Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Legion of Super-Heroes #3 - SPOILERS

Real history is not written as a sequence of stories. The question "if what we know about Marie Antoinette is wrong, doesn't that mean that years of Marie Antoinette stories after that are filled with silly moments?" doesn't happen.

And Star Trek is known for having bad continuity. Comparing something to Star Trek in this regard isn't exactly high praise.

A few decades ago, there were alot of theories that primitive people were matriarchial. Now most of those theories have been disproven, and many say primitive society was more or less equal.

In the context of the LSH, it makes perfect sense that all these characters view their missions and roles differently. Say that Brainiac 5 sits down to write a Database Entry, but in a few minutes is interrupted and passes it on to Timber Wolf. Then Timber Wolf adds onto it, maybe edits it so the words aren't so big. An hour passes and Timber Wolf remembers his date with Light Lass. He passes on the Database Entry to Dream Girl. She adds a little bit more, before rereading it and doing major editing. Dream Girl finishes the Entry and sends it to the current Legion leader.

The Legion leader would probably edit it a bit, censoring and deleting classified information. He/She scans the data for whitewash and brown-nosing. Then he/she posts it, maybe distributes it to reporters and government officials.

quoted for truth...after all there were a lot of legionnaires in that story who we'll never know who they are...and Brainy being one of them is also a retrocon.

By the way...i use that as a way of explaining the Cosmic Boy - TIme Trapper...he's the cosmic boy from this story since everything else after it is filled with either contridictions or outright deletions in legion history up to zero hour.

Examples being Imra's being a brunette the next appearance . And the Legionnaires being children of the ones who met Superboy met to Supergirl then shifting back to the original legionnaires...what Cos-Time Trapper makes a lot of sense in this regard

And I always took those as more evidence of the Legion being particularly fond of 'Hazing' new members... Make Superboy look like a fool before inducting him and then lock him up the very next time you see him when you know that he will eventually become Superman and that imprisoning him will unravel history.... Tell Supergirl that you are the children of the group that recruited Superboy and then send her off on missions with her cousin that they both will both have to be made to forget to protect the integritty of the timeline. Ahhh... those wacky future teens! The thing is, there never was any effort made to say those things didn't happen or that something else happened instead, they just let them fade quietly away as changes slowly took place. The book evolved naturally from a throw-away idea to an ongoing and vital property in it's own right. Eventually some effort was made to maintain a basic continuity, but that is gone now. Now it is all about the story of the momment and making that work even if it totally contradicts years of continuity. The comparison to Star Trek made above is apt... for years on 'The Next Generation' Data's cat (sure, about as minor a character as you can get, but still an ongoing, reacurring character) was a male. Spot was always called He or Him by Data and any crew member that happened to refur to Him. Then suddenly they needed for Spot to be pregnant as a key element to the plot (because it wouldhave been oh so difficult to come up with another idea that didn't require Spot to have kittens). *Zap* Spot was female and bore a litter of kittens that proved to be the solution to the problem-of-the-week. That is pretty much how I see the retcons to the Legion as of late: not really needed, just easier than coming up another solution that would work with continuity instead of changing it to suit the 'idea of the week/month'.

"Ahhh... those wacky future teens! The thing is, there never was any effort made to say those things didn't happen or that something else happened instead, they just let them fade quietly away as changes slowly took place."

Oh yeah there was...when the reprints of those stories happend...the children of the legionnaires superboy met was taken out and replaced. As was Brainy being painted in the background of that last panel of a reprinted adventure comics 247. Hell Mon-El didn't have his real name in his first printing of Superboy's big brother...reprint...he did.

i hate when i repeat myself ...

nothing to see here nothing to see here

The Flintstones--that is the ultimate continuity nightmare!

That does not invalidate using a historical perspective - especially in light of so many of you trying to force a singular, definable, linear structure onto a collection of works that by their nature defy such an approach. Taking a historian's p.o.v. might be one way to escape the dilemma of how to appreciate stories in relation to what has come before, even when they are contradictory.

History isn't a story, though.

If you learn something previously unknown about history it may change the meaning of related parts of history, but that's okay.

If you learn something "previously unknown" about fictional history, it changes the meaning of related parts of history... but those parts of history are stories. They were written to have a certain effect and you're changing the meaning to be something else, and it's just about never going to be as good as the original version, because the original version was written that way and the new one is shoehorned in.

"Truth will always be stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense."

Or, at least, it *would* make sense if it was written halfway professionally...

Yes, it is. Or rather a number of stories.

Stories (fictional or non-) are constructed by authors, pieced together from imagination, with or without external evidence. One stray piece of data on its own may be historical, but is not history until interpreted and plugged into context - the act of which is creating a story.

in expecting comics writers to tie into past elements in order to create new stories, it really isn't so different as you insist. Trust me, I've done plenty of creative writing and history writing.

says who? and how do you learn something new about history? you interpret new data - into a story. Moreover, there are often numerous ways to construct histories; consider: "King Leo's incompetence let 4,000 people die" vs. "King Leo led his nation through the war with few civilian casualties, and only 1/40th of the military casualties as the enemy had."

next...
Why is it 'okay' to interpret data that suggests something completely contradictory to what we currently understand, vs. doing similarly in comics?

If the new, learned history, for instance, is that your great-grandfather was a mass murderer (hypothetically), why is that more okay than finding out New Issue contradicts Anecdotal Throwaway Story #12 of 1979?

same thing in real history, which is also written by authors to have certain effects.

and we almost always learn previously unknown things about everything.... even if it's re-reading the same work over and over, we glean new insights into it.

if you think that something is never going to be as good as the original, then why bother reading the new? I for one would suggest that Smallville has been far better than previous Superman TV shows (as one of many examples). Joe Cocker's "With A Little Help From My Friends" stands on its own merits, even though rooted in a Beatles classic - neither one harms the other, and it's neat to see one creator's reinterpretation of the other.

And yes, you're likely to say, "well, that's hardly the same" - but that's only because you choose to see it that way. And frankly, you never seem to acknowledge that there are other ways to see besides your own (at least that's how you come across).

Great Darkness, for instance, was published and is out there - whether or not it is or isn't 'in continuity.' Ditto hundreds and hundreds of other stories. They still stand on their own merits, even if a later story comes in and plays homage, or plays with the foundations. Kingdom Come was not weakened or changed by Johns' JSA - one can still read it and not have to worry about how it fits (or doesn't) with the greater DCU. Over-obsession with continuity just breeds frustration - and takes the fun out of comics, especially when a presumed singular/linear continuity is a carpet always being pulled out from under us.

I think valuing continuity over all is setting oneself up for disappointment; I suggest capturing the spirit of the mythos is a more rewarding approach - for creators and fans. A wink and a nod to past stories is fine, and can be fun - but the story and characters take precedence.

If the writing didn't rate from mediochre to 'stinking poo' then maybe more people would be enthralled by the story and fewer would even notice the things that are different. And if DC hadn't made such a big deal about how this version of the Legion was going to be the same as the original with no intention of actually delivering on that promise, then there wouldn't be any reason to complain in the first place.

well, both of those points are a matter of opinion.

you of course have your right to that opinion, but it seems to me that some fans (not necessarily you) are going out of their way to find minutia to be ticked off about.

1) History happened. It was the truth, even if you didn't know it, from the very start. In serial fiction, you knew the actual truth *and then it changed.* Did the writer have a good reason for that change? Does the 'new truth' significantly improve the characters / storyline / continuity? Was he too damn lazy to respect the writers who developed these characters, and without whom he wouldn't have the opportunity to work on them at all, and didn't even bother reading up on the characters?

2) History isn't a product that one spends money to purchase. Usually it isn't a creative exercise. If I pay money for a story, and it introduces characters that I like, and I keep paying money, to see those characters I like, and then the new writer comes in and changes those characters, he isn't just annoying anal-retentive readers #321, he's materially affecting a proven 'brand.' Brands of clothing, food, etc. get changed all the time, in most cases refined to better suit new tastes, or to introduce new features (TVs with *color!*, bread with oat flakes!, cereal with green clovers!), and a comic book property is no different, in that it is an enduring product that each consumer is encouraged to buy every month. Change that does not improve the product (which, granted, may not necessarily involve improving any individual character...) is a very different than reading a history book and discovering that the Tea Party had little to do with taxation and was about outrage over the British government was preferentially subsidizing the nearly-bankrupt East India Trading Company and allowing it to sell goods without paying tariffs, and thereby undercut their competitors. I didn't pay anyone to be entertained by the story of 'taxation without representation,' so the 'brand' or the 'product' isn't going to lose market share because it turns out to have all been about some 200 year old corporate bailout.

3) The difference between real people and characters in fiction, is that characters in fiction have to be portrayed with a consistent characterization, because we don't get to spend a lifetime making sense of their inconsistencies, they way we do with a spouse or sibling. Whether or not Kennedy banged Marilyn or Hitler was a vegetarian, that doesn't really change how I feel about those historical players. They're just factoids about real people, whom we all figured out the first time a parent told us to 'do as I say, not as I do,' are terribly contradictory things. Human beings don't have to 'make sense.' We hold fictional characters to a higher standard, and any writer worth the title should know that a character needs to have certain rules and guidelines, to help the reader 'get' the character. We expect, even demand, that James Bond be James Bond. He's not allowed to giggle, or play pranks on his co-workers, or express an interest in fantasy football, or take up tap-dancing, regardless of whether or not real spies are real people and have many diverse interests that go beyond 'squinty-eyed psychopath who always looks cool and collected, no matter how deep the kimshee is around him.'

4) Respect for the property. History isn't really a property, and 'respect' for history involves turning over stones and overturning last years theory with glee. But a fictional product was created by writers and artists, some now dead, and their contributions shouldn't be just thrown out because they are dead. Some of them *should* be thrown out. Many, if not most of them, could do with some up-dating. But the new writer who doesn't even bother to look at the past product to inform what has worked and what has not worked in the past for his target market is a fool, and not just disrespecting the fans, and his fellow writers and artists, but also demonstrating a total failure of how to sell a product. This isn't art, in the sense that you get to come in from the cold and paint whatever the hell you want, in your signature style (and, when it is, we call it an Elseworlds). This is serial production, and to not even bother to look at what has come before, and to just change things willy-nilly is a recipe for disaster. Pretty much any other company that makes a product has meetings where they argue about whether or not to change things, because change for change's sake doesn't guarantee new consumers, and can even drive away established consumers. Changes that *add* features or 'value' are welcomed, in companies that pay attention to such matters.

A change that exactly nobody was clamoring for? Not so much.

Set, clearly you have a set (no pun intended) of assumptions that reinforce where you are coming from. To me, they seem to predispose you to disliking almost anything outside of a very narrow range. If that's your tastes, so be it.

But a few points I would like to address:

1) in fiction, you do not know what "actual truth" - there is no truth because it is fiction. You only know what the storyteller told you, but even this can be a ploy of the storyteller. It is a storyteller's job to decide how much to tell - and when.

This ties into my point re: historian p.o.v. - attention to the storytelling, not mistaking the story setting for an actuality.

History is not a truth, either - it is our interpretation of the past based upon a very limited set of evidence. History is not the entirety of everything that happened - we will never know 99.99999999999999 (and so on) of what happened. Calling History and The Past the same thing aids and abets the assumptions that we know more bout the past than we do - and that there is only a single, knowable version of the past, which is definitely not the case.

I'm not sure why you chose to assume such negatives about the current storytellers, but that's your choice.

2) you seem to assume that textbook-history is the extent of History, or the only reason to read it. Even if it is not your experience, plenty of History works can be read for entertainment (depending on the reader's interests).

Also, almost any prose writing involves creativity, to some extent or another. Any historian would disagree with your suggestion that writing history takes no creativity (but frankly, I've read some things that do help further your perception!).

3) I can see the point, but I'd suggest that more famous/popular characters get frozen in behavior, rather than all of them. Some characters do change/develop over time; Green Arrow has changed significantly over the decades. Legionnaires have changed, too. Also note that even Tarzan has been a monosyllabic brute or an eloquent British lord.

4) The past is not a property, but any individual work on history is intellectual property.

The work of prior writers and artists have been published. It is out there in consciousness - no one can really throw it out. They were presumably paid for their work, and the property is owned by DC; like it or not, it is theirs to do with as they choose. The prior writers and artists did their work whether or not anyone would remember it in 1,5,10 or 50 years. Indeed, many old time creators are often surprised people do remember their work. We respect their work by rereading and appreciating it. It is impossible to pay homage to the complete set of 50 years of stories in each and every new issue; we'd just have pages and pages of lists. Every new issue is change, or else it is rehash/retelling or reprints.

You say some stories should be tossed or updated. Whose job that? The storyteller, or the fan? If it is the fan, how does DC listen to tens of thousands of fans before it moves an inch? Why is where you draw the line any better than where anyone else does?

1. Good point.
2. DC restarted the Leion that they promised us with in the Action Lightning Saga.
Dawnstar was a lesbian, Throm was a Schizophrenic/Prophet, Dreamy was part of the Dreaming, to mention a few 'changes'.
We, the fans, should have taken our cues from that and KNOWN things were going to be 'different' to quite an extent. imo
3. We, the fans, ALWAYS find reasons to complain.
Just read any thread here!

Dude. There's parts of the Threeboot I liked. I respect that Waid attempted to make characters like Lu, Salu, Gim and Nura way more interesting (and I strongly dislike other changes he made). I like Shikari better than Dawnstar (and I really don't like the repeated blowing-up / ravaging of Earth in ever more sensationalistic disasters / invasions). I love Lydda, but I *also* love Jasmin. I like Superboy's Legion, and even liked the parts that were just flat out changed (Lyle and Brainy being brothers, Umbra having darkforce powers). My tastes are hardly monolithic, and go all over the place.

If you wish to characterize me as some anal-retentive close-minded 'only one true Legion' compleatist to 'win' the discussion, then I concede it to you.

Once it gets all personal like this, where the discussion is less about the story and more about what's wrong with me that I don't like the same things you like, I think it's time to back away.

There are some interesting comments about what 'history' is or isn't in this thread. So moving away from the personal, consider here in the UK for years there was conflict in Northern Ireland. Talk to a nationalist and they will quote why history says they are in the right and unionists are wrong. Talk to a unionist and they will quote why history says they are right and the nationalists are wrong.

The same is true in the former Yugoslavia, Israel/Palestine and just about every conflict around the world. Europeans in the Americas see Columbus as a great visionary explorer. Indiginous Americans see him as the start of mass conquest and slaughter and the biggest exercise in ethnic cleansing ever undertaken.

History is spun according to the teller.

Lyle and Brainy were brothers!??
(<3 Umbra's dark force powers AND her nexus/dark realm connection!)

And Brainy was infact created (by the last Coluans) just to be a brother/companion for Lyle. Tinya was a princess, Ayla had Light based powers, etc etc. It was very different, but very entertaining too. Honestly, I rather see more of that version of the Legion than the "It's the Original, but completely different!" poo we are getting now.

That is hardly the case (at least from my point of view).

I merely suggested that those (and not necessarily you specifically) who seem particularly frustrated might be less frustrated by taking a different view on things. That's all.

Instead, I was met by a lot of resistance and deflection for merely positing that there was at least one alternate way to look at things. I don't care if you agree with me or not - I don't care if anyone does. But this subforum seems to grow a lot more negative and unwelcoming when people seem to vent frustrations more than they discuss the stories themselves.

Very true, and that was where I was going. The history, the story, is not separate from the storyteller.

If this is about Superboy's Legion, I just love that Garth was a fop.

Do the editors and writers expect us to view their work as an ongoing narrative or stand alone stories? It feels like it the answer depends on circumstance. If they are promoting cross over events, it seems pretty clear that they want us to buy the related issues in order to get the whole story of the ongoing narrative. That's the draw. When there are mistakes in continuity, however, it seems as if they want to back off that approach. The message than becomes don't be so picky.

Long story short, Kent shares my (and others') frustration with how every issue is seemingly being dissected endlessly and methodically for continuity bloopers while the stories themselves get buried in the morass.

Case in point: issue 3 ends with a very suggestive cliffhanger on that last page, and IT HAS BARELY BEEN DISCUSSED!!! Why IS that?!?!

We shouldn't have to start multiple threads for each issue to discuss the plot and character developments because a number of active posters want to tear the continuity apart in the main thread! There's a THREAD for that, isn't there? I'm not saying there should be a complete moratorium on these discussions in the main issue threads, but can't we at LEAST primarily focus on the events of the issues themselves?!?

Comics contradict themselves ALL the time! How many different versions of Superman's continuity have popped up in the last decade ALONE after John Byrne supposedly streamlined things for good in the Man of Steel?

You can use the same justification that Geoff Johns has done most recently and chalk up a lot of the changes to the aftershocks of Infinite Crisis. This is more or less the same Legion that Levitz wrote before but it's not EXACTLY the same Legion! As I have said elsewhere, it's an approximation. Yeah, it can ruffle our feathers that certain things were apparently changed with no rhyme or reason, but if it bothers you that much, just stop buying it and stick with those treasured back issues that will never disappoint you!

Trust me, I do understand continuity frustrations quite a bit. But if it frustrated me as badly as it does many of you, I would've quit buying mainstream comics decades ago! And some of the gripes are just beyond reason...I mean do we REALLY need a caption explaining that Saturn Queen is wearing a transuit?!?! Aargh!

I'm just saying that if you weathered a reboot and a threeboot and are still a Legion fan, then what's with a few inconsistencies when DC tries to finally give us something approximating what you want? Chances are, if any of us continuity nuts took over writing the Legion, we'd mess up some ourselves--or if we didn't, the stories might end up being so bogged down with exposition and correctness that they'd forget to be entertaining!

Let's accept that the Legion is neither an easy book to write nor to make entertaining in the bargain. Few comics in history can compare to it in regards to its complex continuity and its large cast. Lots of creators have gone on record to say it would be a book they's never consider tackling. You certainly have to have thick skin to put up with us fans! Hell, we obviously sometimes have trouble putting up with each other!

So bitch all you want to, Legion fans--it's what we do! But can't we spend a little more time discussing what actually happens in the issues in the threads devoted to them and less on annotating continuity gaffes panel-by-panel? Can we devote the bulk of those discussions to a separate thread?

So...what the hell's up with the Darkseid statue on Avalon, anyway?