Long Live the Legion (of Superheroes)

Cafe Society
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Legion Of Superheros talk, anyone? Chaim?

Grab a cup of Kono juice and prepare for a long post:

<SPOILERS ABOUND! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!>

Ok. I’ll admit it. Except for a brief period, (the reboot through the Chu Sting) I haven’t enjoyed Legion in a long, long, loooooong time. I love the concept of the Legion, and was very close to getting a complete “every apperance” collection. But apparently the Legion is hard to do right.

I hated most of the 5-Years Later stuff. I really hated the T&M Legion (Shavugn is NOT a male. Lightning Lad is NOT Proty.) I hated the Emerald Vi crap, I hated the Pretty-Boy Mordru story, I hated the Team-20 interminable storyline.

I hated the butchery of the characters (Jan casually using his power on people (Monstress) to mutilate her (turn her orange). Hell: Jan not willing to save a child because (paraphrase) “Dead or alive, he’s still just chemicals”?! Dark Saturn Girl? The aforementioned Emerald Vi? Sneckie? Feh. Plus so many of the storylines were regurgitated classic stories that didn’t have the charm, wit or storytelling of the originals. And I’d rather read the originals in any case.

And then Abnett and Lanning (sp) came on with the Blight story. I loathed it. I abhored it. The art was terrible and the story, at best, dull. But, out of sheer momentum (I’ve been reading Legion since Cockrum/Grell) I bought it. Next came Legion Lost and again, I hated it but bought it out of sheer momentum…but somewhere around issue 5 they began to “get” the characters. Somewhere around issue 10, something began to occur to me…this was new. They weren’t vomiting up yet another retelling of a Jim Shooter Adventure storyline. I recently reread the whole A&L run and…damn if it’s not pretty good.

And the crashing finale of the Legion Lost storyline, with…

<BIG, BIG SPOILER WARNING!>

…a psychotic Element Lad as the bad-guy worked perfectly for me. I wouldn’t have bought it from the “real” Element Lad of the “real” Legion, but given the way previous writers, post-boot have screwed up the character, this seemed like a perfectly logical extension of what had been done. I’d rather Element Lad’s character had never been damaged (see the two examples above for example), but I can’t blame A&L for dealing with a problem that someone else created and I give them kudos for not making the grotesque violations of Element Lad’s character a dream/a hoax/an imaginary story.

And the first two issues of the new Legion title have me excited. Excluding the all-to-brief Mark Waid (and slightly beyond) run (reboot-through-Chu Sting) I haven’t been excited by, let alone particularly interested in Legion since Levitz left. I just read issue two of the new Legion series and except for Saturn (“Pain, doctor”) Girl, they’ve really got a good feel for the characters, they’ve got an exciting storyline going and again…they’re doing something new.

I’m hoping that the faux McCauley isn’t Universo. Been there, done that. But either way, this isn’t the Legion I grew up with, but it’s certainly closer to the “real” Legion than say, the “Team-20” crap was.

I still don’t like the artwork ('though I can live with it) but overall, I gotta say: the Legion Lives!

Opinions? Thoughts? Comments?

Fenris-Lad

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Ahhhhhhhhhh…things haven’t been the same since they killed **Ferro Lad.

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I’m with you on that, Ike. :slight_smile:

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Long live the Gaurdians of the Galaxy! :stuck_out_tongue:

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I got the first issue of the new series and I liked it a lot! Very nice story and character development and unlike most people it seems I really like Coipel’s art!

I liked the post-boot Legion at first but it plummeted in quality until it was unreadable. Too much silly change for changes’ sake like turning Princess Projectra into a snake! (snake bbq on shangalla! yeah!)

I like all Legion eras with the exception of the 70s and early 80s, oh those disco outfits! Phantom Girl in flares! (yuk)Really bad writing!

Oh and I think Paul Levitz is the most overrated writer in comics history :stuck_out_tongue:

I think the Legion now is in its most exciting period for a long time! It’s a good time to be a Legion fan!

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I started reading when DnA came aboard, and I’ve really liked the comic. The last few issues of LLOST were incredible and really brought home the dangers of this business.

BTW, I may disagree about Saturn Girl – she’s been pretty badly hurt over the last year; I think it’s natural that she’s gotten darker.

So far the first two issues of the new series haven’t gone as well as the last three incarnations (all of which written by DnA). That’s because so far it’s been all plot, whereas Damned, LLOST, and LWorlds did a fantastic job of gettting inside various characters’ heads. But that’s forgiveable for the beginning arc of an open-ended series, especially one that has as much backstory as this, so as not to alienate new readers. Given their previous performance, I’m sure DnA will return to the character-driven stories they’ve employed so successfully over the last two years.

–Cliffy

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I don’t recognize what passes for the Legion these days. (IE: since Zero Hour) I picked up a few issues, because a friend of mine said they were good, and mainly because of the Alan Davis covers, but… eh. “Sneckie” (“AAAH! She’s a SNAKE???”) drove me off for good.

I miss Kara. :-/

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SpaceGhostofArrakis wrote:

“Why not? I meet walking mirror-men with Avengers I.D. every day.”

– Spiderman, Marvel Team-Up with the Guardians of the Galaxy

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This is technically a hijack, because I didn’t understand 99% of what was in the original post. But the Legion of Super-Heroes was my all-time favorite comic series for a while there with one particular run, and I’m still trying to figure out how that run fit into the whole series:

They’d started over with an issue 1, and it was written by (I believe) a husband-and-wife team and drawn by Keith Giffen. All the issues had only pages with 9 panels each, Brady Bunch-style. About 6 or 7 issues into the run, they basically destroyed the universe, then had an issue with many of the same characters in some alternate reality, trying to restore the universe to the way it was. When they came back in the next issue, most everything was the same, except they’d inserted a major character into the continuity, with no explanation and no back-story; it was just as if he’d always existed.

I thought that was absolutely brilliant. (Although I heard later that it pissed off a lot of fans.) I’ve always been a fan of just messing around with continuity, if it’s done well; I even liked it when they did it on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, although I would’ve actually liked it better if it hadn’t turned into a major plot point.

Anyway, end of hijack coming up: when was all this? Is that the “reboot” that was mentioned in the OP? As far as I’m concerned, those were the “golden days” of the Legion of Super-Heroes, and I lost interest in the series shortly after that.

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OK, deal me in.

I didn’t get into the Legion until the TMK era. I had a passing knowledge of it, but then, I read some Legion entries in Who’s Who in the DC Universe, and the new Legion intrigued me. The subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) humor, the use of text pages in the back of the book, the “whatever-happened-to?” atmosphere…I got hooked. I could so easily see Sun Boy getting hooked into Earthgov service without understanding what’s really foing on behind the scenes, White Witch falling in love with a rehabilitated Mordru, and taking abuse when he turned evil again, Vi’s and Cosmic Boy’s roles in a Braal-Imsk war, the Persuader becoming a hired hitman, Mano as an underboss, Invisible Kid and the Subs running resistance, etc.

I became obsessed with getting all the back issues in order to “get” all the off-hand references to old continuity. I wrote my Legion Reference File because I wanted to put together the puzzle of just what was going on in the Legion universe with all the retcons and stuff. I found it cool, although I could easily see how others could be put off by it.

It was great until they blew up the Earth. After that, the quality was mediocre, to say the least. Then came Zero Hour, and the creators hit a home run with their send-off for the old Legion.

I loved the new Legion until the big reunion issue, issue # 100. After that, the stories lacked something…hard to say what.

I wasn’t crazy about Abnett and Lanning’s Legion at first - the “Blight” story seemed like an old retread of the Universo Project mixed with the darkness of the TMK Legion, but without the elements that made TMK enjoyable to me.

But I began to gain new respect for Abnett and Lanning at the end of “Widening Rifts,” where they wrapped up (for now) the story of Lori Morning in an extremely satisfactory way. I wasn’t too crazy about Legion Lost at first, but my attitude made a U-turn at the Brainiac 5 issue. I liked the illustration of how he thinks, and I liked the sense of adventure that accompanied the encounter with the Omniphagos. I loved Legion Worlds; I consider that so far to be their best Legion work.

As for the current storyline? I say Venge is Roxxas. There’s no one else who hates the Legion and is that strong.

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Solomon Grundy:

BTW, the issues you’re talking about are the ones I’m referring to as “TMK”. The husband-and-wife team were Tom and Mary Beirbaum, and the K stood for Keith Giffen.

Chaim Mattis Keller

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Ah, the Legion. Where shall I start? At the beginning, I suppose.

Superboy starring the Legion of Super-Heroes #197 was the first super-hero comic I ever bought, in the early 1970s. I was hooked from the git-go, although that issue featured Timber Wolf in a brainwashed evil state and as a result the character made me nervous and suspicious for years afterward.

I read it consistently for the next twenty years or so. Even when I went through destitute periods where I dropped all other books, I still read Legion. I don’t know why it spoke to me as well as it did; something about the optimistic, yet still recognizable future, and the vicarious thrill of seeing all these emancipated teens saving the universe day in and day out.

And all the gorgeous girls, of course. I think Phantom Girl was my favorite, because her pigtails made her seem less glamorous, and therefore more accessible than the others: think Mary Ann with a flight ring.

I read all Legion-related material I could get my hands on, including:

[ul]
[li]the all-Legion issue of Amazing World of DC Comics[/li][li]the tabloid-sized special telling of the marriage of Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl[/li][li]the failed Karate Kid series set in the 20th century[/li][li]the failed spinoff, The Wanderers, written by Doug Moench during one of those periods when his writing switch was toggled to “sucks.”[/li][/ul]

I loved the Grell art regime, although even as a 12-year-old I wanted to know why he dressed all the girls impractically like whores.

I hated all the editorial interventions for the sake of furthering company-wide crossover “events.” I want to believe, for example, that Laurel Kent really is Clark and Lois’s nth-great descendant, and not a thousand-year-old sleeper agent for the Manhunters.

I loved the Paul Levitz era! Earthwar, for example, was a storyline that embodied all the things I liked about Legion. And more generally, he made the characters seem real like no writer had done before, least of all Jim Shooter. Significantly, he even made some of the villains, like Tharok and the Emerald Empress, more three-dimensional. Or at least two-dimensional.

The new Invisible Kid seemed so cool to me that I died a blond stripe into my own hair. I was in college, so I could get away with it.

Strangely enough, I never much cared for Superboy’s presence in the book, and was happy when he was finally phased out.

While the TMK era was happening, I hated their overall arc but liked some parts of it. E.G. destroying Earth was pointless and unwanted, but the issue where they did it was a beautifully-told tale.

I hated, hated, hated the T&M implication that, 1000 years from now, if a boy loves another boy, he’ll have to transform himself into a woman if he wants to have any chance with him.

Batch SW6 was a weird concept (was it ever explained where they came from?), and the waters were muddied unnecessarily by having two versions of most of the characters, but the kids were alright, and their reactions to this brave new world they’d found themselves born into (to say nothing of their collective identity crisis) were sympathetically and interestingly portrayed.

I didn’t read much of the Mark Waid era, but I do have an anecdote from it. At the time I frequently hung out on Compuserve’s Comics Forum, as did Mark Waid himself. I bought a defective issue that I discovered to have pages missing when I got home. Mark explained that a large fraction of the whole run had come out like that. He collects errors like that, it seems, so asked me to send it to him. I did, and for my trouble he sent me his comp copy of Legion Archives volume 1 and several ashcan pages from an upcoming issue. Cool. Mark Waid’s a nice guy (I liked his run on Flash around that same time too).

I finally had to give up on the Legion after Zero Hour. Zero Hour was supposed to “fix” continuity “problems” that had arisen in the years since the Crisis; most importantly, the pocket universe problem. But following Zero Hour we were suddenly told that the pocket universe still existed and that Superboy still came from it.

I gave up at that point. I bought one or two issues over the next few years, but I could no longer tell what was going on. I remember something about the headquarters being a space station that looked like a ball of junk; what was that about?

I picked up the first issue of the new series and I’m even more lost now. Where have the Legionnaires been for a year? Who’s dead now? Who’s this Shikari chick?

Long Live the Legion, indeed.

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It was Duo Damsel for me. < sigh > From Adventure #369-70 (IMHO, the best single Legion story ever if I had to just pick one) and boy did I have a crush on her, 'specially when drawn by Swan!

**

Wasn’t just the girls! Lookit Cosmic Boy’s “See my nipples and belly-button” outfit :stuck_out_tongue:

**

Ok, you’re getting this info fourth-hand (I got it third=hand) so take it with a mouthful of salt. The plotline has been nicknamed “The Hat Trick” (it would have culminated in the “Earth is destroyed” issue). Giffen’s idea was that:
A) The older Legion was the clones. The “SW6 batch” were the originals, kidnapped all those years ago by the Dominators. (And kept alive for the purposes of making more clones)

B) The older Legion had secret mind-control triggers that the Dominators would activate. The Dominators would have, once the SW6 group was freed, triggered the mind control.

C) The Dominators would have told the older Legion to wipe out the Earth and kill the SW6 batch. The SW6 group would have tried to stop the much older, more powerful and more experienced Legion members.

D) For the big fight, Giffen suggested putting all the names (SW6 and Adults) in a hat (hence "Hat Trick) and drawing out X number of names. The names drawn would either be the ones who lived or died (I don’t remember which). That meant that we might end up with both Dream Girls and neither Lightning Lad. The idea was that the survivors would be determined by pure luck. (Which drives most Legion fans insane, but I see a certain compelling logic to it)

E) I think the Spider-Clone saga exploded at this point and Marvel was frantically trying to save it’s flagship character. In any case, DC got cold feet and refused to let him do it.

E.5) They sorta said the SW6 batch were the clones and tried to ignore the clues that had been established that pointed to the fact that the Adults were the Clones. This just muddied the waters further.

F) Eventually, Waid and Busiek(!) came up with a storyline where it turned out that the Time Trapper was Cosmic Boy a million years later. His whole purpose as Time Trapper had been to try to prevent the Mordruverse and the Crisis and who-knows-what else and going progressively madder as each alteration Cos/Trapper made simply made matters worse. The SW6 group were the Legion that Cos/Trapper plucked from an earlier period in time (the same process he used to make the pocket universe that Superboy came from).

G) Since this was during the Zero-Hour thing, it all became moot within an issue or two.

**

Fiver: We share simiilar tastes…trust me and go to your local comic shop, and pick up the 12 issue “Legion Lost” series. The current book is great, but it’ll make no sense without that series (It’ll explain all your questions). If you really don’t want to, lemme know and I’ll give a brief (HA!!!) synopsis. When read in a lump, it’s the best Legion I’ve read in 10 years or so. It’s not the Legion you’ll remember, but it has the right spark.

Fenris

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The “Image Revolution” pretty much killed the joy for me. I saw series after series degrade as plot and characterization were subjugated to big guns, bigger breasts and splashpages. I stucj around until Gaiman wrapped up the Sandman series, then I turned out the lights.

One of my fondest targets of nostalgia, though, is the LSH. The first issue I read was Wildfire;s (ERG-1) “return”. The Grell run hooked me forever on the characters, and I worked back until I had a nearly complete collection of the old Adventure stories. Classic stuff. I’m smiling now just thinking of them: ferro lad, the lightning twins, Mordru buried under the soil . . . so I have to say:

psychotic Element Lad! What the hell is wrong owth those people. Jan Arrah was one of the gentlest, most noble characters in the entire DC multiverse (Fuck the Crisis–I’ll never forget Earth-2). They turned him into a murderer? There’s no excuse for that. I swear this absurd need to “redefine” every character is the most abused crutch for poor writing that has ever struck the industry. It’s too hard to respect the work of your predecessors and find new stories to tell within their established framework–just make up a whole new character and stick him into the panel. Oh, and make him dark and edgy: kids love that.

Jan Arrah is NOT a psychotic villain you talentless, unimaginative, disrespectful hacks! Bastards.

Next they’ll be turning Hal Jordan into a raving mass-murderer with delusions of godhood.

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Oh, and it was Grell’s Supergirl (mmm, red hot pants) that ruled my adolescent fantasies, but of the regular members Dream Girl, Vi, and later Dawnstar vied for the top spots.

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Y’know, I just never got into Legion. It was all just a bit too goofy for me. Having said that, I did read a good Legion story collect in a DC Digest about 15 years ago. It made me go out and buy Legion of Superheroes #1 (1987, the deluxe direct sales edition by Levitz). I was disappointed.

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Man, I haven’t read any of those in eons. (Since college.) Is Mattereater Lad still around?

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As I’ve only been reading Legion for the last two years, most of the following was gleaned from reading Chaim’s Legion Reference File. To summarize:

The Legion began back in the 50’s as a series of guest-shots in Superboy, and eventually driving him out of his own series. (Twice.)

In the 80’s, interest in the Legion was falling, and DC gambled by putting Tom and Mary Biernbaum and Kieth Giffen on the series (the TMK era, as noted by Chaim.) They brought a whole new and much darker sensibility to the Legion; a new series started with issue #1 but took place five years later than the last Legion issue, a five years which had clearly been very difficult ones for the Legion and the United Planets. (Exactly what happened during them was never explained.) This is why these are also called the Five-Year Gap era.

Although TMK alienated a lot of long-term fans, it appears it was financially successful, eventually spawning a second Legion comic (Legionnaires). However, there were considerable continuity problems caused by the Crisis and Post-Crisis revamping of characters. (The clearest being John Byrne’s Superman revamp in which it was established that Superboy never existed.)

The Powers That Be at DC decided to do a Legion housecleaning to tidy up all the continuity problems. As the planning got underway, this turned into Zero Hour, a huge event felt throughout the DCU with almost as much impact as Crisis. Even more, with respect to the Legion.

This was the Legion reboot. Suddenly, the Legion story started over completely. Unlike the Post-Crisis revamps of Superman and others, the Legion started over from the beginning. The characters were brand new teenagers (although most of them had the same names and powers as pre-boot members), and we got to see the formation of the Legion from the beginning. It’s this post-boot Legion that has been in the books from 1995 onward to the present.

–Cliffy

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Spiritus Mundi:

I’ve got to agree with you about Element Lad. Worst thing that Abnett and Lanning did so far.

Also, despite my liking of the TMK era, I should state for the record that I hated the Shvaughn Erin sex-change thing.

Fiver:

Most of your questions would be answered if you’d download my Legion Reference File, which was linked to earlier in this thread. It explains Shikari, at the very least.

Theobroma:

Yes, Matter-Eater Lad is back, sort of. He enjoyed some prominence as smart comic relief during the TMK era. In the reboot (current) era, he became the Legion’s cook. He has not appeared yet since Dan Abnett and Any Lanning took over the writing chores.

Chaim Mattis Keller