Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Official LSH 3 Worlds Thread #5 out (FINALLY!! - spoilers)

It may not be good for the Legion, but it certainly could be good for the Legion's sales numbers.

Not even that, if recent relaunches are any indication. In fact, think about it for a moment: Green Lantern becomes the only franchise to see any growth in recent years at DC for a single reason, IMHO: it was left untouched and into the hands of a very tight team of authors completely on their own. Johns had 5 years (!!!) to build his story. This is by far a better explanation to its success than multimega crossovers and "being tied to DC Universe".

Okay, but the Legion has been relatively independent of the rest of DC continuity for so long that there are longtime DC fans - not people who are just Batman fans or Teen Titans fans but who are generally DC fans - who have never read a Legion issue and don't know the first thing about them. So it's possible that this isolation has been holding Legion sales down a bit, and DC is trying to remedy that.

Call me weird if you want, but I don't think that's the solution. Trying to sell the Legion to a slightly larger slice of a small, low-turnover fanbase isn't ambitious enough. I think the Legion has great potential for sales beyond people who think of themselves as superhero fans. This is why I want the Legion less tied to the present DC universe - so it can be marketed to different demographics from other DC titles, like general SF fans or teenage girls.

What Trip said. Slight ties to the DCU (and allusion to the 21 st century "big events" no crossovers), emphasis on the LSH's peripheral nature to interest readership beyond the super hero genre (War, Crime, Sci-fi, Romance Comics, even a bit of Sword and Sorcery, all these genres fit into the title's natural scope).

are there such things? i think green lanterns, flashes and stuff exist into the DCU besides both johns and morrison...

anyway, nobody, not even DC, said that the legion HAS to be directly connected to the 21st century DCU. it's not like when they did "millennium" and all that crap.
johns and co. are just playing a bit with the legion context, so when you see the 31st century you can recognize it immediately as the DCU. it's not so far to what they did with the DCU past by retconning the JSA in it.

i don't see as any event could modify the legion future in any way. first, because we all know that every change is going to be erased sooner or later with a back to the basics of sorts.
in second way, even if until now the legion continuity has been erased in connection with two major cross-overs, it wasn't like the story itself asked for those reboots. DC decided to reboot the legion in the first place, and used those stories as a tool to do it.
i hope DC learned its lesson now!

Another nod to what Trip wrote, though still puzzling over the teenage girls thing. Even so, easy enough. Put a vampire in it.

Anyhow, if this is meant as an attempt to attract mainstream DC fans to legion I don't get it. Nothing in these issues has highlighted the Legion in anyway to make them interesting to anyone but an "already fan," particularly those that see the legion of their youth in John's version. That would seem to shut out, not invite the younger DC fans.

"Don't miss this issue as lightning strikes again in the DC Universe! The Crisis of the 31st century continues as a great hero falls and another returns to help Superman and the Legion combat the murderous Superboy-Prime! Meanwhile, the Time Trapper makes his move against the three Legion founders, Polar Boy's bizarre mission comes to an end and Superman makes a shocking discovery that will redefine the terms of this war."

I'm really hoping Sodam Yutz is the hero who falls and Rond is the one who returns. Except if he does, I imagine it will be as a glowing green energy being. Yuck. Been there, done that.

Since this is being posted everywhere but here...

Here are the images that Geoff Johns is leaking on his boards here and here .

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Not really, but just in case -

Lo3W #4 has been moved forward to April 29 according to the DC website

And Geoff johns has confirmed it over at Comic Bloc:

Hee hee. Garth's retro-grunge hair is so adorable. Does he wear flannel shirts and wool leggings off-duty, too?

[Sorry. Just having another NW-In-The-Nineties flashback. Don't mind me.]

Yes, but what I meant is that there isn't much coordination between writers these days. Final Crisis was Morrison's story. Tie-ins not written by him (like Legion of Three Worlds) had little to do with it, but other comics by him not advertised as tie-ins were closely connected.

In Legion of Three Worlds, the only present-day characters and plotlines Johns is using are ones he's already written about. There's little use of a shared universe here. That's what I meant.

any one think june for 5 is a lie?

oh now that they have done this one.. and clearly the legion fans aren't happy i think we should demand a second legion of three worlds

Well that's how I write him, anyway.

Now then. Thank God. Now maybe I can stop listening to complaining about how late this has been, No Offense. At least, until they tear through that and start waiting for 5.

Anyone bemused by Johns's characterization of Lightning Lad? I think I figured out what's going on with that!

I'm happy. Just sayin'

Well I kinda rationalized it in the Personalities of Legionnaires topic.

"Lightning Lad: The most honest, and emotional, of the three founders, wearing his heart on his sleeve. His life and his thoughts are an open book. Garth is the one who is more willing to smile, to laugh, to get angry. He's been getting angry a lot lately. The once sensitive, stay-at-home dad has become the Legion's new hothead. And why shouldn't he? His friends and his family are being persecuted, forced undeground. Their ideals are being called old-fashioned, and Garth himself is starting to question them. He hasn't seen his son in months, and everything he and the Legion have tried to do is being torn down by a group of psycho rejects with bad haircuts. What would you expect in this situation from the guy who wears his heart on his sleeve?"

It's a valiant effort, but I just can't reconcile the upright figure who'd chew out Wildfire for disrupting a meeting with the unshaven greaseball crouching on a bench in Action Comics muttering about how he hates cops. Makes much more sense to me that they're different people.

Well would it help to at least know it's not Proty?

I know this is going off-topic, but hey, we're sitting around waiting FOREVER for the latest issue, so why not? I just read your latest Abstract and think its pretty damn cool! If it is intentional, its brillant, and if not, its yet another way comic books and their continuity kind of form their own concscious in the way Grant Morrison always describes.

I also linked to your Calamity King article from almost two years back which I never read. That's a pretty damn cool line of thinking too! Great job, Matthew for noticing that reference to Calamity King just when DC was kind of pusing the 5YL to the side.

I was thinking about how the Legion wasn't designed to appeal to the demographics of current comic readers. But in the Silver Age, it - like most comics - was aimed at boys. The Legion has gained a reputation for female inclusiveness, and female comic readers tend to prefer team books. Then I got to thinking, there's a big market out there that's more likely to read Japanese than American. And to me, the Legion seems to be one of the few "mainstream" American comics that could capture that audience. As usual, I ran into the idea somewhere on the 'net and can't recall where.

I'm not sure exactly how yet. I think they have tried. The early reboot, with its "Archie" approach, (claimed) manga influence, female-driven storylines and even overt fairy-tale influence rarely seen since the Silver Age, seems to have been at least partly aimed at pre-teen girls. Wasn't too successful at it.

They key thing is to manage more than just a core demographic. That's a big part of why the big American comic companies don't sell so well anymore: they don't bother with non-core demographics.

Sarcasm Kid: Of course! That's my point!

Cobalt Kid: Thanks!

Ah. Was I over-analyzing?

(And I wouldn't exactly call him a "greasball". At least he doesn't run around with his shirt off and grope the female Legionnaires, like a certain other grungy superhero)

Unfortunately it's not a "Build it, They will come" scenario. I'm not sure if the Reboot made the conscious effort to write to that demographic or not, but DC sure as heck didn't market it to them. They could have written the most potent hybrid of Twilight, Manga, and whatever else is irresistable to the young female set, but why would that audience even pick up a DC comic called "Legion of Super-Heroes" in the first place? You might as well have etched it under rock somewhere in Nepal and have had an equal chance of it's target audience finding it.