Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Which Legion is the Best Legion and why.

1.Original Pre-Crisis Legion(1958-1985)

2.Post-Crisis Legion (Pocket Universe Superboy)

3.Five Year Gap Legion

4.Sw6 Batch (clones)

5.Zero Hour Legion (DnA Archie Legion)

6.Superboy's Legion (Elseworlds)

7.Mark Waid's Legion (current series)

Post-Crisis Legion and Superboy's Legion are tied for me. Love 'em both.

But there are elements of other Legions that I like as well. For instance, Shikari is about a bazillion times more interesting to me than Dawnstar.

Have to go with the one I fell in love with: 1.Original Pre-Crisis Legion(1958-1985) Particularly the Levitz Era.


Lone Wolf Legionnaire, did you know you could have done this as a poll?

If you had clicked on "POLL" instead of "NEW", you could have made the question as a poll and gotten free tabulation. People could then still post their opinions and thoughts.

1.Pre Crisis Legion 1958-1985, preferably the Shooter/Swan and Bates/Cockrum eras.

2.This one, believe it or not...it's not so much that this one is close to the Pre-Crisis Legion, it's that all the others were so bad IMO.

What's redeemed this one? Well SuperGirl for one thing...plus the return of KK and I personally like the tweak to Triplicate Girl's origin.

The rest don't rate to me really...I will say that probably the one I found most offensive was the Byrned Legion....that was the Legion that killed the original so therefore it is the one I dislike the most...Levitz be damned.

Well, I think everyone who even vaguely knows me here will know what my answer is; but why the pejorative term for it? It's the ONLY one you apply an evil term to.

I'm with Quis on this one

In order:

1. Pre-Crisis (By era: 1. Hamilton/Siegal/Forte/Swan; 2. Shooter/Swan; 3. Levitz; 4. Bates/Cockrum; 5. Everyone else)

2. Post-Crisis

3. Superboy's Legion

4. SW6

5. Five Years Later

6. Waid/Kitson (could easily jump to fourth place with a few good issues)

7. Post-Zero Hour (about tied between the Archie and DnA era, though the first year by itself would probably be in third place)

Here's the way I rank them, and I do split them up differently from how LWL did:

1. Giffen/Bierbaum 5YL Legion (the 38-issue (I think) Terra Mosaic, basically, is what I'm talking about. It had flaws, but it was also the most powerful storytelling the Legion has ever seen.)

2. DnA/Simone Reboot Legion (underrated. Started to wander around a bit at the end, but good stuff. I'm measuring from the Blight storyline to Gail Simone's arc.)

3. Waid/Kitson Threeboot (I presume everyone's familiar with it.)

4. Levitz era original Legion (yes, I rank it lower than Waid/Kitson. Levitz's dialogue is just too comic-book-expositiony-formal and it grates on me. Which is not to say I don't like this era; I do, very much. I have pre- and post-Crisis in here; 1980 to Magic Wars)

5. Pre-Levitz original Legion (1958-1980. I know that this era could be further broken down, but I don't have the knowledge to do it)

6. Post-Zero-Hour Reboot Legion (I don't mean to insult this era by ranking it this low. I liked it. I just liked everything above it more.)

7. SW6 Batch Legion (see comment for 6.)

8. Post-Terra-Mosaic, Pre-Zero-Hour Legion, including Legion on the Run (now this was bad. It was dark and it was bland. Legion comics aren't that complicated. At their best they're light and exciting. Now, they can also be dark and exciting, like the DnA Legion, or light and bland, like the post-Zero-Hour reboot Legion, and the results won't be too bad. So you can be dark or you can be bland. But not both.)

Never read Superboy's Legion.

1. Pre-Crisis (Adventure and Pre-Adventure, then S/LSH, then Levitz. then etc.)

2. Wak (Really got into the LSH with this run and got me interested in reading the other stuff, I rank near par with Levitz's because I can't read PL's dialog without snickering though think his plots were excellent.)

3. Post-Crisis (Since this was all Levitz... it was not bad. The required retcons were getting cumbersome and his dialog wasn't getting much better the upgraded paper is nice though.)

4. Superboy's Legion (The first LSH comic i bought, came out the month I started reading comics seriously again after a 7 or 8 year hiatus. Was one of the better Elseworlds i've read. Picked up some reboot issues based on this)

5. Post-Zero Hour(Really inconsistent, some good stuff, still havent read it all)

6. SW6 and 5YL. (Havent read beyond the first few issues. Very dense storywise and I gave up because I had rapidly read all the preboot LSH to the end of Levitz but didn't know it well-enough to absorb the retcons.)

I don't really dislike any of the eras. I do have a soft spot for the weirdness of the silver age though.

I agree with Matthew E about Levitz' writing style. Reading that stuff along with Roy Thomas, Claremont etc from that generation can be grating. I loved that stuff back then but these days prefer either modern writing or the more simplistic silver age stuff.

No I did not know that,I have not started enough posts to know all the ins and outs of Legion World.
Thanks for the info.

1. 5 years later Legion. This is the Legion that I started with. Boy was I confused. Kent Shakespeare, Kono, and Jo Nah became my favorite characters. Followed this from issue one until Zero Hour.

2. Waid/Kitson Threeboot. I like this version. It is moving a little slow but so did the baxter Levitz series in places.

3. Levitz Post-Crisis Legion. I had to get these to fill in all the questions I had in the gap.

4. Superboy's Legion. Just got this and thought it was great. Probably tied with 3.

5. All the others. I'm still working through Legionnaires and the DNA era (starting with Legion Lost and then on through). The Post Zero Hour is low on my list except the DNA stuff. (Why is it called the Archie Legion?)

I'm new here so I'll say:

Hello!

I'd just like to chime in that I'm not a fan of Levitz' dialogue myself. Levitz was very inventive and clever plotwise with what was done by the previous creative teams but his dialogue made much of the Baxter Run very difficult reading IMO.

Given the fact that much of the Legion mythos were being deconstructed during the Baxter Run. I'm really not a fan of that era of the Legion even the Pre Crisis portion...and I consider it to be a really depressing era, the Baxter era, in which the Legion was just absolutely blown to pieces.

Stil..got to admit that Levitz hit an all time Comic Grandslam with his work on GDS...he was so good in every aspect, that the momentum from that arc carried him for the rest of his writing career, pretty much free of criticism and made him a Legion untouchable...


Honestly...reading the Baxter run...it's an insult to Roy Thomas to compare his dialogue to Levitz. Roy's worst stories didn't require 5 and a half espressos just to stay focused on a storyline featuring my all time favorite characters...while Levitz Baxter stories..well sometimes they did lmao. All of that is JMO of course.

I'll have to mess with the era definitions a bit too. I don't really consider Superboy's Legion in the same category as the others, but it was an enjoyable Elseworlds.

1. Five Year Gap: Layered, complex, interesting. Top rate science fiction. I had grown up and so had the Legion. Much more of a family than a "super hero team". Shared history and shared losses bringing them together.

2. DNA and Coipel: Fresh look, magnificent art, creative stroylines, Legion of the Damned and Legion Lost were gripping page turners.

3. Levitz Era: Levitz wrote some great stories and some bad ones too, but I think he understood pacing and how to utilize such a big cast better than anyone. Each Legionnaire developed an individual personality. By the end of his run everyone had grown and changed. Also the Legion's most popular run if I'm not mistaken.

4. Adventure Era - The foundation for everything else. Lots of hits and lots of misses. By today's standards the story telling wasn't always the greatest, but for it's time very cutting edge.

5. SW6: Loved their introduction in the main Legion book. The early issues of Legionnaires had some good moments. Cera Kesh,anyone?

6. Post Zero Hour: Some good moments. The early reintroductions were fun. The early interactions of Cosmic Boy and Colossal Boy were classic. The mistakes, though, were unforgivable; Projectra as a snake, Andromeda the flying nun, Thunder, Appartition as a Carggite brought back to life by the power of love, Emerald Vi, Bizarro Legion. Some really bad stuff.

7. Threeboot: Unnecessary reboot, I was insulted by all the plot threads left unresolved, twists in origins not working for me. The pace is much too slow. Quite painful for me to read.

8. Legion on the Run up to Zero Hour: What a mess. The Legion at its worst. Rokk is the Time Trapper?

The post 5 year gap stories really did it for me. The Legionairres had finally grown up (after 30 some years!), lost the need for costumes and silly code names. Much more like what I think space-hereos in the future would be like. It was grim, gritty and funny. wasn't too excited about the SW-6 Legionairres showing up but it was an unexpected twist.

As far as the current run goes; I don't know... it feels like it's lacking something. I've seen this expressed here by many others. I don't hate it but do find the whole teens vs. adults premise burdensome and kinda hard to swallow.

BTW, does anyone remember a story from way back where the youthfulness of the Legion was explained by an anti-aging serum or something. I have a vague memory of this but apparently I don't have the issue this was mentioned in my posession or I imagined the whole thing.

I believe you're refering to SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES # 235, in which it was revealed that the Legionnaires had been brainwashing Superboy to keep him in the dark about why they hadn't aged in the years since he'd known them. Medical advances had prolonged life to such a degree that, by the 30th century, it was implied that adolescence continues well into the 20s (which was meant to explain why the Legionnaires were still "Boy" and "Girl").

1. The Levitz Legion

2. The Shooter/Swan Legion

3. The WaK Legion

4. The Archie Legion (mostly because it was the one I grew up with)

5. The Bates/Grell/Cockrum Legion

6. Legionnaires volume 1

7. The DnA Legion

8. Everything else

9. The Post-Five-Year-Gap Legion

That's the one! A childhood friend and I used to share our comincs and he must have had that one.
Thanks He Who Wanders!

1. TMK Legion: The complexity, the stories, maturity, continuity and consequence. These were what made this run of the Legion the best in my opinion.

2. DnAnO Legion: The Blight as a kickoff was great together with LOST & Worlds and the eventual series. It seemed to make the Legion shine brighter in such a tarnished backdrop. The thematic follow-up to the Great Darkness wasn't as impactful as the real GDS but if anything, DnAnO made something out of Kid Quantum (who's the Legionnaire in their run that I would like to see most in Waid-Kitson's run).

3. Levitz Legion: Loved the stories during this era (Great Darkness, LSH vs LSV). The characters was quasi-stereotypical but reflective of the reality that friction between characters weren't always expressed in punches.

Without question: #1 The original pre-crisis Legion.
Specifically the Levitz era, and the removal of Superboy from the title in issue #259.

While the 1970s 'pre-crisis' legion is my number 1, this very time period in the 1970s (Bates, Levitz, some Conway) that captured my imagination also had some of the stuff that bothered me the most:
Bates and early Levitz experimentally tried to explore characters insecurities and mental states in ways that made them seem like basket cases, not heroes. (Condo's death was noble but he seemed far too unconfident to have ever been a legion academy cadet, let alone a legionnaire.) And I am still horrified at how casually Bates snuffed out Invisible Kid. Pretty much a Tasha Yar-type departure.

2nd up I would put the post-ZH legion all the way through the DnA legion, its entire continuous 10 year existence. I think the first post-ZH years are underrated. Lots of interesting exploration of the characters and their relationships. Also, I enjoyed the suspense of finding out what things from the original universe would re-surface and how. And I loved all the cross-overs with XS and Flash, and Ferro Lad's non-fatal role in defeating the sun-eater in the 20th century. Starboy - Starman stuff. Yeah, those things wreak havoc with continuity, but they were fun. Yes there were blunders like "Thunder" and I was sick of Violet's on-again off-again relationship with the Emerald Eye.
And too much Jo and Tinya (but some of that I liked.) And I never got Inferno, and always missed Sun Boy. I'll defend Monstress for the comic relief though. And Dreamy had developed into a very honed, tough and interesting character.

Third I would put the 5 year gap legion. I think it was conceptually brilliant, but when they couldn't get artists to do all that work and there were pages upon pages of small uniform panels, reading was always a little bit of a torture.

Fourth, I would put the present legion. I like the characterization but I am waiting to see how it evolves, especially with the addition of Supergirl.

Fifth, I would put the silver age stuff through and including the Shooter stuff. I love it to death, but story-telling and society have evolved so much. It's hard to compare.

Sixth, I would put the Gerry Conway stuff in the early 1980s. People tend not to like some of the Scooby-Doo type plots, but I thought there was a lot of interesting character interaction and development in there, and I liked the revelation of RJ Brand to be Cham's dad.

Seventh -- people will throw tomatoes at me -- but Great Darkness aside, I wasn't fond of a lot of the late 80s Levitz pre-gap stuff. While I enjoyed the idea of the introduction of sci-fi-ish members like Tellus and Quislet, I ended up not liking the characters. And I was bored with Wildfire/Dawnstar because they just attracted and repelled and didn't really interact that much. And I found that many of the classic characters got so little of the limelight. Some of the best character development was for KK -- right before he got killed off.

1) Pre-Crisis Legion because that's what I grew up with.

2) The Five Year Gap Legion up until they blew up the Earth.

1. The Levitz Era -- The comments about Paul's dialogue/pacing flaws have some merit, but Levitz should be credited with bringing real personality to the characters ... Blok, for instance, was different from Sun Boy, and Tellus was distinct from Lightning Lad, etc. For me, a deep nostalgia surrounds this era and makes it number-one in my heart.

Which leads to ...

2) The Giffen/Bierbaum Five Years Later Legion ... in art, dialogue and plot, seemingly, this is the polar opposite of the relatively sunny Levitz Legion -- but it isn't. The darkness of the 5YL Legion is enhanced by what preceded it under Levitz, which makes the poignancy of how the Legion had fallen all that more real. Levitz/5YL are two sides of the same coin. I really liked seeing them as adults, and so I wasn't thrilled when SW6 turned up.

All the other versions of the Legions meld together, for me, and have no special ranking on the like/dislike chart. They are merely different interpretations of the characters that, to me, were definitively captured by Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen.

I grew up with SW6 Legion first (everyone was hitting comic book stores for the Death of Superman). I never touched the LoSH book except for the Zero Hour issues..... Then everything got rebooted, and I was excited (sorry!) because I was able to see the original story unfold. As I learned more about the Legion I because to read more of the older books, and I grabbed a few archives... but for me the Legion I loved the most were those: the SW6 guys and Year 1 & 2 of DnA. This reboot was kind of unnecessary, yea, but I had lost interest in the Archies, and I'm kind of looking forward to a new start.

1.Original Pre-Crisis Legion(1958-1985)

2.Superboy's Legion

3.Legion of Super-Heroes Cartoon

4.Five Year Gap Legion

5.Post-Crisis Legion (Pocket Universe Superboy)

6.Sw6 Batch (clones)

7.Zero Hour Legion (DnA Archie Legion)

8.Mark Waid's Legion (current series) [/QB][/QUOTE]

I don't know about "best"...but if you want my personal favorites...

1. Five Year Later/SW-6 The rich history of the Legion was still mostly intact, and had even been improved in my eyes (Laurel Gand was far more interesting that Kara Zor-El ever was or would be; Valor had all of Mon-El's 30th Century history, and a far better 20th Century one). It was a bit challenging to keep up with at times, but if you were up to it it was the deepest, richest treatment of the property to date. (Though yeah, despite Stuart Immomen's beautiful art, "Legion on the Run" sucked bad...)

And the SW-6 Legionnaires...they were what brought me to Legion when they got their own book. I saw the promos and went "Whoa...they have cool costumes, and most of the stupid 'Lad/Lass' names are gone!"

2. "Legion 2.0" (aka the Postboot/Archie and DNA Legions). A fresh start, with some of the ideas that had become unweildy (one inspirational figure with an entire DC universe of superheroes?) discarded, some interesting twists on old ideas (and yeah, some bad ones, ie Snake Jeckie, and way overdoing Livewire's bad luck). This was "the" Legion for most of the time I've been reading the characters.

3. Levitz/Giffen Well, heck, how can one argue with the era of the Legion with the greatest commercial and critical success? "The Great Darkness Saga" alone makes this team deserve it's accolates.

4. Waid and Kitson. After so much effort to modernize the Legion, this was disturbingly retro in the wrong way (sigh...here come the "Lad/Lass" names and Tinya's bell bottoms again) but, like the Giffen/Beirbaum Legion, makes more sense when read close together. Though shoving Superbrittney into it still sucks.

5. Superboy's Legion. Eh...Beautiful art, but despite using all the Silver Age names and Kal-El Superboy, in other ways it was farther out there than the Reboot or Waid/Kitson ever were. Start with the fact that my favorite of the Founders, Lightning Lad/Livewire, was all but written out of it, and when he did show up he came across as some kind of prissy pseudo-Brit...not bad as an Elseworlds, but I'd never want an ongoing series based on it.

Everything else...well, I'm just not familiar enough. I've got a few Adventure Comics and DC Blue Ribbon digest compilations, as well as the four issues of the first LSH series (all Adv. reprints) and the Silver Age was very very strange. It certainly can't be beat for raw creativity, and new concepts being thrown out left and right, but by today's standard the characterization and storytelling was awful