Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Waid/Kitson DCU theory

Here are my thoughts on why the current Legion exists.

1) To bring new readers to the Legion.
While sales are not great, there are new readers to the Legion for this title and there is interest in the Legion that has clearly been lacking for awhile. These new readers may now be interested in what has come before and will search out the older titles.

2) To pave the way for a IVboot
I hate to say this, but I honestly am beginning to think this Legion is a transitional title that is allowing the Legion to be brought into the DCU as a more active player.

3) The IVboot

Here is my continuation as I accidentally posted the thread w/o completing it.

3) The IVboot
Now with theoretically more interest in the Legion w/the 3boot and the appearances of now three pre Zero-Hour characters (well, not Dawnstar yet), the stage is set to bring new and old Legion fans together with a title that either brings the pre Zero-Hour Legion back or some amalgam of all the various incarnations after the next major DCU event.

This all is either a semi-brilliant marketing ploy or I am reading to much into what they are currently doing.

They've certainly captured our interest with those preboot characters - I hope it's not just wishful thinking that these are hints that the original group will somehow be back. An amalgam could get messy and wind up pleasing nobody.

I'm hoping, as others are speculating, for a multiverse (or at least multiple futures).

I have no problem with Silver fans wanting their 60s-stlye Adult Legion (as we saw in Superman/Batman a couple years ago), for instance, but I want an 80s-era LSH, and I support fans of Reboot or Threeboot as well.

Let's all support each other getting what we all want!

Pretty much.

I think, in the end, we'll get something that tells us that all the iterations exist *somewhere* (like Hypertime was meant to do initially), and weren't wiped out as some feared. But I don't see a full-scale return happening.

I am realy thinking that Starman and Company are going to be moved to Earth 2 it fits as they are an older continuity that we still like to call upon from time to time which is what Earth 2 is realy all about.

I am still betting that powergirl replaces supergirl in the old legion continuity Just taking the place of Laurel where laurel took the place of Supergirl (it would also be a good way to explain the real reason it took 7 years longer for Powergirl to reach earth than Supergirl)It is also a way to have both a teen and adult legion at the same time.

Any interaction with the DCU of Earth 1 could stay as it was just trans dimensional travel instead of time travel.

You guys keep knocking the sales on legion. Are you actually looking at the numbers?

December it was in 61st place. That is not a weak book.

61st, relative to other books.

I myself am judging it against long-term viability. It wasn't that long ago where 60,000 was a poor-selling book (for a major company) in danger of cancellation, so I fear for any book's longevity by today's numbers.

I've heard it suggested that DC loses money on most of its books and only makes money on trades (and especially on archives).

We are likely in an era where monthlies/issues will be the rarity and full books, trades, will be the norm, whether or not there were ever individual episodic issues. Sort of like the era when pulps and other serialized novels went adios - novels like "A Tale of Two Cities" were published in periodic episodes originally.

So my own doom and gloom is questioning whether in the long run any LSH book will have the numbers to justify any type of edition. 61 out of 200 is okay at the moment, but LSH is something I'd like to see last for decades, long after all the various X-books and what-not are long forgotten.

Well, a lot of it has to do with the longterm viability of the comics industry as a whole. We're talking about an industry that has been in an overall declining trend for forty years. It's not healthy.

It's like how everyone talks about how the Legion was so successful in the early 80s because it was DC's #2 book, but conveniently leaves out the fact that comics in the 80s sold about a quarter of what they did in the 60s.

What would it take for comics to re-capture the public's imagination the way they did in the 40s or 60s? It's probably going to take a far more radical overhaul of the way things are done in the industry than just bringing back this or that past era.

Good point. I know it was hard for me to break into comics until I found someone who would just sit there and answer all my questions as I read each issue. I think that the back story is a big draw, but maybe we just need an easier way for people ease in.

btw. I think the WIKI is a great start to that.

I also think the sales differences in sales numbers have a lot to do with what titles end up in the big chain stores like borders, 7-11 etc. You would be surprised at the number of towns without comic shops and the number of people who have never even heard of a shop that only sells comic books. As a kid I bought all my comics at the convenience store and the mall bookshop.I think I was in college when I first entered a real honest to goodness comic book shop.

Trades however are available in all the big chain bookstores and are selling well look at how big the manga section is next time you are in barnes and noble or borders. So it seems that people do want to buy comics but maybe the single issues just aren't for sale in the places they frequent.

On the reverse side though in those large chain stores there isn't usually a comics guru to fill you in on what you don't know. No wonder it took me so long to become a full fledged addict.

Manga trades usually have a first issue available so they seem accessible to the newbie.

Dunno just a thought.

The turnaround rate on Legion Trades is alot quicker on this incarnation. so far there are 3 out and a fourth on the way. This is a positive sign as it shows DC is aggressively wanting their product out there for the long(er) term.

Lest we forget how the sales on the digest for Runaways kept that monthly viable in the direct market.

There are three basic issues, as far as I can tell, in regards to sales:

1) Marketing: you've got to have people wanting to buy comics.
2) Availability: they've got to be able to find comics when they want them.
3) Accessibility: they've got to be able to make some sense of the comic once they've purchased it.

I don't think that, overall, the comics industry has been doing a great job in regards to any of these.

I do think in the long run that trades/graphic novels are going to play an increasingly large share in the market. The great advantage of these is that you actually get a complete story (or at least a substantial chunk of story) when you buy one. The big problem with serialized monthlies, as I see it, is that you're expecting people to keep up for months or years with a story that you're only giving them 23 pages of once a month, and that's hugely unrealistic expectation for the average consumer. Even with TV shows such as Lost or Heroes that are serialized, they've give you a new episode every week. And such shows have increasingly realized that they need to make sure they have sustained blocks of new episodes to keep the audience watching.

Really, the only way that I see monthlies surviving in the long term is by adopting a "done-in-one" approach or by moving to a weekly format (and perhaps publishing only seasonally).

I wouldn't put any money on the future of printed monthly (or weekly) comics. The trades and books may survive a while longer, but a mix of costs and declining readership may force what remains onto the internet. Even the New York Times is phasing out its print edition. The relevance of traditional newspapers is certainly in question, as is the relevance of comics to the broader reading market.

(Excerpted from story at Haaretz )

Sulzberger is focusing on how to best manage the transition from print to Internet.

"The Internet is a wonderful place to be, and we're leading there," he points out.

The Times, in fact, has doubled its online readership to 1.5 million a day to go along with its 1.1 million subscribers for the print edition.

Sulzberger says the New York Times is on a journey that will conclude the day the company decides to stop printing the paper.

...What about the costs of development and computerization?

"These costs aren't anywhere near what print costs," Sulzberger says. "The last time we made a major investment in print, it cost no less than $1 billion. Site development costs don't grow to that magnitude."

Now there's a thought.
The Legion has been ahead of the curve for decades (sometimes SO far ahead that people don't "get it") and it would be somewhat appropriate for DC to launch it as their first "web only" comic.
I'm not really sure how I'd feel about that but I betcha I'd download it every month anyway.

once they go web only then the playing field is leveled and that spells the end of the big comic houses.

how are they gonna pay each titles creative teams? Whats the payment system? How are they going to advertise? how will we view each issue? cause, scrolling down all the time sucks. how would the format effect/alter the presentation of the stories, etc.

I think we are aways off from comics going full tilt digital.

Unfortunately, once comics are mainly all online, if I ever live to see that, I will probably stop reading most of them.

Some very interesting thoughts here.

Additionally, only 1.5 years ago, Times readership was 50/50 between print and web. So that's a pretty big shift since July 2005.

Here on campus, we have a lot of Japanese students, and one sees them regularly following their manga series on the web.

If one considers Japan (1) has long had a higher percentage of the population reading comics/manga, and (2) Japan is the vanguard of the future as is often said...

...that's pretty clear writing on the wall.

Re: End of mainstream comics companies

For one, who really cares? Not too many people. The virtual monopoly of distribution by the Big Two is one of the reasons the entire industry is so screwed up.

Second, I really don't think it'll kill them--Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Fantastic Four, and a couple of others have become such pop culture icons that they'll be recycling them and capturing the imagination of young people for at least a few more decades.

Third, who ever thought that that anybody would be doing any of the the things they're doing now on the Internet? Banking, information gathering (okay, most of you probably saw that one coming), porn, dating, networking, buying music, accessing libraries, buying everything from groceries to , well, porn, reading--there's a whole lot of things that people are doing PRIMARILY on the internet now that they weren't doing ten years ago. Will comics look and function just like they do now? I don't think so. Will I be sad that I don't get to go down to the Great Escape every Thursday? Not as sad as I would've been ten years ago--and maybe not as sad as I was when the Waldenbooks in the neighborhood strip mall where I USED to get my comics closed.

We've sort of wandered off the original topic - whatever WaK's idea for the Legion was at the outset, I suspect it's changed over time, especially as 52 has developed. I don't think there was a master plan to eventually bring back some older version of the Legion intact, but perhaps now the opportunity is leading them in that direction.

What I like about the webcomic trend is that it could be more financially feasible to have multiple Legion versions. I don't know about the costs involved, but I'd be surprised if DC could sustain 3-4 print versions, given the readership numbers; perhaps it wouldn't work on-line either.
However, I don't see them moving in that direction at this point. Slave Labor has started with downloadable comics, but they're a smaller company, likely more flexible and with a different reader profile.

A fascinating discussion though. Maybe it could use a thread all it's own?

In my mind the question is one of intent. When it's revealed that the multiverse exists (and I think it's only a matter of time...weeks even), I wonder that happens after. Will we see published versions of all the other "versions" or Earths or is it just a case of coming up with a hollow event (i.e. "the mutliverse that we wiped out in '85 is back and...uhmm...that's that...just saying is all...").

Bringing the multiverse back opens up storytelling possibilities, but is one that in mind becomes less progressive and seems more along the lines of folding something back on itself.

you can please all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time but you can never please all of the people all of the time... not even with chocolate ;-)