Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes DC to reboot all titles in September - what will this mean for LSH?

I just read over at Comics Alliance that DC is going to reboot 50 of its titles in September by restarting numbering at #1 and making the characters younger and more relevent to today's audience (more info. is contained on the Source blog, as well - which is linked in the Alliance piece).

Hmff! I wonder if this will include LSH? To me this seems certain. Rats - and just after we'd finally gotten Levitz back on the book and a good deal of silver age coninuity had been resurrected!


Anybody else have any thoughts or information on the matter?

actually, i can't wait for levitz to leave, since i find his current writing uninspired at best, if not plain mediocre.

on the other hand, though, this would be the 4th or 5th reboot for the legion alone, and i'm kinda full of that kind of stuff.
from the first pictures leaked from the USA today site, it looks like a complete crisis-on-infinite-earths-like reboot for the whole DCU: couldn't DC just start every book from #1 and sell their new series as accessible?

It sounds like it is just an issue number reboot and not a reboot of the series or the creative team. At least I would think so for most of the books.

Actuality, CBR indicates via a Bob Wayne statement that it's a line wide *reboot* of the franchises, not just a restart.

I'm just going to repost here what I said in response to Cobalt in Gym'll's:
I agree.

Moreover, it is fiscally INSANE to try and do THIRTEEN LAUNCHES A WEEK! Seriously, think about that - how many people have the cash to preorder all those titles just to try them out? Retailers certainly don't have the cash to order heavily on fifty-two "new" titles.

What I suspect will happen is that a few titles (like Justice League) will launch big, but their sales will be less than they would have been because of the insane signal-to-noise ratio. And lower books will launch a bit higher than their predecessors, and swiftly be gutted as they lose a big chunk of their previous core fanbase and don't have the influx they'd need to replace them (again, to do with the noise-to-signal ratio).

And finally, if they're deaging characters like Superman & Batman, they're going to lose at least one whole generation of characters and a lot of the "texture" of their universe. Right now, DC has the Golden Agers, plus three-and-a-half generations of "modern" characters - the Superman/Batman generation, the Dick Grayson/Donna Troy/Wally West generation, the Kyle Rayner/Tim Drake/Kon-El generation and a half-formed fifth generation with Damien Wayne/nuKara/etc. Once you start wholesale changes in this way, you either get characters previously a significant age apart turned into direct contemporaries, or you get whole tiers of characters squeezed out entirely.

This smacks of panic and desperation, and their ultimate best-case has to be where they are now a year down the line.

Okay. That's it. I, I am done.

Regardless if Nei Ruffino is the colorist of any book, I, I will not support any book this company puts out. Vertigo is a different story, but I will not support this. I will NEVER support this.

I know right away this sounds like the griping of an angry fan who doesn't want to see change. But this, this isn't about making the characters fresher, IMO, this is just them rebooting everything so they no longer have to deal with the mistakes they've made in the last few years.

Ralph and Sue Dibny, the damage they've done to the Legion, all of the dead Titans, the 52, Cassandra Cain, Cry for Justice, killing Lian and making Roy punisher lite, that stupid forest in Green Arrow, Villains for Hire, Amazons Attack, Countdown, Final Crisis, just, just everything!

I will still buy back issues, get sketches of these characters, and come on here, and be a member of the Bring Back Lian Harper group. But I am done.

I don't have a problem with change. I have a problem with people thinking they can sweep everything under the rug.

bleeding cool says that in september we won't see a LoSH vol. VII yet, but a new title called... legion lost!

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/05/31/flashpost-legion-lost/

This is actually the one reboot that I'd like to see since they have rebooted the Legion so much I'm dying to see what this derivative could possibly be. I'm sadly drawn to the ridiculousness of this.

Actually, having calmed a bit, yes, I'll still support a book Nei colors. I can't drag her into my petty obsessiveness.

I'm hoping it's the New Wanderers we've been teased with for these last few years.
Johns certainly used them.

I'm greedy though, I want an Academy book, as well as a Core book, too.

But, who will write and illustrate everything?!

We still have to see, but it sounds more like a gimmick than a full-blown reboot a la Crisis. At least 3 things point out in different directions:

Scott Snyder is saying in his twitter that his current run still matter for Batman, it's not being ignored. Whatever that means.

There will be a full color spectrum Lantern book, apparently. Which means some of the changes are being accepted.

Bob Wayne's letter says: It's not clear what he means by "new angle", but there you go.

What worries me most, though, is the fact the current DC editorial is probably the lamest in history. Their track record is frankly awful: the All-Star Batman & Robin fiasco, Batman Europa mess, the horrifying case of Jim Shooter’s Legion of Super-Heroes being trampled by Johns’ “Lightning Saga” fiasco, the decision to butcher Ambush Bug #6, the mistakes in editing Doom Patrol as a regular book, the First Wave line, the Milestone Line relaunch fiasco…

It likely means everything is "as is" except for things the current editors don't like with little rhyme or reason as to the criteria for change. So Superman & Lois' marriage is thrown out, but Aquaman's marriage to Mera is not (just an example, I have no idea if that's true).

I wonder what other "big" changes might happen? For instance, the status quo of Dick Grayson. If Batman is younger, how young is Dick? Is he Nightwing again? Is he...ROBIN AGAIN? Don't rule it out.

So, basically it'll be like pretty much every other massive continuity-"fixing" event in DC history?

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/05/31/flashpost-the-hooking-up-of-superman-and-wonder-woman/

I would expect most stuff Geoff Johns has a hand in to be preserved, hence the skittle-coloured Lanterns still being around. Stuff before 2000 will probably be wiped almost in entirety.

That's what I am seeing through various media sites as well, that it's a reboot but not a hard reboot. All titles are going #1 - including Action, Detective, and Adventure if it survives.

There are various comments that much of the current continuity will be maintained (guessing Batman and Gl books), but for some characters it will be tweaked (looking at you Superman and WW) and the age of some characters will change (watch out Titans!).

Plus there are 50-some new costume designs coming - including apparently Superman with no red trunks, and everyone in the JLA wearing v-necks (?)

All of this makes me think back to CoIE, and how that universe relaunch was bungled due to sloppy editorial and turf wars over characters. I am not getting a warm fuzzy feeling for this post-flashpoint relaunch.

Rich Johnston suggests Adventure Comics #1 starring Deadman

Apparently Adventure is surviving as a Deadman title!

It does sound like we may losing at least a subgeneration. Here's how I think the younger age groups break down :

Titans : this group would include Dick Grayson, Wally West, Donna Troy, Roy Harper, Garth, Kyle Rayner, Connor Hawke, Gar Logan, Cyborg, Starfire, Raven (in spite of her de-aging a few years back), Hawk and Dove, the Infinity Inc guys, Zatara, etc. This group would include Barbara Gordon on the older end and Gar Logan on the younger end. Age range from 27-20 or so.

Young Justice : this is Tim Drake, Bart Allen, Cassie, Supergirl, Kon-El, Stargirl, Cyclone, JJ Thunder, the current Batgirl, the Batsons and Freddy and other characters that hang with them. Age range here is 19-15 or so.

New Generation : right now this is mainly Damien is either 10 or 11 right now I think? This generation would be the most likely to go since just the very existence of Damien ages both Batman and the DCU itself. However I don't see Morrison letting go of this character that easily.

I could see DC de-aging the Titans back to college age and the YJ group to say 16. But if they do that, would they go a step further and kill the Kon-El book and replace it with Superman-as-a-boy Superboy and chronicle his visits with the Legion? If so there goes the Legion continuity again. On the plus side, we might get back currently deglected (or dead) characters like Chuck and Lu, M-E Lad, Lyle Norg, etc. But then we would lose Wildfire, Dawnstar, etc. Ugh! I hate reboots.

Hmm. If I was DC right now, I would be having their people put out some truth and a bunch of misinformation to keep everyone guessing. Also that way they can gauge the response to some story beats or titles that are not locked down to see if they need tweaked, jettisoned, etc. But I'm not sure if DC editorial is that on top of things to pull that off.

I basically agree with your age breakdown, but I was thinking both in terms of in-character ages and out-of-universe "generations" - if G1 is Golden Age and G2 are the adult Silver Age characters, then G3 are the sidekicks of the 60s and the younger characters of the 70s and 80s, while G4 are the newer/younger characters of the 90s, and the "half-formed" G5 the new characters of the past few years.

I included Kyle in G4 because of when he was intro'ed, although you're right in suggesting that he's more of an age with the G3ers.

I see now that the relaunch Superman won't have been married. And if they de-age Superman is say 24-25, then that would imply Batman, GL, Flash, etc all get de-aged as well (or you get some characters much older (like how Hal and Ollie were in their 40's briefly in the early 90's).

Doing this would put the squeeze on the YG group and push the Titans group back to being 16. If that happens, I don't see how they are going to be able to maintain much continuity from pre-flashpoint. Imagine if Dick Grayson is de-aged, then Barbara Gordon should be de-aged as well. That means no Oracle, no birds of prey and the dominos start falling. Sigh.

Another twist has appeared as the full cover art has been revealed for the Jim Lee Justice League piece. Besides showing a Flash and a Batman, there is also Cyborg. And top of that, the Superman in that piece looks much younger than Cyborg.

So it looks like Cyborg will be a contemporary of Superman instead of Dick Grayson and Donna Troy. Looks like the Wolfman/Perez run got thrown out with the bathwater (or pushed over to some alternate earth)

I was wondering why it felt like most of DC's titles were just treading water and producing mediocre product. This explains it.

I'm going to reserve judgment until I hear more, but I'm not as horrified by this as I would have thought. I'm really only reading a few DC comics at the moment, the Legion titles and Zatanna, so the reboot will not affect me very much. And I think it can only be a good thing for DC to get rid of some bad continuity. On the other hand, I'm truly sorry that Action Comics and Detective Comics will be renumbered.

Bleeding Cool says there will be a Legion Lost series but that does not mean there won't be an ongoing Legion of Super-Heroes title. Perhaps Legion Lost is replacing Adventure as the second Legion book. I read somewhere that Paul Levitz said he had plans later this year to fill in the blanks from the lost years before the Lightning Saga, perhaps this is what Legion Lost is.