Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Multigenerational Legionnaires

It's interesting that in LSH volume 7 #1, Dream Girl is basically mothering Glorith. It underscores the fact that the Legion now has a significant age gap. There are two different cohorts of Legionnaires who are widely separated in age.

I don't think that's ever been the case before. I remember a scene in the '80s when Dawnstar was griping about being younger than Phantom Girl, but have there ever been such large age differences between Legionnaires as there are now? What new story possibilities might be opened up by the existence of this age gap?

Sadly, I think that any new story possibilities regarding an age gap will be ignored.

Back in the '80s, Paul Levitz treated the older Legionnaires more or less as grown-ups (Star Boy grew a beard); the three founders even retired to make room for new blood. And in 5YL, there seemed to be a plot thread of older members mentoring younger ones such as Kono. Alas, this plot thread was never developed.

DC seems to want to downplay the Legionnaires' advancing ages -- hence the reboots whenever a character has children, for example. I doubt the Legionnaires will ever truly to age or that attention will be called to their ages -- which is a shame. I think those would be great stories to tell.

We had the SW6ers for awhile.
And we had the Academy recently.

Unfortunately, ALL of the Legionnaires were just deaged 5 years or so.

The large gap between the Academy inductees and the original team, has been substanially reduced - and everyone should be acting closer to the same age.

Fabian said that the LOST have about 5 years experience as Legionnaires, so they're they're about 19 to 21.

The others would be similar, right?
Maybe, a year or two older, except in Jan's case.

The cadets were not really that young orignally, either, for example - Grav left to be with Jed.

I've always wished that comics would let their stars age and move on. like in the Star Trek series of generational type shows, or like Star Gate or the Potter books or the Pern series.
sigh

I think the "generational gap" will still be played up but in regards to tenure more than age. Short of Invisible Kid II, Legion Lost took out the last few years of new members from the team. Even with the compressed "5 years," there's justification for the established Legionnaires to assume mentor roles with their experience.

The title definitely has a unique opportunity with the "young vs old" take. I don't necessarily mind it. It may even be nice to get some other new blood. I can see an active XS being fun. She's closer to the age of the Academy kids but has a lot more experience and tenure - they can be shocked when she mother hens them just as much as the "older" Legionnaires.

I like XS, but I don't really like the handle Levitz had on her character in that one backup story, so I'm happy for her to sit on the sidelines till someone else who likes her and gets her finds a use for her. It would be nice if we even heard something about her every now and then as a background character though..

It would be interesting to see how tenure, age and experience factor into how the Legionnaires regard one another.

For example, we know Cosmic Boy is still seen as THE first leader, so his words carry a lot of weight. I'd expect that happens a lot with Saturn Girl and Element Lad as well. Maybe Dream Girl.

Does she even still exist?

XS will apparently be appearing in a Flash related series, The Flash: Speed Force .

I hope her mosaic won't become another dangling plot point...

The oldest Legionnaire would still be in the same generation as the youngest. Remember, they're meant to be five years younger than at the end of the last volume. Though I haven't seen a thing yet to indicate that.

Oldest other than Mon-el or Harmonia, if she is a Legionnaire, that is.

We ended up seeing more of this with Chemical Kid and Element Lad. Good power combinations.

As Chemical Kid has realised a little how far out of his comfort zone he is, having a stable, experienced Legionnaire around would make a big difference to whether or not he lasts on the team.