Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Visionaries of Tomorrow Legion Creator Tenure

Sadly, that Website no longer exists, but some of my biographies are available on Jefferson Airplane's official site. Here's one example.

Thanks for the link. Nice site. Great band. Great job on the bio's.

Thanks. It was a blast being able to research and write about them.

You definitely can't include solo series...if you do this becomes a totally different list with guys like Jerry Siegel, Jim Mooney, Curt Swan and Cary Bates smashing everyone else and not entirely due to the number of Legion stories they have produced.


And I can see point behind that against argument with the Wanderers as well, since they didn't really have many ties to the Legion other than a shared Universe/Timeframe.


L.E.G.I.O.N. on the other hand did feature multiple true Legionaires and their ancestors, and it was almost exlusively created, written and drawn by renown Legion creators like Mark Waid, Barry Kitson and Keith Giffen who all had multiple and lengthy turns on the actual Legion book. I always thought of it as a Legion book...sure not all the characters were recognizable...but you could say that about several versions of the actual Legion since then as well.

Yeah, I'm leaning toward including L.E.G.I.O.N.

We may be on different pages regarding solo series, though. I include things like Karate Kid, Cosmic Boy, Timber Wolf and Inferno. I don't include Superboy and Supergirl stories unless there is a significant Legion connection.

I agree with Portfolio Boy. Superboy and Supergirl were created for non-Legion stories and I don't think of them as Legionnaires first.

No need to go to the touble. However, please advise if you spot any errors on the list. A great many people helped with the original version and I have no doubt that I allowed errors and typos to creep in when rebuilding the list.

I think it's just amazing that there are so many whose contribution to Legion lore is so out of proportion to their actual number of complete issues (Cockrum, Grell) versus those who wrote or drew so many issues that don't seem to have had any long lasting effect on what we consider "important" stories; this list seems to show that there's an awful lot of those reboot stories that don't seem to have made a whole lot of difference to a lot of us.

Creators tend to last much less than the labourers, and that's all to common in franchise comics. That is all. The creators which rose the Legion to new heights, for all I know, is Siegel/Swan (converted the Legion into an actual team, not a one-shot), Shooter (for introducing half of the Legion's universal concepts), and Cockrum/Levitz (rest is history).


Who brought them to new lows? John Byrne, for you-know-what. Giffen, for a big you-know-what, though he deserves a high for unknowingly converting the Legion into a more fanfare-centered franchise... and Waid, Waid, and Waid. The Legion of Three Waids consist of throwing away a 35-year old cornerstone of DC and eliminating its potential for mass (by that I mean 'general population' mass) popularity), THEN revamping a relatively young revamp to attempt getting kids to read it (well, at least he convinced at least one ), and when that wasn't successful... bringing in a Super to 'aid' the Legion, which is always effective. Not!

Sorry, but to ignore Levitz/Giffen or Levitz/Lightle is simply unforgivable. And I'd say Keith solo was the ultimate high, for proving the Legion could be way more than funny costumes and fist-fights.

PenaltyKillah, though I am thinking totally different about Giffen, I love your comment about Waid... he really is kind of a tragic figure, being such a big fan but failing so miserably in all his attempts to "right" the book...

To Waid's defense, his early issues on Legionnaires were very good, much better than what was going on on the "adult" (dumber) title. And I think the reboot itself was wrong, so I wouldn't blame Waid for trying something else because this is what DC had asked him. And you can't fix what was good in the first place (as time has proved).

That's right, but wasn't Waid some kind of an editor back then when Zero Hour destroyed my faith in the comic book industry? I don't know for sure but as far as I remember, he very gladly jumped on the "let's erase all Legion Lore" bandwagon...

But while Waids fault concerning Zero Hour might be discussed, I still am totally aghast how a splendid writer like him could come up with such a callow concept for the Legion Threeboot...

The only time Waid was an Editor for DC, he was also the Editor for the first 5 issues of the 5YG. He didn't do editing long...about a year or so. He got out of editing when he quit the 5YG....was still in the 80's I think.

Waid never got to write the Legion he wanted to write...5YG wasn't the Legion to him, it wasn't the Legion to a lot of us. And this is not a bash...it's just a statement that it wasn't the Legion that made a lot of Legion fans, Legion fans.

To me the 5YG is no different than the end of the Levitz run, the Reboot, the Threeboot...none of them were the book I really wanted to read. So I don't think Waid commited some horrible crime by rebooting the title..IMO it had already been rebooted and the original Legion was already gone. And I think that's the way Waid felt too..and the reason he rebooted the 5YG was so the continuity would make sense. But anyway, they were all reboots to me. The Legion was no longer special to me when Waid rebooted it...either time.

And none of them are really any better or any worse...I think Shooter has done the best Legion since the Crisis...but it's not that great.
It's still not the Legion to me. It's just basically a team book. I will give Shooter this...the book doesn't feel like as much of a retread to me for some reason with him writing it...and the characters seem more alive(even with the bad dialogue).

But now...I am pretty damn tired of rebooting. I don't really care anymore, I just want them to stop rebooting the title. Just find one that works and stop rebooting it. But they aren't going to stop doing that until it sells better.

I am sick of sitting through the reintroductions/intepretations lol. That is old...


Because every time they just have to throw some tweaks in there...and they don't really do anything new. They don't really introduce anyone new...the last memorable villains created for this book, were created by Jim Shooter back in the Silver Age. That is lame...

We had this discussion, and talked about the reasons why to me, the Legion that grew up with me (though with major continuity challenges) felt very real and the Kiddie book that followed did not.

But that is the past, and you're right: it is not funny to get a new legion version every five years or so. thus, they never will be able to build up some decent "Legion Lore" to thrive from. The series was robbed its history, its tradition - you say it was in 1985, I'm saying it was in 1994, still since then, hardly any "new history" was established. The Reboot had its (few) moments, but mostly they tackled problems like Tangleweb - the really "history making" events like White Triangle were too few, they thought it would be better to send half of the team to the 20th century for a year to do some crossover galore...

And the Threeboot continuity feels incredibly bland, not a hinch of "history feeling" there til Shooter took over.

Another reboot is just another attempt to bring back old glory. But even if "Legion Lore" in its classic version is reintroduced - thus providing the book tons of loose end stories to thrive on - there probably won't be a large enough crowd to sustain it. We saw what the nitpickers did to Lightning Saga and Action Legion - they just did not want to accept it.

But what is the solution? Continuing the current Threeboot will never succeed, not with the shipwreck that Mark Waid delivered as a basis. Of course, with all its blandness there is a lot that any writer can add without contradicting anything that came before...

But I'll take the Classic attempt. I liked Lightning Saga for its feeling, Action Legion for its story, both for the characters featured: Classic Legionnaires who might just be the original ones.

And maybe, they could finally add some new villains too...

Well, I meant Giffen's 'new low' as in his choice to defect the Legion from Levitz's run, to 'pay respect' or whatsoever. Or he couldn't think of a storyline to continue from the Magic Wars. What he should deserve, though, is giving the Legion a new high in storytelling quality, especially in character depth and stuff. I did not ignore the major players in the Legion's tenure, just those who initiated its descent into new heights (that's why there's Cockrum but not Grell - though copying Cockrum's designs off his sketchbook has certainly helped) or the lows (so I wouldn't blame McCraw, Peyer, or Stern, who pulled off an impressive half-decade of Archie Legion issues - they did the best under what the editorial imposed upon.)

Giffen did an homage to Levitz by starting a-fresh, but not ignoring the past. Keith had such a great respect for the original run he did something that not even DC board dared to: re-think the LSH but recognizing what came before. Fine thread to run, in fact. So fine nobody was able to do so after him.
At that time, there was no Sandman or Starman, which became sole properties of Gaiman and Robinson. Giffen thought that chapter of Legion had to be finished at that point. Which makes Keith's choice even more impressive, because it would be much simpler to keep going from The Magic Wars, for obvious reasons.
And I was not impressed by Archie Legion. I am impressive how long it lasted considering nobody dares to place it into one the best runs of the book. For much less, Keith, Tom & Mary were "left in the dark" and "shot" by TPTB.
I am still waiting for a real reappreciation of TMK's run by DC. A HC should be just the beginning of it...

I concur. The editorial at DC, Byrne, Giffen's creative decisions... you gotta admit, it hurt the Legion's potential of keeping up with the Titans and possibly the X-Men. If something (in this case, any Legion incarnation after CoIE) doesn't have sufficient time to build up and generate the hype and lore needed to create some buzz, it would be even more difficult to instantly start all over, especially when the backstory isn't there, references and relevances to the past are insufficient or just superficial, etc. One more note about Keith... while I mentioned before that his decision to deviate from the previous run, he did bring in a whole new fanbase with plots that, compared with comics published that time and even now, managed to humanize the characters that we all love. And especially for a futuristic book leaning on the sci-fi genre! For that, I tip my hat to Keith, as well as Tom & Mary.

Holy wow... not one for TMK? Very uncalled-for... and the Archie Legion's run was 'impressive' for staying that long without any intervention from above. If DC thought that Reboot was delighting the bulk of the Legion's fanbase, especially the ones enchanted by TMK, by keeping Waid's non-editorial decision... and more significantly, letting sales plummet during that decade... they were very wrong indeed. I mean, the
'90s was, all in all, the Great Depression for the comic medium. Creator-owned comics was on the rise, Giffen did something like it with his deviation of the Legion, but the point is that those great comic franchises were able to survive with all the licensing deals for those Saturday morning cartoons. It was the time when alternatives had to be explored for those companies to survive, and bringing back the Legion's old times (especially a retelling of the Swan and Shooter years) didn't cut the cake.

I'm amazed he was only on for 33 issues. I hated his art some much that I actually stopped reading the Legion for a couple of months before starting again like a crazed junkie.

But now, based on Superboy's comment, I guess I have to track down some example of Laroque's work in other books. I've hated his stuff for so long, it's probably time that I give him a second look.

(Dons fireproof suit) I actually really enjoyed Waid's recent work on the book. I was just fine with a new reboot considering that the Legion that got "booted" this time wasn't "mine." I'd really disliked the DnA run on the book and wanted to see the team get back to more of a club atmosphere. To me, WaK's Legion felt more like "my" Legion than the Reboot Legion ever did. One of the highlights of Comic-Con for me was catching Waid at the end of a Boom! Comics panel (it was right before the Keith Giffen spotlight in the same room) and telling him how much I'd enjoyed it.

As much as I enjoyed Threeboot, I imagined it as a better fit if it was an Image Comics series or something... that's how far it was from the original look and feel of the Legion, the one that was progressively building to be one of DC's cornerstones... yet it kept getting shifted around, not allowing the sands of time to build around it. All in all, Mark Waid's a genius where it counts. But directing the Legion back to the right track? Not so much.

Try his Flash run with Mark Waid and José Marzán Jr. He is one of my favorite Flash artists. And Mike DeCarlo is a great cartoonist (most of his work is with Captain Carrot and Archie, for instance), but definitely not good with superhero fare.

I gotta agree with you that Threeboot is way better than the Reboot ever was, but in spite of some highlights, most of his run was undermined by irregular pencilling, a very weak board concept (youth against adults cannot endure too long) and some lack of characterization.

I can't think of Mike DeCarlo ever doing any pencilling...although I am sure he did.

I think you got him confused on the Archie stuff though, with Dan DeCarlo...the guy that was the Archie artist decades, and he was a great cartoonist, especially outside of his Arhcie stuff. But even that Archie look was copied by DC and Marvel(or hell maybe it was Dan DeCarlo himself doing it).

He's much better without Mike DeCarlo overpowering his pencils with all those heavy inks.