The History of Interlac (and Legion fandom, too!)

Interlac: A Historical perspective

Way back in the Dark Ages, before the fax machine and home computers, when people still dreamed of the Beatles reuniting or, uneasily, of waking up to the sight of mushroom clouds in the distance, along came LEAPA. It was June 1976, nearly 22 years ago.

LEAPA stood for LEgion Amateur Press Association, a name that hardly anyone besides the man who coined it -the apa's founding father, Rich Morrissey - cared a whole lot for. The name didn't last. Three mailings later, LEAPA was consigned to the dustbin of fannish history and replaced by Interlac.

Back then, only a faithful Legion of Super-Heroes fan knew the meaning of that word. In fact, there were plenty of things that only faithful fans of the Legion knew, which set them apart from a sometimes-snickering mainstream fandom. The Legion? 'snicker, chortle!' Matter-Eater Lad and Bouncing Boy? Yeah, they said, voices dripping with sarcasm, right.

Yeah, indeed, right. Never before in fannish history had the fans of a single comic book come together with such passion, tempered with whimsy and camaraderie, in a single apa. There were a few general-interest comics apas around at the time - the venerable CAPA-alpha, already more than 10 years old and the direct inspiration for the form Lac took, and APA-5, where such folks as Frank Miller, Paul Chadwick and Mark Verheiden hung out, and which provided the nucleus later on for Dark Horse Comics.

But Lac was something special and specific. Some of its founding members already belonged to the other two apas, but Interlac was the apa for them from that very first, 26-page mailing. There were 15 founding members.

Today, 127 bimonthly mailings later, six of those 15 are still on the roster, one is on the waitlist and one is a contributing honorary member. Four of those six on the roster have remained on it continuously.

While Interlac's form came from K-a, its substance grew out of the Legion Fan Club and The Legion Outpost.

Those were heady days. The Legion's revived comic was finally on a solid footing, and it -- along with the rich Legion mythos brought to life by Jim Shooter and Curt Swan, Edmond Hamilton and John Forte, gave members plenty to talk about -- and to expound about and expand upon. In one early mailing, Shooter -- himself a founding member - explored the personalities and propensities of each of the current Legionnaires, providing grist for even more discussion. (Was Saturn Girl really such a tight-assed bitch? Was Dream Girl a brainy slut? Was Element Lad gay? Those questions have been kicked around were since in 'Lac and, obliquely, in the Legion book itself - some resolved more conclusively than others over the years.)

As the roster grew -- it didn't take long for it to reach its 50-member limit - it was clear that 'Lac was becoming a community in the best sense of the word. Members and waitlisters interacted freely and pleasantly in their zines, met each other at conventions, and became Friends with a capital-F, not just fannish acquaintances. Lives, in greater or lesser measure, were built on the seed of Interlac membership. In greater measure, for example, member Tom Bierbaum of Delaware moved to California and promptly took up residence with member Mary Gilmore, forming what would become the creative team that would do so much to guide the destiny of the post-Levitz Legion.

It wasn't fun and games every minute of the way. Personality clashes erupted from time to time, sometimes benignly, sometimes less so. There was the vicious Leader election that pitted Jim Chadwick against Ken Gale. That unfortunate race, and the polarization it created, left scars that took their time in healing. An apa less devoted to its very reason for existence might not have survived, but 'Lac did, and perhaps emerged stronger for having overcome such tension. The notion of community was put to the test, and it emerged triumphant.

In 1979, the precursor to Reunion: 2992 took place at the Chicago Comicon, where more than half of the Interlac roster showed up and threw the most talked-about con party in a long time. Imagine a packed hotel suite full of 'Lac members, hangers-on and pros milling about and swilling their brews, a baby doll tied up in a chair in another room and held for ransom while a drunken Steve Skeates held forth about how much he'd like to do a 64-page Legion graphic novel. This was the real Interlac - not so much a collection of names and words on paper that was mailed out every two months, but people having the time of their lives.

That aspect of the apa has changed over the years as we've grown older and richer. Members settled down into jobs, some built families, others gravitated to different interests. The roster, with the exception of quite a number of stalwarts, has turned over and over and over again, breathing fresh life and new points of view into a forum that might otherwise have strangled on its own incestuous agreement on all matters of any fannish importance.