quote:Originally posted by Fat Cramer: Using Magic Wars as an explanation, they could probably retcon just about anything. Lingering vestiges of uncontrolled magic, etc. etc....
Johns already has the villain that can retcon just about anything, in the Time Trapper.
No telling what Legion related walls SuperboyPrime was punching in limbo either...
Registered: Mar 2006
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One thing I find interesting about this board...though we are Legion fans...and let me make this clear, all fans of Post Crisis Legions are true Legion Fans...not to damn with faint praise, but you'd have to be a true Legion fan to be a fan of them.
Inordinately there are great deal of fans that seem to pride themselves on their intellecutalism, that defend the spirit of creativity in which the post crisis Legions were created, and defend the aesthetic value of those works.
Dare I say even a couple of counter comic book culture types are among those fans of the Post Crisis Legions...
The post crisis Legion, the 5YG, the Zero Hour...those Legions were the mandate of coporate policy. Censorship, revisionism, copyright protection, and on the part of John Byrne, creative ignorance and even hatred of the Legion, were what gave birth to those Legions.
Ultimately the decision that gave birth to them was that of non comic people, and people completely ignroant/ambivalent of the history of the Legion. Possibly those Legions were mandated by lawyers worried about claims to ownership by creators...a far cry from the pure spirt of artistic creation that so many of their defenders seem to think they are embodying by defending the creative integrity of those Legions.
It was not the spirit of creativity that birthed those post crisis Legions, and nearly every creator that has been a part of a post crisis Legion, including the current publisher of DC comics, including Tom and Mary Bierbaum, and Mark Waid, and Keith Giffen, will attest to this fact...in fact most of them will call it a mistake. It was cold hard coporate policy, and those are entirely corporate Legions.
They have their place, and they do all have their merits, artistic and otherwise...just not in the same linear continuity as the original Legion, IMO.
IMO, the Post Crisis Legion, was not the original Legion, not even when Levitz was writing it. It was John(I always hated the Legion of Superheroes) Byrne's and probably some TW lawyers' Legion...
LLTL
[ April 09, 2008, 06:06 AM: Message edited by: Superboy ]
Registered: Mar 2006
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OK, Not to burst your bubble, or start an argument, but the pre-crisis Legion, and they do have their place, wasn't made to save humanity from the Barbarians at the gate. They were created to sell comic books. If people would buy stories about Superman, maybe they'd buy them about Superman when he was a boy. Hey You! Write me a series about a teenage Superman growing up in Smallville. OH! Throw Lex Luthor in there, too! Hey, we need to appeal to female readers, let's give Superman a female sidekick... hmmm, his cousin Supergirl! You, make her blonde and give her an alliterative name starting with L. You know, that story about the super-hero club from the future was pretty popular with the letter writers. You, over there, when you're done with whatever you're doing give me another story about that Legion, but let's change the costumes, make the girl a blonde, and what's with the magnetic eyes? Change that... etc, etc, etc.
Mandated by a publishing company wanting to sell comic books to whoever might buy them.
-------------------- All you need is Love (and a whole big bucket of Money).
From: Lost in the Ozone Again | Registered: Dec 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Language Arts Lad: OK, Not to burst your bubble, or start an argument, but the pre-crisis Legion, and they do have their place, wasn't made to save humanity from the Barbarians at the gate. They were created to sell comic books.
Actually...they were created out of spontaneous creativity on the part of Otto Binder and the editorial philosphy of Mort Weissenger and they became more than that because of fan demand.
They were also saved from oblviion by the first true organized fandom devoted to a comic, in all of comicdom.
That is not why the Post Crisis Legions came about.
There was no clamoring for the Post Crisis Legion...and while the fans did clamor for the Post Crisis Legions to be fixed...
DC did not make a sincere effort to give those fans what they wanted, and what they were asking for.
DC gave them something else, and hoped
A. They would learn to like it B. IF they didn't, new fans would like it to the same degree the original was liked.
Unfortunately for DC and all of us Legion Fans, that never truly happened to the degree that the original Legion was successful.
quote: If people would buy stories about Superman, maybe they'd buy them about Superman when he was a boy. Hey You! Write me a series about a teenage Superman growing up in Smallville.
Actually...that was the idea of Jerry Siegel...the guy who basically invented this entire genre and industry in the process.
Not to mention created most of the original Legionaires and was the primary architect of their Universe.
Trust me...Jerry always made the creative decision over the coprorate one...hence the rest of his life after creating Superman.
quote:
OH! Throw Lex Luthor in there, too! Hey, we need to appeal to female readers, let's give Superman a female sidekick... hmmm, his cousin Supergirl! You, make her blonde and give her an alliterative name starting with L. You know, that story about the super-hero club from the future was pretty popular with the letter writers. You, over there, when you're done with whatever you're doing give me another story about that Legion, but let's change the costumes, make the girl a blonde, and what's with the magnetic eyes? Change that... etc, etc, etc.
Mandated by a publishing company wanting to sell comic books to whoever might buy them. [/QB]
DC hasn't been publishing the best Legion they could have been publishing, they haven't handled it as well as they could have...and it's not entirely due to incompetence or ignorance of what the fans were asking for...it's due to worries over copyrights and creator claims of ownership...or in the case of Byrne, Legion hating creator butt kissing.
You don't even have the pure nature of supply and demand between the company and the fans at work there.
DC was not giving the fans what they asking for...as they almost always did with the original Legion.
I'm not saying the Post Crisis Legions are all bad...I'm just saying they aren't the original, and they weren't borne out of a desire on DC's part to give the fans what they were asking for as the original was.
I've got no problem with their existence or their publication...I just don't want them to be considered the original Legion or married to that linear continuity.
No one was asking for the Post Crisis Legion...no one was asking for the 5YG Legion, no one was asking for the Zero Hour Legion, and no one was asking for the W&K Legion...they all have their fans now, but no one was asking for them...they were asking for something else witht he Legion, which DC refused to provide.
Some learned to accept it...but the reboots speak for thsemvles as to how successful that philosophy was for DC...and that includes the Post Crisis Levitz Legion.
I'm all for DC publishing a version of the Magic Wars Legion...I'm all for them publishing the Zero Hour and 5YG Legions...
I just don't want the original Legion being turned into them...
The original Legion should have the same right to fail on it's own merits as all the others have failed. Tis fair, no?
Registered: Mar 2006
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Sure, that's fair. Just don't speak for the Bierbaums or Keith Giffen or Mark Waid. Most of them "would call it a mistake?" How do you know? Have they all said so in interviews?
Speak for yourself unless you have some evidence of what others have said.
-------------------- Watching television is not an activity.
From: Freeville, NY | Registered: Nov 2003
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They WERE created to stave off the barbarians at the gate. If not for Legion our children's children's..... children would have at BEST teeny red spots on their foreheads.
We need an "If the Legion is never invented" thread to get persprective on this.
From: East Toledo | Registered: Jul 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Malvolio: Sure, that's fair. Just don't speak for the Bierbaums or Keith Giffen or Mark Waid. Most of them "would call it a mistake?" How do you know? Have they all said so in interviews?
Prety much yeah...none of them were going, Yay Superman is getting retconned out of the Continity, we love this!
They were all like... :wtf do we do now? How do we fix this?
None of them were happy about it...why would they be?
But since you asked, I will in fact be back with some quotes for you.
From Giffen, from Waid, from the Bierbaums...from Paul Levitz.
quote: Speak for yourself unless you have some evidence of what others have said. [/qb]
Of course I have evidence...some of them I'll have to type out of a book...but I will provide them.
These guys were all fans of the Legion, the original Legion...I don't know why you would think they'd be happy about what was done to it in the Superman revamp...
They weren't the ones that did it to the book...it was not their decision, they just tried to fix it...
I guess Paul Levitz was the most culpable in the whole thing...but I have some quotes from him that are quite revealing themselves...
Stay tuned. Hopefully it will be a revelatory experience for us all...
Registered: Mar 2006
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Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
posted
quote:Originally posted by Superboy: And I haven't seen anything yet that definitively precludes Pre Crisis stories from occurring...
Maybe the Lana Lang Insect Queen stuff...but even that's not definitive.
Could you list some examples?
It hasn't been proven SuperGirl wasn't a part of this Legion...
It has been explictly stated that the current Supergirl, the one who is the cousin of the current Superman, was never a member of this Legion. If there is *a* Supergirl, then she is not the cousin of the New Earth Superman.
Basically anything tied in to Silver/Bronze Age Superman continuity that interacts with the Legion has to be re-written. And that's a huge amount of the pre-Crisis Legion. We've already seen Adventure #247 re-written in a much less interesting version. That's going to have to happen for nearly every pre-Crisis story. Current Insect Queen is an alien who looks like Lana rather than a teenage Lana. Jimmy Olsen has no career as Elastic Lad. Superboy cannot leave the Legion because he discovers the impending deaths of Pa and Ma Kent, because Pa and Ma Kent are still alive. No Super-Pets. Lex Luthor's history is radically altered.
The simple fact is that they have not brought back the pre-Crisis Superman mythology. The current Superman is a weird blend of Byrne, Waid, and a whole bunch of Donner movie Superman elements with a couple of pre-Crisis aspects thrown in as well. I'm not even sure they've figured out a coherent story of what Superman's history is anymore, much less a coherent story of his career with the Legion.
That's not even getting into the completely arbitrary retcons to the Legion itself that have nothing to do with Superman, such as Star Boy's insanity, Projectra's two hearts, Wildfire's connection to Red Tornado, the purpose of the Leigon being interplanetary cooperation or whatever, etc.
As I said above, if they were going to bring back the original Legion, the sensible way to do it would have been to let the guy who was responsible for a huge part of the original Legion mythology, namely Shooter, take charge of it. And isolate from the damn mess of the current DCU. Instead, they've let Johns, who has basically built his career on revising the DCU and running roughshod over continuity, take charge of it. And the result is that we seem to be getting something that is going to be at least as much of a mess as anything else we've seen done with the Legion post-Crisis.
I honestly don't get the attitude of those that hate all post-Crisis Legions but are suddenly willing to embrace Johns's version of the team. The whole Pocket Universe thing was far less revisionist than anything we're going to get from Johns.
From: Liberty City | Registered: Jul 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Eryk Dumaka Ester: It has been explictly stated that the current Supergirl, the one who is the cousin of the current Superman, was never a member of this Legion. If there is *a* Supergirl, then she is not the cousin of the New Earth Superman.
I didn't see it explicitly stated by a creator that she wasn't a member of this Legion...and I follow that pretty closely.
As far as I know, that's the general assumption because Karate Kid and Una did not recognize her..
Basically you are probably right, but I have not seen it defintively stated that she wasn't...and I could see a plethora of reasons for KK and Una not recognizing her.
And keep in mind...Johns said someone has been screwing with the Legions history for a loooooong time...
Which is a true statement on a number of levels..
In fact, this upcoming mini could also fix a lot of things they've screwed up so far...
quote: Basically anything tied in to Silver/Bronze Age Superman continuity that interacts with the Legion has to be re-written.
I don't really agree with that either...and rewriting stuff isn't necessarily equivalent to retconning an entire basis of existence in or out of a storyline.
quote: And that's a huge amount of the pre-Crisis Legion. We've already seen Adventure #247 re-written in a much less interesting version.
Maybe they did that so John Byrne wouldn't kill the Legion again..
It wasn't a major retcon, and they could have turned mean to Superboy once they got him to the 30th century...we don't know that they didn't.
quote: That's going to have to happen for nearly every pre-Crisis story.
I don't really agree with this...I can only think of a handful I know for certain will not have happened...and rewriting isn't really the same as what the Byrne retcon did to the Legion.
quote: Current Insect Queen is an alien who looks like Lana rather than a teenage Lana.
Ahh but they didn't exactly say she never got the bio ring as a teen...
quote: Jimmy Olsen has no career as Elastic Lad.
I'm not sure about that, in fact I believe he referenced his previous bizzare transformations at the beginning of Countdown.
I could be wrong though...
Keep in mind, with Supergirl and Jimmy Olsen, just because we haven't seen it happen to them yet in their present, doesn't mean it hasn't happened in this Legion's past...it could be in their future. It could have happened in their past as well.
As you yourself noted...DC has been purposely vague about a lot of things...
quote: Superboy cannot leave the Legion because he discovers the impending deaths of Pa and Ma Kent, because Pa and Ma Kent are still alive.
Now this one you got me on...true, that story cannot have happened. And since I didn't like that story(and the Conway era it more or less ushered in)...that's ok with me.
quote: No Super-Pets.
I don't think that's been proven...Krypto is around you know....and he and Superboy Prime have some issues with one another.
quote: Lex Luthor's history is radically altered.
But IIRC, he again knew Superboy as a teen..and you know that Luthor portrait in the Perez teaser...it could be our old friend Urthlo
quote: The simple fact is that they have not brought back the pre-Crisis Superman mythology.
They've brought back aspects of it...it's impossible to bring it back in it's entirity as it would require rebooting just about all of the mainstream DC Universe...and probably not a good idea, since it would require subtracting a great many positive additions to the Superman and DC mythos over the past 20 years.
I like adding...not too crazy about subtracting.
This goes for the Post Crisis Legion and their characters as well.
quote: The current Superman is a weird blend of Byrne, Waid, and a whole bunch of Donner movie Superman elements with a couple of pre-Crisis aspects thrown in as well. I'm not even sure they've figured out a coherent story of what Superman's history is anymore, much less a coherent story of his career with the Legion.
They've been purposely vague about it...and I think that's a case of experience...
They clarified all of this stuff right after the Crisis and then lo and behold and bunch of problems arose that they hadn't thought of...with the Legion, Hawkman...Donna Troy.
I'd rathter htem not commit before they know what they are doing...besides, these sorts of things can turn into nice miniseries projects.
quote: That's not even getting into the completely arbitrary retcons to the Legion itself that have nothing to do with Superman, such as Star Boy's insanity, Projectra's two hearts, Wildfire's connection to Red Tornado, the purpose of the Leigon being interplanetary cooperation or whatever, etc.
I don't consider those true retcons...more like stuff that could have been unrevealed in previous Legion stories...
For instance...we still haven't seen the Legion's first battle with Mordru.
In the original Legion... They never said Projectra didn't have two hearts...they never said Starboy didn't have schizophrenia...and they also never said what the ERG1 suit was developed from...
The Wildfire one is probably a major divergence, although I can't think of any stories it eliminates from continuity...and who says his Red Tornado body isn't something that happened to him since the Crisis?
I don't see much of a problem with Projectra or Starboy, and I don't feel like it makes any major changes to any past stories involving them.
Is it needless? Probably...but I don't see anything as being particularly harmful...
Do you find Jeckie less attractive knowing she has two hearts? It still beats her being a @#$$@#$ snake.
quote: As I said above, if they were going to bring back the original Legion, the sensible way to do it would have been to let the guy who was responsible for a huge part of the original Legion mythology, namely Shooter, take charge of it. And isolate from the damn mess of the current DCU. Instead, they've let Johns, who has basically built his career on revising the DCU and running roughshod over continuity, take charge of it. And the result is that we seem to be getting something that is going to be at least as much of a mess as anything else we've seen done with the Legion post-Crisis.
quote: I honestly don't get the attitude of those that hate all post-Crisis Legions but are suddenly willing to embrace Johns's version of the team. The whole Pocket Universe thing was far less revisionist than anything we're going to get from Johns. [/QB]
My reasoning is simple...I liked Superboy being in the Legion. I can overlook a lot of continuity differences as long as that's not one of them...but that's just me.
To me removing him from the stories is the same as removing Lighting Lad or Brainiac 5...truth is, prior to the Crisis he probably appeared in more Legion stories than they did.
For me...they could stick Superman in the Zero Hour Legion and have it be more of the real Legion than any without him.
Superman was one of the original Legionaires, and he was an important character for prety much every peak in the teams history...right up to this day.
We'll see what the sales say.
I full well understand the argument that he can and does overshadow the Legion in the hands of a poor writer...my solution to that is simple, just publish two Legion titles...
That 25K core readership that buys anything with Legion on it has proven it will buy two books(during the Zero Hour Era)...so why not make a commercially viable one to attract new readers, and one so the Legion faightful can get their precious characterization in spades...
Superboy belongs...he is part of the Legion. The original Legionaires are back, the cast from the original Legion...all of them just about, and that hasn't been the case for any other Post Crisis Legion. That alone makes a huge difference.
[ April 09, 2008, 04:32 PM: Message edited by: Superboy ]
Registered: Mar 2006
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I honestly don't get the attitude of those that hate all post-Crisis Legions but are suddenly willing to embrace Johns's version of the team. The whole Pocket Universe thing was far less revisionist than anything we're going to get from Johns.
For me at the age of 41,I starting reading the Legion in 1973 right after Legion Fandom Demanded the Legion be published again and they were united in this cause and won,The stories I read during this time were a mix of new and old as the history of the Legion unfolded before me my love for them grew with each issue,and that history was with Kal-El they were strongly connected even after he left the book ,he was still the inspiration for the Legion and was called upon when they needed him (Great Darkness Saga), When the Pocket Universe Superboy story came out and that character was killed off it was like everything I knew about the Legion was a lie, since there was a Superman still running around in the 20th century that had no ties to the Original Legion, who did indeed have a thirty year history with Kal-El,Once that said history was altered The Original Legion Died right then and there,I just didn't know it yet,But I soon found out with Re-Boot titles such as The 5 year gap,Archie Legion and the WacK Legion,And all of those 3 titles have failed because they had one thing in common,No Kal-El,the only Legion book that was worthwhile to me during the last 20 years was Elseworlds Superboy's Legion to bad it did not get Hype of Wak or the duration of Archie. As for Johns Legion he's trying to Re-Store not Re-Boot out the Legions ties with Kal-El and keep as much of their past history as he can,sure there are some things he's done that I don't like, Wildfire/Red Tornado being at the top,But Having Kal-El is still better than having Kent Shakespeare,Kid Quantum,Valor or Kon-El take his place in the Legion's history.
-------------------- I tried to rip their soul out.I tried to make them forget Superman. But they won't.
From: Kentucky | Registered: Oct 2005
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I too have been reading Legion off-and-on since the early 70's (although I don't look it ) and I've loved and hated various versions of it. I wouldn't call myself a purist or stickler for continuity necessarily and I've got to say I was not particularly bothered by the omission of the Super-Cousins way back when. I always thought the time-travel thing was sticky and almost impossible for an ongoing story but I would agree that the Legion has suffered from extremely poor editorial decisions, bad stories and bad artists (anybody remember the Ditko issues? yikes!)at least occasionally over the years.
Superboy, I agree with a lot of your points but I would say that giving the readership/fans what they want is a mighty tall order especially these days. I guess that's why I was hopeful that the whole 52 worlds thing would lead to a number of versions of the Legion, although that's probably not very sustainable. At least the possibility of different creators to interpret the Legion differently without it having to fit within the confines of an ongoing plot, I think, would be a good thing.
I have to say I liked what Johns did with the Legion and that's a big compliment as I am not much of a fan of his writing, generally. I certainly didn't think it was a great story but I can't find too much wrong with it.
Whether or not this is exactly THE original Legion, is debatable and doesn't really concern me too much. As I've stated before I'd much rather read a good story than one that is so convoluted from trying to fix all the problems of a completely and probably irreversibly f**ked-up continuity. And although that's what I would like to see from the regular Legion series, aside from a few issues and plot threads here and there, I don't really feel like that's what I'm getting. So I guess I'm on for the ride to see what DC comes up with -with trepidation of course.
-------------------- Is that a moon?
From: Portland, OR | Registered: Aug 2006
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late-comer to the party here... but I just read the conclusion, and really enjoyed it.
I am really looking forward to the next Johns Legion story.
Say what you will, but this has been the first Legion since Conspiracy to keep me eagerly anticipating each issue (there was good stuff in between, but I only read those filling in back issues after an absense from fandom).
[ April 12, 2008, 02:27 PM: Message edited by: Kent Shakespeare ]
From: Vancouver, BC, Canada | Registered: Dec 2003
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Hey! You're out of continuity here. Pipe down. (that's a joke Kent, really)
Yeah I wish the original hadn't been thrown out with the bathwater too but we get what we get. Each incarnation has had some high points and a few of those replacement characters are as beloved as the originals they were designed to replace. I loved Kent Shakespeare and Laurel Gand and I also liked Kono a lot. Furball..not so much nor was I all that thrilled with the White Witch as Mordru's slave/wife. The older Lightning Lad (Man?) with a cane made me so proud of their traditions and their enduring spirit. I have a real weak spot for those stories.
XS interacting with 20th century Flashes brought a new twist to Legion continuity that I liked a heck of a lot too even though the Legion book at the time was only so-so. Say what you will about the Archie Legion but the art really was pretty and the writers seemed to be making a real effort to give the fans what-they-thought-we-wanted. I don't really want to get into that since we've beaten that particular dead horse a number of times.
...and so on. I'm not trying to defend each incarnation or anything but just saying that the Legion love is always there to some degree and I appreciate the effort when it's made. So what if Johns isn't exactly writing what old Uncle Morty would have written? Like Kent I've been eagerly awaiting each issue and isn't that (after all) what it's really about?
From: Smallville Sector : Greater Metropolis | Registered: Jun 2004
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I fully support anyone's right to define a favorite era of their own; I do find efforts to portray and diversions from those standards as less authentic to be pointles and counterproductive. For every change Johns has made, I could easily point out two changes Levitz made vs. what came before him.
I would rather enjoy a good, fun story than worry about "continuity," especially after roughly a quarter-century of the keepers of that "continuity" being unable to manage it at all.
Continuity is nice, but it is no substitute for a good story. Thus far, in my opinion, Johns is giving me/some of us the best Legion stories in many years.
If anyone wants to rain on our parade after giving other storytellers a pass, I would suggest it says more of that person's inflexibility than Johns' storytelling.
From: Vancouver, BC, Canada | Registered: Dec 2003
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But on the other hand, if you make the effort to get into one version, why should you go all the way to try and get into another version rather than just finding something else to enjoy. There's loads out there without having to obsess over fifteen different versions of the Legion of Super-Heroes.
Pick one version, stick with it, then move on when that version ends IMO.
-------------------- I :love: :Spark:
[Not Light Lass]
Registered: Mar 2004
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) and I've loved and hated various versions of it. I wouldn't call myself a purist or stickler for continuity necessarily and I've got to say I was not particularly bothered by the omission of the Super-Cousins way back when. I always thought the time-travel thing was sticky and almost impossible for an ongoing story but I would agree that the Legion has suffered from extremely poor editorial decisions, bad stories and bad artists (anybody remember the Ditko issues? yikes!)at least occasionally over the years. 
