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?

Sure: as you said, such teams don't have to be affiliated with the Legion. The only real connection might (should?) be that they were inspired by the Legion.

(I can, however, imagine the migraines that writers and artists would complain about if they had to create an army of characters for each team. )

I don't have any real thoughts about the Legion as a movement since I haven't watched this develop in the current series. I will say that I would prefer such a movement to be generated independently from the Legion (i.e., by their fans) rather than something they started. When a team gets involved with social "movements," it seems to me that it becomes something other than a super-hero team.

Sure. I don't mean to trash anybody's memories of those stories. If anyone does have a different take on their significance, I'd love to read it. Perhaps I'm simply missing something.

Hey, my feelings weren't hurt or anything, HWW. A lot of people react to different stories in different ways. For example, I've never read it, but I'm sure a lot of people who read those Secret Society of Super Villains stories you like might think they're dreck if they read them. Who knows? But comic fans often don't see the quality in certain properties or stories that others do. Hell, even if 99% of comics reader love Watchmen or Dark Knight, I'm SURE there are those in the 1% who absolutely hated it!

I liked the Weber's World story and Supergirl's role in it--and, no the story's not among or near the ranks of my favorite Legion stories--but I would expect a healthy number of fans to register their "meh" vote.

It's funny, though, Kara's much more of a hard sell, I'm finding, than Superboy was for the eponymous poster. I'm not sure which factor is more significant: a) her recent "meh" run in the current ongoing leaving a bad taste in everyone's mouth, or b) the fact that she just wasn't all that comparatively significant to the Legion during pre-Crisis continuity in the first place.

I wonder if it would make any difference here if DC dumped the current version and brought back Kara exactly the way she was prior to her death in CoIE?

Well, I've already defended my postion on why I think they're significant, so anyone with a different view is welcome to post their thoughts on that thread.

Anyone is free to like or dislike anything for any reason (or no reason). What interests me are reasonable arguments either pro or con.

In other words, that one percent that hates Watchmen might just have a good point--and it's something I could learn from.

(By the way, I must be in the one percent that didn't care for Dark Knight, though I couldn't give you reasons why at this remove! )

Like I said, I haven't read SSOSV. I have an inkling I'd actually quite enjoy it, though, based on your posts. I'd wager a lot of people would write them off as '70s cheese or cite its lack of longterm significance, however.

(Interestingly enough, a quick search shows that a near-mint copy of SSOSV #1 sells for $20! Not too bad! )

Speaking of reasonable arguments, if anyone is interested in reading a scholarly approach to 5YL, check out this series of articles from sequart.com. The articles are highly favorable towards Giffen's innovations and I think the author, Julian Darius, makes a good case as to why Giffen's work should be taken seriously.

Thanks for the tip! One of my fanboy dreams would be to release the entire TMK run in deluxe format in Brazil. I'd probably be one out of ten people who would buy that. And I think that run is definitely one of the most overlooked ones in mainstream comics history. For me, it is up there with Animal Man, Starman and Daredevil. (which is a bit below Watchmen and Sandman). Another title that deserved better recognition was Gerard Jones tremendous Green Lantern: Mosaic. Very, very undervalued and one of the most sensible sci-fi titles ever.
UPDATE: What a great essay! Very well put, and there is hardly a piece to which I object. Maybe his only fault is the fact that he seemed to ignore the fact Giffen was under pressure from DC at all times (and I don't doubt he would be under pressure from hardcore but obtuse fans) which makes everything seem so coherent even more amazing.

OMG!! The Supergirl Laurel Gand thing.

I just got it.


Laurel Gand


White Triangle


Daxamite Supremacists/Separatists





This is what's fun about the Legion.


Thanks for that one Mr. Waid...it's hilarious.

I'm not surprised a lot of people forget that Levitz was using Supergirl. He was also using Superboy quite a bit...and I point to that as evidence that they can both be used without overshadowing the Legion. Some will say they weren't used much...I'll say they were used about as often as any other Legionaire during Levitz early run.


The thing with Supergirl is, she was not a major character until she got killed in the Crisis. All her Legion stories came before then, and they tended to be about as memorable as she was...and her Legion stories were probably her most memorable appearances.

I'd say she was neve used better than she was in the GDS prior to her death. Ditto the rest of her usage by Levitz, it was the best she was ever used anywhere.

And I'd say her Romeo and Juliett-esque relationship with Brainiac 5(with a time paradox thrown in for a good measure) was maybe her best remembered romance.


I mean let's look at it for a second...

Her first solo series lasted 10 issues. I think her second lasted about 20 issues.

The Peter David version far surpassed that.

Heck Karate Kid lasted 15 issues in a solo title.

The current version has just about surpassed her.


Even with the Legion, she was in maybe 50 Legion stories in 25 years...

While Laurel Gand was probably in a hundred Legion stories in 13 years or so.


So really Supergirl was not a major character, especially outside of the Legion, but I do think Levitz was in the process of making her one.

The peak of her existence, her best moment, the BAM moment, other than her extremely well done death in Crisis, was her appearance in the GDS. It was Darkseid's best moment as well but that's a discussion for another day.


So she was not a major character but she did work well in the Legion.


And therein is revealed the fatal flaw in the W&K Supergirl and the Legion, and why it wasn't the solution Waid hoped it would be...


Supergirl was retconned into the original Legion's history. She was retconned into being sort of a major part it's history, and there was supposedly this era before Superboy joined where she was the big gun in the Legion...but it was a retcon and not an actual published era.

I think Waid was seeking maybe to tell the story of that era in a way, but the fact of the matter is, Supergirl relly isn't a lead character, and that era of her and the Legion, works better as a retcon than it does as an actual premise for a series.


She's basically a supporting character and she's better in the Legion than she is anywhere else.

She's just like Mon-El, she's just like Saturn Girl, LL and Cosmic Boy...even Darkseid...all elements of Superman stories, some major supporting elements, some throw away, that became something more once they were mixed together a thousand years in the future. I guess when you get down to it, the Legion itself was a retcon, straight into the Superman mythos.


IMO, she belongs for that reason, because she is just like the Legion. But as for Supergirl and the Legion, it works cool as an untold tale, great as a retcon, but it's not a great premise.

To be fair, she brought a huge boost, and she had a positive impact on sales for quite a while, and she didn't really get a fair shot because of Waid's snail like pacing during her tenure...but still, I think it still works better as a retcon than as an actual premise.

IMO, Superboy is the exact inverse. He actually was a major part, and he was retconned into not being a major part, and then into no part, and that works much worse as a premise.

I'm not sure how you are defining "major character" or "memorable," Superboy, but Supergirl was considered to be a very important character long before she was killed off during Crisis.

The fact that her individual series did not last long does not prove anything. There are many characters whose titles fail to last for any number of reasons. The Silver Surfer's first series lasted only 18 issues, for example; yet no one would deny he's a major Marvel Universe character. The Hulk's initial series lasted a whopping six issues, yet the right types of stories turned him into one of Marvel's most recognizable icons.

Just out of curiosity, have you read any of her non-Legion appearances in the '60s and '70s? Yours is a very broad statement to make without support.

I confess that I had read only a few of Supergirl's non-Legion appearances (what can I say? As a boy growing up in the '70s, it was uncool to read a girl's comic!) But some aspects stand out:

1. Supergirl's friendship with Lena Thorul, the telepathic girl who turned out to be Lex Luthor's sister.

2. Her team-up with the Flash, and the Atom for Super-Team Family (I think).

3. A Superman story in which her death is faked in order to teach an unemotional alien child to have feelings.

I'm rather disappointed that I have such a thin recollection of Supergirl's non-Legion appearances, but the memories I do have stand out, I think, because they show that Supergirl was a very significant and memorable character, if handled right.

I think that number is far too high. I can only think of a dozen stories in which she was actively involved (not appearing as, say, a statue or background character):

ACT: 267, 276, and a later one (282?)

ADV: 313, 334, 350-351, 374

SUP: 204

LSH: 294 (GDS), 302-303, 314-315

There may be a few others, but not many more.

Alls I know is that the Supergirl Archives contain some of the best Silver Age stories I own.

I highly recommend them.

She had her fans...every character has their fans, but I just don't feel like she really was one. I liked her...but she wasn't a successful character, at least as a solo feature.


True, because he had been the herald of Galactus, because he had had confrontrations with major Marvel characters and was arguably the most powerful conventional character in the Marve Uni.

He was designed from the outset to be a major player.

Supergirl really wasn't outside of the Superman Universe.


True...and I'd say it was Supergirl's death story that turned her into an icon. That's the way it seems to me.

I'm not saying characters can't become more important...it's definitely harder to do it with some than others.




I've read quite a few of them....none of them stand out in my memory really.


I actually have a great deal of her Adventure run after she replaced the Legion.

Keep in mind I'm not saying I don't like the character...I just don't think she was an A-list character prior to her death.

I don't think it's just you and I that have a thin recollection of her appearances. I think it was the Pre Crisis Comics audience in general. Yes she had her fans...but so does every character.


I'll agree with that, my 50 estimation was any appearance of any sort.


IIRC, she was in more stories in the 300's of LOSH than you have listed though...and I'd say some of them were more than just cameos. Levitz worked his way around the Legion and all that some of the regular Legionaires were getting around time was a half a page or a panel. That's why I claim that when the Levitz Legion really took off, both Supergirl and Superboy were being used as much as any Legionaires. The cast was so large and Levitz generally tried to touch on every one by every other issue or so...that some main characters didn't get much feature time in the book.


IMO, Supergirl was not a major character prior to her death...that's just my opinion, and I think that's why so many of her Pre Death appearances are forgotten of difficult to recall. She became a legendary character after she died. Dyed in the wool Supergirl fans might remember the Pre Crisis stories, and may have read most of them as they came out...but I don't think anyone that was a casual reader from that time really does and was reading them when they came out.


Oh and she always helped the sales of the Legion book during the Silver Age...at least according to Mort Weisinger. So I still say she was at her best in the Legion.

This reminds me why I said I liked Superman but not Superboy.

First, Superboy wasn't part of the original concept of Superman. He was a retcon a decade later. Now, as I said, I don't necessarily like retconned versions less, but I don't necessarily like them more, either.

Before I was about 12, I didn't read a lot of comics. I knew some superheroes, and I'd certainly heard of Superman, but I wasn't familiar with his universe. I don't believe I ever read a Superman comic prior to seeing the 1978 movie. When the words "Lex Luthor" were first spoken, they meant nothing to me.

That movie was iconic, as almost everyone seems to agree. It was based to some extent on the Silver Age Superman, not the then-current version... but not on the real Silver Age, but the Silver Age as it was nostalgically remembered. The Silver Age as it should have been. It eliminated elements like Superman's manipulative attitude, Jimmy as his nearly-official sidekick... and Superboy. Superman worked without Superboy because everything important that happened to Superboy could either happen to a young Clark Kent or an older Superman. Superboy wasn't a necessary period of his life to make him into the Superman we know.

Superboy was more important to the Legion than he was to Superman.

By the way guys...did I leave out too many details about the White Triangle thing for anyone to get the joke? Or is it something Legion fandom has always known and I am the last to know?


The White Triangle is a direct shot at Mike Carlin and the Superman Editorial crew, in particular Mike Carlin on the part of IMO, Mark Waid.

IMO, he got the name the White Triangle for the Daxamite Supremacists(who didn't want to be touched or even be in verbal contact with anyone else) from the (usually)White Triangle that was appearing on the covers of the Superman stories of that era designating the order in which they should be read for continuity purposes. Those were the brain child of Mike Carlin...the guy who pretty much wouldn't let the Legion Crew touch or come anywhere near any Kryptonians.


It gets even better when you think about what the White Triangle did to Andromeda.....

Jerry Siegel created a Superboy character in 1939 6 months after Superman's debut. IIRC while there's no mention of Superboy in Superman's origin...it also doesn't explicitly say he had no career as Superboy.

And by 1945...the Golden Age Superman had a career as Superboy.

Superboy debuted in 1945, in the Golden Age, not the Silver Age, so it would seem to be a statement there that in fact, the original Superman was Superboy as well, and the only reason the GA Superman being Superboy was retconned out was to differentiate between the Earth 2 and Earth 1 Superman. But Superboy was around in publication a mere 7 years after Superman.

That's what I always found ironic about the Byrne retcon and him citing a desire to make Superman unique again...

Superboy was around before Byrne was even born, and Jerry Siegel is his creator.

Jerry Siegel also created a great many additional Kryptonian based characters.

So is Byrne saying he knows Superman better than Jerry Siegel does?


As for whether or not the character is hokey or too Silver Agey...Spiderman began his career as a teen, so did the X-men.


To me it makes more sense for Superman to have had some sort of learning period than to have just appeared with all the answers and as the perfect hero. I've always felt the Legion was a huge part of that BTW.

Trips does have a point about Superboy having been a retcon. However, he was a retcon that existed for over 40 years, appearing first in 1945 (though Siegel and Shuster first wanted to intro him as early as '38, but were denied). Certainly, he and all those other elements intoduced in the Silver Age like the different Kryptonites, the Phantom Zone, etc. did nothing but enhance the mythos. Actually, having been introduced in '45, I guess Superboy would not qualify as Silver Age.

40 years is a long time, and it should be mentioned that Supes' creators put in most of these retcons themselves (don't forget the power and costume changes, too), not some later writers. That means a lot to me personally and gives their changes a lot of legitimacy as they saw more and more the potential their character had.

I enjoyed the original film, and I enjoyed how John Byrne was obviously inspired by it. Maybe they did get back to the characters roots, but they also didn't use the original costume or the original powers. Really, the 'retconned' version lasted a lot longer than the 'original'.

EDIT: after doing some fact-checking, Shuster had pretty much no involvement with Superboy or with the Silver Age stories. Siegel was extensively involved, however.

Right, Superboy is a Golden Age character created by Jerry Siegel and who was originally conceived on some level mere months after Superman's debut.


Not only that...but like Superman and Batman...he held down the lead in two titles from the Gold to the Silver Age.

Those are the only characters to accomplish that. Superman, Batman, and Superboy.

They are the only superheroes to stay in publication through the seduction of the innocent period.

And Superboy was in cartoons in the sixties, the original plan after George Reeves died was to relaunch the show as Superboy.

And while I realize some may argue Superboy was successful just because he was a teen version of Superman(and I'm sure DC wishes the courts would agree)...the fact is he had an entirely different supporting cast, and most of the Silver Age additions to the Superman mythos, first appeared in Superboy, not Superman...like Bizarro for instance, and of course, the Legion of Superheroes.


Prior to the Byrne revamp, in Superman's 50 year history, only 7 of those years had he not been Superboy.

I liked the original Supes film as well..but I've thought all the others were pretty lame.


#1. I'm sick of Lex Luthor being the bad guy in every film. It's boring...Superman and Luthor can't even fight. It'so limiting...I don't care how good Spacey and Hackman are. And I know they had Zod and the Nukeman and a pseudo Bizarro...but still, why not just use the originals?

Last I checked Jerry Siegel and Mort were a hell of a lot better at creating comic characters than Donner is.

What about Brainiac?
The Toyman?
The Prankster?
Mxy?
Bizarro?
Doomsday?
Cyborg Superman?
Darkseid?
The Ultra Humanite?
Mongul?
The Parasite?

Basically the original Superman movie is Superman as he appeared in Action Comics #1...but Superman fast grew beyond that...he grew beyond it to stay interesting and relevant, to distance him from his many imitators. He grew beyond it due in no small part to his own creator. So all the removal of all those elements does is make Superman more or less anachronistic, and less interesting, not more interesting relative to his many imitators.


And more importantly, it completely and utterly fails in it's ultimate goal of making Superman more unique...it makes him less unique.


The only way to truly make Superman unique again is to get rid of Batman and Spiderman etc....other than it's his mythos that sets him apart....mythos created by a who's who of 20th century SciFi writers and afficianados.

Byrne? He's not in their league as a sci-fi guy, or as a writer, he has nowhere near the imagination they had and Superman was left the worse, less sympathetic, and less original for him mucking about.

Even in the Legion after the retcon...they still had 2-4 characters with Kryptonian type powers, what they didn't have, is the one character that can have those powers, and not be called a ripoff or an imitation in the process, and who could have legitimized all those other characters as being more than ripoffs based on their relationship to him. Completely backwards logic...that retcon didn't make Superman unique again.


And I'd argue that the reason that Superman became passe in the seventies was because that's when they first tried to Marvelize him...the first attempt to make him more contemporary was when Julius Schwartz took over for Mort. Julius Schwarts tried to fix him by making him more real just like had done with Batman after the TV show.

Schwartz cast off a great deal of the Silver Age elements...he didn't retcon them out, but he stopped using them.

And that's exactly when Superman became passe..and people started saying he was boring and unoriginal.

Superman is not passe...in fact he's been passe for so long now that considering him passe is passe...it's been that way since the early 70's.

I'll go one step further. I'd argue that Superboy was actually a strong and distinct enough character that he could've been seperated from Superman, ala Wonder Girl/Wonder Woman, and survived as an independent character. The tragedy of the Pocket Universe storyline wasn't so much the revelation that he wasn't a teenage version of Superman, but in killing him off after establishing him as a different character.

I want to add something else about the Silver Age stuff because I see it debated often about whether or not it will sell with the modern audience...whether it will be accepted.

7 words..

Whatever happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

That was the absolutely hokiest Silver Age stuff of the Superman myhthos...Insect Queen, Krypto, the arch villian was Mxy. The Adventure Legion...

Basically everything Byrne was about to throw out...

It was drawn by Curt Swan, inked by Schaffenberger(and Perez)..and written by a guy that is a huge Silver Age DC fan named Alan Moore.

And it is one of the best Superman stories ever written, it's so much better than anything Byrne did that it's next to impossible to even tell it's same character as the guy Byrne wrote...only the uniform is the same.


Luckily for all of us...a great deal of Johns success is going back and taking a real good look at what Moore was doing(as he did in Green Lantern) and carrying Moore's vision forward.

This is going to be good folks...IMO.

And on that my friend...we are in 100% agreement.

Beyond that...I'd argue that killing Karate Kid was a mistake, as he was an extremely popular character at that time, that always did well in fan elections, surived 15 issues as a solo character during the impolosion era, and had been featured in nearly every memorable Legion story written since he first appeared up to that point...

And now? They can gut him and leave him laying around like a slab of meat for 10 issues in Countdown, before throwing him away like garbage...and no one even cares anymore.

Way to kill a character there DC :thumbsup

And Giffen still doesn't sound like he's satisfied. It makes me extremely protective of the 3boot KK. I don't want Giffen anywhere near him, even it means I don't see Giffen on the book again. Killing him 3-4 times is enough...and some of us liked him.

So what? Everything Giffen has created for DC, be JLI, be LSH, was pretty much violated or erased inconspicuously. Infinite Crisis is a disgrace of a story, cold on the wheels of one of biggest pieces of storytelling trash ever: the death of Sue Digby.
Not only that, but we can argue that Blue Beetle was a favorite character, who was very, very poorly handled in that storyline (in fact, whenever a writer wants to screw a JLI character, you just have to put every character disbelieving/poking fun at him - even though JLI was decades ago and most of its characters were already handled as "serious heroes" for quite some time).
So, popularity doesn't seem to be an issue. And Karate Kid, meh...

It took a whole year for that dude to die. It wasn't just ten issues. It went the whole Countdown plus the Lightning Saga. I'd whack him in about two issues, tops.

Well, for all I know, KK is dead for good and Giffen won't try bringing him back for life any time soon. And, as we suspect, 3boot KK will be dead along with his own timeline...

Oh, just to entice rage in here: Laurel Gand was a million times better as a character than Pre-Crisis Supergirl ever was. TKM is there to prove it.

Ricardo...I realize you like Giffen, but what's so great about repeatedly killing a character?

That's not exactly high prose...it's some guy with some odd visceral hatred of a literary character getting off on destruction.

If you kill off all the characters every one likes...what are you left with? Not much.


It is kind of funny...unless you happen to like that chracter..and then it stopped being funny after the second or third time, even if you have a great sense of humor.


Now it's just beating a dead horse.


Me?

I'm praying KK's creator..a guy named Shooter, will create some guy named KG or Geight Kiffen, and juat have KK wail on this dude several times per year...make him KK's #$%%$%@%.

I think that'd be much more funny than seeing KK killed again.

I bet it would! But, meanwhile, there's always KK to be killed again.

I like Giffen much better when he's got someone to keep him sane...he is very creative, but not everything he does is gold...especially when he's on his own.

But he does put a lot of extra into the stuff he does..

One of my favorite things he did was the homage to Michaelangelo in the Great Darkness Saga featuring Darkseid and Shadowlass:

Link: To Michelangelo, not the art from the GDS.
http://www.netpagz.com/bryce/sistinechapel/CreationofAdam.jpg

And the GDS:

http://www.progressiveruin.com/2007_09_09_archive.html

He does cool stuff...but killing KK 43 times isn't one of them. He's not that good...I was a Legion Fan and a KK fan before I knew who Giffen was.