Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Long Live the Legion (and hello, too)

I've been an avid reader of comics since I could read. My father is a huge fan and has a dearth of material to choose from. Old DCs. old Marvels...I read 'em all. When I was about 6 or 7 years old, I stumbled onto a digest of Adventure Comics reprints with a colorful array of characters I hadn't encountered before, and stories that blew my young mind. As you might guess, this was my introduction to the Legion of Super-Heroes. And what an introduction it was!

Lightning Lad's heroic sacrifice in battle with Zaryan the Conqueror!
Mon-El's freedom from the Phantom Zone!
The Kryptonian renegade Dev-Em!
Rejected Legion applicant Jungle King's deadly Legion of Super-Monsters!
The Legion of Substitute Heroes!
Lightning Lad's resurrection...or was it?
Lightning Lad's real, honest and for true resurrection!
And most of all was a story about the Legion squaring off against a foe called Mask Man. A story in which, as most of you know, the entire Legion save Superboy was murdered in cold blood. Sure, they were alive at the end of the story, but that was one of the most influential pieces of fiction I've ever read. Seriously. Compare that to any of the outrageous things that happen in issues of The Authority...this s@%$ was ahead of its time.

Well, I've read many a comic book in the years since then, and the LSH has never been far from my heart. I have recently gotten way into Mark Waid and Barry Kitson's newest take on the concept, and my search for more Legion goodness has brought me here. Hello, and thank you...to the creators of the LSH, yesterday and today; and to you fine folk, for keeping the legend alive.

LONG LIVE THE LEGION!!!

Welcome! There's definitely something really powerful about that Mask Man story. I always find it hard to read, even knowing that everything is going to be set right at the end of the tale. In general, I find the amount of creativity/originality in those Adventure era tales to be astounding. Really, the Legion has been riding on it in various ways ever since.

Hey EDE!

Any chance for any of the ADVENTURE tales to be retold in the current Legion series - seeing that its supposed to involve the members from the Hamilton/Shooter run?

Brian

Mark Waid has often been quoted as saying that the LSH is the foundation for every superhero team book that exists, but I think it goes deeper than that. Most of the major tropes of superhero fiction from oh, say, the late 70s onward, have their roots in classic Legion stories. The complex interpersonal relationships and soap-opera storylines of the Claremont-era X-Men; massive lead and supporting casts; heroes sacrificing themselves in the line of duty (which, except for LSH, just didn't happen in the old days); high-concept sci-fi; team members betraying their fellow heroes (the line from Nemesis Kid to Terra is a short one, IMHO); and so on. Mond you, I think some creators have taken the wrong lessons from these innovative tales...death means jack s#*! in comics now, and while I love a good grim-n-gritty tale as much as the next fanboy, one of the hallmarks of the classic LSH tales is how despite the life-or-death situations that would arise, the stories are still irrepressibly fun.

I think re-telling the Adventure stories is exactly what the current team is trying to avoid, LAM. It's probably for the best. The "adaptations" of old storylines from the last incarnation of the team were generally vastly inferior to the original tales.

Welcome Nihilism Lad!

They are setting up the character interaction that has IMO been the cornerstone of the team! That is the best part of this new Legion.

This is a great website to talk everything Legion.

So what's gonna happen when someone runs out of original ideas?

They get a new someone? Or it's fourboot....

Hi, Nihilism Lad! Those Adventure era stories are wonderful, aren't they. Not only did they hook many of us to become life-long Legion fans, they are still fresh. (Which is why we love to discuss them here....)

Was Ferro Lad the first superhero killed for real in comics?

Define for real. In the Golden Age, I know that there were a few hero deaths. The first one I can think of is MLJ's Comet. He died a few issues after he debuted and then his brother carried on as the Hangman.

Oh! And Hi NL!

Waid said he was going to avoid redoing stories from previous continuities. It's a smart move, IMO. Anything the reboot tried to redo failed to compare to the original story. It's better just to tell new stories, especially since the current cast has a different personalities and motivations.

Note that of those Legionnaires who died (Ferro Lad, Chemical King, Karate Kid, and someone else I seem to be forgetting), none of them EVER came back. That's partly why comic deaths these days mean so little - you just know someone is going to resurrect them eventually.

I think you were thinking of Invisible Kid, maybe?

Welcome Nihilism Lad, we're glad to have ya!

And I echo your thoughts on those early Adventure issues. Small things like the funeral of Lightning Lad, Mon-El's promise to revive him, the gradual building of a larger, more complex mythology, all combined with the major points that you expressed a few posts ago: pure genius.

Look forward to more insight and thoughts from you!

Welcome to Legion World, Nihilism Lad. I can't wait to read the Adventure issues once DC finally collects them in a Showcase volume.

Are the Archives still being published - coz i am waaaaay behind...

Welcome!

I agree, the Adventure Era is a special part of the Legion's existence. They may be a bit silly by today's standards, but that silliness makes them all the more enjoyable.

NL, For a guy who's into nihilism, you have an amazingly positive attitude. It's very refreshing.

The Adventure tales are MUST reading for you latecomers. Beg, borrow or steal the archives/digests if you have to. And if you don't have a child handy, kidnap one and read the stories with him/her. It's the best way to capture the incredible sense of wonder we old fogeys experienced back in the day.

The Legion Archives are up to Volume 12, featuring Superboy #213-223. They've slowed down the publication rate of them, but they're still being produced.

Hi! Yeah, I found those digest Adventures pretty much simultaniously as I discovered the regular Legion book Levitz and Giffen were doing at the time.

It's funny you mention "the Doom of the Super-Heroes" (Mask Man story), because that's probably the one that had the greatest effect on me, too. As a kid, I don't think I would have described myself as being a fan of "old fashioned" Silver Age comics, but I really enjoyed those Adventure digest reprints as much as the current series.

I must have read those things 20 or 30 times since '82... They were also great for turning me on to the Aparo-drawn Aquaman stories, Murphy Anderson Spectre, Simon & Kirby Sandman, and a bunch of other great stuff. It was a great format...digest sized, but $1.50 for 100 pages in color...and 2 Legion stories every issue!

Like Invisible Brainiac says, they may seem a little silly by today's standards, but they have a lot of charm, a real sense of wonder, and I think that in some ways, they hold up better than some of the stuff done more recently...

Hey NL! Sounds a bit like how I became a Legion fan. I read my first Legion from those Blue Ribbon Digests that would dedicate a whole issue to Adventure reprints. My first story was the LEgion Suicide Squad (or something like that) where the entire Legion is defeated by two craazy old men in a fortified citadel and its up to the Substitutes (Night Girl really) to stop them.

So even though I was years behind the game, the Adventure stories still had me hooked for life!

Welcome, Nihilism Lad! My membership here precedes yours by only a few days.

I remember those Adventure reprint digests very fondly. I had been reading LSH for a few years when they came along to fill in the gaps. I wish I had saved them.

An aside, there was one digest that showed the three founders as they appeared during the Adventure-era in front of the three as they appeared at the time (think Cos in the bustier, etc.). I had seen an "Adult" Legion story reprinted somewhere or other and surmised that the more modestly dressed Legionnaires were the older versions. Hey! I was a kid!

I think that was Adventure #300 that had a wraparound cover depicting the (then) current look of the team on one side of the book and the Silver Age look of the characters on the other side. I loved that cover, it was so cool.

That was a fantastic era for us Legion fans. The LSH had only had their own book for a few years (no longer Superboy and the Legion of Superheroes it was just The Legion of Superheroes) the Baxter had just been launched with all new stories by Giffen and the regular title was carrying new stories (featuring the comics newcomer Dan Jurgens on art chores) for the first year of the baxter comic until they had some lead time and started the reprints of the baxters as the regular newstand comic. So for a little while we had THREE Legion comics coming out. It was pretty darned special.