Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes 5YL - the first year. Some thoughts...

Thirded. I like that she was organically introduced, and had a fairly unique powerset that totally fit the Legion future.

A thought occurred to me regarding Glorith.

If we're operating on the logic of her taking the Time Trapper's role when she remade the continuity, then it stands to reason a version of Legionnaires 3 happened in the FYL timeline. She targeted the founders, kidnapped Graym, tried to torture Lightning Lad and he beat her by endurance until the clock ran out.

And because we know Glorith is a petty, vindictive little witch who holds a grudge, who's to say she didn't get revenge later on by gaslighting Garth into believing he was "Proty" the whole time since his resurrection.

We also know Glorith's willing to play the long game. Look at what she did to Ultra Boy by making him think Tinya was dead for years, gave him a sliver of hope she was in the past, and then let him find out it was her cousin who was sent back and not her.

That's actually a really cool take!

And, given that the whole "proty" thing was from fans, just as valid, IMO.

Okay, so I'm done. If I had done this on the "regular" cadence, I would have posted this somewhere towards the end of Legion on the Run, but I decided to just finish it up.

I think what can best be said about this last year and a half of so of the 5YL run is that it just felt like it was marking time. Giffen's, and the Bierbaum's, work may have been overly dense and retconned to hell and back, but the story arcs that were planned took a while, so the stories felt like they meant something. After Bierbaum finally left, I understand that the plan to hit the Zero Hour reset button was already in play, so the storylines around the Legion trying to clear their name was just.... Okay. It may have been the over-reliance on Glorith and Mordru that I found a bit wearing, but it honestly could have been a lot of things.

There were a few standout issues - the Timberwolf issues had a nice nostalgic tone, as did, of course, the final issue of End of an Era. I have to admit that the last scenes of the iconic Legion moments, and the fading away of the rescue of Brande kind of got to me in the right way.

I also have to say that the Legionnaires issues I very much enjoyed, as they seemed to be more pure fun with sometimes goofy premises, but also didn't take themselves too seriously, and I did find that the premise of "new earth" was kind of interesting after a bit.

Also, as another note, I felt that the Annuals of this time period also were good. This would be the one where the LSH does the Wizard of Oz, which worked its way into the existing continuity when Ayla was reversing in physical age. I thought the Legionnaires elseworlds annual with the take on the Arthurian legends to be much more of an interesting read, however, and I enjoyed it as much as I did 30 years ago.

So that's it. Adventure 247 to 5YL. The original Legion run.

After doing this, I definitely have a better understanding of those who, in 1994, were none too happy with the way that this ended. 3.5 reboots later, I'm glad to have had the other versions as comparisons. But it has also taught me that since the 80s one thing is crystal clear:

The biggest problem with the Legion has been whoever runs the back end editorial staff.

Just to revive the thread here - the 5YL Omni vol 2 was released today!

It's 7.5 pounds of Legion goodness with great quality paper and color starting from LSH 40 to the end of End of an Era.

Of course I ordered this thing right after my birthday last August, so technically this is my birthday present to myself from last year!