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?

The Legion should play up to it's strength's,and yes my friend's one of those strength's is having ties to Kal-El in some shape or form,He makes the Legion stronger, I always loved the fact that Superman had superpowered friends before the Justice League and that those friend's were the Legion and I think they made him stronger to.

I myself might never have picked up that copy of SLSH #197 if not for Kal-El being on the cover as he was the only character I recognized.

I've been resisting joining this discussion.

I'll say it.

I prefer the Legion without Superboy.

(Ducks)

I understand that Superboy's presence in the Legion was good for sales, but when he was around, he often dominated. Sometimes this was more obvious than others. In Adventure #331, the LSV creates a memorial plaque for the LSH (whom they claim to have killed) and, next to it, is a tombstone, of equal size, for Superboy. The whole Legion is given an honor (albeit, by villains) equal to that Superboy gets himself.

Perhaps this is a poor example, but the mindset of the time was that Superboy was more important than the rest of the characters put together.

Please don't get me wrong, I have a great affection for that era--and really, for all Legion stories, but when the Crisis erased Kal-El's involvement with the Legion and the Big Three's involvement with the JSA, I really came to appreciate the remaining characters of both teams so much more. Maybe good stories could be told about Rokk, Garth and Imra (and Jay, Alan and Carter) that didn't require one of DC's flagship characters. For me the retcons made to keep stories in continuity minus those characters worked.

I realize this is contrary to the dominant thinking here and I hope I haven't offended anyone.

I'll accept whatever they give us. What choice do we have? We can either buy the comics or not. There have been times in my life that I have chosen not to buy them.

At this point, my choices in comics are mostly DC's second string: LSH and JSA, plus a few others that strike my fancy. I haven't picked up a Batman comic in 20 years. I rarely read Superman or Wonder Woman titles or JLA. DC has so many wonderful characters, to me it seems they do a disservice to those characters if they insist on a tie to one or all of the big three.

You don't need to duck from me.

I never preferred the Legion with strong Superman ties. In fact, if I look back at my comics fandom history, I disliked the Legion back when the only one I knew was the Pre-Crisis Legion, principally from stories with strong Superman involvement and connections.

The DC universe is too hierarchial. Characters' in-universe importance is based on their real-world popularity and date of creation. This is especially evident now that different series don't really occupy their own corners of the universe anymore. All the complaints about minor characters being killed off in company-wide crossovers? That situation happens because characters are seen in terms of their importance and place in the whole universe first and in terms of their own series second. Series generally work better if stories stem from events within the series. Less popular characters work better when out of the shadow of more popular ones.

I'm not against all crossovers. But some don't help things. I never liked the Superman-Batman team because of the scale difference. Batman should not be a character of great importance to the larger universe. He's Gotham City's hero, the greatest on his own turf. As long as his stories are mostly limited to that, he works. Superman is the entire world's hero. If Batman ever enters Superman's world, he is the lesser.

This situation of "greatest on his own turf" can, in a more metafictional way, be used to explain why I prefer the concept of Valor to the earlier Mon-El. After 1989, in the Legion's world, Superman was Earth's greatest hero... and Valor was the galaxy's greatest hero. He didn't diminish Superman in any way. On the galactic scale, Superman and Valor were equivalent to what Batman and Superman were on the global scale. In this case, because Valor was a much less popular character than Superman, it was interestingly anti-metafictional. DC had assigned great importance to a relatively unpopular character. There was a reason we hadn't seen more of him: he wasn't especially important to Earth. Our perspective as readers was limited. We were told that the heroes that were so great to us weren't necessarily so important in the rest of the universe.

Obviously, my point is again taken incorrectly. I do agree with you to an extent, Rocky! I liked that Superboy was relegated to occasional guest star status just prior to Levitz/Giffen for the exact reasons you state. I wasn't and am not looking to give Superboy a bigger role in the stories.

But he was a major part of their history and, as Lone Wolf states, was a big reason for fans checking out the book in the first place. Superboy was nowhere near the top in my list of favorite Legionnaires. But he WAS a Legionnaire, and the ties with his legacy as Superman were important. Just because the LSH had grown beyond needing Kal as a crutch doesn't mean his role in their history should've been eliminated or undermined.

And, again, the larger point for me is what this Pocket Universe retcon (or whatever) started in that it set the Legion up as some clay that could be constantly molded into drastically different shapes. Like I said, just look at what's happened since! Has any comics property been dumped on like the Legion?

So, Rocky, to me at least its not about how much you like or don't like Superboy; it's about how damaging to the Legion it was messing with his role in it. I'd say since that happened, we're eternally either on the brink of cancellation or another reboot. And that's not a lot of fun!

The teen Legion met the Adult LSV in ADV. 331. The latter had travelled back from their own time to join Dynamo Boy's Legion, after DB had expelled the other Legionnaires. After the LSV tricked DB into entering a timeship which transported him to the end of time, the real (teen) Legionnaires returned to defeat the LSV.

(EDIT: I realize you were asking if the teen Legion met the Adult Legion or the teen LSV met the Adult LSV. As I recall, no. But ADV 331 does show the teen Legion meeting people who were understood to be from their own future, not a parallel universe.)

I guess the next question is, "considered canonical by whom?" Legion fans (which ones)? DC?

The problem with making canonical arguments is, now that we have threeboot Legion and L3W, should we consider anything before them canon? Or are only the current Legion(s) canon?

I think what is central to Eryk's argument (and he is certainly capable of defending his own argument) is that the Adult Legion were considered canon *at the time they were being published--and for many years after,* just as Superboy (young Superman) was considered canon at the time and up to the Pocket Universe.

Um, we are talking about the Adult Legion story published in ADV. 354-355, right? This is "the one written by Shooter"? Superman plays a major role in that story and travels from his own time to visit the Legion.

You can view the covers of those issues
here and here .

I'm never offended by a well-reasoned opposing view, Rocky, and you present your reasons quite well.

Also, I half agree with you. That is, I think the association with Superboy was something the Legion outgrew (and vice versa). I was happy to see him written out of the series and returning only as an occasional guest. Everybody has to graduate from high school eventually.

Thank you for posting this rationale, Triplicate Kid. I've always hated the Valor retcon (and especially the Valor name), but your insight gives it a whole new and more positive perspective.

Don't get me wrong I to wan't The Legion to have their own title without Superman,But I also want them to have most of their history intact with Superman.

I wan't them grown up with their original continuity and relationship's back,I wouldn't mind if Kal-El showed up once a year, or they made an appearance in one of his titles every so often.

With Superman in their history the Legion is stronger in the DCU,on the Comic Racks bringing in New Readers,and in Sales.

I was never crazy about Superboy as well, cause he too often not only dominated the other characters, but also too often was the solution to every problem, which was boring. They had to find always new ways to outpower him (stun him, kryptonite-ize him, brainwash him...) to keep the fans from asking "why does Superboy not simply go there superfast and superpunch the bad guys?"...

I preferred the Legion without him, cause the wonderful Legionnaires had more breathing space that way...

I too prefer the Legion without Superboy, but the Superboy connection provides one thing that even the Lightning Saga Legion lacks, and that is FOCUS. When we look at the Legion over the years I see many different reasons why they exist, as a shining example to a fragile United Planets for what teamwork can do, as an anti-adult/pro-youth movement, as a way to overcome xenophobia (you have NO idea how much I dilike the fact that Johns continues to allude to this isn 3Worlds), etc.

Yet the original Legion was simply inspired by the world's greatest hero when he was a boy (i.e the same age as them, Q: why are teenagers superheroes? A: because look at all the good Superboy did). I can't recall a single moment in original Legion history where they ever 'questioned' whey they were or where the reason they were founded became a part of the story, simply put they were heroes, and that is what made it work. Without the clutter of 'social' causes (the UP draft, the anti-adult movement, the compat xenophobiaism) they could have far out space adventures and little cliques and funny moments.

Without Superboy, it seems that writers stumble over the WHY for the Legion existance, and it seems that no matter what they decide on to be the inspiration they can not make the Legion simply about super-powered youths who are heroes. That said, I don't like reading Superman stories or Superboy stories that guest star the Legion, I want to read the Legion story. That's one reason why I'm not 100% in love with the Action Legion, yeah it was a good arc, but it was a SUPERMAN story using the Legion to tell us more about him, and not a LEGION story using Superman to tell us more about them. Which is fine, since it is in Action comics, but it is one reason why I'm not begging for a "Superman and the Legion of Super-heroes" title.

I want Superboy to be a part of Legion history but I don't really want to see him actually APPEAR in the Legion if that makes any sense.

Lardy, I'm sorry if I misunderstood you. You have a very good point about the instability of the Legion over the last 20 years.

That being said, I still would prefer Superboy/man's involvement with the Legion to be minimal.

I would rather have a Daxam back as the most powerful Legionnaire. I think the period right after Invasion up to TKM's demise was the best in terms of how I would deal with Legion ties with DC Universe (meaning: Valor, L.E.G.I.O.N. and no Superman).
In fact, Valor had that tragical link the original Superboy [our LegionWorld member] had and one current Superman sorely lacks.

Here is my opinion ,Any Legion not having a connection with Kal-El in their history will fail.
Post-Crisis Legion
5 Years Later
Zero Hour Re-boot
And it looks like the Three-Boot won't be far behind these other atempts of doing the Legion without him.

Post-Crisis Legion and 5 years Later have not failed - not sales-wise and much less storywise. TM Legion failed and ZH failed on both accounts. It's got nothing to do with Superman. It's got to do with bad storytelling.

A Supe-character can help sales, but not for long without a good story.

There's nothing wrong with having a Supe-connection; that's where Legion did come from, after all. That does not mean every Legion story needs a Supe-related connection, but it is part of the fabric.

And it doesn't have to be on the teen level; I'm really loving that an adult Kal can have renewed Legion ties. Fans circa the 1960s were teends reading about teens. Fans of today are alrgely older, and can relate to childhood/teenhood friends drifting in and out of one's life.

TMK could have been just as great with a Supe connection; it was great without one, too.
There's no need to mistake one element of flavor for the entire recipe.

Hell even when Gerry Conway and Joe Staton did the Legion it had more fan support than any of the Re-Boots.

You take away the Loyal Fans who stuck with the Legion after they dismantled it starting with The Pocket Universe Story and then those who stayed after all the Retcons and Re-Boots.

I doubt those Legion's would ever have even gotten past their first year,Just look at all the other titles in comics that have never made it.

The Original Legion never got cancelled due to poor sales,It even took two titles away from it's most recognizable member Kal-El,And was one of DC's better selling titles for almost 30 years.

Fun discussion, one of my favorite Legion debates too.

Superboy seldom actually enhances a story but the familiar always has a chance of attracting a casual reader to try the title.

Honestly I always like Kal being used sparingly and being shown as being humbled in the presence of his equals the inclusion of the character both humanizes Kal-El and lends prestige to the team. In the Legion he's not always the toughest, the smartest or the fastest. He's just one of the guys. Virtually a different character than the ultra-competent king of the super heroes depicted in other Superman comics. I find him WAY more likeable as an insecure teenager.

I don't seem to be alone in that either. I really enjoyed the recent scenes of young Clark being a misunderstood loner and the object of ridicule by the popular jock IN crowd. Poor Clarkie. I feel for the guy. Lucky thing for him he met some other super powered kids to hang out with, eh?

But that's not really the point to adding the S shield into the title. The idea was always to persuade the regular public to throw down 12 or 15 cents, later a quarter and now $3-$5 for a Supersomebody comic book. When the Legion reads well and keeps the super teen on the covers we tend to keep those extra fans around. IMO it takes a heck of a lot more work to keep the buying public interested with the book as a stand-alone. If Superman sells the book then why force it?

This quote is from Stan Lee and has nothing to do with the Legion yet at the same time it has everything to do with the Legion,
At some level it really IS the bottom line that keeps us going and I generally like the way Superboy/Superman is used in Legion stories so why not?

A little while ago, I realized that this connection - or at least the necessity for it - was fallacious. It occured when I encountered the suggestion that the Teen Titans could've inspired the Legion. I realized that kids don't look up to other kids as much as they do to adults. The Legion could've been inspired by SuperMAN. A way DC could've conceivably got around the problem in the no-Superboy era. Until the ridiculous no-mention-of-Superman directive, that is.

A good point. Of course, this begs the question of why the Legion isn't called the Legion of Titanic Heroes or some such.

I wonder if the idea that kids don't look up to other kids still holds true when there's a thousand years' remove involved. That is, when I was a kid, we read about Joan of Arc and the Virgin Mary (who was supposedly a teenager when she gave birth to Jesus) as historical role models for how kids were supposed to behave, what they should believe, etc. I wonder if the same reverence would hold true for the Legion and Superboy and Supergirl since the latter weren't (at the time of the Legion's founding) contemporaries.

I have to go with history.

It wasn't the titans, or Batman, or the Green Lantern Corps. It was Superboy, in that goofy little story that captured lightning in a bottle. Superboy doesn't have to appear in every single story, but the legion never feels right to me without him.

Supergirl didn't cut it. The issues around 255 or so where he left just didn't...well, they just seemed lacking to me.

The legion was inspired by the greatest of the ancient champions of good, Superboy who became Superman.

And like it was said above, i like the Superboy character much more than the Superman character. Superboy was still being formed, while Superman was always a little too...perfect.

I still remember a line "imagine knowing you have the power to shatter worlds and knowing it isn't enough" to paraphrase. It was against the fatal five on Mordan, i think it was. Superboy didn't save the day completely, it took the skills and teamwork of a Legion of kids.

I loved it.

But without Superboy, the legion loses something. Don't ask me why, they just...do.

I didn't feel this way for the longest time but began to change my mind about three or four years ago, and I think that change in opinion directly is the result of (A) rereading the entire Legion run (all boots) from start to finish a second time and (B) the almost ten years of discussing the Legion of Super-Heroes with other Legion fans here and elsewhere on line before. And what I feel is that the Legion absolutely must have that Superman/Superboy connection to maintain the spirit of the series.

That being said, I don't think Kal-El needs to be an active Legionnaire in every issue. I thought perhaps his most effective appearance after leaving the Legion was when he and Supergirl showed up in Great Darkness to battle Darkseid in the finale--it really felt like something special there. A very conservative use of Superboy with the Legion, not overdoing it, could work to the series' benefit in a variety of ways: a sense of building from where the Legion's beginnings, a larger connection to the Superma mythos (and thereby the DC universe), and a constant reminder of the Silver Age science-fiction origins of the Legion mythos which should always be present (albeit in various forms).

The entire idea of the utopian future of the Legion hinges somewhat on the inclusion of Superboy in its mythos. In a way, knowing full well that Superboy would one day grow to be Superman, the greatest hero of them all, was in parallel to the world one day growing into the utopian future of the Legion. Remove Superboy from the Legion and things grow tougher--remove Superboy from Legion history and the utopian future soon after changes to something much less so, even dystopian at times.

The Superman mythos had suffered just as painfully as the Legion via this disconnection. By removing the Legion aspect (and various other Silver Age Earth-1 themes), DC has tried to connect Superman closer to Wonder Woman and other DC properties, and there is no doubt that at times it does not feel right. It actually feels forced and lacking veracity at times.

To get back to what I first said, I used to feel the opposite of this for years. But I've thought about this topic a great deal, specifically for the last four years or so (since I reread the whole run) and I'm quite certain the Legion needs a firm connection to Superman/Superboy. I still, however, feel the connection to the rest of the DCU should end there.

Funny how our latest topic here in the Roundtable has strayed (or evolved?) from where it began, as the original topic the Roundtable grew from strayed...

But, really the Superboy thing started mostly as conjecture as to whether the Pocket Universe retcon actually may have been the first reboot of the Legion, albeit a somewhat subtler one than the Zero Hour one and the like. And it was also used to, at the very least, show how that retcon/reboot was the first (and possibly most damaging) domino to fall in a series of dominoes that have nearly destroyed the Legion and its fanbase.

But obviously that leads to the present focus, which is about whether Superboy should be a part of Legion history, and if so, to what extent should he be involved? Most posters appear to want the Supes tie but with Supes used sparingly.

Allow Spider-Lardy to spin his web on this debate into a different direction and see what takes shape:

Okay, what happened starting with the Pocket Universe retcon/reboot is done, as are all the other changes that happened. Bottom line is we can't turn back time and erase what happened in v3 #37-38 and reverse what happened and all the series of events (dominoes) that followed.

But Geoff Johns is trying to work his continuity magic and give us back: a) a Legion with ties to young Superman and b) the version who Supes has ties with resembles the LSH as we knew them circa the Levitz era.

My question is: Is Johns' attempt at a fix not waaaay too late? I mean, really, really too late? Granted, Johns has a decent track record with this sort of thing, but it feels like it's just way too much in an already-complicated Legion continuity mess!

In any case DC will do whatever DC wants to do, assuming that this latest "fix" is gonna be the one to ignite sells on the Legion. Of course all the other "fixes" were supposed to do this anyway. Uh...anybody got a scorecard here?

I know it's too late to rant and rave, but given my druthers, I'd prefer to give Shooter a chance to spin his stories and build up the fanbase. There are no guarantees, but good stories is what the Legion needs most of all. Why not let one of the masters of a good Legion story have a year or two to work his magic and see what happens before pulling the plug and aborting the whole thing AGAIN? Hell, why couldn't Shooter's take on the 3Boot Legion have been the one to have ties with young Kal-El? Would that have just made too much sense, DC?

Instead, we'll have L3W and probably with it the latest "real" version will be officially unveiled. And I'll just bet 3Boot (along with Shooter and Manapul) will be back in the trash bin of futility that the Legion's stories go into once fickle DC decides to give it another makeover.

In that line of thinking I'm having very little trouble believing the rumor about Shooter being out is true and that our devotion will be rewarded the way it always seems to be the last couple decades.

Cynicism, thy name is Lard Lad...today, at least.

Ooops! Sorry Fallible Lardy is definitely fallible where his memory of certain stories is involved. Apologize. I don't think it totally obliterates my argument about the standalone nature of the story, but it definitely weakened it.

Ricardo, all I want to say is that based on Keith Giffen's own words he felt the title was falling apart by issue 5. Waid and the Bierbaum's mentioned that issue as well. Issue 5 was the Mon-El retcon. It was forced on them by DC and the Superman creative team right after the launch. And Giffen had to completely retool on the fly.

He felt he was being interefered with by DC as well as the fans, and he quit the book multiple times, including a period of months early in the run. By his own admission he quit it many times, for hours, days, weeks and months. I do not see that as this smooth fluid creative environment.

Reading it at the time, it actually felt to me like the way the creators describe it..a huge confusing why are they doing that cluster.....and it felt like someone who hated the Legion was dictating some of the changes. That's what Giffen took the brunt of...and I don't think he realizes it to this day. Does anyone really think the fan backlash was because Dream Girl's hair was different?

Yes they made lemonaid from lemons well, but I just don't see how anyone can say Giffen got to tell the story he wanted to tell, the way he wanted to tell it. All he got to do really was age them 5 years and put them through some minor-major character changes.

And he even said his Legion were meant to clones, not the real Legion.

That's just my opinion and I realize I am not going to change yours, but that book was a pretty big departure from the original Legion in tone, in continuity, in everything. Not for one second did it ever feel like the original Legion to me at even the most cursory level. I'd have probably enjoyed it a lot more if they hadn't called it Legion, but Giffen said he was banking on the Legion name to sell it.


I applaud him attempting to salvage the continuity, but truthfully, the matter was taken out of his hands, much to his chagrin I imagine. And even though he himself did not reboot the Legion and fought against it, the Superman Team did reboot it.


Oh yeah...Giffen also said he destroyed the Earth/Moon to vent his anger.

Back toi the topic that was being discussed...IMO, retconning Superboy was a huge retcon.

The Legion was spun entirely out of the Superboy mythos.


I know we all enjoyed Eryk Davis Ester's favorite Legionaires polls...and I know some got a chuckle out of Superboy's poor showing on some of them...


But what made me chuckle is that the character that dominanted every single poll...

Was named Brainiac 5.
As in the Superman Villian Brainiac.

In at least one incarnation was in love with Supergirl.


And he was created Jerry Siegel.

Tied together on so many different levels. Of course it was massive retcon. In terms of commercial appeal...Superboy is not some obscure Legionaire(and that's not comics reality either), he's the single most important Legionaire.

And you know what's really funny about the Pocket Uni story?

Superboy was in his own comic(short lived) and on TV within months of that retcon. Supergirl was soon back...a new version of Superboy was back a few years later.


So I ask you...what did that retcon accomplish? It limited bigname characters appearing in the Legion...that's what it accomplished. It removed the Legion from the Superman Family, and basically forced them to stand on their own with no strong and reliable tether to any known Universe...that's a tough sell with any team, in any era. Yeah they survived...but they didn't flourish as they once did.

All it did was hurt the Legion, that's all it accomplished.

And Superboy never went away...except from the Legion. He was on TV months after the reton...he's been on TV for 8 years now or so. He's also the top villian in the DC Universe now...

Not some minor character...especially to the Legion.