Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes What if the Legion had been created at Marvel?

Eryk Davis Ester's unrealized memory prompted the creation of this topic.

We'll start with Ultra Boy being a reformed criminal (which was speculated about in the thread in which EDE's memory of a pre-existing thread along these lines was raised).

Since it's Marvel, probably about a third of the team will also be reformed baddies.

So, who else would be good choices for having a criminal past?

I seem to remember "Timber Wolf is really an android who wants to be human" from the list as well.

Anyway, the whole Legion would probably be viewed as criminals by the U.P.!

Lately Phantom Girl has been popping into secured areas like a pro.

There would be a SHOCKING revelation at some point down the road that Garth and Ayla used to be Mekt's villainous flunkies on Winath in their pre-Legion days, a la the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver working in Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants way back when...

Also, Ferro Lad would have been hated and feared by all prior to joining the Legion, and probably survived hand to mouth stealing what he could in between being chased by <strike>anti-mutant</strike> angry space-mobs. In fact!! I can see it now....RJ Brande caught him stealing food scraps from his space-dumpster and felt sorry for the poor outcast, enlisting him in the Legion where he learned to be the angstiest hero of all *choke*

A team of thought-dead Legionnaires would suddenly appear and try to get revenge on THIS Legion.

The 3 Founders and several early Legionnaires had actually met them - but they were thought killed and RJ Brande had wiped their memories from the minds of everyone else!

Oh, and half the Legionnaires would end up having super-villain parents.

The other half would be depowered and repowered repeatedly.

There would be no Lad/Lass names, and probably no "Boy" names either. Most would have SW6/postboot style names right from the start, the "Boy"s would use "Man" (e.g. "Cosmicman", probably as one word), and the "Girl"s would either drop the "Girl" completely or upgrade to "Woman" in the 70s & 80s.

Uh, that wasn't a revelation. Wanda & Pietro DEBUTED as (semi-reluctant) villains...

There would be an average of five different Legion titles;

A core title, Legion of Super-Heroes.

Legion Espionage Squad would detail the noir-esque of a motley group of mostly abandoned lower-tier characters, retirees and / or honorary members led by Luornu 'Multiple Maid' Duorgu, and written by Peter David.

Grant Morrison's all-new 'All Star Legion' would be detail the more offbeat developments of the team, including Garth rebounding after Imra's death by hooking up with a more-or-less-reformed Eve Aries, and incomprehensible plots involving imposters pretending to be imposters of someone else, who have weird powers because they have a larval Sun-Eater in their head.

Legion Academy would detail the adventures of five to seven-ish young recruits. Mandalla and Tiger Girl might turn out to be 'soulmates.' Power Boy's dad would be a Brazilian millionaire and secret member of the Dark Council! Westerner would be a hick from a huge family, half of whom would later be revealed to *also* have powers.

Timber Wolf would have his own title, and run a bar on Zuun, where he has all sorts of funky adventures and tears through hundreds of synthezoid assassins that melt into goo when destroyed.

In the 'Timeline of the Trapper' mega-event, every Legion title would be rebooted with radically different versions of various Legion sub-teams, in an apocalyptic alternate future where the Time Trapper had won, and, only after the various teams destroyed his 'perfect future,' would the books reset to normal.

A few really popular standout alternate history versions would escape to the real timeline and survive the destruction of their own, including purple-skinned teleporter, Veilmist, and an evil version of Brainy who likes to experiment on himself, called 'Dark Brainiac.'

Universo would be about 50% villainous mastermind and about 50% 'trying to make a better universe' and on the Legion's side. It would be kind of a crapshoot whether they'd be allies or enemies on any given day. This would be terribly confusing for Rond.

The White Witch would absorb the power of Mordru, on a Sorcerer's World devastated by a war between him and the Legion, and, in a moment of despair, mutter the words 'no more magic,' changing reality and eliminating magic from the universe (mostly), resulting in untold chaos. This would finally be corrected, but, driven mad by her experiences in a universe without magic, she would blame the *Legion* for the devastation, and instead say, 'no more Legion! leading to a completely different mega-event...

Timber Wolf would inexplicably appear in all the above titles.

He'd also have a young female clone who appears in all the titles with "young" recruits.

Ha! Timber Wolf would also be discovered to have an evil never-before-seen son, who not only has his powers, but, since he's a cliched depraved bisexual, also has creepy roofie-pheremones!

Another series would bring together a team of six Timber Wolves from different alternate universes!

Shunted through time/space/dimensions, the whacky Legion Lost team would consist of alternate universe members of very different Legions. Led by a heroic version of Earth-Man, dating Veilmist, and accompanied by a whacky comedic version of Cham and a reverse-gendered gay verison of Sun Boy, as well as the daughter of Nightcrawler and the White Witch and a towering version of Ferro Lad (who had been recovered after his Sun-Eater sacrifice, reanimated and re-forged into a villain by Tharok, in his own universe), these 'Exiles' would jaunt through alternate universes, fixing broken timelines, and encounter wildly different versions of friends, foes and even themselves!

It's kind of amazing how easy it is to plug in appropriate characters to replace Marvel characters!

Mimic - heroic alter-ego of a power duplicating villain from the classic timeline, replace with Earth-Man.

Blink - purple-skinned teleporter, replace with Veilmist.

Thunderbird - first X-Man to die, replaced by brother, who became a Horseman of Apocalypse in another dimension, escaped and became a hero. Replace with Ferro Lad, first Legionnaire to die (and stay dead, anyway) and be replaced by a brother.

Shadow Lass would have been worshipped as a goddess on Talok VIII.

Blok would have been the political one instead of Gates.

Of the Fatal Five, Emerald Empress and Persuader would have been reluctant members and brother and sister. Or alternatively, Lightning Lad & Light Lass would have been the reluctant members of the Fatal Five.

Both the White Witch and Cosmic Boy would be the children of Mordru.

Colossal Boy would have originally been able to shrink like his girlfriend Shrinking Violet.

IRC Stan Lee and John Byrne originally announced they were going to collaborate on JUST IMAGINE STAN LEE CREATING THE LEGION but that ultimately was transformed into ROBIN...

oops sorry...badly punctuated, I meant that their previous lives as ex-flunkies for a relative would be like Wanda & Pietro, not the revelation itself...

For what it's worth, here\'s an earlier thread on this topic, but still not the thread I was remembering.

Lightning Lad is a descendant of Electro.
Cosmic Boy is a descendant of Magneto.
Brainiac 5 is a descendant of that gamma-irradiated big-headed green-skinned guy from Hulk.
Mon-El is a pink-skinned Kree warrior.
Shadow Lass is a blue-skinned Kree Warrior.
And neither of them get along well with Chameleon Boy, who is, obviously, a Skrull.

The Legion of Substitute Heroes has their own book, in which they do nothing but sit around and whine about how hard it is to be "different" and all their annoying personal problems.

Chlorophyll Kid- Obesity.
Color Kid- Blindness.
Night Girl- unrequited crush on Cosmic Boy.
Porcupine Pete, Infectious Lass, and Polecat- inability to relate to the opposite sex.
Fire Lad- Cannot wear a hat.
Stone Boy- narcolepsy.
Polar Boy- diminutive stature.
Antennae Boy- nobody listens to him.
Double Header- dead.

^ Ooh, I like it! I'd buy it.

90% of the Legion Academy kids are depowered, maimed or die. Luornu and Chuck divorce over their differences in training philosophy; the rest of the Legionnaires then take sides.

Instead of Rokk slapping Ayla, it's Garth slapping Imra, and twenty years later, long after Imra has died, been reborn with cosmic powers, and then died again (and he's dating Eve Aries, who dresses like a stripper) Garth is still remembered pretty much exclusively as 'the wife-beater.'

Sun Boy devolves from 'hotshot pilot / party boy' to 'male Paris Hilton' and then dies, having been rendered unpopular by crappy writing.

Spider-Girl turns into an actual spider, explodes, and crawls out of her own spider-corpse, with new powers that better reflect her movie portrayal. On the upside, there's a Spider-Girl movie! The scene where Kirsten Dunst-as-Spider-Girl hangs upside down, kissing her boyfriend is widely mimiced and / or satirized. There's also a whole Spider-Girl 'clone saga' thing, but that's ignored almost immediately after being written.

Hugh Jackman's breakout role (to American movie audiences, at least) is as Timber Wolf. A rush to capitalize on that success leads to some unfortunate sequels, and the Legion franchise is rebooted soon thereafter, with Michael Fassbender pulling off a memorable Universo, who is retconned to having been an old friend of R.J. Brande (played in the first movies by John Rhys-Davies) and having had some minor role in the formation of the Legion.

Walt Simonson's epic run on the Legion starts with the destruction of an entire galaxy to forge Darkseid's ultimate weapon, and involves the introduction of 'Beta Ray Superboy,' and a massive fight with various Legion villains coming out of retirement at Darkseid's bidding, ending with the Legion of Super-Heroes, Legion of Super-Villains and various other unaffiliated heroes and villains teaming up to stop Darkseid from destroying the universe!

In the memorable final battle, Garth shouts, "For the Legion!" and Rond shouts, "For the Corps!" and Mekt shouts, "For me!"

Don't forget all those covers with the Legionnaires on the right about the clash with the Legionnaires on the left, right in the middle.

Or the covers with some random female character in the middle, and attacks coming from all sides, saying, 'Welcome to the Legion, Character X, hope you survive the experience!'

- The three founders would not have saved RJ Brande - they would've been the assassins! But they'd experience a change of heart after killing him, thus becoming heroes!

- An even angstier Wildfire!

- An even ballsier Dawnstar!

- Half the team are secretly Skrulls! (the other half are Space Phantoms)

- Space Nick Fury gettin' all up in everyone's business!

- The Legion would be based in New York City.

I would have stopped buying Legion books after the launch of their 3rd or 4th spinoff title, complaining to anyone who would listen about how the company was glutting the market with too many Legion titles of questionable quality.

Darkseid would have four servants he calls his Four Horsemen of Apokalips, and, at various different times, at least half of the Legion would have been Horsemen (usually Death) having been brainwashed by the Anti-Life Equation and 'borged up / power-boosted with Apokaliptan technology.

It would end up being the de facto means of powering up 'weaker' Legionnaires or butching up less gung-ho militant ones, or angsting up more well-adjusted (aka, 'boring') ones, having Darkseid kidnap and brainwash and augment them to serve as a 'Horseman of Apokalips.'