our mandate always is to make something different in feel and tone. You try to avoid someone thinking, 'Gee, I've seen this before.'
The cinematic universe will not worry about 'Legion.' They will not worry about these TV worlds at all.
I love to say that what's great about 'Legion' is that if you haven't read a comic book and you haven't seen an 'X-Men' movie, you can come in and understand it - and this can be your comic.
Conservatives who decried Trump's rise (and those who scoffed at his chances of winning a single primary were legion) are the same 'purist' boxing snobs who could never grasp the popularity - and populist legitimacy - of wrestling.
Pros in state capitals across the country and inside the Beltway might be more skeptical, but they're still vulnerable. They should be on vigilant watch for Sacha Baron Cohen and a legion of his imitators.
