Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes 15 years later - Rereading the Reboot...

Now, you obviously know/remember that the 20th century stint is coming up. Are you sticking with the series proper, or reading the myriad of crossover books out there? I don't think a lot of them are important, but some of them were well done. I remember liking "Superman Plus Legion", the Supergirl Annual, and the Impulse issue. There was the Brainiac family reunion stuff in Showcase as well (was that the only time Vril, Querl and Brainiac ever appeared together?). It had promise but ultimately wasn't very good. There were also some Superman/Action issues that interwove with LSH (Ferro's introduction and the one near the very end). I skipped Final Night, but they popped up there too.

I think the basic problem was that the Flash office somehow got equal or greater control of her. And they were interested in playing up her connections to their characters for obvious reasons.

"Man-El"? Really (I say Man as "Mahn". I say "Mon" as "Mawn", rhyming with "Don". Ditto "Kon".).

To me, "mahn" rhymes with "Don." I'm using an American English pronunciation guide I found years ago in World Book Encyclopedia. There are, of course, other guides, but this one makes the most sense to me. Words or names with "ah" tend to be pronounced the same way as "Don": Carl Icahn, "rah rah rah," or when the doctor asks you to open up and say "Ahhh!"

The "aw" combination has a slightly more rounded vowel sound, such as in "lawn" or "raw."

As for the vowel sound of "hat," the letter "a" is usually represented by itself.

Well, I say the "on" in "Mon" and "Kon" the same way I would say, well, "on", as in "on the moon". [And, of course, the whole joke of the Tornado twins is that they have the same first name, just spelt differently.]

Then again, I'm Scottish, not American. And some US pronunciations are absolutely bizarre to me (e.g., "vase" is "vahse", not "vayse").

It would have been a lot easier for the Tornado Twins' parents to tell them apart if they'd just rounded the girl's name.

Oh wow now I started a procunciation war :rolleyes: That's rather funny for me as a non-native speaker. In German M'onel would actually be pronunciated "Monllll", but that's of course silly. So I guess Monelle (like in "Danielle") would be the best fit for me

Well, as I was not so hot for the Reboot Legion back then, I actually don't have all those issues. I got Final Night, I got Ferro Lads first appearance in Adventure, I even got an obscure Sovereign Seven/Legion book (got that recently cheap on Ebay). I remember that I had the Supergirl Annual, but it's not with my Legion boos. Hm. I even realized that I am missing one Legion issue (#89) - I was such a big Reboot hater back then that I did not bother to hunt it down.

So yes, I am going to reread the assorted stuff as well - as long as I'm having it... Final Night is a must. I remember it had Immonen artwork.

Well, Claremont yanked the whole S7 series from continuity in the last issue (with an "it was all a dream"-type ending: It was a creator-owned book, albeit with DC characters involved and - before that last issue - apparently set in the DCU).

I got those first 12 S7 issues a year ago. They left me quite confused - didn't take me long to resell them again... but I digress. I wonder what the Legion did together with S7

S7 plus #1 was a Saturn Girl story where Imra teamed up with the 7s. Interesting and worth a read.

The only other S7 link I'm aware of was the Annual (Tales of the Dead Earth) that showed Saturn Girl (again) in flashback in the C30.

Claremont clearly had a thing for Imra.

I read S7 Plus, but don't really remember it all that much, other than that it didn't really impact the team 20 story like some other crossovers did.

She was a "strong woman" telepath. It's Chris Claremont we're talking about here.

Are you really surprised?

Das ist nicht schwer zu tun.

The fascinating thing about languages is that pronunciation guides differ from country to country and even from region to region and community to community. This is especially true in American English.

For this reason, I have no problem pronouncing "M'Onel" the same way as "Mon-El." Who knows what the pronunciation rules are in Martian?

If she was flirty with Ayla then Claremont would really have been all over it

Chemical King:

Well, to be fair, the Annual featuring XS was actually the Legionnaires Annual, not the "Legion of Super-Heroes" Annual. Although the two books were pretty much a single book published twice a month at that point, so the distinction is sort of hair-splitting, but hey, if you're going to harp on the title, we might as well harp on the RIGHT title.

Were you upset that the first Legion of Super-Heroes Annual of the TMK era was a solo focus on Ultra Boy, or that the second was a solo focus on Valor?

As for the story being irrelevant - because of XS's time-travel and return to the 30th century, it was about 1000 times more relevant than any of the other "Dead Earth" Annuals, which was the dumbest theme I'd heard of since they started making themed annuals in 1991. It was especially disappointing that after suffering through that turkey of a theme, the Legion crew decided to sit out the following year's "Pulp Heroes" Annuals, which I thought were fantastic creative outlets for the comics creators (and yes, I know that the Legion was in the Supergirl one. Not the same as having your own Annual).

Well, at least the Ultra Boy Annual featured lots and lots of Legionnaires from every era, which the XS annual did not at all.

But of course you're right - it was the Legionnaires annual. I did not realize that because Legionnaires Annual #2 was not that long ago, but LSH was. Anyway you could argue that "Legionnaires" also implies more than ONE Legionnaire

On a general note, I've made the experience that annuals in the latter 90s mostly were crap (at DC and Marvel both). Unlike in the 80s, when they often were used to tell important stories which did not fit into the normal book length, in the 90s they felt like an appendix nobody wanted but had to produce out of a habit. Many stories were Elseworlds, which I consider mostly wasted time. Legionnaires Annual #2 was an exception to that rule, which made it stand out.

The Pulp Fiction annuals I only read one, the Teen Titans book. That one was actually rather good. But annuals as a whole never returned to the quality in the 80s (Remember: Legion Annual #1 & #2, Teen Titans Annual#1-4, Justice League did great ones... hm...)

So now for Emerald Vi - that one was nice, though much shorter than I remembered. Two issues into it, *thwack* there was the big green boom and the splitting up of the team was done. The aftermath of Emerald Vi in "Legionnaires" was well done, as was the solution to the Kinetix/Mysa story. With the 30th century down to nine members, including Mon-El, a tryout issue was up the horizon.

Far less enjoyable was the first LSH issue in the 20th century. The silliness immediately started with the Legion hunting after a green energy cloud for an entire issue. A fitting beginning to one of the worst ideas of Legion history ever - with so many high profile Legionnaires (Cos, Saturn Girl, Brainy, Ultra Boy) in the 20th century doing crossovers, the team in the 30th century was suffering as well. To maintain that status for over a year... oh my god. What were they thinking?

Rereading this run I realy got the feeling that the books were doing quite well, with solid storytelling and decent, though often too one-dimensional characterisation. Why did DC have to screw this up with this obvious publicity stunt?

So the silliness factor rose again - first came the tiny emerald energy cloud, next on the list was probably Coco Not to forget Shvaun Erin being reduced to a baby with an energy gun during Emerald Vi. This idea was lame even before X-Babies...

Legion Annual #1 - Great writing. Arguably Giffen's best ever Legion art. Aaaah.

Bring back Danielle Foccart!!!!!!!!!!

One of my favorite comic books of all time. Ironically it was also one of the last Legion tales ever published in Germany - after that goodie, we got #300 and that's it til today. No Great Darkness, no v.3, no 5YL, no Reboot, no Threeboot. They did publish Legion Lost as a paperback, but that obviously did not lead to more...

Hell You have been sorely deprived. Have you now got all the Levitz era books?

Yeah, though it took me the better part of the 90s to collect them all. 5YL was easier, but some of the v3 issues I hunted for years. They're absolutely not expensive - but no retailer listed them in his stock. I was so happy for every single issue I managed to find.

But I guess this throws an interesting light on the sales position of the Legion: In Germany, obviously nobody considers them a profitable endeavour (and they publish a whole lot of the US stuff today), though they translated pretty much every Legion story of the 70s back when I was a child...

That's what happened when I rediscovered the Legion in 1993: "Hey, the Legion! It's still there! Hey, there's a decade of stories to discover! Cool, they have all grown up like myself! Exciting stuff!" And then in 1994... *puff* all was gone due to Zero Hour... therefore my negative attitude towards the Reboot.

Well, the English-speaking world has never had a LL TPB, so still one up in that regard...

well it was fitting that XS got that annual to herself...after all she was the first legionnaire in the reboot to break off from the rest of the team solo wise. She was in The Flash and Impulse books so spending a bit more time with her and getting more of a sense of her was a good idea. And it left the main books to focus on the team.

So last week was quite busy, but now I'm through with Final Night and the following Legion issues.

I have to confirm my first suspicions: The quality of the Legion went downhill in this third year. They had hardly arrived in the 20th century when they already were right in the middle of the annual company crossover. Brainiac, Saturn Girl and Cosmic Boy were featured heavily, Ferro Lad had his new origin in the 20th century. Unfortunately, the Final Night crossover was rather lame. Its style remembered me rather of a childrens book than an actual comic book story. But that was Final Night.

Do I have to mention the Annual with Wildfire leading a Legion of the dead Earth? It was lukewarm at best...

It has to be said that both Legion books suffered heavily under the splitting up of the team. Team 20 did its crossover of the month thing: The first four issues featured Superman, the whole DCU (Final Night), Deadman and then, to top the silliness, Impulse. Including the fact that the Legion also appeared in Showcase, Superman and Impulse (I have neither of these books), the feeling that this whole idea was just a giant marketing gag can't be pushed away. The stories were irrelevant, the characterisation got even more cartoony than before (Koko anyone?).

At the same time, Team 30 suffered cause many major characters were missing. Logically, they introduced new heroes, but apart from Umbra, who solved her first mission all by herself, the other characters were silly (Sensor) or boring (Magno). The recurring focus on a character like Lori Morning didn't help.

So fun elements like the tryout issue (Arms-Fall-of-Boy, Polar Boy, Night Girl) were overshadowed by rather insulting "cool ideas" like Sneckie or Koko the monkey.

My pal Ricardo back then said something like: DCs low esteem for their readers intelligence is symbolized by Koko... and 15 years later, seeing this monkey on Brainiac 5s head, I still go... "Huh? Which five year old boy did come up with this crappy idea?"

And why did the two teams have to communicate with each other? Apart from it being scientific nonsense, the fact that they did NOT know what happened to the rest of the team would have been stuff for much more interesting stories. Now they know the other half is alive, and the most "dramatic" element left is XS worrying about Cosmic Boy standing so close to Saturn Girl... oh my.

So Team 20 is down to being a marketing stunt without any relevant stories, Team 30 is getting sillier as well so that its good moments can't be cherished accordingly any longer. Hm. Let's see how long this reread will take.

If only Koko was a gorilla, I could see DC was trying to tie to its origins, but no, we got Koko, the monkey. Giffen should make him the next target of Lobo or add him to Ambush Bug list of characters.

I really liked the Wildfire Annual. Probably because we'd been so deprived of the character for years that any exposure was a breath of fresh air. I also though Peyer nailed the characterisation pretty well.

It was highly disappointing then, when the "amalgamated" Wildfire did show up later on. That "Firestorm" lite origin was completely unnecessary and bugged the heck out of me.