posted
Even though I haven't met a single one of you in person, I consider the wonderful posters at Legion World to be an awesome extended family.
I was just curious as to how each one of us came to find his or her way to Legion World and the LMB?
I remember way back when I was a wee lad of 15 (or was it 14, I can't quite remember). I was already a Legion fan, and lurking on the DC Boards to indulge my Legion love. Two of my closest real life friends read the Legion too, but we only got to discuss Legion-y stuff while in school. These were the days of dial-up Internet connections
I remember chancing upon one of the LMB tag team threads on the DC boards - Heaven help me which one it was, maybe Cobalt Kid can guess. I was shocked! Who the heck were all these wonderful, crazy characters whom I had never heard of in a Legion comic?
Globe Girl? Whordru? The LMB Spectre? What the...?
I was AMAZED. Maybe this was what the Legion would be like in real life.
I didn't jump in yet - I was too shy, and too paranoid about Internet security (plus my folks would have killed me if I'd tied up the phone lines). But I lurked, and read, and fell in love with this awesome collection of people called the LMB.
One day, when I was bored at home with nothing to do, I checked back on the DC boards to find... NOTHING! The DC boards had changed, and the LMB had LEFT!
Imagine my consternation to find that THE COOLEST GROUP OF POSTERS EVER was gone. It was like... like... like how fans must have felt when The Beatles, the Spice Girls or the Backstreet Boys broke up. It was just so sad.
Now, Cobalt Kid tells it much better than I do, so here's a link to his Year Four of the LMB (if you have time, do read the whole thing - I've had many a chuckle reliving old moments).
Anyway, I was such a devoted fan that I followed the LMB as they made their exodus - first to Rob's Damn Boards (damn those "Naturals"), Ships N' Giggles, and finally, Legion World.
It was weird, in a way. As a lurker, I didn't interact with ANY of the LMB. Yet, I felt I knew them somehow; their posts just overflowed with personality. I could laugh along with some of the in jokes. And I was deathly afraid of actually joining in, because... I didn't think I'd be cool enough.
When Nightcrawler, Lightning Lad and the others opened Legion World, and it was bliss. This was a place where the LMB could flourish; where sense and silliness could both thrive; and where everyone could be themselves.
I swallowed my nerves and signed up in October 2003, just a month before my 16th birthday. Legion World was here for me during my final years of high school, and was a "home" I could visit when real life became too overwhelming. I remember the first time one of my "heroes" responded to me in a thread! While my friends would go nuts because they attended a Backstreet Boys concert, I'd be beaming because MLLASH, Cobalt Kid or Fat Cramer had replied to ME!
I was one of the most prolific posters back then, I remember, and at that time, I was also the "Youngest LMBer", a title I hold proudly to this day even though it's no longer true. I believe we've had some younger members join - but I still maintain I was the first youngster
After the first couple years, I became, true to my name, invisible - college life caught up with me, and for 5 years I dropped out of relative sight.
Luckily, I ended up with a job that keeps me behind a laptop for long stretches of time AND that has a lot of idle time - hence my recent return to prominence on Legion World.
You know what, though? I realized that I never truly "left". All the awesome friends I've made over the years welcomed me back.
To this day it still rocks that these cool people I've met online are my real, honest-to-goodness, awesome friends.
posted
I think I'm a fairly unique case on Legion World, in that I actually met a bunch of the LMB in person first, prior to migrating to the board itself.
I joined the DCMBs back in 2007, and the Legion board was really my first messageboard experience. Although I enjoyed posting about comic books, the main thing that I felt was lacking was any sense of community. Any time that conversations began to stray toward the personal, you could be certain that the threads would be deleted as "off topic". Conversely, threads that would become argumentative and even, at times, abusive, would remain untouched. This erratic and seemingly counter-intuitive moderation frustrated me a good deal, and I started looking for another place to hang my online hat.
One of the posters that I had gotten to know there, kenaustin, suggested that I should check out Legion World as an alternative. I registered here in early 2008, but I don't know if there was something going on with the servers at the time, but the whole site was painfully slow to navigate, so my initial foray over here was aborted.
Until that summer...
2008 was the 50th anniversary of the Legion and accordingly, the San Diego Con was celebrating with an unprecedented number of Legion-related panels. Though I had never been to SD, I thought, this has to be the year that changes. I flew out to SD with the intent of meeting some of my creative heroes (Giffen, Levitz, the Bierbaums, Grell, etc.) but little did I suspect that another band of heroes was also arriving in force.
Up on the mezzanine of the convention center I saw the Legion World booth being set up, so I thought I'd go over and say hi. I met Kent Shakespeare (who I mistakenly thought was the board owner) and Nightcrawler (who I only knew as "the guy that runs that Dave Cockrum fansite"), and chatted a bit. I popped by again later and also met Rockhopper Lad (who doesn't remember me ) and Director Lad.
Though I should have figured as much, as I made my way around to the various panels that weekend, I was literally surrounded by other Legion Worlders (though I would only discover this after the fact).
That cosplaying guy dressed as Star Boy sitting next to me? Suddenly Seymour.
That girl I was checking out sitting in front of me? Caliente.
That guy I was talking to at the water fountain? Cobalt Kid.
His quiet friend? CJ Taylor.
When I checked out the Legion World site the next week and found that I had somehow wound up in one of Director Lad's photos, I figured the time was right to make the move over here officially.
And I haven't shut up since.
-------------------- See Here for the latest update on the 2013 Chicago Gathering (now including tentative attendance list)
Registered: Feb 2008
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posted
My Legion World experience began at the old Wizard forum, where I as an internet newb first ventured because that magazine use to tickle me so.
It was there I took notice of this hilarious poster named LARDLAD. Everything he posted was funny to me, and we also seemed very in synch on our comicbook posts as well.
As I grew more adventurous on the web, I made it to the old DC boards and the LSH forums, where I was delighted to see LARDLAD again! Turns out, his titsworthiness was the same on this board as well, and it was probably him I responded to/talked to most at first there.
But I quickly discovered posters like Cobalt Kid, Shadowplay in Candlelight and Tsarin (now known as Mystery Lad), who also had hilarious, fun, in-synch and intelligent posts to be made and who all stood out to me...
...and the rest is well-known already here, almost as well-known as the tale of 3 teens saving the life of a rich Durlan one day.
So that's the earliest, smallest roots of it for me... maybe Lardy or Cobie or Shady or Mystery Lad will pop by with their versions and tell more of the tale!!
posted
For my story, we have to back up to 1994 or so. Zero Hour had just been published, the Legion had been rebooted and I stopped reading comics. It wasn't necessarily because of Zero Hour, I just stopped reading them. I never read a single Reboot issue.
Then, around 2003 or so, I started picking up comics again. A year later the Threeboot was announced and I figured, it was a good time to check out my old favorite, the Legion. I went looking for Legion-related stuff online and found Legion World, thought it looked cool, but didn't register. Several months later, I checked in again and realized this was a community I had to be a part of. I have used variations on "rockhopper" as a user name for years, so I added "lad" to the end in Legion style. That was August 6, 2005. Six years later, here I am!
-------------------- The only character in all of literature who has been described as "badnass" while using the phrase "vile miscreant."
From: The Pyngwyn Colonies of Planet Hyustyn | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
In early 2005, I started reading comics regularly again after having been more or less away since 1997. I also took all my old comics out of storage, among them a fair chunk of the L.E.G.I.O.N. run, which I had been more into than the Legion. I loved them just as much upon re-reading them.
That summer, I found the DC Boards and made some passionate posts about L.E.G.I.O.N. in the Legion forum. A certain glc-1, LW's own Nightcrawler, said he agreed with a lot of what I was saying and invited me to join Legion World.
posted
Way, way back I was posting my legion manips on yahoo legion groups (pretty sure it wasn't called yahoo then). I was pretty much a regular artist there, with one or two new manips a week. I had been doing that for a while when I recieved an email from Therod (BTW, what ever happened to him?). I can't remember exactly what the email said, but the gist of it was that I seemed like a devout legion fan and that I should join with some like minded folks on the DC boards. At the time there were 2 legion boards, one for the LSH and another "abandoned" board that had been co-oped by the LMB. I wasn't there long when the mods shut us down, but that just resulted in moving to the Phineas B Fuddle boards. Eventually we got booted from there too and I pretty much lost track of everyone. Many years later, I put up a new art website and shortly afterwards recieved an email from an old DC boards poster, Greybird. He let me know about this place and having lots of fond memories of the people on the DC boards I popped in registered. So I logged in and lurked for a bit, when suddenly two threads appeared on the MMB, one welcoming me here and the other calling me out to stop lurking and start posting. So, I knew I had again found my internet home!!
From: Fort McMurray | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Those of you that know me know that I can talk about this at length so I’ll do my best to give the abbreviated version (yeah right). Essentially, the LMB and Legion World have been a big of my life—for almost half of it!
In 1999, at age 18, I went off to college and for the first time in my life I had ongoing access to a computers: my roomate’s (my parents never had a computer then and there was no way I’d ever get one unless I bought it myself). He was real cool and let me use so the first thing I decided to check out was comic book stuff, and that’s how I found the DCMB’s.
Back in the Fall of 1999 the DCMB’s were totally different than what many of you would experience. It was mainly two camps: the Nature Boys, who would later become famous on Rob’s Boards, versus Greybird & Sk8maven, and the argument was usually centered around the preboot vs. the reboot. Also present in those days were Dean Lee, Rhino and Dev Em. Never being shy, I registered and posted on my very first trip there and began posting regularly; my roommate got a kick out of my message board presence since I knew nothing about computers. I also arrived at a crazy time for the Legion: DnA had just been announced as the upcoming creative team and it was clear the reboot was changing—and it looked like for the better! Oh how we clamored for the death of Monstress and change of Sensor-snake back to Jeckie in those days.
Shortly after my arrival I began to see some other names pop up more and more: Newcru (who became Princess Crujectra), Shadowplay in Candelight, Tsarin (now Mystery Lad), Bellbookcandle and others. Also important early on was the very ‘out’ gay community among Legion fans and general acceptance of it by the strait posters. Probably only the Wonder Woman Board equaled that. Another poster who arrived shortly after me, Paul McNeil, was a big part of keeping that community strong.
But it was the arrival of two posters that changed the Legion Board in a big way: MLLASH and LARDLAD. Both came over and added a big sense of humor to the LSH Board and they also apparently knew each other pretty well. They joked and interacted with one another on a much more personal level. Previously, I had become friendly with a poster named “Continuity Kid” who has long since disappeared and kind of friendly with Newcru. These guys were like the new class clowns / cool kids. Even more amusing was they both started to suddenly start arguing like crazy with Greybird! And then, when the tension began to mount, in true diplomatic fashion, Lardy & Lash were able to rope Greybird into the actual humor and fun of it!
Of note is the DCMB posters on the Legion Board in 1999 gave Dan and Andy the ‘DnA’ nickname, which has stuck with them ever since.
The first big change occurred on the Legion Board when Lard Lad posted a thread called “Who Are You?”. His premise was clear: let’s remove some internet ambiguity and learn more about who the various posters were. Some posters responded negatively to it; but most really were just blown away by the fresh concept and delved right in! That’s how I got to know those earliest LMBers—you can look at the thread on the LMB websites and see the actual friendships between us happening right there in the posts.
The next big change came in late February / early March 2000. It occurred to me there was a Legionnaires Board even though the series was just cancelled as DnA’s run took off. I wondered why it still existed and checked it out. To my surprise, the Board was basically abandoned but only one poster was keeping it alive—bumping every thread and starting new ones day in and day out. His name was Engine Joe.
In an odd occurrence, a few of us began responding to Engine Joe’s threads all within the same 1 or 2 nights. But the tragedy is, having no one respond to him for several days, Engine Joe moved on completely and disappeared! He truly was an inspiration to what soon happened, but never got to see it! (Until later when he returned ).
Those posters and I began to interact with one another and I was glad to see LARDLAD and MLLASH were among them. As you can guess, this also included Tsarin and Shadowplay in Candelight. Taking our cue from Engine Joe, most of our posts were only quasi-Legion related while also being more about ‘us’, the posters. And then on March 12, 2000, Lash kicked off the LMB by posting a thread called the LEGION OF MESSAGE BOARD POSTERS! By the second post, Shady recruited Bellbookcandle, Lev and Goon Boy, all of whom were also on the Legionnaires Board (which we called the “L* Board”). By the second days, more posters joined. By the end of week 1, we were flooded with members! By 10 days, we had like 25 members!! Something special was happening.
One day I logged in and saw the very first tag team thread, created by (who else?) Lardy. Imagine my surprise to see Cobalt Kid was in the starring, lead role!
In those days, I was the youngest LMBer by far; I was only 18 and while I thought I was an adult then, looking back on it, I was clearly a kid. A few years later STU would tell me I was “the collective kid brother of the LMB”. Cobalt Kid the character was the big lady’s man of the LMB because (A) I was one of about 5 strait males and (B) the ‘older brother’ LMBers were always looking out for me and building me up.
The LMB basically taught me about the internet. It refined my abilities to analyze and critique comics. It introduced to me to all kinds of ways of life I never would. Clearly, my comfort and enjoyment of dozens of gay friends is because I’ve had an entire lifetime among them online.
My presence in the early years was a bit of a rollercoaster. During summer break in 2000 I left for home and since we had no computer, I left the LMB. I returned in September and the group had clearly changed. To my delight there was a thread entitled “Countdown to Cobalt Kid!”. But my sophomore year in college saw me hit the party scene in a HUGE way and my presence was pretty sporadic unlike my major prominence in the earliest days. By 2001, I had kind of left again.
Then in summer 2001, I got an email from Seahorse (formerly Bellbookcandle) inviting me to the new hangout since the L* Board was destroyed. I was back at school in two weeks and September 2001, I decided to check it out. It was like old home week—there is just something so damn special about this group and I knew it even then. I remember on 9/11 when everyone was worried about STU because we knew he was flying in and out of New York around that time. I remember learning that Pov actually lived about 5 minutes from my campus!
The college cycle hit again and I went home in the Summer of 2002, right at the tail end of my term as LMB Leader, and was again computer less (we did have one by then but it was real slow). When I came back for my senior year, I never checked back in. Again, a whole year went by. Before I graduated, I bought my own laptop and when I moved back home, we had a better connection. I began using it regularly and one day it occurred to me—I’ll check out the LMB!
And so in September 2003, I asked on the Yahoo Group where everyone was and Pov gave me the link—and the rest is history. I missed the first three months of Legion World but I made up for it in short order. Never being shy, I basically jumped into meeting all the new posters I didn’t know.
And this time, I never looked back. I’ve been on here steady ever since and in addition to all the fun, the LMB shenanigans, the comic book reviews, I’ve got to share a ton with you all about my personal life. In those early years I told you when I was having doubts about my relationship, or when I was drunk at work from the night before. I told you when I was in a bad car accident. I told you when my brother and I lived with two girls and had a huge party house. I told you when I bought a condo and asked for you advice about it. When I got engaged. When I got married. When we got Pickles. And then when my son was born—and now when my second son was born.
I remember the first time Pov and I actually met; by then I lived an hour away. We basically had to own up to meeting since Lash pressured us into it, even though we’d been friends for a few years online. Still, it was pretty weird to think about actually doing it. And when we did—it was fantastic. The weirdness went away pretty fast and it was clear we had a real bond of friendship. That was also the day that Paul McNeil died; in a weird way, between an LMBer I knew dying and then meeting another in person for the first time, it all kind of came together on what this group really meant to me.
Jillikers, LMB! It’s been 12 years. Here’s to many, many more!
From: If you don't want my peaches, honey... | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
I was about to turn 30 years old. We had just found out that we were going to have a baby a few weeks earlier. I was a somewhat regular poster on the DCMB, the Legion of Super Heroes board in particular. I strayed into the Legionnaires board a bit too, but there was usually no life there, so I didn't really post a lot on that one.
Then one day, someone asked a question on the Legionnaires board and I chimed in and answered it. I also noticed that there had been quite a bit of activity on that board as well the last week or so, and really was curious about it. A little apprehensive to post personal things on the net, I had lurked at the amazing thing that was happening before my eyes. Anyway, I was invited to join their group, and I became the official 25th member of the LMB.
I was a regular member for years, helping get other forums to post on when Rob closed us down. Then I had a fit one day and pissed some people off. Then I found LW, and rejoined...and they welcomed me back like I had never left.
Then, on Christmas Eve one year (not sure how long ago) my hard drive fried itself...and I was without internet. It was a year or so of posting a post here or there as I could get to the library, or when my parents finally got a computer I could hop on once a week.
When I finally got a computer back at home, I started posting again here in earnest. In the last two years I have had the pleasure of meeting Quis, Beagz and Suddenly Seymour in person. Ironically, I met Quis first on a business trip to Boston when SS lives about a half hour from me, and while I had spoken with SS a few times, it was Beagz coming up to our neck of the woods that got us all together.
I do remember the punch in the gut feeling when upon returning to the forums here and learning that several of my friends had passed. Of particular note was Paul and Art. Still gets me when I think of them and the out and out fun times we had.
In twelve years, I have had the joy of sharing the birth of my two kids with my LW family. Met some of the greatest people on the net, and a few in real life.
From: Turn around... | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
One more thing...I distinctly remember creating the Furball (now Timberwolf) character during our reboot adventure and nobody knowing who I was. I forget how long it lasted, but nobody ever guessed it was me until I finally outed myself for whatever reason.
Unlike poor Sharklad who outed himself as PBeaver during an online chat session on the Yahoogroup.
From: Turn around... | Registered: Jul 2003
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future king
Excuse me but can you please direct me to the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles?
posted
I've only been a member since the beginning of 2007 and I believe (although I cannot remember for sure) I found out about Legion World from someone mentioning it on the DC message boards.
Well when I finally got on this site for the very first time I have to tell you I was so impressed at the details and all the funny threads. It really was the ultimate place of all things Legion!
I didn't know where to begin first!
I felt like a little kid when I was trying to figure out a code name for myself. I still think the name I chose is kinda corny, but I'm a firm believer in sticking to your guns, so I picked this name and I guess I'm going to see it through until the end.
... unless I change my mind at some point that is!
Here's to the last 4 years (and the next 1000 years) of great times with GREAT NEW FRIENDS whom I consider to be my extended family!
From: ontario | Registered: Feb 2007
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posted
I joined the LMB pretty early on... had some amazing times with an equally amazing group of people... then after six months or so, I went back to school for my doctorate... I wasn't reading any comics at that time, and I dropped out of the group for the most part... it wasn't until the summer of 2003, after a spectacularly bad break-up and the stress of grad school had me back at the comic store, that I came across a familiar name on the DC message boards... my old friend Lash Lad... his signature line said something to the effect of "Visit the new home of the LMB at LegionWorld.net"... I signed up and it was just like old times... unfortunately, just like old times, I dropped out again after a while and only posted sporadically until 2008 when, with grad school long behind me and in a wonderful new relationship that, I started posting pretty regularly... I met my first LMBers in 2009 and have been lucky enough to meet up with a couple of them more than once... Legion World means more to me than I can adequately put to words, and I consider myself very lucky to be a part of it...
-------------------- Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...
From: The waters off eastern Long Island | Registered: Jul 2003
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