Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Geoff Johns Legion Death Toll (Updated for Lo3W#4)

Since a lot of people seem to be predicting a big Legion blood-bath over the coming months I thought it would be interesting to keep a tally of just which characters have gone to that big space-graveyard in the sky since Geoff Johns started writing the team.

(To make the list simpler I'll refer to the Geoff Johns "pre-Crisis" Legion as L1, the reboot team as L2 and the threeboot as L3.)

1. Double Header (L1) - Murdered by Earth-Man.
2. RJ Brande (L1) - Shot by Leland McCauley.
3. Leland McCauley (L1) - Aged to death by the Time Trapper.
4. Glorith (L1) - Murdered by Mordru. (Possibly - we only have Mordru's word for it.)
5. Dragonmage (L1) - Murdered by Mordru. (Possibly - we only have Mordru's word for it.)
6. Prince Evillo (L1) - Murdered by Mordru. (Possibly - we only have Mordru's word for it.)
<strike>7. Lazon (L1) - Dispersed by Rond Vidar. (Possibly - he does show up in a later panel but this may have been an artist mistake.)</strike>
7. Rond Vidar (L1) - Neck snapped by Superboy-Prime.
8. Karate Kid II (L1) - Vaporized by Radiation Roy.
9. The entire Reboot universe (L2) - Destroyed in Infinite Crisis. (Possibly - this point seems unclear so far.)
10. Sun Boy (L3) - Frozen solid and then crushed by Superboy-Prime.
11. Kinetix (L2) - Blown up by Superboy-Prime.
12. Element Lad (L3) - Chunk of Kryptonite hurled through chest by Superboy-Prime.

Did I miss anyone?

I'll update the list as new characters get deep-sixed. (Though hopefully there won't be too much need to do so. )

Of all the deaths so far I'm most bummed by Dragonmage and Prince Evillo. Dragonmage because his reboot costume rocked the kazbah and he had a lot of untapped potential; and Evillo because he was one of those "so bad they're fabulous" villains that they just don't make anymore.

In regards to Dragonmage, the way I understand is:

(1) The Dragonmage of the Reboot, who had most of the screen time this character has ever had, is still alive.

(2) Therefore, the Dragonmage that was killed by Mordru is the Dragonmage of the preboot. The only time we ever saw him was in the Legionnaires comic, where he joined briefly. However, that entire bit of history has been 'washed out'. Yet, since Myg showing up proves that certain elements of "Crisis - End of an Era" still exist, Dragonmage technically still exists. However, this Dragonmage, technically, has never been seen before.

Alternate title for this thread:

Why EDE is not reading this series

Jeepers, a similar thread is in the Titans forum that could alternately be entitled "Why Cobie hates the current Titans comics!"

Riddle me this, Batman:

Q: What's going faster than Flash running downhill?

A: Cemetery plots on Shamballa.


Side note - aside from the deaths Blacula accurately described, we also have the blinding of Color Kid by Earth Man, and the loss of Polar Boy's arm by Tusker, and the demise of the poor residents of Smallville 31st Century. Were there any citizens of Gorilla City offed in "Lightning Saga"?

His deaths aren't even creative any more. Seen one cervical dislocation, you've seen them all and having worked with lab rodents i've seen a few.

I think only sending Blok back in time to be ground up and using him as concrete to bury Jimmy Hoffa in Giants Stadium can amuse me.

I suspect the massive delays in the LO3W publishing schedule are due, at least in part, to *rewriting* -- especially a higher death toll for the Shooter Legion.

Plus 20,000 Takron-Galtos prison workers dying with a horrible scream.

Any attempt at 'redeeming' Superboy Prime that doesn't involve him writing 20,000 letters to 20,000 bereaved families, and begging their forgiveness can go straight to whatever pit spawned that loathsome idea.

Barring time travel and a cosmic 'undo' button (which is plenty possible), I don't think Superbutcher can come back from this, and, even then, he's only ditching responsibility. Even if he brings every single person he's ever killed back to life and resets the timeline so that it never happened, he's still the monster that *chose* to murder them all in the first place.

Because he was in limbo for a few years, and it 'messed with his head.' Mon-El sees your couple of years in limbo and raises you *ten centuries,* crybaby. And Mon's not even mad at Clark for forgetting him there, let alone psychotic!

I always thought the whole "Superboy of Earth-Prime" idea was one of the most interesting subplots during the original Crisis, so I've been pretty much irritated at everything that's been done with the character since his re-introduction during Infinite Crapfest.

The problem with Superboy Prime is that he's like a little kid that hasn't gotten his way as opposed to a real antagonist / villain / enemy with an elaberate motivation, personality, dynamic relationship with the protagonists and other various atributes. Such types of villains, if they're interesting at all (which they usually are not), are pretty much one trick ponies.

Now the Joker and Lex Luthor and various others have been done to death in comics--to the point where I wouldn't mind not seeing them again for several years. But at least they are complex and their very characters can derive story-telling.

Superboy Prime, other than dying, can only 'grow up', and once you wrack up a death toll like he has, no one really has any real investment in watching him do so. All we can hope for is someone to quietly take him out behind the sheds, put two bullets in the back of his head, and throw his corpse in the dumpest, then file him away so no one ever bothers to ask what happened to him.

Superboy Prime's chance at redemption seems pretty bleak at this point - even Kal-El must see that.

If true justice would be served, a pinned-up Prime on the Source wall with a frozen face of horror and anguish would be the proper solution.

Ooops - I think it is "Shanghalla", the burial asteroid for fallen heroes.

Way to ruin a Batman riddle...

Ah, but this is Prime, who can punch his way out of the Phantom Zone (Mon-El must be pissed about that one!). He'd probably break the Source, and then where would we be?

We'd have broken bits of Source all over the kitchen floor, that's where we'd be!

Superboy-Prime will be redeemed, made to feel so sorry for his crimes that with one last, massive super punch he resets the future in a four-boot version of the Legion that will star in a revived Adventure Comics.

And that, indeed, would be the coolest super-power ever. Every time something happens that you don't like, you punch a wall and reboot the universe, to one where the thing you didn't like didn't happen...

I name thee, Reboot Lad! Sadly, he'd never be allowed in the Legion, since every attempt to demonstrate his power makes the people he's trying to convince dissapear in a massive reboot!

Which leads exactly to the point Superman is trying to make: nobody is going to do that, because a) nobody can, and b) killing is wrong anyway. Or perhaps that should be a) killing is wrong, and b) nobody can anyway. Redemption is literally the only thing that has any chance of working for more than a little while, even if you have to hold your nose while you're doing it.

This idea just kinda came to me out of nowhere...what if S-Prime is destined to live out his "redemption" with the "new" Legion after the events of Lo3W end? Think about it for a moment, big bad Supes learning how to be a hero again with an entire army of do-gooders looking out (and carefully watching) him. The reintroduction of Monel would act as a safety net, just in case.
Hmmmmmm.......

Thus far, I don't think it's that bad. I feared worse due to Primes participation. Hope that it doesn't get too gory, but of course with all those villains, you never know... and it is realistic that you have to expect the worst.

No writer would be horrifically, stupefyingly bad enough to have a character kill members of a team, then have that same team invite their friends' killer to join in with them on fun and adventures because they've seemingly seen the error of their ways.

Oh wait - that's exactly what Judd Winick did with Indigo and the Titans. OK so one writer would be.

Well, Mark Waid had Sun Boy go and join the killers of his teammate's entire race. This is sort of the opposite side of the same coin.

^^^ Good call Jim. I guess that makes 2 writers.

And reason #1 why Mark Waid should never be allowed near this team again.

I thought that was the whole point of the 'redemption' thing. The survivors of the three Legions will be his sidekicks. I mean we *obviously* can't have a Legion book without a Superboy, and, hey look, we found a Superboy!

'Cause that's *exactly* what I expect from Didio.

I thought that was the whole point of the 'redemption' thing. The survivors of the three Legions will be his sidekicks. I mean we *obviously* can't have a Legion book without a Superboy, and, hey look, we found a Superboy!

Hey Set, If the writers took Superboy Prime from a point in time before he did all those nasty things then his character could be played as sort of "might he, will he one day" so the seed of destruction would be a part of him, and that's what the Legion would have to work on.
Lame I know, but...

Oh, that's certainly an option, but it still doesn't resolve the story as told, which is that Mon-El and the entire reboot Legion are *vastly* better people than this version of Kal-El, because they've gone through what he's gone through (times a factor of a couple hundred, in Mon-El's case!) and not 'been driven crazy' by it.

It makes Superman looks bad, by having him insist that it's somehow acceptable for Prime to have snapped and killed tens of thousands because he's had a hard life, while Mon-El stands there with the world's tiniest violin.

Given that Prime *is* the Clark Kent / Kal-El of another universe, it also makes Superman look bad in another way too, suggesting that if *he'd* been the one to get Zoned for a 1000 years by Mon-El after a prank involving kryptonite, that he would have come out of the Zone as Genocide Lad.

Superman is supposed to be better than this.

The entire premise makes him look terrible, both in effigy (through Prime) and in person (because of the balls of steel, and brains of rock, he exhibits in trying to justify Prime's actions, as if the 'he's had a hard life' excuse is gonna work here).

I disagree. I don't think Superman is saying any of that. I think he's just saying that nothing else has a chance of working.