Well, the three Legions are explicitly the original Legion circa sometime around the original Crisis, the post-Zero Hour legion, and the current threeboot Legion. Maybe Superman’s Legion turns into the 5YL legion sometime, y’know, later, but they do seem to be excluded from the current available futures.
[spoiler] Current Flash-lore says that Barry merged with the Speed Force back in Crisis. Which is close enough to becoming one with the multiverse.
It’s also a good counterpoint to Libra, who when last seen became one with the universe. The narration read to me like a consciousness slowly regaining its individuality and cohesiveness, until he finally remembers what and who he is on the last page. [/spoiler]
No, I think it’s the first time for this continuity. The only rival groups of young super-powered types weren’t affiliated with the UP. There was Terror Firma and Mekt’s Wanderers. I’m not aware of it happening in the original LSH either, really. The post-ZH group may have had a similar sequence of events.
Nope. Post-ZH, the Legion itself was primarily organized by the UP…the closest to this story in it was early on when the UP insisted on inserting members known to be loyal to the UP to keep an eye on them (Leviathan was an SP officer, recruited by the president). Leland McCauley’s Workforce weren’t UP-supported, at first, though there was a version of the Workforce later on (after the Legion of the Damned, leading into Legion Lost) that was (IIRC) UP-supported, it was specifically designed to avoid having Underagers (part of the criticism McCauley levelled against the Legion, and thus President Brande). When the UP’s been against the Legion in post-ZH continuity, it’s never formed a more tractable version of the Legion.
Frankly, all the Legion continuities seem to be blending together for me lately. Maybe it’s just that Action just told an LSH story where the Legion had been replaced by the JLE, that was quite similar to the Legion’s periods of being disbanded in the Five Years Later continuity and the Legion Lost.
Unfortunately, the Action storyline just seemed more fun to me than this current LSH storyline. I enjoyed this incarnation of the LSH originally, but it just hasn’t kept its appeal for me.
And I don’t think that the Five Years Later continuity can be canon anymore, since the timeline in the Lightning Saga/Action stuff has passed by a lot of the stuff that should have happened in the 5YL timeline. We’ll see how the upcoming stuff deals with it, though.
And thanks for the DCU0 clarification. 
Just one guy’s opinion…
Picked up the final issue of Warren Ellis’ Ultimate Human, which is a Marvel Ultimate mini featuring Iron Man and Hulk facing off against the Leader. The cynic in me suspects that the pairing of the two main characters has something to do with a couple movies coming out this summer, but the counterpoint is that neither of the Iron Man or Hulk names appear on the cover and both characters look very different than the movie versions.
The title “Ultimate Human” is a confusing one as it’s not clear which of the characters it’s supposed to be referring to (until the character starts referring to himself as such). With a rather vague title, one would get the feeling that it had more to do with the basic foundation of the “Ultimate Universe,” but in retrospect it reads best as an episode of the Hulk’s ongoing story.
The final face-off against the villain was over and done with disappointingly quick and I think I would have preferred it if fewer pages (nearly the entirety of issue 3) had been devoted to his backstory and a little bit more struggle in the final battle with a stronger cliffhanger at the end of issue 3.
A minor complaint is that Ellis let some Englishisms seep into some of the U.S. characters and once had Tony Stark shifting into full-Nextwave dialogue: “…it’s very important that I climb into my shiny flying metal pajamas of death…” As much as I loved Ellis’ Nextwave — and hunger for more — it felt a little out of place here.
The story element that I found most intriguing is a further examination into the Ultimate Hulk’s abilities. As opposed to the Marvel basis, this version is an adaptive powerhouse: one method for bringing him down will only work once and his physiology will adapt to overcome it should it ever encounter it again.
Beyond that, the most consistently enjoyable element of the mini is the Cary Nord artwork. I was unfamiliar with his work prior to this and have become an instant fan. It’s realistic, but expressive.
Ultimate Hulk is Doomsday?
Look out, Ultimate Sentry!
Of course, he SEEMED to come back once, and it wasn’t really him.
And heck, with Bucky and Jason Todd already returned, why not? (Yeah, yeah, different companies, but it was to make the larger point.)