Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! What's your Legion-reading roadmap?

How did you get from your first Legion issue to your most recent one?

I don't know which one was my first one. Whatever it was, I bought it in the cheap bin in 1983 or 1984. I'm sure it would have been from 1978-1983.

I wound up getting several over time because, well, I guess I thought they were OK and all right they were CHEAP.

I know which NEW issue was the first I purchased: v3n320. There wasn't much at the comics shop and I wanted to get something, and that's what I picked. The color scheme on the cover probably didn't help, but Dream Girl being there did.

I got the Secrets of the Legion mini. I didn't buy all of it in the cheap bin. (It wasn't expensive, but it was in the regular back issue box. I had to go looking for it. Maybe found the first one at a bargain price and then follow-up?)

Kept buying the cheap older copies but didn't buy another new one until 324. I recall not being very interested in that one, but I did get 326 and continued on through the LSV war.

I was a Titans fan so I knew about the Baxter/newsprint thing, but I'm not so sure I was thinking about that with the LSH.

Bought v3n14 because the cover looked interesting. I liked it.

Not long after that, my comics budget all but dried up and Legion was not a priority for me. The library had some comics though, so I'd read whatever I could put my hands on.

There was a bookstore that had comics, and since LSH and Avengers back issues were frequently 35 cents or so, I'd get them. I got v3n26 on a whim when I was temporarily flush.

And that was pretty much it for a long time. I was in and out of comics several times. I had a very vague sense of going what was going on in LSH (like I knew the Earth blew up) but what with the various titles and everything it all seemed complicated and since I didn't have that much invested in the first place, investigating didn't seem worth it.

Late 90s: I still love a bargain, so when I saw one of my old favorites, Projectra, on the cover of v4n44 in a quarter bin, I picked it up. Didn't really understand it. I purchased a few more (various eras) from the quarter bins. Lightning didn't strike there either.

Fall 2001: I'm at the comics shop. No new issues of my favorites, but I wanted to get something. So I got Legion #1.

Not long after that: I was at the DCMBs and for whatever reason I stopped by the LMB to see if I could find some thread to explain the basics of What Happened. Oh, did I find out...although not in one visit as planned.

So I kept up with reading the current series and also sought out the older stuff. I'm sure I saw the old LSH bibliograpies in the 1984-ish issues and was aware that the LSH didn't always have its own title, but once again, didn't really think about it. I read the archives (for the most part in order). Loved most of the Adventure stuff.

I've purchased some random issues from my appx. 13-year gap (late 80s to 2000?). More recently I've picked up a big stack of LSH and Legionnaires from the time just before and after Zero Hour.

I have issues still to read from each era, but I am most looking forward to getting the 5YL ones.

And I guess I'll get Legion 22 next week.

My name is minesurfer. You can call me Mike, and I am a Legion-aholic.

It was 1997. I started collecting comics based on childhood memories of reading my aunt's and my cousin's comics. I remembered wishing that we had the money for me to have my own comics, but don't cry for me, my childhood was filled with baseball and bikes.

Like with anything else, when you start something new, you're lucky to get it right the first time. Well I didn't. I started collecting JLA. From there I was all over the place trying to define my tastes. Iron Man, Hulk, X-Men, Nightwing, Tales of Spider-man, Spider-Girl, Martian Manhunter, Deadpool, Young Justice, and all types of trade paperbacks found their way into my collection. Eventually I dropped all the titles that started to bore me which left my monthly pulls at Martian Manhunter, Deadpool, and Young Justice.

I wanted to add another title. I was afraid that the titles I was collecting were in danger of cancellation. I turned out to be right. I wanted a new title that I considered to be away from the mainstream and non-Marvel. I swore off of Marvel comics (except Deadpool) for good, they were just too wordy. I'd read them and have trouble remembering what I had just read. And I didn't want to have to collect six issues a month to know what was going on in the titles.

Anyway, I ran across The Beginning of Tomorrow TPB. Having only vague memories of what the Legion was, I decided to try it out. I got hooked. Legion was/is the perfect title for my tastes. A little Sci-fi, a little bit hero, a lotta bit team dynamic, whatever... It all appealed to me.

I WANTED to know what happened next in the story. Finally I had my comic tastes defined. I went back to my local comic book shop and purchased the next 20 issues of LOSH and Legionnaires each. I also started getting the current issues. About two weeks later (after I'd read all of my Legion comics) I went back to the store and bought the rest of the reboot (which to me, I didn't even know was a reboot at the time). Since I now knew what happened “next”, it only seemed fitting to find out what happened previously, I went back to several different comic stores and starting with No. 259 I've managed to purchase every Legion appearance from that point on (circa 1980). I am filling in the rest of my collection with HC Archives (only seven more to go). The only era that I really don't like is the 5YL. Sorry TD, but you know it's bad when the editor needs to write a summary at the end of issues to explain what happened in previous issues. I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I'm also not the dumbest either, and I found those issues hard to follow.

The Legion for me, like any good story or movie, is about discovery. Maybe that's why I don't get involved emotionally in the mainstream titles. What is there that is left to discover in those titles?

Legion is the only on-going series that I get every month. Any other title I can wait for the Trade.

I noted most of my "road map" in the second page of the "What If" thread , as an extended aside to Fat Cramer, so I won't repeat it here, but y'all may find it entertaining.

When I decided to actually keep the comics I read and bought (by my late 30s, as I note at the link above), I started with the issues featuring Dawnstar -- surprise! {g}

Those ran, as I saw it, from Superboy 225 -- her first mention, noting that she debuts in the next issue -- to "LSH" v3 n63, the end of the Magic Wars. I worked up a checklist for these, from on- and off-line sources.

(After that, she was corrupted and betrayed by the writers, and I never had much interest in collecting those TMK-and-later issues, though I read them when I could. Since the reboot, she's only had occasional cameos, her longest appearance being in the newly written "Crisis" issue "4.5" adventure.)

I progressed this way in what I bought, most via eBay:
~ Dawnstar appearances during Levitz's two writing stints on the Legion
~ Other issues of Levitz's two writing stints
~ Other LSH issues between or along with (minis, "Tales," Annuals, "Who's Who") Levitz's stints
~ Dawnstar appearances after the departure of "Bounty," in the late pre-boot
~ The few notable "Bounty" appearances
~ About 30 other selected issues, TMK to the present -- for story or importance
~ "The Legion," upon Coipel's departure

Although I've read many issues from the "Adventure," "Action," early reboot, and DnA periods -- in archives, in others' collections, and off the racks -- I've bought almost none of them. I only buy and keep what is compelling to me. The near-exception has been wanting the Levitz LSH era, end to end with all gaps in between, out of a general affection for that time.

I've collected very few other non-Legion titles to speak about -- in the sense of more or less complete runs -- but a few have come along:
~ "Ms. Marvel," the original 23-issue solo series
~ "DC Challenge," the professional round-robin tale of the early '80s
~ "Crisis on Infinite Earths," with most of the Dawnstar crossovers
~ "Power Girl" miniseries and some individual appearances
~ Superman / Wonder Woman Elseworlds, "Whom Gods Destroy"

Also about 50 to 60 other individual issues, mostly winged-art covers.

Recent series that I've read and bought in full include "Promethea," the several "Aria" miniseries, the new "Astro City: Local Heroes," "Namor," and "Hawkman." I started buying "Sojourn" about a year ago.

And all this still fits in just under three short boxes ... almost none bagged and boarded, by the way. They're meant to be read.

I don't even really remember my first Legion issue, it would have been mid-60s. Legion was just one of many favorites. I read a whole bunch of comics back then, all the kids did and older brothers and sisters passed down grocery bags of comics. Days of innocence, days of delight.

Like a lot of girls, I moved away from comics in high school and college. It was in my final week of college (1976), after exams, I found a stack of beat-up LSH comics in a bookstore. I was hooked, and I had time to read "junk" (what a snob!). The comics thing was more off than on for the next years as I tried to pretend I was an adult. I got rehooked by the TMK stories, totally devoted to Legion. That interest waned as the book degenerated (IMHO) into Legion on the Run and I moved from a city to a rural community with no comic store. I'm not too big on keeping anything, so I never kept any of these comics for long.

Maybe it was all the war talk last summer that sent me into escapism, but I started wondering what ever had happened to the Legion of Super Heroes. Ask Google a question and you get more than you bargained for. Combine that with eBay and message boards and I was sunk into the Legionverse once again.

This is my favorite book because it's the most fun, the book itself and the discussions that accompany it. It's the only one for which I have a subscription, so I get it in this little hick village the same day as it appears in the shops; I can become quite obssessive about some things. But not so obssessive that I'll drive 2 hours into the city to go to the comic shop once a month.

I certainly don't have most of the back issues - big gaps in my "collection". I don't mind paying a buck or two for an old book, it's great entertainment - but on principle I won't pay the going price for the death of Superboy issue.

I haven't really picked up on the other superhero books but buy a ton, it seems to me, of independents, GNs, some Wildstorm and Vertigo.

And, like Greybird, I don't bother with the plastic bags. Most of the Legion back issues came that way, but I find it's a bother, and I expect even that newsprint will outlive me at this point.

My roadmap:
Step 1: While interning at Marvel, I read the beginning of TMK (it took two or three issues for me to really get into it and I wouldn't have if comics weren't free over there).

Step 2: Intrigued by the history that TMK only hinted at, I bought up all the back issues I could find (Baxter and LSH from "The Great Darkness Saga" onward).

Step 3: postboot, during PMS I dropped "Legionnaires", and eventually the main "LSH" title -- I just didn't find anything interesting about it storywise and the art was ok, but not enough for me to keep buying it.

Step 4: DnA arrive and my interest is rekindled.

Step 5: Back to the back issue bins -- I've been able to find fairly inexpensive pre "GDS" stuff and "Superboy and LSH" issues.

My first Legion experience that started a life long obsession was Superboy #210 (Soljer's Private War). It came out right after my father died in 1975.

I lost track of the Legion in the late 80's during my first marriage (I was married once before Caroline, for 2 years) until the Blight came around. I've tried (and almost successfully) tracked down all the issues I missed in between, not that I've read them all yet. What brought me back was a chance happening upon an e-mail RPG that featured the Legion in which the person who had be playing Garth had just quit. I dived right back in and haven't looked back since.

Then a couple of years ago I found message boards and what you see here is an end result of that. I'm really glad I did and with the exception of a few bumps in the road I'm glad to be here with all of you.

My Legion reading map started back in Adventure days. My best friend's older brother gave me my first comic book and it happened to be an Adventure comic with the Legion of Super Heroes. I was immediately hooked and began buying the title with my allowance. I also traded with others until I had the dozen or so prior issues since 300.

Bought & read & saved all of Adventure & Action. Then there was that worthless LSH v1 which was simply reprints! BAH! With all the clamoring going on in DC fandom from Legion fans, it sure took them a long time to finally bring the series back in Superboy (sporadically at first, but I was thrilled!)

I bought and read SuperBoy & the LSH through about # 280 (though I had started missing numerous issues by then) and finally stopped completely when I decided that comics were for kids and an almost adult like me couldn't be seen buying them!

Years later, I had a fire in the attic of my house and my comic collection suffered mightily. They would all be gone today if my mother and aunt hadn't gone through all the fire damaged wreakage and salvaged almost my entire LSH collection and many other comics! I couldn't believe it! When I asked them why they said that they would always remember me as a little boy with my nose buried in a comic book and they couldn't stand the thought of them being lost along with everything else.

I still have them...many singed, some charred and have since replaced all of those I lost (through eBay.) I've found all the pre Adventure 300 appearances (actually had some pre fire) and am only missing Adventure #247. (I do have a copy of Adventure #237 which many claim is the try out for the Legion concept)

Since then I have picked up an issue here or there of the newer versions so I'm aware of what's going on in the LSH but, to me, nothing will ever compare with the early days through S&LSH.

To me Shady will always be Shady not Umbar, Invisible Kid is Lyle not Jacquez, Validus is one of the Fatal Five not Garth & Irma's little boy, Polar Boy is the head of the Subs, and my top five will always be: Mon-El (not Valor,etc.), Cos, Invisible Kid, Chemical King, & Element Lad. Oh yeah, and Kal & Kara still visit every once in a while! *grin*

V

PS: There's nothing wrong with the newer version, I do enjoy it but it just seems a little off kilter to me at times.

I've recounted various parts of my 40+ years of Legion "fanship" over the last couple of years. So I'll just focus on a couple aspects that might be unique to an "ancient" fan like myself that might not be ascertainable to younger fans.

I clearly remember what it was like before there ever was a Legion series, when they were just these kids from the future who would pop up in the different Superman comics. To get an idea of what that was like, you have to set aside everything you know about Legion, all the stories you've read and many of the characters you immediately associate with Legion.

[And remember also that there was no mass youth entertainment culture such as exists today - games, computers, skating, everything, were totally non-existant. Hell, this was two years before the Beatles hit America. Besides comics and TV, about the only cultural "thing" for kids was the national obsession with the Space Race. Comics and network TV, such as they were, were it for many kids.]

As for Legion, everybody who joined after Mon-el also didn't exist yet. No Tenzil, Element Lad, Ayla, Subs, Nura, Lallors, Timber Wolf, Karate Kid, Projectra, or Shadow Lass, or anybody after that. There even wasn't an Ultra Boy yet, who first appeared only two months before the Legion got it's series.

And no Fatal Five, no Mordru, and even, even no Time Trapper. There was a Legion of Super-Villains, and these adults seemed at times to pop up as much as the Legion. Now they haven't been seen for twenty years.

Even Mon-el wasn't a Legionnaire. He was a totally separate and independent character, just "that good guy in the Phantom Zone." Many fans didn't even know what color his costume was because he rarely left the Zone; he was always being shown as a white wraith. A very frail and tragic character compared to his later alpha male stature in Legion history. Mon-el was an entirely different character - primarily Superman's "emergency warning system" (and rarely Superboy's.)

The Legion back then was completely different from all subsequent versions in both how it was shown and how it was percieved. The things that defined the Legion then, what you knew about the Legion, was basically what you didn't know about the Legion. Sure you knew the often appearing big three (Lightning Lad, Cosmic Boy, & Saturn Girl,) but there seemed a lot about the "Legion of Super-Heroes" that was unknown and mysterious. Little had been written or established yet, but that's not how a kid sees it - there's had to be more stuff to be discovered about this cool super-hero kids club.

Though I had read a few prior Legion cameos, the first Legion story that "hit" me wasn't a story. It was the "Origins & Powers of the Legion of Super-Heroes" feature in Superman Annual #4. These two pages of Swan's action-shots and the half-page text of brief bios really captivated me. By not having the Legion heroes speaking, and just giving bare-bones info on them, it made them much more mysterious and allowed young minds to imagine anything they wanted about these super-kids.

[BTW, I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that they were rarely if ever referred to as "Legionnaires" during this earliest period.]

So, specifically, even though the feature identified 12 heroes, there was no sense that these were all of the Legion of Super-Heroes. There could be more, many more heroes yet to be shown (it said Legion!) There had to be more!

And there was absolutely nothing like the Legion of Super-Heroes anywhere in comics. Nothing. No team was this big, there were no "heroes from the future" anywhere, and no team of kid heroes yet in 1961 & 1962. (First appearance of Teen Titans wasn't till 1964.)

So when the announcement was made that they would get there own series in Adventure 300, that was a big deal among the few comic fans I knew. I can't remember in what letter column it was announced, but I believe it was a couple of months before the debut. At least the anticipation afterwards made it seem so.

To this day, I can't look at the cover of Adventure #300 without feeling some of that same sense of youthful anticipation and pure wonderment.

I think that's one thing modern fans don't have the opportunity to feel. Because there has been such a comic market saturation for over three decades, that there is no true sense of "uniqueness" with new titles. Even for most brand new fans, they walk into a comic store and see a million titles. What's another one?

Another thing that most Legion fans haven't experienced is the loss of the series, specifically its limbo status after the Action feature cancellation. Hey, it was all over for the Legion. Seriously. Six months passed after the Action cancellation before another Legion story appeared seemingly accidently in the back of Superboy.

And in that year there were just three measly sporatic Legion stories, with the rather generic art of George Tuska. This was just appeasement of fans by DC. In late 1970 and 1971, it's was all over for the Legion, just a slow lingering death.

Luckily, fans started pestering DC to give the Legion a real regular series. At the same time, or perhaps partially because of this, Dave Cockrum took over the series, and the rest is history.

I guess the final major thing unique to ancient Legion fans is simply growing up with the Silver Age Legion. As the series and characters developed, I went from grammar school into Junior High, and then into High School. Legion left Adventure while I was still in high school, so there very much is a sense for me of Adventure being contained in that period, the 60s. They still exist there. The Adventure Legion didn't make it out.

So I visit them now and then. And not only do I often recall something long forgotten, I usually realize something new about the time and my childhood.

I could have "wasted my youth" a lot worse in the sixties than by reading Adventure comics and flying into the future with the Legion of Super-Heroes!

I hear you, Varalent and Reep. I probably started reading shortly after you did, all the way to the end of Adventure. My comic book phase came to an end with the passing of Adventure, until I discovered Dan and Andy's stories. Now forty years after I first fell in love with the Legion I'm collecting both ends of the spectrum simultaneously, i.e., the early stories in the Archives and the most recent issues starting from the present back to Zero Hour. It'll be a while before I'm able to visit the middle years, though I do have a number of seminal issues, annuals and such, from the 70s and 80s. Maybe that's also why I don't have feelings of nostalgia concerning Levitz, Giffen, Cockrum, Lightle, and other Legion creators of that era, though I'm now coming to appreciate their talents thanks to other fans.

In case you were wondering, I did indeed get Legion 22.

1983: I read my cousin's LSH. I only remember Dawnstar trying to grab a missile and screaming the Levitz-scream as it carried her out of control. I ripped that scene off for my own comics later that summer. I was 12.

1986: A kid the neighborhood had the end of the Sensor Girl saga. I read it. It was OK. (Ten years later I would buy the whole arc).

1991: The summer before my junior year in college, I meet Jason Pearson at DragonCon in Atlanta. He's doing LSH. I see some pencils or breakdowns or something. Am intrigued by the nine-panel grid. Later in the year the Quiet Darkness Saga's Furball cover catches my eye. But skimming the interior tells me nothing.

1992: the "Bounty vs. Sade" cover catches my eye. The sheer KEWLness of the fight inside absolutely snares my interest. The surrounding drama, even moreso. I traipse all over D.C. seeking the rest of "Terra Mosaic."

1993: With Legionnaires #1, I am hooked on the Legion concept, whether SW6 teens or Adult. Meet Chris Sprouse at a mini-con in Bethesda; got a Kid Quantum sketch. Collecting Legionnaire trading cards. T&M minus Keith prove unpalatable to me; I drop LSH. Legionnaires becomes unreadable due to Sprouse and Hughes' departures; I drop.

1994: Zero Hour catches my eye again, but the continuing horrible art and immediate death of my favorite, Ferro, scare me away again. The 0 issues are mildly promising, but somewhat flat writing and art make me drop both books shortly after Planet Hell.

1995: I happen upon the brilliant group shot cover of LSH #80 and skim it. Alarmed at the apparent deaths of several Legionnaires, I get to the end to learn that the past 2 years' worth of stories led up to this conclusion. I was so blown away that I went back and filled in all the back issues I'd missed (inc. attendant issues of Superboy). I was back for the next 3 years, even though Archie Legion never got that good again.

1996: I begin to pick up the odd v.3 issue here and there, esp. the entire "Who is Sensor Girl?" arc.

1998: Archie Legion never recovers from Team 20 fiasco and becomes unreadable. Once again college student, I must drop it again.

1999: Coipel's ugly "Damned" art does nothing to get me back. "Didn't we already do this...in TMK?" My words.

2000: Legion Lost #1 looks intriguing, but I am in a self-enforced fast from comics at the time and it's not good enough to tempt me to break it. Nor is LL #2. In December the Wildfire issue, with its "Element Lad" appearance and improved art, hooks me again. I spend $$ and time tracking down the rest of the series. Very impressed with both story and art, now seeing Coipel's underlying strength under all the lines.

2001: Love the conclusion of LL. Track down LL#1 via E-bay, but item is lost in the mail. Fortunately, I find it in a quarter box. In between LWorlds and Superboy's Legion, I track down the majority of TMK in those same quarter boxes along with a few v3 issues. LW is a mixed bag. New series "The Legion" starts. Never regretted it.

I was a spin-racker as a kid. Adventure stopped showing up so I thought they's stopped making it. Money got tight so stopped buying. I "grew-up" and old books hit the garbage. Besides, without my favorite book, there didn't seem much point.

Flash forward 25 years. While playing tourist in Australia, I noticed a comic book store and thought what an odd idea; those Aussies.

Hey Spin-rack!

LEGION? Wow, bikinis! These books are used?

Spin, buy,spin, buy, girlfriend pissed, BOXES of COMICS?, buy. HEY, this one's NEW! Last months? BUY! Late night, comics spread out on the bed, girlfriend pissed.

Back in the US, showing girlfriend through the south (girlfriend was Dutch). Stopped at every town looking for these, "Comic's Stores." Filled up nearly everything I had missed, girlfirend still pissed but consigned. She even paid for one of the stacks.

Back home, found a Comic's Store and have been collecting for the last..twelve years.

I have pretty much the entire run beginning in the ADV 240's. My Secrets of Legion seems to be missing, but I know it is somewhere.

The first Legion comic that I can vividly remember buying fresh off the stands with my own l'il hands (albeit my grandmother's money) was Superboy and the LSH #218. That's the issue where Tyroc joined.

OOOUUUIIIIEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This book really captured my imagination. From the heroic figure of Tyroc on the cover confronting the villain, his can do attitude throughout the book (note, in this my first experience with the character, he is completely devoid of that whole 'angry black man' thing that would define him to most fans), the multitude of heroes within, the intimation of other missions and adventures happening concurrently, the whole initiation thing, the back story with Zorrrax (if I recall that name right), people actually getting rejected from the group (hey, I could identify with that), two heroes making out (HA!) and getting caught by a dude on monitor duty (huh?) , the Legion cell bank (remember, this was before DNA), and even more heroes I had never seen at the swearing in ceremony. I mean, this book had it ALL!

I was all about the Legion from that point on. However, recall that in these heady days before direct distribution. Although comics were everywhere, on every newsstand, and in every store, finding a particular comic could be challenging. Heck, at this point I was still young enough that I had not really figured out that comics came out on a certain day of the week. For me, it was still just the "miracle of the newsstand." I'd bike all over town, finding some books in one place, some in another. Hell, the search alone was half the fun!

In Winslow, Maine where I grew up, I kind of forget the names of my regular haunts. However, I would sometimes, when I knew Mom would not be home from work for awhile, venture across the Kennebec river to Waterville to what I soon discovered was the holy temple of newsstands, Joe's Smoke Shop!

Funny aside: a couple of years ago I was back in waterville and stopped into Joe's. There were only a handful of comics on the stands. I asked the proprieter (who is not names Joe BTW) if he sold many comics. "Nawwww," he said, rather dejectedly I thought. "They don't make 'em for kids anymore." I thought this was rather insightful from a guy who had probably never actually read a comic himself and knew nothing of the industry. But somehow, just by noticing what the distributor was sending him, and what the kids were reacting too, he innately sensed that the "Comics aren't just for kids anymore!" wave of the '80s (of which I am sure he knew nothing) had left his customer's behind. In his eyes kids had not left comics, comics had left the kids.

Now, way back when, I would spend most every weekend with my grandparents in Skowhegan. Every weekend gram would give me a couple of dollars and stop at the Pic Qwik, where I would sit at the newsstand reading and making pained decisions until my legs fell asleep, or until a LONG blast of the horn told me she was tired of waiting. Later, when we moved to Skowhegan ourselves, and the Pik Qwik had become a Big Apple Store, I spent almost every afternoon after school through junior high there buying comics, drinking slush puppies (ow, ow, owwww, BRAIN FREEZE!), and playing Dig Dug. There were two arcade games in the store. One would rotate Asteroids, Space Invaders, Ms Pac-Man. But the Dig Dug was constant. Probably because it was my favorite and I probably could have gone to college on the quarters I pumped into it.

So, anyway, back to my original point, which was that distribution of comics was spotty in those days. I do not have a vivid recollection of another Legion until #225 where Wildfire was elected leader. Also, a VERY cool story. Comics were cool then. Sure, sub-plots would carry over from issue to issue, but you almost always got a complete story of some kind in each and every book. The next one I recall was #230. The main story was pretty lame, but I do recall the reference to "Moopsball." That fascinated me. I remember spending hours with pen and paper trying to work out my own Calvin & Hobbs type rules for the game.

After that, the books went to 50-cent, and later 60-cent giants. At this point, they became MUCH easier to find. Gone were the days of here's an issue, there's an issue, some months NO issue. From here on in, I was there each and every month for Klordney festivals, Composite Legionnaires, Fatal Five battles, and EARTHWAR!! Ooooohhhhh! I remember getting "That Damn Tabloid" at Joe’s and, rather than being thrilled at this over-sized book, being rather pissed off that my pal Tyroc once more had been given the short shrift. Again, I had not yet seen any "angry black man" stories, and could not figure out why Tyroc was not taking part in adventures.

Later, my enthusiasm, if not my interest, began to wane. I had not quite discovered the credit box, and so did not at the time realize that Paul Levitz had left. Still, I could recognize art styles and I somehow dimly perceived that someone new (Joe Staton) was handling the art regularly. The art was not bad, just not near as exciting as it had been.

Somewhere in there, I also ran across a copy of DC Super-Stars #3. This book truly fascinated me. An ADULT Legion story. Weird. At the time, I don't think I recognized that it was a reprint of an earlier story. I know that I was just fascinated that all the heroes changed their costumes once they grew up. Made sense, I thought, to go to a more conservative look when they got older...

Then, when the Legion got it's own book! WOW!! That was BIG! Not all the stories were great, and I was not overly thrilled with the art, things were getting worse, no better, IMHO, but still, an actual Legion book.

Shortly after v.2 started, we had a house fire. I lost my entire comics collection. A sad, sad day. This happened just before the start of school that year (7th grade) and we found ourselves at the mall in Portland for school shopping. Actually, at this point it was not so much school shopping as any clothes period shopping. While at the mall we happened into a bookstore where I spied this glorious and mysterious thing called an Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide. One sniffle and a set of Bambi eyes later, this Gutenburg Bible was mine. So, ironically, at this point I owned a price guide and not one single comic book.

More ironically, it was soon after this that I got a pity raise in my allowance, and parlayed that windfall into a purchase of some older comics from a schoolmate. Most were more recent books, but among them was Adventure Comics #346. Adventure Comics!? Here was a seemingly teen Legion, based on one of my favs Karate Kid (had managed to search out nearly all of his solo series from #8 when I first discovered it!) joining, but he was wearing a different costume, In fact, all the Legion members were wearing their adult costumes. Well, let's just consult 'ol Overstreet and see what he has to say on this. 1st app. this, 1st app. that, 1st app. the other damn thing. HOLY CRAP!!

Now, in our old trailer, that got claimed by the fire , I had my comics on shelves in the closet. In the new trailer, my stepfather refused to let me have shelves in the closet again. Why? Same answer as for everything, "Because I said so!" However, this new trailer had a half-bath off my bedroom, and he did build shelved over the toilet. Funny, now that my collection is closing in on 12,000 comics, to think of that time when my entire collection fit on 4 small shelves in the bathroom. Anyway, my stepfather and I never hooked horns, and to this day I am convinced that this is why he did such a half-assed job on those shelves. One day they collapsed, and the entire "L" pile took a deep-sea dive. It was almost 20 years later before I had replaced my last waterlogged copies of the Superboy/Ultra Boy/Reflecto saga!

So, things are going fine, I'm groovin' on the Legion, and The Great Darkness saga is absolutely the coolest thing I have ever read. Omen & Prophet not so much though, especially half way through when Giffin got kidnapped by aliens and changed his art style.

Then, DISASTER! Almost worse than the house fire even!

To most of you, the hardcover/softcover thing might have been a good idea. For me, in Maine, it was the worst possible thing that could have happened. Today, there are maybe 6 comics shops in the State. There have rarely been more then that. Back in 1984, not even this many. V.3 was lost to me. However, by the time Tales was reprinting the series, I had discovered one an hour's drive away in Portland. I never bought the Tales reprints, preferring to get what I could, when I could, of the Baxter series because, in my teen mind, reprints sucked.

In some ways, it was like the old days, when you never knew what you would find, and only ever managed to get every third issue. Problem was, now if you missed an issue, it almost always meant missing half the story. Pretty unsatisfying. Later, I would find a comics shop only 25 minutes away, and by then I had my license, but with much the same results.

In the meantime, I had discovered a used bookstore in Bingham that had comics. I managed to get most of the Adventure run post #340 here. Although I never did get #347, to find out who the traitor was, Ferro or Nemesis Kid (I could easily rule out KK & PP for obvious reasons). That issue would not be found for another 15 years with the advent of eBay.

I also found a used bookstore, run out of this guy’s garage, right in Skowhegan. This guy actually collected comics, the only adult I had met up till then who did so. He was the stereotypical Simpsons' Comic Book Guy, and he never had any old Adventure comics, but I did get from him the last issue of the original Legion Outpost fanzine. This was a revelation. Oh, to find that, somewhere, there were fans as fanatical about the Legion as me.

After dropping out of High School, I moved around a LOT. Back then, I was the Commando Waiter. Always cash on hand, zero responsibility, get pissed off, walk out, get new waiter job within two days, always cash on hand, zero responsibility, move on, move on, more money here, grass is greener there, move on, move on. Many times, changing jobs meant changing ghetto apartments, especially when I had used up all the restaurants in one city and had to find another. I once counted and from 18 to 32 I moved, on average, twice a year. My Legion collection may not be in the best condition, but it is certainly the most well traveled.

Most of this time, there were few if any comics shops nearby. Sometime none. Most of v3. and v.4 came to me via back issue bins. Eventually I managed to fill in all the holes. And, using e-bay, I managed to fill in most of the Adventure run, all the Action run, and re-collect all the Superboy & LSH run.

I also discovered online fandom via AOL chatrooms and the lsh-l list around '95 or '96. That was fun. By the reboot, I had begun to settle down, and with the help of new online pals, I was way BIG into the new Legion.

Today, I have been married for going on three years. THAT has settled me down a LOT. I actually own a house on 9 acres in Sumner, Maine. Sumner is a small town of <850 people in west central Maine. I serve there on the Volunteer Fire Department as its Secretary, and recently received by my State certification as a Firefighter I.

I was in a few Legion APA's briefly, and many Legion related mailing lists, but have recently roosted here at LegionWorld.Net as my primary internet home. I am very happy here, thank all who made this possible, and all those who make it such a fun place to be. Also, on an unrelated note, I have absolutly no idea who Koko is.

I work customer service & tech support for a phone/internet company in Auburn, making me a super-commuter as work is 40 mins. from home. It's still a "suck-job," but at least I am finally out of restaurants.

My comics shop, Zimmie's, is across the Androscoggin river in Lewiston. I pre-order, and pre-pay, for my books and get a 15% discount. Legion is still the favored purchase, and I can usually be counted on to order and A-R items I know of in advance. The batter half allows me a budget of $100 a month. I generally max that and have not bought many back issues in recent years. Not that I need 'em. The entire 2nd floor of our house is dedicated to my Fortress of Solitude. Sill, I recognize that it is unfair of me to monopolize an entire whole floor of the house. I keep threatening to buy a silo, paint it yellow, weld some big red rocket fins on it, and place it on the far corner of our property as my super-hero clubhouse.

Anyway, that's MY story, and I'm stickin' to it!


Thanks for having me.

I know the first Legion stories I read were in a digest, and somehow or other I had enough exposure that I started collecting with V3 # 13. I think I must have borrowed a lot from a friend and got into it that way. The first Adventure era backissue I bought was # 319, which was really cool because most series' back issues from that era were already getting to pricey for a punk kid.

Since then there have been several times when I kicked the habit so to speak, only to get sucked back in. I missed part of v3 during a fling with manga reprints, but was back before the Magic Wars. I dropped it again after Zero Hour when I realized what had happened (the reboot) but got sucked back again when the Fatal Five reappeared. I dropped comics altogether when my wife and I first shacked up, but when I found the DC Message boards I heard the buzz about Legion Lost and jumped back in again.

The only diffence this time is that I haven't gone back and filled in the gap since I dropped out last time, just after Team 20. Before, I always went back and got caught up. When I decided the reboot was okay I was buying backissues at a furious pace, four or five at a time. Nobody seems to care too much for the pre-DnA stories anyhow so I may never get around to it.

i do not read them, i merely flip through to make sure my name is properly spelled.

KOKO BUMP!

Well I guess my roadmap has taken an easy path as I have collected all legion titles since I started with Superboy and the Legion of Super Heroes #197.

I guess I’ll be a dedicated fan until the day it ends (hopefully not for a long, long time).

LLL

This has been an interesting thread. Good topic, TD.

I think my first massive exposure to the Legion was through the Best of DC reprints of the Adventure issues. I was about 7 and digests were the only kind of comics I read since they were often put at the supermarket checkout and my mom was easily persuaded I took it home and "read" the first story, the "Legion Suicide Squad" where the Subs save the day after the Legion is unable to break into a fortress commandeered by two old men. Other stories included the 1st Dev-Em story, the secret of the Concentrator, Proty joining the Legion of Super Pets, and an election contest won by Saturn Girl.

I had a friend who liked superheroes, too. I showed him the comic and we actually played superheroes pretending to be different Legionnaires (Mon-El was usually the first choice). When I turned 8 he moved away. That would be the last time I would ever meet anyone in person who enjoyed the Legion.

Anyway, in time I had "graduated" to "big-size" comics. I usually got Uncle Scrooge and other kid comics but a strange one with an awesome cover caught my eye one day. Crisis #1 was out and the earth was getting blown up real good. I had to have it to see if my home state of Michigan would come through unscathed. Within a few pages I was introduced to Dawnstar who claimed to be a member of the Legion. She was beautiful and intriguing to my little 8 year-old mind. I had to see more of her. The next week I saw an issue of Who's Who and together with Crisis, I would become a comic-geek for life.

The first regular issue of Legion i ever picked up was Tales #324 where Mon-El, Ultra Boy and White Witch were fighting Dark Circle agents in space. I got the next issue after only to find that they were beginning to do reprints!! Well, since the nearest comic store was 35 miles away I had to settle for second rate reprints. I collected them faithfully until cancellation (grrrr, stupid Baxter) and when Best of DC stopped doing Legion reprints I was stuck. No coincidence that I lost interest in comics completely and gave up. Interesting that I grew up on both Adventure and Levitz and I enjoyed each equally.

I saw a copy of LSH v.3 #63 on a turnrack in Waldenbooks and bought it on a whim. Great timing - it was the last issue! I bought v.4 #'s 1 & 2 at the same turnrack and didn't like what I saw so i just stopped. Soon after graduating from high school I attended a community college in the same town as the closest comic shop and, again on a whim, decided to pick up the latest issue of Legion which happened to be the first part of the "Quiet Darkness" story. Well, from then on I was hooked and managed to buy at least one back issue every week starting with v.4 then the rest of v.3, then the v.2 stories written by Levitz. The only time I quit from there was shortly after the recent "Bizarro Legion" story by PMS. I just couldn't justify spending money on stuff I didn't like.

Over the last few years (5 years since I've been out of college, whew) I've been working on the awful, awful Conway/Staton issues and I'm currently working on the pre-Conway issues. I now get a back issue maybe once a month.

The coolest thing was discovering the internet. I had no idea that Legion fandom was so loyal and widespread. Sure, I met people in comic shops that read comics, but none ever read the Legion regularly. What a shock to discover hundreds of people just like me who enjoy one "not-aspopular-as-the-rest" comic that most people had never heard of.

Holy crap, this post is getting long. Hope my "life story" here wasn't too dull. I think I'll cut it short now.

KOKO McBUMP!

Speaking of Koko bump, how much would one of you charge me to bump off this annoying simian?

My road to Legion fandom started in the summer of '76. We were on vacation, staying with my Aunt (the cool PotA/Lone Ranger one ) in her cabin outside Sangerville, ME. On one of our trips to the General Store in town, she bought me four of the oversized treasuries: Secret Origins of the Supervillians 2, the Bicentennial treasury, Superman vs. the Flash, and SUPERBOY & THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES. Even though I was only 5, I was preternaturally drawn to Princess Projectra on that gorgeous Grell Gatefold cover. And what I found inside was just as good. Superboy was much cooler than Superman, who i was already familiar with (I'd been reading comics since I was 3). I had a crush on Shadow Lash, too. And Mordru was a badass! The doublepage spread from the wedding of BB and Duo Damsel engaged me for hours, it seemed, as did the cutaway diagram of the headquarters. I read that thing to pieces.

When I got back home, my access to comics was limited to the spinner rack at the local general store; they never seemed to have alot of DC's besides JLA and the big guns. one of the few pre-80's S&LSH I got new was the first appearance of Pulsar Stargrave. I loved that to death, too. In my childlike acknowledgement of PS's bad-assitude, I went through the issue with a red marker and drew wounds on various Legionnaires!

I started getting the title as regularly as I could with the "League of Super-Assassins" story, through the title change with Superboy's departure, on up through the Reflecto/Jo/Kal storyline, then the Broderick-drawn issues. I was in on the beginning of the GDS, but *gasp* lost interest because I didn't care for the art, and couldn't see what the to-do was over Giff.

I lost track of the Legion up until Byrne used them in Superman 8 after Crisis and his relaunch of the big "S". I found the Baxter #39 and bought it for a few issues, mainly for the letters pages to find out what had happened in the Legion chapters to that story. I quit buying when I found out they'd actually killed off Superboy.

Fastforward to after the reboot. I was reading the S-books following the death and return of Superman, and was following the new Superboy. His 3-part crossover into LSH and LEGIONNAIRES rekindled my interest in the kids from the future. I started buying those two titles regularly, and bought what back-issues I could. It soon became apparent I'd missed a LOT. In a short time, I'd completed my reboot collection, as well as a good portion of the 5YL relaunch.

From there, it snowballed. I immersed myself in the wonderful world of eBay, working mainly on collecting the Adventure era (mainly on the cheap, excluding key issues)-- and in one wonderful auction, I completed my "Superboy starring the" through the original Tales issues. 170 issues for $100!

(Sheesh-- didn't mean to write a frigging BOOK... :rolleyes: )

Well, now I know who beat me out in that auction! Glad it went to someone worthwhile!

Not to worry POV. It was a good read. I kinda did the same thing you did to get my collection as near completion as it is. I'm missing maybe 20 issues at the most from the beginning until now, not counting AR appearances. And lil'rhino, the sweetheart, sent me some of the Action appearances I was missing for nothing. Made my year!

And although it isn't in the best of shape I have to say the prize of my collection is my copy of Adventure #247 that I picked up off eBay for around $50.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Varalent:
<strong> Well, now I know who beat me out in that auction! Glad it went to someone worthwhile!

I wish I could apologize...!

Actually, though, Vee, it probably wasn't me you got into a bidding war with... The auction I won, I used the "Buy It Now" feature on. I did a half-second of "Well, I already HAVE half of these... before I caved in and bought it... best $100 I ever spent. I completed Superboy 197 through Tales 325, and ended up replacing most of my original issues with the new ones, which were in somewhat better shape! Aaaah, the memories...

247 for $50?!?! And I was happy getting 2-SIXTY-7 in Fi+ for 3 times that! WOW!!

Great thread! It's like "secret confessions of Legion fans".

I started with S/LSH with either Superboy #220 or the Limited Collector's Edition of the "Mordru in Smallvile" saga.

And funny, even though they weren't "jump-on" stories, I managed to figure out the back-story soon enough.

(Plus in #220, there was that great back-up story with Cham, Brainy and Nura. That was a classic. "Cool up, lady" indeed!)

After that, I followed the Legion until TMK #42, with the exception of the ONE LSH, post-boot tp.

(P.S. LL, Don't kill KOKO. He's a pre-crisis/post-boot anomaly and can't help it!)

It'll probably surprise people to know I got into the Legion pretty late in the game.

My first encounter with the Legion was 1983. I was a Marvel guy, and I had a friend who was into DC. He didn't regularly read the Legion, but he liked to buy big anniversary issues, and he had # 300. I also recall encountering the Secrets of the Legion miniseries and I read every entry in the original Who's Who...I love encyclopedia-comics. So I had a basic familiarity with the cast of the Legion.

Fast forward to 1990. Marvel began to suck about three years earlier, and I had spent a year and a half pretty much comic book-free in Israel. I came back and what caught my eye but the loose-leaf Who's Who. I loved the format, I loved the art. And the Legion entries were fascinating...the Legionnaires had seemingly moved on from super-hero life, Phantom Girl was amnesiac in the twentieth century, Mon-El was now called Valor...

To satisafy my curiosity, I picked up Legion (Beirbaum/Giffen series) # 13, titled "State of the Universe" on the cover. This only slaked my curiosity further, until I bought up the whole series. Then, to provide background for myself on some of the unfamiliar faces, I bought back-issues of Who's Who in the Legion and the ICG Legion Indexes. Eventually I noticed that a) everything that had changed was interconnected, confusing but understandable if one had the right resource, and b) the Beirbaums had thrown in a lot of off-handed easter eggs that I still wasn't getting. So I began work on version 1 of the Legion.HLP file, and I became obsessive about obtaining reference material.

The result is the Legion trivia whiz you are familiar with today.

That's amazing Chaim. I've been around a lot longer, since 1975, but don't have half the knowledge you do for their past.

How is the recovery of your files going for the update? Any luck?

I'm still thinking of trying to create something similar but for use on Palm handhelds. That'll make my Tungsten a true Omnicom.

My first issues were Legionnaires 1-7, in the SW6 era. I picked the whole bunch up for what would be only about a dollar (horrible exchange rate factored in ) Then I would get a few other back issues from time to time, but never with any regularity. Then I chanced on Legionnaires 47-50 and LSH 91, and I totally fell in love with the Legion! I filled up my collection with other back issues, and I also read my aunt's collection of Legion issues ranging from the Adventure era to the second Levitz run and the TMK era, and much of the early reboot too. Unfortunately, all those characters were just too much for a young new Legion fan, so I started to explore the Internet looking for info, and I definitely got more than I bargained for. Now I know a lot more about the Legion than anyone living here probably does, thanks in a large part to these message boards and CM Keller's Help file And with the advent of Legion Lost, which I totally loved, I became totally and completely hooked, and now I'm a regular at the shop where I get the latest issue of the Legion every month. The Legion is definitely a large part of what makes life worth living!

Is your aunt still a fan? Maybe she should join us here at Legion World!

my Legion road map started in the late 70's. i was about 6 or 7my grandmother and her sister had just returned from their weekly venture to a few garage sales in hartsdale or scarsdale n.y. and to my suprise the came back with 4 paper grocery bags full of comics and among them were a lot of the Grell era SB/LSH comics. the one's that spring to mind were:
~the Legion's fight against the Legion of Super-Rejects.
~the issue featuring the ghost of Ferro lad & Invisible Kid.
~the issue were Superboy saves Ultra boy & Lana Lang from being exocuted by a Legion firing squad.
~the 1st apperance of Grimbor.
from then i knew i liked this book but was not hooked yet.
then later on i was trading comics with a friend and i traded a Marshall & Austin era detective comics for the Legion of Super-Heroes comic that was a reprint of the Computo saga. that was my intro to the adventure comics era team.
then i knew that i was hooked. now when i was little it was a hassle to get my grandparents to take me to the store (as far as i knew back then there were no such places as comic book shops.):sad: so i would have to beg and plead with them to take me to the local news stand so my next few LSH issues were spotty. but the one's that come to mind were:
~ the issue where B-5 was cured of his "insanity"
~the issue featuring the Psyco-pirate.
~the issue titled "will the last one leaving the planet please turn of off the lights."
and a few others which i can't remember right now but it wasn't untill the issue when Superboy finally left the Legion for good and the title changed to the Legion of Super Heroes that i was able to collect every issue on a regular basis, and since then i havent stopped.
the GDS and the Levitz/giffen pre baxter issues made me love the legion so much more. then came the baxter series, the LSH/LSV war the death of K.K., the founders leaving group the addition of non-humaniod members, Polarboy moving up to the "big leagues" the who is Sensor girl mystery. the Universo project, the death of Superboy and on through to the series finalie with the Magic wars. i still think the baxter series is great reading.
now the 5yr gap /TMK era group was a little,.. no a lot different because it seemed to me that they took the Shooter era "Adult Legion ers" idea and took a hard left turn with it and kept on running
IMO it had some good points but it wasn't a fan favorite. so i won't go on.
now the re-boot era Legion so far i've loved what's been put out by the various creative teams except for the Dark Circle Rising story arch, that still leaves my scratching my head.
which brings me to today
so from a little child of the 70's through my teen years of the 80's to young adulthood of the 90's through today the Legion is the one title that my fanatisism for has never wavered.
unlike other long running titles over last 20 or so years if i didn't like the direction the book was going or the creative team i'd drop the book
so you see my Legion-reading road map is long and winding indeed but i've enjoyed every turn ,bend and curve along the way.

*** OH MAN and i forgot about the Adventure Comics mini digest that DC put out during the late 80's that was how i got further exposure to the adventure and action comic era stories from the 60's. stupid..,stupid,....stupid, i'm sooooooo stuuuupid!!!!

I like this thread also

My Legion experience:

-I notice that Keith Giffen, my favorite comic book writer is writing the Legion (TMK). My Dad tells me it's excellent, but I'm a bit too young for it right then (at age 10).

-Years later, I pick up one of the earliest issues of the reboot (on the Prison Planet with goggles), and like it so much, that I go back and read all the reboot issues since Zero Hour.

-Then, I remember that the Legionnaires were once older, since I remember the Giffen series, and seeing them in Crisis and Zero Hour.

-Luckily, my Dad's collection was almost complete even then. I began with the Adventure stories and decided to read them strait through until Zero Hour. I started with Adventure #300.

-Through the Adventure era, although there were holes early on. By Shooter we had every issue, and I really got into it then. The fact that it was confusing (knowing the reboot) only made it even more interesting and fun.

-Flash forward: we own NONE of the Superboy and the Legion issues. Suddenly, I come back in at the Legion #304. What the hell happened? Blok? Dawnstar? Wildfire?

-Read the Levitz issues, loved them. Bought the Great Darkness TPB. Loved it. By now, Legion had become my favorite comic. Before finishing the Levitz run, I got my Dad to buy almost all of the Superboy and the Legion run, and then went back and reread those. We were missing some of the later Baxter run (I never read Magic Wars until a few months ago), but that was alright.

-We had the entire TMK run, and having just read close to every Legion story in the last month, I read that whole run in a few days, and was BLOWN away by it.

-Then, just for kicks, I decided to reread the entire run the next summer in chronological order. Anything that didn't make sense did then. Afterwards, it was almost sad knowing that I had connected all the dots and made sense out of those stories.

-I then got the Archives #1 and #2 to read the stories that I never had and will take me awhile to get.

-And now it's been up to me to complete the collection with...gasp!...my own money! (And Pov's generosity a few months back ).

Great thread Teeds!

So Cobie, what are you still missing. It seems like you've mentioned just about everything.

I'm missing all the Legion appearances before Adventure #300 with the exceptions of #293 and the first appearance of Ultra Boy (Superboy #89). Besides those, I think I'm missing three issues of Superboy and the Legion, and a few more of the Adventure era (two or three from #301-310, and then one more before Shooter).

I had planned to go crazy on Ebay, but then thought better of it. I think I should get a reliable source of income before that . Adventure #247 will be my crowning achievement I think (although now I suddenly crave Superman #141 also).

1977: I read DC Super-Stars #17. 1st appearance of the Huntress (the REAL Huntress, Earth-2 Batman's daughter), A Grell Green Arrow origin, and a Legion origin. LOVE Huntress, and follow her into Bat-books and JSA; LIKE GA, start following GL/GA; lukewarm on Legion. go figure. even today, I'm not wild about that one.

1978: Read S/LSH #236. LOVE it. part of the fun is trying to follow all these characters. Art (Sherman) is pretty damn cool, too. Unfortunately, mom has a lot of say over what comics 10-year-old me can read, and she vetoes Legion. Meanwhile Hal Jordan and JSA are my favorites at this point.

1979: Winning a little ground on Legion. Allowed to pick up a few in the late #240s, and early #250s. Unfortunately, there not as good as #236 was. The Conway era has begun. When Superboy leaves, mom says 'that's it.' I don't argue; its not the Legion I was enchanted with.

1980/81: What a difference a year makes! I have more say over what I buy, and the Secrets mini makes a good excuse to rejoin Legion. Janes, not wild about. Ditko, loved his Starman, Odd Man and Creeper. Blok? I remember when he was a villain. Ulta Boy dead? not dead? dead again? I think I'll stick around.

1981: Make friends with Mike, the only other Legion fan I knew back then. Read his collection, which includes stories I hadn't read before: the Infinite Man, the Composite Legionaire, and that machine that zaps Superboy's memory. Around this same time, DC digests begin, and I get a taste of Silver. At the time, me, a defensive DC fan among serious, cool, macho Marvel zombies, I was ashamed at how corny they seemed, compared to X-Men and Daredevil. Luckily, I love em now, corny or not.

1982-84: Love Legion, love Levitz/Giffen, but Wolfman/Perez Titans are my faves. As a teen, getting to comic shops in Albany (45 minutes away) becomes more and more feasable, so baxter and indies become possible. Not driving yet, but go with friends once a month or more to Dr Who club meetings, and we hit the comics stores afterward.

1985-1987: Titans who? Marv burns out with Crisis. Levitz still has it, although I initially hold a grudge against non-Giffen artists (sorry Steve! I've gotten over it, though). Legion becomes my favorite DC superhero book (Alan Moore's Swamp Thing rules my DC roost at this time, however), although my interests are starting to veer towards Indies: Mage, Elfquest, Jon Sable, American Flagg, Ms Tree and others. Love Sensor Girl arc, Conspiracy, but Starfinger and the early #40s tax my enthusiasm. By now, I'm knee-deep in comics insiderism, helping a friend out with a mail-order subscription service, religiously reading Comics Journal and CBG, hob-nobbing with pros at the Albany cons, and go to San Diego for the 1st time (86).

1988-89: Post-conspiracy, Legion is lagging. I drop the book for a few months, onlt to rejoin with Magic Wars. L.E.G.I.O.N. 89 ads make me gag - I sense corrosion of the arteries of Legion lore - by Giffen? how could he? ...and he's taking over the new LSH book too? I'm out of here.

1990: Well, a little peak or three won't hurt (#15-17). It's interesting, but not MY Legion (not back then, anyway).

1991: Great Darkness sequel? let's look at #24... still not my Legion. Lobo? BAH! A second, younger Legion? Clones? give me a break! By this time, Sandman's my favorite.

1991/2: Moving a lot, time to downsize the collection. Keep 110-ish best LSH, ditch 70-80 or so.

1994: 'End of an era' part one (or conclusion, if you read covers). Interesting. don't know why I only picked up this one, though. I gather the young clones are still around... who's Glorith? why's Mordru young? Is that furry guy Brin? Why does elder Violet look like a cruise ship crew member, and has she filed suit against her hairdresser yet?

1994: LSH #0: A beautiful relauch. I guess it hadda be done. Immonen's art is stunning. Maybe I'll follow this... no, in subsequent issues, this Moy guy's art is too cartoony, and the story's lagging.

1996: LSH #80: Hey! that's a cover... that's a story... that's a keeper! maybe it's time to keep an eye on the gang again. By this time, I'm working in a comic shop, and can follow without buying (will regret later). At this time, my favorite is Preacher.

1997/8: team 20/30? cammon! glad I'm not buying this (at the time).

1999: Legion who? no longer at the shop, I don't see it, don't follow it. I keep a strict diet of Vertigo and indies. serious stuff, no super-heroes, not since I dropped Supreme by Alan Moore.

2000: Yeah, I heard the series was ending. couple min-series will follow. whatever.

2003, spring: Time to downsize my collection again? Lemme re-read some of these... man, these were great! wonder what Legion's up to these days? "Timber Wolf joins," eh? wasn't he already in the reboot? dunno.... Great art! very Euro-cinimatic... another Kid Quantum ,like the one in Legionnaires 17, only female. is that Violet? she's big now! Garth's dead? Jan went bad? musta been in the first few issues. have to track these down. Looks good.

2003, summer: okay, have most of "The," missing 1,2,4... oh here's 2. getting there. Man, 3's a great issue... maybe I'll start filling in my old gaps, too... Levita era: old friends! how could I have ditched you? TMK: first dozen and half: what a departure... this is great stuff! loved figuring out what was going on. reunion in #10 is priceless. early Archies: not bad. there's some good stuff here... hope it doesn't tank the way I remember (20/30). I plan to fill in everything post-archives, then start on the volumes. no way I can afford Silver.

fall 2003: I can afford silver, at least old raggedy ones. pick up a few where I can find and afford, pick up Legion Worlds and a few LLs I can find, and most of DnA's pre-LL issues. I Archie my way into the #70s (still cant find 'Aires Annual #2 at this point!), start into Terra Mosaic, finish re-collecting most of 1982-1989 run. It's fun collecting several eras at once, putting the puzzle together from different perspectives.

winter 03/04: I discover ebay! yeah, I'm a late comer. so what. MIssing about 6 DnA, vow to complete before my one-year reLegioning anniversary (which I do... two mid-run LLs were the holdouts. track them down in NYC, the morning before marching in a parade). start focusing on big runs to fill gaps in the Archie and S/KLSH eras.

spring/summer 04: blow tax refund $ better spent elsewhere on lots of silver and bronze LSH. now missing just over 1/2 Adventure run, 3/4 of Action, 6 Superboys, 10 Karate Kids, and assorted crossovers and cameos. slowing down, bidding cautiously. Legion has definitely replaced Hellblazer has my longest single run (400 to 500 issues in a row vs. 200-ish) and most overall (620 at last count).

and you thought War and Peace was long!

I like this thread.

Remind me to respond some time.

Let's see, first issue (S/LSH #236ish) to now...well, I bought that issue, then I bought one involving Barley's Circus of Crime, then the one where Superboy supposedly left the team, and then LSH #283, at which point I got hooked into GDS and was a fan for life.

I wasn't all that thrilled with later issues of preboot v4, but still kept reading, even reading L*. Then came the reboot. I enjoyed it for awhile, but I can't say I ever felt like it was "my" Legion. I really liked Kinetix. I thought she was one of the highlights of the series. (It didn't hurt that I didn't have to deal with her as a rebooted character.) Finally, after a bunch of lackluster Team 20 stories, I gave up. I later came back when DnA were writing Legion and liked it better than I had in a long time. Not everything was great, but overall I enjoyed it.

Since I had never really loved the reboot Legion, I'm not all that sorry to see it go (with a few exceptions like Kinetix and XS - Shikari, too, but that might not matter). This new version seems like it might be a fresh take on the Legion - not rehashing old stories in a new way. Since it seems like this won't be an inferior repetition of previous stories, I think I'm more prone to enjoy it. Maybe it won't be spectacular, but I can at least hope for something new and different.

started reading the DC digests in Albertson's Sunday morning after church ... don't have a precise recollection of the stories except for the Jungle King & Legion of Super-Monsters (it was 1977: i was 5) but i never had enough money to buy one (at the time, if my brother and i wanted a comic, we had to agree on it because our mom would only buy 1 for the 2 of us)

the first legion comic that was mine was a plastic-wrapped 3 pack that they used to sell at k-mart as an 'impulse buy' at the register... i had spent the last week accomodating the (literally) dozens of family coming into our home from Viet Nam (where we're mostly from), translating for immigration, social services and groceries -- my mom (who was WAY more stressed than my 6 yr old butt could be) smiled at me and let me pick out a comic JUST FOR ME (i don't think she knew there were 3 in the pack -- i felt like catwoman or something) and there it was:
the explosive conclusion of OMEGA!
the deadly introduction of the League of Super-Assassins!
and the Subs to the rescue against the Super-Assassins!!!

mind-blowing stuff

consistency wavered as my finances did and i grew up ... an issue here and there (in 1 the legion's in the circus, in another they battle organus, in another chains bind the earth, and another they're in 1950s Bgztl -- i was fascinated)... my bro got into Legion at the Great Darkness Saga, and we moved to Cali, with a 7-11 that had a decent comics spinner on the corner

by the time LSH 300 rolled in, full of alternate futures and actual panel-time for a host of barely seen legionnaires, i was caught

been hooked ever since -- probably have duplicates of the entire Levitz/2nd series, as well as most of TMK (I think) between the boxes of comics i've got in my bro's place in New York, the stuff i've got here in LA, and stuff at my ex's spot in bangkok

levitz was the person who put comic-writing on the map for me, the organic ways he spun stories into each other, the subplots that bobbed up and down before getting their resolution -- it was a very welcome option to Claremont's meandering X and the agonizing angst in every issue of Wolfman's Titans (will Dick quit? will Donna choose to be a housewife? when will Joey come out -- oh, he's straight -- uh huh)

i was ready for ennis, ellis, morrison and moore because of levitz's legion

i didn't like TMK at all when it came out, but it's grown on me - the density of the pages, the maturity in the stories, the complexity of the UP Galaxy, the redemption of Lady Memory, Spider Girl and Ron-Karr -- these things have stayed with me ... but i also have a better understanding, as a writer, about the weights they threw on the stories that didn't always work -- and the way they did it didn't give a way back, twisting and torquing people, places and events straight into the bin

dropped Legion around 1995, when i finished college, moved to New York with $110 in my pocket, and was completely over Archie legion anyway

a year or so later, i had a decent job and began hunting for all the back issues i always wished i had -- especially hunting for stories where i had either the end or the beginning ... i was a madman suddenly wealthy by the glimpses of Legion past filling up -- there was a year or so of reading tons of back issues filled with Legion Subs (even when they got their butt handed to them, like with the Khunds or Daxamites), Legion Academy (Laurel Kent, Shadow Kid, Comet Queen, Nightwind, Lamprey, Jed -- these were somehow my peers growing up -- even if they mostly just corraled lost animals), Duo Damsel & Bouncing Boy (fighting Grimbor alongside the Legion, holding off the djinn invasion, faltering in the face of her own death in Computo's Annual return), Karate Kid & Timberwolf (2 of the sexiest of Legion buds as far as i was concerned and Val was physically the closest to me), Chemical King & Tyroc (enjoying understanding the mystery they left in their absence -- Condo's death, Tyroc's stereotypically angry entrance to the Legion with his fabu disco gear -- 2 powers completely before their respective times which led to horrendously bland depictions on-panel in a world where men ran past time into a rainbow tunnel??? ahh, i never did get that)

Coipel's stark force and motion, his brilliantly different vision of the future, brought me back to the legion, and i stayed through the end of DnA (but my attention was flagging anyway)

legionworld has gotten me all excited about the Waid/Kitson start

now, i pick up a new legion archive every few months .. sometimes i come across a story that's vaguely familiar ... and i remember those precious little digests

and smile

Eryk, respond to this thread! NOW, mister!

1989, Senior in High School, remembered a Legion feature in a Superman tabloid from the late 70's, bought v4#12--smack dab in the middle of the TMK glory years. No Superboy? Crisis? Who the hell is Lar? Reep? WTF? If the poster with everyone's real name hadn't been in that issue, I might have given up. Two year later, found most of the Giffen/Levitz run, including annuals, in the .50 cent bin at the Great Escape. Now I was REALLY hooked. All the stuff that TMK alluded to, all the background, began to come into focus. I read a good 20-30 comics, including the Great Darkness saga, Cos's parents dying, LSH 300, even Omen and the Prophet in one sitting....while tripping. Ah, misspent youth. I still get a little bit of the heebie jeebies when I read the issues with Wildfire, Jacques, and the original Invisible Kid in the alternate reality. Creepy. Anyhoo, over the last 15 (!) years or so I've assembled a nearly complete run of the Legion, from a full set of Archives to today. The only holes left are between the last Archive collection and v2 259, when the title changed over, including Earthwar. I just can't bring myself to pursue it too avidly, since once I have the complete run, it'll be over! Next Legion project: Reread the entire reboot. Maybe I'll find some more good in it now that it's over.

"My" Legion will always be the Levitz-TMK Legion; cliques, arguments, lovers, saving the universe, living, dying, subplots, etc. That being said, I can't wait to see what Waid will do, left to his own devices.

Not to mention I'm looking forward to introducing my five year old to the Legion. Of course, everything's Justice League to him now, but maybe Unlimited will head to the future soon. Hey, if they can base a whole ep around freakin' Hawk and Dove, the Legion GOT to be on the list somehow.

He Who Wanders's roadmap is in installment form. Very retro-chic!

Legion Memories: Superboy 197
Legion Memories: Superboy 198-201
Legion Memories: Superboy 202
Legion Memories: Superboy 203
Legion Memories: Superboy 205
Legion Memories: Superboy 206

Maybe you can hunt down the ep(s) where Superman meets the Legion. That could give your kid a slight intro before showing off the comics.

About '93 or so I was staying with a friend in Manchester. While not of the best taste, he had shown me Marvel's New Warriors and I was interested in that. Then he instroduced me to the Legion. I'd only read X-Men and Batman so I wasn't too knowledgeable about anything else.

He was a huge fan of the Chris Sprouse Legionnaires series and it was entertaining. #1 to when Matter-Eater Lad was turned into a girl I read from 50p bins that we had scoured there.

A few years later, aspiring writer that I was I wanted to find science fiction comics. There were not many for proper space-fiction. I suddenly remember Legionnaires and picked up a couple of issues from the comic shop I was working at. There were not many on the shelf and I hadn't noticed it there before. Then I saw the "L" symbol and number like on Superman so I had to pick up Legion of Super-Heroes. It was very odd. Shrinking Violet had turned giant because of Colossal Boy's death & the Emeral Eye, half the Legion were in the present and I only knew a few of them.

Hunting down an #1 to begin with I decided against the Levitz #1 for reasons even I'm not sure with, but went for the Giffen #1. Loved it, bought as many as I could find and started spending wages on the Archive editions. I think I'm about 30 or so issues away from the lot now and have been getting the back issue guy to hunt down the guest appearances and such.

With Legion Lost I discovered my shop was getting preview copies and 'acquired them' as my manager didn't notice such things going missing. I made friends with some Legion-loving customers and even traded some of our back issues for the big Giffen poster that came in the old Great Darkness book and a couple of RPG books.

I'm not working there now so I'm mourning not getting a preview copy, but with this series I plan on indoctrinating my RPG group into LSH as they loved mad superheroism from the Incredibles and may go for this.

Charlie E/N

I am SO jealous! My preview copy of Universe Ablaze is one my most treasured items. I would LOVE to have a stack of those to read through.

I got into comics in the early 90s, after high school. The first Legion-related book of any kind that I read was L.E.G.I.O.N. Annual # 2, which astonished me. I started hunting down back issues, and some current issues, even though the monthly L-20 went through something of a creative valley right around that time. But I wasn't into LSH at all because this was during 5 Years Later, which I found very off-putting.

What I really got into was the back issues of LSH, even though there was so much to choose from and so much history to catch up on that it ended up becoming one of the more checkered parts of my collection: I have a handful of Bates/Cockrum issues, a handful of Bates/Grell issues, and quite a few from Levitz's second run, depending on the artists (one of my favorites is Vol. 3 # 45, with just about every Legion artist in history each drawing a few pages.) And, of course, all this time, I was also putting together a complete run of the first 51 issues of L-20.

Having unearthed my collection earlier this year after being away from comics for more than seven years, I've decided to make it a goal to eventually have all of Vol. 3.

And the WaK reboot, which I started reading with # 7, continues to grow on me. I'm looking forward to the TPB of the ones I missed.

A bump for the new kids and the old slackers.

HEY ERYK!! WHY DON'T YOU RESPOND SOME TIME?

Here you go:

So I guess I was about 8 years old when I first discovered the Legion. I remember I had a friend who was also into comics and I can remember him telling me about the Legion of Super-Heroes (and I remember him mentioning Shadow Lass as one of the members).

The first issue I bought featuring the Legion was World's Finest #284, which features the Legion helping Superman and Batman take on the Composite Superman II/Amalgamax. Anyway, I remember liking the sense of the Legion being this huge organization and that there were a lot more of them than were featured in this issue. I also found the conclusion to this issue, where the Legionnaires defeat a vastly more powerful foe through deception, quite appealing. And there was this sense of history as well, with Superman having been a member of the team playing an important role, as well as the history of this Composite Superman character being central to the plot.

It was awhile before I really seriously got into the Legion, however. I don't really remember why. I seem to remember not really seriously buying them until I started going to a comic shop, so maybe it had to do with not being able to find them on the spinner racks where I bought comics previously. But once I got into them, a little after the start of the Baxter series, they became my absolute favorites. This whole sense of history and complex mythology, and building upon that, had such an incredible appeal to me.

I remember we used to go to this fair in the summer where there were all these antiques and crafts and various sort of things sold. For me the exciting part of this was the booth where they had all the old comics from the sixties. I'd usually buy the old JLA/JSA teamups [the JSA were so much cooler than their Earth-1 counterparts!], but the real treasure was finding the old issues of Adventure featuring the early Legion of Super-Heroes. I only bought a handful (half the Computo story; The Trial of Starboy; the first half of the Super-Stalag-- it was *years* before I found out who the traitor was!), but I absolutely loved them.

Anyway, I collected probably about the first two years of the Baxter Series, as well as assorted back issues when I could afford them, before I "outgrew" comics. I would occassionally buy some more issues of the Legion in the years to come (I know I picked up a few issues of the Conspiracy Story and the Trial of Brainiac Five, and then a few issues of the TMK/Legionnaires era), but never really seriously getting back into comics. For some reason it was always the Legion that drew me back during my flirtations with it, however.

So when I went to college in 1994, I found out that the Legion was being completely relaunched, and started buying this new reboot Legion. I thought that for the most part this was a really cool new take on the team, and it was quite exciting. A few things annoyed me, like the lack of Matter-Eater Lad, but, overall, I was quite enthusiastic. I also bought a lot of back issues in this period, particularly from the Levitz era and TMK. I wasn't really inspired to start reading any other comics, but I was about as devoted a fan of the Legion as one could find in those days.

Well, that enthusiasm didn't last. I pretty much stopped picking up Legion of Super-Heroes after the team 20 arc started, and didn't make it to Legionnaires #50. I just realized I wasn't enjoying this incarnation of the team any more, and I was incredibly annoyed by the death of Gim, who was one of my favorite characters, followed by the introduction of Sneckie. It just seemed like the title had taken a severe wrong turn. So I quit reading.

So a few years pass by, and by this time I'm in graduate school and I seriously discover the internet, and one day happen upon the DCMBs. This was about the time DnA took over the title, and I remember reading a lot of mixed reviews of their early work. I guess I must have lurked kind of off and on for a few months, then it seemed like a lot of people were really excited about this Legion Lost series, so I eventually decided to pick up a few issues of it. I remember being moderately impressed by it. If it weren't the Legion, it might not really have had any appeal, but I was willing to give it a try, given that it was my favorite team.

I think it was really more the getting involved with the internet community that inspired me to start seriously reading the book again than anything about DnA's work in particular. I remember the impression at the time was that they were fixing the mistakes of their predecessors, and it was kind of exciting to see how they would go about doing it. Anyway, I've pretty much been reading ever since, except for a few issues around the end of the DnA series that I could never muster the interest to buy.

Plus, I've picked up all of the Legion Archives and filled in some of the holes in my back-issue collection, so I finally managed to read the second half of that Super-Stalag story!

I didn't think anybody would be interested in it... but hey, if you really want to know how it was to become a Legion fan in Germany - where there never was a Legion book, just the accidental appearance in the Superboy and Superman comics - I'll tell you next week when I have a little bit more time

My story starts when I was three years old, when I used to visit our neighbors in my trailer park. Not only did they give my brother and I sour ball candy, but the retired couple would take time to read comic books and the Sunday funnies to us. The gentleman, Mr. Thompson, was a big Batman and Batgirl fan, with some Superman thrown in as well. My parents swear I was reading by three years old because of this. God bless the Thompsons.

When we moved to our first house, I found a comic book store next to the local laundry mat. Comics were the best way to pass the time while trapped waiting for clothes to wash/dry. The lady who ran the store was a sweet old lady, who always made me answer a math question before I could view the comic racks! We also made a deal - I would let her try to convert me to be a Jehovahs Witness and she would special order those Giant Superboy issues for me which were hard to find. I got hooked here at seven years old on the Legion when I read the backup story "Murder the Leader" in a Nick Cardy covered Superboy issue. While I never became a Jehovahs Witness, we became good friends, and she would trust this twelve year old to make her bank deposits for her, as she eventually had a hard time walking and her sight began to fail. God bless you Mrs. Oliver.

As I entered High School the Grell era was ending and I decided to outgrow comics. I quit cold turkey until my senior year of college, when in a magazine store I stumbled across "A Cold and Lonely Corner of Hell" on a comics rack. I snagged the copy and have been rehooked ever since, continuing monthly purchases while filling in back issues. I stopped collecting for a while during TMK to protest the carnage at that time, and during this last run before Supergirl appeared to protest the poor writing. But, I expect I will eventually collect all those missing issues to try to complete the collection.

PS - I somewhat have my son hooked on the Legion and 52, as he prepares to finish High School. My daughters think I'm hopeless.

To explain how I became a Legion fan in Germany I have to explain how comics were distributed over here in the 70s and 80s. It was a chaotic mess of different formats from weekly Superman issues to monthly specials and quarterly paperback edition in small, medium and large format. When I got my first Superman book I was five years old &#8211; I did hardly understand a word (it was a complicated issue with the JLA and Amazo) but I was hooked, and my grandmother, God bless her soul, started to buy me a lot of Superhero stuff. Green Lantern was my favorite, but then, probably 1980, a new Superboy book was published. Issue #1 was a badly cut translation of ##250/251, the Omega story. I was immediately hooked on the Legion. I loved all the different characters, the colourful action, Wildfire sacrificing (or so I thought) and the great art (those were the Starlin issues). Unfortunately, the Superboy book did also feature the regular Superboy adventures, which I thought were incredibly boring and so I did not stay on the book and was depending on all the special paperback issues which sometimes featured the Legion (Pulsar Stargrave, Earthwar, the Damn Tabloid, Secrets of the Legion, Annual #1 or #300). Green Lantern I could get every month &#8211; but it was a holiday when the Legion was featured somewhere. It was special. But then, the German DC publisher canceled all Superhero books &#8211; no more stories about &#8220;Blitzjunge&#8221; (Lightning Lad), &#8220;Winzwanda&#8221; (Shrinking Violet) or &#8220;Sternschwinge&#8221; (Dawnstar). I often reread the few Legion stories I had. #300 was the last book published in Germany, though they had never translated Great Darkness and most of the other Levitz/Giffen issues before. The characters remained in my heart while I was growing up and found new heroes.

Then, in 1992, by sheer coincidence I found a comic shop catalogue where you could order back issues &#8211; and there I read &#8220;Legion of Superheroes&#8221;, three different books, and I blindly ordered some issues - ##298 & 299 and v4 ## 13 & 14 . And I was so excited when the books arrived &#8211; I found out that there were not only dozens of old stories I did not know yet, but there were ten years of history which had happened since. I started to spend a whole lot of money on getting back issues. The US books were not expensive, but incredibly hard to get (except for v4 which was quite new back then), but it was fun to hunt them down. Finally, at my first comic convention 1994, one of the comic book dealers had a large amount of v2 and v3 Legion comics in his trunk &#8211; I bought about 50 issues at once. And so my collection grew, but unfortunately, then came the Reboot &#8211; and I lost the joy of reading the current Legion books. I stayed in hope of the books getting better, but except for some isolated storylines it never did, and I left somewhen after the dull year with half of the Legion in the 20th century. I returned when Abnett and Lanning, which I knew from their previous books like Ressurection Man, came on board and stayed since then, even when I still think the Waid run is a directionless mess. Well, the last few issues were quite okay &#8211; so I keep on reading, hoping that finally, George Perez will get on board of his favorite childhood heroes book and deliver us from evil&#8230;

I can't remember the first Legion story I read. It's lost way back in the mists of time. I know that fairly early on I came across a little black-and-white reprint book of some Legion stories, and I think the one with Saturn Lad and Prince Projectur was in there. I think I also read a badly battered copy of the one where Bouncing Boy first got together with Duo Damsel. Something else else like that.

Then, in about 1980 or thereabouts, I started buying comics for myself. I think the first one I got was the one where Blok joined the team, with the Starburst Bandits and all that malarkey. But I didn't really get into it for real until I picked up the second-last issue of the Ultra Boy/Superboy/Reflecto storyline. That, and the first Annual, with Computo and Jacques Foccart and Shvaughn Erin. From then, I collected LSH on and off until thirty-some issues into 5YL. (Gaps in my collection persist from that time. It was only relatively recently that I filled in all five issues of the Great Darkness Saga, for instance.)

Then DC did something to tick me off and I stopped collecting comics altogether for about ten years.

In my absence, the Earth was destroyed, the Legion went on the run, the future was rebooted in the wake of Zero Hour, the Blight arrived and trashed the joint, the two Legion series were cancelled and replaced with Legion Lost, then Legion World, then The Legion, and after about ten issues of that, a pilot light somewhere in my soul flickered to life again.

Nothing would do but that I start reading Legion comics again. I hunted down a couple of local comic shops and began the long, slow (still incomplete) process of catching up on all the back issues I missed.

When I first found out that the original Legion had been rebooted, I was crushed. But I became attached to the DnA Legion anyway. Then, later, when The Legion was cancelled and the Waid-Kitson Threeboot started, I was crushed again. But I'm attached to the threeboot Legion anyway.

I don't mind being introduced to new Legion versions. I just don't want to have to lose the old ones for it to happen.

The first Legion story I read was the First Trade of WaK's Legion and have been continuing it in trade form since and also been reading the issues too.

I've been reading all the "roadmaps" you have posted here, and when I finish I'll write about my bumpy road with the Legion. This is a wonderful topic.

Before that though, I just wanted to comment on Chemical King's entry. I remember the German issues in the mid-70s. They were distributed in a few bookstores here in Athens.
I didn't speak German then (only recently have I begun studying that incredible language) but I bought them becuase sometimes they had Legion stories which I couldn't possibly hope to find in English back then. Buying them meant that I could at least look at the art and maybe understand 2 words a page. But it's a happy memory!
Those comics were the same size as the American ones, but they were printed on a much thinner paper, that was surprisingly resilient. Even the cover was printed on the same kind of paper.

The colors though were more vivid than the original - I have no idea what the printing process was that made coloring really stand out - but what I remember most fondly is the smell of that paper.
It had a resin-like smell that always made me imagine all those wonderful forests of Germany (well, d'oh! It's paper, it comes from trees ) but this was a particular smell that other paper simply didn't have.
I loved it whenever I found a German issue (I still have a few) and tried desperately to undestand some of the names, like Winzwanda, Federleicht etc. I knew they were Shrinking Violet and Light Lass, but I also coulnd't understand why their names were like that (Feder probably meant Feather and Ayla had a feather on her uniform, that much was obvious). I could tell that neither was an accurate translation and puzzled over this, but I considered the German issues a God-given extra-gift in my Legion-starved youth (after the American comics, of course)!

Ah. Fond memories.

Hi Dain,

nice to meet a fellow European here. I can explain those names to you. German comic books have gone through a history of translating Super hero names - at the beginning, EVERY name was translated - Superman became Supermann, vor example, which really looks ridiculous today - Spidermann was "Die Spinne" (the spider) and Green Lantern was "Grüne Leuchte" (with Leuchte being everything but not a Lantern). Flash was "Roter Blitz" (Red Lightning).

With the Legion, they had the problem that some direct tranlations did not work at all like "Light Lass" in german meaning "Leichtes Mädchen" which is a nickname for a hooker. So they took "Federleicht" which is an adjective meaing something is very very light. Kind of a nice name in german, but no direct translation. Same goes for Winzwanda ("Tiny Wanda"), Waldwolf ("Forest Wolf") and Sternschwinge ("Starswing" or something like that). They translated Dawnstar with "Dämmerungsstern" for one issue but it just did not have the sound...

Today, most names are not translated at all - with the exception of the Avengers which still are called "Die Ruhmreichen Rächer" in their current book (or did they skip the "Ruhmreich" = rich of glory lately? Don't know...)

Greetings to Athens!

I came into a bit of extra money last week, and used some of it to purchase volumes 10, 11 and 12 of the Archives. This is a part of Legion history that I am unfamiliar with. Not sure what else I've read from this era... the Grimbor and Charma story? The first Wildfire story? The one where the Legion tries to put one over on Projectra with the 'Saturn Lad and Prince Projectur' thing? The one where Invisible Kid needs Chemical King's help to catch an invisible thief? Are those from this era?

Anyway, they've been shipped, so I should be able to find out in a few days. Looking forward to it.

I think all of those stories are featured in those Archives.

My reading of Legion stories pretty much stops with Archive 12, and then is pretty sporadic from there through the Levitz era.

Yeah. Someday I'd really like to be able to read Earthwar. What kind of Legion fan am I if I've never read Earthwar?

At the rate they're publishing the Legion Archives now, we should see Earthwar in print again about 2058. Shame, because I found it much more uplifting and satisfyingly Legionesque than Levitz's later "war stories" (GDS, LSV and Magic Wars).

Now this would be an interesting reboot.

My LegionRoadmap.com

Mid 60's Spinner rack attacks at the local drug store with my 25 cent allowance. Two books and tax.

Mostly I'd get anything that started with "House of" or had witches on the cover or FFour (The Thing was my big brother). I loved the 25 cent giants and felt special to be a able to buy one (but I had to turn in a pop bottle to pay the tax)! I know I continued to buy comics into the early 70's because I remember seeing Swamp Thing for the first time and going ga ga (wish I'd kept that one!). Silver Surfer was also a favorite.

My First Adventure

You could look at the cover of ADV346 and not grap it (looking over shoulder to see if cashier was going to tell me they're for buying, not reading). Ferro Lad was my new friend and Queen Projectra I saved from many monsters! Legion instantly became my favorite. As my mighty income permitted, I dug through the rack for some back issues. The stories I remember most were Traitor, Computo, Nardo, and Suneater. I do not recall anything after Suneater so I suspect I either gave it up in sadness or the drug store stopped carrying ADV. and I thought the book just stopped. I didn't really get the "big picture."

Zzzzziiiiiipppppppppppppp "1989"

I'm bumming around Cairne, Australia with my Dutch GF and I see..... a spinner rack! (Got to get me one of these before I die). So I spin it, looking at familiar titles and I see a <span style="font-size: 18px;">pink bikini </span> . I read the title.

This is also the first time I ever heard of a "comic shop."

Much to my GF's chagrin (she let me know this clearly), I spent the next two months traveling around Australia and the US looking for comic shops and back issues. Imagine a 32 year old guy with a GF who's a GYMNAST!!!, spending evenings with comic books spread out over the bed. sigh.

Still reading?

She eventually caved and even bought some for me. Unfortunately, the relationship was not meant to be. Before we were done traveling I had most of the ADV after 340 and some before. All Actions, Superboys, and everything after that.

I continued to collect up to about the end of DnA. I have the first WaK trade.

I wonder what the Dutch GF's up to?

Chemical King said Hi Chem. Nice meeting you too.
Thank you for explaining those names for me. I guess Winzwanda was translated this way as a nice alliteration.
It was the same in Greece in the 60s. Back then, there was a weekly comic book series with alternating titles. "Diaplanetika", "Dynamika", "Paraxena" and "Ekpliktika" which reprinted Mystery in Space, Action/Superman, Strange Adventures and Unexpected respectively.

They had translated Adam Strange as Adam Paraxenos, Superman as Hyperanthropos and Batman as Nykteridas. Justice League of America was "To Syndikato tis Nemeseos" meaning "The Syndicate of Nemesis" a name I hated (along with Nykteridas that simply meant He-bat).

A funny coincindece though is the translation of "Alanna", Adam's girlfriend. They called her "Alanka" that sounded Slavic and vaguely exotic, because Alanna in Greek slang means either a barren, empty lot, a very promiscuous and immoral woman, or.....a hooker!

Those wonderful comics (as well as Little Lulu and Mickey Mouse)are very much sought after and expensive collectors' items today.
They were the first American comics I ever read, in Greek of course, around 1968. Each week I travelled to the planet Rann of the star-sun Alpha Centauri where Adam Paraxenos met his beloved Alanka and saved Rann using his mind and resourcefullness instead of a super-power like Hyperanthropos, Gyneka-Thauma (Wonder Woman), Prasinos Fanos (Green Lantern) etc.
I was secretly in love with Alanka. Older boys at school whispered among themselves about what Alanka and Adam "do" when we don't see them, but that stuff was hidden in shadows for me at the age of 6 or 7. Those super-heroes seemed so grown-up to me. Heck, even those 11-year old boys were grown up as far I was concerned.

Then &#921; read this Supergirl story. She asked for help from a group of heroes from the future. They seemed younger than other super-heroes, the art was wonderful and the idea that each came from a different world amd had a special power amazed me.

I managed to find a few issues with Legion stories and that's how I met Saturn Girl, Sun Boy, Cosmic Boy, Bouncing Boy and Brainiac 5 (whose name remained untranslated, thank heaven! Years later in one story in another magazine they translated his name as Eksypnakias which means Smarmy wise-guy!) I loved the Legion. I played with friends at being Legionnaires, dreamed about them at night, in my bleak room in a bleak neighborhood of downtown Athens.

All those stories were reprints from before the Adventure era, so I had no idea there were more. Little did I know at that time that American Comics were already distributed in Greece since the early 50s. Little did I know that there were stacks of them in used book stores.

Fast forward a few years. It's 1972. 10 years old and having had maybe 10 lessons of English. I go to a thriftshop to trade some Mickey Mouse comics for a couple of Diaplanetika issues. There's nothing new so I trade my comics for an issue of Action Comics in English, my first original American comic.
The back story is a futuristic adventure. I understand a few words here and there, especially "Chemical", "King" and "Violet". No recognition. It took 30 years to finally find that comic again.

Fast forward a few years. It's Friday, May 16 1975. School's out at 2 p.m. I've been buying a few American comics from foreign press newsstands in downtown Athens. Iron Man, a couple of X-men.
My English is much better and can easily understand 40% of the text without having to search in a dictionary.
Stores close at 2.30, there's nothing new in the local newsstand so I decide to run to the American Bookstore 2 Km away. I get there at 2.25.
The clerk gives me a dirty look as I look at the spinner rack. Don't have much time.
A blue-yellow-red cover catches my eye. I don't notice the title, only the art (I still don't). A gorgeous platinum-haired girl dressed in a fiery red costume is lying on a table, a powerful young man dressed in a futuristic costume tries to do something while a younger version of Superman, but older than the Superboy I knew, is bursting thru a wall. I browse the interior quickly,it's a futuristic story. The clerk is getting impatient, I buy the magazine and return home.

The smell of late spring wafts thru my window from the big park just opposite the street. A new home, new and better neighborhood.
I start reading without having paid any attention to the magazine title, yet!
I like the story and the art is fabulous. Then...something in the back of my mind starts tingling. Where have I seen this green guy before?
Who's this incredibly sexy blonde in the pink costume? Her name is Imra. The green guy calls her Saturn Girl...Saturn is the planet Kronos, the ringed planet...the tingling gets more intense...a warm sensation in my chest gets hotter and hotter...the blonde calls the green guy Brainiac 5....the tingling and the hot sensation start to combine and an incredible realisation is taking form....my whole self is involved in this....for the first time I look at the title of the magazine, and suddenly everything explodes!!!!
It's Superboy starring The Legion of Super-Heroes #209!! The Legion...Leyeona ton Hyper-eroon.
It's my Legion of Super-Heroes. Grown up, sensual, addictive, beautiful, a window into the future, my future, their future, my Legion!!!
And there were more characters than I had ever imagined in a glorious future. The Legion was bigger and better than anything I had known before.



I've felt such joy and happiness a few times in my life after that, but that moment defined a big part of who I am. It literally changed my life in the most profound yet tangible ways.
My love for the Legion led me not only to study English literature -to become a teacher of foreign languages - but also philosophy, linguistics, astronomy, sociology, psychology and art.

In the next few years I was going on my monthly rounds of the center of Athens trying to locate new and maybe older issues of the SLSH. I still remember how I felt and where I bought many of those early Legion issues from. Sometimes I bought them in languages I didn't understand like German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and once even in a black-and-white edition in Arabic.

I started creating my own characters, artlessly but in full enthusiasm sketching them in notebooks and even school books if I happened to be absent-minded during "Homeric Syntax and Grammar" class!
Once I even drew a semi-naked Dream Girl on a Latin pop-quiz in class without even realising it! The teacher gave me a "10". "Zero for the quiz and 20 for the sketch", he said jokingly. Well, at least I got a passing mark.

The mid-80s brought a "dark age" when almost no comics were imported in Greece because of extremely harsh taxes the new government implemented on anything it considered - in a totally arbitrary way - "frivolities". Each imported comic - with the exception of some Marvels - would cost the equivalent of $10 today.
There were entire years, once 3 years in a row, that I had read no new Legion book. I managed to get back issues from friends who went to Australia, from my brother in Germany and when I felt strong enough I even faced "Customs", that 9-headed monster that would keep back issue orders for 6 months trying to discourage imports!
It was really a dark time and I'm glad it's over now.

The 80s and 90s are another story though and this is getting to be a novel, not a road map. I hope I haven't bored you too much.

Today there are about 15 comic shops in the Athens metropolitan area that's home to almost 4,5 million people, a giant warehouse with hundreds of thousands of back issues, we have a real Comics Con - with a focus on American Comics - each year. We also have the Net that brought so many of us together and where we can get any comicbook we want. Greece is part of the European Union and no one has the power anymore to arbitrarily decide what is "frivolous" and what isn't or what we'll read...

I'm sorry this turned out so big but I really wanted to share it with you people.

Hey Dain no prob. It was fun and insightful.

My first Legion issue #305. Violet's Story. To this day I just think it's different. That is my favorite Giffen era...#305 to the end of that title (316?). I still think that vision of the Legion was ahead of it's time and no one has been able to replicate it. Cool powers, cool characters, no capes.

My Legion roadmap is pretty simple (but I will make it complicated and wordy).

When I was a wee lass I went into McKay's used book store in Knoxville, TN with my mom. I had just gotten into comics (or had only been in a few years, memory is fuzzy) but I saw that they had a few issues for dirt cheap. Two were Superboy issues and one was a Legion of Super-heroes issue with Superboy on the cover.

The Legion issue (and unfortuantly I'm not at home so I can't look up the number) had a picture of Lightning Lad, Phantom Girl and a few other Legionnaires surrounded by tanks. Lightning Lad was telling Superboy to use his powers to save them (or something to that effect) and Superboy was saying something like "I would Lightning Lad, but I'm NOT SUPERBOY"

The issue dealt with Superboy thinking he was Ultra Boy posing as Reflecto, yeah, I'm still not sure I get it.

Anyways, I enjoyed that issue, but never bought the Legion. When Superboy (Kon-El) had his book and it crossed-over with the Legion (around issue 21) I really enjoyed the Legion in it and got one part of the cross-over (I think I was still overseas at the time and the newstand (Stars and Stripes) might not have carried both Legion titles, again, I don't remember).

Anyways, I enjoyed the Legion in their guest spots. When Gail Simone finished the last Legion with that one arc I got that because I had recently fallen in love with her BOP. It was then that I realized how much I enjoyed the characters, even though I only had a handful of issues with them in it.

The reboot came, Waid and Kitson started the current Leigon and I decided to get onboard at the ground floor. I really enjoyed it and realized that I really liked the concept of the Legion.

I don't remember if it was before the boot or around this time that I decided to try and find the issue after the one issue I had (with Superboy thinking he was Ultra Boy). Well, I finally did (in the quarter bin with the pages wrinkled) but I didn't care, I had had that issue for 10 years before I found out how the story ended.

Anyways, to end my incredibly boring rambling story this was the begining of my Legion back issue buying spree. Couples with the number of Legion issues I could get for cheap and the passion for the Legion that Waid and Kitson had ignited in me with the early issues of their run I tried to grab everything that had Legion on it that was a dollar or less. I was able to pick up a bunch of Legion and Tales issues for 20 cents and soon had that store wiped out, I then moved on to another store that had a bunch of Legion for a dollar each. Soon I had a repectable run of the Levitz era (actually I'm quite proud of how many Legion issues I've picked up), I also have some post-ZH (plus that trade they came out with).

Recently I've dropped S/LOSH. Partially for monetary reasons, I needed to trim my list and Legion was more frustrating than enjoyable for me (I planned to just get it in trade). Now I'm not so sure, I might go back to picking it up to finish Waid's run or I might just jump back on for Benard or I might just wait and see, but just because I'm not currently buying the book (seriously, poor college student) I still love the Legion and wish that it hadn't taken me so long to realize that I loved these characters.

Thank you Ultra Jorge! I love that era too. So many characters and concepts and Mr. Giffen's art was really ahead of its time before he changed his style...

I've enjoyed immensely all stories here. Many of them even moved me because I realised how much in common many of us have and how connected is our "real" life with the Legion.

Stephbarton, welcome to Legion World. I'm fairly new here myself. I didn't find your roadmap boring at all. You obviously like the Legion very much to go to all that trouble trying to locate those back issues. I think you'd like the rest of the Waid/Kitson run. I know I do (well, not everything but it's a good Legion version and the latest storyline is one of the best!)

LOL, yeah as a kid I also bought this in one of those cheap comics stacks. I read it a few times (I was like 10). And kept saying "so who the heck is Reflecto???"

Thankfully he became his own person over in v4 annual #1...a rejected applicant. It answered the the 10 year old's question...even if it was a retcon.

This thread is 4 years old, by the way.

My first comics were off the spinner rack at the local 7-11 in Edison, NJ. My first Legion issue, Superboy 212 (Legion of Super-Rejects), was a few months after I read my first comic (Superman 276 with Captain Thunder). My second issue was Adventure 346, the first part of the Adult Legion story, which I picked up at a garage sale. I couldn't figure out why they were older in the 1960s and teens in the 1970s!

I eventually picked up back issues and by around 220 or so I was buying each issue on the stands. Somewhere around the 250's-260's I got a subscription, but that sucked because the comics came later than on the newsstand and often in worse shape. I've bought every issue since then.

Somewhere in the early 90s I developed my "anal retentive" checklist and with the internet I was able to find more obscure issues and artifacts.

I have a nearly complete Legion run - missing just 7 Adventure issues (I have 247), 11 Action issues (mostly the cameo appearances), 7 Superman issues, most of the Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane issues, and a handful of other scattered stories. I've read almost all of them via reprints, though, but it's the thrill of the chase that's fun to.

Oh, and it was about 10 years before I got to read the second part of the Adult Legion story, via the reprint in the DC Super-Stars issue.

Wow! first off, I totally relate to the 'waiting years before finding how a story ends' and Wow! that is one impressive Legion run.

The Reflecto thing was kind of a precursor to the whole "Let's retell an old story but with a twist" that took off with the reboot. So we basically knew how the story was supposed to go: Dude named Reflecto joins the Legion, he gets killed in duel with the Molecule Master. That's the classic version as Shooter first stated it. But rather than just making that the story, they had to give the most convoluted possible storyline they could think of.

Maybe, but we got really hot pirate Captain Frake out of the deal.

Almost, but not quite.

This board opened 4 years ago today, so let's celebrate with more roadmaps, sentients!

My roadmap is currently "under construction."

Today, for the very first time, I picked up an issue of the threeboot. It led, unfortunately, to a dead end.

So, while I'm waiting for new roads to open, I'm busy traveling down familiar lanes and seeing things I'd never noticed before. I revisit old friends and see the old neighborhood in a new light. It doesn't seem as big as it used to, but it's still full of love, laughter, and hope. Some of the things that went on here make more sense now that I've been away for awhile. Even the bad times were temporary and led to something better in the long run.

So, my roadmap may be a little out of date, but it still leads me to all the right places.

Happy Anniversary, Legion World!

I really don't remember ever not having comic books around. My mother always bought them for me and my older sister. Not super heroes, but Casper, Little Archie, Wendy, and Richie Rich. My parents married young. My father was still in high school and my mother had recently graduated when my older sister was born. My parents were both 20 when I was born. Neither of their families had any money, and my father always worked two or three jobs to support his young family. He would come home to sleep for a few brief hours between jobs. It was very important that my sister and I not make any noise when he was home. He could become violently angry if we woke him. Mom kept us well supplied with library books, coloring books, and comic books so we would have quiet activities. One of dad's jobs was with the post office. He sorted mail at night. His hard work paid off and he became the postmaster for a small rural community at the age of 28. The town is called Prairie Home. We moved there when I was eight. The population of the town was 265 people at the time. There was a red brick drug store across the street from dad's one room post office. My mother continued to work as a grocery store clerk in the town that we moved from. It was about an hour drive, and my sister and I would stay at home by ourselves while mom and dad were at work. Sometimes, mom would give me a quarter before she left. I would walk to the drug store. They sold vanilla cokes for a nickel and comic books were 20 cents. With my quarter I could buy one comic book and one vanilla coke. This is where I discovered super heroes. I picked up a few issues of Superboy and liked them. Superboy #198 was the first issue I bought with the Legion in it. Cockrum art. The Fatal Five in Smallville. Princess Projectra's white hair stands out as a distinct memory. I think I was confused but fascinated. From my collection,it looks like I got every second or third issue for the first year after that, but by the time I was 10 I was buying each issue, and didn't miss a single one until my senior year in high school.

My mother eventually quit her job in town, and the drug store closed. Dad bought her a small grocery store in Prairie Home which she ran for 28 years. Part of the motivation was so that they wouldn't have to leave us home alone. We stayed with her at the store.

When the drug store closed there was no place in Prairie Home to buy comics. I, however, had very crooked buck teeth and needed braces badly. My teeth were so bad that the orthodontics were experimental and took a very long time to complete. I wore braces and major headgear for a little over seven years. The braces had to be tightened once a month. Whenever I had a dentist appointment, mom would pay a local lady to run the store, and she and I would spend the whole day in town. It became a ritual for us. Mom always had lots of shopping and errands to do. There were several drug stores, grocery stores, and convenience stores on her route. She always made the first stop after the dentist my comic book stop. I would buy a huge stack and spend the rest of the day reading in the car while she shopped. I never missed an issue of my favorites, and the Legion quickly rose to the top of my fave list.

I also managed to pick up a lot of the Adventure run during this period. My dad got a real estate license, and started to sell real estate on weekends. By this point, my relationship with him was pretty strained. He has had a passion for hunting his entire life, as have all of the men in my family and the community where I grew up. I was a geeky, buck toothed,comic book reading kid with thick glasses. I went hunting with my dad exactly once. I shot a squirrel. It's head went back and blood gurgled up out it's throat, it fell from the tree as if in slow motion, convulsed at my feet and then died. It made me ill and very sad. I refused to ever go hunting again, and by so doing, greatly damaged the relationship with most of the men in my life. One Saturday afternoon when I was about fourteen my dad came into the house. He told me and my mother that he had just listed a house for a "nutty guy" who had all kinds of comic books and "Star Trek shit" in his basement. He said the man had to move and was trying to sell all the comic books, and asked me if I wanted to go pick some out. I went with him. He bought me every Legion and Superboy comic the guy had. I got the first appearance of Ultra Boy, the Moby Dick of Space, the first appearance of Element Lad, Mordu, Karate Kid, Projectra, and Chemical King, the Nardo storyline, the mutiny in space and much more. About 30 books in all. I was thrilled. I remember my mother crying and telling me how proud she was of dad for doing that for me.