Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! MAKE FIVE MORE BOLD PREDICTIONS (For Waid/Kitson series)

Self-explanatory, let's jump right to it...

1. The Wiad/Kitson run will be a complete reboot, not a relaunch. They will not be continuing the current continuity.

2. The new continuity will be a complete re-imagining of the 31st centiry. One could almost think of it as an alternate reality. Over time, we will get the backstory on the history of this reality, noting several changes over what has happened in our world, or what we might expect to have happened in the DCU. Think of the new LSH as a 31st century Arrowsmith.

3. The setting for the new Legion will be a world in which humanity has branched out to terraform and inhabit every planet and moon of the Sol system (that's the UP) but has still not yet developed faster than light travel. The setting will be analagous to our own world in which we have spread to every corner of the globe without yet making the leap to the next planet (or even permenatly to the moon)

4. Most of the Legionnaire powers will have come as the result of genetic manipulation on humans to make them more adaptive to differing extra terrestrial settings. i.e. traid's ancestors mutated to breed asexually for long space tracel, Rokk's to be explorers by being able to "read" magnetic lines-like birds or lobstes, Vi's to move more poeple in less space, etc. etc..

5. The series will not start from the very beginning of the team... it will pick up a couple of years after its foundation. RJ BRande will still be the benefactor. Waid's "why would anyone entrust the safety of the UP to teens? They wouldn't." comment will be revealed to have meant that the initial foundation of the Legion was more of a PR stunt that got out of control. The team was originally meant as a "can't we all get along" training camp for youngsters to do humanitarian projects, it was never originnally intended to become an offical law enforcement organization. It will be unclear just how "in" on the team just being PR Brande actually was, at the beginning.

Oh, drat... I can never limit myself to just five...

6. Waid's "it's not a team, it's movement" line will not mean any type of religous movement. It will be more analagous to a sort of combination between the boy/girl scouts and the Peace Corps.

7. There will already be one dead member when the series begins. It will be Ferro Lad.

8. For the most part, silver age style code names will be used.

9. There will be some sort of fundementalist Islamic style resistance/terrorist group which the Legion will be in regular confrontation with, analagous to current political situations in our world

10. A major force creating UP conflict will be wars over fresh water.

1. The threat encountered in the Titans / Legion story is none other than...The Time Trapper. The outcome will be the Legion sacraficing their portion of the timeline in order to save previous portions of the timeline (or perhaps even bigger...there will be a timeline effect that will be important in the huge DC event that's been hinted at).

2. This will further cement the symbiotic link between the LSH and the Time Trapper. It will be revealed to the LSH at some point (either in the arc...or early in the next series) that the Time Trapper has done this many many many many times...in various timelines. He is simply looking for the right combination to fulfill his final goal...which is more than just ruling over times...but also freedom from his bonds with the Legion.

It will also be revealed that although he did not start off as a Legionnaire, ever since his first "defeat" he has always come back by evolving out of one of the Legionnaires of whatever time he's working on. He never knows which Legionnaire will "birth" him in a particular timeline, so again, he can't just go around killing Legionnaires at whim. He is just as dependant on the LSH succeeding (for a while) as they are on him planting the seeds to their very existence as a group so that they can handle his dirty work (entities that threaten his rule at the end of time...be it Mordru, Darkseid, Khund Empire, Robotica, whatever it happens to be for a particular timeline).

Pleasant side-effect: All LSH incarnations will have legitimacy...everyone's favorite version / era happened.

This will become a major dilemna for the Legion once revealed. If they continue stopping major threats, they pave the way for the Time Trapper's rule of the timeline. But they can't just sit back and watch (insert threat) devastate the safety of those they are sworn to protect.

3. The Legionnaires will respond to a Legion Distress call that doesn't make sense (on the wrong frequency...all members accounted for...nobody near there...difficult to interpret...etc...). Upon arrival, they will meet a certain ship-bound energy being with a knack of manipulating matter. He will recognize some of them (even calling them by their pre-boot names if not used in the new series) but they will not recognize him. As Teall is outside the universe, it somehow escaped the effects of Zero Hour.

But he did not come alone. He is, after all, on the run from his own kind. But they want more than just him....they want revenge (against Wildfire) and a new source of power....The Emerald Eye. When the Eye took out Quislet's ship...it also "tainted" his energy. When Quislet was being re-integrated into the group mind...they were able to catch a glimpse of how powerful the eye's energy was. This was further proven when Quislet was able to eventually reject re-integration.

4. Origin Tweak: Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, and Saturn Girl did, in fact, save RJ Brande in this timeline. Saturn Girl was arrested (lots of red-tape in this future....and she *did* illegally use her mind-reading power) but is bailed out by RJ who then hires the three initially to be his personal body-guards and/or lucky charms. It's not until they break ranks from their protective duties to help people around them (the classic monorail accident disaster?) that the true potential of a Legion of Superheroes is realized.

5. There will be a Dominator in the LSH. He will have the ability to detect and analyze "powers" without the need for special equipment, giving the Legion a nice tactical advantage.

In some circumstances, he will even be able to neutralize the powers (ie he couldn't neutralize Karate Kid's powers...there is no genetic tweak driving them...but he could cancel out Cosmic Boy by temporarily blocking the genetic code which gives Braalians magnetic manipulation). Neutralizing powers may require special equipment.

This will be a huge PR obstacle...and cause much contention within the ranks of the team. There will be a time where members will question his motivations for joining...but he will eventually redeem himself and remove himself willingly from the dominator caste society.

BONUS

6. I predict that someone is about to go all Sun Boy on me...it's already getting hot in here.

6.B - I predict I will only edit my post a dozen more times.

Story predictions:

(1) The new Legion and its milieu will be completely disconnected from any other century, due to the events in the Teen Titans crossover. Kon-el will stay in the 21st. He and the others in the 21st will remember the Legion's involvement, though, from a thousand years hence, and a tribute group -- outside all normal governmental channels -- will spring up, of un-"tamable" young superpowered beings, calling itself "L.E.G.I.O.N." in tribute. This last will have occasional appearances in both the Titans and Legion titles.

The time-anomalies-resolved Legion in the 31st, conversely, will not remember that its members were involved with the Titans. Indeed, much of the past for them will have been altered, without their realizing it (though the Titans and L.E.G.I.O.N. do manage to find out, they don't say anything). Most of the earlier setting of the United Planets will remain in place, with the notable exception of the earlier stargate technology never having failed. The Kwai, including Shikari, are back in their own galaxy, but may be rediscovered later.

Nobody remembers Ra's al Ghul, terrorforming, Warworld, the Blight, any of the Legionnaires ever having been "Lost," or even Darkseid or Leland McCauley. For all this Legion knows, in fact, superpowers are merely a phenomenon of their own time, and come from centuries of genetic engineering. No "mutations." They're truly, as against the rest of the superpowered DCU set in centuries past, on their own. ... Well, except for occasional well-meant but usually disastrous time-travel intrusions by the Titans or L.E.G.I.O.N.

Villain predictions:

(2) At least 10 classic Jim-Shooter-era villains will be brought back in some form, probably transmogrified for today's darker sensibilities.

The Time Trapper will vanish finally, thoroughly, and (according to Waid) permanently, in some cosmic showdown, and the creators will say that he's just too problematic to keep around. The Trapper will, of course, be resurrected shortly before the end of Waid's run.

Legionnaire predictions:

(3) The core group will be roughly 20 people, but auxiliary groups based on particular gen-engineer-run planets (such as Xanthu and Lallor) will pop up as periodic allies or enemies. Almost no examples will exist of any planet having its broad population sharing a metapower -- at most, only a handful of young humanoids will manage it on any planet. Earth will only gather more than its handful out of being, politically and commercially, where the UP action is.

Publishing predictions:

(4) Kitson will last about 12 issues as artist before, as he'll be quoted, this "fekackte huge cast" will drive him crazy and make him depart the book. The "Volume 5" series will be announced to end, as usual, with issue 38, after Lightle, LaRocque, Patterson, Sherman, and Broderick all have their short guest stints as one- or two-issue artists. Paul Levitz will, however, intervene from on high, contravene that decision, and announce that he's returning as Legion writer, having become heartily sick of carrying out Time Warner's decisions, and the series will resume after a two-month hiatus, with issue 39.

The only thing, as ever, that will have the Legion making any real money for DC will be Archives volumes and action figures from the Silver Age, sold to relatively wealthier 40-plus farts. By 2008, we will have seen at least 12 different versions of Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, and Saturn Girl in some form of figures, but still no Blok, Wildfire, or Dawnstar.

Two attempts to animate the Legion, one in an "Adventures"-Timm-ish style, one with 3D "Shrek"ish morphs, will be initiated and will be abandoned before 2008. One, however, will be handled by my college dorm-mate Tim Johnson (the co-director of "Antz" and "Sinbad"), who will give me a lucrative job that will last only about 12 months.

"Personally" motivated prediction:

(5) Starhavenites will be seen again, with feathered wings, hyperspace warp generation, navigational reputations that span the galaxy, Cherokee or Haida heritage, fringed outfits showing maximum skin, and one adept trio of siblings (two boys, one girl) who have the additional genetic gift of massively powerful telekinesis. They'll be adjuncts on call for Legion missions.

... well, c'mon, "I've" gotta have one chance to star in this one!

1) One member will wear begin wearing thigh high boots
2) New Legion romance
3) One new non-humanoid member
4) New Legion leader who hasn't been a leader before in the reboot
5) Turtles (you'll see....)

Sorry, I couldn't restrict myself to only 5.

1. The Legion (and Teen Titans) will be caught up in the events of "Identity Crisis", which is supposed to redefine the DCU from top to bottom. This will provide a gateway to the "radically reimagined" universe.

2 If it is indeed a "new chapter" rather than a reboot or relaunch, it will be set in the not-too-distant future relative to the current LSH (the characters are still teenagers) or in an alternate but closely parallel universe.

3. In terms of how future society will be physically reimagined -- I'm thinking "Dune". Some aspects of it will be so futuristic, they'll be retro.

4. If the new LSH is a "movement" set in a utopian society, it stands to reason that the society is not really as utopian as it appears on the surface. Look for a redefinition of the concept of "super-hero" in the vein of Kingdom Come.

5. The origins of the new LSH will be revealed only slowly (so Kitson implies). The original founding three may provide the inspiration for the new LSH but will no longer play a direct role, opening the door to reformation. They represent the foundations of the old LSH, and as such carry with them the very continuity baggage the new creative team is seeking to unload. Look for them -- or at least two of the three founders -- to be martyred, lost in the past, hypertimed, or somehow drastically reinvented.

6. None of the characters who are dead in current continuity, e.g., Leviathan, Element Lad, will reappear.

7. The team will consist of some familiar legacy characters (only Brainy, for sure), plus some new ones. Perhaps half and half. See some older characters play different roles, e.g., Mekt as a member of the LSH. It's possible a few of the Teen Titans who are called into the future will remain as part of the new LSH. Superboy might be among them (his role as Superman's protege having been usurped by the new Supergirl). Conversely, some members of the current Legion may wind up in the 21st century DCU. Star Boy and Ferro, if they surive at all, are good candidates.

8. The super-powers of surviving legacy characters will be reinvented and souped-up.

9. Among the new members, there will be fewer individuals who are recognizably human, or even humanoid. Gender and sexual roles, as we know it, will be redefined as well. We will see the first openly gay Legionnaire.

10. Brainy will become even more pivotal a character than he is now, perhaps a "founder" of the new LSH.

11. The 30-page format will include a standard 22-page story, plus an 8-page backup story that focuses on a particular character or groups of characters. Lightle's Legion Outpost project may fit into this scheme. The roll-call and "previously" recap will be reinstated.

12. The fan community will be as vehemently split about this relaunch as they were in 1989 and 1994. It won't be pretty. Faced with this, the new creative team will be no more inclined to interact with the LSH community than the previous team was.

13. TC (me) will become the MOTA (an infamous troll) of Legionworld.net and be banned for life before May 2005.

1. Many facets of the rebooted stories we've been reading will be intact... some facets from the first year or two of the reboot will be brought back into play. Some preboot facets will reappear. Combined with unseen, presently unknowable changes to the 'timestream', all those facets will form the new Legion continuity.

2. The Legion of Substitute Heroes will form... or shown to have been formed all along (and yes, I know about their one/two panel eariler reboot appearances). Possibly, its membership will contain heretofore 'official' Legionnaires.

3. At least one Legionnaire dead in other continuites will now be alive... whether through resurrection, 'wrong man' revelation, or hypertime.

4. New Legionnaires will appear... at least one will be nonhumanoid. One will be from Lallor.

5. There'll be new romances/friendships/rivalries that'll actually *matter*.

TN

this is fun but hard. do i state what i would like to see or what i think i'll get to see?

1) the futurisitc "utopia" is actually quite boring to live in with a large "big brother" element watching everything and everyone in the U.P. no one over 21 questions anything or makes waves.

2) the Legion is more of a "youth movement", a cross between the hippie peace movement/Aryan youth/boy scouts. ..seeking adventure...asking the hard questions...exposing man's inhumanity to man (or the sentient equivalent).

3) no more Legion World. instead several underground and R.J. Brande sponsored "Outposts" on many worlds.

4) The Fatal Five will appear at the end of the first year of stories.

5) a return to reader elections for Legion Leader!

6) among the team's roster will definitely be XS, M'onel, Wildfire, Timber Wolf, Shrinking Violet, Invisible Kid, Ultra Boy, and Chameleon. Plus several new members that will expand the team's ethnic and alien diversity.

7) the Legion "L" will remain a unifying logo, but the costumes will be more individual and Cockrum inspired rather than the center stripe format.

MOTA?

Man, that is just harsh.

Okay, I've calmed down a bit since writing that. I'll be MOTA only if they kill a core Legionnaire or fail to bring back Element Lad.

Mmmkay, hope mine are too goofy but I don't usually do writing so much as art so here goes nothing:

1. Waid's got some interesting ideas that take Legion in a new direction similar to the jumps of X-Men to New X-Men or Stormwatch to the Authority. The relaunched Legion will catch the eye of Entertainment Weekly's occasional comic review and get a bump in readership from within out outside the community. Perhaps the Legion with gain a well-known celebrity fan or more facetime on "The O.C.".

2. After his father dies, Tim Drake/(former?) Robin joins the cast of Legion of Superheroes as they head back to the future following the Titans/Legion Crossover. Dreamer has a premonition that this IS the right thing to do, so they take Robin, leave Superboy, and that female Robin takes over in Teen Titans. The new resulting Legion series is not really a reboot but there are changes as well as similarities to the former series. This is explained away as history being changed as a result of the Titans/Legion crossover and Robin's existence in the future.

Interesting side note: the chick Robin creates a romantic third point to the new love triangle between her, Superboy, and Wondergirl - with Wondergirl sharings feelings with both Superboy and Robin!

3. There will be more new characters than people think (at least a third of the team). The team will start out decently sized (10-15) but will swell in the first few arcs.

4. A new green lantern will join the Legion and a heroic 21st century analog with be a new villian. Can anybody say Bat Man?

5. Matter-Eater Lad will be the first new Leader of the Legion of Superheroes. One of biggest changes is that the concept of "superhero" is unknown to the folks of the future. Look to the Legion to have to redefine the concept to a world without heroes.

1) A Hypertime event will revert the Waid/Kitson Legion back to its original three founders plus 10-15 other Legionnaires.

2) The "new" lineup will mimic the Davis/Farmer Superboy Legion roster, including Colossal Boy and Sun Boy and Bouncing Boy, maybe include Kid Quantum 1, Dreamer, XS, M-E Lad and Andromeda, but will probably not include Gates, Kinetix, Sensor, Shikari or Wildfire (at least to start).

3) The member uniforms will also mimic the Superboy Legion stylings, many going back to the Adventure Era garb and colorings. These will also match the DC Direct line of Legion figures currently put out for easy new reader recognition.

4) The Simone stories upcoming feature characters of variations of current Justice Leaguers (Canary, Green Arrow, etc.) who will eventually become new Legion members. Add in XS (as the New Flash), a mace-wielding Dawnstar (now from Thanagar), Thunder, and part-time visits by Superboy and you will have a 31st century version of the JLA (sales!) to compliment the rest of the Legion.

5) While this reboot will be interesting and entertaining, it will come under a great deal of scrutiny and criticism and schism between readers (a la TMK), thus requiring yet another reboot (in the eyes of the DC PTB) to accompany their Legion movie of 2008 during the Legion 50th anniversary.

-- We will continue to be denied a legionnaire in clogs.
-- Less carbs
-- Scary clowns (is that redundant?)
-- Unisex bathrooms

Pofo made some dang good predictions!

1. We'll find a lost colony of Kryptonians living on Daxam. This gives us a true Superboy (possibly even Kal-El's heir to the name) and...

...drumroll please...

...wait for it...

Dev-Em!

2. Power Girl joins the Legion!

3. Legion World becomes Weber's World.

4. We get a Gil d'shpan (sp?) Legionnaire.

5. The tripmphant return of the Veilmist and Flederweb!

1) It'll be a load of crap

2) It'll be cancelled by issue 20

3) It'll feature a load of dated characters with ludicrous names in hideous costumes

4) It won't attract any new readers

5) It'll take 6 issues for anyone to work out what the new 'direction' is. Space Brats Make Trouble?

1) Bitter people will be eating crow

2) It'll make for a more streamlined, less convoluted Legion that embraces the great things from its past and overlooks the problems

3) The Daxamite Kryptonians is a great idea

4) Fandom, in general, won't react in that stereotypical "The Sky is Falling" mania that leads trolls to confuse activism with throwing hissy fits on-line

5) It'll be fun again, as ever, but with an extra 8 pages of fun!

I wouldn't mind seeing Dev-Em as the 31st century Superboy! Ofcourse I wouldn't mind Mon-El as Superboy either!

Jorge

OK, here are my humble predictions:

1) No characters created after the Adventure era will appear in the book until at least #24, or there is a change in creative teams. Sorry fans of Dawnstar, Wildfire and, my favorite, Gates.

2) One of the ongoing subplots will be L.E.G.I.O.N. style suspicion of B5's motives... Is he really trying to save the universe or just conquer it subtly.

3) Garth will begin the series as dead, dead, dead. He may get better though.

4) The series will debut with fairly high sales. Whether or not this translates into long-term viability...

5) Less than five years from now there will be yet another reboot transforming the legion into more of an 'Archie Legion meets Anime.' This will be done to tie into an upcoming animated series.

Anyways, those are my guesses.

I pray that you're wrong, but the timing of the reboot (about a year after formation) seems correct, assuming they're repeating this aspect of pre-boot continuity. Thing is, if he's dead again why is Ayla said to be "Light Lass"? Previously, her power change was dictated solely by the need to avoid duplicated powers after her brother's resurrection.

That's assuming that their even going to do the 'power twin' thing with Garth and Ayla this time out. Maybe their not related in this version, or maybe they started off with different powers. Maybe I just didn't know Ayla was on the starting roster and feel a little embarassed.

Barry referred to Spark as Light Lass in a recent post, but I dunno if that really constitutes a confirmation. Sounds like anything is possible this time around, so don't let anything I say discourage you from boldly speculating, Cad.

I predict that Phantom Girl will initially be repulsed by the "thug" Ultra Boy.

PG being repulsed by 'thug' Ultra Boy would be pretty classic in a 'my feelings for you are so wrong yet so right' kinda way.

I would like to add the following to my predictions:

the Legion will be split into at least two factions. There will be the older, founding, members who have left a mark on the universe and are moving onto greener pastures. Basically they will not so much be sell-outs who are using their postions as ex-legionnaries to advance careers in politics and business but will be folks who have 'bought in' and hope to change the system in a more adult fashion. I can totally see a Senator Krinn, or Kem for that matter, belonging to this group.

The other faction will be the hot-heads and the new bloods, who believe in the legion with the ferver that only the young and brash can have. They look at the older members as sell outs and want to remain semi-revolutionaries. Possibly under the influence of a somewhat sinister B5 they will, from time to time, attempt to change the UP in ethically questionable ways. Thug Jo will be emblematic of this faction.

It'll sort of be like the Authority in space but with some of the members acting like grown-ups.

How is my optimistic generalization that fandom won't react in a stereotypical vein a personal attack on you or anyone else in this forum?

I'm sorry if you felt the statement described you.