Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Would you rather have endless reboots or the Legionnaires aging?

I think the Legion could work using a generational aspect like you see in things like Dragon Ball Z.

Y'know with the original Legion growing up and then you see their kids going through the Legion Acadamy. That could be a fun approach.

Though in most cases I support keeping characters ageless and iconic.

I think that was one of the problems with the post-ZH Legion. They stuck too closely to what had come before and they didn't really venture out into new territory. So they were pretty much just repeating old Legion stories. What I like about the current reboot is that they are at least telling new stories.

Interestingly, I think this is the basis of a lot of the criticism of the current 'boot that it "doesn't feel like the Legion". It's kind of a Catch-22 that's inherent to the notion of a reboot. You either end up rehashing the stories that happened to the previous incarnation of the team, in which case... what was the point of the reboot? Or, you let the team develop in a radically different fashion, but then you lose a lot of what people love about the property.

I think what makes a book "feel" like the Legion changes from person to person. For me, many aspects of the WaK run felt more like the Legion than any part of the Zero Hour reboot. My big issue with the Zero Hour reboot was that they were rehashing the same stories, but that the characters seemed totally different. They were like these eerie doppelgangers in the skins of my Legionnaires, doing things my Legion would never have done.

By the way, I totally forgot about it when I made my previous post, but I was going to say something about preferring the Legionnaires aging to endless robots, which is what I originally though the thread title refered to. Guess it's too late now.

Just for the record, I actually agree with you that in some ways, at least, the current 'boot feels more like the Legion than the prior version ever did. But I still think this is the source of a lot of people's discomfort with the title.

So to sum up?

defining "characters" as the individuals and the team:

The first reboot (post ZH) was the same stories, same names, different characters?

The second reboot (WaK) was different stories, same names, same characters?


I'd have to go different, different, different as my take on the reboots, whereas I'd have been happy with different (some new, some retelling in time), same ( preferred ), same ( a must ).

The main reason I think MY preference was considered impractical was the fan base wanted "their" characters back as quickly as possible, meaning there couldn't be a wait of 20 years to reintroduce Drake and Burroughs. They didn't get their "characters" though. They got their characters' names.

IMO, the best post-ZH option instead of UP membership to build the team up would have been to start somewhere abouts the intro of ERG-I or just after the return of Wildfire (HUGE fanbase there), then done the revised origin as flashback. For the most part, the only characters that would have had drastic personality and origin change I think would have been Monel and Superboy/girl.

I guess I now have a view that keeping them young or aging them (and to an extent keeping the future a bright place or making it dystopic) is a decision that creative teams/editorial/TPTB at DC make to keep the book selling a profitable level. During Levitz' time it made sense to "freeze" them at a certain age while during Giffen's 5YL time it made sense to darken the tone. Same holds true post Zero Hour and Legion of the Damned/Legion Lost. The approach was what (or at least they hoped would have) sold well.

Well, if we discount the other smaller groups that defend the 31st Century (i.e. Wanderers, Heroes of Lallor, Workforce, etc without regard to 'boot status), then the Legion's really the only group out there that's big & recognized/open enough to become the "universe-wide" protector.

As such I'd like for them to become a combination of the Teen Titans/JLA/JSA i.e....

...early years/within a few years of formation it would be like the Teen Titans
...post-formation we'll lose members & gain members, with the "core" team growing up and becoming young adults/adults ala JLA
...with more years we'll lose & gain some more new/young members while the young adults now become real adults (i.e. get married, have kids) ala JSA

It's kind of like how Levitz (during his run) & Giffen (5YL) progressed it where the kids that founded the Legion grew up, changed civil status, had kids while the newer recruits would be teens or young adults. Even before Geoff Johns did his "generational"/"training the legacy" approach to JSA, the Legion already had it with LSHrs becoming parents, marrying while younger members joined.

Igee, i like your thinking. They are the Teen Titans, JLA, and JSA all rolled up into one.

I dont know about everybody else but I suppose I have always thought of the main team as titans contemporaries. The biggest thing I didnt like about the archie legion was they made them so damm young (I think the 3 founders were aged 12-14). So im probably alone here but if they do get rebooted again I would like to ditch the teen thing to make the book more beleivable.

You know... the more I think about this, the more I think that pre-Crisis Superman was doing something right.

You had your mainline Superman stories. You had your Superboy stories. You had your college-age Superman stories. You even had your Super-Sons stories with Superman/Batman retired and the punk kids taking over. And you could tell stories in each version.

I guess that's really the kind of approach I'd like to see with the Legion. Horribly unrealistic that we'd actually get it, I know, but it's what I'd prefer.

Having them perpetually young works for me. Other comic book characters don't age. Why should they?

Ideal world I'd agree but we know that in the AR world, Legion Fans AND writers are royalty compared to Supes fans. If Monel Boy is shown to be invulnerable to lactose intolerance and Monel Man farts, there had better soon be a bridging story or flashback panel explaining it all or riots will ensue.

"Youth" is a relative term but I'd never want to see the Legion older than 25 y/o again. One of the biggest mistakes (imo) made after the GDS was accelerating their aging with developments like kids, retirements, widowhood, etc. That (and the erasure of Earth-One Superboy) dispelled the magic and led to its loss of innocence and darker, uglier things down the road. Some will call it character evolution; I call it deterioration of the core Legion concept, of which youth is a sine qua non.

While the Karate Kid in the JLA/JSA crossover doesn't look quite as young as his WaK counterpart, the fact other characters call him "boy" and "son" and question if his team is like the Teen Titans, suggests that this Legion will be defined by its youth as well.

Personally I think there should be a range. It's a Legion...why do they all have to be young? Just like any sports team you have the hotshot athletic 18 year old and the team veterans usually in their late 20s or early 30s. The majority of the characters should be in between.

I think the "youth core concept" thing is probably the main reason the current Legion isn't that successful.

That's kind of like saying the Teen Titans should just be sidekicks. Cyborg, Starfire, Raven shouldn't be part of the team cause the original members were all sidekics...yet the last really popular Titans weren't sidekicks...and the last successful Legion weren't teens.

However, that means replacing the Legion's oldest and most iconic characters with newbies, and we know for a fact that doesn't work, either.

I don't really know where this whole "youth as a core concept" stuff comes from.

Certainly not from the 60s, where, apart from them having names like "Lightning Lad" and "Cosmic Boy" and not being drawn as balding, you wouldn't have even known that they weren't adults. In fact, I've always assumed the whole "On my planet, we're considered grown at 14" to be Weisinger's way of basically ignoring the fact that these are supposed to be kids.

I guess it was really the 70s when the whole idea of them as the "Teen Team from the Future" became a central selling point of the title. That's also when the "teen" Legion started crossing over with the rest of the DC characters.

Again, what seems to me the core concept is that they're "Superman's friends from the future", and to have the Justice League going around calling them "boy" and "son" just seems wrong to me.

I think what's wrong with the JL calling them "boy" and "son" isn't a problem with how the LSH is depicted, but with how the JLA is depicted. DC always says that Supes/Bats et. al. are in their early 30s right? But they're often written as if they were in their mid-40s or older. What 30-year-old would refer to a teenager as "son?" Somebody in their 50s might do that, but a 30-year-old is probably clinging to the notion that they're still of an age with the 18-year-old.

My ideal age for the LSH is between 16 and 25 years old, though I can handle the older members progressing to their early 30s. I really liked what Igee said about the comparisons to other teams. They really are a congolomerate of the team concepts of all three major 20th-century teams. (Which I guess makes the WaK Wanderers the 30th century counterpart to the Outsiders. I'd love to see the 30th century's answer to the Doom Patrol!) I love to see the team have a sort of mentoring system in place to bring newer, younger members up to speed.

They could help with the robots too.

Wouldn't that be the Heroes of Lallor?

You're right. Even the reboots have younger version of the characters and they will never be as popular as PC Legion. Just bring back the PC Legion and don't age them.

Well Val certainly nipped that in the bud when he said they weren't the Teen Titans of the future but the JLA.

I haven't read the book, but one might interpret Val's statement as meaning "We're not the kid sidekicks, we're the main superteam. The adults we look up to are you guys, from 1,000 years ago."

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't follow this point. Assuming you're responding to Ultra Jorge's post, what did he say that would indicate that the oldest Legionniares should be replaced? All he said was that there should be an age range (which I don't think is a bad idea).

The way I took it is if we retire some of the older members and introduce some young new characters it may not work.

Which I agree. But just because Garth/Imra/Pol are retired doesn't mean they can't be part of the book.

IMO, Wildfire got even more interesting when he started teaching at the Academy, so quasi-retirement for a few works for me as well.

The whole Wildfire / Dawnstar romantic plotline left me cold. Can you say 'dead character' any more strongly than to have their sole arc being who they're dating? I'm all for the Legionnaires getting some, but this isn't Dawson's Creek, I'd like to see them also having a role in the book or character trait other than, 'so-and-so's boyfriend / girlfriend.'

Dawnstar's solo trek did wonders for her characterization, IMO. Having the two characters make googly-eyes / faceplates at each other every time they were in-panel detracted from them both, so seperating them allowed both to shine individually.

Set, i agree with retired characters becoming interesting. I didn't care for Bouncing Boy or Duo Damsel until they were both retired and teaching at the Academy as well. They don't all have to be superheroes. They can be super supporting cast. (love Chuck with a moustache)