Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Lightning Saga Legion in Action!

I'd rather see a non-Kryptonian, if there has to be 20th century character 'stunt-casting.'

It's not like the 20th century is lacking for immortal characters (like the various Amazons or Martian Manhunter or Phantom Stranger) or characters capable of time-travel (various Flashes, like Wally or Bart, or Captain Atom or something).

To my knowledge no other team has had the multiple re-boots that the Legion has had. The JLA, Avengers FF have all had changes in line-up but not the total re-hash that the Legion has gone through.

Isn't it time to call 'time' on all of the stupidity and get back to a core single Legion and for me (and I'm sure most Legion fans) that means the original version (the Johns version if you like).

I like, for example, XS and Gates as characters and see nothing wrong with bringing them into the Johns team as new members. If this attitude was adopted, every character that was ever called a Legionnaire could be in one straightforward continuity. Surely that would be enough for the vast majority of buyers to stay on board and hopefully bring in old timers who have fallen by the wayside as well.

Aye and aye again! I would love to see XS, Gates, Kinetix, and Dragonmage join! Devlin O'Ryan, the yellow girl whose name I forget, and Celeste Rockfish. We have room for all of them!

In saying that, you're saying "most Legion fans" prefer the book as it was 23 years ago.

That says something about the demographics of "most Legion fans"

oops wrong thread

True - but that doesn't make it wrong. And says a lot for why continuity DOES matter

Set mentioned the Martian Manhunter. I remember from the post-Zero Hour continuity that its version of R. J. Brande displayed some suspiciously Martian characteristics at times. Were they eventually going to reveal that R. J. was indeed J'Onn J'Onzz?

Sorta like they were gonna eventually reveal Lyle was gay too LOL.

Actually, it says more about the appeal of the Post Crisis Legions to the comics buying audience than it does anything else.


DC told the vast majority of the old Legion Fans to go eff themselves a long time ago. And they have not catered to that demographic for some time now...say 23 years. Although it's not that simple, because in a way they've been catering to purist Legion fans, the absolutely purest of the pure, that voice, for this entire time, which is probably why those are the only people that read the book, and that includes the new fans.




Perhaps if DC listened to the old Legion Fans, not just the diehards, but all of them..

A. The old Legion Fans would like the Post Crisis Legions more.

B. Most Legion fans wouldn't be old Legion fans(or purists).


The Post Crisis versions of the book are conceptually different from the Pre Crisis team. In some ways these changes were wrought by DC, but some of them were wrought by hardcore Legion fans. I think the importance of these conceptual differences are lost on most Legion fans both old and new, but I think they are important nontheless.


For instance, you can say Mon-El, is now Superboy and represents his role on the team, that energy, but that means absolutely nothing to a non-Legion fan, nor does it make Mon-El as recognizable as Superboy. That decision only caters to hardcore Legion fans.

Come to think of it, taking Superboy out of the picture doesn't make any Legionaires more recognizable.

You can also say the Legion now resides almost entirely in a self contained Universe, with little or no ties to any other comics Univrse, in some cases with near Real Time Aging(some old fans love this)...but that's something done to appeal to the ultra hardcore Legion fan base...not the mainstream audience and potential new readers.


IF you look at successful team books, they all have a character that attracts, and keeps attracting new readers...

When the Legion removed Superboy, they removed that character.

It's not so much that Superboy is a character everyone wants to read about, as it is that he's a version of arguably the most instantly recognizable character in comics history, and the Legion becomes a more familiar/inviting/approachable team and concept by his association with them, instead of the group of unknowns with a large cast, a basically generic foundation, and a confusing history, in a self contained/oft rebooted Universe, that they are without him.


I'd also argue that other things that hurt the Legion conceptually are the virtual elimination of time travel stories, overly focusing on realism and character devlopment, at the expense of the sci fi elements, action, and universal expansion, and not having a sophisticated enough future Universe.


I realize that you may not feel these conceptual differences are that great(although I don't know that for sure), in fact you may not like them at all, and that's not just because you are younger genration fan, for you seem to me to be as much a purist as many old Legion fans, but you are a fan DC did capture with a post crisis Legion, a post crisis Legion defined by Legion purists and a fundamentally different foundation, so it would make sense that those elements are not noticed or missed by yourself.

Unfortunately, there aren't enough of you, regardless of generation, to suit DC. If there were? We wouldn't be having this conversation, and the Action Legion would be nothing more than a nostalgic story arc. Instead, it's a potential future published version of this team.

did any one notice the the pic for the legion of three worlds behind brainiac 5's hand the lighting is shaped liked the letters x s

Awesome.
Maybe I'll get my wish and to some version of Jenni join the Legion as The 31st Century Flash!

Which character do most people recognize on this cover The 1st appearance of the Legion of Super-Heroes.
Kal-El has been there from the beginning and since he was took away from the Legion the book has ended 3 times,It's in my opinion that the Legion has done better with him than without him,at one time with him they were more popular than the X-Men and the Titans,and under the right direction I think with him they could be a Top seller once again for DC.

Sorry, Wrong Thread!

The jurors on the Adventure #247 cover look more and more like the LSV than the Legion founders to me!

Hmmm, I wonder...

have just got back from the comic con and buying a six inch stack of old legion comics, as some one who started with the legion at the 3 boot

what i, with out a doubt know why i love that legion the most,the stories have an open and a close in almost every issue. i can pick up almost any of them and know what's going on with out havening read every single issue before and after it. and that is what in my opinion makes it a great read, don't get me wrong i pretty much worship the 3-boot but to me that is what sets it apart from the others where i need to read every issue to get what the hell is going on( and that reboot you NEED to read every issue and that is something coming from a girl that has finished that said six inch stack of comics 2 night ago. has them logged in her brain)

As a Legion fan and not a big Superboy/man fan I have to agree. I think the Legion could've made it without him but DC trips over themselves so much it's just easier with him. The legion didn't need him but DC really messed up the Legion...now they need him more than ever. I guess he's an anchor. Johns sold me on the Superman connection.

I think what Johns (and the TV show) have done is argue convincingly that the Legion is important to Superman--that they had a reciprocal/paradoxical influence on each other that helped make sure that young Clark Kent grew up to become the greatest hero in the universe, great enough to inspire a bunch of kids 1,000 years later. There are pitfalls in this approach -- of the time travel/paradox/quasi-religious destiny variety. But there are advantages too. For one, it takes some of the pressure off poor old Ma and Pa Kent for raising the perfect kid to become the greatest hero in the universe. With the Legion, there's a peer group that gets Clark through adolescence without the angst that could result in planet-wide catastrophe. Also, Clark's experiences of the Legion serve as a critical reminder to him that, as powerful as he is, he is MORE powerful with allies and friends to help him. I think that's an essential part of Superman that gets overlooked too often. When you are THAT powerful, how do you avoid the "Oh, I'll do it myself" attitude that ends in tyranny? (This is my new mental model of why Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader, and why Luke Skywalker doesn't, BTW.) Seen in this light, Superman's experience with the Legion should lead him to reach out to other heroes, even ones radically different from him, like Batman. A Legionless Supes (like that of Byrne and later) WOULD be disdainful of the Justice League, and Batman. A Legion-based Supes would crave connection to the other heroes, even if that connection isn't the intense adolescent bonding he had with the Legion. He would win Batman's friendship in spite of Batman himself. He would help form the Justice League just as soon as there were other heroes to join.

The reverse question, though, is whether the Superman is important enough to the Legion to warrant including him somehow. You can argue that he's a point of view character, someone the reader can identify with in this huge cast of wacky future alien super hero teens. Certainly that's how Superboy WAS often used during the Adventure era. Then there's the argument that including Supes is worth it to sell more books. The best argument I see is that Supes is there as a living reminder to the Legion to stay on the right path, to live up to the high ideals that inspired the Legion in the first place. Seen in that light, you could imagine a pretty cool story with Superman meeting the Reboot/3Boot Legions and reading them the riot act about their bad behavior!

I thought it was a "v s" as in "versus". Since "XS" was in another panel of the preview, and she's another member of the Flash family it certainly could be her though...

In his meeting characters like Karate Kid, who utterly school him during tryouts as to how 'no powers' does not equal 'weak' or 'helpless,' I think it sets Clark up to respect people like Batman and Wildcat, who are willing (and quite able) to be full-fledged heroes without a single super-power.

Also, in meeting other superhuman figures, who use their powers badly, including others of his own 'weight class,' I think it helps foster the realization that being Kryptonian isn't what makes him a 'good guy.' It's what he chooses to do with those powers and that heritage. Rather than becoming strange and alien and distant from humanity, in all it's shapes and colors, his teenage experience with all sorts of shapes and colors of good guys and bad guys, IMO, helps to prime him to judge people on their actions and not on their power-level or alien/human/whatever heritage.

Saturn Girl comes from a world with many thousands of telepaths. Cosmic Boy comes from a world with millions of magnetically-powered folk. Quite a few other Legionnaires (Phantom Girl, Triplicate Girl, Brainiac 5, Chameleon Boy) come from worlds where everyone has powers much like their own, and yet *these* are the ones who have been inspired by the heroes of the past, of which Superman is first and foremost, to use their innate abilities to 'fight the good fight.'

I'm not a huge fan of Superman/boy/pig *in* the Legion, at least not full-time, but I do think that he's absolutely vital to the formation of the team, as they exist in a universe where billions of sentients, entire worlds full of them, have the power to match 20th century heroes *and choose not to.*

The Legion live in a universe where 'with great power comes great responsibility' is not a common concept, from the very earliest envisionings of the setting, where the vast, vast, vast majority of Titanians and Braalians were content to live non-super-lives, working as teachers and miners and whatever.

Given their comic-collecting, hero-worshipping ways, the threeboot Legion is particularly egregious in this fashion. They fight the good fight, but spend a fair amount of the first couple years assaulting authorities, breaking laws willfully (with no need to do so, just for fun) and going out of their way to act like the sorts of people 60's era Superboy would have called 'super-hoodlums!'

Forgive the edits, but I agree with these points that you making above. Except that I think that the Legion works better if they are not tied directly to the present-day DC universe. Just more or less ignore the doings in the present-day DC universe, sort of like they did in the old Adventure days. First, every story-line or major-event wont have to have reverberations in the future. I'm sure that events that occured in 1008 may have seemed earth-shattering and world-changing at the time but 1000 years later the effects of those earth-shattering/world changing events have been greatly muted by time. It would seem to me that the Legion creative staff shouldn't have to tie-in to every Crisis DC comes up with.
And second, ...well I've forgotten what my second point was but I'm sure that it was a good one.

Oh and they definately need to elevate the sci-fi/future sophistication angle. Thats what made the Levitz/Giffen run so swell was that the future seemed so ...futuristic. And time travel played a big part in the sci-fi feel of the Legion. Bring back the time bubbles, I miss the time bubbles.

Set, these are wonderful insights! I can remember thinking idly along these lines as a kid, but it has not occured to me in quite a long time that the 31st century is full of super-heroes that refuse the opportunity! The idea of all these special people keeping to themselves, considering their extraordinary gifts "normal," not thinking to help their cousins on other planets, cousins who were beneath their consideration. What a perfect metaphor for America in the 1950s! When you think about it, this is a much better underlying conflict for the 3boot Legion than the whole generation gap. The generation gap is a red herring (like, say, flag lapel pins). The real disagreement is about leaving your comfort zone and joining with people different from you to make the most of your uniqueness and benefit the common good. Man, I hope Francis and Shooter and read this.

the tip of that v goes out like an x

I don't know if this is the right place to post this... but did anyone else pick up Action Comics #864 this week? I was surprised at how big a Legion issue it was.

The interaction between Batman and Lightning Lad was very interesting. And my favorite scene was when they visited Starman.

This issue seemed to be a bridge between all the various stories with this Legion and setting up what's going to happen in Legion of Three Worlds.

<span class="spoiler_containter"><span class="spoiler_wording">Click Here For A Spoiler</span><span class="spoiler_text">Batman mentions having met all three Legions. He talked about the Reboot Legion during Final Night. It's not clear if Superman remembers them. I found that curious.</span></span>

And there was a big reveal at the end:

<span class="spoiler_containter"><span class="spoiler_wording">Click Here For A Spoiler</span><span class="spoiler_text">Time Trapper has been pulling the strings such as placing that tablet for Earth-Man to find. He wants to "corrupt everything you [Superman] ever stood for."</span></span>

yeah yeah I was wondering when they'd touch on that. I'm certainly glad i picked that ish up. That and I'm groovin on the ending page.also garth's tattoo xD!

I am actually depressed that I am no longer reading a Johns/Frank Legion story.