Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes We're Getting a Freakin' Legion OMNIBUS!!!

What EDE said.

I would only add that Volume 10 has all the Dave Cockrum* stories in it, so that one's well worth saving up for.






*Or, rather, DAVE EFFING COCKRUM, to use the nickname Pal-Lardy coined for him a few years ago.

The gap bugs me so much. I've managed to accidentally collect the first part of the silver age three times over (I had the first couple showcase volumes, I picked up the first silver age trade when it came out, and then I finally got the omnibuses), but there's such a huge amount that's out of print and I can't find anywhere.

Yeah, its like five or six years' worth. Most of these comics aren't even digital at this point. I think DCI has issue 200, then 222, but nothing from the backup issues after the last of the Silver age comics. They seem to be more consistent after 222.

I will add, that its fascinating to me, reading all these stories in 2021, that Editorial machinations with comic books in general, and the Legion in particular have literally been going on longer than I've been alive.

Oy, don't even get me started(!!) (too late! )

I don't know why they have shifted focus from backfilling the earlier volumes to instead filling in the recent(ish, 90s+) history... maybe they thought it would help more with sales of the current title? (if it even still exists?), but as Ann Hebistand alludes to above, the next volume (which I presume would be BRONZE AGE Legion Omnibus #1), would have contained the ENTIRETY of the Dave Cockrum run. It will be a crime if they never get to this key turning point in the Legion's publication history.

IMHO, Dave Cockrum single-handedly rescued the Legion and was responsible for their surge in popularity in the mid-late 70s.

A lot people give Grell a great deal of credit for that, but really he just went with Cockrum's improvements/style and ran with it,... and ran quite a bit too far, if you ask me (70s Cosmic Boy costume and Colossal Boy with no pants but still with headgear? Tyroc's "Peter Pan in chains" costume? augh!). Other than those horrific misfires (and Dawnstar, which could start a whole debate but I'll just leave it, and Saturn Girl, which was an ill-fated editorial decision to permanently go with a reader-suggested costume), the rest of the "new" costumes for the 70s Legion were all tasteful, and ALL from Cockrum. Plus Cockrum gave different characters subtly different faces and hair, unlike Grell's "every guy has the exact same ridiculous sideburns" style. I also prefer Cockrum's sci-fi backgrounds, although to be fair Grell was good at that also.

I think the good news is of course that since Silver AGe Omnibus Vol 3 came out I am pretty sure less than 2 years ago (still fairly new!), there is still a pretty decent chance (especially if everyone speaks up about it!) that we might, before long, see Legion Bronze Age Omnibuses come out to bridge that gap to S&LSH #234. It certainly is frustrating that this missing period has the most expensive DC Archives volumes.... not sure if that is because of lower print runs, or more demand (this was true even BEFORE the Silver Age Omnibuses were released, BTW). But if it is at all the latter, that should clue in someone at DC that the Bronze Age Omnibuses are worth publishing! (I am assuming 2 of them to get to #234, but you could imagine one really big one also.)


In the meantime, I will keep googling "Legion Bronze Age Omnibus" and hoping I get a true hit.

I hear you!!

A couple things to unpack on what you've said based on your great comments. The collections that Ann was talking about above are the ones from the late 90s that contain fewer stories than the latest Omnis. Regardless, they are out of print, so therefore pricey. Unfortunately.

As to why we aren't seeing any new collections, I don't know. I've asked around myself and the most common thing I've heard for more current news is that due to the AT&T divestiture and the resulting layoffs, there is no headcount to make it happen. And there are several more collections to go: The Cockrum/Grell Legion, a third and/or fourth collection of the reboot (hopefully not the McAvennie stuff), and at least a couple more volumes of DnA to round out the reboot era. The retroboot and current book released collected editions within the last 10 years.

They were OK with publishing the Grell designs in 2017, so the earlier stuff should be no problem if they have the staff.

Perhaps we could circulate my copy of Volume 10 among us? I have all my favorite Cockrum stories in floppies, so if anything were to happen to it, I'd be okay.

That's a wonderful offer, but I wouldn't want your (valuable now) book to be damaged, or especially lost, by the likes of the postal service!

The stories can be found pretty easily for free online, if it were just a matter of reading them.

It's typical of long-running series like the Archives that later volumes would have lower print runs, and would thus presumably be scarcer. I imagine 13 is especially rare, being published near the end of the whole Archives program.

Well, this discussion has inspired me to consider the possibility of making some $$$$$$ by selling my copies of Volumes 11, 12, and 13 on Ebay.

As with Cockrum, I have my favorite Grell stories in floppies. And, to be quite honest, I think that, despite some very nice art by Grell and Netzer and Sherman, that era just doesn't hold up well.

I'll keep Volume 10, though. That one's special.

Yeah, I've heard the stories aren't all that consistent in quality. But, it'd be good to at least read them in order.

I didn't even think about looking at something like the superblogger site, that's a great idea EDE.

Yeah, Cockrum had a ton of interesting ideas to build stories around, which make the issues at least memorable even when the writing is sometimes a bit iffy.

Vols. 11-13 contain a lot of issues that are just kind of there. There are definitely gems, like #212, but, overall, Shooter's second run is much less interesting than his first, and Levitz's first run is much less interesting than his second.

Thank you for the kind words, GL, and thank you for easing my concern about the legal issues and for informing all of us about the unfortunate reduced headcount issue. I did not know that. At least that is something that we could hope would be reversed over time, unlike a legal block. One would hope that if the potential profit from producing more volumes offsets hiring people back, that they would... but then, we are also living in the first ever labor shortage that *I* can recall...

I am familiar with the out-of-print 90s "DC archives", and in fact I did get impatient and purchase volume 10 about a year ago, thinking it might only go up in price even more. I got a reasonable (but not "good") deal on ebay, paying only roughly double the original cover-price, but I work long hours and figured I deserved to indulge myself a little.

HOWEVER, I am still anxious for a Bronze Age Omnibus for several reasons:
1) The old "DC archives" pages are reduced size. I am not sure by how much (feels like about 85% or so of the original), but as I have just reached the age where I need reading glasses and before long might probably need prescription lenses, the reduced size is annoying.
2) while I at least partially agree with Ann Hebistand's comment above that the stories right after the Cockrum run are often weak (I would call them "inconsistent"), there are several gems, and some of these are historically important, such as the death of Lyle Norg, and the first even mention of Legion clones in #206. Speaking of which...
3) I think it would be nice if the Legion fandom community were as familiar with these stories as they are with the Adventure run. S&LSH #206 *in particular*drives me crazy because (spoilers if you haven't read!) 4) I would just like for everyone else to be able to read these great stories, and complete the "classic" (well, pre-TMK) Legion run, without having to break the bank by paying collector's item prices. The rest of the run leading up to #234 has the 1st Infinite Man, the death of Chemical King, the intros of Dawnstar and Tyroc, and several perennial "rejects" (Infections lass, porcupine pete, etc.) Not to mention the intro of Wildfire by Cockrum.

Anyway, hopefully it will happen eventually. It hasn't been so long that I am giving up hope yet.

Well, there is still a chance it may happen. We did get word this week that DC will release a second omni for the 5YL era that will effectively round out that run and include Valor up to the end of Zero Hour.

And I completely agree - there are a lot of concepts in the Cockrum era (i.e. 70-78) that inform some of what came later in the 80, the later reboot, as well as a lot of classic introductions. I just signed up for DCU Infinite to try and catch up, but it only really starts with S&LSH 222, missing many years of Legion stories.

Good point about the potential link between SLSH #206 and Batch SW6. I have to admit I completely missed that too. Of course End of an Era went down a different path but it certainly could have fitted with postulating prior to that.

I thought there was a letter about that during the TMK Era. I definitely remember someone making the point that, if SW6 were clones, they the Dominators or Dark Circle or whoever must have much more successful cloning tech than the Legion.

I feel like the SP kind of put a spoiler into clone tech on Earth / in the UP to keep it from running wild with everyone making a dozen clones of themselves and having whole clone families.

But the Dark Circle has historically been crawling with clones, and they were sometimes active for decades, so clearly they are using tech developed elsewhere (quite possibly by the Dominators!), or have hacked it and removed whatever spoiler the SPs built into it (or developed it past whatever bizarre restriction makes the clones poof in 24 hours, in any event).

Tom Bierbaum on the SW6 clones from his It's OK I'm a Senator Blog:

We then remind readers that Valor has found evidence that the Dark Circle had obtained Legion genetic material back in the Adventure days and planned to grow an "Unkillables" version of the Legion for their own use. And for the first time as I writer this, it's occurring to me that according to the timeline of this Legion universe we were writing, our younger "SW6 Legion" popped up after a gap of 17 years in Legion continuity, which gave the Dark Circle or the Dominators or anybody else roughly the right amount of time they needed to clone and grow up their own Legion replicas, avoiding that illogical quality of most comic-book clones - that they're somehow "born" as old as the original person from which they've been cloned. That 17 years is total coincidence, simply the number of years of Legion continuity that had occurred from the point in Legion history I wanted to draw the SW6 Legion from. I suggested that point because I wanted Ferro Lad in the SW6 Legion, not because I was counting the years or anything. And yet it's very close to the perfect amount of time someone would need to grow and age their own Legion to the proper point. Funny that I don't believe that ever occurred to me before.

Somewhere else (couldn't find it) I recall speculation or suggestion that the Dominators had the advanced tech necessary to perfect the cloning technique - it may have been the letter EDE mentions.

I'm far less bothered by the idea that clones could be grown to the appropriate age super-quickly, than I am at the idea that they would have all of the memories/personality of the original. That seems to me far more unrealistic (though obviously explanations can be invented in a universe with a whole world full of telepaths, for example).

Actually, I mainly thought lack of concern in the batch-SW6 storyline over the events from SLSH #206 did not seem plausible, although any such omission can I suppose be attributed to something not mentioned in the 5-year gap...still an awkward omission, though.

But yeah, replicating memories/personality is something far more than "cloning", while the idea that normal cloning would still be a challenge 1000 years in the future seems a bit ludicrous, given that we can already, right now, clone if we really wanted (obviously we don't for ethical reasons of high failure rates, but Dolly the Sheep happened 25 years ago, and we can now edit DNA of pre-embryonic mice and could with other species if warranted).

But that was definitely not true at the time of SLSH #206, and not even quite yet at the time of SW6 storyline.

But what they (whomever it was fictionally) did for SW6 was really: a) cloning + b) rapid aging, + c) mind transfer

I guess it is still believable that b) would lead to the survivability issue in #206 (Set's explanation of a spoiler put in by the SPs also could make sense), and that c) might be something only the Dominators or Dark Circle had mastered. (But then, I am sure there must be tons of "mind transfer" storylines in LSH history? I can't think of any off-hand, but I am sure there must be...)

But as Tom B points out, you don't actually need the rapid aging for SW6, because of the time gap between when they are from and when they appear. So if the rapid aging is what's responsible for the self-destructing, that would actually solve that problem.

That 's an undeniably good point. I still feel it warranted a mention. Oh well.

ironically, the SW6-ers were eventually wiped out anyway by Zero Hour (or, to break the 4th wall, being rebooted. I dare someone to execute a reboot but then still have multiple versions of the team after the reboot due to cloning. )