Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! UPDATE (12/20): Legion of Super-Heroes #1-- SOLICITATION! SPOILERS!

It is an irony -- though unintended and perfectly understandable -- that so many fans on this site believe that DC can/should go back to the Zero Hour (ZH) Legion when Waid's effort inevitably fails.

Of course, the very creation of the ZH Legion suggests this CAN'T and SHOULDN'T happen.

After all, the ZH Legion was created after a similar Limbo-like send off to the original Legion of Super-Heroes, which at the time had almost 40 years of history, continuity, and character development under its cape. At the time that ZH happened, I kept thinking that the new Legion was just some flashback and soon we would get the "real" Legion back. Of course, we never did.

Now, we see the passing into Limbo of the ZH Legion, a group with a much shorter and less illustrious history, both in creative and financial terms. If Levitz didn't bring back HIS Legion, he sure won't bring back the ZH Legion, especially given how poorly the book has sold for so long. They've had their run, and now they are out to comic-book pasture.

At some point, I think, to really enjoy comics, you have to start viewing the characters as ideas--archetypes, if you will, rather than as real people with real histories. The idea of Saturn Girl, the icy, unemotional, telepathic control freak, is more important than a particular Saturn Girl who arrived in Metropolis Spaceport in July 2994 AD and sat in seat 10F of the space cruiser, having dined on Pluto Pretzels and Kona Juice.

Because comic books are a serial medium relying on archetypal characters, you really have only two choices -- the characters never really age or develop, but are interesting enough as icons to make reading their adventures every month worthwhile. Or, you allow the characters to age and develop, in full knowledge that every generation or so you will have to start over, because you will progressed too far from the original inspiration that attracted everyone in the first place.

The Legion has a tough location on this narrative continuum because it is a large team book. Therefore, few if any of its characters have the iconic power of a Superman or Spider-Man. The group interaction is what most readers enjoy. However, group interaction implies personal development, which at some point moves the characters too far from their source.

My hope for the Waid/Kitson Legion is that they play up the iconic aspects of the book AND make its characters more interesting. Then, you have the potential to do what has been successful for books like the Avengers and JLA over the years --you regularly shake up the roster to give the book a continual renewal of character interactions and individual narrative threads.

I've been waiting for a long time for somebody to understand this. It's such a simple concept, yet most comic book readers can't get it.
How would you like your own timeline, doublechinner ? I still have some good tickets around; "lord of time of your owm timeline", "successful evil overlord of your own timeline", "illusionist snake-princess of your own timeline" (not exactly sold out), and the very rare "I-can't-believe-John-Byrne-is-still-a-great-writer timeline". Choose one, if you want.

I'm sort of at peace with the reboot now, just as long as the issues are as good as that preview. For neatness' sake I'd like to see a little follow up to the dangling thread that is Shikari, but as much as _I_ think it'd be fine for the two or more LSH versions to discreetly co-exist, I imagine that would be counter productive to the whole reboot. Expect them to turn up in a few years as a hypertime footnote, or in some crossover. Or maybe in the "Crisis 2" we're hearing rumours of.

In the meantime I'm just going to try and enjoy the new version (And I say this as someone who was _horrified_ by the idea of a reboot).

Trapper!!!! What a generous, magnanimous offer from someone as busy, all-powerful and malevolent as yourself! I hardly know what to say! I thought about asking for "King of All Sandwiches," but it's taken. How about "Duke of All Dumplings, especially those various Asian, steamed, pork-filled dumplings with a spicy/sour sauce?" Um...dumplings...

I am excited to see new Legion stories that remain true to the spirit of the Legion and its characters, whatever that means. As a comics reader of 30+ years, I usually worry much more about character continuity than plot continuity, but it is true that Waid and Kitson are restarting both. I am most annoyed by violent character "rape," as David Gerrold referred to it (boy, you could say ANYTHING in the 70s), when a character I feel like I know well suddenly has a new flaw, capability or viewpoint that springs up out of the blue (see: Cosmic Boy and Church of the Last Son). That said, I liked much of the reboot characterizations (I echo the frequent appreciation for Invisible Kid, Karate Kid, and Umbra), although Snecki is pretty much unforgivable and tarnishes everyone who agreed to use the character. Most of all I want such compelling characters and stories that my beloved Legion will not lie in intensive care, on life-support, for years on end. Give us the future, and make it sell, dammit!

For the record, I'm still not buying, Byrning or reading this, and I'm still "_horrified_ by the idea of a reboot".

the ZH Legion was created after a similar Limbo-like send off to the original Legion of Super-Heroes

PU Legion faded from existence, because Time Trapper was messing with the future timeline by using the pocket universe as a bypass. The timeline reverted back to what nature attended.

ZH timeline was saved and it's Legion is roaming out of control in hypertime. They, and their timeline still exist. The new series is based on an alternate timeline that has a simliar past that Shikari, who has tracking powers, is stranded in.

Now, we see the passing into Limbo of the ZH Legion, a group with a much shorter and less illustrious history, both in creative and financial terms. If Levitz didn't bring back HIS Legion, he sure won't bring back the ZH Legion, especially given how poorly the book has sold for so long. They've had their run, and now they are out to comic-book pasture.

We're not really sure of that. by reading the Special you can see that they have a way back to Zero Hour because of Shikari and the fact that V4 Legion still exist and need to be rescued from Hypertime. It's kind of like Valor being trapped in that phantom, or whatever it was called, zone for a thousand years, but perhaps in comic time they'll be stuck for a month if the new series fails live up to it's hype and it may fail since Waid seems to be too unfocused on what will attract readers and too focused on thinking it's going to be god's gift to all comic books.

To me this seems to be a retelling of old stories in diffrent format. New villians, new costumes, but same Archie taste. I got a feeling that this book will be canceled by issue 12 because Waid made too many promises and seems to say anything to gain attention.

This is like a cheap gimmick made to look spectacular, but will probably end up a stinker after issue 2 or 3 when the "hype" dies out, even if Waid is writing it. Not all his works and ideas were succuses and this may end up in that list.

It's obvious that Waid is too focused on the "glory" of the super-hero, instead of the "reason". The real solution for Legion is to broaden the 31st century area, but Waid will surely make the same mistakes where it seems that the Legion are the only heroes in the whole wide universe and the trillians of trillians of poeple of the universe are too helpless to take care of themselves.

DC needs to wake up and look out the window to see what's going on. It's like they're living in a closed box.

Hmm. I disagree.

I'm thinking this will be a take on the LSH that *finally* takes off.

Maybe not. We'll see. But I hope it does.

As good as the stuff we've seen so far is, I haven't seen anything that'll make me think the non-Legion masses will stand up and take notice. It might create good word of mouth based on its quality, but I haven't seen any "hook" that'll pique others' interest.

I hope we see more promos that emphasize that this isn't just a "superhero team" - maybe more of those takes on 31st century advertising that hints at the world Waid is creating, but make them ads for the Legion somehow. The book needs something to make people try it out!

I don't know. I've heard a few people who are non-Legion fans say that they're interested in this book. The Titans/Legion Special also didn't hurt.

Hi guys
Good news is that initial sales are way, way above anything LSH has achieved for many a long year - (more than double the highest it achieved in its last two runs if I understood the figures correctly -) so definitely a whole lot of new readers ARE jumping on board - our task as creators will be to keep them with us

BTW the Titans/Legion Special was apparently the highest reordered book from any company for that month!

Also a really big compliment/relief for me was that Jim Lee told me in Texas that he really liked what he'd seen so far- and we all know how big an LSH fan Jim is!

My memory is not what it used to be but if its DOUBLE what we sold in the last run thats a heck of an increase. So whats that then around 55,000 to 60,000.?



And praise from Jim Lee too.

To borrow a phrase from these boards

<font size="30">WOOHOO</font s>


Ahem. sorry i shall return to grumpy old man mood now

Last two runs? That's Legion Lost (or maybe Worlds) and The Legion, right?

Bearing in mind usual disclaimers about North American estimates only...

http://www.legionworld.net/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=002307#000000

Okay, I know For No Better Reason slipped a bit, so the absence of those figures is not significant. That would make the benchmark The Legion #1 (estimated from inital, not final as now, orders as 28350). Meaning that, in comparable figures, LSHv5 #1 would be looking at 60-65000.

Which, in the September estimates (the latest available) would place it between 20 and 23. Squarely on top of Teen Titans (which I suspect is retailers literally looking at their TT orders and saying "same again please"), and just ahead of Chuck Austen's JLA. Which is a jump on where it was, but for the amount of publicity it's been getting, less hot than it might have been. And certainly not "making LSH DC's #1 book" Mr Waid...

Well I might be prepared to give WaK the benefit of the doubt here a bit.

By Septembers estimates we can see that (If we accept and place the Legion between JLA and Teen Titans) there are potentially only 5 DC comics which would list above the Legion. These are Teen Titans, Batman, Superman, Identity Crisis and Superman/Batman. Now call me an optimist, but I think that’s pretty good for a series that has a reputation for being impenetrable to new fans. After all, we can discount Identity Crisis from the list as it will come to an end soon. That leaves the Legion up against Teen Titans, and the big two, Superman and Batman. Not too shabby, as it would put us ahead of the other big icons such as Wonder Woman, Flash and Green Lantern. And if the stories and art justify it then it is not beyond the realms of possibility for the Legion to get to first place in the list of DC comics.

So far so good I say. But, as with every comic, we will need to see what happens after first issue fever is over and sales settle down.

Jim Lee for Legion back-ups!

Then see how quickly this book gets to #1!

Faraway: Busiek on JLA for a JLA/Av followup'll give that a bump (I mean, the Sep figures are Austen), and you're forgetting Morrison's JLA: Classified and (eugh) Green Lantern: Rebirth. And you've got Batman only still that high because it's still riding on the dregs of Hush, and it's still above that point.

And the fact that it's picking up in mid-stream negates a lot of the restart potential. No-one's getting in on the ground floor here - first entrance is on floor 5. Again, negative. Plus there's the first issue drop (which, in the most optimistic case is 10%, and 20-25% are not uncommon).

Really, for a Day One restart, with the amount of publicity it's been given, this should have broken the 100k barrier (for the icv2 estimates) if it was to be a big success. It's going to make, in the most optimistic case, two-thirds of that. This is, for the claims made and the push given, a disappointment.

Was anyone *really* expecting this to be DC's number #1 book??? I know I wasn't! The Legion is just not that sort of property.

I'd be more than happy if this book got to about number #20 in the charts! That would be a fantastic increase in readership from the previous series and would make it safe from any cancellation fears. That's all I ask for.

I'm with you, Blacula. I'd be shocked beyond belief if this book hit the #1 spot. Still, Waid didn't say it would be #1 by the first issue, just that it would be #1. But I'm still skeptical, even though I anticipate this being a great book.

Just to clarify there, Rebirth is written by Johns, not Morrison. (I'm sure you knew that, Reboot.)

Yeah. Whatever Morrison did to the X-Men, at least he had the right idea when it comes to Green Lanterns...

I have to agree 100% with Morrisson. I see the old green lantern/arrow as very old and creepy.

Kyle and Conner are much cooler.

I don't see how 50 - 60k sales for a book that hasn't sold more than thirty thousand issues in, what ten years? is dissapointing.

How many books actually reach the 100K mark anymore? Damn few, if any.

Also...if we need more sales why not just kill the most beloved Legionnaire and add Batman, Superman, the Flash, Black Lightning, and Katana sort of a response to the New Avengers! Give them a time machine and kill Ultra Boy! (Jo being my fave as was Hawkeye)

Jorge

Let's not have Legion go down that road again. The TMK era wasn't exactly good for Legion sales given that it almost put a permanent end to any sort of Legion.

Actually, the TMK era had enough sales to warrant bi-weekly shipping for a bit on the main LSH book, plus launching a spinoff series(LEGIONNAIRES). They don't do stuff like that for poor-selling books, I wouldn't imagine.