The Legion of Super-Heroes has been around since the 50’s, originally introduced as a club for super-powered teens 1000 in the future which Superboy and, later, Supergirl, were asked to join. For decades the Legion was a more or less popular title, but when John Byrne revamped Superman post-Crisis, he established that Superman didn’t gain his powers until he was nearing adulthood (so no Superboy) and that he was the absolute only survivor of Krypton (so no Supergirl). (There are now a Superboy and Supergirl in the DC Universe, but both are very different characters than their pre-Crisis counterparts.)
This retroactive erasure of two key members wreaked havoc on Legion continuity. Various fixes were written in which didn’t work very well and the continuity spiraled out of control. The decision was made in the mid-90’s to reboot the Legion through the Zero Hour event. Post-Zero Hour, the Legion started over from scratch. Some characters reappeared in largely the same form (Triplicate Girl now Triad, Lightning Lad now Live Wire, Cosmic Boy, Ultra Boy, etc.), some new characters were created (the Kids Quantum, Gates), and some were changed greatly (Princess Projectra is now a snake, Bouncing Boy Chuck Taine is now a non-powered regular human, albeit a bit chubby). Unlike the mid-80’s reboots of say, Batman and Superman, where pre-Crisis adventures probably happened something like they did in the original comics, there is no Legion history prior to the post-Zero Hour issues, when the whole thing was restarted.
(yeah, yeah, I know, it was just a typo, but that’s quibbling for ya).
Short Legion history for Daniel:
Way back in 1958, Superboy (then appearing in DC’s Adventure Comics) encountered three teenage superheroes from the future, specifically the late 21st century (this would later be modified to the 30th century). The futuristic world was drawn like something Dr. Seuss on speed would come up with, with the “Legion of Superheroes” described as some kind of futuristic Boy Scouts with super-powered members. They proved to be popular (as later, similar groups like Teen Titans would be) and their roster expanded with more and more characters, some of whom had powers that were of dubious value, like Bouncing Boy (who could inflate himself like a beach ball and, you guessed it, bounce real good) and Matter-Eater Lad, which I’ll assume is self-explanatory.
When the DC universe underwent its major rewrite in the least eighties, John Byrne was hired to redo Superman, and chose to ignore the entire “Superboy” phase. This left the Legion with a serious continuity problem, since the 20th-century Superboy was supposed to be their inspiration. The Legion was brought up in this thread because there was also a Green Lantern tie-in, which has also been seriously messed up by events in the Green Lantern storyline.
The Legion has always been kind of a problem, because any attempt to link the 30th-century storylines to 20th-century characters invites inconsistancies. If a character claims to be a descendant of Wonder Woman, for example, that character is kinda thrown for a loop if DC decides to kill off Wonder Woman.
Legion stories require a ridiculous amount of tweaking to stay “current” with the changes in the DC universe, plus there is a certain amount of inspired silliness in the premise.
What was the Green Lantern tie-in? I think it’s a safe guess to say the whole Parallax story killed pretty much any future-GL stories out there, but I’m curious about the details.
Universo was an ex-Green Lantern who tried to take over the Time Institute to recreate Chrona’s experiment. The Guardians slapped him down pretty hard, but also tried to forbid Earth to tamper with time. This lead to a ban on Green Lanterns in our solar system. And was a nifty retcon.
Rond Vidar, Universo’s son turned out to be an incognito Green Lantern in a kick-ass good story (that a huge chunk of continuity hinged on: the one with the Time Trapper).
At the time of Dooley’s “NO GREEN LANTERNS BUT KYYYYYLE” phase, there was a major subplot about a detective named Celeste Rockfish (gad!) who was, umm…I don’t remember exactly. She got hit by a burst of green energy and was able to do Green Lantern-ish stuff. Or something. It never got very far but it was building nicely. Then it suddenly stopped due to editorial crap and Celeste became a Darkstar with no explaination given until Zero-Hour.
And on the topic of Legion: what Bryan and Cliffy said, but with the addendum that following the great Zero Hour reboot, there were two or three years of wonderful stories, then when Mark Waid left the book, further writers spent years regurgitating old stories (“Hey! Let’s redo the first Computo story!”, “Hey! Let’s bring back Projectra, but we’ll make her a slave-owning snake!” :rolleyes: )
The current team, despite my major misgivings early on gets MAJOR kudos from me for doing something different.
(emphasis mine)
When I read that, I suddenly realized “Whoa, there’s obviously some strong Lensman influence here. Why didn’t I notice that before?”. Then I scroll down some more, and notice Fenris’ comment that there is apparently a Green Lantern named “Arisia”. Was that intentional, or just another case of two authors coming up with the same nifty-sounding name?
The original guy from the '40s had a magic ring and had nothing to do with the Lensman series.
However, in the mid-50s, Julius Schwartz, a huge science-fiction buff did for comics what John W. Campbell did for SF in the late '30s. He reimagined many of the second tier heros and removed a lot of the magic stuff and made them science-fiction based. (IIRC, Schwartz was connected to the pulp community somehow…ISTR he was an agent-Bradbury’s maybe?)
In any case, Schwartz swiped HUGE chunks of Lensman stuff for his revitalized Green Lanterns. They had to be without fear and had to face the temptations of life but remain uncorrupted. There was an evil planet (Qward) who was trying to undermine the good the Guardians did, etc.
Anyway, I’m certain, given the other Lensman elements that Arisia was a deliberate homage to Smith.
Fenris–yep, Schwartz was Bradbury’s agent, as well as Alfred Bester and H.P. Lovecraft. He worked on both the Golden Age (I think that’s how Bester got involved; he wrote the original Green Lantern oath) and Silver Age Lanterns.
If you want some inside information on Julius Schwartz and his connections ,check out Man of Two Worlds by Julius Schwartz with Brian M. Thomsen. A fun look at some inner workings of both SF fandom and comics.
Um. You do know the difference between the real world and a comic book, right? The fact that we’re all different shades doesn’t mean that comic book people are.
Read pre-'70s DC comics. All aliens from a given planet did look alike. Krypton didn’t have a single black person until the early-'70s. And then they were all segragated on their own island.
EVERY member of an alien race in DC was one “race”, there were only minor variations in hair style and body size. I defy you to show me a Talok VII-ian who’s not blue. Show me an (whatever the hell Starfire was) who’s not orange. A Coluan who wasn’t green.
Hell, if you want to be nit-picky, with the exception of one or two “message issues” of JLA, excluding Pie-Face, I can’t think of a single non-white earthling in pre '70s DC.
Real world rules don’t work in a comic-book universe, necessarily.
And in any case, I dug out a bunch of GLs: Katma was red.
hmm… seems my post didn’t come across in quite the way I intended… I was sort of mocking the comic/scifi concept of alien races always only consisting of one ethnic group - and usually one government too… it was just the thought that popped into my head on reading that post.
I misunderstood too, Shadow Warrior. Sorry for the snarky tone in my post. It’s been a weird couple of days.
But you’re reight. Other than preachy “very special episode” shows like that Star Trek one with Frank Gorshin, I can’t think of an sf-book or tv-show/movie that didn’t feature mono-culture aliens until the '70s. Ursula K. LeGuin’s Left Hand of Darkness features a bunch of nations on the planet on which the action happens.