Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Legion November 2007 Solicitations and Images...SPOILERS!

Isn't that cool? Most of the modern Legion creators have read and posted (minimally at least) here and we always treat them with respect and try hard to treat them as old friends. ALL Legion fans are welcome here.
BUT
That's NOT the coolest thing about LW, that particular kudo belongs to the posters who are so obviously passionate about the book(s) and our depth of affection for the rich field of characters tha6t people the stories.

I think this is a wonderful discussion and I'd like to thank everyone that's given so much thought to so many aspects of Legion history.

..as far as the retcons go I feel the the most fantastic of the lot was the TMK Andromeda. Wow. An adult (almost) Supergirl with the power and confidence that an adult Kryptonian (in this case Daxamite) ought to have. Of all the retcons she's the one I miss most.

You saw that too, huh...

I'm on the fence; Not my favorite storyline, but it's half-off and I wanna support this LSH...

I just took a not-so wild guess it would be 50% off.

Their September solicits are up, and your guess is correct.

Yup, the 'Wolverine' paradigm. If we put him on the cover, people will buy the book.

My point above was that Superboy, as a product of an earlier style of writing, never got as much character development as the team-members that continued to be presented later. To some, this could be seen as a 'plus,' since he's apparently quite popular as a personality-free boy scout drone, but I tend to prefer characters to have a little more... character. His presentation in the Legion, IMO, proved to be both a disservice to the character, and to the team, just as an appearance by Wolverine in, say, the Avengers, similarly serves only as a gimmick, and neither serves to strengthen the Avengers franchise, nor the Wolverine character. It's just a cold-blooded marketing tactic to increase sales by targetting compleatist fanboys who must have every appearance of Wolverine.

While this may seem like a contrary position, I think that Superboy was ill-served by being trotted around and kludged into a team book that he was ill-suited towards, to prop up sales (the same applies, but far more so, towards Supergirl, who is even *less* suited towards that use, IMO, as she's far less integral to the Legion as a concept, and seemed almost like she was thrown there as an afterthought in the early days, and served only as a cheap 'stunt-casting'
gimmick in the WaK run, like Wolverine in the Avengers).

So, the short-short version. I think that *Superboy* deserved better treatment. The character was treated as a property to prop up a book derived from his own title.

Saying that Superboy has to show up to 'carry water' for the 'super-teens from the future' who were introduced in his book would be like requiring Batman to show up in every single issue of Birds of Prey, because they were all Batman-derived characters introduced in his books.

I do not in any case want a retconned Legion that has never been inspired by Superboy/man, nor met him, nor had adventures with him, which apparently was some sort of Byrne thing I've never even heard of (I didn't know that Byrne ever even wrote the Legion! It must have been one of the reboots I skipped.). That way lies much character destruction, and I'm for including as much of the core continuity, not subtracting it.

He didn't write the Legion; he wrote Superman. And he revised Superman so that there was no Superboy or Legion in his past. The Legion writers had to follow suit.

Is that the Man of Steel thing? I actually have that and enjoyed it, and while the six issue limited series (IIRC) didn't specifically mention the Legion, or almost all of Superman's classic villains, for that matter, it didn't say that they never existed either.

It seemed to me like touched up out-takes from Superman's early life, not a definitive 'nothing I haven't shown has ever happened to Clark, ever' proclamation. Heck, only select snapshots of his life were shown, with the *vast* majority of it being skipped over by the mini-series, and I never got the impression that nothing at all happened in his life during the 'gaps!'

Now that I think back, Byrne himself has gone back and filled in stuff, adding the Ultra-Humanite to the early roster, for example, so I'm not sure where the idea that anything he didn't write in the initial mini-series didn't happen came from.

Regardless, even if Byrne had specifically somehow written the Legion / Superman connection out of existence, along with the other 16 and a half years not shown in the Man of Steel limited series, there's no reason why the Legion writers couldn't still have had the team *inspired* by this example of legendary heroism from the 20th century, and kept the team recognizable, without 'rebooting' and turning Projectra into a snake or whatever, which, IMO, has *nothing* to do with Byrne's touching up of Superman.

(As for Byrne himself, I feel dirty for even defending him, since he's a misogynistic nutbar, but I like his clean artwork, and don't see any reason to blame him for the reboot that brought us Jarth and LeViathan and Monstress...)

It seems to me that it was purely a Legion writers decision / faux pas to try and pass off Mon-El / Valor, and later Femme-Elle (Andromeda) as the iconic 'Superman' figure, in addition to the raft of other changes.

In the Newsrama article, Jim Shooter specifically points out the enormous advantage of working on a title set 1000 years after standard DC continuity, and thus not being creatively straightjacketed by what is going on in the rest of the 'shared universe.' It seems to me that someone, could be editorial, could be at the writer level, missed that back during the Man of Steel days, and decided to allow a limited series re-depicting a snapshot of about 4 days of Superman's early life, which didn't happen to include a portrayal of the Legion, to mutilate the Legion universe.

Byrne didn't show Lori Lemaris either, to my recollection, and yet Atlantis still exists, apparently un-mangled by Byrne's ommision. Didn't they get the memo?

Byrnes decision to write Superboy out of existence made everything more difficult for Legion continuity.

Still, why suddenly the Pocket universe explanation no longer was good enough and TPTB forced given to substitute Superboy with Valor I never really understood.

They messed it up without good reasons. Somewhen late in the DnA run, they suddenly brought a Superboy to the 31st century again (without any need again) and challenged this second continuity (which I never accepted in the beginning so I did not care) again.

Today, DC can't even mention the name "Superboy" due to the lawsuit with the Siegels - so if Superboy would have been reintroduced into the Legion continuity, maybe they would have to write him out AGAIN today?

I guess it's really not Byrne alone who is to blame. But his Superboy decision started a fire which keeps on devouring the Legion for 20 years... resulting in at least 13 years of unsatisfying stories.

Wellll, to be fair, they could have had 13 years of unsatisfying stories even with Superboy.

I can't really agree with the 13 years thing though. I really liked DnA's run and I get a good chuckle out of a few of the post ZH even if I don't find any of the story arcs particularly memorable.

If you can believe Giffen (and other sources), it was Mike Carlin who required Superboy to be wiped from existence, refused to let any other character have any connection to Superman/Krypton/El (hence the Mon-El name had to go). This was the "Cultural Revolution" phase of Superman as the true last son of Krypton. This was after Byrne had stopped working on Superman, even, I think (although it was Byrne's idea for the reboot Supes to NOT have been SuperBOY).

According to Giffen, Keith was struggling to maintain as much of Legion history intact without Superboy or ANY connection to Superman. In haste, he hit on the idea of Lar Gand filling the Superboy shoes. Of course, from a character point of view, this was a bad fit, since Lar was always a reluctant hero (I imagine Keith would admit as much). Keith only created Laurel to fill the Supergirl "hole" in Legion history and didn't particularly like the character, which explains why they killed her when it was convenient. To hear Giffen's version, he did all of this practically overnight before the publication of LSH v4 #3 and 4.

The fact that all of this was a jury-rigged job, and various creative teams kept tinkering with Valor and Glorith, and the Legion got run into the ground as a bunch of geriatric fugitives, led to the idea of the reboot at Zero Hour.

Just currently rereading v.4, I really keep on wondering why they made it so hard for Giffen to actually succeed with his endeavour - first letting him have a go with the 5YL and after just four issues forcing him to retcon Valor as Superboy... I really think that these issues (until Earth explodes) are one hell of a satisfying read, I think it's the fourth or fifth time I am rereading them over the years and there's hardly a comic aside from Sandman or Watchmen that's as intellectually stimulating as this run. So much happening, so many background informations. Gave the run to a non-Legion fan some time ago and he totally digged it although he rather prefers indie comics.

So the McCraw run certainly was a letdown, but I guess today, they woulod find a different solution but to reboot it from scratch - considering that neither reboot was a big success in the long run...

@Blockade Boy: Yes, the DnA run was okay, probably the only Legion stuff since ZH that I would even consider to reread ONCE. It suffered from the fact that (like Shooter now), the writers had to take over a rather lame continuity with characters like Monstress and XS... but they did well.

Shooter has it much easier now cause Threeboot characters are hardly fleshed out so he can get away with practically everything...

I agree with the King. The 5YL Giffen and even the Bierbaum stories are just about my favorite and really redeemed the Legion in my eyes after the previous run. I even like the stories after the destruction of Earth and was sad to see it end. Didn't have much use for the Legionaries offshoot though.
Really, all this talk of purity and continuity seems like sour grapes. It seems like some folks want the Legion to be the same as it was in the mid-seventies. And granted, as a kid I fell in love with them then but I want to see some progress, otherwise none of the characters develop and the Fatal Five just keep escaping from Takron Galtos.

I would be super-happy to see a version in which the Legion had aged naturally, were all in their 60s or 70s, probably mostly retired with a ton of new characters, children of the Legion, etc. It just seems like there's a lot of potential there.

I'm fine with multiple versions of the Legion as well. Basically I want a good story. I could care less if Superboy is around. I always thought his membership to be gimickey. Fine for the 50s and tolerable in the 70s but I wasn't bothered in the least to see him fazed out. I couldn't care less about skin-tight, gaudy, unrealistic costumes. I loved what Giffen did with them towards the end of the original run and was happy not to see the silly costumes reappear after the five year gap. I mean really, who wears the same thing every day and what purpose would they serve except to make villans laugh themselves to death?

I have to say the current run hasn't really done a hell of a lot for me. I've liked it off and on but for some reason it just feels a little flat although the last few issues I've somewhat enjoyed. I'm curious to see what's in store with Shooter's run. I am also intrigued with the Action Comics version. I like the updated costumes. Gary Frank may draw everyone's irises too small and their teeth too buck but damn can that guy draw realistic looking, detailed costumes that don't look like they were spray-painted on.

The legal issues surrounding the name Superboy make things difficult for everyone. It makes the animated show sound... um, odd and probably helped stagnate Smallville (although the horrendous writing and the vile Kristen Kruek can probably take the blame for most of that)

ACTION COMICS #859 (variant cover)

Written by Geoff Johns, art by Gary Frank and Jonathan Sibal, cover by Frank, variant cover by Andy Kubert.

The return of the original Legion of Super-Heroes continues! The Man of Steel's jump to the future is anything but idyllic as he finds a world torn apart by strife and a populace that has turned on the Legion of Super-Heroes -- and it's all because of Superman! But what went wrong, and how can Superman begin to fix it when he's Public Enemy #1?

32 pages, $2.99, in stores on Nov. 21.

Here's the regular cover. Didn't see it get posted anywhere and I finally received my books from last week today.

I'd seen the image, with no mention of it being the regular cover.

As DCBS didn't solicit the variant, I'm guessing they'll include it in random orders. They did that with UMBRELLA ACADEMY #1; I got lucky because I'd ordered two copies @$.74, and ended up with one of each.

I prefer the regular ACTION cover. If I end up with the variant, I'll trade ya, Scooter.

You got a deal Pov! I got my usual two copies and both are the regular one. I even asked Cameron and he said there was no variant planned or listed by Diamond.

I wanted the variant, got the regular. My CBS said no variant was shipped or available.

I think I'd prefer the regular. Damn if I can ever remember that there's two covers when I'm in the comic book store though...

There is supposed to be two covers for each issue of this arc. So just keep an eye open. Although I would like to know what happened with the scheduled one for #859. Got the one for #858 and have pre-ordered #860-861.

Sorry, bud, I ended up with the regular grafitti'd statues cover. I'll keep an eye out elsewhere.

I've only seen the cover on eBay. So it is out there.

I have both covers. I have to pay $9.99 for the chase one, though.

I just grabbed three copies off eBay, about $7.31 each, including shipping. Ones for you Bri.