Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Justice League United Annual #1

Well after a first reading of this issue, here are some gleanings...

This storyline does not pick up where Levitz left off wth LSH #23 (although there is a little wiggle room on that). Mon-El is not hurt. Star Boy is alive. Phantom Girl is still part of the team. In fact, the art doesn't reflect the costume changes of the New 52 run, i.e. Ultra Boy, Timber Wolf and Tyroc's uniforms, Saturn Girl's hairstyle, etc.

While Gates is pictured as part of the team, White Witch is referred to as have joined in on the mission and healed Shadow Lass. Duo Damsel is mentioned instead of Duplicate Damsel. So, possibly not all of Lo3W and vol. 6 of Levitz run is in continuity with this story...

There's just a lot of continuity issues here. I'll comment on the actual story later.

This is a longshot, but the storyline could possibly fit into what the Legion Lost team discovered when they traveled back to the 31st century in Legion Lost #10. This menace might cause the whole population of Earth to be evacuated. I doubt they pick up that plot thread, but it would be nice for a little continuity somewhere. Don't you think?

It looks like they poured everything but the kitchen sink into this issue. Also Nura has blonde hair again. Well at least Matter-Eater Lad is shown in the group shot.

Thanks for sharing, guys. Hearing that Gates (who has often been ignored in group shots) shows up, and that Mysa is the White Witch again (?) instead of the Black Witch, are both nice.

I was pretty relieved with what I read, to be honest.

Sun Boy is also alive. Jeckie is in one panal, but her costume is miscolored and she's facing away from us. Bouncing Boy was also present.

No sign of XS (No doubt TPTB regret ever including her on this team), Quislet, Night Girl, Glorith, Chemical Kid, Dragonfire, or Harmonia.

This issue reinforced my belief that Supergirl does not belong in the (or any) Justice League.

It feels like this is the post Lo3W Legion before Paul Levitz rehashed everything. No XS, Night Girl or Quislet in the double page picture but they could be behind Mon-El as could Wildfire. Of course that could be a retrospective picture.

Brainy acting as Leader. Duo Damsel. White Witch. This isn't a period I recognise but it could be the future of the Lo3W team ie the pre Flashpoint team.

I don't think the double page Legion splash is meant to include everyone since it doesn't include Duo Damsel and White Witch, who are mentioned, let alone Invisible Kid II, Chameleon Boy or Sensor Girl either.

It is a good question as to where in Legion timeline this storyline is supposed to take place. I read a reviewer elsewhere on the web suggest that this is the official introduction of the New 52 Earth Prime Legion and what we got earlier with Levitz and DeFalco was the New 52 Earth 2 Legion. I really hope not. That would be really mess up continuity all around.

For example, that would mean that we'd have 2 Gates joining 2 different Legions coming out of 2 separate Lo3W's or something crazy like that.

Seeing that Lo3W was pre-Flashpoint, there is nothing to say that any it happened post Flashpoint on Earth 0 or Earth 2. So Gates may be from the same universe as the rest of the Legion on whichever earth that is!

Making the Lemire Legion Earth 0 and Levitz Legion Earth 2 has a silver age neatness to it. How long before a cross-over?

I refuse to believe that all Legion continuity went out the door with Flashpoint. The deal was with the New 52 was that the Legion got to keep its continuity.

The "deal" with New 52 continuity is that Superman (and related characters like Superboy/Kon and Supergirl/Kara) got a hard reboot, no non-"Big 7" Justice League (with Cyborg instead of Martian Manhunter), nor any team of Teen Titans, had ever existed in the "five years" prior to (most of) the N52 #1s and prior Crises were not in N52 continuity. (Some of this took a while to be decided on, so early issues of some titles contradicted it...)

Ergo - Lightning Saga, Lo3W, "Superman and the Legion", New Krypton, and all the retroboot's interaction with the post-Infinite Crisis, pre-Flashpoint DCU all didn't ever happen any more. LSH v6, however, did happen.

(Except for anything involving the Fatal Five, of course!)

Well I quite like this one. Still not sure that the legion would want to kill to save there own lives, but the in story reasoning is sort of ok. I can understand Mon shooting off in anger, given what happens.

I am surprised though that no one seems to have made the connection between Infinitus and

Lets hope the Legion and The JLU can work out a way to save the day.

The "retroboot" has pretty much had wishy washy continuity since the very beginning.

I think we can pretty much expect that for the foreseeable future, anytime the Legion shows up for a new storyline it'll look kind of like the Legion from around the time of Crisis, but I'm not sure it's worth the effort to try to make too much sense of how these different appearance by different writers really relate to one another.

While that may be true, echoes of Lo3W were still felt in the New 52 Legion i.e. White Witch was now Black Witch, Gates was now part of the team, Dou Damsel remained Duplicate Damsel, etc. I think Levitz tried to maintain as much continuity as possible. At least it seemed that the post-Flashpoint Legion retained its original continuity. We'll have to see as these next few issues play out, whether that remains true here as well, and whether there are any hints given that this storyline follows up on LSH vol. 7 and Legion Lost in any way, or if it is just a return to the LSH vol. 6 status quo.

Well, effects of Lo3W were seen, but the events that caused those to happen were never mentioned by Levitz. So Gates could have joined in another way (or, as mentioned above, this could even have been the Gates from that reality - it was never mentioned in-story that Gates had come from different one); Mysa could still have absorbed Mordru but in another encounter; Luornu's expanded powers could have been caused by something else. XS was completely absent so we have no idea if she existed then. Reboot's reasoning is correct, that stories such as the Lightning Saga and Lo3W can't have happened - at least in that continuity.

I'm with EDE, we can probably expect continuity to be a bit nebulous from this point.

In Lemire's own words:

"So I just approached it not as a reboot or another re-imagining of the Legion. Rather, I just… as close as I can, I'm just bringing it back to what people think of as a classic Legion and not worrying too much about all the minutia of continuity."

It was a decent start. As I suspected, it's the whole "would you kill Hitler as a baby", with immediate stakes on the Legion's part. It will make a good conflict point, but I suspect even the Legionnaires will struggle with it when push come to shove.

Interesting to see a re-imagined Cadre.

"...not worrying too much about all the minutia of continuity."

That's a message that should be sent to every fanboy on the planet.

HA! So right.

We should be used to this anyway, being Legion fans.

It's like with the last Fatal Five story. I was up in arms not because of the continuity mess, but because the story plain sucked

I do think that you're generally more likely to get good stories if you've got a creative/editorial team that sits down and creates a "story bible" detailing what exactly is in continuity and what isn't, and figures out the background details of the Legion's world and the characters they are writing about, even if all those details aren't made explicit in the stories themselves. This is the kind of thing that Levitz apparently did back in the 80s. It's the kind of thing that good sci fi/fantasy writers (as well as writers in other genres) typically do. I just don't think the overall situation at DC is such that we can expect this kind of thing anytime soon, particularly with regards to the Legion.

Close enough to the Legion to make me give a sigh of relief.

This was disappointing to me. I wasn't crazy about the art. Not terrible, but not really pretty or interesting, and it didn't seem to flow well. The same can be said for Lemire's writing - which I typically enjoy. Mon-El as a hot head seemed forced. Bainiac 5's arrogance has gotten way too boring. The rationale for the Legion coming to the past (present) isn't strong. They've faced a lot of big bad threats in the past. Suddenly, the solution is to hop into a time bubble and destroy the villain as child? Why haven't they done that with other villains of this threat level? What makes Infinitus different?

The last Levitz run had Mon El & Brainy contend for the leadership in a pretty dull way. Mon El would race away to deal with threats, while Brainy would stay behind and practice being an arrogant pain. This is an extension of that, unfortunately.



The story is supposed to have us believe the Legion would do this as a last resort as Rugarth wins in their century. But, yeah, we know that it's not how they operate so it falls very flat. Perhaps it's to make it more exciting sounding to new readers?

Extending the idea...

The Great Darkness Saga
Darkseid: Give me the Highfather child, and I will let billions live.
Dream Girl: Oh, okay then. It's only one child.

OR

Earth War
High priest of Zerox: Look at out prodigy! Young Mordru will become the greatest...
>Giant foot plunges from the heavens squashing young Mordru<
Saturn Girl: Well done Gim. Right, back to Angtu to take off Mano's hand.


OR

Conspiracy
"All things have ended here, even those that never began. dreams have crumbled to dust, and lives faded out of memory. In all the universe, it seems there only remains energy enough to swirl the fragments of the past and abandon hope of the future."

The Legion have killed the promise of countless civilisations across time. Only the Trapper remains, in his broken kingdom. Its last day has come, and he is the universe's only hope.

So it looks like the Legion being shown in JLU is the one right before Mon-El was made a GL and Earth Man joined? Does that seem right? The splash page seems to show that. However that doesn’t make it them. Since it’s time travel it could be them but the last two series could still happen unless what goes on in JLU makes it that it doesn’t. I would be alright with that. I thought the team was great except for the GL storyline. I actually liked the Earth Man thread. In a way I’m glad they didn’t mess with it too much and yet in some I wish they did. It would be cool to have Kid Quantum, Karate Kid, or others back. But then I can’t complain too much because what there is, is great too.