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?

Here's what I bought today.

Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 1 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 2 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 3 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 4 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 5 NM 1 $2.40
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 17 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 18 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 19 NM 1 $2.40
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 20 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 24 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 25 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 26 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 27 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 29 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 30 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 31 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 32 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 33 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 34 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 35 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 36 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 38 VF 1 $2.00
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 39 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 40 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 41 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 43 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 44 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 45 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 48 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 50 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 52 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 53 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 57 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989 4th Series) 58 NM 1 $1.49
Legion of Super Heroes (1989) Annual 1 NM 1 $3.20
Legion of Super Heroes (1989) Annual 4 NM 1 $2.10
Legion of Super Heroes (1989) Annual 5 NM 1 $2.10

Less than $75 Total.

Annual 4, the Bloodlines story, is possibly - no, almost certainly - the worst Legion story ever.
but other than that (and LoTR), you may have some pleasant suprises in store... hopefully.

Not bragging but with that last purchace I'm down to only needing some Adventure and Action issues to complete my Legion Collection...

Oh Wait! I am Bragging...


(I'm gonna get so slapped down for that...)

You know the rule! Once you buy all the Legion issues besides the Adventure ones, you have to buy everyone a drink at the next big meet-up! So grab those Action ones soon, because I'm getting one of those giant-sized fishbowl margaritas in San Diego

didn't know that rule... glad I'm still missing a couple dozen Adventure and a few Action.

All this talk of drinking makes me wonder...in any era of our beloved Legion, could we have made up a Legion-based drinking game where we take shots every time something specifically recurring happened? Like on the X-Files, everytime Scully said "what you're saying, Mulder is...", or on Lost every time Hurley says "Dude!" Or with the LSH animated series, take a shot every time Violet snorted when she laughed or Brainy exhibited some sign of his man-crush on Superman?

Could something like this have worked for the comics during whatever eras? Classic Adventure era: every time a character *choke*s?

Doing a quick search, the only similar thread for the Legion I found was this one for the DnA era!

I know there used to be a game online somewhere for the pre-DNA reboot Legion. Moy tongues were one of the triggers.

Moy tongues! Yes! I'm sure anyone playing that game would get positively WASTED!

I knew there used to be some online, so I dug up some links:

v2/v3 Drinking Game
Postboot Drinking Game
And one for Legion fandom!

Yikes Lardy, the thread is dying (you know, I'm simply AMAZED that drinking topics can't sustain this thread).

so, switching topics again, I've heard from those who loved the 5YL Legion why they did, my question is, if the 5YL failed, when was it. There seems to be certain stories that I hear mentioned where the general consensus is, yeah, they were bad (and not in the Dr. Madvela *or however you spell it* way).

So, where do you think the 5YL Legion fell apart, or a more general question, when do you think the pre-Zero Hour Legion fell apart.

For my two cents (not liking the 5YL Legion) the original Legion falls apart with the Conspiracy storyline, or at least with the Time Trapper conclusion issue. I finally got that arc and was rather excited, but to me it is a poor story and I say the last Legion story (pre-ZH) that I really enjoyed was the Universo Arc, after that everything seems to be rather unfocused and of poor quality.

Yeah, Steph...I thought the drinking game topic would be uber-popular! Honestly, I thought it would work nicely to point out certain character quirks or whatever that might have popped up a lot in certain eras, perhaps some I've never thought of. Oh, well...

As for 5YL, most fans feel that the train really jumped the track with the arc fans refer to as "Legion on the Run" (LotR for short, though I can see how that might confuse Tolkien fans ). This arc began in number 54 with a wretched die-cut gimmick cover and involved the adult Legionnaires being framed for some crime (don't recall what it was) and having to run away from the authorities, presumably to clear their names in the process. All the members involved get new lame costumes (and in some cases godawful dye-jobs!) and code names that anyone with half a brain could see through! I think Brainy's new codename was either "5" or "B-5"---really clever, huh?

"Legion on the Run" also wasn't helped by the fact that many Legionnaires involved were either aged or de-aged by Glorith in the previous issue (Ayla was grade-school age and Brainy a geezer, IIRC), and they stuck that way until, or possibly even through, "End of an Era".

So most fans of 5YL point to that storyline, or more generally, to the departure of Tom and Mary as the quality was still fairly high until they left after issue 50. Some, however, point further back to the destruction of Earth in #38, saying that TMK basically painted themselves into a corner that brought the Legion too far from its concept and gave them an irrevocable failure it could never fix.

Personally, I feel the preboot ended on a pretty nice note overall with "End of an Era", but in hindsight, I wish it never came to that.

But I'd say the downward spiral of the preboot in general began before "Conspiracy", though. I'd circle the death of Superboy for that dubious distinction. Not that it wasn't a touching story, but this story began the huge retconning of the Legion in order to explain Byrne's Superman-who-was-never-Superboy as the "real" one, and it just got worse and worse with 5YL when Giffen was forced by DC to retcon Superboy completely out.

And, yeah, Levitz's stories immediately took a tumble after Superboy's death, exemplified by the lumbering mess that was "Conspiracy". It was difficult to read, even though contrary to your opinion, I felt #50 totally saved it from being a complete disaster.

Any other thoughts?

For me, the first 13 issues, sometimes referred to as the "Rebirth" storyline were the strongest. Red Dawn and the Dark Circle storyline were still amazing. Then came the Quiet Darkness which I still enjoyed, but can understand why some people didn't like it. The inclusion of Lobo, who wasn't really Lobo, appeared to be a sales ploy to many. I never liked Lobo before that, but enjoyed the way he was presented here. The ending of Quiet Darkness was not strong, but I give the story bonus pints for being original. B.I.O.N. and all of Terra Mosiac were just fantastic. A classic storyline, one of the Legion's strongest. The first few issues with the SW6 kids had me totally enthralled. If the series had ended with number #38, I would have been satisfied that the tale had been told, and that would have been the perfect point for a reboot. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy some of Tom and Mary's stories. They did have heart, but the "vision thing" was lost with Giffen's depature.

When McGraw picked up the scripting with #50 it was one big thunk. The magic was gone. It got worse with Legion on the Run, and then just spiraled out of control. End of an Era was a complete mess in my eyes, as was anything associated with Zero Hour. It seemed like an attempt to bring everyone back for a last hurrah, but nobody was acting right. It was too crowded and disjointed. I couldn't follow it. The styles of the artists involved didn't work well together, and I wasn't really fond of anyone's work. To this day, Rokk as the Time Trapper makes no sense to me. I just don't get it. It was much more of a travesty than Superboy being retconned out of existence. I could at least figure out what Byrne was trying to accomplish by eliminating the Superboy portion of Kal's career. The creative teams on the Legion managed to come up with some interesting explanations, and the stories kept coming. But, Rokk as the Time Trapper? I never got the rationale, and nothing good ever came of it.

I think what made the Rokk-as-Trapper twist so bad for me (if I'm remembering correctly) is there was no real explanation. Yes, we saw current-Rokk lose it because something went wrong with his powers and mentally unbalanced him(or something)...but that was supposed to be why he eventually became the Legion's very worst enemy? C'mon!

To properly sell us on this, they needed to devote an entire issue to give the Trapper space to properly tell his tale so that we could understand why this happened to him. Instead, we're supposed to just take it at face value: "OH! Rokk lost it last issue, so he becomes the Time Trapper--Kewl!"

Nuh-uh!

Basically, I wasn't closed to the Trapper having once been a Legionnaire (hell, his faceless appearance had fandom speculating for years), but you don't just throw it out there like that! Sell it to us! Show us how it makes perfect sense! If one of our founders, one of our most beloved heroes, turns into one of their most vicious enemies, it'd better be one of the best stories ever told!!!

And it suuuuure wasn't! Hell, it was less believable than that beloved GL classic "Emerald Twilight"! And it was obviously just thrown in there because this was the last story of the Legion as we'd known it to give it some manufactured sense of closure.

I guess I just liked "End of an Era" at the time because it had a lot of sentiment to it. Some touching scenes there as we watched our friends vanish out of existence. But no, not a great story at all, especially in hindsight.

I don't think the pre-Zero Hour Legion ever "fell apart" in the sense of becoming something unsalvageable or that really warranted scrapping everything and starting again as was done with the reboot. Legion on the Run was a pretty crappy story, but not really significantly worse than some of the Conway stories, or even Levitz's Starfinger story, for that matter.

The biggest weaknesses of 5YL are the obsession with retconning that started with the editorially mandated removal of Superboy (but once the door opened they kind of became obsessed with the "everything you thought you knew is false" mentality!), and the fact that the storyline of the Legion getting back together just dragged on way too long. The plan was always to get them back to traditional costumed super-heroics, but after fifty issues it still wasn't completely clear who was a member of the team and who wasn't. The appearance of the SW6 Legion was a huge distraction as well, though I really enjoyed the Legionnaires series (except or the stupid "modernized" codenames).

Eryk makes a good point about LotR not being any worse than some of Conway and Levitz' lesser tales.

I myself have defended LotR's merits (which to me consist of mainly using long-unseen and seldom-used characters from LSH lore).

For me the 5YL became utter crapola with the death of Laurel. Explosions DON'T kill Daxamites, by damn! Also wasn't fond of the whine-ification of Spider Girl/Wave.

DC screwed up by dumping Tom and Mary.

Lash is here! YES--this thread has now truly arrived!!!

Actually, Eryk and EDE, I think the point about LotR regards its relative quality compared to what we'd grown accustomed to, as opposed to its quality relative to all other Legion stories. Fans of 5YL had simply become accustomed to better storytelling than what we saw in LotR.

I mean, even I'll concede that LotR wasn't really atrocious, but it was just so gimmicky and goofy. I, for one, would certainly have rather seen something more organic with what had come before being used as a story basis, something I'm sure Tom and Mary would've done had they been allowed to continue.

And, yes, killing Laurel off...it really hurt. And, as Lash says, it made no sense. A Daxamite simply would have survived that. The only reason I can imagine they'd want to kill Laurel is because they knew things were about to be rebooted anyway and needed an emotional punch at the end of the story.

In a sense, I actually think LOTR was kind of the right thing to do, in that it was an attempt to get the Legionnaires back in costumes and using codenames, and restore some sense of "tradition super-heroics" to the title. It was just *really* horribly executed.

True on the "horribly executed". I'll have to put LotR on my rereading list soon, so I can more accurately distill what didn't work about it. The ol' memory's a bit fuzzy on the specifics, right now.

But I wonder, Eryk, was getting them back into costumes and using codenames again really the "right thing to do" as 5YL had successfully (IMO, of course) ditched those trappings?

good question Lardy,

I say the 5YL Legion did not 'successfully' remove the trappings of costumes and codenames. However, I say this in complete ignorance of the story, but more along the line that comic books do not 'successfully' change anything. Comics and heroes are, ultimately (she said making a very broad generalization) maintaining the status quo.

The problem with Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman et al is trying to tell essentially the same story in an interesting way. Good v Evil, Good must win. So even if the legion goes through a period of no costumes no names (and heroes go though no powers, or different powers, or different status quo) the Legion would eventually have to revert to being heroes from a sci-fi utopian future for the franchise to sustain itself.

Now of course I can't really back that with evidence, it is all conjunction and speculation on my part, but I do think that the idea of 'change' in comics and 'changes' in comic universes are bogus, as the changes can not sufficiently affect the status quo otherwise they do not sustain themselves.

So I think, if the legion had not been rebooted, it would have returned to original codenames, costumes, and bright shiny future. A big break to the status quo (i.e. 5YL) only can last so long, but when the story loses its vision or does not get finished being told (in the end things aren't returned to normal) you have a non-sustaining franchise.

I think it's the natural end of the story. 5YL is about the rebirth of the Legion of the Super-Heroes. It's about re-establishing their importance to the galaxy. It's about the value of the Legion. Restoring the "trappings" is a part of restoring the Legion to what they formerly were, which is the main theme of the run. So while 5YL shows that you can succesfully tell a Legion story without the team using costumes or codenames (which to a certain extent had already been foreshadowed years before in the Legion Chain Gang issues), I think there's no realistic way to make it a permanent change to the team.

Interesting perspectives, Steph and Eryk, and certainly very valid ones.

However, for me, 5YL became so much more about Jo, Rokk, Ayla, Vi, etc. and so much less about Ultra Boy, Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lass, Shrinking Violet, et al, if you catch my drift. (See this post for an expansion of that thought) When you wear costumes 99% of the time like the Legion did pre-5YL, it's more about who has what powers and how they're going to use them to dispatch Bad-Guy-of-the-Month. 5YL took away the costumes and made me care, for the first time in many cases, about characters I hadn't particularly cared about before.

I'm not saying that can't happen in a book with codenames and costumes, but with the Legion in particular with its huge, unruly cast, it was highly symbolic of the new character-centric approach that was being taken. Honestly, before 5YL I needed a scorecard to help me remember all the Legionnaires' real names! I remember a lot of fan mail expressing confusion with this costumeless/codenameless approach as many weren't completely sure who was who (admittedly some of these comments were based on Giffen's sketchy art). But soon, for me and many others, knowing them by their names became second nature. And I feel we got to know them better than ever before.

Now, let me back up and make it clear that I'm not in any way saying there wasn't any characterization in Legion comics before this era. Certainly, Levitz, Shooter and many others did some awesome things with these characters. But I don't feel the focus was ever so squarely on the characters as it was during 5YL. Say what you want about the big uber-story from 1-38 and all the wild plot twists and shocking developments, but I stand by the statement that thru Tom & Mary's departure, the success of this take on the Legion was grounded by its excellent character work.

I didn't realize it at the time, but my discomfort with the return of using costumes and code names subliminally showed me that the focus on character above all was being phased out. I feel that that would have happened with any creative team that decided to bring back those trappings in some form.

Yes, it's likely the sales were beginning to dip which prompted the change, but I feel a positive push could've been made without bringing back those elements. After all, we still had the SW6 Legionnaires series to provide that take without doing the same to the more mature-themed title.

Giffen has said his goal, had he stayed, was to get back to the optimistic future after all the darkness was behind them. Do you think that necessarily meant returning to the costumes and codenames? (especially with the younger version running around?)

I agree with you completely about the character-centric nature of 5YL, and the importance of the lack of the "trappings" for allowing for focus on Rokk, Jo, etc. as opposed to Cosmic Boy, Ultra Boy, etc. And I think that's part of what was trying to be achieved in the storyline, as signaled in the first issue where Cham tells Rokk that he needs "Rokk Krinn" rather than "Cosmic Boy".

However, I guess I disagree that return to costume/code names necessarily would negate the advances in characterization that we got in the overall storyline. I actually think that what the role that the SW6 subplot plays in the story is to emphasize the idea that in an important sense, one needs "Cosmic Boy" as much as one needs "Rokk Krinn". Seeing the Adventure Era Legion flying through the air inspires people in a way that a bunch of poorly shaven guys in trenchcoats doesn't. Interestingly, Cham says something in one of the early Legionnaires issues to the effect that *that* was really the kind of thing he had in mind in trying to re-unite the Legion, and that it had never quite gone the way he wanted.

I think the situation where we had both the SW6 team and the Adult Legion running around was inherently unstable, and the most natural end to the storyline had to result in the recombination of the two teams, and resulting recombination of the values embodied by both sets of Legionnaires. The natural end, as I see it, should have been to combine the more advanced characterizations of the older team with the super-heroic trappings of the younger team.

In fact, that seems to me kind of what we got in the Legionnaires series while the Bierbaums were writing it. I think their characterization in that series was as good as anything they gave us in the "Adult" series, once you take into account they were writing teens as opposed to adults in that series.

I realize that characterization didn't necessarily have to suffer with the return of costumes and codenames, but in my mind doing so would certainly create a certain expectation by the fans for what kinds of stories should be told. There's a difference between what makes a good superhero story as opposed to what LSH had evolved into, which was more of a sci-fi story.

Legion had always straddled the line between these two things but had previously been more on the superhero side. 5YL was more on the sci-fi side, and I feel sci-fi generally allows deeper characterization in its formula than does the superhero genre. So returning to costumes and codenames, especially after an extensive run without them, makes it implicitly more of a superhero comic again and theoretically brings with it that less character-centric dynamic (particularly with a super team). That's my opinion anyway.

So...how would you have "recombined" them, Eryk? It would seem kinda awkward to have the thitysomethings on the same team as the teens. I mean, it's certainly been done with varying degrees of success with, say, John's Teen Titans and Justice Society and even the X-Men when Kitty Pryde was incorporated during the Claremont times (of these three, I'd say JSA did it the best long term)--but if we had members of the younger version unite with members of the older one on a reglar basis, I don't know if it would work, especially considering there are different versions of the same characters involved.

Maybe you were thinking that the adults would mentor the teens and mostly be their support structure?

Or were you thinking of something specific I believe I've seen you post about before, literally "recombining" the adults somehow with their youthful counterparts as one entity. Two Jos become one, for example? If so, which version would emerge, teen Jo or adult Jo? The mind boggles!

Thinking about it further, I think it might've been best if they had followed the model Keith mentioned before where the Legionnaires could be "the" Legion (the superheroes), while the adults could morph into their own adventuring group (the sci-fi types), whether as a new Omega Men or Wanderers or whatever.

OR the creators could have done what Kent suggested a few pages back...have a group from both teams go back in time to the beginning of the five year gap with a mission to prevent it all from ever having happened! If done right, this could have satisfied a lot of people.

IMO 5YL Legion went off the rails after "Terra Mosaic". The series started off instilling the notion that this universe needed what it had lost. Namely the LSH and all it entails - the codenames, the costumes, the bright shiny future! But things just seemed to get worse than better. They needed to bring things back around after the hard won victory over the Dominators. It would've been a great way to close that chapter of Legion history. (then the book should've started "One Year Later" where the team was back in full force and reestablished)

The quality of the book also went downhill. While the art on "LotR" was good, the art during the Khund War was terrible. (an even worse story, imo, but it usually gets overlooked)

I like the idea of moving the story "One Year Later" after Terra Mosaic, with the team back up and running again.

As far as the young and old teams, while I do like the idea of literally merging the two sets of Legionnaires into one being. As far as what results, I would see it as being mentally primarily the older version but physically reinvigorated. So, if the young version were late teens and the old version thirty-somethings, physically they'd basically be twenty-somethings after the merger. That's certainly what I would've done at End of an Era rather than rebooting.

However, an even more basic solution would've been to reveal the young Legionnaires as simply time-displaced, and send 'em back to Adventure #360 or whenever they're supposed to have come from, presumably with their minds wiped. Except of course one Legionnaire would remember the events of the future, which would explain some long-unanswered Legion mystery that we'd never thought to wonder about before.