Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Crises of the Infinite Legions

This is based on a comment by doublechinner in another thread….


Is the Legion doomed to be re-booted every time they grow up? Part of the beauty of the original Legion was we got to see them grow, mature and even marry. However, during the TMK era, many thought they had grown up too much.

Now when the post-boot Legion was getting older (Tinya: “Grife, were we ever that age?), we looking at another reboot.

Does the Legion have to stay in their mid-teens to tell good stories?

Is there an age when they should stop getting older?

I don't think so. I'd still like to see some version of Jim Shooter's Adult Legion realized.
We got a taste of that just prior to the reboot and I liked it. Yes, I liked the TMK era (I seem to be in a minority), I liked following their adventures as adults. There were kids an careers and even secret identities for a little while. All good comic book fun.

Maybe not mid-teens forever; personally I prefer them late teens/20s. Why couldn't they stay in that range forever? Just abandon the notion that their stories have to conform to our sense of evolving time, as in "how much time has elapsed since the reboot, in Legion years?"

Some cartoon strips have their characters grow up, and their children grow up - such as Gasoline Alley, Doonesbury, For Better or Worse - others, like Peanuts, just keep them pretty much at the same age. Superman and Batman have been more or less unaged since the beginning, with a few excursions to older and younger versions.

The Adventure-era "Adult Legion" story seemed to put them in their 50s! - but maybe that was my perspective when I read it. All those receding hairlines. Since a lot of them had young children in that tale, they were probably meant to be late 20s/30s.

As an older reader, I would be interested to see what a Legion of 50 year olds could be like - 50 isn't necessarily over the hill today, and less likely to be so in the future - so they could still have (most of) the physical prowess of their youth, but with added maturity - hardened, seasoned champions. It could be a good one-shot or mini-series; for some reason, I wouldn't want it to be the permanent version.

I agree, comic book characters don’t need to age at all, as long as the stories remain something people want to read. Peanuts is a fine example FC. For the same reason I don’t want to read about Legion: The Next Generation. I want to read about the Legion of Super Heroes, a group of super powered teens doing good and honouring the ideals of the heroes of the current era.

Mind you, I like FC's other idea of an elseworlds (out of continuity) story based on 50 plus heroes. Who would be ill, fat, bald, contented grandparents, grumpy old men etc.

The fact that the characters aged is one of the things that I liked and that set them apart from other comic book series. They aged, got married, had kids, died and stayed dead (except Lightining Lad).

I started reading the Legion properly during the much maligned 5YG period so to my mind they were a few years away from reaching their proper ages before this reboot. As being a 20-something was the best and worst time of my life it's the age I think of as the most dramatic. FC's comment about a 50 something group is very intriqueing though.

The norm for comic books in general seems to be to ignore the passing years--Peter Parker doesn't seem to have been Spidey for 40 years, last time I looked at a comic.

Long time Legion fans, however, were spared belief suspending for the Levitz to TMK eras. I preferred it that way, as I started reading the Legion as a young adult, not a child. I would be open to going back to that, although I suspect that since the reboot/retcon paradigm has been established and we're stuck with it.

I personally think the TMK era was the best...but that could be because I jumped in at that point...

FC hit the point I was asking about.

It seems TPTB think that when the Legion reaches late teens or early twenties (or beyond), they get the reboot.

I thought the pre-boot Legion's development was great (except for the "no Superboy" thing), and I wasn't unhappy with the TMK era until the stories started to suck (around #50).

But then we got Zero Hour, and a nice (if somewhat spotty tribute) to the original Legion.

Now we have "Hypertime Hour".

So my question is: is this an endless cycle?

The answer so far seems to be yes. DC does not seem to have any problem rebooting their most popular titles. Using the broadest definition of a reboot, I would say that the Legion has been rebooted (continuity, history, or present circumstances changed/retconned/obliterated) at least four times (pocket universe, Mordruverse/Superboy completely removed from Legion history, Zero Hour, Hypertime) in the last twenty years. So, even more than other titles, the paradigm exists that if you dislike the Legion's current standing, change it.

Note that the above reboot count doesn't count the numerous minor retcons that have occurred, especially during the TMK run.

I personally like the idea of the Legion growing older, largely because when I first encountered them, they had started to get married and have children. It added to the sense of history, of a team changing and growing and developing over time, which is one of the things that always attracted me to it. It also makes the characters more real, imo.

I think it's a lot harder to do well, however, when you have something that is serial fiction, written by a number of different authors over time. If the Legion were one person's vision, I think they could develop a much more coherent story about the course of these people's lives. As it is, what we have are the same basic characters and situations reinterpreted by each successive team to their own vision.

I also liked the TMK era up until they blew up the Moon & the Earth.

I don't think that the Legion growing up is the reason for the reboot. Poor sales have more to do with it than anything else.

One of the strengths of the Legion is that because the book is set in the distant future, there isn't any need to include contemporary cultural references that cause stories to seem dated years later, a la Aunt May's concerns about missing "The Ed Sullivan Show" in an early Spider-Man issue (in a later reprint it was edited to read "Dukes of Hazzard!") Over the years contemporary characters tend to accrue those sort of things which eventually we either have to ignore (the Marvel strategy in general) or have explained (the rationale for the JSA remaining youthful beyond their normal lifespans) or if all else fails, reboot. Superman can't be 29 forever if he used to hang out with JFK, if you prefer all stories to follow a logical continuity.

I appreciate comic strips that allow their characters to age, such as Doonesbury. To a certain extent those strips are allowed a greater variety of stories because they can depend on contemporary issues as grist for the mill. The strips that are at best tangetially set in contemprorary society (Peanutsor or Mutts) run the risk of becoming either stale (Garfield) or simply running their course (Calvin & Hobbes).

Personally, I feel like the Legion is the best suited comics for something approximating real-time aging. The more the title is divorced from the 21st century DCU the better to do so. It is also a title that, like it or not, is most easily rebooted. A small number of retcons to 21st century DCU continuity (or injudicious use of "hypertime") can lift out any Legion from DCU continuity with ease. Heck, the Legion was pretty heavily involved with Crisis, and DC never has explained that one away yet.

Personally, if a reboot is done with a reasonable amount of respect for the outgoing continuity I don't think I'll ever really be as bothered by it like I was the first time. Looking back, the originally continuity may have been played out, unlike the 2.0 continuity. I wouldn't be surprised if DC rebooted the Legion every 15 years or so just to keep things fresh.

The Legion was unique though in that the characters did age - they grew older between the Adventure run and them going into the Superboy comic. The flesh-flashing costumes gave it away but so did things like Nura shagging Thom. I always imagined the founders to be in their early 30s when they retired and made way for Sensor Girl etc.

I don't see the appeal of "brats in space" so even though it's been rebooted I hope Waid doesn't write them too "young" (ie throwing petulent tantrums). Luckily, they look older in the preview than how Moy drew them during the last reboot.

Tinya's comment in the TT/Legion crossover was a bit inappropriate. I thought they were supposed to be in their early 20s "now" but her Ultra Boy's remark that "we are that age" kind of made it look like Tinya got up the duff aged 15 - which no one wants in a super hero!

I don't think aging has anything to do with why the Legion is being/was rebooted. The original team was rebooted due to very poor sales. I'm thinking Levitz's prominent position is what kept this book around in any form.

I don't know why the latest version has been rebooted. They certainly didn't age much (if at all), so that can't be the problem. I think it must have been perceieved that this Legion had no direction. Waid had something in mind that TPTB thought might work. I guess we'll have to see. With any luck, there won't be any further reboots.

You're probably right Ferro. The stories in the rumor mill seem to suggest that Paul did indeed keep the series alive and that's always made me quite happy. I'd hate to see this book cancelled for good and the LSH go away to comic book character limbo only to have John Byrne take a whack at rebootiing it.

I liked TMK too -- the complexity of the UP, the maturity, the intelligence behind *most* of the choices -- it was a great change for me as i entered my 20s

BUT

i also thought some of TMK was fan-fic gone awry

on some points, the editing was 'too loose' (maybe intimidated by Giffen and his relationship with Levitz?) and resulted in some wicked choices that i'm not sure were necessary and were definitely hard to get away from -- i.e. Shvaughn/Sean, the deaths of dr. gym'll, atmos, circadia seniusm, the moon, the Earth; towards the end, the editing was too restrictive resulting in weird story choices (as in the changing plans for SW6 & Legionnaires book)

NOW, i think the market has changed enough to support an adult look at heroes (Millar, Gaiman, Ellis, Morrison, Bendis and Moore have all elevated the playing field/comics market in those terms) ... but i think there has to be some intelligence behind the format, artist/writer combo, themes and relative corporate freedom for it to work on Legion

this reboot is all about growing a book's sales -- a 'reimagination/reboot' seemed like the best choice ... i don't disagree, especially with that 7 page preview wetting my appetite