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

The one thing DC has always had over Marvel (and any other company, for that matter) is a history that goes back to the beginning of the comic book industry. Without it they are just another company, and, to be brutally honest, not a particularly good one at that.

So now, in order to attract a younger audience, they are willing to sacrifice their primary asset.

Well guess what DC. There is no younger audience out there waiting to buy your books. Comics as a mass market industry are dying. As are the major record labels. And the broadcast TV networks.

The younger generation has no interest in any of those things. All of those industries grew up during a time when there were limited entertainment options available. Now there are so many choices out there that it is impossible to build the kind of mass audience that DC and Marvel had in the Silver Age.

And many of those options cost considerably less than $2.99 for about 10 minutes worth of entertainment.

DC have been slicing and dicing their history since Flash of Two Worlds.

Crisis on Infinite Earths
Zero Hour
Infinite Crisis

all eroded and changed history. The Superman today is very different to the one that went into Crisis on Infinite Earths or the one that came out of Man of Steel. To me this is just another reboot like all the others. Cutting away a bit mor continuity and probably losing more readers than it wins.

What is significant thoughis the announcement that digital books will be available at the same time as the paper editions. This is DC's last throw of the dice to bring in the multi-media savvy kids of today. No doubt some will get into comics that way but as Hermit rightly said mass audiences are a thing of the past. DC/Warner will have to work around the fact, as will Disney/Marvel

No, that's just DC for you.

I exaggerate, but it seems like every other time I visit this site, I find some reason to be glad I gave up buying comic books.

The thing that has me excited is the digital availability. I am so tired of collecting paper product.

DC's priorities are (or should be):

1) Expanding it's audience to create more sales.
2) Putting out a quality product to achieve #1
3) Protecting its property

A company-wide reboot of all its titles suggests two things; that the current situation isn't working, or that DC has come up with a better plan. I'm inclined to believe it is more the former than the latter. The industry as a whole has gone down over the last four decades with the production costs increased exponentially while the fan base has grown older.

Still, I don't think this tactic of company-wide reboot may be all that bad. Comics still generate the scripts for all those fantastic money-making super-hero movies (Thor, X-Men IV, Capt. America and Green Lantern this summer alone), so it won't be going away any time soon. The industry sorely needs a younger audience, so expect more Anime and computer game graphics introduced to which youngsters can better relate to. If it appeals to younger kids, than my preference to the old time "classic" stuff we have now I will gladly sacrifice [my kids are embarrassed that I still read comic books anyway]. The total emphasis should always be on putting out a good story with good artwork - and much less on continuity (Continuity is preferable within a storyline - that makes a good story - but over 40 years, who cares if Brainiac was a robot but is now a steroid muncher.

That said, we are only eight years away from the amazing 1000th issue of Action, and Detective Comics is not far behind. I'd hate to see those title numbers ditched. The recent restart Adventure "double" numbering system was ok, but a little awkward.

As this is a public forum and it offends some, I will not subject anyone to it, but please imagine that I started this post off with the most vile profanities you can imagine.

Now then.

My hope, and half-expectation, is that this is a publicity stunt, since it has now been reported in the "mass media" outside comic-fandom:

Yahoo! News

Last time this was done was, I believe, "Death of Superman" (didn't stay dead), or maybe the Bane thing (likewise, Bruce Wayne got better.)

I, for one, have *greatly* enjoyed the Levitz run so far (though the Shady/EarthMan thing does leave me queasy), so I do hope that this doesn't extend to the 30th C.

Whether it does or not, how stupid is this? Let me count the ways....

1. Restart the Action numbering? Really?!? They actually think starting with #1 again will get more publicity than reaching #1,000? When the main fan-base of the Superman titles are the traditionalists, and when there is, let's be real, no *hope* of revitalizing it for a younger generation (unless perhaps you extend form Smallville, but then why not start a new title)?

2. Likewise, they already *did* release Adventure #1 ... and then by popular demand went to the extensions of the older numbering... Now back to #1? WTF?

3. Has this not been tried before? Did it not spectacularly fail? Have they not been fixing the fallout from that ever since? WTF?

4. No way the "Legion Lost" report is accurate. That smacks of some "insider" who didn't know the answer to a question doing a cursory look-up and coming up with the trade paperback as an answer. Why would they re-use that title?

Anyway, as has been so often uttered in comics: "Eeeyyaaaaargh!!!" (I hope I spelled that correctly )

P.S. I, for one, am anxiously awaiting word from an insider who "knows" what they are talking about to enlighten us as the fate of LSH under this change.

This is just stupid.

*removed*

I agree, this is their asset, underwear over pants and cape included.

but, I don't know, I only buy maybe 2 DC books a month ... so maybe they're right. I might pick up a new Batgirl, OMAC, or some other relaunched title ... and if they're good maybe I'll be getting 4 or 5 DC comics a months. If there's good art, I will certainly try a few things during the first couple of months of the reboot.

(unless by then I am so disgusted by all this I have decided to boycott. )

We know exactly what went wrong with all the other DC reboots, and we know why. Is there *any* reason to think that this one won't have the same problems as all the others?

The *best* we can hope for is that the Legion will continue unchanged, which requires that there be higher-ups who are sympathetic enough to it to let it go unchanged. (Not entirely impossible, since Geoff Johns is one of the people behind the reboot.)

The worst is probably getting the Legion rebooted as teens again with enough early success that it seems to be succeeding, but bottoming out much lower than the title's bottomed out right now, then being cancelled and resulting in no Legion until 10 years later. And then we get a revival which is about as much like any version of the Legion as the Wild Wild West movie is like the Wild Wild West TV series.

As a Legion fan I am very nervous!

As far as the rest of DC goes? Man except some GL stuff and Legion I haven't been reading any DC.

I am interested YET it seems to quick and I know within 3 months they will have continuity errors of the new continuity!

I really hope it's not a rehash of old DC continuity. I don't want to see classic Batman villains in the first year of his new book!

As far as Legion? This sounds like they are starting in a newly established DCU. It's not origin stories...the JLA already exists, etc. I think the Legion will have already existed and we won't see the typical reboot again...3 founders, etc. It will be more like Waid's...and they won't be young kids again...maybe older kids/young adults.

agreed

Hey here's a thought. Flashpoint reveals that the speed force is really just the Time Trapper and he finally succeeds in devolving everyone in the DCU.
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Including the people making the decisions at DC.

This is of course one of the factors that caused problems in other DCU reboots. The teams were around for a while, so some events still happened... but nobody has any idea what.

i agree. i think the move to restart all their books from #1 all at once would have been clear enough by itself to shout a new direction for the DCU even without the continuity reboot.
in fact, i believe that what the DC books need to try and be readable again would be to get rid of continuity masturbation altogether, and use an approach more similar to tv series', where every episode is mostly self contained and underground storylines aren't dragged on for more than a season/year.
i'm afraid the way they said they want to handle the reboot continuity-wise, by changing some things and some others don't, is going to create even more confusion and scare a lot of possible readers. i guess in a couple of years we're still gonna see crises to fix this or that hole (as if i cared for them to actually fix them, btw).

about the legion's age, i guess that if DC really is making superman younger, the legionnaires will be younger as well.
that doesn't mean DC will throw out everything they did from the lightning saga on, though, see the way DC didn't make a big deal about how they had already made barry allen and iris allen decades younger in "the flash: rebirth".

Egad. How can these clowns POSSIBLY be stupid enough to try something like this AGAIN? I thought it was pretty much universally accepted that Crisis was a huge mistake and now it sounds like they're going to do it all again.

Another Legion reboot. Good God, it's pathetic in its redundancy.

The ONLY thing that worries me about all this is what happens to the Legion. If the Legion gets better, I am a happy Sub. If it changes again in some fundamental way, like renegade delinquent hacker anarchist freedom fighter rock stars on the run from another United Planets controlled by evil alien plant people genocidal cloning scaredy cat fish faces, with history altering deaging time travel paradoxes, and Rob Liefeld and Howard Chaykin as the creative team, I will be a vociferously sad Sub. I pray to Nass that Legion Lost is lost years and not lost readers.

I would sure like to hope DD and JL and GJ are sincere that we will see better, more broadly appealing stories. I'm doubtful, because I'm not sure that this fan boy generation of creatives can conceive of stories that are broadly appealing and character-centered. I'm very doubtful that there's enough talent to launch 52 really good titles, even if several of them are unchanged. Are they bringing Waid and Rucka back into the fold? Will Azzarello contribute?

I do think this is different than COIE because the group editors don't have the power that their predecessors had in 1986. And the big push on digital makes sense, it is time to make that play.

Guys I'm at loss as to what to do.

I'll support Nei's coloring regardless, unless they put her on Titans (she doesn't deserve a punishment like that), and I do remember the last time I dropped everything it was pointed out to me that I shouldn't ignore the good stuff with the bad.

But, every dollar that goes to support a good book, a good writer, or a good artist that money is also supporting the editorial decisions and company that is run by a group of emotionally stunted man children whom equate "change" solely with the likes of death, mutilation, and loss of innocence.

Apart bringing back the original Legion, all of DC's items and marketing ploys and mini-reboots of the past few years have had one thing in common:

Me buying less and less DC comics.

Looks like i'm about to cull a few more titles in a few months.

This JL piece by Lee is vile!

I agree with them doing self-contained books like a TV season. No sub-plots carrying over. Each one may have a new continuity, etc.


As far as Legion ages...Superman will be younger but not a teenager. I am guessing 24 to 25 years old. So Legion should be about the same. Young adults.

(still don't know why media is obsessed with highschool teenagers?! 18-25 is pretty exciting...and they are adults.)

The Source has covers and the writers/artists for several of the new issues here: http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2011/06/02/the-new-justice/

Loving the team on Wonder Woman. Looks like Cinar is moving over to Firestorm.

Justice League International looks neat.

Notes: Nothing much seems different yet, except that DC seems to be simply trying to cash in on the "fans will buy a #1 issue" more to increase sales. As has been mentioned before, what happens after the sales drop off at issue 12, or even 5 or 6?

Wonder Woman has the 'new look' costume that was to appear in the new TV series, which is now on hold. I would expect Hal Jordan's costume to change to look a lot more like the movie version in upcoming issues.

hmm, I think I'll probably flip through these at my comic store to figure out which I might get.

So far, I might try flash because of Manapaul's art, (sharing art duties .... sounds disappointing though) I am so hoping Hawkman will be good, Maybe Captain Atom has potential... i always thought he was under developed.

Mr Terrific sounds interesting but they'll need a clever team to do it in a comic book.

So many covers done by different people than who are drawing the issues dos not fill me with confidence, to say the least.

just my opinion.