Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Lightning Saga Legion in Action!

NO, NO, NO

They WERE created to stave off the barbarians at the gate. If not for Legion our children's children's..... children would have at BEST teeny red spots on their foreheads.

We need an "If the Legion is never invented" thread to get persprective on this.

Prety much yeah...none of them were going, Yay Superman is getting retconned out of the Continity, we love this!

They were all like... :wtf do we do now? How do we fix this?


None of them were happy about it...why would they be?

But since you asked, I will in fact be back with some quotes for you.

From Giffen, from Waid, from the Bierbaums...from Paul Levitz.


Of course I have evidence...some of them I'll have to type out of a book...but I will provide them.


These guys were all fans of the Legion, the original Legion...I don't know why you would think they'd be happy about what was done to it in the Superman revamp...


They weren't the ones that did it to the book...it was not their decision, they just tried to fix it...

I guess Paul Levitz was the most culpable in the whole thing...but I have some quotes from him that are quite revealing themselves...


Stay tuned. Hopefully it will be a revelatory experience for us all...

It has been explictly stated that the current Supergirl, the one who is the cousin of the current Superman, was never a member of this Legion. If there is *a* Supergirl, then she is not the cousin of the New Earth Superman.

Basically anything tied in to Silver/Bronze Age Superman continuity that interacts with the Legion has to be re-written. And that's a huge amount of the pre-Crisis Legion. We've already seen Adventure #247 re-written in a much less interesting version. That's going to have to happen for nearly every pre-Crisis story. Current Insect Queen is an alien who looks like Lana rather than a teenage Lana. Jimmy Olsen has no career as Elastic Lad. Superboy cannot leave the Legion because he discovers the impending deaths of Pa and Ma Kent, because Pa and Ma Kent are still alive. No Super-Pets. Lex Luthor's history is radically altered.

The simple fact is that they have not brought back the pre-Crisis Superman mythology. The current Superman is a weird blend of Byrne, Waid, and a whole bunch of Donner movie Superman elements with a couple of pre-Crisis aspects thrown in as well. I'm not even sure they've figured out a coherent story of what Superman's history is anymore, much less a coherent story of his career with the Legion.

That's not even getting into the completely arbitrary retcons to the Legion itself that have nothing to do with Superman, such as Star Boy's insanity, Projectra's two hearts, Wildfire's connection to Red Tornado, the purpose of the Leigon being interplanetary cooperation or whatever, etc.

As I said above, if they were going to bring back the original Legion, the sensible way to do it would have been to let the guy who was responsible for a huge part of the original Legion mythology, namely Shooter, take charge of it. And isolate from the damn mess of the current DCU. Instead, they've let Johns, who has basically built his career on revising the DCU and running roughshod over continuity, take charge of it. And the result is that we seem to be getting something that is going to be at least as much of a mess as anything else we've seen done with the Legion post-Crisis.

I honestly don't get the attitude of those that hate all post-Crisis Legions but are suddenly willing to embrace Johns's version of the team. The whole Pocket Universe thing was far less revisionist than anything we're going to get from Johns.

I didn't see it explicitly stated by a creator that she wasn't a member of this Legion...and I follow that pretty closely.

As far as I know, that's the general assumption because Karate Kid and Una did not recognize her..

Basically you are probably right, but I have not seen it defintively stated that she wasn't...and I could see a plethora of reasons for KK and Una not recognizing her.


And keep in mind...Johns said someone has been screwing with the Legions history for a loooooong time...

Which is a true statement on a number of levels..


In fact, this upcoming mini could also fix a lot of things they've screwed up so far...

I don't really agree with that either...and rewriting stuff isn't necessarily equivalent to retconning an entire basis of existence in or out of a storyline.

Maybe they did that so John Byrne wouldn't kill the Legion again..

It wasn't a major retcon, and they could have turned mean to Superboy once they got him to the 30th century...we don't know that they didn't.

I don't really agree with this...I can only think of a handful I know for certain will not have happened...and rewriting isn't really the same as what the Byrne retcon did to the Legion.

Ahh but they didn't exactly say she never got the bio ring as a teen...


I'm not sure about that, in fact I believe he referenced his previous bizzare transformations at the beginning of Countdown.

I could be wrong though...

Keep in mind, with Supergirl and Jimmy Olsen, just because we haven't seen it happen to them yet in their present, doesn't mean it hasn't happened in this Legion's past...it could be in their future. It could have happened in their past as well.

As you yourself noted...DC has been purposely vague about a lot of things...


Now this one you got me on...true, that story cannot have happened. And since I didn't like that story(and the Conway era it more or less ushered in)...that's ok with me.


I don't think that's been proven...Krypto is around you know....and he and Superboy Prime have some issues with one another.

But IIRC, he again knew Superboy as a teen..and you know that Luthor portrait in the Perez teaser...it could be our old friend Urthlo


They've brought back aspects of it...it's impossible to bring it back in it's entirity as it would require rebooting just about all of the mainstream DC Universe...and probably not a good idea, since it would require subtracting a great many positive additions to the Superman and DC mythos over the past 20 years.

I like adding...not too crazy about subtracting.


This goes for the Post Crisis Legion and their characters as well.


They've been purposely vague about it...and I think that's a case of experience...

They clarified all of this stuff right after the Crisis and then lo and behold and bunch of problems arose that they hadn't thought of...with the Legion, Hawkman...Donna Troy.

I'd rathter htem not commit before they know what they are doing...besides, these sorts of things can turn into nice miniseries projects.


I don't consider those true retcons...more like stuff that could have been unrevealed in previous Legion stories...

For instance...we still haven't seen the Legion's first battle with Mordru.


In the original Legion...
They never said Projectra didn't have two hearts...they never said Starboy didn't have schizophrenia...and they also never said what the ERG1 suit was developed from...


The Wildfire one is probably a major divergence, although I can't think of any stories it eliminates from continuity...and who says his Red Tornado body isn't something that happened to him since the Crisis?

I don't see much of a problem with Projectra or Starboy, and I don't feel like it makes any major changes to any past stories involving them.

Is it needless? Probably...but I don't see anything as being particularly harmful...

Do you find Jeckie less attractive knowing she has two hearts? It still beats her being a @#$$@#$ snake.


My reasoning is simple...I liked Superboy being in the Legion. I can overlook a lot of continuity differences as long as that's not one of them...but that's just me.

To me removing him from the stories is the same as removing Lighting Lad or Brainiac 5...truth is, prior to the Crisis he probably appeared in more Legion stories than they did.

For me...they could stick Superman in the Zero Hour Legion and have it be more of the real Legion than any without him.

Superman was one of the original Legionaires, and he was an important character for prety much every peak in the teams history...right up to this day.


We'll see what the sales say.


I full well understand the argument that he can and does overshadow the Legion in the hands of a poor writer...my solution to that is simple, just publish two Legion titles...


That 25K core readership that buys anything with Legion on it has proven it will buy two books(during the Zero Hour Era)...so why not make a commercially viable one to attract new readers, and one so the Legion faightful can get their precious characterization in spades...

Superboy belongs...he is part of the Legion. The original Legionaires are back, the cast from the original Legion...all of them just about, and that hasn't been the case for any other Post Crisis Legion. That alone makes a huge difference.

I honestly don't get the attitude of those that hate all post-Crisis Legions but are suddenly willing to embrace Johns's version of the team. The whole Pocket Universe thing was far less revisionist than anything we're going to get from Johns.

For me at the age of 41,I starting reading the Legion in 1973 right after Legion Fandom Demanded the Legion be published again and they were united in this cause and won,The stories I read during this time were a mix of new and old as the history of the Legion unfolded before me my love for them grew with each issue,and that history was with Kal-El they were strongly connected even after he left the book ,he was still the inspiration for the Legion and was called upon when they needed him (Great Darkness Saga), When the Pocket Universe Superboy story came out and that character was killed off it was like everything I knew about the Legion was a lie, since there was a Superman still running around in the 20th century that had no ties to the Original Legion, who did indeed have a thirty year history with Kal-El,Once that said history was altered The Original Legion Died right then and there,I just didn't know it yet,But I soon found out with Re-Boot titles such as The 5 year gap,Archie Legion and the WacK Legion,And all of those 3 titles have failed because they had one thing in common,No Kal-El,the only Legion book that was worthwhile to me during the last 20 years was Elseworlds Superboy's Legion to bad it did not get Hype of Wak or the duration of Archie.
As for Johns Legion he's trying to Re-Store not Re-Boot out the Legions ties with Kal-El and keep as much of their past history as he can,sure there are some things he's done that I don't like, Wildfire/Red Tornado being at the top,But Having Kal-El is still better than having Kent Shakespeare,Kid Quantum,Valor or Kon-El take his place in the Legion's history.

I too have been reading Legion off-and-on since the early 70's (although I don't look it ) and I've loved and hated various versions of it. I wouldn't call myself a purist or stickler for continuity necessarily and I've got to say I was not particularly bothered by the omission of the Super-Cousins way back when. I always thought the time-travel thing was sticky and almost impossible for an ongoing story but I would agree that the Legion has suffered from extremely poor editorial decisions, bad stories and bad artists (anybody remember the Ditko issues? yikes!)at least occasionally over the years.

Superboy, I agree with a lot of your points but I would say that giving the readership/fans what they want is a mighty tall order especially these days. I guess that's why I was hopeful that the whole 52 worlds thing would lead to a number of versions of the Legion, although that's probably not very sustainable. At least the possibility of different creators to interpret the Legion differently without it having to fit within the confines of an ongoing plot, I think, would be a good thing.

I have to say I liked what Johns did with the Legion and that's a big compliment as I am not much of a fan of his writing, generally. I certainly didn't think it was a great story but I can't find too much wrong with it.

Whether or not this is exactly THE original Legion, is debatable and doesn't really concern me too much. As I've stated before I'd much rather read a good story than one that is so convoluted from trying to fix all the problems of a completely and probably irreversibly f**ked-up continuity. And although that's what I would like to see from the regular Legion series, aside from a few issues and plot threads here and there, I don't really feel like that's what I'm getting. So I guess I'm on for the ride to see what DC comes up with -with trepidation of course.

late-comer to the party here... but I just read the conclusion, and really enjoyed it.

I am really looking forward to the next Johns Legion story.

Say what you will, but this has been the first Legion since Conspiracy to keep me eagerly anticipating each issue (there was good stuff in between, but I only read those filling in back issues after an absense from fandom).

Hey!
You're out of continuity here. Pipe down.
(that's a joke Kent, really)

Yeah I wish the original hadn't been thrown out with the bathwater too but we get what we get. Each incarnation has had some high points and a few of those replacement characters are as beloved as the originals they were designed to replace. I loved Kent Shakespeare and Laurel Gand and I also liked Kono a lot. Furball..not so much nor was I all that thrilled with the White Witch as Mordru's slave/wife. The older Lightning Lad (Man?) with a cane made me so proud of their traditions and their enduring spirit. I have a real weak spot for those stories.

XS interacting with 20th century Flashes brought a new twist to Legion continuity that I liked a heck of a lot too even though the Legion book at the time was only so-so. Say what you will about the Archie Legion but the art really was pretty and the writers seemed to be making a real effort to give the fans what-they-thought-we-wanted. I don't really want to get into that since we've beaten that particular dead horse a number of times.

...and so on. I'm not trying to defend each incarnation or anything but just saying that the Legion love is always there to some degree and I appreciate the effort when it's made. So what if Johns isn't exactly writing what old Uncle Morty would have written? Like Kent I've been eagerly awaiting each issue and isn't that (after all) what it's really about?

Well said, YK.

I fully support anyone's right to define a favorite era of their own; I do find efforts to portray and diversions from those standards as less authentic to be pointles and counterproductive. For every change Johns has made, I could easily point out two changes Levitz made vs. what came before him.

I would rather enjoy a good, fun story than worry about "continuity," especially after roughly a quarter-century of the keepers of that "continuity" being unable to manage it at all.

Continuity is nice, but it is no substitute for a good story. Thus far, in my opinion, Johns is giving me/some of us the best Legion stories in many years.

If anyone wants to rain on our parade after giving other storytellers a pass, I would suggest it says more of that person's inflexibility than Johns' storytelling.

But on the other hand, if you make the effort to get into one version, why should you go all the way to try and get into another version rather than just finding something else to enjoy. There's loads out there without having to obsess over fifteen different versions of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

Pick one version, stick with it, then move on when that version ends IMO.

If you want, sure. But all versions of the Legion have things in common; depending on what you like about the Legion, it may be easy to get into a different version. That's how it is for me. I like 'em all.

I look at it as, why should I stop enjoying Legion comics just because DC editorial has dropped another brick? It's their mistake, not mine; why should I deprive myself of enjoyment?

Spark's Boy, you do raise an interesting point... but it reminds me of DC's Superman policy of, say, 1988 until a few years ago: it boiled all Superman stories down to low levels that interested few; Grant Morrison's excellent All-Star series, the best ongoing Supe series in living memory (except for Alan Moore's similar Supreme run), would never have come about. In fact, during that era, DC's narrow focus only served to open the door for the imitation (Supreme) to out-Superman the "original."

Granted, Legion has never been as household a name as Supe, but there is logic in throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks: a series based on the cartoon would more likely draw cartoon fans in than the Waid-now-Shooter book; Johns' Legion could and does have more appeal to fans who were turned off by flavor-du-jour Legions of the post-Levitz eras (most flavors of which I enjoyed to varying degrees).

There's no harm in the effort, and through effort maybe we (and DC) have a better sense of what fans will go for. A one-size-fits-all approach may make sense over a long haul, but stunts growth and evolution; diversity and competition do that.

People only interested in one versino can limit themselves. That's their choice; but they can do that in a situation where many Legions are offered - but could not if the numbewr of Legions are trimmed back and theirs is eliminated. In other words, the many accomodates those who prefer the single, but the reverse is not true.

Of course, the Superman that Alan Moore "borrowed" for Supreme, and Morrison based ASS on, has very little in common with the original, as various lawyers are presently busy pointing out to other lawyers. The original Superman had no Fortress, no Krypto, couldn't fly, was the sole survivor of his planet (where everyone was super-powered!) and wasn't the holier-than-thou sun-sneezer of later years. If anything, the "1988" Superman is marginally closer to that than the Weisinger version.

Okay, simple question - do you think the comic market, as presently consituted, can and will support the publication of enough separate ongoing LSH series to cater for all the tastes you mention.

Let's break down how many you would need.

Well, you explicitly mention:

1) LSH31C, as a "based on the cartoon" book
2) LSH v5, as the "Waid-now-Shooter" book and
3) "Johns' Legion" book, which we'll call "Superman and the LSH", since that's what he's said he'd want to write.

To that, you can add

4) A postboot book - call it "The Legion v2" for argument's sake

Straight off since DC have acknowledged that version.

Then, there's of course

5) LSH: 5YL (self explanatory)

And why don't we add, since it's stuff people have periodically called for over the past umpteen years at this board:

6) Adventure Comics (I'm sure you can guess) and
7) Legionnaires v2 (for a "Cockrum Legion" book)

We'll assume that Johns' Legion fulfills the "Levitz" niche.

And finally, since there were calls (EDE, I certainly remember wanting to see this):

8) Superboy's Legion v2.

Okay, so how many of them do you think the market can support? #1-3? #1-4? #1-5? All of them? Some other combination?

All at the same time? extremely unlikely.

But just as it was interesting to see the Silver Age-stlye Adult Legion pop up in Superman/Batman a few years ago, the occasional project in *any* of those continuities could work.


Rather than calling for all versions to be avaiable all the time, I merely suggest that if a viable creative team wants to dust off a version and use it, they should be able to... assuming the project could reasonably be expected to be viable in the market as any other publishable project that creative team might pitch.

If Mike Allred wants to do a Silver Age Legion mini that does not tie into any ongoing series/universe, let him. If Mike Grell wanted to do an ongoing Sdaow Lass solo series set in the pre-Crisis 2970s, let him. If [insert hack team of your choice here whose last 5 series flopped] want to do a Adventures of Officer Dvron and Comet Queen series as a grim, stark noir drama... weigh it/veto it on its own merits rather than how it fits (or doesn't) in "continuity."

As Dark Horse has proven time and again, doing an occassional mini is a feasible way to handle properties that don't need to run month-in, month-out.

Also - I put "original" in quotes simply because the term can mean any number of things to any number of people. To some, Supreme was more "original" Superman than the Superman of the mid-90s. I don't necessarily agree, and you clearly don't. And I'm sure someone could argue Nietche's was the "original" Superman, for that matter.

My point was not to nitpick, but to point out that deliberately limiting one's scope can backfire (not that Supreme likely outsold any of the Supe books at the time, but it hypothetically could have).

I agree completely with Kent, in principle.

But now I'm left wondering: Why doesn't DC just give us a Legion series that's not "in-continuity"? Because that's exactly what I want.

I really have very little interest in any Legion where Booster Gold sneezes over in his series and that causes a War with the Dominators in the Legion. I don't want to have to worry about how Final Crisis has changed Superman's past and how that then affects his career with the Legion. But DC is not giving me that.

A large part of the reason why All-Star Superman is the best Superman title in years is that it's not connected to current "DC continuity" (whatever that is, exactly). That allows Morrison to do what he wants with the title and not worry about its ramifications for other titles (or, more importantly, the ramifications of other titles on it). If DC would just use the same recipe with the Legion that they used with All-Star Superman, I'd be happy. Give me an iconic version that's internally consistent and independent of the rest of what DC's doing, and that's a lot more important to me than whether something vaguely resembling the storyline of some random issue of SLSH is now "back in continuity", provided we modify the storyline slightly to take into account what happened to the Khunds in the latest issue of Wonder Woman, etc.

And maybe that's just my idiosyncratic preferences, because everyone seems all ga-ga over Johns's attempt to integrate the Legion as a central player in the mainstream DCU. But it seems to me that's exactly the kind of thing that screwed up the Legion so badly in the first place.

*bites his tongue to stop the dozen "hypothetically could have" strawmen that want to get out*

Seriously, you can 'prove' anything with "hypothetically could have".

I have to wonder how - given DC's record with miniseries that don't tie into anything (never mind its' record with miniseries that *do*) - how ANY such project could be as "viable in the market as any other publishable project that creative team might pitch".

[Well, okay, unless that other project is a high-concept Vertigo series, or a Wildstorm Universe series. But DC's starting to cut back on them - with Y gone, and Sandman spin-offs having finally dried up, Fables is the only success story between those imprints.]

I'm a bit confused. Looking at February's sales chart, Dark Horse's top sellers are:
*Buffy S8 #11 (long-but-finite series, hardly a mini even if it'll get rebooted for "S9" at some point)
*Star Wars Legacy #19 (ongoing)
*Umbrella Academy #6 (written by someone who writes comics as a hobby)
*Star Wars Dark Times #9 (not marked as a mini)
*Conan #49 (about to be rebooted as another ongoing, Conan the Cimmeran)
*Star Wars Rebellion #11 (not marked as a mini)
*Abe Sapien: Drowning #1 (mini, but a new spinoff of Hellboy rather than a v2+)
*BPRD 1946 #2 (BPRD - a series-of-miniseries - is another Hellboy spinoff, but a de facto ongoing since it doesn't have a break between minis)

I was not trying to *prove* anything with a hypothertical, only point out that some people found an imitation better than the regular. "Original" wasn't the best choice of words; "official" would have better reflected what I intended to say. Mea culpa.

Fair enough. I do not recall the sales figures on Superboy's Legion, but The Nail apparently proved successful enough for a sequel.

Likewise, I'm not up on current Dark Horse series or sales figures; I was referring to the era I knew best, the 1990s, when DH was rotating Star Wars minis, and books like Sin City, Concrete, and a number of others (like some of the Japanese series) came out mostly as the occassional mini.

I'd also point out by 1970 standards, nothing DC publishes today would be considered viable.

By 2020, today's print-only perspective may look quaint.

That ONLY works if a title with "Legion" (or LSH, or whatever arrangement of words & letters that adds up to the same result) at the top of the cover is an end in itself for you. Shades of the people who bought Uncanny X-Men during Chuck Austen's reign of terror.

Just because it says its' something, and shares a few stylistic trappings with it, doesn't make it that thing.

They've got three choices:
1) Pick a version and stick with it. It WILL alienate some people, but they'll build a core audience. If that's big enough - and it will include people like Matthew, who pick up any book with "Legion" in the title (probably, in some cases, even to the point of getting multiple copies) - it'll keep going. If not, they've lost the others, and some will be gone for good.

2) Get a bazooka and fire two, three, ten versions out into the marketplace. It'll split the vote - it's not a zero-sum game, but on the other hand factors beyond the simple version are at play - even I wouldn't buy a Spark series if it was written by Grant Morrison after his New X-Men, especially if he had the same artist(s) like that guy who made everyone look about fifty (Quietly? Something else else like that). Some people won't be able to afford all of them and will buy none of them. Some people will be offended, because there's no way they can do EVERY version. Etc, etc.

No, it goes deeper than that. Yes, there are differences between Legion versions and eras, but I have yet to read a Legion comic and say "that wasn't really a Legion comic". (Okay, maybe some of the 'Legion on the Run' stuff. But that didn't last long.) DC simply has never gotten it that far wrong.

These statements all describe every Legion version, for instance, and I happily agree that I'd buy any half-decent comic that called itself 'Legion' and shared these characteristics:

1. The Legion is a group of superheroes.
2. The Legionnaires started their heroic careers as teenagers.
3. The Legion lives in the distant future.
4. The future setting of the Legion is an optimistic one, and so is the Legion’s outlook.
5. There are many Legionnaires.
6. Being a Legionnaire is a special thing.
7. In Legion comics, characters can experience permanent change.
8. Either directly or indirectly, the Legion represents the legacy of Superman ten centuries in the future.
9. The future setting of the Legion is one in which space travel is common, and there is abundant life on other planets.
10. Legionnaires don’t all have overwhelming superpowers, but combine their more modest talents through teamwork to be effective.

I vehemently deny the multiple-copies charge.

The Legion was the most powerful team ever created and they had about 20 members capable of acting as a Planet's sole defender.


Which is good...since they have the task of protecting, at the minimum, an entire Planetary Confderation. And they fight wars. And have groups that control entire planetary systems among their stock villians.

That modestly powered premise make no sense given the responsibilities of the Legion, and it never did. IT certainly wasn't something Legion writers particularly focused on prior to about 1990.


Me? I want the team whose non-superpowered character is the most powerful HTH combatant ever created in comics...a guy capable of wiping the floor with Batman.

Whose joke character can eat the most powerful machine in existence.


I want Supergirl...and Laurel Gand, and Mon-El, Superboy(both of them), Ultraboy, and if Wildfire could get his ERG1 suit back, all the better, ditto Starboy's Kryptonian powers...after all, galaxies are big things. Really really big.

That's why the idea that too many powerful characters hurts the Legion's storyline/character development has never been a good one...

I mean you want to focus on Shrinking Violet...well chances are in a galaxy, there's some planet, among the billions in that galaxy about to get hit by an asteroid to keep Mon-El and Superboy busy.


The Legion has a big responsiblity...it makes no sense for them to have a bunch of X-Men and still realisticly handle their responsibility.


Phantom Girl? She's indestructible...

Dawnstar? She can fly the speed of light and track stuff across a Universe.

Shrinking Violet? That stroke trick was once used to defead Darkseid...


I don't want a bunch of misfits banding their meager powers together to take down giants, unless they are trying to take over the Universe...if I want to read that, I'll read the X-Men.


That is the premise of the X-men...they did it first, they do it better...and they used to rip off the Legion...not the other way around. I don't want the Legion to be the X-men. That's not who and what they are...and when that approach is taken, it's one of those things that turns the Legion into a generic Superteam.

As for the whole multiple Legions and how well that would sell...


The only time the team has carried two monthly titles was the worst selling version of the Legion ever...both in terms of total sales and in relation to it's peers. The Zero Hour Legion.

Those titles sold on average 25-40k(25k for the bulk of it) monthly, and were usually both in the bottom 30 of the top 100, before bottoming out with the DNA Legion which was selling @17k when it finally got cancelled, the alltime low point in Legion history.


DC didn't produce two Legion titles for the only time ever in the 90's because that Legion sold well compared to other Legions, not even in relation to it's peers...they did it because they learned they could count on that 25K core two times per month and they were trying to establish that Legion as the definitive version.


So yeah...it could be done. There is a core of about 25k that will buy just about any regular Legion title...it's been there for every version, except "The Legion" era of the ZH Legion and the Johnny DC Title. IF the worst selling version of the Legion(both in total sales and relation to it's peers) could carry two monthly titles and sell well enough justify their monthly publication for an extended period...I'd say the same rules would probably hold true for the Legion name being on 3 different versions, at least for a little while.


Although it is possible that 25k base would fragment and some Legion fans would stop buying Legion versions they bought previously because of a lack of alternatives.

Me? I'd give all 3 a try...it'd definitely a be a first in comics history...but I doubt DC is feeling that concept.


IMO, if anything, DC would probably like to replicate sales of a better selling Legion like they did with the ZH Legion...and the best selling Legion of all time(both in terms of total sales, and in relation to it's peers) is Superboy and the Legion, so my guess is that DC is going to add the popular characters from the Post Crisis Legions(suriving this L3W story), like Gates, XS, Andromeda, perhaps a couple of original cast Legionaires from the current version will replace their Action Legion counterparts(like the more powerful W&K Trips for instance) to the Action version...and if they do any multiple titles it'll be of one combined version of the Legion...perhaps one with a focus on the early years with Superboy(or an adult version with Superman which Johns has said is what he wants to write), and one monthly devoted to contemporary stories focusing on characterization etc. At the very least a regular monthly with regularly produced companion minis would be viable, more commecially viable than anything done with the team in decades IMO.


Of course...now that I think about it, that would make the most sense both commercially and possibly even in the endeavor of soothing the irritated and fragmented Legion fan base...and DC seldom does what makes sense with the Legion.

I'd have agreed with you on option #1 a few years ago, but between the Johns Legion and the animated book, it seems that multiple versions are vialbe, at least for the short run.

Multiple versions can splinter the vote, true. But if different versions are drawing different audiences, then the numbers on two or more books can draw in much more than a single book. While that represents greater expense to put out two different books, it doubles the chance that one of them will succeed.

90s DC did try the audience-building route with Reboot Legion; it didn't work. Regardless of its merits (and it did have some), it did not draw the numbers. I don't know that Reboot LSH's #s would have been twice as big without a second monthly book; it's just as conceivable that version just didn't appeal to most comic-buyers.

Under the "one way" scenario, all we can ever have is a series of 'boots; I think it is more productive to try several things at once - not necessarily on a permanent basis.

If you don't try, you don't know if something can work better, and we all settle for dwindling numbers.

I give DC credit for making the attempt right now; it would be a shame if DnA had been the last truly enjoyable Legion run.

Another idea is a main Legion title like Shooter's is now and then a multiverse sister team-up book.

Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes & INSERT HERE (Superman, Flash, Supergirl) depending on the Legion.

The postboot ZH Legion should focus on the Flash mythos with XS, Impulse/Kid Flash, the Teen Titans, and Kon-El. Tales of the LOSH & Flash or Teen Titans or Superboy (if that is ever allowed). We get a nice two to three issue arc and then rotate to...

Tales of the LOSH & Superman. The current Action Legion. After that story arc we rotate to

The Shooter& fjm Legion written by a guest creative team. Tales of the LOSH & Supergirl.

Yes it can get confusing. Especially with Supergirl who has ties to all three teams. The Teen Titans have ties to the postboot ZH Legion and she is currently a member of the TT.