Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! 'Fix' the current version of the Legion

This thread might be a moot point depending on where DC takes the JLA/JSA crossover, but what the hey.

Assume you are given control of the Legion. How would you 'fix' it?

You cannot Deboot the Legion.
You cannot Reboot the Legion.
You cannot have anyone wake up and go "what a strange dream..."

Taking what Waid and Kitson established, what would you do to improve the Legion.

If you think the Legion is fine as is, say so.


Here are my ideas.

oh, and Supergirl is gone at this point.

1) tell an orgin. First arc I would do would be an orgin arc, and I would make Imra a big part in bringing the Legion together, I feel that she is often portrayed as "Garth's girlfriend" instead of a founder in her own right.

2) ditch the politcs--after the orgin arc Cos will decide that the Legion is about SUPER-HEROES, not politics, and that by being super-heroes they will change things for the better regardless of political affiliation.

3) make them inspiring--with Cos' proclamation the Legionnaires are inspired to be more heroic

4) small missions that lead to big things-- first mission is more of an unplanned adventure. Projectra hears rumor that Orando is back, she goes at it alone, Shrinking Violet and IK tag alone to keep an eye on her. In a short arc we would see more about Jeckie and how she is dealing with the death of her world plus how all three relate to eachother. However, this arc would lead to the knowledge that a powerful sorcer, Mordru, is out there. I wouldn't immediatly go to a big arc, though, instead I would continue to have multiple missions with teams of three or four Legionnaires, especially Legionnaires who haven't been seen interacting with eachother, going to different corners of the galaxy doing hero stuff.

5) reintroduce some old Legionnaires--After the Orando arc (three issues max) I would have a one-shot where Trip goes down into lower metropolis to investigate something. There she meets a wannabe Legionnaire whose powers is to bounce. She doesn't think much of this, but in the course of the adventure he proves himself useful. He wants to join the Legion, she gives him some sappy line about already proving himself a legionnaire or something (essentaily, Waid's idea that anyone who follows the legion's ideals is a legionnaire). This way BB is introduced and he can be used later, but you don't have to focus on him like a new, ring wearing member.

Later on others would be reintroduced.

6) The Science Police will have a liason with the Legion-- the SP reluctantly agrees to send a liason to the Legion, the Legion have done a lot of good in the universe so TPTB decide that there needs to be more cooperation between the two. This way you can have some humor, some tension, and utilize some resources for bigger conflicts without retreading the old "we don't like you" ground.

After spending time reestablishing these characters and their relationships with eachother through short adventures (which will be deadly and serious) I would go into the next major arc. Either Mordru or the Fatal Five.

I feel this changes will allow the Legion to move on to an inspiring group of heroes who protect the entire galaxy, you can still have political and ideological tension, but it is no longer put in front of the super heroics.

The Legion is fine. I like what WnK have done with it. Sure, the title could use a faster pace, but other than that, it's just right.

Sent Cobalt a half-formed idea on this once (given an inability to reboot or deboot the book) as part of a wider conversation, baed on a couple of points I'd accidentally picked up back when I still edited Wikipedia and I was trying to edit the postZH sections of pages that had "threeboot" stuff on them.

Disclaimers:
(1) It's half-intended to "break" the book, and I freely admit it;
(2) It's half-formed based on about one and a half points of information that I read by accident a couple of years back, and I'm not interested in all the crap that makes this obviously impossible to anyone who's actually read the book;
(3) 90% of the people here will hate it on sheer principle, whatever they think of the "threeboot"
(4) I probably won't be reading the followup on this thread

With all that said:

What Bedard talked about in this interview sounded pretty good to me.

I think I'll let him do his own thing before offering advice.

I think that we should all comment on each others changes to get an honest appraisal of how each other's ideas are good and what doesn't work. Reboots version certainly does "kill" the Legion even as it would be a very interesting plotline for example.

I also like Steph Barton's Orando Arc and the much needed return of old villains.

If Charles Phipps wrote Supergirl and the Legion of Superheroes

General Changes

1. The Legion is a Big comic Book: At a raise in price of the comic, add 12 extra pages of Legion content. This will help tell the stories that neeed to be told about such a large and interesting body of stories.

2. Untold Tales of the Legion of Superheroes: The twelve pages addition will be devoted to single stories that begin and end during the original. For the most part, these will be re-imagined or retold stories of the original Legionaires. The shortness of the original Legionaire stories will lend themselves well for this.

3. Twelve Issue Legion of Superheroes: Year One...Thousand: A mini-series, retelling of the RJ Brande storyline and the founding of the Legion of Superheroes. This version ends up with them facing down Mordu for the first time as the main villain, recruiting "Superman" as a boy after acquiring a time machine somehow (I always wondered how they got one), the Sun Eater Plot, and trying to stay close to the original heroics to a certain extent.

If it sells, then it'll become the basis for a revived Legionaires series that will permanently be about decompressed Legion stories.

4. One Story an Issue, One Super-Villain Arc every Six Issues: Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer seasons, every six issues will have the Legion facing down an evil mastermind at the head of an army of evil that they stop down but each issue is self contained. "Over" Villains will include the Legion of Supervillains (lead by Praetor Lemnos whose the new Cosmic King), Mordu as usual, The Dark Circle, and Darkseid.

In Comic book changes

1. Print out the Legion Manifesto in the back of an issue, One Page: The Manifesto as written by Cosmic Boy explains in simple terms: The Legion exists to combat the corruption, xenophobia, isolationism, and malaise (he uses that word) in the United Planets. They use the example of superheroes to do what cannot be done by the system but believe anyone who wishes to contribute to a better world is a Legionaire at heart.

He dismisses anyone who believes this is about an age-war or the stifling (he uses the word stifling) nature of society.

2. They're older than they look: Some clear ages listed for everyone. The Legionaire founders have been doing this since they were 16.....and they're in their mid-twenties now. Cosmic Boy, Imra, Garth, Timber Wolf, Element Lad, Shady, Collosol Boy, and so on are all college age or graduates. Invisible Kid is the only real teenager amongst them and they'll be sligghttlyyy altered to look like this.

It's a clarification rather than a retcon. It also establishes the Legion is filled with veteran superheroes.

3. Show serious character development: Princess Projectra is now leader of the Orando in exile as they rebuild her planet slowly (i.e. a slow reboot of the very fact it was destroyed) but we see her suitably traumatized and why she loves Timber Wolf, Karate Kid's love for Phantom Girl contrasted with the fact HE REALLY REALLY SHOULD BE with Shady, Cosmic Boy really does love Supergirl but is a complete dunce with women, and so on. Brainiac 5 falls in love with the revived Nura as Dream Boy her brother, ressurects her with a certain machine because they really WERE a good couple.

4. Element Lad is Gay: Just establish that point "I was just attempting to see what sort of interaction was between a man and a woman." He'll also have his people largely smashed and get ROYALLY ****ed.

5. "Guest" Legionaires: Dawnstar, Wildfire, and others appear every so often like Timberwolf and company as they are always 'off doing their own thing' despite having flight rings. They'll often appear as useful characters relevant to the story.

6. The Main Cast: Imra, Garth, Cosmic Boy, Brainiac 5, and Timberwolf are going to be in every issue to help establish the idea of a main cast in order to give the place a feeling of a suitable storyline.

7. Superman joins the Team and Supergirl quasi-does: Basically, the Legionaires manufacture two flight rings with Time Travel Devices for them both and then send them back in the past. Thus, whenever they want to visit, they just fly in like old times.

8. More "Reboot" touches: Dawnstar is Thanagarian, Tyroc is actually a Prince of a 'United States of Africa settled planet' thats often at odds with the UP, and so on.

Oddly, if I were REALLY evil, I'd actually make Sunboy BECOME Wildfire when his powers go out of control.

My thoughts on Charles Phipps thoughts;

Like the origin stories in the back of the first dozen issues of Alpha Flight? GENIUS!

I'd love to see some of the 'classic' stories re-imagined. If the Legion is going to be fighting the Fatal Five in the front of the book, a 12 page flashback to the first encounter with the F5 would be awesome, in this specific instance, the Fatal Five battle royale could take up two issues, and thus the 'flashback' could also be a two-parter!

Neat idea. A lot of the 'classic' historical bits, such as Garth losing an arm and dying and whatever, could use a little brush-over to update them (without any references to Proteans...).

To one extent I agree, but some of the better stories only warrant one issue, and I wouldn't mind a few of what other people probably call 'filler' issues that don't advance any particular arc (such as Timber Wolf's visit to Lythyl, or Ultra Boy's framing for the murder of An Ryd, or the 'trial of Brainy,' or the abso-freaking-mandatory tryouts / vote for leader issues!)

Definitely. And I agree with your interpretation. They are there to honor the heroes of the past and inspire the sentients of the future that one person can make a difference, and that there will *always* be a place for heroes, and for individual acts of heroism.

They already look plenty old, IMO. Cosmic Boy and Brainiac seem to be mid-20s. I would definitely keep them at some squiffily defined age between teens and 20-somethings.

Definitely something they have trouble doing with such a large cast, but yeah, this would be nice.

In my perfect world, Dream Boy's name is either Baya or Toma, and he's the PreCommando that Dream Girl warned was going to be left by his wife in the next week. After that came true, he wasn't as interested in hanging out in Dumpsville, and so when the opportunity to go off-world came up, he went and signed up.

Shadow Lass and Karate Kid haven't yet recognized him without his armor and helmet from their butt-kicking on Naltor. Someone's in for a surprise when they push 'fleece-heads' button...

Yanno, I'd rather see a future where no one cares about that sort of thing. Where Ultra Boy off-handedly comments about Ayla being a firecracker, but nothing compared to Gim, and nobody bats an eye, because it's a complete non-issue.

Definitely. And the choices you've made make some sense as well. Dawnstar, historically, has always been tied into her culture and blabbed about her people and traditions a lot, so it would fit her character to spend more time being her people's hero and an inspiration in whatever space sector they live in than hanging around the clubhouse playing 'The Real World, Metropolis.'

Star Boy and Shadow Lass both make sense to also be respective champions of their worlds, showing up from time to time (visiting Earth for some other reason, such as diplomacy, or visiting family there, or called there for a big to-do), but otherwise spending a lot of time focused on other activities, and not hanging around the rec room reading comic books.

Not the ones I would have chosen, but I agree with the sentiment. Garth, Imra and Rokk, as founders, might feel obliged to 'make the Legion their life' and live in the HQ, while others come and go a bit more.

Meh. I loathe the spawn of El, but I'd rather not have time machines in Flight Rings. Those things are already pretty crazy. Brainy could just design a temporal aperture somewhere that only allows super-dense materials through it into the future. So Kara or Kal (or someone equally super-dense...) could fly through said aperture into the future to visit the team. Said aperture would be invisible, and hanging out somewhere like the Fortress of Solitude, to prevent too many super-dense party-crashers (but, of course, there will always be one!).

I'd skip the Tyroc one, and just make him some dude with sonic powers who happens to be black, 'though. I don't mind there being a United African Nations of Space, but I'd rather not have some token black Legionnaire come from there, nor have it be the Angry Young Black Planet.

But Dawnstar as a Thanagarian? Oh yes, please!

For that matter, I want to see *more legacies!*

Where is the Helmet of Fate? Where are the Green Lanterns? Where are the Atlanteans? What happened to New Genesis? Amazons? White Martians? The entire Vega system, complete with Tamaranians? All those elemental people (Swamp Thing, Firestorm, Red Tornado, Animal Man, etc.)?

Is there a connection between Colu and the 20th century Brainiac? For that matter, he's the big 'I shrink your city, mwa-ha-ha' dude, so what's his connection to Imsk?

It seems like, from the original Legion, the only super-heroes that had legacies were Superman (in Laurel Kent, who didn't make much of a mark, and then died stupidly anyway) and Batman (who had a descendent who was a detective, and also died). Yeesh! While I hated the blow-up-the-world story-arcs of that era, I didn't mind seeing XS and Thunder, actual 20th century legacy heroes as Legionnaires!

And, yes, more *classic* villains. I want my Legion of Super-Villains back. I want my League of Super-Assassins back. I want my Fatal freaking Five! Universo! Computo! The Sun-Eater! Ontiir!

Not 'Praetor Lemnos and his cast of nameless shlubs.'

Thanks for the comments! Here's some notes...

Yes, that was actually an inspiration for the story. Sort of like the X-men need four comics to keep up with their main cast, you need to go beyond a little of the normal size of a comic for the Legion because it has all of the baggage of the X-men but only one of the titles.

I sort of like the idea that Cosmic Boy is the one who turned the team from a typical SCA group of superheroes into a big movement but in typical "visionary" style, never really clearly spelled out what they were about.

I stick with "They should be old enough to drink at a bar, have sex, have serious relationships" but "Not be the mother of four kids" Imra.

Which leads to 9 for me.

9. No More Dropped Plotlines

If Colu is a planet of monkey primitives, then you damn well will mention how they're dealing with the situation. If there was a huge intergalactic war, then you damn well will show the after affects for a few issues. I don't mind if you smoothe it over in a few sentences. Brainiac 5 says "Colu's anti-virus should take care of the problem in a few days" or "Earth will be rebuilt in a few weeks." But you MENTION it.

I don't mind if its a bit like the Green Lantern Corps for all intents and purposes. There's a lot of Legionaires and they're off doing their own thing whether retired or actively superheroing. Once a Legionaire, always a legionaire as Captain America said something similiar about his team.

It was an homage to the old "Superman and Supergirl can just fly faster than the Speed of light" to reach the future, I would assume that the visual effect would be the same. They lift up their ring, a wormhole appears, and they fly up into it. Better yet, you can also restrict the ring to being able to hold only a relative time point (or other technobabble) so that it can ONLY journey to the Legion's time.

Like the Superman bit, it's probably attempting to be TOO faithful. Tyroc is from a strange land somewhere that's isolated, you can keep that and make it an isolationist planet that just happens to be black. Not a land that's isolated because it's black.

But yes, I for one would love to see the Green Lantern Corps and Nabu show up again. Hell, Amethyst too.

For one thing, I would SEVERELY limit the usage of time-travel. I know it plays a big role in the Legion's history, but look at what else you get with it that has created upteen problems for the group: pocket universes, paradoxes, and who's who again?

Time-travel should be as it is in Doctor Who: only the mighty can do it. I'm not saying they shouldn't do it all, but if you place big limits on it's usage, when it does occur, you realize that something mighty is about to happen.

Firstly:
BRING BACK WILDFIRE!

- Also get rid of the "eat it grandpa" teen rebellion thing and make the social movement more profound and inspiring.
- Give the Legion an agenda rather than getting into pissing contests with the UP. Make them more proactive.
- Enough infighting. Personality differneces is one thing, but the leadership should be stable and the Legionnaires should be more unified than this fractured bunch.
- New blood. New members. Make them interesting.

I think I'm one of the few who has enjoyed the political aspect of the series so far - I'd like to see more and how the Earth system (nobody interacts anymore, public service, basically a planet of sheep)fits in with other planets (also with well realised political systems - whats going on in Vega in the 31st century for instance?).

I like the characters too so far so I'd definitely want to see more of them.

Things I'd change quickly though are-

Add more legionnaires - some old (Tellus, Quislet, Gates, Wildfire etc), some new (a Tamaran, a Gil'Dishpan, a descendent of Gorilla City etc), establish a couple of decent villains - again some old some new, and give the kids some pets.

Shorten the story arcs and make them a bit more unpredictable - the occassional single issue stand alone, a few two parters, maybe once a year a story that has been building in subplots comes to fruition, mix it up a bit! Just get shot of this twelve issues to tell a four issue story routine.

Find another artist of Barry's calibre to take over.

Harbinger, I also enjoyed the politics. But I hate the teenagers vs. adults thing. Young adults vs. the system? I like that.

Anyways, I agree add more members. Stop writing and drawing them as kids. Firestorm was a young adult/teenager and wasn't this skinny kid that was a foot shorter than the adults.

And less universe/global threatening menaces. More down time also. I like to the members just being people. shopping, vacation, etc.

no need. JSA and JLA already have!