Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! 5 Years later... What a delight

Hmmm... I'm probably going to have a hard time composing this reply... so many thoughts...

I liked that there *was* a five year gap, first of all. A lot of stuff happened between the final LSH issue and the new one. I liked that we got tiny little peeks at that. I liked that it took a while to figure out what was up with each character. I liked that they each had something interesting to go through as the Legion re-formed. I liked that it was all complicated and a bit difficult to understand. I liked Giffen's funky art. I liked that it was gritty and tense. There was a LOT of emotion/drama, which I like to read. I didn't always like what was happening, but it affected me, so I figure that must be good writing.

My main complaint is related to that above statement. I had to feel affected by the things that were written. I do not care for reboots, so, the Glorithverse retelling of history just turned me off.

To use the broken foundation to the house analogy, my opinion is that the contractors were too rough with it. They did a patch job. When they put the house on jacks, they cracked the antique tea set. A few of the teacups shattered. They got replacements, but they were never quite the same as the regular set. (Of course, the reboot meant getting a whole new set... way different and not better, but that's another thread.)
I would have preferred for the foundation to be repaired in a smoother way, so that perhaps a teacup or two went missing, but there wasn't a big mess, or cheaper subsitutes. Mind you, I don't mind adding new pieces to the set...

I also felt like some of those emotional events were not done with respect to the characters. Blok, Sun Boy, Dawnstar, Timber Wolf, Wildfire, even Dream Girl, and later Lightning Lad, which then leads to a disrespectful treatment of Saturn Girl... etc. I'm usually not welcome at Proty discussions. A lot of depressing stuff went on. Some I don't mind that in smaller doses, but there was a LOT of it. Jan and Shvaughn. I mean, we were asked to take a lot. Tinya.

Still, a lot of kewl things did happen, mostly character treatments. It was fun, too. Tenzil, Kono. I did like Laurel, I just didn't need her to replace Supergirl. I liked the Mordru meeting. The plots were good, mostly. Jacques. Drura. Troy. I liked the clones, overall.

It was a lush and complex universe, not perfect.

I never would have elected for there to be a reboot or another reboot.

Yeah, I wish for that smooth foundation repair.

Well, it was a reboot, albeit an intelligent one as it didn't negate anything that came before while creating a new continuity to start from scratch for new readers. We were slowly reintroduced to the Legion, we had a new "origin", but at the same time, that "reboot" was the result of one character altering historic events to such a degree that continuity was modified. Which meant it was totally reversible at any point in the story.

I think the revesibility was the key. It's the feeling that at any point they could say "Hey, we were just kidding about that whole Valor instead of Superboy thing!" but continue moving on with stories that made it less drastic in the way that later "reboots" were not.

They should never have rebooted the first time. It was insulting and they could easily have continued on where they were with new concepts and a change of tone, and it still would have been the Legion.

Simple as that. Every comic has terrible runs, but they don't reboot them. Just because Thor wandered from bad story to bad story from #300 to #336 to the point where virtually all of his supporting cast had been effectively written out of the book, Walt Simonsin didn't come in and start over--he made some changes, changed the tone, and *moved forward*. That's what should have happened.

I agree. The Archive Legion should have never come into existence.