Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! LEGION Ending?!?

That certainly sounds like DC editorial staff, capt. I think, given that DnA wanted to do another few issues but were told when to settle up, tho, that a new team has already been set.

I hear you, Kent, but if this "new team" was already in place,

WHERE
ARE
THEY?

When was DnA's departure announced? Late December? Early January? It's been 5 months since we've learned they would be leaving the title, and since then, we've heard crickets chirping in the woods. For comic book industry, this isn't normal... unless there is some genuine hesitation on DC's part about what to do next with LSH.

And let's assume I am dead, dead wrong. Let's assume that the future of LSH is already planned out and will be announced shortly.

If that is indeed case, then to leave the loyal Legion readership confused about the future of the title is DISGRACEFUL! I'll say it again, it's a HORRIBLE way to do business!

I wouldn't be too surprised about how this is being handled. I mean, look at the way they handled the relaunch of the Titans. Rumors about the cancellation lasted for a month or more before we got any sort of confirmation, and then they "let slip" the fact that someone with ties to both the Titans and Young Justice would die, and then let us speculate about that for at least 3 or 4 months before the horrible Graduation Day came out.

I used to respect DC a lot more than Marvel, but lately they don't seem to respect their own characters any more, let alone their readers.

Something else else else to consider re: the relaunch of TEEN TITANS... it is now one of DC's top 5 selling books.

AND a cartoon!

Maybe DC doesn't want to annoucne anything yet about the relaunch cuz it might spoil the end of the current series or make them seem like "lame duck" issues. Gail deserves to have her run get attention by itself rather than be overshadowed by what's going to come after. We don't even know when this supposed relaunch will happen so there's no point making a bug hubub now if it's too premature.

In general, I wouldn't mind knowing about future developments until the solits come out (sometimes I prefer not to know til I actually read the story), but nowadays we've gotten spoiled and expect to know what all the plans are as they happen.

capt. dallas wrote:
When was DnA's departure announced? Late December? Early January? It's been 5 months since we've learned they would be leaving the title, and since then, we've heard crickets chirping in the woods.

Gail Simone confirmed Waid as writer last month, and has been referring to the existence of a "permanent creative team" for months now. It's not the official word, but it's better than complete silence. The release may have been delayed (or in the worst scenario, sidetracked), but Gail's promise of "huge Legion plans" is encouraging.

capt. dallas wrote:
And let's assume I am dead, dead wrong. Let's assume that the future of LSH is already planned out and will be announced shortly.

If that is indeed case, then to leave the loyal Legion readership confused about the future of the title is DISGRACEFUL! I'll say it again, it's a HORRIBLE way to do business!

I agree with you completely, and I'm royally pissed. Allowing a guest writer to leak information to the public is a bizarre tactic to say the least (I can't believe Gail did it without the editor's sanction). Wacker's attitude as he delivered the body blow was snarky, childish, and insulting to Legion fandom. If this is part of DC's marketing plan, I've never seen a worse marketing organization in my life. We're the ones who've kept this franchise alive, and we deserve better.

yep, i also think the announcement of the cancellation was kinda callously thrown out there considering a fandom as rabid as Legion fandom... i feel rather pissy toward TPTB myself...

all we know is that there are "plans" for the Legion, which could mean anything...

having said that, however, i don't even feel a desire to know *what* they are going to do with the Legion... I just want to know that they *will do something* with the Legion on a regular basis, and I feel I'm lacking that, despite past references to "regular creative teams" and so forth...

drama drama drama blah blah blah... i just want legion to be published...

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, T.C.!!!!!

For the past three hours I've been in a heated email argument with a close friend of mine about this very point. I told him that DC is doing a disgraceful job here, deliberately keeping us in the dark when all they have to do is DEFINITIVELY reassure us that DC will continue to have LSH as a regular title (like "rokk steady" just wrote, for legion fandom, our principal concern is that we have a title to buy every month, yes?).

Here was my friend's response to my complaint: "[DC is] building buzz. Good for DC. If the next phase of Legion is well written, this should eventually clear itself up. If I were DC, I would wait 4-12 months to make an announcement. By that point, Legion fans will be so starved they will just be happy to have a book. And hopefully it will be innovative and attract new readers as well."

Well, needless to say, I went ballistic on that premise. We're still arguing back and forth.

If DC waited 4 to 12 months, we wouldn't be starved and happy for a new book. We'd be so pissed that we'd (I'd) boycott any of their titles.

I expect that kind of crap out of Marvel and for their Zombies to faithfully follow. But I'm not a Marvel Zombie. I'd rather just chuck all the titles I buy every month and use the $100+/month to do something else.

Frankly, it became a "lame duck," to use your turn of phrase, the second Wacker uttered the words "this book is cancelled." See the number of posts on the preview when compared to the cancellation/possible relaunch for proof.

That's not to say it won't be a good, or even great, story. Simply tho, announcing the cancellation before her first issue hit has sabotaged her arc.

Yes, that was a poor move.

Cap, I used to work as a marketing professional before I went on to more interesting things. Tell your friend that the last thing a company wants to do is earn the distrust of its customers. The scenario he paints would lead to sour feelings between readers and publisher for a long time to come. Creating buzz is one thing. Yanking a customer's chain is quite another.

Thanks, T.C. You know what's hysterical? My friend? He currently is a marketing professional, earned his M.B.A. too.

I can't wait to read his reaction to your comment. Oh, this should be good...

I think maybe we're being a bit harsh on the marketing boys here.

They've shown they know what they're doing. They're the ones that gave us a Legion Lost TPB even though we told them, "don't do that, bad idea." And they're the ones that made those great changes to the DCMBs.

Oh wait...

We're screwed!

You're all entitled to your opinons and feelings, but personally, I don't see what the big deal is. We've heard that DC does have plans for the Legion (whether it was "official" or not), so I'm content to wait til they tell us what they are. I don't feel DC is screwing with us by not making any relaunch announcements yet.

I can respect your view...

but understand that what you "heard" did not come from DC's Publisher, President, Editor or other Executive. The information has been provided to us by a writer who *seems* to be in the know about what the future holds in store for us.

That this information is coming from Gail, and not from Wacker, is upsetting many of us, Drake, as is the fact that the varied pieces of this "relaunch" puzzle just don't link up smoothly. You can argue they're downright contradictory:

--DnA's (and Batista's) departure is announced 5 months ago, but no replacement team is announced. That's ODD in comicdom when everything is planned out WAY ahead of time.

--Waid admits that he and Kitson are working on a project "dear to their hearts" and many assume that means Legion (why? Kitson worked on L.E.G.I.O.N., not LSH)

--Gail "slips" in an interview that Waid will be the next Legion writer (notice though that SHE never mentions Waid; she only responds to the interviewers question about the direction of Legion after her arc)

--Kitson tells another interviewer that his next work is on JSA, not Legion.

--Wacker pronounces the series is cancelled without ANY indication that a relaunch is in the works.

--Gail claims, "DC has some huge Legion plans," but then professes that her story "ties in a bit with [the future plans], in ways that won't be completely obvious right away, but it's also just big crashing fun on its own." Well, if these future plans don't tie into Gail's story arc in "completely obvious" ways, to many of us, that rules out a relaunch as a continuation of "The Legion" and something more radical.

And also consider this: to say "DC has some huge Legion plans" sounds like an exaggerated campaign promise ("No new taxes!" "Social Security lock box!", et al) that in the end is nothing but hot air meant to bedazzle the audience.

Just for the record, Kitson plotted the 4-part "Legends of the Legion" in 1998, but Waid also wrote (co-wrote?) about a dozen issues of L.E.G.I.O.N. I agree the "dear to our hearts" evidence is inconclusive.

Now Steve Lightle is talking about his NEXT Legion project. Steve's a jewel, but to reiterate your point, why should *he* be the messenger?

BAH!

I think we would all be pissed if we had to wait a year or more for a new Legion project. We might even threaten not to return. But, as every true Legion fan on these boards knows, we would all return. But I hope the creators DO NOT take advantage of that kind of loyalty, as they have so often in the last 15 years of endless revamps and reboots. Enough is enough already people! Treat us fans with the respect we deserve.

It sounds to me she's just talking about certain elements/plot threads in her storyarc. To me it doesn't imply that the Legion itself will undergo a big overhaul (the term "big plans" might though).

I honestly don't think Gail has any reason to "campaign" for DC or their future plans. It sounds to me she was genuinely excited about the Legion's future. Whether or not you'll be as excited when the news breaks is another thing, but since Simone was just talking as herself, I have no reason to think she's hyping.

Not to sound like I'm contradicting you, I just see things differently and considering how little info we have, I prefer not to get worked up trying to decipher these clues. I'll wait til we hear something official before reacting.

I think that the internet has given fans a lot more access to behind the scenes info on upcoming stuff -- sometimes directly from the creators and two things can happen: either DC can force a gag on creators to not disclose anything on the internet before they're ready (like they do for high profile projects) or they can feed the demand and give us all breaking info on all their decisions as they happen. Neither of those seem reasonable to me, so yeah, sometimes creators will leak stuff before DC's ready to announce it themselves. It's not like they're withholding info to mess with us.

Two or three important points you missed:

-- Rich Johnson posted a green-light rumour back in December that "I understand that Mark Waid and Barry Kitson are to take over "Legion" some time next year." This was also the first place (same rumour) that Giffen doing an issue was mentioned.

-- Kitson : "I've been a Legion fan since I was about 5 years old!" Waid : "I've been reading Legion for TWENTY-SEVEN years (and this is a quote from 1994). AND there is no bigger fan of the Legion ALIVE than me."

--Kitson first mentioned that he was doing "200 pages of a JSA mini" on the oldDCMB when he first announced that he was working on Empire (the DC series, not the original issues, to clarify). This is well over a year ago now.

No, there's nothing outright proven, especially on Kitson. But there's strong reason to suspect at least.

Do we know what the JSA mini-series is? Could it possibly be the JSA-Legion crossover that many have been clamoring for?

As a long time fan, I'll echo some of the sentiments expressed by others. The last time the LSH was rebooted many of us got so upset about the changes that we were GONE for years. Many have never come back. Yes Legion has picked up new readers but it was at the expense of longtime fans.

I'm not certain I would stay for ANOTHER reboot. It took me quite a few years to even consider looking at it again. (Actually it was meeting many of you on the DC Board that finally convinced me to take a look again.)

It's not as if the book can handle losing scores of readers. Last time I checked the numbers weren't spectacular.

What bothered me most was the callous way in which Wacker made the announcement in the Pulse article. That showed no sense of concern or caring about his "customers" (yes, that's what we are!) I would never treat my custmers in that fashion nor would I expect them to put up with it.

I think it is the long-rumored Society of Substitute All-Stars Special.