Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities JSA: A model for what the current Legion ought to be?

We have... a team that's been around for 60+ years.

Characters that could be seen as somewhat hokey or old-fashioned.

Continuity that is beyond confusing... Silver-age revamps/reinventions of the most important characters... multiple worlds and timelines... Characters that overlap onto other characters, some that have actually combined, some that have actually split further...

A rogue's gallery that has more dust on it than back issues of Atari Force sitting in your local CBS's 25 cent bin.

Multiple revamps and #1 issues.

There's no reason at all why this should work. Yet it does. It more than works. It's one of the hottest things going in the industry.

The reason for this? It takes impossible continuity and out-of-date characters, and instead of throwing up their hands at the impossibility of adapting the endless morass of continuity, it spins lead into gold. Is there anything that can tickle a comics fan's heart more than this?

Obviously not.

It respects what has gone before, straightens out the mess, and moves forward. And you know, I think JSA has shown without a doubt that the greater the mess, the greater the payoff when it is fixed. I mean, just look at Hawkman.

I think, more than anything else, JSA shows that endless reboots of properties aren't the answer. Organic storytelling is. 3 reboots later, LSH is struggling along to make it, and the current writer of the book is obviously drowning under the weight of all the continuity he doesn't want to or can't (by editorial mandate) reference. We shouldn't judge Waid. He's obviously paralyzed by the weight of all the great stories and characters that have come before in previous boots and that he can't reference or do anything about. What needs to happen is this current book needs to be morphed into something that can tie the weight of Legion history into a concrete, coherent whole. All the versions of the Legion need to come together, once and for all. Somehow. I think JSA shows us it can be done. Wouldn't it be something if it came to pass.

Geoff Johns is the man. Seriously I got slammed for talking about what the general audiences want...what the masses want.

Geoff Johns makes everybody happy. I've never seen a writer make the old guys who want an old lady with a pot on her head to the guys that want new exciting stuff love the same book. This is how it is done.

He helped bring back the JSA. He then made them great again, and now he is progressing them. That is what I like most about Geoff he does progress things.

Geoff just has the uncanny ability of making lemonade out of lemons...and a large number of fans from every different corner happy. I've been using the JSA of what the Legion can be for years now.

Id really like to see the Legion taken in the JSA "Old Gaurd/New Gaurd" direction with both the pre-crisis members and the 2 reboots on the same team, along with a few new additions.

I more or less agree with your larger point, although as I've often said I'm generally happy with what Waid and Kitson are doing with the Legion. But what I really want to say is this:

If there are back issues of Atari Force sitting in the quarter bin, why, why, haven't you snapped them up? That was a great comic book!

You can substitute NFL Superpro for Atari Force if you like.

Yes! Exactly!

JSA and LSH are two teams whose histories are part of their appeal. They're the 1st and 3rd olderst super-teams (#2, Seven Soldiers, never built up a lore or mystique of its own). Their histories are a resource, not something to be bull-dozed every decade.

This type of comic would certainly be one I'd be into.

The idea of a creator writing a Legion book to appeal to old school Legion fans (who've been reading since the 70s or 80s or even longer!), more modern Legion fans (for whom the postboot or threeboot Legion is "their" Legion) and "neo-classicists" (those who've mostly discovered the title through Archives and back issues) sounds really groovy, but it would take a miracle to pull it off!

Considering the fact that both previous boots basically ended with the entire Legion vanishing into a swirling vortex of pretty energy, I don't know if it would be as hard as one might think.

Maybe DC's testing the waters with all these side appearances.

Fixing Hawkman took a miracle. Geoff is the only one who has a chance I guess.

Hukka Huk! {Translation: "What he said!"}


--------------------
BOB!

Also some diversity in the cast wouldn't hurt. When we have characters just from the old days...well they could've mixed it up a bit more. I know it appears they are going to soon but I am not holding my breath.


The JSA has Alan Scott down to Damage. Their lineup is pretty diverse.

Nononononononono! I love the Legion far too much to subject it to Geoff Johns-ization. While I liked the first year or two of the JSA
book, I stopped reading it when he began ressurecting old golden agers (the most grievous example being android Tyler, replaced by Rick, then Rex) and when it became clear that his respect to continuity is highly selective, and that he's willing to retcon anything in order to make the current heroes more like his percieved ideal (see: Kon-El, Impulse). The masturbatory extent to which the Golden-Age characters were worshiped turned me off. Plus, I'm not a big fan of de-aging characters, something that is rampant in the book--seeing the thirty-something legionnaires return to being teenagers and suddenly return to costume is not something I want for the Legion.

Ah! I knew there had to be somebody out there who has a problem with his work. I've only read the 2 new JSA issues, so I can't say whether his earlier stuff is good or bad, but it seemed awfully strange that everyone seemed to like it. That's just not the way it works on the net.

I am in the middle. Between the Silver Age fans and Ian Lad. I understand that knock on Geoff. His Titans are another good example of making both camps happy. Very glad he went with the Wolfman/Perez stuff at first.

Anyhow, I asked Geoff once years ago if he would like to write the Legion. And he said yes...very much so. I hope we get to see it one day.

What I've read from Johns has been pretty much a mixed bag.

Infinite Crisis was about the biggest crapfest ever.

And while Titans has been good one year later, I'm actually in the camp the finds the basic idea of turning Young Justice into the Teen Titans of twenty-five years ago pretty annoying. I mean... let these kids develop on their terms, rather than turning them into something trying to copy the past. Plus the de-aging of older Titans to make them fit in with the teeny-boppers... ugh.

I would love to at least see Geoff Johns take over when Mark Waid's arc is over maybe he's the one to finally fix the Legion and bring back most of their history,the reason the Legion was my favorite title from 1973 to the late 1980's was their rich history even though the adventure series was before my time when I first read a story from that era I enjoyed it as much as the then current series when I found out little things about their past and read the first appearance of a character it thrilled me to no end.The now current Legion is not the same characters I fell in love with the only thing they have in common with my Legion is they have the same names and powers other than that they seem like strangers.
That said The JSA has consistently been my favorite title over the last few years even before the restart and now with members of my Legion popping up in the title i'm in heaven I just hope 20 more or so of them pop up and they don't go into limbo or get killed off again.
And in case anyone wants to know how I really feel about the Legion put me down for the return of the Original Pre-Crisis LSH and their history with the Silver Age Superman intact even if he does not exist anymore why must the true Legion of Super-Heroes be cursed to remain in limbo forever.

I never said I didn't like the Silver Age--I just don't think it should be put on a pedestal. I love Oliver Queen, The Shooter Legion, Englehart's Batman, and the WWII JSA. The Multi-verse continues to be the most elegant solution to the problem of the old vs. the new, and it was a mistake to eliminate it. However, I also like Connor Hawke, Kon-El (not Conner Kent), Kyle Rayner, and Impulse, and believe that they deserved the chance to become their own characters.

What I do dislike is stagnation, which is what I believe JSA (as well as other books--I'm not a fan of the GCPD "re-boot" in Batman, for example) represents, and is in fact antitehtical to the Silver Age "feel". To me, the silver age was a time of constant invention and reinvention. However, Johns and his ilk have seemed content in doing the opposite, stifling creativity and growth in favor of some "ideal" version of their favorite characters.

While I'm enjoying the post-"One Year Later" Titans , I'd have to disagree (or not, seeing as how I don't know which camps you refer to): Teen Titans, particularly at the beginning, exemplifies the worst of Johns' creative style. It took characters and smashed them to fit molds they were ill-suited for (Superboy, Impulse); regressed any progress some characters may have made (Cyborg, who had evolved to the point where one could say his storyline had come full circle, went right back to the beginning), and destroyed what was a good book that had actually carved its own identity in order to bring back his conception of a fifteen-year old team. What's worse is that creatively, there was no need to do any of it; if he wanted to write stories about the old Teen Titans, then heck, just write stories about the old Teen Titans.

To me, the books that truly respect the Silver Age are those that acknowlege it and use it to create new concepts and characters, or establish new takes on old characters. Peter David's Supergirl was such a book, as was his Young Justice and what I've read of his Aquaman. The current Firestorm book is also one of those. Others would include Judd Winick's Outsiders (and to a lesser extent his Green Arrow and Green Lantern), Busiek's The Power Company and Aquaman; John Arcudi's Doom Patrol, and Karl Kesel's Superboy.

Where does the Legion fit in all this? As I've said in other threads, one of my favorite things about the Preboot Legion was its sense of history, that their universe was truly growing and evolving as it grew older. That sense of history is missing from the other two incarnations, and simply re-booting them will not solve the problem. Waid and Kitson's book may have its flaws, but I believe it at least deserves the opportunity to grow into its own thing. If DC truly wants to satisfy (almost) everyone, acknowledge the different incarnations and allow stories about them, each in its own universe. It's that simple.

The problem I see here, and the opportunity as well, is that Legion has, like JSA, always been about it's history. Being a 'new school' fan of the Legion has far less benefits to it then being an 'old school' fan if you know what I mean. It's like a few years back when DC's catchphrase was, "The Original Universe".

Original Universe?! It hasn't been the Original Universe since 1985!

Why not use 40+ years worth of ideas? seriously, why not? What is the benefit of ignoring that much history. Long time fans will love you for reviving their old favorites and a brand new reader won't know what they were missing anyway. I'm always amazed when they say, "but new fans won't be able to get into it". If they're new to the book and it's characters, they will get into it whether it's brand new or based on something 40 years old since either way it's new to them.

All in all I point the fact that whether you like Johns style or not, it works. You will not see a reboot of JSA or Green Lantern any time soon because, simply put, they sell. Legion needs to sell again. I mean sell like a top 10 or top 5 book. It can. It has all the elements. It just needs to become comfortable with those elements instead of trying to reinvent them.

AL

I think I agree with Ian Lad, for the most part. The biggest problem DC's got is the whole "Clutter Earth" that emerged after Crisis, and Johns's style in a lot of ways tries to make a virtue of the clutter.

Green Lantern in many ways exemplifies the problem. While the basic "last of the Green Lanterns" concept of Kyle was pretty cool, there was no way to implement except by trashing all of the other Green Lanterns, which only managed to piss off a lot of fans. So eventually they bring back Hal and the Corps and a lot of the mythology they'd abandoned. But doing so take away the basic premise of Kyle, and they've basically set the precedent that there can be no permanent change in the status quo of Hal. Whereas with the multiverse, if you want to introduce Kyle, you can do so on "Earth-8", and you can continue to tell Hal's stories without trashing him. Let him grow old and retire and have kids like the "Earth-2" characters did. And if you want to tell a story about young Hal Jordan, either set it in the sixties or create a new ("All-Star") continuity where there's a version of Hal that's still young.

Ironically, after DC abandoned the multiverse, Marvel picked it up and seem to be doing it right (I don't really read Marvel, so I don't really have first hand knowledge). You've got various versions of the Avengers for all the old-school fans, and the Ultimates for a more modern take.

The more I think about it, the more I think trying to mesh together the three versions of the Legion into one organization would just be disasterous.

I agree. Because the strength of the characters was partly rooted in the roles they played in their worlds, and in their histories. If you simply took all three Legions and shuffled them together into one deck, you're jettisoning the worlds and histories, and losing a lot of what makes them worthwhile in the first place.

I've been an advocate of bringing back the previous two Legions, and I still am, but it has to be in such a way that their worlds and histories are intact.

Which is one reason why I'm not more enthusiastic about the appearance of the White Witch in last issue. Sure, I like Mysa, but this isn't that Mysa. I don't know if I like this Mysa until I see if she herself is a good character. The mere fact of having her there isn't enough for me; I either want the original, in her world and with her history, or I want a good new one. Or, preferably, both.