Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes I think Geoff cheated...

With Hawkman, Green Lantern and other franchises he has taken the sum total of their histories and incorporated them into a cohesive story. With the Legion, he chose where he wanted to pick up the threads, and made continuity tweaks along the way to suit his purposes.

I just think that he really would have impressed me by taking over the Legion...Post 5YG and gone from there. There are ways to do it...believe me. You'll see the ideas I had soon.

Maybe that's a statement about how convoluted the Legion's history has become. It's not convoluted to me, mind you.

Looking forward to hearing your ideas!

Also looking forward to it.

I agree with your take on the other books and on Legion but how would taking over Legion 5YL not also be cheating? That wasn't the Legion in play.

Though I'm an old ADV guy, I prefer Shooter's attempts at salvaging the mess that had occurred.

If the powers that be were intent on bringing back the "Classic" Legion...and it seems they were as they have been bringing back all of their Silver Age Heroes...(Hal, Barry, Carter, Ollie, and others.) Then they could have taken the thought of taking the full sum of what those characters went through (as they did with all of those mentioned) and that would have included the 5YG stories.

Geoff had a hand in a good majority of these resets with Silver Age Heroes, and he used everything at his disposal, but not for the Legion.

I just think that's not playing 100% fair. That's all.

I agree with that statement Dev. I also agree it'd be fairly easy to use the TMK era and change the entire attitude of that era to fit with what Geoff is trying to do. A few minor tweaks--many of them to style rather than continuity--would accomplish it.

I wonder if some major hurdles stopped Geoff from doing this though: death of Sun Boy; death of Blok; Schvaughn; Proty-Garth; etc. He especially seems to like using Blok and Dirk so maybe that was a factor.

I actully don't mind Geoff's 'cheat' here, because of the dead characters Cobie mentions and others in the TMK continuity.


On the bright side, nothing is stopping great characters like Kent Shakespeare and Laurel Gand from being brought into Geoff's continuity.

Blok and Dirk could both easily be brought back if desired. SW6 Dirk was still alive, and who knows what it actually takes to kill a sentient rock creature. Blok could conceivably re-assemble himself, for example.

Well, it could be done (in fact, I think you and I had a topic once where we discussed that), but I'm sure all of those things affected the Geoff's decision of where to cut-off continuity. I'm not arguing if that's right or wrong (I'm a little burnt out on that at this point ).

I'd forgotten about the SW6 Legion too...I always think that if the TMK timeline had been restored, they'd have been swept under the rug almost immediately, just because I know how comic book companies, editors and creators are.

I would actually go so far as to say that Johns's take on the Legion might actually make more sense if it were supposed to be a continuation of the 5YG. We actually see the roots of anti-alien sentiment in the 5YG/SW6 stories. This would have been far more acceptable to me than trying to retcon this whole dystopian vision into the backstory of the Legion.

Don't rule it out

At first it seemed Geoff's cut-off was Crisis, but that obviously isn't right anymore. There was even a little uncertainty if it was around the time of Superboy's death. Now its at least the all the way until the end of Levitz's run, with some considerable time passing in between, since there was a Karate Kid II and the Sensor Girl / Tellus / etc. group are firmly secure in continuity. Of course, that doesn't explain inconsistencies of Val re-appearing alive or even Xerox being a planet again, but I wouldn't hold my breath for those explanations. When all is said and done, we might learn that its actually after TMK after all--with an "oh, we forgot to tell you Sun Boy was ressurected, Blok is back..."

I'm half-kidding but only half.

Well, that goes to the deeper problem that they really just don't seem to have had a clear plan at all in introducing this version of the Legion. Like so much of DC's current approach to writing comics, they seem to be just making it up as they go along, with little concern as to whether a story is consistent with what they published last month. One can only hope that Levitz can at least straighten some of this mess out.

In all honesty, I don't think anyone over there (at DC) actually knows the continuity well enough to put it all together. I'm hoping Paul Levitz can make some sense of it all but I don't expect him to know it as well as...well, as well as we do.

What they need there, and I mean "they" as in all of DC and all of Marvel, are editors who actually know this continuity chapter & verse and can make sense of it. Let the writers tell their stories without continuity guiding them, but keep the editors aware of continuity so the writers are flowing in the right direction without screwing things up. Of course, editors need to be able to do a host of other things, like actually add some value to what the artists are doing (and I see a lot of instances where that doesn't seem to be the case IMO) but thats a conversation for another time.

It'd be pretty helpful if the editor on Action Comics said to Gary Frank: "this is beautiful Gary but you forgot to put Tyroc in there--you can draw him in right there and we'll have your inker make sure it looks great". No explanation needed to the readership then.

I will say that with the SW6, and the "older" Legionnaires, there was easy ways to make a multi-generational team. Do not forget that several key members of the "older" group were de-aged, made older, etc.

Again, I want to reread some stuff, but I am going to post my thoughts soon.

It does all start with the Time Trapper re-establishing his timeline in the DCU proper. It involves the DCU proper and the Pocket Dimension.

Some characters will stay deceased, some will return...some surprisingly, and not everyone will be happy with some characters decisions, or what decisions they're forced to make.

This is actually the thrust of my problem with Geoff's decisions. Geoff has proven time and again that he is able to understand and utilize the complex histories for a compelling story.

I just wish he had done this for the Legion.

But this all presupposes somebody actually sitting down and making the decision as to what the continuity actually is. Does it include things past Crisis? Does it include Supergirl? It seems like they just started writing without making what seem like basic choices one would need to make before deciding to "bring back" the Legion, but no one seems to have bothered to make them. And so we seem to get conflicting info from one story to the next.

I'm completely schizo when it comes to continuity.

On the one hand, I very much enjoy the writing of authors like Kurt Busiek, who eat, drink and make sweet, sweet love to continuity.

On the other hand, my favorite Legion stories of the last decade or so have been Superboy's Legion (totally out of continuity), the cartoon (totally out of continuity) and the early Shooter / Manapul run (in a weird sort of threeboot / classic continuity all it's own).

I could give a rat's rump whether or not Geoff Johns 'gets it right,' being more focused on whether or not he tells a good Legion story.

And, so far, he really hasn't. Worse, it's been 'marketed' as the return of the Classic Legion, which it ain't. It's not what it says it is on the tin, and it's not a great Legion story, so he fails, IMO, on both 'getting it right' and 'making it good.'

Johns has presented us a Legion that *looks* older, but abandoned character advancement to have couples that had broken up suddenly back together, characters who died suddenly, and inexplicably, alive again, characters who we watched grow up regressed into hot-headed ranting maniacs (Lightning Lad) or giddy overexcitable buffoons (Polar Boy), etc.

I give Waid ten times the credit I give Johns. I didn't care for some elements of Waid's work (although I loved his 'precop' Dream Girl), but he never said that he'd be giving me the Classic Legion.

Legion fandom has an (undeserved, IMO) reputation for being hard to please. It isn't hard. There are devoted fans of characters I do not 'get' at all, like Infectious Lass, Matter-Eater Lad, Quislet, Dawnstar and Kent Shakespeare, so it seems like many of us don't care nearly so much about continuity as we do about interesting characters and good storytelling.

Continuity, IMO, has in some cases been a bit of a bane. The X-Men, for instance, do not belong in the same universe as the Avengers, because one group saves the world and gets attacked by giant government robots and torch wielding mobs, while the other group *which includes many known mutants* has an 'Avengers Day Parade' through the middle of New York City, right past the national landmark headquarters of another wildly popular celebrity superteam (the Fantastic Four).

And that's just how continuity has messed up the Marvel-verse.

The 20th century interfering with the 30th is where it messes up the Legion. While I love the idea that the Legion is *informed* by 20th century heroism, I don't want the storylines to be restricted by what is going on in 1000 years before (or after).

Writers for the Legion should be able to write whatever they want, using elements inspired by the 21st century (or not) as desired. If a new character seems unlikely because so-and-so died back in the 21st century and didn't have any descendents, it can be rationalized that the Spectre waved his hand or something and made it possible...

I know reboots have become anathema among Legion fans, but I'd almost like to see a Legion book done in the new, upcoming, Earth-1 line.

Of course, I also argue that the new universe, if it's to capture new readers, should be done in the comparatively inexpensive pamphlets, while the current universe moves to graphic novels, where fanboys are more likely to follow than the casusl reader.

There are a number of comic readers who for years now have said that the monthly pamphlets should just go and the industry should to graphic novels. (I don't agree with them, but the attitude is out there). These upcoming "Earth One" GNs are the "put up or shut up" moment for those people.

I totally agree with Set that Marvel Universe continuity is a mess, but it doesn't seem to have hurt Marvel saleswise

OM, I think you're right about this being a put-up or shut-up moment. And I think by going the TPB route without a monthly preceding it, they will lose a ton of publicity and marketing potential that will ultimately hurt them. If they'd put out monthlies first, people would have bought the single issues and a buzz could have been created, or at least 6+ months of reviews keeping it in the spotlight. Now its kind of a one-shot deal. I know I'll likely skip right over them unless there is some kind of great cry among the message boards I frequent that its the greatest thing ever (which is highly doubtful, since it will mainly consist of LW). I think DC has gone about it all wrong.

For Marvel continuity--sure its messy. Yet, it never feels all that apparent or distracting. Sales aren't hurt because no large number of fans notice nor care. Its alwasy been this way with Marvel. And thats because continuity doesn't drive the storylines, while at DC it does--for some time now. No one argues about Marvel continuity and refers to it as a hampering factor in the enjoyment of its titles. Sure there is plenty to complain about at times, but that's not one of the hot button topics.

I point to the recent Marvels Project by Brubaker and Epting in which some of Marvel's Golden Age heroes (albeit obscure ones) have some pretty strong retcons going on with their continuity. Fan outcry: zero. Unless Outdoor Miner pointed it out, I think I'd hardly notice it. Because Marvel has never been about that kind of orderly structuring and restructuring of its continuity. DC needs to take a note, I think and let continuity be for awhile. A long while.

I think that's a very interesting argument because what it says in effect is that Marvel is held to a lower standard by a large portion of the fanbase. You are right that Marvel is rarely orderly about their continuity changes, but they make them. So I think the lesson for DC is not to leave continuity alone, but to stop trying to explain their changes via events.

I think the Earth One GNs have potential, but there will need to be a marketing effort that goes beyond the normal channels. They are going need to come up with something to help make these stick out from the trades and GNs already on the shelves in comic shops and (especially for this case) bookstores.

Yeah, I think thats the basic jist of it. DC needs to stop trying to explain their continuity through events. Marvel never bothers doing this and basically no one complains--I can almost see Dan Slott running into Joe Q's office and saying "how do we explain Wolverine fighting Omega Red in ___ while he has his arms cut off in __?" and Joe Q says "Ha! What are we, DC? Let 'em figure it out on their own." And thus, fans make their own assumptions and no one ever complains.

'Lower standard' implies 'crap' but thats not quite what I'm saying...I'm saying fans just don't expect Marvel continuity to be so firmly structured and therefore, ispo facto Marvel doesn't address it as much and ultimately the perception is that it doesn't have the same problem as DC's.

Hmm...

Ironically, it was trying to imitate Marvel's much tighter continuity in the 60s/70s/80s that really led DC down the self-destructive path beginning with COIE.

The problem is DC worked backwards, while Marvel worked forwards for the first 10 years. Marvel started from the ground-up, only ever bringing in the barest prior history from 1962. DC tried tying everything together after they'd established a plethora of different things all over the map, and then even tried to fit in the Golden Age.

And DC has always ever worked backwards. They won't stick to one system and therefore have to keep making an increasing amount of backstory work together. Even now, Marvel mainly tries to make the future fit and hardly ever spends time tying in the backstory (not as much as in the 60's, but that culture is still very much there).

...then they would be doing Super-Baby and Red Kryptonite stories.