Granted that I haven't followed the threeboot, but from certain threads I'm picking up the notion that DC may bring back the old Legion or (ugh!) reboot the franchise yet again. This seems to happen whenever creators jump ship these days.

But it also seems to be a way of keeping the Legionnaires from really growing or growing up. Is it any coincidence that the threeboot happened not too long after Ultra Boy and Apparition became parents? Was the threeboot a convenient way of getting rid of Cub?

And yet, the Legion's story seems to always develop along certain lines. The presence of Supergirl, for example, echoes the induction of Superboy in the previous boots. One super-cousin for the other. Same idea, different execution. In the original timeline, Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel married first, and Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl became parents first. In the reboot, the honor of both fell to Jo and Tinya. Same idea, different execution.

With that in mind, is it possible that the Legion's overall arc has to go a certain way? Is it possible that it must involve these young heroes growing up at some point? If given a choice, would you rather the Legionnaires grow up or continue to be rebooted? Or is there a third option?

As far as third options go, there's also the "timelessly young without worrying about continuity" option. Will Eisner, for example, always wrote The Spirit as occuring in "the present", no matter what decade the story was published in, without worrying about how all the characters could still be basically the same age as they were in the forties. Arguably, most comics were written this way up until the seventies or eighties (see, for example, the Brave and the Bold Batman/Sgt. Rock team-up, which includes their prior meeting during WWII).

No aging. I'm not opposed to the concept in general, but it just doesn't seem to fit the Legion. They were created to be teens and without the Lad, Girl, Boy, Kid names, I think they lose alot of their luster. Maybe they could start a new title with a different cast of characters and take them in that direction.

Hmm... I actually think that pretty much the opposite is true. Within three years of their initial appearance, in their seventh appearance, we already see the Legion grown-up. To me, the fact that the Legionnaires will one day become "The Adult Legion" is as much a part of the mythos as the fact that Superboy will become Superman.

I don't have a problem with the Legion aging gradualy (much like Nightwing or the Titans) but I do object for aging to equal a darkening of the universe. Also, I don't like it when the characters age too fast. It seems like the writers don't have enough to tell of their teenage years so kick them up too adults too quickly.

Even if I didn't like aging, I feel reboots will just hurt this franchise more and more. Especially as with each reboot fans want to see aspect from previous boots.

Also, He Who Wanders brings up an interesting point, where Jo and Tinya's marriage in the post-zh reflects the original marriage of BB and DD and the birth of Garth and Imra's children. That's something else I feel hurt the reboots, in that fans want to see certain stories emerge or be reflected on (esp the relationships) so its just not as fun anymore. I mean, I don't care about Ultra Boy and Shadow Lass's realtionship because I feel that in the end UB and PG will hook up, that's just the way things go.

I'd prefer them to age slowly. Characters retiring (to teach at the Academy, like Chuck and Lu, for instance) and being replaced by fresh faces, such as Tellus and Sensor (well, a familiar face in a shiny new mask, in her case) was fine.

Having all of them suddenly be old wouldn't work so well for me, and endless empty reboots is at the absolute bottom of my list, just one step above no Legion comics at all.

As much as I feel queasy for even suggesting it, I wouldn't mind seeing the Legion rebooted back to the original (sort of like John Byrne's Man of Steel reboot of Superman, not changing the character, just cleaning up the backstory a bit), and then a few of the clunkier stories re-written. I wouldn't mind seeing a fresh version of the first encounter with Computo, or a fresh look at an epic battle against Mordru, since, IMO, neither of those where exactly stellar in the original.

Others, such as the Great Darkness Saga or the Universo Project or the LSV War, could be left alone and considered to have happened as written, more or less. But I realize that these are purely *my* preferences, and that some might think that the Great Darkness War sucked and the Computo fight was pitch-perfect as is.

Whatever happens, I can't stomach the idea of an interpretation of the Legion that doesn't have tryouts issues and votes for leadership. To me, those two things are sacred cows that make the Legion stand apart from other books. One thing about the threeboot that has deeply disappointed was the lack of tryouts, and the perfunctory, at best, references to a vote for leader.

You guys hit on the key tension in the Legion, which was there from almost the start: is it just a teen book, or was it a story (with beginning, middle and end) about kids becoming adults? Both are completely valid approaches, with definite strengths and weaknesses.

I think the intent of the Legion originally was to tell a teens-forever story, and I think the adult Legion stories actually helped in this regard. They reassured the reader that the characters HAD a future, even if you never showed them getting there. Also, to me they emphasized that the teen Legion and the adult Legion were somehow completely different characters. Swan's depiction of the adult Legion as real adults -- with balding, facial hair, and paunches -- strengthened this feeling of separateness.

(Sidebar 1: I think it's interesting to think about the character of Superboy this way, as well. Was he an "eternal" representation of heroic youth, or just a phase on the way to Superman? He's been both over his history, even becoming a separate character with a separate origin.)

The powers that be at DC clearly decided, sometime in the 1970s, to let the Legionnaires grow up. I think this was of a piece with the decision to let the Earth-2 characters grow old and die. Legion and Earth-2 were alternatives to the main DCU, so you could do those things with them. It also helped that you had the same writer, Levitz, in charge of the Legion (and Earth-2) for the majority of 2 decades. By the time he was done, the Legionnaires were certainly adults. And Levitz himself wrote the story, in Legion 300, that repudiated the original Adult Legion story as the future alternates and basically said the "current" Legion would grow into adult heroes. Like the 1970s JSA, this was a unique, wonderful story, and it ended (badly) in 1994.

(Sidebar 2: It's funny to think of the BB/DD wedding as kicking this off, since the actual story indicates the wedding was a nice way to send off characters the creative team didn't want anymore, rather than a milestone, as it become afterward, for the Legion's maturation.)

I don't think there's any doubt that the core concept of the Legion is as a team of young people. Therefore, you can't have the characters age out of their core concept. You can however do adult Legion stories, have the kids meet their adult counterparts, have them meet future kids who are their successors, tell stories of the early Legion when the characters are really young, etc. You could take the "adult" Legion starting to appear in JLA and JSA and make it sort of the Earth-2 for the current Legion, or a current, teen-aged Legion.

I think the current DC creative and editorial team, as talented as they are, are really struggling with how to deal with this. Didio, Johns, Meltzer, et. al seem to want to acknowledge the long history of the characters, acknowledge the passage of time, foreshadow future events which then promptly happen, and so on. You do too much of this, though, and you end up with Roy Harpers, Dick Graysons and Donna Troys older than their mentors. The Silver Age guys really knew how to do this better -- tell stories of past, present and future all the time, and keep them all moving, but don't destroy the characters by having the present link too seamlessly with the future. I thought maybe with the current Legion #14 that Waid and his ilk would move toward this approach. Maybe they still will.

Sorry for the long post. I think this is the central problem with the Legion and the DCU today, so I have thought about it a lot.

I guess for me, part of the essence of the Legion is that they are a part of the greater Superman Family mythos. They're the club that Superman hung out with when he was a boy. So it makes sense to me that the "Adult Legion" should make regular appearances in Superman. If you want to tell stories of Superman's past adventures with the Legion when they were all teens, then fine, but the default should be that they are his contemporaries. I actually find various stories from the seventies and eighties that have the adult Superman hanging out with the teen Legion kind of jarring. And the same really goes for Supergirl. It's always seemed to me she should be a part of the Adult Legion's "teen auxilary" rather than a member at the same time as Superboy.

well since i'm a big fan of the 5YG legion, you can guess what i'll say. also i liked the levitz era where the legion's age wasn't such a big deal.

I've always hated Superboy(girl/dog/whatever) being part of the Legion.

They're an awesome team by themselves, but it's always been felt that they couldn't carry a book without Super(whatever) there to carry their water.

But if the teen Legion is going to be associated with a Teen of Steel, it would be logical for the *Grown-up* of Steel to still hang with the Adult Legion, n'est ce-pas? I mean, did they revoke his permission to travel to the future and hang out with his friends? Doesn't seem likely... Seems more likely that SuperMAN would be a member of the Adult Legion, in between gigs as part of the JLA and his own solo career.

I pretty much disagree with you guys. To me, there's always been something...neverlandish about Superboy's and Supergirl's time with the teen Legion. Something else else Clark had to give up (for some reason or another) when he became Superman. And I really kind of liked that. Not that he would never see them again, but that he couldn't be regular part of the group as a grown up, even if the Legion is grown up, too.

Age slowly if at all. I know it's an idea close to that story no one seems to like, but I would hope that any effects of aging would be drastically reduced by the legion's time. What better reason for there to be so many human-looking folks all over the galaxy? But such biological themes are probably too much for modern audiences. Thus, exploding clones, no more convenient sex changes, & the like.

The Legion pretty much aged as I did. They were kids when I was, late teens/early twenties when I was and 5YL took us both into our 30s - so it all seemed very appropriate to me. Starting with this new version, I would prefer to see them age again, because that (to me) is where a lot of the story interest develops, as the characters change, develop relationships, pursue new interests/occupations/lifestyles - and also, ideally, draw on their years of experience. Various storylines can move forward with them, so we see how their society/galaxy changes over time.

I suspect a reboot might work best, assuming the premise is timely, when a character has sunk to such obscurity that very few old fans remain to be alienated.

Perhaps this trend we have now of a younger person assuming the mantle of the old/retired/dead hero is one way to go. The Legion has had some of that with Pol Krinn, a character I didn't consider to be a success - and now with Dream Boy (jury's out).

Then they ought to just make policy. Every ten years, reboot. Then there's no complaining, or else.

The Legion has an advantage over many titles as a large group. Instead of having four stories of Batman every month affecting his characterization, you have a cast of two dozen or more where some can be featured one month, put on a shelf for a month or two, then featured again later. This would slow the aging process considerably and allow for a large number of fresh characters (someone for everyone to like). This was the formula of the early seventies with Cary Bates/Dave Cockrum/Mike Grell and it created a solid foundation for a looong run through the end of the Levitz era. Make the Legion cast number 50 members, and have at it. Down with reboots!

The aging/passage of time question has never really bothered me. Whether characters age, age slowly, or don't age is minor compared to good stories.

But too many reboots will not help either. It is similar to what happens in the Robin series. A new team comes in and Tim Drake is moved to a new locale and given a new supporting cast. Blah.

Further along the same lines, it's incredible how much the development of the reboot mirrored the original timeline, even though the reboot creators went to great lengths to make their Legion "different." Leviathan becomes the first Legion leader, but quickly abdicates to Cosmic Boy. Valor returns but takes the name M'Onel. Saturn Girl dates Cos but ends up with Live Wire (Lightning Lad). Live Wire loses his arm, etc.

Also, in spite of the new Legionnaires who were introduced (XS, Kinetix, Gates), practically all of the old ones were brought back sooner or later. Sometimes, the creators used drastic and even absurd ideas to change the original characters (Sensor), but these characters still came back.

Perhaps it's inevitable that, if the Legion's story is allowed to develop for any length of time, it involves them growing up, as well. As Eryk noted, the Adult Legion was practically written into the storyline from the get-go.

I think ageing should be a very real part of the legion. First of all get rid of this mock legion and go back to what we had (A team with higher ideals then were bored).
The dc universe is richer and better when it had more depth through character evolution. The flash is an excellent example of this With Barry Giving his life in a big way and wally taking up the mantel. Try outs and the legion academy are pretty useless concepts when the legion is made up of the same 25 characters. I want real danger and ageing lends itself to real deaths. Also I want writers to make me care about a catspawn or some new character out of the academy replacing a cosmic boy or other big name. In conjuction a superman family style anthology book showing unseen adventers of various legions through out their history would be a good way of reading new stories of lightning lad in his prime even though hes now the balding projectiles teacher at the academy also seeing the original dream girl and how very differently she used her powers to her daughter currently on the team.

I'm with the Legion aging gradually...and them inserting some new young members to the team. I mean at Magic Wars I viewed most the characters in either their early 30's or late twenties.

I like comic book time. In my comic book time people age very slowly. In 1989 I thought Cosmic Boy was 30. If continuity continued I would see him as 35 today. that's not bad.

The entire "not aging" thing is better for solo characters in a small setting. The Spirit? No problem. Spider-Man? If continuity wasn't such a big deal I wouldn't mind it.

But things like character development, long epics, etc. Don't fit the not aging thing. The MU and DCU age slowly. It's been shown. All Star Superman? Who cares! Spider-Man Adventures? Ultimate Spider-Man? Keep him 16 forever!

I really believe that without aging, all the stories happening will mean nothing. Aging is a natural part of life, and when you take it out of the story, it will always stay artificial.

One of the major strengths of 5YL was that the characters had grown up, as I myself had at that time. You really could delve into all these stories, feel with these characters whose youth you knew so much about and who had gone through hard times but still (mostly) maintained their ideals and tried to rebuild the Legion again. Those were real characters, acting like people, no cartoons in funny costumes like the current Waid Legion or the Reboot kiddies.

Some characters getting older and leaving the Legion like Imra and Garth back then is very realistic and they really should try to incolude it in future stories / continuities. The art of believable storywriting depends on it.

Given that I started reading the Legion regularly in '82, I'm ok with them aging gradually. While I have enjoyed the WaK Legion and would likely continue to read even if the book gets rebooted again, a reboot is a seriously risky proposition for DC. After all, the only time this Legion fan stopped reading the book in the last 25 years was a few issues after the first reboot.

I like what doublechinner said about the "Neverland" quality of the Legion with relation to Superman and agree with whoever said that the '70s and '80s stories featuring an adult Superman teaming with the younger Legion were jarring. I always thought of the Legion as Superman's high school friends. After you graduate high school and go off to college or whatever, you change in ways that often distance you from those friends. I liked having Superboy around from time to time, but was less happy if he was the focus of the story. Usually that reflected sloppy storytelling.

Anyway, I think that it worked to have them gradually age over time in the original continuity.

This is the only option that makes sense to me. I don't want them againg *that much* (though a continual maturing and progressing is needed) and I certainly wish there had never been a reboot of any kind.

Also, anyone who believes Batman is over 34 is wrong. I think he caps off around 36, which should be around 2035.

Without meaning to sound snide, when I read the title of this thread the first thing that popped in my head was "neither or both, as long as it tells a good story". Like Quislet above, I still think it's a not a question of aging per se but how it's used in the context of a good story.

There's nothing snide about an honest response, Igee. The aging issue means different things to different people.

For what it's worth, I absolutely agree that a good story is paramount. I guess my question is, how is the aging of the characters related to telling a good Legion story?

I use the term "story" broadly, to include not only the individual single-story episodes, but also the larger arc, as a whole. While it's not strictly accurate to compare comic book series to novels (which have endings), it is fair, I think, to expect certain ones to have long-term development.

All stories have to go somewhere. Just as a single-issue story, such as "The Super Moby Dick of Space," has to build toward Lightning Lad reaching a decision (does he kill the beast or not?), so, too, does the Legion's overall story have to progress in some fashion. It would be monotonous if DC kept rewriting the same story, so that Lightning Lad keeps losing his arm over and over again without ever reaching the decision to kill or not kill the creature responsible. Nothing would be accomplished. I feel that in many ways, the reboots have done exactly that.

I think the Legion could work using a generational aspect like you see in things like Dragon Ball Z.

Y'know with the original Legion growing up and then you see their kids going through the Legion Acadamy. That could be a fun approach.

Though in most cases I support keeping characters ageless and iconic.

I think that was one of the problems with the post-ZH Legion. They stuck too closely to what had come before and they didn't really venture out into new territory. So they were pretty much just repeating old Legion stories. What I like about the current reboot is that they are at least telling new stories.

Interestingly, I think this is the basis of a lot of the criticism of the current 'boot that it "doesn't feel like the Legion". It's kind of a Catch-22 that's inherent to the notion of a reboot. You either end up rehashing the stories that happened to the previous incarnation of the team, in which case... what was the point of the reboot? Or, you let the team develop in a radically different fashion, but then you lose a lot of what people love about the property.

I think what makes a book "feel" like the Legion changes from person to person. For me, many aspects of the WaK run felt more like the Legion than any part of the Zero Hour reboot. My big issue with the Zero Hour reboot was that they were rehashing the same stories, but that the characters seemed totally different. They were like these eerie doppelgangers in the skins of my Legionnaires, doing things my Legion would never have done.

By the way, I totally forgot about it when I made my previous post, but I was going to say something about preferring the Legionnaires aging to endless robots, which is what I originally though the thread title refered to. Guess it's too late now.

Just for the record, I actually agree with you that in some ways, at least, the current 'boot feels more like the Legion than the prior version ever did. But I still think this is the source of a lot of people's discomfort with the title.

So to sum up?

defining "characters" as the individuals and the team:

The first reboot (post ZH) was the same stories, same names, different characters?

The second reboot (WaK) was different stories, same names, same characters?


I'd have to go different, different, different as my take on the reboots, whereas I'd have been happy with different (some new, some retelling in time), same ( preferred ), same ( a must ).

The main reason I think MY preference was considered impractical was the fan base wanted "their" characters back as quickly as possible, meaning there couldn't be a wait of 20 years to reintroduce Drake and Burroughs. They didn't get their "characters" though. They got their characters' names.

IMO, the best post-ZH option instead of UP membership to build the team up would have been to start somewhere abouts the intro of ERG-I or just after the return of Wildfire (HUGE fanbase there), then done the revised origin as flashback. For the most part, the only characters that would have had drastic personality and origin change I think would have been Monel and Superboy/girl.

I guess I now have a view that keeping them young or aging them (and to an extent keeping the future a bright place or making it dystopic) is a decision that creative teams/editorial/TPTB at DC make to keep the book selling a profitable level. During Levitz' time it made sense to "freeze" them at a certain age while during Giffen's 5YL time it made sense to darken the tone. Same holds true post Zero Hour and Legion of the Damned/Legion Lost. The approach was what (or at least they hoped would have) sold well.

Well, if we discount the other smaller groups that defend the 31st Century (i.e. Wanderers, Heroes of Lallor, Workforce, etc without regard to 'boot status), then the Legion's really the only group out there that's big & recognized/open enough to become the "universe-wide" protector.

As such I'd like for them to become a combination of the Teen Titans/JLA/JSA i.e....

...early years/within a few years of formation it would be like the Teen Titans
...post-formation we'll lose members & gain members, with the "core" team growing up and becoming young adults/adults ala JLA
...with more years we'll lose & gain some more new/young members while the young adults now become real adults (i.e. get married, have kids) ala JSA

It's kind of like how Levitz (during his run) & Giffen (5YL) progressed it where the kids that founded the Legion grew up, changed civil status, had kids while the newer recruits would be teens or young adults. Even before Geoff Johns did his "generational"/"training the legacy" approach to JSA, the Legion already had it with LSHrs becoming parents, marrying while younger members joined.

Igee, i like your thinking. They are the Teen Titans, JLA, and JSA all rolled up into one.

I dont know about everybody else but I suppose I have always thought of the main team as titans contemporaries. The biggest thing I didnt like about the archie legion was they made them so damm young (I think the 3 founders were aged 12-14). So im probably alone here but if they do get rebooted again I would like to ditch the teen thing to make the book more beleivable.

You know... the more I think about this, the more I think that pre-Crisis Superman was doing something right.

You had your mainline Superman stories. You had your Superboy stories. You had your college-age Superman stories. You even had your Super-Sons stories with Superman/Batman retired and the punk kids taking over. And you could tell stories in each version.

I guess that's really the kind of approach I'd like to see with the Legion. Horribly unrealistic that we'd actually get it, I know, but it's what I'd prefer.

Having them perpetually young works for me. Other comic book characters don't age. Why should they?

Ideal world I'd agree but we know that in the AR world, Legion Fans AND writers are royalty compared to Supes fans. If Monel Boy is shown to be invulnerable to lactose intolerance and Monel Man farts, there had better soon be a bridging story or flashback panel explaining it all or riots will ensue.

"Youth" is a relative term but I'd never want to see the Legion older than 25 y/o again. One of the biggest mistakes (imo) made after the GDS was accelerating their aging with developments like kids, retirements, widowhood, etc. That (and the erasure of Earth-One Superboy) dispelled the magic and led to its loss of innocence and darker, uglier things down the road. Some will call it character evolution; I call it deterioration of the core Legion concept, of which youth is a sine qua non.

While the Karate Kid in the JLA/JSA crossover doesn't look quite as young as his WaK counterpart, the fact other characters call him "boy" and "son" and question if his team is like the Teen Titans, suggests that this Legion will be defined by its youth as well.

Personally I think there should be a range. It's a Legion...why do they all have to be young? Just like any sports team you have the hotshot athletic 18 year old and the team veterans usually in their late 20s or early 30s. The majority of the characters should be in between.

I think the "youth core concept" thing is probably the main reason the current Legion isn't that successful.

That's kind of like saying the Teen Titans should just be sidekicks. Cyborg, Starfire, Raven shouldn't be part of the team cause the original members were all sidekics...yet the last really popular Titans weren't sidekicks...and the last successful Legion weren't teens.

However, that means replacing the Legion's oldest and most iconic characters with newbies, and we know for a fact that doesn't work, either.

I don't really know where this whole "youth as a core concept" stuff comes from.

Certainly not from the 60s, where, apart from them having names like "Lightning Lad" and "Cosmic Boy" and not being drawn as balding, you wouldn't have even known that they weren't adults. In fact, I've always assumed the whole "On my planet, we're considered grown at 14" to be Weisinger's way of basically ignoring the fact that these are supposed to be kids.

I guess it was really the 70s when the whole idea of them as the "Teen Team from the Future" became a central selling point of the title. That's also when the "teen" Legion started crossing over with the rest of the DC characters.

Again, what seems to me the core concept is that they're "Superman's friends from the future", and to have the Justice League going around calling them "boy" and "son" just seems wrong to me.

I think what's wrong with the JL calling them "boy" and "son" isn't a problem with how the LSH is depicted, but with how the JLA is depicted. DC always says that Supes/Bats et. al. are in their early 30s right? But they're often written as if they were in their mid-40s or older. What 30-year-old would refer to a teenager as "son?" Somebody in their 50s might do that, but a 30-year-old is probably clinging to the notion that they're still of an age with the 18-year-old.

My ideal age for the LSH is between 16 and 25 years old, though I can handle the older members progressing to their early 30s. I really liked what Igee said about the comparisons to other teams. They really are a congolomerate of the team concepts of all three major 20th-century teams. (Which I guess makes the WaK Wanderers the 30th century counterpart to the Outsiders. I'd love to see the 30th century's answer to the Doom Patrol!) I love to see the team have a sort of mentoring system in place to bring newer, younger members up to speed.

They could help with the robots too.

Wouldn't that be the Heroes of Lallor?

You're right. Even the reboots have younger version of the characters and they will never be as popular as PC Legion. Just bring back the PC Legion and don't age them.

Well Val certainly nipped that in the bud when he said they weren't the Teen Titans of the future but the JLA.

I haven't read the book, but one might interpret Val's statement as meaning "We're not the kid sidekicks, we're the main superteam. The adults we look up to are you guys, from 1,000 years ago."

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't follow this point. Assuming you're responding to Ultra Jorge's post, what did he say that would indicate that the oldest Legionniares should be replaced? All he said was that there should be an age range (which I don't think is a bad idea).

The way I took it is if we retire some of the older members and introduce some young new characters it may not work.

Which I agree. But just because Garth/Imra/Pol are retired doesn't mean they can't be part of the book.

IMO, Wildfire got even more interesting when he started teaching at the Academy, so quasi-retirement for a few works for me as well.

The whole Wildfire / Dawnstar romantic plotline left me cold. Can you say 'dead character' any more strongly than to have their sole arc being who they're dating? I'm all for the Legionnaires getting some, but this isn't Dawson's Creek, I'd like to see them also having a role in the book or character trait other than, 'so-and-so's boyfriend / girlfriend.'

Dawnstar's solo trek did wonders for her characterization, IMO. Having the two characters make googly-eyes / faceplates at each other every time they were in-panel detracted from them both, so seperating them allowed both to shine individually.

Set, i agree with retired characters becoming interesting. I didn't care for Bouncing Boy or Duo Damsel until they were both retired and teaching at the Academy as well. They don't all have to be superheroes. They can be super supporting cast. (love Chuck with a moustache)

The context is my previously expressed opinion that the Legionnaires should never again age past 25 (hardly retirement age), and I should add I consider a core team of more than, say, 25-27 members unwieldy for both reader and writer. All told, that doesn't leave much room for newbloods or allow for a great range of ages -- certainly not the teens to 30s range Jorge has in mind -- unless you assume they're going to kill off an original Legionnaire every few years just for the sake of change.

There are other opportunities to introduce younger characters as supporting cast, e.g., the Legion Academy, and in the case of the WaK Legion, the lower-case legionnaires. However, the radical team shakeups of the late 1980s and the early 1990s were profound mistakes that should never be repeated, imo.

I'm totally in favor of the ambiguously aged but going-on-30 Legionnaires having their own "teen auxillary", ala what Mort Weisinger suggested way back in the 60s!

Thanks for clarifying that, Tromium.

However, there's no reason to assume that older Legionnaires must be killed off to make way for younger ones. Marriages, drafts, and resignations worked just as effectively in the past.

re: introduction of new members

As mentioned, it's indeed possible to transition members away from the Legion. The more interesting ones that come to mind would be:

- Matter-Eater Lad gets drafted into Bismollian politics
- Tyroc leaves with Marzal
- Star Boy gets appointed planetary protector
- White Witch leaves over a philosophical difference with Polar Boy
- Saturn Girl & Lightning Lad leave to raise a family
- ...then of course there's the big clubhouse in the sky

re: shake-ups

I think that during the period you mention (likely the TMK period), it was less about a team shake-up & more about the whole unvierse changing. Just to clarify, I really do like the TMK period with how the team emerged of older members as well as younger ones. Perhaps the median age was higher than the team compositions before but the fact that you had old & young together, learning off of each other and keeping the legacy of the Legion alive was great.