Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Would you rather have endless reboots or the Legionnaires aging?

Granted that I haven't followed the threeboot, but from certain threads I'm picking up the notion that DC may bring back the old Legion or (ugh!) reboot the franchise yet again. This seems to happen whenever creators jump ship these days.

But it also seems to be a way of keeping the Legionnaires from really growing or growing up. Is it any coincidence that the threeboot happened not too long after Ultra Boy and Apparition became parents? Was the threeboot a convenient way of getting rid of Cub?

And yet, the Legion's story seems to always develop along certain lines. The presence of Supergirl, for example, echoes the induction of Superboy in the previous boots. One super-cousin for the other. Same idea, different execution. In the original timeline, Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel married first, and Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl became parents first. In the reboot, the honor of both fell to Jo and Tinya. Same idea, different execution.

With that in mind, is it possible that the Legion's overall arc has to go a certain way? Is it possible that it must involve these young heroes growing up at some point? If given a choice, would you rather the Legionnaires grow up or continue to be rebooted? Or is there a third option?

As far as third options go, there's also the "timelessly young without worrying about continuity" option. Will Eisner, for example, always wrote The Spirit as occuring in "the present", no matter what decade the story was published in, without worrying about how all the characters could still be basically the same age as they were in the forties. Arguably, most comics were written this way up until the seventies or eighties (see, for example, the Brave and the Bold Batman/Sgt. Rock team-up, which includes their prior meeting during WWII).

No aging. I'm not opposed to the concept in general, but it just doesn't seem to fit the Legion. They were created to be teens and without the Lad, Girl, Boy, Kid names, I think they lose alot of their luster. Maybe they could start a new title with a different cast of characters and take them in that direction.

Hmm... I actually think that pretty much the opposite is true. Within three years of their initial appearance, in their seventh appearance, we already see the Legion grown-up. To me, the fact that the Legionnaires will one day become "The Adult Legion" is as much a part of the mythos as the fact that Superboy will become Superman.

I don't have a problem with the Legion aging gradualy (much like Nightwing or the Titans) but I do object for aging to equal a darkening of the universe. Also, I don't like it when the characters age too fast. It seems like the writers don't have enough to tell of their teenage years so kick them up too adults too quickly.

Even if I didn't like aging, I feel reboots will just hurt this franchise more and more. Especially as with each reboot fans want to see aspect from previous boots.

Also, He Who Wanders brings up an interesting point, where Jo and Tinya's marriage in the post-zh reflects the original marriage of BB and DD and the birth of Garth and Imra's children. That's something else I feel hurt the reboots, in that fans want to see certain stories emerge or be reflected on (esp the relationships) so its just not as fun anymore. I mean, I don't care about Ultra Boy and Shadow Lass's realtionship because I feel that in the end UB and PG will hook up, that's just the way things go.

I'd prefer them to age slowly. Characters retiring (to teach at the Academy, like Chuck and Lu, for instance) and being replaced by fresh faces, such as Tellus and Sensor (well, a familiar face in a shiny new mask, in her case) was fine.

Having all of them suddenly be old wouldn't work so well for me, and endless empty reboots is at the absolute bottom of my list, just one step above no Legion comics at all.

As much as I feel queasy for even suggesting it, I wouldn't mind seeing the Legion rebooted back to the original (sort of like John Byrne's Man of Steel reboot of Superman, not changing the character, just cleaning up the backstory a bit), and then a few of the clunkier stories re-written. I wouldn't mind seeing a fresh version of the first encounter with Computo, or a fresh look at an epic battle against Mordru, since, IMO, neither of those where exactly stellar in the original.

Others, such as the Great Darkness Saga or the Universo Project or the LSV War, could be left alone and considered to have happened as written, more or less. But I realize that these are purely *my* preferences, and that some might think that the Great Darkness War sucked and the Computo fight was pitch-perfect as is.

Whatever happens, I can't stomach the idea of an interpretation of the Legion that doesn't have tryouts issues and votes for leadership. To me, those two things are sacred cows that make the Legion stand apart from other books. One thing about the threeboot that has deeply disappointed was the lack of tryouts, and the perfunctory, at best, references to a vote for leader.

You guys hit on the key tension in the Legion, which was there from almost the start: is it just a teen book, or was it a story (with beginning, middle and end) about kids becoming adults? Both are completely valid approaches, with definite strengths and weaknesses.

I think the intent of the Legion originally was to tell a teens-forever story, and I think the adult Legion stories actually helped in this regard. They reassured the reader that the characters HAD a future, even if you never showed them getting there. Also, to me they emphasized that the teen Legion and the adult Legion were somehow completely different characters. Swan's depiction of the adult Legion as real adults -- with balding, facial hair, and paunches -- strengthened this feeling of separateness.

(Sidebar 1: I think it's interesting to think about the character of Superboy this way, as well. Was he an "eternal" representation of heroic youth, or just a phase on the way to Superman? He's been both over his history, even becoming a separate character with a separate origin.)

The powers that be at DC clearly decided, sometime in the 1970s, to let the Legionnaires grow up. I think this was of a piece with the decision to let the Earth-2 characters grow old and die. Legion and Earth-2 were alternatives to the main DCU, so you could do those things with them. It also helped that you had the same writer, Levitz, in charge of the Legion (and Earth-2) for the majority of 2 decades. By the time he was done, the Legionnaires were certainly adults. And Levitz himself wrote the story, in Legion 300, that repudiated the original Adult Legion story as the future alternates and basically said the "current" Legion would grow into adult heroes. Like the 1970s JSA, this was a unique, wonderful story, and it ended (badly) in 1994.

(Sidebar 2: It's funny to think of the BB/DD wedding as kicking this off, since the actual story indicates the wedding was a nice way to send off characters the creative team didn't want anymore, rather than a milestone, as it become afterward, for the Legion's maturation.)

I don't think there's any doubt that the core concept of the Legion is as a team of young people. Therefore, you can't have the characters age out of their core concept. You can however do adult Legion stories, have the kids meet their adult counterparts, have them meet future kids who are their successors, tell stories of the early Legion when the characters are really young, etc. You could take the "adult" Legion starting to appear in JLA and JSA and make it sort of the Earth-2 for the current Legion, or a current, teen-aged Legion.

I think the current DC creative and editorial team, as talented as they are, are really struggling with how to deal with this. Didio, Johns, Meltzer, et. al seem to want to acknowledge the long history of the characters, acknowledge the passage of time, foreshadow future events which then promptly happen, and so on. You do too much of this, though, and you end up with Roy Harpers, Dick Graysons and Donna Troys older than their mentors. The Silver Age guys really knew how to do this better -- tell stories of past, present and future all the time, and keep them all moving, but don't destroy the characters by having the present link too seamlessly with the future. I thought maybe with the current Legion #14 that Waid and his ilk would move toward this approach. Maybe they still will.

Sorry for the long post. I think this is the central problem with the Legion and the DCU today, so I have thought about it a lot.

I guess for me, part of the essence of the Legion is that they are a part of the greater Superman Family mythos. They're the club that Superman hung out with when he was a boy. So it makes sense to me that the "Adult Legion" should make regular appearances in Superman. If you want to tell stories of Superman's past adventures with the Legion when they were all teens, then fine, but the default should be that they are his contemporaries. I actually find various stories from the seventies and eighties that have the adult Superman hanging out with the teen Legion kind of jarring. And the same really goes for Supergirl. It's always seemed to me she should be a part of the Adult Legion's "teen auxilary" rather than a member at the same time as Superboy.

well since i'm a big fan of the 5YG legion, you can guess what i'll say. also i liked the levitz era where the legion's age wasn't such a big deal.

I've always hated Superboy(girl/dog/whatever) being part of the Legion.

They're an awesome team by themselves, but it's always been felt that they couldn't carry a book without Super(whatever) there to carry their water.

But if the teen Legion is going to be associated with a Teen of Steel, it would be logical for the *Grown-up* of Steel to still hang with the Adult Legion, n'est ce-pas? I mean, did they revoke his permission to travel to the future and hang out with his friends? Doesn't seem likely... Seems more likely that SuperMAN would be a member of the Adult Legion, in between gigs as part of the JLA and his own solo career.

I pretty much disagree with you guys. To me, there's always been something...neverlandish about Superboy's and Supergirl's time with the teen Legion. Something else else Clark had to give up (for some reason or another) when he became Superman. And I really kind of liked that. Not that he would never see them again, but that he couldn't be regular part of the group as a grown up, even if the Legion is grown up, too.

Age slowly if at all. I know it's an idea close to that story no one seems to like, but I would hope that any effects of aging would be drastically reduced by the legion's time. What better reason for there to be so many human-looking folks all over the galaxy? But such biological themes are probably too much for modern audiences. Thus, exploding clones, no more convenient sex changes, & the like.

The Legion pretty much aged as I did. They were kids when I was, late teens/early twenties when I was and 5YL took us both into our 30s - so it all seemed very appropriate to me. Starting with this new version, I would prefer to see them age again, because that (to me) is where a lot of the story interest develops, as the characters change, develop relationships, pursue new interests/occupations/lifestyles - and also, ideally, draw on their years of experience. Various storylines can move forward with them, so we see how their society/galaxy changes over time.

I suspect a reboot might work best, assuming the premise is timely, when a character has sunk to such obscurity that very few old fans remain to be alienated.

Perhaps this trend we have now of a younger person assuming the mantle of the old/retired/dead hero is one way to go. The Legion has had some of that with Pol Krinn, a character I didn't consider to be a success - and now with Dream Boy (jury's out).

Then they ought to just make policy. Every ten years, reboot. Then there's no complaining, or else.

The Legion has an advantage over many titles as a large group. Instead of having four stories of Batman every month affecting his characterization, you have a cast of two dozen or more where some can be featured one month, put on a shelf for a month or two, then featured again later. This would slow the aging process considerably and allow for a large number of fresh characters (someone for everyone to like). This was the formula of the early seventies with Cary Bates/Dave Cockrum/Mike Grell and it created a solid foundation for a looong run through the end of the Levitz era. Make the Legion cast number 50 members, and have at it. Down with reboots!

The aging/passage of time question has never really bothered me. Whether characters age, age slowly, or don't age is minor compared to good stories.

But too many reboots will not help either. It is similar to what happens in the Robin series. A new team comes in and Tim Drake is moved to a new locale and given a new supporting cast. Blah.

Further along the same lines, it's incredible how much the development of the reboot mirrored the original timeline, even though the reboot creators went to great lengths to make their Legion "different." Leviathan becomes the first Legion leader, but quickly abdicates to Cosmic Boy. Valor returns but takes the name M'Onel. Saturn Girl dates Cos but ends up with Live Wire (Lightning Lad). Live Wire loses his arm, etc.

Also, in spite of the new Legionnaires who were introduced (XS, Kinetix, Gates), practically all of the old ones were brought back sooner or later. Sometimes, the creators used drastic and even absurd ideas to change the original characters (Sensor), but these characters still came back.

Perhaps it's inevitable that, if the Legion's story is allowed to develop for any length of time, it involves them growing up, as well. As Eryk noted, the Adult Legion was practically written into the storyline from the get-go.

I think ageing should be a very real part of the legion. First of all get rid of this mock legion and go back to what we had (A team with higher ideals then were bored).
The dc universe is richer and better when it had more depth through character evolution. The flash is an excellent example of this With Barry Giving his life in a big way and wally taking up the mantel. Try outs and the legion academy are pretty useless concepts when the legion is made up of the same 25 characters. I want real danger and ageing lends itself to real deaths. Also I want writers to make me care about a catspawn or some new character out of the academy replacing a cosmic boy or other big name. In conjuction a superman family style anthology book showing unseen adventers of various legions through out their history would be a good way of reading new stories of lightning lad in his prime even though hes now the balding projectiles teacher at the academy also seeing the original dream girl and how very differently she used her powers to her daughter currently on the team.

I'm with the Legion aging gradually...and them inserting some new young members to the team. I mean at Magic Wars I viewed most the characters in either their early 30's or late twenties.

I like comic book time. In my comic book time people age very slowly. In 1989 I thought Cosmic Boy was 30. If continuity continued I would see him as 35 today. that's not bad.

The entire "not aging" thing is better for solo characters in a small setting. The Spirit? No problem. Spider-Man? If continuity wasn't such a big deal I wouldn't mind it.

But things like character development, long epics, etc. Don't fit the not aging thing. The MU and DCU age slowly. It's been shown. All Star Superman? Who cares! Spider-Man Adventures? Ultimate Spider-Man? Keep him 16 forever!

I really believe that without aging, all the stories happening will mean nothing. Aging is a natural part of life, and when you take it out of the story, it will always stay artificial.

One of the major strengths of 5YL was that the characters had grown up, as I myself had at that time. You really could delve into all these stories, feel with these characters whose youth you knew so much about and who had gone through hard times but still (mostly) maintained their ideals and tried to rebuild the Legion again. Those were real characters, acting like people, no cartoons in funny costumes like the current Waid Legion or the Reboot kiddies.

Some characters getting older and leaving the Legion like Imra and Garth back then is very realistic and they really should try to incolude it in future stories / continuities. The art of believable storywriting depends on it.

Given that I started reading the Legion regularly in '82, I'm ok with them aging gradually. While I have enjoyed the WaK Legion and would likely continue to read even if the book gets rebooted again, a reboot is a seriously risky proposition for DC. After all, the only time this Legion fan stopped reading the book in the last 25 years was a few issues after the first reboot.

I like what doublechinner said about the "Neverland" quality of the Legion with relation to Superman and agree with whoever said that the '70s and '80s stories featuring an adult Superman teaming with the younger Legion were jarring. I always thought of the Legion as Superman's high school friends. After you graduate high school and go off to college or whatever, you change in ways that often distance you from those friends. I liked having Superboy around from time to time, but was less happy if he was the focus of the story. Usually that reflected sloppy storytelling.

Anyway, I think that it worked to have them gradually age over time in the original continuity.

This is the only option that makes sense to me. I don't want them againg *that much* (though a continual maturing and progressing is needed) and I certainly wish there had never been a reboot of any kind.

Also, anyone who believes Batman is over 34 is wrong. I think he caps off around 36, which should be around 2035.

Without meaning to sound snide, when I read the title of this thread the first thing that popped in my head was "neither or both, as long as it tells a good story". Like Quislet above, I still think it's a not a question of aging per se but how it's used in the context of a good story.

There's nothing snide about an honest response, Igee. The aging issue means different things to different people.

For what it's worth, I absolutely agree that a good story is paramount. I guess my question is, how is the aging of the characters related to telling a good Legion story?

I use the term "story" broadly, to include not only the individual single-story episodes, but also the larger arc, as a whole. While it's not strictly accurate to compare comic book series to novels (which have endings), it is fair, I think, to expect certain ones to have long-term development.

All stories have to go somewhere. Just as a single-issue story, such as "The Super Moby Dick of Space," has to build toward Lightning Lad reaching a decision (does he kill the beast or not?), so, too, does the Legion's overall story have to progress in some fashion. It would be monotonous if DC kept rewriting the same story, so that Lightning Lad keeps losing his arm over and over again without ever reaching the decision to kill or not kill the creature responsible. Nothing would be accomplished. I feel that in many ways, the reboots have done exactly that.