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?

I'd argue there's nothing terribly "soft" about altering such an integral part of Legion continuity, even if its intent was to preserve as much as possible. Superboy was that important to the Legion, as I'm sure you'd agree, EDE. So changing things so that the guy who was their foundation for three decades of comics was never the "real" Kal-El--well, there's nothing "soft" about that. In theory this patch could have preserved all that continuity, but it still established that they had had a ringer among them all along...kinda "hard" if you ask most folks.

A softboot, IMO, would be something like how Fantastic Four retconned out Reed and Ben's being Vietnam (or was it Korea? WW2?) vets and the circumstances around their fateful spaceflight. Marvel does that every so often with their 'sliding timeline'. That's what I would call a softboot.

I reiterate: softboot is definitely too tame a description for the PU Superboy patch and all the changes that followed it. In a way, I'd be more inclined to call the Valor substitution more of a softboot because of the headache it got rid of by eliminating the PU Superboy patch.

Note: I wasn't endorsing it, just pointing out that it's another word that gets used for things like that.

Understood completely, Eryk. I knew you of all people didn't feel it was appropriate. But I felt it my duty to show how "softboot" would not apply in this case ASAP.

What you describe is also known as "compression of time." It was something Marvel was doing all along and with little fanfare (in fact, they seemed to hope no one would notice), so I don't think it's warranted to give it a third name, softboot.

I do see your argument about the term "softboot" being applied to 5YL or the Pocket Universe Superboy. Perhaps the term I stumbled upon, mini-reboot, is a better description, after all.

Dnno, HWW, "mini-reboot" doesn't really have the teeth to it when you consider my argument and the emotional, far-reaching implications. There's just nothing "mini" about this retcon.

Perhaps, the poster Superboy was right to call it a full-on reboot? I'm definitely leaning that way, even as someone who loved 5YL so much.

But a "full-on reboot" would mean that they went back to the beginning and started over from scratch, which wasn't the case.

"Mini" simply means smaller, of lesser scale. Admittedly, it might trivialize the impact of such an event, as the term is also used to mean "mini-skirt."

Another possibility is "partial reboot." This term, to my mind, brings along ghastly associations (partial birth abortion) which may be or may not be appropriate, depending on your view.

The 5YL as a reboot theory does give a little more insight into the fan division over the series. In general, those who consider it a reboot seem to not have postive feelings about it. For me, seeing these characters as the originals is an integral part of enjoying 5YL. These are the characters that I grew up with, and they grew up too. It all goes back to the theme of growth. Adventure era to disco era to Levitz era to 5YL. The growth of the team was very linear. Each era built on, and flowed naturally from, what went before.

The 5YL detractors frequently use words like "destructive" to desrcibe it. I see it as "enhancing" and moving forward. I appreciate the care that TMK took in that leap forward. I appreciate the respect that they showed for what had gone before. Recognizing that respect and caring is key to enjoying the series. Fans who don't find those elements in the story see very little to appreciate. I imagine it would be more difficult to find those elements if you don't even view them as the same characters to begin with.

I do see your point, HWW, I really do. And at first I was happy with the PU retcon because it enabled the Legion continuity to go on intact, at least on the surface. But if you look at what came after, not just 5YL, but the fact that this Legion had now never really been in contact with the proper DCU or the real Kal-El all those years--it just altered things so heavily.

Few would argue that that one change, whether a retcon, reboot, mini-boot, partial reboot or softboot, has caused the Legion to be fighting for its proverbial life ever since. Lots of things have been tried in the two decades since, but finally, we're apparently coming full circle to the point where we're now coming back to where we started...with Superman-as-a-boy (can't call him Superboy, anymore!) having been restored as part of Legion history (a Legion history, anyway). It's admirable that the Legion has somehow managed to survive in the two decades since, but now we're back to its roots if DC is going where I think it is with this (Shooter's possible exit being the clue). Maybe its the only way it can thrive again and not just survive?

I love 5YL for the same reasons Jerry states, and I'm not trying to undermine that with the current train of thought. To me now, 5YL is not an alternate universe because of its radical change of direction or to explain away its more extreme happenings but because it and the last 25 or so issues of Vol. 3 remove the "real" present-day Kal-El as a crucial element, first in the form of the PU Superboy and later in Valor.

Like it or not, the Legion was rebooted (or at least a divergent timeline created) around Vol. 3 #37, and what came after, while recognizable and consistent with the previous timeline, was not the same Legion we read since the Silver Age.

It would be akin to a hypothetical "reveal" in Marvel's Secret Invasion that the man the Avengers found in the ice in Avengers #4 was never really Steve Rogers, but a Skrull sleeper agent all these years. Seriously.

So I still stand by the PU Superboy having been a reboot...unless we can coin something else suitably vile enough to use instead. Sorry, "partial reboot" ain't vile enough, HWW!

If you want vile, "Glorithverse" is a term I saw used years ago and started to use myself for everything that happened post-TMK # 4.

The LSH wasn't rebooted or retconned, they were shunted to the Glorithverse continuity until Zero Hour ended it all.

(I myself am a colossal TMK fan, for the record)

Wow... poor messed-up LSH fistory...

Hmmm... Lardy said:

Like it or not, the Legion was rebooted (or at least a divergent timeline created) around Vol. 3 #37, and what came after, while recognizable and consistent with the previous timeline, was not the same Legion we read since the Silver Age.

"Gloithverse" doesn't apply here. "Reboot" seems too strong. I'd likely go with "retcon"...

Alterna-boot.

I like the term 'softboot' though I'm not sure it applies to the exit of Superboy. I love the term 'fistory'

I think Superboy (the poster) has a great point. Everything up to Superboy's exit from Legion continuity was the Silver Age Legion, and everything after was a different continuity. I'm not partial one way or another anymore, more from warriness than anything, but I could follow that logic.

Just to re-iterate my position... I don't think the revelation that the Superboy that the Legion had been hanging with for years was really from the "Pocket Universe", and thus was not destined to grow up to be the Superman we were all familiar with, is any bigger change in continuity than the revelation that the Legion was not going to grow up to be the Adult Legion from the Silver Age stories because they were an alternate version. Thus, LSH #300 is a change in continuity of the exact same type as the change in LSH #37-38.

Keith Giffen was willing to acknowledge v4 as a reboot at the recent 50th anniverary panel. When someone asked if any of the reboots was good, Giffen was the first person to respond with "I know one was!" and proceeded to talk about his series. (Podcast available at dcccomics.com "Download' page)

And why should he care now, 16 years after he stomped out the door? Giffen's gambit was over once he was stopped from revealing the adult Legion were clones and the teenage pod people were the "originals". That scheme by itself, quite apart from the Superboy issues, should have ended the v4 "originalness" debate when he admitted it years ago. When Goeff Johns explains away v4 as Time Trapper reality-messing (or however else he intends to erase it as "real" Legion continuity), you won't hear Giffen crying foul. After all, Johns is using Giffen's (and Levitz's) post-Crisis, deus-ex-machina version of the Time Trapper in very much the same way Giffen did later -- to rewrite Legion history.

Now, if only Geoff Johns would be as honest about *his* Legion reboot.

Well, so far the best response to the never-ending question... However, Giffen is usually put on the corner by v4 detractors (I've never read a single interview about his LSH run without the words "polemic", "destructive" or something like that. It's like he always has to justify ALL his choices as bad ones. Being the gentleman but cynical bastich he is, he always seems to go along with the flow. I really wanted to see someone stepping in to say otherwise.

Again, even though Tom & Mary call that a reboot (and they did), the main thing is most of what came before was still valid. LSH was still formed by R. J. Brande, and except for Superboy/Superman, all characters maintained their history. If there is one thing TMK's detractors can't deny is that their run lacked LSH lore. I remember I had to buy all "Who's Who" and the Mayfair book in order to get all subtleties. So, for me, it was a retcon - not a reboot. Otherwise, Marvel Universe is a full reboot all the time.

Also, I find it strage to call LSH an impenetrable book. X-Men is way more impenetrable these days and people still jump on. What LSH lacked was bite and good writing (yes, not even DnA was worth and W/K L.E.G.I.O.N run was much superior than their LSH take). In fact, Shooter's is the single best LSH since TMK's.

As for Geoff being straight... I think it will be answered in L3W. If his GL and JSA run is any indication, he really enjoys building up pieces here and there. Am I right to this his Action LSH was more or less the team around Crisis on Infinite Earths?

I fully agree with EDE.

Tromium, if a creator's intentions do not manifest on the page, they are rather irrelevant. Case in point: Starlin's intentions for S/LSH 250... but one could easily list thousands of examples from comics history.

Jerry, your posting totally captures my feelings about 5YL. As I came back to the book after ten years rest, I learned that my childhood favorite characters had aged just like me - and their life had gotten much more complicated... just like mine had as well.

So I delved into 5YL and thoroughly enjoyed the ride. I consider it to be one of the best (if not THE BEST) Science Fiction comic books ever written. The fact that it uses my beloved Legion characters even adds to its quality. The art may look ugly to some, but it was perfect for the mood of the story. And the Nine Panel Grid made every issue twice as long as any regular comic book I can remember.

So for its sheer complexity, its dystopian portrayal of the future and its characters doing what they do best in a totally different environment, I have always adored and will always
love 5YL, even if after L3W, it probably will only be a giant Elseworld adventure somewhere in the limbo of comics - maybe even standing in Luciens (from the Sandman) library of stories never written or told?

Since we are discussing definitions, I'm curious about the following:

1) Do fans consider Crisis on Infintie Earth's a reboot of the DC universe or a retcon? Or something else entirely?

2) Do people consider the post crisis Superman to be the same character as the Earth 1 Superman, or is he a different character?

3) What about Power Girl? Is she the same character as the original Earth 2 Power Girl or a new character.

DC currently seems to be taking the position that Power Girl is the same character. The changes to the Legion's history all appear to be ripples from COIE. Isn't it inconsistent to argue that the post crisis Power Girl is the same character, but the post crisis Legionnaires are different characters?

1) It's just a mess. The biggest problem with Crisis is that some titles were rebooted, others were retconned, others were "softbooted" or "minibooted" or whatever, others were left to continue on their merry way without effects of Crisis showing up for years. And we're still feeling the effects of the poor planning that went into the post-Crisis period.

2) Different character, no matter what DC says. And that goes for the post-Infinite Crisis mish mash version as well.

3) I haven't really been following it, but it seems to me that this is kind of a mess, too. Power Girl remembers that she is a survivor from the pre-Crisis Earth-2. And, sometimes, at least, the other JSAers remember that they came from this world as well. Only there's also a post-IC Earth-2, with its own JSA, whose Superman and Power Girl are missing, and I take it that the implication is that Power Girl is supposed to be the missing member from there? Well, I guess that's all straightened out. :rolleyes:

I'm gonna take a step back for a moment because some of the posters responding seem to misinterpret my meaning a little with regard to my take on the 'Pocket Universe Superboy as reboot' argument.

First, let me reiterate that I'm a massive fan of 5YL, so this is not an attempt to somehow invalidate or discredit it in any way. The bulk of that era is probably my favorite Legion era of them all!

But reading the poster Superboy's words in the Shooter thread just hit a chord in me. I've actually heard the same argument before, more or less, but reading it in the context of Shooter possibly leaving or being fired--I think it activated a weariness in my Legion fanhood. The possibiliy of him being off the title upsets me. I've only read the first two issues of his 3Boot run, so far, but just last week I was planning on ordering the subsequent issues and greatly anticipated reading them because I enjoyed those two issues so much.

But then this rumor breaks, and my perceived likelihood that it's true just hurts. How many times exactly does a long-suffering Legion fan have to have the rug pulled out from under him? Crisis, PU Superboy, Valor, Zero Hour reboot, Waid threeboot, cartoon cancelled and now Shooter probably off the book before he can even finish his damn story? I've had pretty thick skin where the Legion is concerned, but I'm finally starting to feel what all those hardcore fans who finally gave up at some point must have felt.

And Superboy (the poster) somehow brought it all into perspective by bringing it all back to the Pocket Universe reboot (or whatever you want to call it). Looking back, it's clear that everything went into a downward spiral because some asinine editorial policy decreed that the Legion can't ever have made friends with Superman when he was a boy.

When I was around twenty I just had no idea what the implications of this really were. "Well," I thought, "the Legion's grown up and doesn't really need him anymore, so I guess they'll be alright."

Twenty years later, I can admit I was wrong. The way the Legion's been treated and jerked around over those years since the Superboy debacle, I can only point back to that event as being the first domino that fell.

I loved 5YL. The character work was brilliant. I even loved number four and how Valor had to replace Superboy in the legend because it worked as a kind of eulogy for Superboy. There was a love to that story's execution (and a particular beauty in the role Andrew Nolan played) that is rarely seen when big retcons are done. At least there was a story behind it, and it wasn't just done, y'know?

Then 5YL went off the tracks creatively, and we got the Zero Hour reboot. Surprisingly, I warmed up to it quickly and admired how it was building itself to be unreliant on present-day DCU continuity...to be "reboot-proof", I thought ironically. I think it worked so well for me because this was essentially the same cast, with the same costumes and the same personality traits, as the pre-Zero Hour SW6 Legionnaires with a new beginning and without the complicated continuity and the adult duplicates.

I enjoyed the ZH reboot for a long time. And when the creators started to stagnate, it got a shot in the arm by a fresh creative team who seemed to prove my "reboot-proof" theory. This version had legs and would be around a long time, I felt.

Then, suddenly, the axe falls and we're in for another reboot, this time because we had a pair of hot creators, Waid and Kitson, who had a 'fresh' take. Something else else inside me was weary, but I loved these creators and the characters dearly. So I got excited despite myself.

But this "threeboot" underwhelmed me despite top flight creators and a few cool ideas they brought. The stories were flat and largely unresolved, and the characters were mostly even flatter.

So deep into this 3boot, elsewhere we're introduced to another set of Legionnaires who do have a connection to Superman, and in addition, are apparently the Silver Age Legion itself somehow restored to us but with a few nips and tucks.

So in my mind (and I started a thread to this effect), I'm thinking, "okay, we're in for another reboot and the Waid version will just disappear." But instead the 3Boot continues and DC entices us to stick with it with the biggest writer coup imaginable: Jim effin' Shooter is hired to revitalize the 3Boot and establish it as THE Legion! I snapped up the first two issues, and they were indeed great. "Maybe," I thought, "just maybe, DC's gonna get it right this time!"

But here we are, May 2008 and half a year into the run, and we're waiting for the hammer to fall again because of a rumor from a credible source that Shooter is off Legion. It's just too much.

So that's why Superboy's posts hit a nerve. I feel like we're about to be jerked around one-too-many times most likely because DC has finally realized that they did a bad thing by cutting Superboy out of the Legion in the first place? Two decades later? That's way, waaaaayyyy too late, DC!

There's two things I'm gonna need from DC, or they may just lose me forever:

1) Let Shooter at least finish his story!

2) If the Lightning Saga Legion will soon be the Legion, then it had better be done really well, and they damned well better stick with it!

I've just simply had enough, and I now realize that it all goes back to the Pocket Universe story. Yes, there's a lot I've enjoyed in those two decades since, but where has it really gotten me? What kind of payoff have I received when the rug is constantly being pulled from beneath me? Has any diehard fan of any continuously published comic ever been treated with so little care?

All I can say is, Spider-man fans may look back the same way Legion fans are before long.....

And with all the discussing about Superboy, until today niobody could answer my question:

If they had to take Superboy out, why FIRST doing the Pocket Universe story and THEN doing the Valor retcon??? Why was it necessary to complicate things if the Legion Superboy was already "explained away"?

I never got that...

Mike Carlin.

It was Universe wide reboot. Some chracters weren't changed much some weren't changed directly at all, others were changed completely, but all the characters interacted with each other and so on that level they did all change and get rebooted. IF Superman got completely rebooted and Batman really didn't...every memory Batman had of Superman was changed, so therefore he was rebooted too....even if didn't appear much different than his Pre Crisis Counterpart.

DC Comics completely relaunched their entire Universe in 1986, and it impacted every continuity in their Universe, either directly or indirectly...including the Legion...it actually impacted the Legion more than all but about 2 or 3 characters.


Originally they had it planned to where all the characters that appeared at the Dawn of Time would remember everything...but the wheels were already falling off that idea within months of the Crisis being over.


Personally I think they should have stuck with the idea that all the characters remembered...particularly with the Legion, as it would have made a lot more sense.

John's Legion has already shown to be aware that their past has been changed several times so it sounds to me like he's incorporating that idea into his reboot and I think it's a good one.

Completely different characters...


Earth 1 Superman was as much a tragic figure as Batman...you could identify with him. Not only did he lose his planet and his biological parents, he lost his Earth parents at a young age, he stood by poweruless and watched them die, just like Batman, but he reacted in a completely different way to it than Batman...and his parents being dead was part of his origin from the onset. His parents were never part of the picture outside of Superboy until the Byrne revamp.

Personally I don't like the Byrne revamp as to me it made Superman entirely unsympathetic...it made him literally the luckiest character in the Universe that had everything going for him...Superman is already difficult enough to relate to...and Byrne's revamp made it even more difficult IMO.


His Krypton was better off dead, he was lucky to escape it, and his parents were alive and healthy...it made him look like this big superficial jock. And that was not the case with the Pre Crisis Superman.


This current Superman is not the Earth 1 Superman...but he's also not the Post Crisis Superman.


Kurt Busiek gave the best explanation...this is not the Pre Crisis DC Universe...it's not the Post Crisis DC Universe...it's an entirely New Universe/Multiverse that bears a strong resemblance to both the Pre and Post Crisis Universes.

Some things that were only a part of Earth 1, or Earth only...both happened on this Earth. And as well...there's now a multiverse again. I've even heard rumors of a megaverse.

I think it's possible that this is going to be applied to the Legion as well...I think Pre IC, all the Legions were on different Earths, and it now sounds to me like in this new continuity, all the Legions are going to be the result of alternate timelines. Altough I'm not certain of it.


But like I said...Busiek gave the best explantion I've seen, in saying it's an entirely new earth and new multiverse with a somewhat familiar history.


She's back to being the Superman's cousin. But she's not exactly as she was Pre Crisis.

Yeah...it is inconsistent. But basically she was a better character as Superman's cousin than she was as some contrived Atlantean character...


What DC is trying to do is simply get the best stuff and put it all back on the table.

As opposed to what they did in COIE which was come up with an explanation and then force everything to conform to it, even it required important stuff being taken off the table.

Pride isn't coming before the fall this time around...and DC hasn't given the explantion for how every thing works and fits together now...and I think that's simply because they know they don't know everything yet. They are figuring out what they want and the explanation is going to fit that.

I guess that gives us room to crow at them and wonder if they have their act together...but honestly, I'd rather them do it this way than they way they did it in the COIE.


But Busiek has already said it's a new earth...and he's pretty wired into it.

Well, these are two different arguments: 1) what to call the PU Superboy/v.4 alterations, and 2) whether or not they were a good thing.

I, too, was disappointed with the whole Pocket Universe thing, but Superboy had already ceased to be a major, ongoing part of the Legion at that point, so I thought the Legion could survive without him. Revealing that he came from a Pocket Universe would be tantamount to discovering that George Washington was gay. It may change our perception of the first president, but it doesn't change the present.

I also thought that a couple of good things came out of PU storyline. For one, the funeral sequence was one of biggest tear-jerking scenes in
Legion history. (Any time a comic gets me to feel something is a good thing, even if it's sadness.)

Secondly, Superboy's death provided a more-than-credible motivation for some Legion members to seek revenge against the Time Trapper during the Legion Conspiracy. It would have to be something of that magnitude to make a select few go behind the backs of their teammates to launch a suicide mission. I thought that the build-up of the conspiracy was very well done; it was only the resolution that lacked . . . well, resolution.

I'm not sure it's fair to blame everything the Legion has been through since then on the PU. Twenty years is a long time . . . long enough for some enterprising souls to launch a cohesive, well-thought-out, and entertaining version of the Legion. And there have actually been some successful versions (the early reboot, for one). The problem *I think* is that DC doesn't want to stick with any single version of the Legion and develop it the way it needs to be developed. This means that the Legionnaires should grow up after awhile, get married, have kids, etc.

A lot of fans would prefer to see the Legionnaires remain kids forever, and DC seems to have adopted this as the easy way out: just reboot them every decade or launch multiple versions of the Legion at the same time, and that way we can please everybody. But any grade schooler knows that attempts to please everybody end up pleasing no one.

You're going for an emotionally loaded term while I was trying to find an objective way of describing the event without making a value judgment about it.

(Even though I suggested "partial reboot" as analogous to partial birth abortion, I'm not sure I endorse it for that reason.)

Even reboots are not by definition good or bad. They are just events. And, as we have seen, some good story lines and characters came out of the Legion reboot.

An interesting perspective, Eryk, and I agree with you on a conceptual level. But Superboy was much more important to the Legion's history and identity than the Adult Legion, so the two changes are different at least on that level.

Again, HWW, I'm not trying to devalue all the stories that came after the pocket universe story! In fact, I've enjoyed the vast majority of the stories published in the interim. I'm simply weary beyond words at having my longterm emotional investments in these characters and stories being dumped in DC's trash folder over and over and over again. I just can't keep having that done to me anymore and remain a fan!

The fact is that the Legion was pretty stable and immutable (no, I'm not ignoring your post-Adv. #247 reboot idea or the LSH 300 one...I'll get to those in a future post) before the powers-that-be started f***ing with it beginning with what they did to explain away Superboy. A couple years later they did it again when they forced TMK to take Superboy out entirely, and they haven't been able to leave well enough alone ever since! Superboy as a PU doppleganger was the first domino to fall, and since then, there have just been too many damn dominoes!

Honestly, I think I would have been happy if DC had just stopped wih the Zero Hour reboot and let them be the Legion from then on. I think I really could have lived with that. But they didn't, and with all the uncertainty surrounding what's going on with Shooter, I'm THAT near the breaking point.

And being that close to possibly cutting the cord to my Legion fandom, it's hard not to look back and see where all those problems started and be pretty angry about it. Whether 'reboot' is the appropriate term for it or not, it was certainly a dagger in the Legion's heart. And it's pretty much impossible to survive that kind of wound.

If, as you surmise, DC will continue to give us more of the same, I definitely won't stick around.