Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes #32 (Spoilers)

I agree that the visual appeal of the book was upgraded significantly. Some of the panels were quite striking and if I can't have Barry this will certainly surfice. Good wishes for your tenure and thanks for posting.

The term "real" Legion is a bit subjective.

How about the Legion that has 30+ plus years of history, continuity, character development and millions of people encountered for the "first" time in that 30+ year peroid?

In other words, "YOUR" Legion...and it sounds like that would be the pre-crisis Legion.

I grew up reading comics, and started in 1974. However, the Legion of that period didn't appeal to me, and part of the reason was the Legion stuff I came across was of the SA Adventure era and it left me cold. It was very silly to me, and it looked dated as well. There was Superboy (which was a lame character to my eyes) and any number of Lads, Lasses, Girls that were essentially the same character with different, goofy looking, costumes (except for Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl. Always have liked those costumes). So, cardboard characters, cardboard stories and so forth and I'm supposed to get excited about this?

I read some of the newer stories in other reprint comics (Digests were a god send in those days...) and my opinion didn't much change (Except I did sort of like the updated Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl costumes at the time...).

I ran across a long box of Legion comics that spanned 1973-1989 at a garage sale. I think I paid something along the lines of $25-$40 for the whole thing. Less than $200 later and I've got it all in that time period with a few missing issues in other series (Karate Kid, for example) and the Treasury Sized book where LL and SG get hitched.

The vaunted character development has been minimal. Timber Wolf was a crab when he first showed up, and has remained such. Wildfire falling in love with Dawnstar (and vice versa) was SO telegraphed over the long haul...I could see that one coming. Light Lass getting all snippy about what happened on that asteroid and not talking to T-Wolf puts the depths of love that Imra read in her to bed as so much hokum. You don't love like that without trust...(having just read issue 301, I've no notion how that whole thing plays out ultimately, so don't spoil it for me...)

I see many of the characters with the same names and similar suits in different situations. I see all of them as being just as valid as the others.

I've really enjoyed this current series, and I bought it solely on the strength of Waid's name on the cover. I loved what he did on the Flash, and was hoping he'd bring that same energy and verve to this book. And so far, I've enjoyed it. I guess not having a bazillion years of baggage has helped in that regard.

One man's baggage is another man's treasure. But I've seen other writers side swipe said baggage quite masterfully without making anybody angry.

Old Man Lad, I never said that was "my" Legion either.

Yup. Very, very true. And the word "baggage" was most likely not the best work I could've used. History or attachment might have been better.

Any specifics? Serious question, as I'm still rather new to this Legion thing...


No, I knew that. I was responding more to Chemical King...

Old Man Lad, the best examples I can use of writers handling "baggage" is probably Levitz(Legion), Geoff Johns(JSA), and Kurt Busiek(Avengers).

All three of these teams have a ton of history. These writers pick/choose their spots of when to use the history or simply nod to it. Reading the Adventure era I've noticed many of the Levitz stories are a nod to that. I never knew that unless I knew more specifics about the history. As a new reader I enjoyed it and didn't know any better.

Same with the JSA. I knew nothing of them. I still don't to a degree. I just love what Geoff shows us and sometimes I go do a search to find out more about their past.

But these writers alleviate the baggage. They don't reveal something unless it directly ties to the story, etc.

And still I am wondering how somebody can get angry when somebody else has a different opinion...

Even if I would be part of a minority I still would state my opinion like "the new Legion leaves me cold". So why can't that be said?

@Ultra Jorge

Yes, "real" Legion might be subjective, but "Legion that has 30+ plus years of history, continuity, character development and millions of people encountered for the "first" time in that 30+ year peroid" might be better but is a little bit long to state a point just out of "political correctness"...

I guess the best term might be "original Legion" which includes it being there first. Original Legion = Real Legion to me, but hey, if I can't get a Ferrari, a Japanese speedster will do as a "real sports car" as well...

Well I hear people getting upset over the term "original". I like classic? who knows.

It can most certainly be said. I'm not at all angry, just curious. Sorry if I gave you that impression, because it's the farthest thing from the truth.

Sounds like a semantics debate over "my" and "real." Generally mean the same thing around here. "Original" could be debated too as even before Crisis, things mysteriously changed as the series moved on.

I accept it like this.

These are historically based treatise channeled by future archaeologist, historians, and the occasional myth maker to the minds of various artists, creative types, and John Byrne, to be put to paper in our present. What we buy are textbooks and must be treated such. They are considered expert opinion but not fact and not first hand knowledge. They are open to speculation.

What we read is to be debated by experts (that would be us) and scanned for logical fallacies. The scientific process as well as faith are all part of the construction.

Collectively based upon this emperical evidence, personal and general experience, we speculate as to the truth of what happened a thousand years in the future.

I won't spoil it for you, but be prepared for more "hokum". To me, a lot of that period reads like agonizingly maudlin soap opera in constrast to the crisp, unsentimental and sometimes sardonically funny character treatments of today's book. One of numerous objections I have against the "Lightning Saga", whose characters seemed even more deeply mired in insipid and insincere emotionality than their 80s counterparts.
My feelings exactly. I view them as basically the same Legionnaires I met when I opened my first Adventure comic book some 40-plus years ago, and it never ceases to amaze me how well they've stood the test of time despite all the bad writing they've been subjected to, not to mention the retcons, reboots, reimaginings, and so forth.

As for continuity baggage -- I loved and still love most of the old, pre-Crisis stories (the earlier ones more than the later ones) but I don't give a dang if they're in continuity or not, except to insist that what's written is written, and retroactively changing or reinterpreting them is a worse "crime" against the old Legion than restarting their history from scratch. Another reason why I so enjoy today's Legion comics and cartoon -- they pay loving homage to past continuity but leave it unharmed -- and why the "Lighting Saga" strikes me as step in the wrong direction.

But what if suddenly they reboot Superman. He's not a member of the JLA, he doesn't know Batman, he's got a slightly new costume, Lois Lane is Lola Lorenzo and is hispanic. Lots of people are not going to care about Superman anymore. As good as the stories are (and for the most part I haven't seen anything too great post v4) many people won't care.

It's a recognition thing. The Legion is up there with Hawkman as probably getting the most screwed because of Crisis(and Wonder Woman). The thing is the Legion was much more popular than Hawkman or Wonder Woman during Crisis. ohwell.

Have you read Grant Morrison's All-Star Superman and Darwyn Cooke's Superman Confidential? Except for Lola Lorenzo part, they're pretty close to what you've outlined. No JLA, no Batman, no Wonder Woman, no Supergirl and so forth. Just Superman with his Golden Age inner circle, mainly -- Ma and Pa Kent, Lois, Jimmy, Perry and Lex. (Plus a few Silver Age nods like Krypto and Bizarro). The fact that even the most continuity obsessed fans seem to dig these stories proves that people do indeed care about the character without the added embellishments.

Ditto the Superman movies and the "Lois and Clark" and "Smallville" TV shows (the latter only introducing JLA and Supergirl as it gasps its last breaths, and still no sign of Bruce, Diana, etc.). The "Superman Doomsday" DVD won't include them either. To the public at large, who vastly outnumber us pamphlet readers, they're not essential Superman recognition factors.

Superman's costume has changed over the decades -- no biggie. Changing Lois's name to Lola Lorenzo would probably be unwise for reasons related to trademark and brand-recognition, but why not make her half-Latina? She looks vaguely Latina in All-Star Superman, anyway. Your untenable Superman reboot is actually pretty solid. Reboot away!!

Likewise with the Legion, the cartoon proves that it doesn't have to be saddled with a ton of continuity for it to be recognized as "real". The Suneater/Ferro Lad episodes were a wonderful homage to the original Jim Shooter story but, apart from that, the basic framework and familiar characters (some, like B5 and Starfinger, barely recognizable) seem to be enough for most fans. So, why isn't it good enough for the comic book Legion?

@Old Man Lad

No hard feelings then

But in the end, all seems to come down to the question: Do you like continuity, or do you more like the basic spirit of the Legion?

The "Spirit" is shown in every incarnation, even the Manga Archie Legion or "Superboys Legion" mini or maybe (don't know cause the cartoon hasn't been shown in Germany yet) the cartoon. But if you're rather a continuity maniac like me, you just don't care about the soirit alone, you want to know what happened first, what happened before, what did this character do ten years before and who was together with whom over the years. For me, this is one major part of characterization: BIOGRAPHY! Biography very much influences the way you turn out to be decades later, your behavior, your emotions, social status, everything.

So as for the Legion, I absolutely concur that there was hardly any character development during large parts of the original run (it was the original run - I won't care about any semantics here) like the 60s before Shooter or the 70s with Bates or Conway - but there had been happening a lot which made the Legion what it was (death, sacrifice, love, victory, tons of supporting cast). And I thought the Levitz run made the characters more and more vivid and alive, and 5YL was just spectacular storytelling and characterization. So that was the Legion as a whole, full of history, every character with his own biography.

WaK - to me - feels bland because the characters don't have a biography. They do not only look like carbon copies - there seems to be no pattern who does what or who loves whom. When Mekt Ranzz chooses some Legionnaires to follow his cause because "they follow orders more easily" my first reaction was like "aha... how does he know that, they all behave the same way..."

So when Tromium mentions "crisp, unsentimental and sometimes sardonically funny character treatments of today's book", I really would be very interested where he has found it - cause I did not and I read the current run twice because I could not believe what Mark Waid - who has written so much great stuff like Kingdom Come or Empire - had done with the Legion...

So now I think I have stated my feelings more clearly without hurting anyones feelings about any "real Legion" whichever that may be. It is a fact that the current version could not tell the same amount of story as the original version could in 30 years. Maybe the fact that nowadays, stories take 5 or ten issues to tell does not help things (in the 60s and 70s, they just threw the story at you - "here, Lightning Lad gets resurrected in one issue, Ferro Lad gets killed in a major two-parter"). But whereas before ZH, we had three decades of story (therefore: biographies) to thrive on, today we have two years of bland "underagers versus adults" and one decent storyline fighting the Dominators. To me, that does not feel fullfilling - especially because of the lack of characterization which would have been so important due to the lack of any biography.

I think it could have been done without the biography, but wasn't. After growing up with these characters, I think of some of them by their 'real names' and not their superhero code-names, and yet, the 'Tasmia' of previous versions simply did not exist in WaKs universe. Not until her visit to Talok VIII with Vi do we see a *hint* of character depth, and it was two freaking YEARS into the story.

And Vi herself? Barely a squeak. Does she revere Brainy like her fellow Imskians? How does she get along with her fellow Imskians, being the 'high priestess' to their 'god?' Does she kinda resent Brainy? Does she pine after him? Does she even like boys???

They had years, and most of the characters remain one-note ciphers. Element Lad, Sun Boy, Invisible Kid, etc. all behave in manners that we might or might not consider out of character at times throughout the run, *if we had the slightest clue what their character was!*

And entirely too many seemed to get dismissed as 'fluff.' Colossal Boy, Star Boy and Ultra Boy are dismissed as jokes, written in broad terms as screw-ups. Despite their super-powers, all three come off as losers.

Chameleon and Element Lad suffer the worst. Chameleon is a grumpy antisocial curmudgeon, sounding more like Gates than Chameleon Boy. Element Lad transforms from a quiet, yet strong, tragic figure to some pretentious absent-minded fluffy pseudointellectual 30th-century-stoner.

The 'real' Legion side-debate goes nowhere. Everyone jumped on at a different point (they still called it 'Adventure comics' back when I jumped on), and many of us have a preference for the first Legion we 'met.' (Although most of us also are happy to make exceptions for newcomers and new developments that *enhance* the pre-existing world, such as my own love of Waid's interpretation of Naltor and it's 'PreCops' or my preference for Shikari over Dawnstar.)

For me, capturing the *spirit* is more important than capturing the specifics. This run didn't do that for me.

The Legion didn't come across as *heroes* in a wondrous future full of adventure and danger, they came across as a collection of super-powered jerks bickering and sulking their way through nasty future full of planet-destroying psychopaths.

I've tried very hard to remain upbeat about the current iteration of the Legion, but share the doubts expressed above. In particular, it wasn't apparent to me who would be likely to support Rokk or Mekt in the Dominators' Earth Invasion storyline.

However, the writing in this issues does give me hope. Long live the Legion!

Begs the question then whether WaK's Legion would fall under "character-driven" or "story-driven". Sadly, it seems to me like neither impetus applied in this incarnation.

- Publication of this Legion started a year (or two?) after the team was first formed. Sure, we get semi-character sidebars for members such as Dream Girl (the interaction on her planet hinting at bits of her past...before a building toppled all over her), Invisible Kid (status quo-keeping parents), Projectra (spoiled brat from a now-murdered world), Karate Kid's failed romances (with Phantom Girl & Shadow Lass) and others. For me though, it all seemed one-note. WaK didn't even bother to show us the "1 year gap".

- Then we were handed "event" stories such as the Dominator invasion and a Kryptonian story-stopper who's storyline seems to have been decompressed to what feels like 18 months of real time.

I love sarcastic one-liners more than I should, but frankly that's what this Legion ended up being. Bickering does not always equate or build up to characterization, which the Legion previously had in spades prior to this reboo--oops--"reimagination".

Set you give a good example. When I say the names Jo, Tinya, Rokk, Garth, Imra, Lu, Chuck, Gim, Dirk,(etc) I don't think of any other versions except the PC Legion.

The other ones I use codenames. That's not Jo...that's Ultra Boy.

Finally got my hands on this issue! It was great! Loved the spooky art and the character driven writing - and what characters! Mekt was stunning (My fave line was deffo "Since I was born"- yowza!), Thom was cool, calm and collected - an interesting side to him as he's been shown as a bit of a doofus in the WAK run - and I lo ved his comment about getting Brainy later. Brainy was his usual delight, I so love that man! And Dirk, well, I'm not to sure about Dirk, I liked his comment to Mekt that he faced worse threats in the Dominators hands and his sarcasm to Tenzil but I'm kind of holding out for a bit more from him - next issue will deliver I'm sure.

All I can say is more, more, more!

I've had this for 1-plus week and still haven't read it... way behind on my reading while I've been catching up on the Marvel "zombie-verse"... will read it this weekend for sure!!

Belinda wanting more? Say it ain't so...



Good to see you posting again B.

Finally got my copy of this issue!

Well, I LOVE the art! Very expressive and as many have stated, appropriate for the story.

I like the way the issue centered around Dirk Mekt, Thom and Tenz. I do wish Tenz was a Legionnaire, not a special prosecutor, though.

Anyway, I'm interested in what happens next. I'm not raving about the storytelling, but I'm not bored.

I'm looking forward to seeing the girls... between this issue and the McDonald's action figures, you'd think it was the Legion of Super Guys.

Okay, one more post...

More than a couple of the faces looked just like Linda Blair in the Exorcist.

That's it, no more from me....