Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Visionaries of Tomorrow Waid Talks LSH at Newsarama

Insane: Dream Girl (temporarily loss of precog drives her batty)

Switches Sides: Imra (Are you all assuming this means from LSH to Terra Firma? I think it means from Brainy to Cos or Brainy to Cos. If it is to Terra Firma, then I'd say Brin)

Romance: Projectra & Jan (already hinted at by Barry & Mark very early on) or Light Lass and Star Boy

Insane: Invisible Kid (I think he's been pushed too far.)

Switches Sides: ? (one of Terra Firma to the LSH, the one who was reminiscent of Mentalla)

Romance: Reep and Star Boy (just to be different )

What's the red stuff at the bottom of Dream Girl's roll call tag? Interlac?

Arguably insane - Brin, because he's been worked over by Lemnos

Switch sides - Cham, who really is poisonously bitter

Romance - 1st choice, Brainy & Nura; 2nd, Karate Kid and Phantom Girl

The quote says that it is "another" Legionnaire that will switch sides, so I don't think it's a member of Terror Firma.

I've been thinking Cham as well, at least partially for the alien thing.

I like the Brin-as-insane idea as well.

And I really hope it's Brainy and Nura for the romance.

The way I read it (and I may be wrong), is that Waid means two more Legionnaires will find romance in addition to the ones we've already seen. In other words, Brainy & Dreamy and Brin & Jeckie might not count.

The pairings might reveal some...so far we haven't seen any interaction b/t Tinya and Joe and their together (I actually like them apart right now).

I don't know that Brainy and Nura have found romance yet. They were tantilizingly close in issue 10 though..... DAH she can't be dead... you realize I've never felt this strongly about a comic book death or plot element before. Curse you Mark Waid...

I also notice that Ayla was sitting on Micro Lad's chest during the meeting. So in 10 issues has she already pitched to the entire lineup and are we now back to the top of the order again?

I love each of the characters and would have fun writing them all. Too bad I don't have the job.

I'm still holding out hope for Nura.

I'm also going to speculate that the switching sides is a ruse as much as Sun Boy's quitting was.

Am I the only one to notice SENTIENT CLOUD BOY, whose appearance was foretold by Mark Waid 16 months ago?

http://www.newsarama.com/dcnew/Legion/LSH11_11.jpg

Whoa! You are right!

What? Cosmic Boy brings a team to a key world and doesn't inform them that it is the heart of the public service beforehand? I'm stunned.

Insane: Projectra

Switch sides: Ultra Boy

Romance: Micro Lad & Element Lad

Oh no they found the machine of how adults control all underagers. That's one of the silliest pages I've ever seen.

That's it! Sentient Cloud Being switches sides, stops guarding the Public Service and joins the Legion.

Nightcrawler's suggestion that the side switching is a ruse makes sense - maybe Brin has pretended to join Lemnos' group. Can we really have a legionnaire go bad?

I thought this was brilliant, and in all my years of Legion board posting, I've never seen this reason for the fall of the Legion...at least not explained this clearly.

"People keep thinking that, but it's not true. Superboy wasn't even in the group anymore, and hadn't been for years. The fact that he was retconned out of existence shouldn't have had any bearing on future stories. The absence of Superboy was irrelevant because Superboy was already absent. Was it really that essential to say that Superboy inspired the Legion? If it was, why isn't it at the core of this series? Because it's not, that's why.

What really happened was that in 1984 both the Legion and the New Teen Titans went hardcover/softcover for one year, and that meant that in 1985 you could no longer buy an all-new Legion comic on the newstands. People who didn't have access to comic book stores bought subscriptions; people who had access to comic book stores bought it there. Sales of the newsstand reprints tanked and both Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes and Tales of the Teen Titans were eventually cancelled, meaning that both the Legion and the Titans were no longer available on the newsstand in any capacity. This is back when newsstands were the primary source of new comic purchases, before comic books stores dominated the industry. Meanwhile, the X-Men has always been available wherever comic books are sold. If the X-Men had been taken off the newsstands in the mid-Eighties, I don't think it would be the juggernaut that it still is today."

I still think the reboots had something to do with it, because Teen Titans has been able to return to former glories at least twice. But it's hard to argue with all three titles collapsing at the same time.

Comic book fans keep thinking that everyone else thinks like them and that the reason why a given book (or books in general) don't sell is because of what's inside it. For the majority of people, it's always been about distribution and price. DC's three best-selling books in the early Eighties were 1) New Teen Titans, 2) Legion of Super-Heroes, and 3) Batman and the Outsiders. They were all taken off of the newsstands and replaced with reprints, and look what happened to all of them. It was like handing Marvel the ball at the one yard line and saying, "Go ahead, have one on us." It doesn't matter what the product is if people can't find it or afford it.

Also, why exactly didn't I quite understand the Public Service? I've got 2 degrees from a very good school, I teach for a living, and somehow I never figured out that the Legion was rebelling for a good damn reason? I don't want to be spoonfed--I love being dropped into a situation and having to figure it out, but I think Waid needs to spend a little more time explaining what the hell is going on in a little more detail, or at least a little more clearly. He's going to lose/is losing a lot of readers who are quitting because they're scratching their heads more than enjoying a ripping yarn.

Well that's corporate marketing in a conglomerate for you . The decision was probably forced on DC by someone at Warner who had lots of experience in book marketing.

The whole point of comics is wanting to know what happens next, and reading a comic that first came out a year ago just doesn't turn that crank. Of course the was probably lost on the Warner Books guy who suggested this. Not quite as bad as New Coke (because all those guys sold was sugar water, they should have known better) but close.

Did Warner own DC back when the books went to direct market?

I'm proof positive of that argument though. I read LSH and TT, but there was no comic shop within reasonable distance back then, so when they stopped publishing the reprints I was left out. At least until I discovered subscriptions a few years later.

As for people not realising the Legion was rebelling against the Public Service, was it mentioned at all outside of the preview? Maybe it won't be so confusing for people starting with the trade.

DC was about as autonomous from Warner Brothers as they could get back then. I know that people have this perception that because DC is important to them it was important to Warners, but honesty, the people at Warner Brothers could have cared less about DC Comics. I doubt if many of the executives there knew that they owned it. The decision was entirely that of Jenette Kahn and Dick Giordano, who misread the situation. To this day, DC is not part of Warner Brothers' publishing division, but an asset which they own, and the comics are considered loss leaders which keep the characters in the public eye.

The reboots did play a role, but it all began with the hardcover/softcover experiment. In my original post at Newsarama I didn't even mention the fact that the direct sales versions of the Titans and the Legion cost more than their newsstand brethern and that in under half a year both books had new artists. After having been hyped mainly based on the creative teams, many fans felt like they had fallen for a bait and switch (especially subscribers who were on the hook for a full year's worth of issues), and to make matters worse, during the second year of publication (the first year where new issues were only produced for the direct sales market) each book was on its third regular artist. Many people felt like they were paying more and getting less in return and sales slumped as a result, but DC kept making money on the arrangement due to the higher cover price and the non-returnable nature of the books. They didn't realize that if more people start dropping a book than start buying it, you're going to be in trouble before you know it. That's when the audience shrinkage really started to begin.

The reboot of Superman didn't help matters any, but sales before and after the Legion dealt with that event were more or less the same. By comparison, a lot less people were buying the Legion of Super-Heroes after the hardcover/softcover year than before it. By the end of Paul Levitz's run, Legion sales had undergone steady attrition from year to year mainly due to the direct-sales only nature of the title, but the people at DC couldn't figure out why there weren't as many people buying the Legion anymore. That was when the finger started pointing inward at continuity instead of external factors like availability, price, and whether or not whoever was drawing the book was a deciding sales factor. Let's face it: in the minds of many people, both the Legion and the Titans became pretty mediocre books around 1985. When books get worse, people aren't willing to pay the usual price for them, let alone more than they were a couple of years ago.

The next big hit to Legion sales occurred during the Five Years Later era. Ironically, the book was now back on the newsstands but still cost more than the average comic book. The people behind it honestly believed that the Legion would now be easier to follow and would not only keep the existing audience but draw in new readers as well. They were wrong on both counts: justified or not, older readers fled in droves and newer readers didn't pick it up in significant numbers to offset the losses. To make matters worse, the Superboy Edict (which required all mention of Superboy, even the El family name, to be removed from the book) essentially rubbed in people's faces the fact that this was no longer the Legion which they had grown up with, and many fans who were willing to stick it out and give the relaunch a try found themselves leaving the book. Instead of just never mentioning Superboy's name again since he was dead and no longer a part of ongoing storylines, TMK tackled the problem head on, assuming that a majority, not minority, or readers would not be satisfied unless the issue was addressed. Given that sales were smaller to begin with in comparison to the last time the Legion got a new number one, there wasn't as much room to manouver and the series took another massive hit in the sales department.

Sales continued to decline until the series was deemed unsalvagable. Rather than restore the original continuity in an attempt to win back lapsed fans, the decision was made to start over entirely from scratch and the Legion was rebooted in 1994. Sales actually enjoyed a brief spike upward, but the decline soon began again and eventually resulted in the book being cancelled in 2000. By this point, Legion sales were reportedly at 13,000 units a month. By comparison, at the time of the hardcover/softcover experiment, sales were reportedly in the 170,000-200,000 range for the newsstand book, let alone the direct sales version.

The Legion was relaunched again in 2001 and it attempted the same thing which every Legion relaunch does: to appeal to new readers and to bring back older ones. A little over two years later, it too was cancelled in favor of another reboot.

Which brings us up to today. The current Legion series has star power going for it with Mark Waid and Barry Kitson, but it too is seeing a drop in sales month after month after the initial period of interest which traditionally accompanies every Legion relaunch/reboot. The thinking is still that the Legion's salvation is in newer readers who would otherwise be frightened away by the Legion's reputation, but if sales continue to decline over the next few years (especially if the creative team changes), it'll be interesting to see what DC's plan will be then. There will never be a period in which DC gives up on the Legion of Super-Heroes entirely - it's far too valuable a trademark for that - so thoughts of permanent cancellation are premature. Still, whether or not the Legion will break out of the cycle or relaunch/reboot-declining sales remains to be seen.

Not to ignore Glen Cardigan's very thought-provoking post, but returning to the idea that Legion HQ might be a prison as well as a clue to the team's origin, I think it would be wickedly funny if WaK depicted the three founding members - before they formed the Legion proper - as teenaged "agents of chaos" who went by the codenames Lightning Lord, Cosmic King and Saturn Queen.

is it just me or is the idea of them escaping from a prison a bit L.E.G.I.O.N.esque?

It's a great idea if WAK follow it up really, just think - regardless of what is done with Superboy/no Superboy in the 20thC DCU, in this 'Boot as they are basing them on a 20th century interstellar group. Would that be a good way of avoiding awkward continuity problems in future?

Erk... does that mean Nura is the new Stealth? Assuming she lives, of course.)

Can Flying Foxlike-Creature Boy be far behind?

Um, what's up with my post? Why's the entire post in the quote box, when clearly my message ("Can Flying Foxlike-Creature Boy be far behind?") is outside of the [/qb] and [/quote]? (Not to mention my sig and the stuff at the bottom...)

Its a fault in the UBB code. Caused the IMG tags to be removed from the HTML of the image. I fixed it up for you Stu.

It says "DECEASED".