Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Lardy's Roundtable: How forgettable or unforgettable was SLSH/LSH between Earthwar and Levitz II/Giffen?

Good points about growing up guys, but still too pessimistic for me. I like my comics being about hope and victory, not about 'real' issues and failures. To me the Legion represents optimism and the 5YL seems less about optimisim and more about cynicism.

However, I've only found the Legion recently, so my Legion experience has been piecemeal and 'after the fact' so to speak. I remember finding an old Adventure digest, that reprinted some Legion stories, and I remember reading the "Death of Lightning Lad" story. That story really made an impact on me with the character of Saturn Girl. She was just so incredible, here she was willing to sacrifice her life so that no one else would die and was doing it all on her own. She KNEW she was going to die, she didn't know LL would come up and take her place, so she made a plan, stuck to her guns and went to die. Wow.

Another story that impacted me, was Projectra killing Nemesis Kid, hardcore. She just made the decision and did it, and no whining or regret, she was going to stick to her guns regardless of the consequences (side note, I always wanted to explore Saturn Girl's and Sensor Girl's relationship more as I think they would have been very interesting to watch since they are both such strong women and leaders).

So I have a hard time seeing these two women step aside, I mean, Imra even rejoined the Legion even after having her kids (after another favorite Imra moment of mine when she takes down Universo). To me that is the difference between joining as a teenager to have 'fun' and doing it as an adult. Put this way, the difference between someone joining the Navy out of high school to see the world and someone going to Annapolis and staying in until they're an Admiral or something.

Yes, some Legionnaires would drift away and move on, but I think some of the older Legionnaires would stay no matter what, also, I think their successors would be up to it. But that's me wanting to believe in the optimism that is a Legion comic. To me the Legion represents the idea that humanity progresses and improves, to have their successors and future generations fail mean that their 'message' is ultimatly false.

Like I said, I would love to see an Adult Legion where they are still the galaxies greatest protectors and where there are 50 or a 100 Legion mmember, where the threats are faced by the Legion and the Heroes of Llalor and the Subs and Dev-Em. Where the Legion is an inspiration and the older members take orders from younger members who have proven themselves. and Khund Legionnaires do sound cool. And have some of the Legionnaires move on, but not because they are tired, but because the galaxy is in good hands.

I realize this is kind of rambling, I guess I just have hard time connecting the Legion I've read with what I've read of the 5YG Legion. Part of that is because when I first got into the Legion I just grabbed back issues, and I didn't know which order they went (with Superboy and the LOSH, Tales, LOSH, LOSH on nicer paper, LOSH on similar paper but different art style, Legionnaires) so for awhile I was reading things in quite a jumbe till I could figure it out (like I would read an issue of the early Baxter Legion and then the 5YG Legion because of the numbering order and MAN was I confused).

But I do remember absolutly loving the bright, optimistic Legion and having a real aversion and disgust to the darker Legion, even the 'funny' stories where Thom was a coach and Dream Girl was fat I thought were a mockary of what the Legion ment. And maybe this is just because I am doing it all after the fact. Maybe if I had read it at the time I could see the growth and accept it better, but for me it's just not the Legion, it just doesn't have the core componants that made me a Legion fan.

I first regularly began buying the Legion with the threeboot, since then I've gone back and through back issues got some of Superboy and the Legion, all of Levitz's run except for some issues towards the end and the Pocket Unvierse stoyline (mostly because that is so expensive), I finally got Earthwar the other day, I have some Cockrum and Grell stuff, I'm waiting with baited breath for the Showcases (I had to go to a business party yesterday otherwise I would already have Showcase vo 2), I picked up those little digest wherever I could find them....so basically, the Legion bug bit me and it bit me hard, but whatever it is that I LOVE about the Legion, I just don't see it in the 5YL Legion, yet I can still find it in the Conway Legion which is why I think Conway isn't the worse.

Whew. Thanks for reading (or skimming, or just ignoring).

Steph, I started reading the Legion in Adventure in the early 60's I believe I've read every Legion story ever written with the exception of a large portion of V4. Thank you for putting into words my feelings about the Five Year Crap.

In my opinion TMK Shat upon the Legion Mythos and can never, ever, be sufficiently damned for what they did to the greatest franchise in comics.

But that's just my opinion.

I understand (now) that they were working with some horrendous editorial demands and that they were cursed by the need to validate the hatchet job John Byrne was doing on Superman.

But I still despise that version of the Legion and only reluctantly am I buying the back issues to complete my collection.

So my opinion is ANYTHING that erases the 5YC from a revised continuity is a good thing, so TPTB implementing a plan like Kent's would be fantastic.

But now, how do we get Gates, XS, Gear, Kid Quantum II, Triad, and Shikari into that LSH?

Kent, I agree with everything you wrote (including the VOYAGER analogy), but I'm not sure what it proves. If you're suggesting that the destruction of earth wasn't well thought out, you could be right; we'll never know, as the Bierbaums were dismissed only a year or so later. It would take time for a story of that magnitude to reach resolution. (Giffen himself took an inordinately long time just to reform the Legion.)

If, as you say, DC was pushing the book back toward mainstream super-hero fare, then this, to my mind, is another example of editorial meddling independent of whether or not the idea itself was well considered.

Well, that's comparing apples to . . . a computer simulation of apples.

DnA's run had other problems besides its science fiction bent. In my opnion, TMK did a much better job of exploring the science fiction possibilities of the Legion's world through stories such as ProFem and the destruction of earth than DnA were capable of. TMK never lost sight of the Legionnaires as individuals and how those individuals were affected by their world.

I like optimistic Legion stories, too, steph, but I don't see 5YL as being necessarily incompatible with that.

True optimism comes from facing "the dark side" of life and still deciding that life is worth living. True optimism means refusing to give in to cynicism even though events are beyond our control. (As an aside, I'm teaching my writing class about Martin Luther King, Jr., who probably embodied optimism better than any other American leader. To face the ugly specter of racism, not to mention personal threats, bombings, and a stabbing, and to continue to work for equality through nonviolent means is remarkable.)

Had Giffen or the Bierbaums been allowed to develop their original story plan, they may have brought us around to a place where things would be optimistic again. Giffen alludes to that, at least, in his LEGION COMPANION interview. He suggests that the Legion would have emerged as even greater heroes at the end.

But I do see your point. Much of 5YL is unrelentingly dark. This is one of the problems I had with it, particularly during the early run. Giffen went out of his way to deconstruct every aspect of the Legion. He succeeded too well.

I thank you, Stephbarton, because your post made by heart soar my spirit dance with joy. Especially the following:

Exactly! While I don't mind dark superhero stories when they're good stories well told, I only enjoy those stories if they take place in the past or the present, not the future. I'm a huge fan of the tales of the Legion's ancestors, L.E.G.I.O.N., especially issues 14 to 31. I think it further enriches the optimism of the pre-5YL Legion by contrasting the bleak present with the promise of a brighter future (and, on a purely subjective note, I think Alan Grant was able to write dark stories with far more wit, flair, and cohesion, and a much less heavy hand, than TMK.)

And before anyone says anything, yes, I know that L.E.G.I.O.N. was launched while the Levitz era was wrapping up and looking darker by the minute, and that it mostly ran concurrently with the 5YL Legion. That doesn't change anything for me. As I've said in another thread, I think 5YL was the superhero story equivalent of a cokehead's ramble, and I do not consider it canon no matter what the 5YL fans may argue.

Again, exactly! TMK can flash their fan credentials all they want, but their smug demolishing of many Legion institutions is the proof in the pudding. They are an early example of the kind of writing that has become an epidemic in recent years, where successive writers tear down what their predecessors built*. I admit I'm not completely against it, as anyone who's read my Green Lantern posts in the Dr. Gym'll forum can confirm, but I've felt its sting as well, with my Marvel counterpart to the Legion, the Avengers**, and Kurt Busiek's hatchet job on my beloved Bob Harras era.

*The earliest example in my opinion is John Byrne regressing the personalities and looks of the Fantastic Four, way back in 1981.

**Counterpart not literally, but in the sense that Legion is my favorite DC superhero team book and Avengers is my favorite Marvel superhero team book.

Steph, I just want to say that I appreciate your point of view on the Legion entirely. And I think you understand that my take on and justification of 5YL is purely my own rationale for why it worked for me and for others. In fact I'm sure that if I, like Abin, cut my teeth on the Legion during the classic Adventure era, there's a much, much greater chance that I would have dropped the book in disgust like Abin did.

My first issue of LSH I ever bought was actually #286, Giffen's first issue. I was ten years old and my interest had been piqued by the Legion's appearances in DC Comics Presents and later enhanced (while reading the Levitz run) by those wonderful Adventure digests that were reprinting chronologically the Legion's Silver Age stories. I was curious to notice the differences in tone, story, art and costumes between what I was reading in the digests and what was in the regular series. In a way it helped me understand continuity in comics better than anything I'd ever read to that point. And it was exciting because I realized these characters had really changed over time, unlike, say, Superman and Batman.

So I guess the way I was educated on change very early on with the Legion really prepared me to accept and embrace 5YL (and later, the reboots in a way), even though it was admittedly pretty drastic and sudden.

Maybe my peculiar Legion-reading roadmap is part of why I personally am more accepting of 5YL. In a way it's why I can also genuinely identify with Steph's (and Abin's and Stealth's) point of view at the same time.

Side story: Ironically, as much as I got into the Legion during my tweens, I didn't stick with them for long. I dropped the Legion around #305 when a friend got me into--the X-Men! What can I say? Teens are fickle, and even though I wasn't dissatisfied with the title, I dropped it (and all DC titles!) and sold all my LSH comics (and all my DCs!), so I could--ta-DA--buy more X-Men! I was converted into a Marvel Zombie overnight...but I still never forgot about those Legion comics. So several years later, when I followed Byrne from Marvel to Superman, I eventually found myself back to the Legion (with the Death of Superboy crossover) and have been back ever since (and bought back all the Levitz issues I sold, plus, eventually, all those I missed in the interim)!

I am a legion follower since the very early days in Adventure and the 5YL wasn't complete anathema to me. What put me off was

1 the artwork and that had started at the end of the Levitz run. for me the rot had set in artwise before the Magic Wars.

2 the other aspect was the retconning Sean, Garth/Proty, Triad not Triplicate Girl, Kid quantum. None of these were necesarry for the overall story line and lost a lot of older fans.

i think that DnA's run ran out of steam when... it left sci-fi behind. steve whacker wanted the book to be more "super-heroish", and in the end it just came back to be another brick in a wall of many other similar super-hero books.
recently i loved johns' "superman & the legion" arc on action comics, it had many sci-fi moments and they all worked.

Thanks for sharing Lardy (may I call you Lardy), I too wonder what similiarites there are between those who really like the 5YL and then the similarities for those who basically shear it from Legion lore. I can certainly understand and respect your position as you got both Levitz/Giffen and Adventures at roughly the same time.

I guess it all comes to rationalization. Just like with the current issue, I can justify Ayla's actions with Garth very easily, some can not and see it as poor writing. Some can see the Legion turning into the 5YG Legion, others cannot make the connection/rationalization (like me) and ending up hating what the 5YL stories did to the Legion.

I think that is a risk they decided to take, and ulitmatly it backfired. According to a sales chart I saw on this site, the 5YL Legion sold really well at the begining, but eventually it was rebooted. You said it yourself, it took awhile for Giffen to reform the Legion, probably too long in hindsight.

Now you have the Legion struggling to maintain its own title, and it seems that no matter what they do they have a hard time keeping the fans. I think denying the Legion its history hurt it (Titans still has its history to draw upon, even if the current Teen Titans is vastly different from W/P era) but Legion doesn't have that anymore.

I think Kent's idea would have been better in the long run than the reboot (which since it has been rebooted itself is almost a no brainer) but I also think the older Legion (but not 'dark' 5YL Legion) is really what people want. Going back to the end of Baxter and having the new characters try to prevent the darkness of the 5YG would have added a sense of drama.

This was the issue I had with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In seasons one through three (and, to an extent, four and five), the characters were heroic, but human, with their feet of clay and their bitchy moments and their stupid mistakes and teen dramas. But still heroes, at the end of the day.

As time progressed, Joss Whedon claimed that the theme was 'growing up,' but, in his mind, 'growing up' seems to mean becoming petty, spiteful, vicious, depressed, abusive and callous. In 'growing' his characters, he made them unlikable, and very unheroic. The 'regular people' they so often saved, to little or no acclaim, and returned night after night to save again, vanished from the background (and were occasionally just plain left to die by 'heroes' who didn't bother doing anything heroic and wandered around moping about their own situations). No 'NPCs' meant that the 'heroes' no longer had non-heroes walking around to serve as contrast, and the 'heroes' were no longer saving people, since there were no 'damsels in distress' (which, in the Jossverse, where usually guys being saved by girls) in need of saving.

The 5YL thing seems similar to me. Growing up may have been some awful trauma for Joss or whomever, and their life has been unremitting hell and torment ever since, but for me it was a good thing. I don't miss being a child. It was just step one on a journey that has only gotten more interesting as it's gone along.

Stories that start out sunny and with an optimistic future and idealistic youth banding together as friends to make a difference, and then transition into some grim dystopia where the Earth is ravaged by plagues and robot invasions and hostile aliens and finally destroyed senselessly in some non-event, while the 'heroes' that banded together all those years ago are now bitter sniping factions that fail to save any but the tiniest handful of humanity in the face of a 'disaster' that *pales* by comparison to stuff they've beaten in the past when they were less powerful, less numerous and less experienced, just falls right down for me.

This dystopian 'mature*' crap is the destruction of heroes, and everything that the comic-book superhero genre was built upon, and I don't care for that sort of thing.


*Irony of ironies. Defenders of this darker storytelling often like to say that people who don't like it aren't 'mature enough to handle it.' (Joss himself has said that in regards to the latter seasons of Buffy, which were full of hate sex from a 'hero' who hates her life and longs to return to the grave.) Nope. I'm mature enough to recognize that emo woe-is-me deconstructionist crap as being purple prose of the worst kind.

This is an interesting point of view, I think. It's always been hard for me to put into words why the DnA run ran out of steam. All I know is that "Foundations" just seemed 'off' and that's where it started for me. Some fans point to "Dream Crime", but I really liked that arc, personally. It's definitely "Foundations" for me, and I don't feel it was too 'superhero-y' and not 'sci-fi enuff'. I just simply can't explain why "Foundations" was so underwhelming! Guess I'll have to reread it soon--been meanin' to reread DnA anyway.....

Thoughts on when and why DnA jumped the shark?

But, of course, Steph--it's just natural for me here! May I call you 'Steph'?

Could be worthwhile to explore--anyone else want to express which side of the 5YL fence you're on whilst giving us a snapshot of your LSH fandom roadmap to help us understand why you did or didn't dig it?

As for Set's Buffy analogy...as a huge fan of that show myself, I'd have to agree to disagree there. BTVS was about a lot of things, but the very premise of that show--of one girl and her small circle of friends being all there is to defend the world from the horrors of a Hellmouth--allows for the dark territory the show went to to be explored.

Yes, the show started out more lighthearted in tone as these young people embraced their heroic roles, but the darkness was never far away. I mean, in the pilot Xanders best friend Jesse falls to a vampire and several people are slaughtered in an attempt by the vampires to raise their Master. Second season, the heroic vampire Angel loses his soul and becomes a depraved killer, taking Gile's beloved Jenny Calendar's life in a sadistic manner before Buffy has to turn around and kill the restored Angel to save the world.

This was all some pretty dark stuff in those early seasons, folks. And it opened the way for the darker stuff to follow. I mean, 'emo' or not, it wasn't exactly out of left field how Buffy behaved after her resurrection, given how her storyline worked out. Often it wasn't a pretty sight, true, but not totally out of character. Same with Dark Willow and some of the other developments. Honestly, I'd say Willow as a lesbian was the most out-of-character twist that Joss came up with, though I certainly don't hate it.

As a fan of both properties, I'd have to say the darker developments in BTVS were easily more organic than those of 5YG, though I'm a fan of 5YG as well. But certainly, there were many Buffy fans, like Set, who have a similarly negative reaction to those latter seasons as many Legion fans have to 5YG.

Our backgrounds are similar, Lardy, even though I'm nearly a decade older. My first encounter with the Legion came with the ADVENTURE reprints in LSH v.1, in 1973. Later that same year, Bates and Cockrum updated the look and feel of the Legion in SUPERBOY. I, too, experienced a Legion in transition during my formative days.

Like steph and Stealth, however, I was attracted to the optimistic future of the Legion and to the heroism of the characters. They had incredible powers that they used to right wrongs. They built amusement parks for children. The Legionnaires were not only heroes, but they had fun being heroes!

And yet . . . somewhere during that year I also read a reprint of ADVENTURE # 332, in which Lightning Lad loses an arm --- an arm, for gosh sakes! Then there was the reprint of ADVENTURE # 340-341, in which one of Triplicate Girl's bodies dies. The following year came the reprint of Star Boy's expulsion for killing.

When fans describe the ADVENTURE era as optimistic, I have to wonder exactly how they are defining that term. Yes, the Legionnaires overcame most obstacles (Garth regrew an arm and Thom was readmitted, although Lu never did regain a third body), but comic book conventions at the time required that stories be resolved quickly and neatly, and with very little emotional impact (which is why we never saw Lu mourning over the loss of her "sister" until much later). However, the "darkness" was always there, implied if not outright stated.

It was also the following year that one of my favorite Legionnaires, Invisible Kid, died. I think the cumulative effect of these "real world" tragedies in Legion stories helped me, too, accept much of TMK (though, as I said earlier, the transition was not easy for me.)

TMK did have its faults. Silver Age Lad mentions the art, which I, too, disliked. I found it disgusting and incomprehensible. Furthermore, the story line was unwieldy and hard to follow. When you have 20-odd characters who have disbanded and we've got to catch up gradually on what each is doing, it becomes disorienting and frustrating when your favorites are missing. Then, as I also mentioned, DC "mini-rebooted" the Legion to excise Superboy's influence.

Another fault, for me, was that Giffen tried too hard to emulate WATCHMEN, even down to using nine-panel grids and text features to "explain" the 5YL world. Of course, he also adopted the dystopian tone of WATCHMEN, which was a jarring shift in the Legion's world.

Where TMK took off for me was in the 20s. I could accept Dirk's fate because it seemed to evolve naturally for his character (even though he, too, was one of my long-time favorites). I could accept Proty/Garth, as it did nothing to change a character I had closely identified with since the reprint of ADV. 332.

(Oddly enough, the one change I couldn't accept was Mon-El's name change to Valor and his new role as the 20th century inspiration for the Legion. This change turned Mon into an essentially different character.)

I also grew to like SW6, even though I thought the clones were a bad idea. The interactions between the adult Legionnaires and their teenaged counterparts was very emotional and moving. Who could not be moved by older Jo's encounter with younger Tinya?

But the Legion's universe was always populated with monsters such as Mordru and Universo. Occasionally, they won a temporary victory over the Legion. (Universo outlawed the team in ADV. # 359-360, a plotline echoed in TMK. Mordru literally had the Legion "on the run" in #369-370.) Those stories were always resolvd within an issue or two and seldom touched on the costs and personal sacrifices heroes make when they go up against such monsters. TMK can be viewed as a drawn-out version of those stories, with greater detail focussed on such costs and sacrifices.

Great, great, GREAT point, HWW! You explain in much more detail what I touched on in some earlier posts. One of the groundbreaking things about the Legion was that things did change and, importantly, bad things did happen to them, even early on! Yes, the ramifications weren't fully explored, but they also weren't explained away as imaginary tales, dreams or alternate realities. If Superman ever lost an arm back then in his books, you'd better believe you'd learn by the last page he never really lost it in the first place!

I think, as a kid, that was one of the things that made Legion appealing to me. While simultaneously reading early Levitz/Giffen issues, I read their early adventures in the digest. One of the prominent characters in those reprints was this guy wearing a headband and a brown costume named Invisible Kid who had actually DIED! Meanwhile, in the "now" a new Invisible Kid shows up who is obviously pretty distinctive looking from the headband guy. And reading the index featre running in the back of the main comic, I soon learned that two other guys I'd never even seen had also passed in the interim named Ferro Lad and Chemical King. Wow! The Legion had three heroes die in action? Not to mention, Triplicate Girl lost a body along the way? This was damn more interesting than Justice League!

So, yeah, Legion did 'dark' even during the shiny, happy Silver Age. And maybe, subconsciously, that's at least a small part of why it had such a devoted fanbase. So maybe 5YL wasn't that far out of left field after all? I'm sure in any case the debate will always rage on among all us rabid diehards!

I've thought about posting to this thread, but thought I didn't have anything to add. Especially with some awe-inspiring insights by Steph, Kent, HWW, etc. But Lardy DID ask.

I quite liked the TMK/5YL days, but I think the reason is that I read it AFTER the fact. So I may be proving the hypothesis set before. The reboot had already happened, so it was easy reading for me once I knew my Legion lore because I was reading it as 'a' Legion story rather than 'the' Legion story. No matter what happened in the series it didn't impact the Legion that was being published at the time, or the stuff that had come before it since this story was the aftermath of those. What was to lose?

While I was drawn in by the more youthful, vibrant SW6 batch, I really came to love the adult Legion. I adored Vi, who while still rough around the sens-tank edges felt like she had matured. Great interpersonal use of the 'housewife' Legionnaires of Imra, Lydda, and Rond with their old friends and seeing them in their new roles. This version also made me really like Cham, and I'm still to this day a sucker for all the Legionnaires exclusive to this version. I love Kono and Laurel. They were fun, dynamic personalities balancing out the serious nature a lot of the established Legionnaires had been steered into.

Irregardless of my like, I 100% understand the arguments against the TMK days. I really liked what Steph said about the Legion not giving up and the hope that entailed. Kent (I believe it was Kent)'s comments about how the Legion really needed an intrinsic foe to battle against after GDS also was great insight. To that end, I really did like the set-up of TMK and the Legion coming together again. It just felt like they never truly got there because they had, as they even put it, 'grew up' (away from the familiar costumes and codenames). And as Steph and others have brought up, there was a bit of a 'give up' attitude. Maybe not that the Legionnaires gave up after awhile, so much as the galaxy had given up on them (and the Legion was more or less taking it, or in some instances running from it).

I relate 5YL to one of the best books I ever read: the 90s Starman. Like this version of the Legion, I read Starman after it had finished. Their stories resonate to me more as an adult than they ever would have as a youth or teen looking for something flashy. I found Starman brilliant as I read it because I had all the issues readily available and saw the progression and plot pay-offs years faster than the at-the-time reader (I also had no spoilers going into it; whereas TMK I did but that probably spared me some headaches).

With both books, there was so much going on. With the occasional interlude, it'd drive me insane to wait for the pay-off or try to make sense of where these books were trying to go. Where's this Legionnaire and that Legionnaire? In a book devoid of so much it used to identify with (near utopia, costumes/codenames, inspiring youth, etc) it would have been even harder to hold my interest during that wait.

But I lucked out. I got to enjoy the series after the fact. I had vague knowledge before I began of what was going to happen, who was where, and got to enjoy most of it within a few months. I also had another reality of Legionnaires actively being published to fall back on, or back issues of the v2/v3 days which I was devouring at the time.

For me, the dialogue during this time was engaging, as well as the relationships that had formed in the missing years. Long forgotten Legionnaires and supporting characters got flushed out, though often at the expense of several former stars of the book. Even the gritty aspect was leveraged in engaging ways on occasion, like watching the 'pure' SW6 Legionnaires have their hearts wrenched as they realized what Metropolis and the Adult Legion had become. I felt bad for those kids, and feeling something at all is more than I could ask for in comics anymore.

As a striving Legion info sponge able to approach this version on my own terms, I really wanted to read it. This was a story that had already been told, and I was there to see what everyone was talking about. That's how the 5YL storyline was for me. I've had 11 years now to look back at it, and like most versions of the Legion I enjoy it more as time goes on.

I amy have rushed in assuming a lack of forethought, but that assumption was based on what was printed, Bierbaum or otherwise.It could easily be that DC barred the implementation of such a plan, as intelligent a move as holding a "grand opening" but then never stocking the store's shelves. Classic DC editorial move.

I guess one could intro them one at a time, so they fit into a post-Levitz era. Triad could be a clone of Luornu, perhaps the sole survivor of a SW6 batch that failed to be viable. Jasmine would be more difficult, since preboot James was not a real Xanthite, but a Protean in human form... unless he was modeled after a real person, then she could be the sister of that template.

I think there's a bit of confusion here. You guys are talking about story elements (characters dying or losing arms, bad things happening to good people) and saying they contributed to a "Dark Undercurrent" even during the bright and shiny Adventure Era.
I don't see that.

To me, the "Darkness" of the TMK Legion was in the tone of the book and the attitude of the major characters.

In the "Adventure/Action/S&LSH era's" nothing could stop the Legion. A space pirate destroys a world? The Legion chases him down overcoming obstacle after obstacle in the pursuit of justice. One of their members dies? They decide that there must be a way to defeat death itself and they move heaven and earth to find it. Granted when they found it, someone else had to die to restore Lightning Lad to life. But even that didn’t deter them and the strongest female character in the history of comics again decided that she wouldn’t allow her teammates to be placed at risk for what she felt was her failure, rigged the game so that it was only her life at risk, only to have her plans undone by a team-mate’s pet.

Hell, back then even the Legion’s pets were heroes in their own right.

Yes, Legionnaires died or lost arms, but they never backed down or compromised their core beliefs because of that. A Legionnaire killed someone in self-defense? Could it have been avoided? Let’s have a trial and find out! Yes he’s our friend but our ideals mean more than friendship! Out you go, Star Boy!

Now bring out the 5YC…

To start with, Heroes who wouldn’t back down to Death, Darkseid, the Dark Circle, or the Dominators have given up… Just flat out quit…

And it goes downhill from there…

Proty/Garth, Sean/Shavagn, Timber Wolf/Furball, etc… Star Boy is managing a Batball Team, Dream Girl is fat. Sun Boy… White Witch/Mordru…

I couldn’t read it. I gave up comics, completely.

The Legion brought me back. I read the reboot Legion and Legion Lost as back issues.

I liked them. They weren’t my Legion, but they were better than what my Legion had become.

I'm a 43 year old man who has been reading comic books for as long as I can remember. I've been reading the Legion since the early 70's. The 5YL issues stand out as some of the best comic books I've ever read. Reading them was a rewarding, interesting, and entertaining experience. One of the highlights of years I've devoted to this medium. The medium is, after all, about storytelling more than anything else. If the story is good and worth telling little else matters. Many times the perceived need for continuity, artists fears of shaking things up too much, or fears of alienating fans who have certain expectations prevent artisits from telling good stories. Other times artists shake things up just for the sake of shaking things up, and forget to tell a stroy at all.

The Legion's story was one of beautiful heroic teeneagers who banded together as freinds, put together a super- hero club, and were even cocky enough to travel back in time to ask the mightiest of heroes to join them. Over time they evloved. The simple club became and organization with a big budget, high tech equipment, and and the support of Earthgov. They became an official police force of sorts. The villians got tougher and tougher. A few heroes died along the way. Teenage crushes became lifelong loves, marriages occured, and a few break ups, as well. The organization evolved more, becoming almost a military organization by the time the reality altering crisises set in. Each member, and I do mean EACH member, grew, changed, and became more complex along the way. These kids loved each other and were loyal to their team.

The government of Earth was quietly infiltrated by the Dominators. Financial support and public favor waned. Far from giving up, many of the Legionnaires held on. The Legion was disbanded by the government and outlawed. Most left Earth. Even then, a few stayed to fight.

So here we are. Five years later. Dark days, indeed. Reep Daggle sets out to rebuild the team. He starts by convincing Rokk that he is needed in spite of the loss of his powers. Perhaps, more so because of the loss of his powers. The team gradually reforms. Personal demons are confronted. It turns out that some of our heroes were flawed. Human, maybe? The odds were against them. The dangers real. The shared history and sorrow over things lost or things that might have been was tangible. Rarely, have comic book characters seemed so real. In the end, it was their sense of loyalty to one another that brought them back together. This wasn't a super-hero club, a super powered police force, or military organization. This was family. These men and women would be there for one another no matter the cost. Make no mistake, it cost them plenty. If the story of the adult Legion had never been told, we would never have had the chance to be so proud of the adults they became. Earth's final moments were among its proudest. Influenced by the Watchmen? Sure. Better than the Watchmen, though, simply because the history was richer, the characters were better, and the story that had to be told was much more compelling. Smugly demolishing? Please. Lacking optimism? Hardly. Not my Legion? Sorry.

In the end, I'm content that the series didn't go on. The ideas about "what might have been" are interesting and uneccessary speculation. The story of the greatest comic book super-hero team was told. It had a beginning, a middle, and an end. It was great fun. I was privileged to be there for it. After reading some of these posts, I feel even more privileged never to have been burdened with the feeling that I was somehow violated by the talented men and women who told it. Everything that has come since has been just fine. Artists trying to interpret or put a new spin on a legend. Sometimes it has worked and sometimes it hasn't. It is encouraging that they keep trying.

The one thing the 5YC did successfully was invoke strong emotions in Legion Fans.

I and many others hated it with a passion.

Jerry and many others loved it with an equal passion.

The very things I hated most were the things others loved the most. They aren't wrong and I'm not right. We just have different preferences and expectations.

In the end I'm hoping for the same thing every other Legion fan is hoping for... The team we've loved for so many years comes out of this latest crisis stronger and better.

Excellent point, Future. I, too, read most of 5YL after the fact, and I think it holds up better that way: as a novel.

Ironically, I think just the opposite. I still think of the preboot Legion as the "real Legion" and the ones that came after as being various versions of "a" Legion, but that's just me.

Another good point. I'm currently reading Coretta Scott King's book, My Life with Martin Luther King Jr., and she makes the point over and over that she and her husband did not act alone in the Civil Rights movement. They had the support of numerous pastors, business leaders, Civil Rights activists, and ordinary folks, both black and white, not only to help organize and participate in their protests, but to sustain them spiritually. They even had political allies in Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.

While comparing the real life struggle for civil rights to the imaginary events of comic book characters is tenuous at best, I think a case can be made that if the public had given up on the Legion (as Dominator-influenced Earthgov did), they would have been far less effective and much more likely to be demoralized.

I agree. I recently re-read some of those issues and read others for the first time, and they hold up extremely well.

It occurs to me that the goal of successful writers is to provoke strong emotions in their readers. These emotions don't have to be positive.

In this respect, maybe TMK can be classified as successful.

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The very things I hated most were the things others loved the most. They aren't wrong and I'm not right. We just have different preferences and expectations.

Amen.

You know, I really love the 5YL too, and part of that is like Future and HWW, by the time I read it, the Reboot had already happened. I think because of that, I was heavily influenced in seeing it quite differently than someone who bought TMK #1 off the stands.

It still evokes more teary-eyed moments out of me than any other period in Legion history or really any other single era of a comic book.

I bought it right off the stands, and was hooked from issue #1. I couldn't wait for the each issue. The anticpation was was painfull, at times.