Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Could a "Legionnaires" series work?

As is well-known, the Legionnaires title was originally supposed to feature re-tellings of Adventure era Legion stories, as they happened in the new Glorithverse continuity.

That got me thinking, could an interesting title be produced which engaged in "modern" versions of the Silver Age Legion stories?

The obvious problem is, of course, how can one make such a title have any real drama when so many people already know the plots to the story?

One possibility would be to follow something like the All-Star Squadron model. It managed to stay interesting because, while it followed and incorporated the classic JSA storylines, the main focus was actually on a lot of "minor" WW2 characters. So one possibility might be something like focusing on the Subs, and re-telling the Silver Age from their point of view, and maybe expanding them to include the Subs "Auxillary", including various minor and perhaps never-before-seen characters. I don't know.

Ideas?

Maybe as a spotlight book to show different characters and places, sort of like Legion Worlds. In each issue there'd be 2 regular Legionnaires and any number of reimagined subs characters from previous continuities or new small L legionnaires.

They'd be on some planet doing Peace Corps type work or whatever and meet some Adventure era inspired threat. The stories would be inspired by the Adventure stories but wouldn't be bound by them.

Example plot, Lightning Lad is on the science asteroid (a school of science and tech) to recruit when the Moby Dick of Space escapes the holding tank at the institute. He leads a team of kids from the school to hunt down the creature. He gets to keep his arm too.

Each issue would be self contained but might tie in to an overall story, mission, or focus id'ed in the first issue of an arc. In this example it could be an arc dealing with the lack of scientist ethics in the UP.

Love the idea EDE, but I doubt DC would want to go back and explore the silver age DCU at this point.

However, I think a Legionnaires series might work that focused on the 45,000+ OTHER Legion members in the current series. With so many characters calling themselves Legionnaires these days, the format would be wide open for any number of different settings, themes, and storytelling styles. Of course, some stories could retell threeboot stories from the point of view of the mass multitude of ringless wonders.

I'd think the concept might work best as the lead feature in a new Adventure Comics anthology. The Legion connection would guarentee a certain level of sales while one story each issue could feature some other character by a big name creator, bringing on more readers.

Or maybe coaxing the Legion writers of the past to contribute a few scripts: Jim Shooter, Gerry Conway, Paul Levitz, Cary Bates...etc.

Legionnaires Quarterly!

All new stories and art by classic Legion writers and artists (as much as possible) and open to new creators that are dying to "take a stab" at a classic Legionesque tale.

One Silver Age reprint story (not necessarily in any order) to "frame" the issue and new stories set within the framework to expand and flesh out the the scenario.

I like the Quarterly idea...but, alas, experience would dictate that it is yet another Legion fan pipe dream (yeah, we all have 'em...I used to wish there were 4 Titles: LSH and "Tales of the LSH" for the main stories, "Legionnaires" for a focus on one or a small handful of Legionnaires, and "30th Century Chronicles", to focus on the rest of the 30th century universe...)


HOWEVER, a more likely scenario to fill this TYPE of niche...

"Legion Adventures" a la "Justice League Adventures"/ "JLU Adventures"...

With a new cartoon rumored to be on the horizon (and certainly it would have to be an amalgam of the PREVIOUS incarnations...the current being just a tad too different), this would be the obvious forum for both the "older" Legion, and, of course, redux versions of "classic" LSH tales, as has also been done in Superman/Batman/JLA cartoons, to some extent.

My hope would be they'd use a LITTLE less minimalst art...I think someone like Jeff Moy would be perfect for this type of thing, though I certainly prefer Kitson's art for the main book...

I'm actually more excited by this possibility (a comic to accompany the cartoon) then I am about the cartoon itself...

If DC is smart, they can use this as an opportunity to finally "give back" the original LSH to the hardcore fans, while mining the best of the whold of LSH history to hook new fans of the cartoon...

Sounds to me like some of what y'all are saying would better fall into the category of an "All-Star Legion of Super-Heroes" series more than anything else. The "All-Star" label is currently hot, it would allow for high profile creators to do a self-contained Legion story free of baggage, and they'd be able to use the elements of what they considered "classic" Legion mythos.

Man, I would love to see new Cary Bates anything...