Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Visionaries of Tomorrow Shooter off Legion?

Maybe an analogy to sports entertainment shows the true dilemma of the Legion:

Most teams suffer some periods without success. This can have many reasons, but mostly, the first man to go is the coach (no matter if it's football, basketball or whatever sport out there like handball ).

In comics, the coach mostly is the writer, but there is also a kind of larger coach which is simply a kind of "direction" given by the powers that be.

If you let the creative teams follow this direction for a considerable time, like for example Johns on Green Lantern or JSA or Bendis (later Brubaker) on Daredevil or Willingham on Fables, the book can flourish. The Legion did in the 80s when Levitz was left alone for a long time.

But if success is lacking, often the "direction" of the book is sacrificed to some lame event like a major crossover or an unneccessary death of a major character, whatever.

The Legion suffered thrugh this for 20 years.

They decided to go adult with 5YL, got cold feet and changed direction again to do Legion on the Run, which had to fail cause all the fans who might have liked it were gone due to 5YL, and most of those who liked 5YL were appalled by LotR (wow! Same initials as Lord of the Rings, at least!)

So they changed old guys in spandex into young guys in spandex, another new direction, they changed into slightly more adult and a little gritty again with DnA, then again into ... I don't know what direction WaK was supposed to be, but in my book it totally tanked.

It's all about direction - the Legion no longer has a creative "Über-ich" any longer, and it suffered, like so many other books.

Can a new direction (again) have a chance after all this? I hope so, but fear that not many people trust DC far enough as if they would actually leave the Legion and Johns (and his followers) alone for, say, a decade...

Anybody catch this podcast here? Mark Waid talks about Jim Shooter's Legion run:

http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=157442

His comments start at the 54:40 min mark.

Data on sales was reproduced in a post here . As you can see, when Keith left the title, it was still selling a bit above Levitz. And that was after the slump of the 90s.
As for unrecognizable, I beg to differ. The reboots are the ones who are unrecognizable - being a bunch of stories that carried nothing but colorful characters that once were part of a book called LSH. It's like comparing the original villain Ambush Bug to current Ambush Bug: same clothes but oh, what a difference.
TMK had the original team, the original story, the original background except it was set in a more mature vein (and had to deal with retcons forced upon them). If that is your explanation for why LSH was rebooted, you should check sales AFTER Keith left. And Legion on The Run was all about "youthful optimism"...

For once, we should stop blaming sales for what is simply an opinion on what was "wrong" with v4., and more what came AFTER TMK for End of An Era. You don't like v4? Fine, but don't blame sales for that.

Can't seem to find it. What is it about?

It dosn't sound good for Shooter's future on the book, that's for sure. Mark Waid unintentionally makes it sound like Shooter is already gone and so is the 3boot...he doesn't outright say it, but he basically sounds like it's a done deal that both Shooter and the 3 boot are out of the picture.

He's not going to come out and say what he knows...but he definitely sounds like he knows something. And he probably does since he's pretty wired into both Shooter and Johns.

Waid says "I sure wish they weren't about to bury that (the 3boot) over too...paving that over"... He said with L3W and a fan base favoring a 70's Legion he's not sure there is room for the other two versions.

He also says "I think Shooter did a great job...it's been a delight to read." Waid really appears to be speaking past tense.

But he ends with "Hopefully I'll be proven wrong" (about DC not needing 3 versions of Legion around).

As a fan who appreciates things about each version of the team (even though my heart lies with the preboot), all I can say is "Amen, brother!"


LLLs - all of 'em!!

This should seriously become the new catchphrase for Legion fans.

Thanks guys. I started listening to the show but Mark Waid got on my nerves after 3 minutes LOL

And the host too hehe

This thread has moved a long way from Jim Shooter but

a question

What in the opinion of everyone would DC need to do to attract new readers (especially to the Legion?)

The animated series seemed the most obvious way in and that's been ditched. A film looks unlikely this century, so any ideas?

All I know is what attracted me to the Legion way back in 1973 was Superboy(Kal-El)Mixed with Dave Cockrum's cool costumes on the rest of the characters that I didn't know from adam.

Also I have a non-comicbook friend who loved the Justice League show,so I recommended the Legion series,he went out and got the DVD's and was not to keen on it,saying it was a kiddie show,I defended it of course, but I still could not change his opinion.

So here's what I think would draw in new reader's.

A hook (as in Kal-El from time to time)

Cool looking character's (See Dave Cockrum)

Interesting Villian's (See Jim Shooter)

A writer who understands the concept (See Paul Levitz)

I think most of the new readers nowaday's would already be comic fan's so go after them,but don't go trying to turn the Legion into something that it's not like the X-Men,make it the best Legion it can be,by using it's history,
combined with Great stories and Art.

Something else else like this

Legion of Super-Heroes #1

The Original Legion returns in their own series

Co-Written by (Paul Levitz and Geoff John's)

Art by (George Perez or Alan Davis or Chris Batista) or whoever's good and can commit to 12 issue's a year,with the Legion it may take 2 artist's to do the book correctly.

Cover's by (Alex Ross)

Edited by (Jim Shooter) Just Kidding.

I would be really radical on that, which is more it into more adult (yes, Vertigo) direction with the classic team, picking it up from somewhere around TMK, placing it closer to sci-fi territory than super hero. Being handled in sci-fi territory also allows more freedom and hotter writers. This one would be set outside DCU - or maybe in Earth X, whatever.

The current team needed more exposure (which L3W does), but I would keep it with Shooter and Manapul for a long time and see if it can stick after the hype. This could still be the "entrance" to the LSH world and this one would be firmly attached to DCU. It can even have Superman for all I care.

However, what is probably going to be happening is what I mentioned before: classic retconned LSH returns, with Geoff Johns somehow writing it (maybe with George Pérez?), Shooter is ditched and things move on from there.

And, no, I don't believe LSH will ever again be DC's top seller. LSH concept is nowhere near as novel as back then and there is clearly a move towards artist books and big events for the major characters. I don't see "offbeat" comic books getting there anymore (such as Teen Titans and LSH in the 80s). Not now, I mean.

Radical Ricardo, I like your approach - I would probably buy both books.
IMHO a kind of Vertigo set up would be great with the Action Legion (- I mean they are kind of an "adult Legion"). Doesn't necessarily have to be dark & gritty...

But I suppose you're right about the probable outcome... and from DCs point of view you've already got a second book with LSH31.

On a sidenote:
I wonder what would happen if Johns were charged with boosting the 3boot?

I love the idea of a Vertigo book for mature readers. I would love to see a series of books for different reading groups:

- the LSHC31 for younger readers

- a teen book for teen readers like the 3boot

- and then a Vertigo for mature

the hook would have to be easily movable from one to the next. By having one team but three diferent age groups within it possibly so a Legion/Legionnaires kind of split but handled correctly.

This way we could have Shooter AND Johns both writing the Legion every month. Shame it isn't going to happen.

To be frank, the main idea would be that the Vertigo Legion would be set apart from DCU (or at least be considered as "off the main Universe), just like Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol.

By the way, I just read in one gulp Seven Soldiers and... well, there are LOTS of hints to Final Crisis. Morrison is unbelievably detailed in that sense (quite like Keith on v4 - lots and lots of hints since number one, and lots of unresolved matters).

I'd call the WaK Legion "the high-concept Legion". As in, "It's the Legion of Super-Heroes as the SCA/Vietnam protesters".

I don't have any desire to see a Vertigo Legion...I mean I'll buy it if they produce it, but I don't see that as being the Legion.

It's not why I ever read the Legion.

And I am not biased against Vertigo or Horror titles...in fact those are my favorite genre, but the Legion was my favorite comic ever with no dark overtones necessary.


The Legion was a book about fantasitcally powered kids, driven by the idealism of youth, that had all this fantastic technology...in this super advanced future a thousand years from now. Whatever their personal issues were..the Legion came first. And their idealism often read as them having their act together moreso than the UP and the adults of their time. And in many cases their idealism won the day in their world.

Why everyone wants to see them as a bunch of old beaten down guys in a beaten down world with as much 21st century "realism" interjected into the title as is humanly possible....is beyond me.

Why do people want to see that with the Legion? Turned up on it's head and turned entirely into something it never was.

Why not just read the abundant titles that already do that?

Doing a contemporary(of imitated) theme with the Legion is not original or innovative...it's only a completely different from what the Legion was before, and what made it appealing in the first place.

That's not unique to the modern audience...in fact it's like everything else published nowdays.

On top of all that...there was nothing particularly unique or innovative about that style in the 90's...every title in the industry was that way.


The only novelty was in doing it to the Legion...but that's not originality, and it makes the Legion seem like an imitation following the trends of the market...instead of what it was previously, which was a book with it's own unique feel, Universe and foundation.


That sort of direction for the book is what hurts it more than anything else...

That's turning a unique book(regardless of genre), into a genre book.

Zero desire to see that...why call it the Legion?

It's not.


If they do do it...I hope they use the W&K Legion and not the Action...

I don't see what a mature-reader Legion would have to be dark and gloomy. For once, I never saw TMK's as dark-and-gloomy. Rather, I saw it as COMPLEX under a distressing situation. And that's what I think when I think of a Vertigo Legion.
In fact, one of the things that made LSH stand out was always its complexity. It was never about "youthful optimism". I was introduced to LSH during Levitz run, so that's my parameter of LSH - and I guess most of people here, since he had the most successful LSH run in terms of sales.
TMK was never about novelty - had it been, it wouldn't be so discussed and so well-remembered. You are confounding mature complexity to "dark". Leave that to Chuck Dixon's Batman run. Or Dan Vado's JLI run. Or any Marvel X-title.
In fact, TMK was elected on the top 50 of the best comic book runs ever. Hadn't it been innovative, it wouldn't be there, right? I don't think I ever saw such a complex monthly title NOT placed as a mature-readers book dealing with superheroes before. Or ever again.
And again, Vertigo Legion would be about GREAT sci-fi under adult thematics. This is impossible with W&L Legion. This had to be done with an adult version of Legion.

If it's Vertigo it's going to be....


All the characters were middle aged and broekn down and Giffen was blowing up the Earth and the Moon...that's not exactly the basis for a feel good story there.


In terms of sales the Post Crisis version(top 40 at best) was not comparable to the Pre(top 20).

And in particular the latter half of his run required Superman crossovers with Byrne, revisiting that crossover, and bringing Giffen back, just to keep it in the top 40 or so.


By who? 35 posters at CBR? Giffen's home forum?

I'm not saying it doesn't have it's fans. I'm not even saying it isn't good for what it was...but what it was was not the Legion. I'm just saying it's not the Legion...it was Keith Giffen being different....doing it with the Legion name...he even said he wanted the Legion name to sell what he was doing.

Well we are probably both sci fi fans...I personally hope for a return to a Sci-Fi driven Legion, but you don't need to be a Vertigo book to do that...and the writers that can write a sci-fi driven book with a 20+ member cast without losing characterization etc...are few and far between.

In fact I'd say if that's what you want to do, Jim Shooter is your guy. But the sales decline...


And Johns version is being popularly received, plus it's selling consistently.

Mr. Ricardo, the Legion has been and will always be about youthful optimism. Take that away and you don't have the Legion, you have an imitation in Legion clothing. Propelling the Legion as adults into a dark future was an ill conceived idea, and although the TMK version produced some quality moments, it generally was a failure because the "mature complexity" of the characters is a nice way of saying the original characters were re-written - it was no longer the Legion we (many long time readers) came to know. If you want to take a mediocre title like Jonah Hex or Doom Patrol and catapult them into a totally different premise, that's understandable - but the DC PTB had a once top selling title in the Legion and for them to let one person hijack it with their personal "vision" turned out to be a disaster. Sadly, DC didn't learn from Giffen's debacle and gave a blank check to Waid as well. The result is a fractured reader base over various Legion characters sharing the same name.

The recent Geoff Johns Action stories with the Legion have been popular because he has reintroduced the core elements of the Legion to the title we haven't seen much of since DnA. I believe Mr. Shooter was on his way to do that with the current run, but has been handcuffed to some extent by having to straighten out some of the Waid quirks still remaining. The Legion Action issues are selling, however, and sales has been the overriding concern of DC Comics for decades. All the changes, retcons, reboots, etc. have been directly instigated by sales or lack thereof, like it or not.

Not to pile on Mr. Waid, but this was always a fundamental problem with the 3boot Legion. The original and post-ZH had kind of a mission, or at least a "mission statement"; a reason for being. The 3boot, as far as I can see, is together because they love the comic books of the 20th century and want to give the finger to the old folks. (I know its not a simple as that - it is a bit more nuanced)

Speaking for myself, I think that when reading the Johns Legion in Action, I saw a Legion that was fighting for a society they belevied in for themselves and others - in spite of the fact that the indigenous population was pretty much against them - versus a 3boot Legion that was counter-cultural because it was what _they_ wanted. The differences may be minutiae in the grand scheme, but I think it's what sets the versions apart, and ultimately why even Shooter wouldn't be able to really save the book, unless he were to have 2 years+ to write it without interference.

My $.02.

Sorry, but ZH Legion had nothing but a name-change and new costumes, sans Superman (a nod to our Pre-Crisis fans) and sans everything else (a nod to our Post-Crisis fans). Not only it was a poor excuse to wipe LSH history, but it couldn't stand on its own: we had multiple writers, Legion Lost, The Legion... All trying to solve the huge mess that this version of LSH was from the beginning.
3boot came, in my opinion, from a more modern concept: youth would gather as a community, because telecom would be spread out and hero teams would be media darlings. You can't control your product (the LSH itself) anymore. Which is a fine idea, unless:

1) The ultimate enemies were... adults? This makes no sense today and will make less sense in the future. Maybe for Mark Waid the 60s are still hip...
2) If any "youthster" is potentially a Legionnaire, who gave who the rights to it? Chaos was supposed to reign from the very beginning of the concept. It would be dead in a month.
3) Such concept also lacks a long term direction. If adults are the enemy, and that's pretty much what seemed to be the core idea, I am fighting to free the world from bad guys for what? It lacks coherence.

It is no wonder that Shooter deliberately ignored this concept and moved it forward towards a more political game, in which THIS group of heroes are trying to gain recognition and legitimacy. THIS makes much more sense.

How did people see so much with Johns??? What I saw was some similar characters from Pre-Crisis fighting as sidekicks to Superman. And this is also true on The Lightning Saga, in which some Legionnaires appear and... not much is done by them. Or in Countdown, where we find out that Karate Kid... knows fighting and is sick. And Una has a crush on him.

People: what you think is a team with purpose is just because we SUPPOSE it is the same LSH we saw back then. But so far, nothing has been said and definitely nothing has been revealed about them to make us know what the f*** is this version of LSH. People are excited? Sure. Johns is a good teaser? You bet. But it is not a LSH story yet. So far, Shooter is still years ahead with his LSH, at least in terms of characterization and storytelling.

Ricardo,
I think we're mostly on the same page about our expectations of what the Legion should/could/would be...

one thing in defense of Johns:
True, while his stuff with the Legion so far has been mostly teasing, people are expecting something like a "high concept" legion with an optmistic mission statement based on what he did with JSA and the GL/Sinestro Corps.

And I think he could deliver...

I just don't think the Adult Action Legion would be the right vehicle...

BTW, have there been any assertions IF Shooter really jumped the ship? Any more rumors? kidflash2fan?

I disagree that Vertigo = gloomy. Wonderful titles like "Sandman" & "Y: The Last Man" in the past & currently "Fables" are not all dark & gloomy. There are light, moments in those books as much as there was/is conflict. If there was no conflict at all then what would serve as the contrast for good? Why would there be a need for super-HEROES doing good if there weren't any super-VILLAINS?

Stories in the past such as "The Great Darkness Saga" & "LSH vs LSV" aren't dark? A horde of super-powered Daxamites on a Darkseid-controlled killing spree all over the universe isn't gloomy? The LSH defeating the LSV with the end-product being Karate Kid's barbecued corpse & Nemesis Kid's broken neck wasn't dark & gloomy?

Also, idealism doesn't need to be young. The Legion grew up, married, had sex, had kids. The noble ideals & principles they behind forming & being part of the LSH in the first place was there even when they grew up. Even Levitz' LSH grew up from the days when they were in that inverted rocket clubhouse to those in their Computo-butlered headquarters.

The TMK ex-Legionnaires didn't need to re-form. Rokk didn't need to be a Legionnaire again after losing his magnetic powers & a baby on the way...Reep was already living a comfy life as head of a Brande Industries in the black...Ayla was having the time of her naked life on the farm...but they turned their back on that because the ideal of what it was to be a Legionnaire, to fight for what was right, burned brightly inside of them. It would've been so easy to keep the status quo...to lead an uneventful life, but they chose to risk their lives for the safety of a universe that had kicked them out of their HQ and made them outlaws.

That's why TMK for me exemplified the idealism behind the LSH...moreso than the Adventure- or Levitz era stories. So the color palette was more on the black or the universe faced an economic collapse. Real idealism...true idealism, doesn't need a sunlight-drenched, happy ending to shine through.

Let's call a spade a spade.

The Johns-penned Action-Legion are popular because it's by Geoff Johns, not merely because he brought in such elements. I'd wager they brought him onboard because they needed the Legion book to sell, sell, sell. He brings his star power to the book to the point that non-LSH readers are picking up the book because it's being written by him. He's not writing a bad story at all, mind you.

Sales has always been an overriding concern of DC for decades because it happens to be a business. It doesn't produce comics for charity but for profit.

Let me share my conspiracy theory though: When the launched the WaK Legion, they had high hopes...which came crashing down. It's the 50th anniversary of comicdom's first super-team and you have a so-so title. WaK's off the book..who do you get to replace them? Johns' L3W story's not yet done, you get limited arcs by newly-acquired talent like Bedard...but that's just a stop-gap. What to do? "Stunt cast" Shooter as the new writer. He brings the star power and roots to a book or set of characters that will soon be handled by big guns Johns & Perez. In comics, bad publicity is still good publicity after all.

In light of that, for me, I'm worried more about what happens to LSH once "Final Crisis" is done, particularly who'll be the creative team left standing when all the dust clears...Shooter? Johns??? Who?

I think the Geoff Johns Action Legion stories were popular not so much because of the writer's star power, but because they were good stories. In particular, the Earth Man saga drew upon previous Legion established elements (the founders recruiting Superboy/man, the Subs, the Rejects, Gim and Yera, etc.) and positively accentuated them into an entertaining product. This ADDS to the Legion mythos. Why this is not done more often instead of attempts to re-write the wealth of Legion tradition and foundation escapes me, especially after the disastrous results in those cases.

As far as who the creative team will be after Final Crisis, I think we're all worried what will happen. Geoff Johns would be a great writer for the Legion full time, but I hope the current Shooter/Manipul creative team gets the nod. They have done a great job so far and would accomplish a lot in a two-three year run. Hopefully it won't be mop-up duty of splattered Legionnaires - e.g. re-re-reboot?