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

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 – 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 – but it was a holiday when the Legion was featured somewhere. It was special. But then, the German DC publisher canceled all Superhero books – no more stories about “Blitzjunge” (Lightning Lad), “Winzwanda” (Shrinking Violet) or “Sternschwinge” (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 – and there I read “Legion of Superheroes”, three different books, and I blindly ordered some issues - ##298 & 299 and v4 ## 13 & 14 . And I was so excited when the books arrived – 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 – I bought about 50 issues at once. And so my collection grew, but unfortunately, then came the Reboot – 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 – 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…

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.