Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Visionaries of Tomorrow Shooter: It's Official

These (list of ten in a larger article) are the ten things that make the Legion the Legion, as far as I can tell. And it's not just my opinion, either--I didn't make that list up, I just compiled it from what many Legion fans have said.

LR,

Geoff Johns (with help from Brad Meltzer) has been revealing over the last year or so that the current Superman, while an adolescent, traveled to the future for adventures with the Legion. All of this has happened as a result of the "New Earth" after Infinite Crisis. He has statues of his Legion in his Fortress of Solitude. This new/old Legion includes everyone except Chemical King and Tyroc (natch). Projectra is Sensor Girl in this Legion. Lightning Lad died and was resurrected in this Legion, as in the original Adventure stories. Also, Dawnstar is bisexual, Wildfire lives in Red Tornado's "body," Triplicate Girl has only one body left and calls herself "Una," and Karate Kid has been brought back from the dead, somehow. That's the Karate Kid running around in "current day" stories like in "Countdown." Most importantly, perhaps, the Starman in JSofA now is the grown-up Thom Kallor from this Legion. It's been strongly hinted that this Legion may be from one of the other "52" earths. Karate Kid, Sensor Girl, Timber Wolf, Dream Girl, Dawn Star, Star Boy, Dawnstar and Wildfire traveled back in time with the resurrection lightning rods to retrieve some sort of entity (Barry Allen? Bart? Johnny Quick?) from the speed force for Brainiac 5. At the same time, Wally West and family re-appeared.

The upcoming Action Comics story seems set in a time with the Legionnaires even older than in the "Lightning Saga" in JLofA and JSofA. Superman has stated that the last time he saw his Legion was the first crisis on infinite earths.

This new/old Legion has sparked some controversy. Johns has clearly altered the "original" Legion as he sees fit. (Like Wildfire being housed in Red Tornado's android body.) We don't really know if this is truly the original Legion (with all the Adventure/Superboy history intact) or a Johns facsimile with material differences, not just tweaks and developments.

Tenz as a lawyer was pre-ordained in the "Legion" to which you refer as "Legion," at least as a precursor to becoming President of Bismol. Tenz as chef is good tongue-in-cheek IMO and everybody needs hobbies so the point I guess I am making, it is easy for us to try and (over?) analyze what "Legion" is while forgetting that few have encyclopedic knowledge of 50 years of details to be dictating what "Legion" is, whether we be fan or writer and even in defining what "Legion" is to ourselves is a tricky propostion.

Or I suppose, maybe through dialogue we are just trying to flesh out our own feelings?

Personally, I blame editors because it's the more "problem with authority" thing to do.


My view of the discussion here, what has fleshed out is that what Waid added is the smaller part of the "problem" and the real problem is with what is missing? That and the slow storylines.

The LSH started as a group of powered youths protecting the universe, set 1000 yrs in the future. We met Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, and Cosmic Boy. Other characters were added, relationships were developed and details were added.

There were times when neither LL, SG, or CB were i the stories. There were times when Ultra Boy and Phantom Girl weren't either. Some stories didn't mention the Legion charter, Academy try outs, or leader elections. They were still Legion stories.

I understand some readers may not like these characters or their actions. But DC produces the book, the creators define the characters. They call it the Legion. You may not like it, but in the end it is the Legion.

I've read your Legion Manifesto before, Matthew, and responded to it on page two of this thread .

The only thing I have to add is that these 10 characteristics seem too general. They could apply to any characters set in the future who represent some legacy of Superman, etc. They do not address the specific qualities of the characters who make up the Legion most of us have come to know and care about.

How so? Being "drafted into politics" is not synonymous with becoming a lawyer. The US, for example, has had several presidents who were not lawyers.

Anyway, this comment misses the point. If Tenz had left the Legion to enter law school, this development would have built on what had gone before. But if the first time we see Tenz in the threeboot is him acting as a lawyer with no previous Legion connection, then I'm left wondering why this character has to be Tenz at all. It seems to have been done solely for its surprise value.

One need not have an "encyclopedic knowledge" to appreciate the high points of the team and important milestones for each major character. One should not expect fans to "forget" these milestones in order to understand or appreciate the Legion today. Your comment implies that fans aren't intelligent enough or can't be bothered to learn fascinating character histories (an attitude with which Waid seems to agree) -- but fandom itself was built on learning such histories.

And what if we are? Obviously, we all care a great deal about the Legion (of whatever version) to devote so much time to discussing it.

On this I agree. Good stories can win over even the most hardened fans -- perhaps even me.

True, but these characters and ideas didn't cease to exist just because they were "off-stage" for a time.

This reminds me of the old saying: If you call a dog's tail a leg, how many legs does the dog have?

Answer: Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

DC is, of course, free to assemble a team consisting of Brother Power the Geek, Prez, Snapper Carr, and the Man with Ten Eyes, and call it the Legion of Super-Heroes. So what? That doesn't mean I have to eat whatever the company puts on the table.

As for the off stage comment, I agree those concepts don't cease to exist. But it was still a Legion story without them. It was Legion before they had Jo and Tinya, before the first leader election.


You don't have to eat it. But DC defines the Legion, it's their property. If you don't like it, don't read it. Say "It's not my Legion" but don't say "It's not the Legion."

Hmmm. Interesting list. I'd say those ten items are necessary, but not sufficient, to define the Legion. Perhaps the problem occurs when they are considered sufficient.

It's all semantics, but I disagree. I think an established character (or team of characters) must have certain essential characteristics, without which they are not the same character (or team). What if DC decided that henceforth Superman weighs 500 lbs, has blue skin, has no super-powers except for super-stretching, comes from Atlantis, and has a secret identity of Blackie Thrombosis, lead guitar for a Whitesnake tribute band? Would you still say that is Superman, just not your Superman?

You're making a lot of sense, You who are Wandering

I'd like to add one thought: If this new book can't be compared to the old Legion continuities, then they should not have CALLED it Legion of Superheroes. As the Wanderer aptly stated, all that remained of the Legion in Waids run was the name of the team (which even became an intergalactic hippie movement)and the code-names. If Waid would have liked to tell his story of the future, he could have told it WITHOUT calling it "The Legion of Superheroes", and he could have avoided the constant comparing and bickering and complaining.

It's as if you would be making music, calling yourself "Nirvana" and publishing an album "Nevermind", but doing hip hop music - and then being surprised when people come to your door complaining "This is not Nirvana", "My Nirvana is about grunge, not hip hop", "Nirvana is defined by their greatest concert 'MTV unplugged'" or whatever.

Waid tried to tell his Legion story without ANY classic element. And it could even have worked if he just would have added SOME milestone that was worth remembering. Just taking away all the classic Legion Lore but NOT producing any new one to me is the reason why so many Legion fans can't really get hooked on the Threeboot... and it's amazing "success" at the box office and the rather small number of NEW Legion fans it managed to attract makes me rather certain that five years from now, the Waid run will be mercifully forgotten by the largest part of "Fandom"...

... which is not saying that the Threeboot as a continuity might not survive if Shooter manages to make it "hot"... as I said, to me this Legion is a rather clean sheet which gives Shooter all the possibilities to establish an exciting run...

Cheryl Lad and Chemical King have already done an excellent job of refuting this assertion. I'd like to add, though, that if DC had always defined the Legion without input from fans, the Legion would never have made it past their first appearance in Adventure Comics # 247. Bear in mind that they were supposed to be one-shot characters. It was fan interest that brought them back for a return engagement and played a significant role in defining how the series developed during the Weisinger years.

The notion that DC says what the Legion is and that fans can either like it or lump it strikes me as a position of weak resignation on the part of fans. It portrays fans as junkies who are at the mercy of a drug dealer: some Legion is better than no Legion so we can get our monthly "fix"? We may complain about the quality of the Legion but we continue to buy it because we have no choice?

If this is what we as fans are reduced to, then perhaps it's better to just say no.

Of course, it is their property, but they don't seem to know what to do with it since Zero Hour, and this latest reboot hasn't been the commercial success they were expecting. Which means that people don't buy it (remember, it used to be one of the best selling DC titles)

The reason could be that this new series they call "Legion of Super Heroes" isn't perceived as the Legion.

Doesn't it strike you as odd that there's been more talking and curiosity about the Legion (outside of these boards) because of the JLA/JSA crossover and the upcoming Action Comics arc... which ironically don't feature the current series characters... than about the current series?

Superman use to not fly, Batman use to carry a gun. Characters change overtime. These characters are concepts. They are dynamic and open to interpretations. If Picasso painted a shoe and called it "The Rose" we can comment on his work, but it would still be called "The Rose."

"Waid tried to tell his Legion story without ANY classic element. And it could even have worked if he just would have added SOME milestone that was worth remembering. Just taking away all the classic Legion Lore but NOT producing any new one to me is the reason why so many Legion fans can't really get hooked on the Threeboot... and it's amazing "success" at the box office and the rather small number of NEW Legion fans it managed to attract makes me rather certain that five years from now, the Waid run will be mercifully forgotten by the largest part of "Fandom"..."

Waid's reimagining wasn't that bad. But the fact that is was another reimagining. His first reimagining wasn't successful and this one wasn't either. THIS one though was put together much better.

Besides the really bad "Eat it Grandpa" stuff I thought it was pretty good. Thing is he seemed a bit obsessed with the teenager vs. adults thing. And that was a huge turn off for me.

Not at all. Fans have a tough time accepting changes to their characters. I think more folks don't read this current book because it's not the Legion they remember than because it's a bad book (it's not!)

And that's what I'm saying, don't buy it if you don't like it. But I like it, it is a Legion I would like to read. Saying it isn't Legion suggests your opinon carries more weight than mine.

The fact remains that the current version of the Legion is the official one of New Earth for now and the forseeable future, and Shooter chose to adopt it as his own because he sees his old characters in these Legionnaires.

If fans don't trust Shooter's instincts or his ability to look beyond surface differences and recognize the "real" Legion when he sees it, and choose to ignore them in favor of the Johns/Meltzer facsimiles because of their familiar appearance and nostalgia value, then maybe its time to hang up the hat. The LS Legion, whoever they are, are all about the past -- they've obviously seen better days and are experiencing a middle-aged crisis. The Waid/Shooter Legion has a lot to learn but are pure potential. If forced to choose between the two, I'll go with the Legion that has a future as opposed to a past. That said, I hope I don't have to choose, but DC isn't making it easy by creating a confusing competitive atmosphere that encourages fans to take sides.

I don't think that's it at all. I *loved* Alan Davis' reinterpretation of 'Superboy's Legion' as a bunch of shining-faced smiling youth, and he changed all sorts of stuff (Superboy as RJ Brande's adopted son, Light Lass shoots lasers, Projectra manifests a persons fears and was a snake, Shady control dark-force, etc).

I *hate* when a popular character, such as Spider-man or Superman, gets updated to a really spiffy looking new costume, and then the creative team is *forced* to change it back to the 'classic' look. It's just lazy marketing to hide behind an inflexible branding. The property owner *owns* the property, not the other way around. Charles Xavier gets his back healed, it breaks again, he gets cloned and transfered to a new body, oh, nope, can't have that, it's the chair for you, dude! Xavier can't walk, Spidey can't wear black, Thor can't grow a beard, Wonder Woman can't wear armor, etc., etc. I hate that kind of thing.

I like change. I loved the old Avengers stories where Wasp would change her costume every couple of issues. I've followed Hank Pym from Ant-Man to Giant-Man to Goliath to Yellowjacket and to just 'Hank Pym.'

Change doesn't scare me at all, and a Legion that isn't 'my Legion' is abso-freaking-lutely guaranteed at this point, because I like the core team, and I like Kid Quantum, and I like Shikari, and I like Theena, and all of these things don't exist in the same continuity!

It's not individual quibbly details that bug me, it's creative teams calling a book 'the Legion of Super-Heroes' and not capturing the *essence* of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

It doesn't matter that the Threeboot has a dude named Garth who can throw lightning, has a twin and grew up on a farm if he's been turned into an addle-pated twit (even worse, someone with such a problem with ADD that even a new guy who just walked in the room knows of it by reputation!) who can't finish a sentence about *becoming team leader* without saying, 'ooh, something shiny!' and wandering off to ask Element Lad and Trip if they are dating!

It doesn't matter that they have a team of teenagers set in a shining future if they are transformed into a bunch of squabbling entitled punks who abuse their powers, kill people at the drop of a hat, scheme against each other constantly and live in a scary dystopian universe full of people too scared to stare each other in the face, or step outside of their apartments.

Change every costume, change some skin colors and even species, change powers around, make them older, make them younger, marry them off, give them kids, have some become leaders of their respective worlds, even have a few suffer heroic deaths, but don't mess with what makes them Legion, dammit.

Set, I agree to a point. They always have to go back to the classic...even the minor details.

What is worse is when a new creative team wants to use the classic and completely unravels everything the last creative team did. That really irks me.

Everyone keeps going back to the "classic" Legion because that's where there is the most depth, the most foundation to build upon. That version had a slow cook of thirty years. There was a respect for tradition and the work of writers and artists by new writers and artists who came later. There was also more editorial dedication to consistency. The result was a Legion, which over time, had substance.

It kills me that some "creative teams" can come in and smash it all to heck because their egos have some sort of new vision. I'm all for character growth and evolution, and introducing new characters and ideas, but for some sort of need to drastically change everything, either label it an "Elseworlds" tale or create a new group of characters with a new title. These reboots where everything is changed and twisted into something unrecognizable and totally out of character is just a poor excuse of writers and artists sucking the good out of previous work while disrespecting it at the same time with their own deviations.

The result, in the case of the Legion, has been a fractured mess. These three to five year long reboots just muddy the character waters and leave little for future creative teams to build upon. Five Year Gap was a disaster, Zero Hour not any better, and the Waid thing totally forgettable. The Legion should go back to basics (yes, the Classic Legion) and BUILD upon it for a few years, not tear it down and remake it.

So, what exactly are the elements of the "classic" Legion and why does the threeboot fall short in some ways?

In other threads, I've postulated the theory that the overall "story" of the Legion has to go a certain way for it to be recognizable. There are certain core elements that just have to develop as time goes on. It is interesting, for example, that the previous reboot started out with characters going in very different directions (Gim as first leader, Imra dating Cos, etc.) than in the original continuity. Yet, as time went on, virtually all of the original story lines "corrected" themselves (Cos became the Legion's first influential leader, Imra fell in love with Garth; heck, Garth even lost his arm and died and returned, after a fashion). Furthermore, almost all of the classic '60s/'70s characters reappeared in versions that were still recognizable as their preboot selves, although their names and certain other details had changed. The reboot even featured a wedding and a childbirth, albeit involving different Legionnaires than in the original continuity.

Others can determine how well the threeboot represents these and other classic elements. But it seems to me that if the Legion's story keeps going in this direction anyway (or must keep going in this direction in order to be recognizable), then DC would be better off acknowledging that this is the Legion's story and building from there, instead of constantly trying to rewrite it.

Yes the Original Legion had 30 years worth of history and characters to draw upon, that was one of the things that appealed to me the most about them I miss those characters and that history.
The Re-Booted versions have never lived up to their original counterparts,Maybe that will change with Jim Shooter on board since he in large part created alot of the things I loved about the Original Legion.

I'm not sure where you got this last idea, CJ. My opinion is just as good as yours, and vice versa.

But are we really talking about opinions here, or are we talking about something essential to the Legion? Comic book characters are like characters in any other fictional, literary, or entertainment medium: they have to have certain defining characteristics in order for them to be recognized and accepted as who they are supposed to be. This is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of identifying what the story is really about.

If someone were to rewrite "Huckleberry Finn" as a "modern" story with Huck as a runaway child actor who befriends a closeted gay man and they travel in an SUV across the country, encountering various people until Huck decides not to reveal his friend's secret, would it be recognizable as "Huckleberry Finn"? Probably: the structure and "moral" of the story are still there, even if the details have changed.

But if Huck is now a child actor who leaves on his own without a friend, and who runs from drug dealers, gets in shoot-em-ups, and wins out over the bad guys in a climactic car chase ... how is this recognizable as "Huckleberry Finn", other than the name?

You may like this latter story a great deal -- and it may even be a good story in its own right -- but it's not the story Mark Twain wrote.

The Legion, too, has a structure and a moral of its own. The structure developed over 30+ years and came to be as much a defining characteristic of the Legion as any of the characters, the future setting, etc. The "moral" (or, perhaps "theme" is a better word) is the sense of family and camaraderie that developed among these young people from different worlds as they united for a common goal: the serve humanity (or sentients) as heroes. Both this structure and this theme are missing from what I've seen of the threeboot.

Saying that you like the threeboot Legion doesn't validate its right to be the Legion. As I suggested earlier, you would probably like this story if it were called something else. It might even be a good story on its own (though I was underwhelmed by the issues I read). But is it the Legion (or even a Legion)? I'm not convinced. Perhaps you can still convince me that it is.

Yes, it was mostly time that gave the classic Legion substance.

There were many bad stories, like in the 70s Bates era (not to mention Reflecto...) - but there were as many or more good stories, and all those worked together to build a rich and satisfying continuity with personal biographies for each character, relationships (and changes in those), landmark events and tons of tiny tidbits to pick up years later again, thus making the feel of a coherent universe complete.

All attempts to do so in the reboot were (naturally) rushed, cause they tried to start anew AND at the same time give us back many many elements of the old continuity all at once. The first Legionaire dies after not even five issues (Kid Quantum), which majorly diminished the effect. They killed him just so that there could be one of those nifty statues standing around. And so on.

The Threeboot, on the other hand, totally omitted any classic elements, relying on code names and classic-inspired costumes to get the Legion feeling. That was not enough. I'm currently rereading the Threeboot (for the third time), and it just does not work to me - the characters have no history, no personal biographies and no special characteristics (apart from Brainy and Cos) that define them. Carbon copies, as somebody on this board said. The permises Qaid started with did just not work: You have this hippie movement which does not act like a hippie movement, cause most of the time they are off saving some adults' butts when at the same time they should do something to help their fellow underagers. And so on (I'll post a personal analysis when I'm through with the whole Waid run).

So why do so many people want the classic Legion back? Because nothing can give you this feeling of a rich continuity than when time actually build it. Nothing can substitute tha natural growth of a universe 30 years old. The 5 year gap left many fans puzzled, but I loved it cause it still was a new chapter to the old Legion (that's GOOD change in my eyes - I could look over the continuity issues left by Superboys erasure).

The reboot was just pure slaughter....