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

I agree the Wildfire annual - and to a lesser extent the Legion 1 million - seemed to give Wildfire a real character amongst the chaos.

I couldn't reconcile the annual with the later Wildfirestorm (as I dubbed him at the time)

Well, for what it's worth, adding Koko as Querl's sidekick/foil was a deliberate echo of the original Brainiac's pet space-monkey, another one of the 2boot's "Silver-Age-but-with-a-twist" elements.

Wow, this is strange. I just started rereading the reboot about a month ago and stopped right where Chemical King last left off. Then I decide to check out these boards and find that others are doing the same.

I guess I'm in the minority, but I loved seeing the Legion in the 20th century. I enjoyed all the crossovers and teamups. I thought Legionnaires quickly deteriorated in quality with focus being kept on non-traditional characters like Lori, Monstress and Sensor while others like Element Lad and Star Boy were pretty much ignored.
Some say the split went on for too long, but I thought it was just about right.


Some random observations about this era:

*What was Shvaughn doing with the team in the 20th century? It seemed like an odd choice to send to the past.


*What was the point of the two parter where the two teams reunite temporarily? Triad joined the team in the 20th. Was that just so she could be around to face Computo and add a bit of tension?


*Has there been a more useless and forgettable Legionnaire than Magno? I had completely forgotten he existed. Talk about boring.

i liked Magno. he was interesting, cheerful and should have been in that legion of 3 worlds saga. not wiped out or whatever it is. earth 247

I liked Magno, too, though I think the sole reason for his existence was so he could lose his powers and teach Garth a lesson about not prejudging others. I don't think Magno was ever intended for the long haul.

Dyrk's finest moment was the Braal issue of Legion Worlds. I think that may have been his last appearance - unless he had a minor appearance in one the early Legion issues. I love the image of him sticking out his tongue to catch the metallic tasting falling snow. The reboot certainly takes the prize for some of most interesting tongue moments in comics history.

Magno is one of my Top 10 Favourite Legionnaires!

Oops. Should've known that every Legionnaire is someone's favorite. Sorry guys, but Magno never did it for me. He took too much attention away from other characters I wanted to see more of.

I just finished the Sovereign Seven plus issue, and it was better than I remembered. It gave Saturn Girl a depth that was missing in the main books. Chris Claremont writing a Legion story? Who have thought.

Everyone is certainly entitled to their own opinion, SLK, and no one should take offense at you for honestly expressing yours.

Every Legionnaire is someone's favorite, yes, but every Legionnaire is probably also someone's least favorite.

Diversity makes the (Legion) World go around!

Speaking of Legion World...do we dare hope Legion World still exists in the mulitiverse with the other Legionnaires (reboot) not seen in L3w?

I can't say I was the biggest fan of Legion World. It just seemed too big and unwieldy to make any practical use of it. A planet as an HQ for thirty or so teens? Now if it there was a spin-off title about life on Legion World (a la Deep Space Nine), that could be interesting.


Anyway, I don't mean to take anything away from Chemical King's thread, but I read a few more issues this past weekend, and some thoughts came to my mind:

-Lori Morning quickly becomes my least favorite fictional character of all time when she basically throws a tantrum that ruins the chances of rescuing the time-lost Legionnaires. She also takes down Rond Vidar with a knee to the groin, and steals the H-Dial for kicks. Is this when reboot Legion jumped the shark? Lori was so much more interesting when it looked like she was getting prepped to be the new Glorith. Hopefully, the "Laurie" that was Supe-Prime's girlfriend is really Lori. Those two deserve each other.

-Evisceratronic. I'm not sure if the name was supposed to be a joke or not. He was an SP officer who blamed the Legion for his squad's death so he ... um... kills more SPs for revenge. He is then killed by Mordru before he can do a thing. I really feel like I missed something with that.

-I loved the "Elseworlds"/Curt Swan tribute issue. The Legion never gets to have Elseworlds fun anymore. The moral of the story was laid on pretty thick, but it was an enjoyable issue, and I didn't mind the interruption of the story in order to tell it.

Legion at this time was a pretty mixed bag. Too much attention was given to the whiny brat from the past (hmm, sounds like Lo3W), but the threat of Mordru still makes things exciting. I'll keep reading.

Lori Morning was an absolute nightmare that went nowhere...she was obviously supposed to be Glorith so what happened with that? Terrible.

The art really doesn't help these issues at all.

I was able to re-read the 5YG because, until the very end, the art was pretty good.

There was something way to cartoony about the reboot that put me off.

Once Olivier Coipel arrived I found my love of the Legion again!

Thanks to the wonder of the Megalo-Thriftmart's dollar comics section, I now own two actual reboot comics.

One Moy issue, and one issue of Legion Lost.

(If anyone is still looking to fill in gaps in their First, Dark Horse, and Eclipse collections and isn't fussy about pristine quality, we should talk one of these days. Way more remaindered Indy books than Big Two.)

I always did wonder if Magno was supposed to go bad or something. Like maybe joining a Legion of Super Villains or becoming possessed by the Emerald Eye, because he'd lost his powers. Or at least being tempted to, and then turning into a hero again at the last minute.

Hm... They could have done something with him and Kinetix too. She'd lost her powers before after all.

I always had the theory that he'd never get his Magno powers back, but still bond with Garth growing an unhealthy attachment to him. Then when Cos came back he'd get extremely jealous that Cos resumed being both the Braalian and Garth's best friend that he'd try to get some power and end up with Transmutation abilities and become Cosmic King.

Wow, hadn't thought of that in a while.

I'm glad they didn't go that route with Magno. There's nothing wrong with a comic book character who just happens to be a decent guy. We could use more characters like that.

So I'm back as well, have been on a Legion break due to my rereading all of my Geoff Johns Green Lantern stuff to be PREPARED for Blackest Night. Quite good stuff, by the way...

Okay what came next? I have to confess that I am actually missing an issue of LSH (#89), so what I did get with Team 20 was the obscure Sovereign Seven Oneshot with a journey into Saturn Girls mind and... oops!... #90 with a journey into Saturn Girls mind! Considering that Avon already journeyed into Saturn Girls mind some time ago, I really think that this story has been told... extensively enough...

Team 30 - as I stated before - kept on suffering from the absence of so many feature characters. The story revolved around the ongoing search for the Emerald Eye and Mordrus slow rise to power. That was good, cause it was a logical continuation of what came before. Unfortunately, ##45 & 46 had a strong focus on Sensor (the "shove-it-down-their-throats-approach" again?). Way worse than Umbras big hour in #44. Magno on the other hand, as SLK already stated, was hardly to be seen - which I actually find kind of pleasant. Evisceratronic? Again, SLK is right: Another of those names which made the book look even cheaper than it was (Planet Hell, Work Force, you name em...).

Well, the books went from cheesy to becoming unbearable during the two issue crossover Leg #47 & LSH #91. The chance to get reunited was screwed up by LORI MORNING pressing some buttons cause she does not want to get home. Out of this lame oh how lame exposition, the Legion ends somewehere in the timestream (where Lori is still allowed to push buttons) collecting chronal energy everywhere to get back. In my eyes, the plot of this two-parter is total gibberish, with no other outcome than sending yet another established character (Triad) to the merchandizing event in the 20th century, thus further weakening Team 30.

I think it's one thing to do an additional story about a child character doing some nonsense, but when her doing becomes the starting point for whole stories that are actually going nowhere in the end, it's getting really annoying. For the first time during my reread, I was getting this feeling of wasting my time with the books.

Up on the horizon: Team 30 battles Mordru while Team 20 does some further irrelevant gimmick stories like being stuck in the 50s. Duh...

Considering the guy got killed within pages, it was pretty obviously a pisstake name...

Okay so now I read the next eight issues, and I am totally torn about its quality.

Team 30 was fighting Mordru in a rather huge story. All in all, the story was well-told. Certainly it does qualify as weak storywriting to include a bunch of third- and fourthstringer characters just to be able to kill somebody off: The only characters that really suffered in the outcome of the battle with Mordru were Blast-Off (dead), Atom'x (dead), Radion (disfigured), Dragonmage (badly injured), Kid Quantum II (badly injured) and the least important Legionnaire of all, Magno (lost his powers). It seems obvious that the only reason to include the additional heroes was to make somebody suffer, thus rising the stakes of the story. It was not enough that Violet got growth powers and Element Lad got stuck in a crystalline form - there HAD to be BLOOD... Maybe the editors did forbid them to touch the blood of the Legionnaires themselves? Or did they just want to get rid of some of the worst codenames?

Anyway that was the ending of a rather long dangling storyline (Emerald Vi), with the Eye still on the loose. It was not solid gold, but "Legionnaires" actually told a story. With "Legion of Superheroes", it seemed like there was no story to BE told. As it was clear from the beginning that the Legion would stay in the 20th century for at least a year, every attempt of the Legion to get back home was nothing but a bland excuse for another crossover. Those books to me seem like "hey, we got another half year left, which gimmick do we throw out next? Oh, wouldn't it be cool to put them into the 50s for an issue? Why? No reason why, it's just so cooool!" With the exception of #94 (Shvaughns Diary), which actually focussed on the Legion itself and their relationsships with each other, those last few issues read like crap -
the meeting with the Metal Men being the worst example of it.

This was the end of the third year of the Reboot. I really feel that the quality declined majorly due to the teams split-up. While Legionnaires was still telling solid stories with a smaller, less interesting team-up including crappy characters like Sneckie and Monstress, LSH was quickly getting unbearable to read. In my eyes, this was the beginning of the end. I don't know if sales dropped (or even rose in the beginning), but I do know that it was just about half a year from here that I decided to quit the Legion books. QUIT. The Legion. Books. Unthinkable, but true. I'll reread the rest of the fold as well, but I guess it won't be pretty.

Thankfully, I am looking forward to rereading the DnA books after that - so my Reread will be missing about two years of Legion stories.

Well now you do know those Legion time slips were done by the Time Trapper to prepare them for the upcoming Dark Circle Rising saga.

And yes those stories in LSH were some clunkiers but DNA did built off them...we get our first views of C.O.M.P.U.T.O which will play a large part in the teams future...especially when they get back from the 2nd galaxy.

And of course due to Blast-Off (dead), Atom'x (dead), we got Wildfire back.

Kept on reading until up to the end of 1997. In LSH, this was the beginning of the COMPUTO saga, which finally gave Team 20 some drive. Unfortunately, there was still a lot of less interesting stuff before that, like the desperate attempt to explain the existence of Phase post-Zero Hour and the screwed-up wedding of Imra and Rokk. Not to mention the Legions participation in the abysmal Genesis "event".

Well, in the end, Jo got married to Tinya, and I have to ask: If you're stucked in the 20th century, is a wedding actually a good idea? From my wedding, I know that I wanted to have every and all of my friends with me for the celebration. I would not have married my wife if we would have been stuck in, let's say, Sierra Leone...

As Monstress joined, which I still can't understand, and Lori Morning fought evil using the H-Dial, I was way beyond caring for the books back in 1997, so I have to confess that I neither do own Action #741, which seemingly continues the COMPUTO story, nor the Inferno mini (except for the rather lukewarm #1), nor the Legion Secret Files #1. So everything that happened there is lost to me. This was no longer the Legion to me, this was becoming nonsense.

Leaving out the nonsense parts in the Legionnaires book, the team fought the Composite Durlan for a second time - quite okay - but surprisingly, the most interesting storyline of those days for me was the way that Magno dealed with loosing his powers. I have to confess that Magno grew on me only after his powers got lost - which is no wonder due to the fact that he actually only fought in two Legion missions before already
leaving again...

As if there would not have been enough gimmick stories, they started doing them in Legionnaires too with the team being stuck in the Golden Age in #54. I already stated how little I care for this Elseworld stuff. Even though it might have been explained later as the Time Trappers manipulations, this was just a cheap way of NOT having to tell an ACTUAL story. This is like when they start singing in those Disney movies cause they don't have enough story to tell for a 90 minutes feature.

Up ahead: LSH #100

I'm about to the same place in my rereading. It's funny, because I remember when I first read these, that I cared more about the 20th century team and was increasingly frustrated by the 30th century. Upon rereading, the situation has reversed.

Team 20 was pretty bad. I'm not sure why I liked it so much earlier. As Chemical King mentioned, the story went nowhere. It seems as though every threat they faced was of their own creation- Brainiac, the Fortress illusions in the Superman plus issue, Dr. Psycho, Computo - everything was the Legion's fault. They would've looked like a bunch of careless bumbling idiots in the eyes of the 20th century superhero community. I still enjoyed the 100th issue where they teamed with the JLA and the not-yet-formed Young Justice to take down Computo.

Rereading Legionnaires made me like some of those characters more. Magno seemed a little more tolerable I suppose, but anything featuring Monstress or Lori was simply intolerable. I did like Moy's designs of some of Lori's superhero identities.

But some Legionnaires were simply shoved to the side. Star Boy, E-Lad, and Invisible Kid were virtually ignored in favor of Lori and Monstress.

The Superman issue wasn't anything special. I've reread the Inferno miniseries, and I really haven't got a clue what that was about. The art was good, Immonen's always been a favorite, but the story was boring.

As I mentioned before, I liked the imaginary stories. I thought the Time Trapper was a great vehicle for letting us get short glimpses into Legion Elseworlds.

Now I'm through with my personal Pre-DnA Reboot stuff. I stopped buying it with LSH #101 and Leg #58, though I did get the Time Trapper Twoparter Leg #61 & LSH #105 some months later. From todays viewpoint, it's rather ironic: I suffered through the whole 20th century shindig, but left the books when the team was finally reunited. But it was 1998 back then, I was in the last year of my university studies and desperately had to cut down expenses cause my stipend had run out. There was no way back then that I would have spent further money on Sneckie, Lori Morning and Monstress. Today, I have to say that I would pick up those missing issues if I got them cheap on Ebay, but would not travel far for them. I am a little sad that I do not have the Dark Circle storyline which slowly started in my final issues.

As for those last books in general, I thought that the quality immediately felt better once the team was back together. I liked the issue with the Mon-El spotlight and the missing Legion which, of course, was missing cause it was on its way to bring the rest of the team back home. #100 was all in all well done, though the endless Elseworld Legion pinups were a waste of space in my eyes. Also, this issue was the swan song of Lee Moder, whose bubblehead Legionnaires I never really grew accustomed to, but who was way better than Jason Armstrong was in the next few issues. Armstrongs art - and Todd Naucks art as well - were way too cartoony in my book.

What was left was a few examples of psychology 101 stories with Imra, Ayla and Ferro Lad. Not exactly great epics, but 30th century stories nonetheless, and that's what Legion stories should be. The Time Trapper Two-Parter was pure nostalgia. Just look how cool the old headquarters looked in comparision to the bulky, ininspired brick they had in the Reboot! Back in 98, this only made it harder to accept the Reboot Legion. Today, with the Reboot Legion being kind of history again, I can much more enjoy such a nostalgia trip than I could back then, though I have to say that the first part was way better than the second one. The chaotic fight of Legionnaires of all eras against whomever got rather annoying, especially with its strong focus on Lori Morning... again... Jason Armstrongs sloppy artwork did not help.

So that's where I left. Anybody able to fill in the gaps? SLK, do you have those? I started buying the Legion again with the "Legion of the Damned" storyline, so there's about two years of story missing.

Action #741 is a classic example of something which has become increasingly common in recent years (especially to do with Mega Crossover Epics, although this week's Thor Annual is an example more on this scale) - a book tying into (being ordered to tie into?) a story the writer has no part to play in, nor any particular interest in.

As such, it doesn't actually fit with the LSH story, and makes absolutely no contribution to it - I'd advise someone who had it and was reading LSH #98-100 to skip it.

I have a few non-Legion books from around this time that feature the Legion. I miss the days when they would pop up in unexpected places:

Action #741 - Yeah, pretty much a waste of time story-wise. But it's the last time you'll get to see Immonen draw the Legion for awhile so for me it's worth it.

Unlimited Access #2 - The lost Legionnaires team up with the X-Men from Days of Future Past. They even get to share the cover of Wolverine! Fun but quick appearance. This is the only X-Men comic I own. I'm sure this is the only Legion appearance that many X-Men fans own.

Adventure in the DCU #10 - This is how I wish the Legion cartoon was. A simple, but fun story that manages to give nearly the entire Legion some screen time. And no Monstress!

Spiderboy Team up #1 - An Amalgam story. I'm not a Marvel reader so I think I missed most of the Marvel references, but it still makes for an entertaining Legion spoof.

Legion Secret Files #1 - Boring issue that adds very little. I always hated these things. They would serve as a great introduction to a new character or series, but they are too expensive for anyone but diehard fans to buy. And very little new information is given that the diehards don't already know, so it seems like a waste of time. It did have a funny scene that showed Gates trying to unionize some UPS workers while he was in the 20th. I always thought that was pretty clever.

Legends of the Legion mini- shows the origins of four members. The Ultra Boy and Star Boy issues were pure and utter crap. Spark's was ok, and I really liked Shadow Lass's issue. I'm not sure who thought this miniseries was necessary but the sooner forgotten the better for all.

Chemical King - It took me a while longer to give up on the Legion so I'll keep posting my thoughts on here. It's sad, though, that I see a large number of issues left in my box, and I can't recall anything specific happening in the rest of the run. It was a pretty forgettable run after the Legion was reunited.