Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Official LSH 3 Worlds Thread #5 out (FINALLY!! - spoilers)

EDE: (snip)

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...written by fanboys for the fanboys.

Which wouldn't be a problem, if they got real input from outside the biosphere while they were doing it. (Oh, and if they realized that many, many "boys" are actually not boys, but v v handles that soapbox beautifully. I hardly need to.)

Look at it this way: I'm a huge fan of a long-dead NZ writer named Katherine Mansfield. I bought all her story collections so I could have every finished story she'd written. The only reason I never got her journals, her bio and every critical essay about her was because I ran out of funds.

But there's probably lots of people who like Mansfield's work and only own one collection of it. Doesn't mean they're bad people. Only that some work speaks more loudly to certain people than it does others. You can enjoy something without ever becoming a fan(atic - in the original sense of the word).

If DC and the rest operated that way (marketing products with an eye towards casual enjoyment rather than the packrat-urge to buy everything just to keep up) I'm thinking that their readership might look a little better than it does.

They lost me for two decades, because I got tired of being treated like a packrat. As did Marvel, incidentally. Even if I had the urge again these days, there's no way I could afford to indulge. (Cough.) Depression. (Cough.)

It's all right if every last panel in every last story doesn't send me over the moon every single time. Really, it is. That's not the problem. The overpricing and ever-escalating attempts to spread one lousy story over sixty titles and six-hundred twenty "franchises"-- that's the damn problem.

<strike>Oh, and the stupid Miller-esque jiggle-shows. Hated that two decades ago. Absence hasn't made the heart grow fonder, lemme' tell ya'...</strike>

Yep. Actuarially flawed as a business plan, and not so interesting to read. I may wait another 20 years before picking up another Legion book.

2 questions:

Anyone remember Zero Hour where they showed Time Trapper with a hair? presumably a female version of Time Trapper? Hmm?

and

Zymyr? No one talks about the villains apparent death? hmm. am I the only one who noticed his bubble being shattered and Zymyr is falling down....to death?

I noticed. But you never know. It looked as if Lazon died in #2 but he bounced back.

welll, yes, prime represents fanpeople. BUT...
there are good fans and bad fans represented here.

what's the legion but a bunch of...superman fans! but nice superman fans (hahaha... as "nice" as hazing teenagers can be). they're very heroic but they have a frigging museum to superman! and they call themselves "boys and girls", you know?
no, not all fans are bags of dicks, but...some are. you can't tell me they're not. (some of you are thinking "vv, you are..." right now, for example.)

but a better fan? Polar boy! what a good guy! very brave, very nice!

today i was thinking...maybe prime is the way he is because he didn't have a legion, he and his 3boot legion never got to be little friends ;__;!

You know, if I could, I would send Geoff Johns an email just to see if he CARES what anyone thinks, with a link to this board, starting on page 71. If Grant Morrison can rewrite Final Crisis 7, (albeit not that well), I'm sure GJ could make some alterations. Ah well.

Incidentally, if anyone is interested, there is a sliver cover for #4 here.

Well they do call themselves boys and girls because if it's a child's dream to rid the universe of xenophobia, then they're kids.

And, in my opinion, Prime's the way he is because of a certain red-haired, gold suited deutchsbog who made him re-watch the death of his planet, his family, and his girlfriend over and over and over and over. And over.

Say, I don't know if anyone else has mentioned this, but (Reboot) an adult Andromeda saw Zoe in the Time Stream she exclaimed, "Kinetix, you're alive?" , or something like that.

whoaaaaaaa, KK, you just blew my mind!!!

Zymyr has always seemed able to fly (or, at least, float), as well as teleport, so he might be able to survive the destruction of his life support bubble by teleporting to somewhere a little more environmentally friendly for him.

It's also possible that Cosmic King could save him, if he cared to.

And what the heck was up with that, 'I'm turning the kryptonite radiation in your system into yellow sunlight' crap? I mean, what the hell? Cosmic King turns matter into matter (with eyebeams, no less), or, at least, always has in the past! Did I miss something? Has he always been able to tranform energies?

sorry guys but i really don't understand why you didn't like L3W #4... why do you say johns doesn't erespect the fans? sorry but i really don't get it.

i liked this issue very much, and i can't wait to see how the story ends. yeah, i feel like kid flash and superboy's return were a bit forced into the story, but what the hell, overall it's still a good read.

I didn't like this issue and the series in general has been a huge disappointment.

My main problem is that the Legion seem to be guest stars in their own book!

http://bottlecityofkanga.blogspot.com/2009/05/legion-of-three-worlds-slaughter.html

Was I implicated in that?

Okay...

As has been said everywhere on the net, the Legion are still being deprotagonized. That's disrespectful to readers, to not actually have the Legions driving the story in a book called "Legion of Three Worlds". It's also disappointing that DC (or at least Johns) doesn't seem to believe the Legion can carry a book - even a limited series - on their own.

Being too predictable is disrespectful, because it suggests you think we're only willing to like what we've already said we'd like. (The unfortunate thing is, maybe you're right.) On a large scale, an attitude like this is probably also responsible for the relative lack of success of most modern characters. The big companies don't put as much effort behind them, because they don't see specific demand for them. Only publishing what people specifically ask for gets old fast.

Also, blatant mischaracterization of members of more than one Legion to such an extent that it doesn't seem Johns actually read the series before.

I won't pretend to speak for all fans. Personally, there's no way anyone could make a series called "Legion of Three Worlds" that I'd want to see, because I want the versions of Legion continuity to remain independent. But I hope that my statements above are more neutrally true.

I thought the reveal was done perfectly, so far as it happened in this particular issue.

However, even with a thousand years under his belt, I don't see how S-P gains Time Trapper-level smarts.

Much less the power over time. For me, the old 'a lot can happen in those 1,000 years' answer won't satisfy. To believe this character actually becomes the Trapper, I'm gonna have to read how he gained mastery of time.

I'll be disappointed if the 'all Zoe is is now trapped in Mordru' development doesn't lead somewhere in the next few years. It was weird enough reading her speak in coherent sentences, much less thinking of her as a 'mage' all of a sudden. I never thought that of her, anyway. I know she had that overweening attraction to mystical artifacts, but that isn't the same thing as *being* a mage.

It'd be a shame if that last reservoir of hypertaxic (or whatever) energy she was left with went unused. What a waste of a plot hook, if so. And a further waste of a good character- since the prospect of that coming into play was the only thing that even partially redeemed her stint as nippleless giant mud girl.

I always thought the hypertaxic energy'd figure into either resolving the Cub situation or separating Jan and Garth (which we've been told was something DNA intended to do...)

As for the other death-- I was surprised by how little it affected me, given that Element Lad has been my favorite Legionnaire and superhero across the previous three boots. The Waidboot version never felt 'real' to me, I guess.

I did like the way the scenes leading up to death by kryptonite projectile were written. I liked the way Jan's ire arose in response to Sun Boy's death. However, I can't even recall a scene shared between these two- other than the two of them running in terror from Triplicate Girl's bed when she revealed she was dating them simultaneously.

Maybe we can assume there was a friendship there? As evidenced by a shared color scheme?

Further, what this Jan said about overcoming his distaste for battle (I'm paraphrasing), read like it'd have made more sense coming from the post Zero Hour Element Lad's mouth.

I enjoyed the Sun Boy/Polar Boy scenes very much. Brek's attitude is refreshing-- you can tell that Johns is a big fan of the guy. The same for Sun Boy. I look forward to reading what this character is like once he's past the burnout stage and is fully reignited.

Dawnstar and Wildfire-- eh-- why Drake to choose the crystal? I guess it was really the pair of them united that led to the right path. A little eye-rolling. I guess I'd prefer to read about them separately, before seeing them embroiled in tormented love again.

The art-- well, it's Perez. Readers past a certain age revere him. I'm always a little dumbfounded when I read comments by fans who don't appreciate his art. I know it's all a subjective response, but if there was one guy who'd get a near-universal love of his work, I'd have thought it'd be George Perez. Anyway, I thought the pages with panels appearing in planets were beautiful.

I know I'll be looking at these pages-- and all the various 'pin-ups' again and again. I can quibble about his rendition of certain characters (not crazy about his XS, for instance), but my Lord look at the sheer number of heroes and villains he's drawing.

The three Brainies continue to be the very best thing about this miniseries. We've seen a very little bit between the three Phantom Girls and a bit less between the Ultra Boys-- and precious little other interaction. Just imagine if the entertainment value that's there between classic Querl, Anomalized Querl and Vril-reincarnated Querl could've been applied to *all* the duplicated or triplicated Legionnaires. *That's* what I wanted from this mini-- maybe it's what we'll be getting in ADVENTURE COMICS and whatever happens after or alongside that?

This was a good issue. I would easily be able to say "a great issue" were it not for a few things:

First, I don't really care about Bart or Conner. That's not to say I dislike them. They're fine, but their reappearances just waeren't going to take me over the top. It is nice, on the other hand, that their reappearances do mean a lot to many fans and those fans have the Legion to thank for them.

Second, there was a string of disappointments that tempered my enthusiasm: The threeboot is from earth prime--so they probably won't just be thrown into the trash heap where I feel they belong. Another dead Element Lad?--Really? And Superboy Prime as Time Trapper.

That last disappointment was not as trying for me as it appears to have been for some others. My initial response was dismay that, given all of the legion's history with the Trapper and potential villains behind the hood, it turns out to be the current schmuck. But, then I figured that introducing someone whose identity or motivation the reader would have to venture into Legion continuity for would violate a rule of writing or two. I also quickly whipped up a theory that the Time Trapper remains a cosmic-ish entity that just inhabits the last person standing in any particular end-of-time extrapolation (like Mr. Johns's yellow fear monster thing).

In any case, the issue was a fun and exciting read once I let those disappointments slide. I loved Superboy Prime's response to effectual kryptonite: "NYAA!" The Brainies are terribly entertaining. Bart was pretty entertaining too. And I actually got to the point where I could acknowledge Polar Boy's devotion as a good thing.

Legion of THREE Worlds-- shouldn't there also be Time Trappers of Three Worlds (and more--)?

SP is the Time Trapper of the Earth Prime Universe-- Trappers of the Zero Hour/Archieverse and the DCU we've been reading since Crisis (I guess) should also exist. The Zero Hour Time Trapper as chick (Lori? maybe, we don't know) presumably went into the white along with 'her' universe. But the merged-earth DCU Time Trapper is theoretically out there. And, I'd guess, he'd be pretty pissed that another universe's Trapper is poaching in his territory.

Maybe LOTW 5 will feature pissed-off Big Daddy Time Trapper putting the smackdown to interloper S-Prime Trapper. If not, maybe that'll happen in the future...

Maybe Lori (Kid Glorith who was last seen as the Trapper, I think) can redeem herself in fans eyes by coming to the rescue!

Fun idea about the Trappers, ML.

I agree that 3boot EL never seemed real to me either ~ he was just sort of a caricature of the real thing.

I get my book tomorrow, I hope, so I won't comment further.

i think this book IS servicing the fans QUITE WELL.

L03W's is supposed to do two things. 1) fan service for legion fans 2)seduce new readers into the book.

how do you accomplish number 1? You shove all three legions together, even ones you thought were dead, make them all work together! make them exist again!

How do you accomplish number 2? You include people and events that will bring in other readers. you might not care about bart allen. i hate to break it to you but a lot more people know who bart allen is than the legion. a lot more people understand "superboy" and "superman" better than the legion. and green lanterns are very very prominent right now (there's this thing called blackest night, you might have heard of it).

i know the legion is cool. you know the legion is cool. but you kind of have to trick people into reading them before they'll get into it. people don't like crap they don't understand/have never seen before. they don't. a lot of people know who the justice league is because it has frigging superman and batman in it (and they're barely even in it!!!).

L03W, to ME, does not diminish the legion by including other people that are more popular. personally, i think he's using this as a primer to get people interested in the legion that weren't before. that's why there was that scene at the museum of jimmy olsen explaining things, right?! obviously, WE all knew that already, right?

i feel, that as a legion fan, i am happy with the things that are happening in this. it's funny, there's lots of fighting, there's characters interacting and they're doing something really monumental and important to the DC universe. you guys are crying because "superboy came back in my legion book". you should feel happy and flattered that something SO important to the DC universe like SUPERBOY (tm) coming back to LIFE is in a legion book. or Kid Flash coming back to life. These are things that when the little price guide comes out, it will have "bart allen returns" or "superboy returns" next to it. two other important things happened during final crisis, barry allen and batman "dying". barry allen coming back made me buy frigging flash rebirth!! i don't even care about barry!!! i barely understand who he is!

we WANT the legion to come back and to have a cool book, and i'm sorry, the legion is not going to come back just because five people are interested in them. they need numbers behind them, and as much as you think it takes face time away from them, we need people to be funneled into the legion via a vehicle like this. the lengths dc is going to make legion viable again is makes me, personally, very grateful.

consider the things that has been given to it: Geoff Johns writing it (again, i don't care if you like how he writes or not, he SELLS and many fans and professionals DO), George Perez drawing (hell, i don't care for his art but i know that he's very well respected in his field and that many people will pick up this book just because he's drawing it), Superboy return, Superman Inclusion, Final Crisis inclusion, Blackest Night/ Green Lantern Inclusion, Flash Rebirth tie in/Bart Allen return.

These are all reasons that people that are NOT legion fans already will pick up this book. i am not going to complain because geoff johns and dc are trying to bring attention, talent, money, and fans to the legion-side of things.

i wanted to add another thing, to me, L03W's feels more like a "crisis" book than the actual crisis. i think it's better written and i think it has the "big crazy consequence/multiworld" flavor thing going for it better than the real crisis did but that might just be me.

then squeeze their heads till they pop or inviserate them in the most comical ways as pimp fodder for the author's newest property. lol

John's may be working it on number 2, long term numbers will tell but I think the jury's going to be out for a long time on number 1.

And explode them. Don't forget the exploding.

Oh, yeah, Bart Allen also is more well-known than the Legion. After all, Bart was the best selling title of the 80s, had his own cartoon series and managed to have a monthly book for almost 50 years.

I'd also suggest that L3W #5 should be retitled:

Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds, the Infinite Blackest Night edition. THAT would bring in readers. After all, Shooter/Manapul managed to have more readers than Flash even being destroyed by editorial mandate, but a tie-in to ALL events will blow everybody's mind!

Why didn't Johns add a Tangent Legion to the book to make it even more attractive, I don't know...

Mystery Lad, you mentioned the interractions between the other Legionnaires being little, save for the 3 Querls. I was gonna save this for another of those drabbles but I couldn't think of one. I dunno if this would work, I just thought it would be funny concerning Jo and Imra's little tet-a-tet in Shooter's run.

NE Jo: Kay, here's how we tell the difference between ourselves. I'm Big Man, he's Family Man, and you are Little Man.

3B Jo: Why the sprock am I little man?

247 Jo: Because that's what she said.

3B Jo: That'd not how you do it.

NE: Now THAT's what she said.

So would I, friend, so would I.

"Even in death she'll never know peace" - this just made it all the worse.

Still, I have to say I wasn't surprised that they'd kill Zoe off... I was half-expecting she'd be one of the casualties. But I wasn't any less saddened.

Because all that potential is wasted. Possibly. If Johns can redeem Hal he can return Zoe to her old self. God knows the Legion needs that perky attitude nowadays.

Wow, I can't think about anything else this issue other than Zoe.

I'd love for a creative writer to do something with her. I mean, she may not be really dead yet since Mordru did absorb her. I agree with what others have said - her "last words" may mean something. Plus, she was absorbed by Mordru, that might lead somewhere too. I also thought her Hypertaxis energy could be used for something...

Might be too much to hope that she'll return in the final issue though...