Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Interesting cover for Superman: Secret Origin

What "Hulk" on the last frame? Have I gone blind? I don't see it.

Byrne: Did he ever give a reason for the removal of Superboy?

EDE i know what you mean,..i mean it's been over 30 years since Superman:the movie and to my recollection they never added anything from the movie into the Superman mythos. now all of a sudden it's like it's 1978 all over again. and what is the deal with Jor-el looking like as if Marlon brando and Michael McDonald had sired a son?

It's actually on the 5th frame, on the black and white Newsarama article, not on the colored version.



Byrne: I don't remember any specific reason. But I would say that it made more sense that Superman would appear as an adult in Metropolis out of a sudden than being for years and years stuck in Smallville being, you know, Superman and nobody knowing about it.
It was a sign of times, I guess. I still don't like Superboy and I prefer Byrne's reading of Superman over Johns. I mean, Krypto? Gimme a break. Unless it has an Ambush Bug tagged along, I really don't see a reason for SuperPuppies back into chronology.

If memory serves I think part of Byrne's rationale was also that because we know that Superboy grows up to become Superman then any Superboy story inherently lacks tension because he's in no real jeapardy.

I'm sort of noncommital about this latest development. Is it the last step in banishing the reboot and threeboot teams? I don't neccesarily enjoy the John's version of the team so much that enshrining it as the current "official" version thrills me.

Goes to personal tastes, i suppose. I liked the old Krypto stuff, as well as there being a Superboy with the legion. Much as i love the legion, it isn't Legion without Superboy.

After all, it is a classic origin, based on a Superboy story.

Superman was never my favorite, but for some reason, Superboy seemed like a completely different character, and one that, while not my favorite, worked in the context of the Legion.

I meant in the sense that Krypto was fine at that time. But nowadays, it is simply an exercice in nostalgia. It worked wonderfully with Alan Moore but it simply doesn't work that nice in a monthly these days.
I do agree Superboy is part of the Legion and a source of inspiration, but it never had to have Superboy to be a Legion book. I think the 3 founders are much more important to the book, in fact.
And all this return to Silver Age Superman (and Silver Age Legion in fact) makes me wonder how Legion would be better off if creators had free reign on it like Johns seems to have with the Superman franchise.

That's a feeble argument as far as I'm concerned... Byrne did not have to care about those old Superboy stories. if he felt they lacked tension, he could have simply let them be and never have told another Superboy story again. It's not necessary to erase every story which doesn't have enough tension...

That argument holds true of every main character, ever. The Death of Superman lacked tension, because we knew in our bones it wouldn't last. The Death of Batman? Same thing. The Death of Captain America? Same thing.

If someone like Halo, of the Outsiders, dies, *that* might actually last awhile, but even then, even tertiary characters like Spider-Man's 30 years dead uncle, tend to show back up eventually when someone gets a hankering to write about them.

No tension? Bah. Lame upon lame.

He could have added *tons* of tension by having Byrne Superman *not remember ever having been Superboy* and left those Superboy adventures alone, so that anyone reading those tales is left wondering what happened. Was it a mind wipe thing? Or is present-day Superman a totally different person than the silver age Superboy (which means that 'Superboy' is doomed!)? Drama!

Yeah, they really screwed the pooch with the whole Crisis. They basically wanted to start over fresh with Wonder Woman and Superman, so they erased their past, apparently not considering the trickle down effect it would have. First Superboy and Supergirl had to be erased, causing the creation of the pocket universe fiasco. Then Wonder Girl's ties to Wonder Woman and the Amazons were severed, so they had to rewrite her origin. Then those changes trickled down to affect the Legion, Titans and Justice League, so their origins and histories all had to be rewritten. Laurel Gand had to be created to sub for Supergirl, Mon-El had to become Valor and sub for Superboy as the LSH's inspiration. Then Wonder Girl had to have a new origin, which affected the Titans origin. Then the Justice League had to have a new origin and Black Canary had to sub for Wonder Woman as a founding member . . . On and on and on. WTF were they thinking?!@!! All this just to freshen up Superman and Wonder Woman who they thought had gotten stale. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, people!

Well, at least they aren't approaching the current round of retcons in such a haphazard ill-thought out fashion!

See, I knew if I put the "no tension" rationale out there my fellow Legionworlders would rise to the occasion and point out how lame it was. That way I didn't have to do it myself. Though I would add that I don't see how "dramatic tension" equals "mortal peril."

I wonder what other creepy add-ons we can look forward to during our next peek at the faux Adventure era. I'm still a bit annoyed by the notion of Saturn Girl snooping in applicant's minds I guess.

First, that's not Kathy Lee Gifford, that's Six, from Battlestar Galactica, and that takes the "what's her unseen hand doing?" question to a WHOLE new level.

Second, the Superboy-never-in-jeopardy rationale. I always thought that was the ONE thing the Legion did for Superboy. You take Clark into the future, you are tampering with the timeline, and risking the worst paradox in history, if you allow he who will be Superman to die in the future before he's actually lived to become the greatest hero in the Universe.

It seems pretty likely that the "twist" will be, as in the animated show, that Clark is only "Superboy" in the future. And that seems about right. Clark is learning how to be history's greatest hero in the future from kids who were inspired by him to become heroes themselves. It's a sort of positive feedback loop paradox, rather than a negative one.

And FWIW, I agree that Superman bursting on the scene as the first new superhero in generations is really preferable to Superboy in training pants for years in Smallville. As I've written before, I think Superboy and Superman, were, in the Silver Age, 2 separate characters from a practical point of view, because, outside the one-off "secret origins," you never saw Clark really changing from boy to man, grieving the loss of his parents, making a new life in Metropolis, leaving the Legion mostly behind like your best friends from high school when you go to college out of state and never move back home. The 2 characters always existed in these separate, almost parallel, narrative arcs. SuperBOY's Smallville never really made it out of the 1920s, even as SuperMAN's life lurched into contemporary modernity in the 1970s.

I'll always feel that Levitz held this view too, and that's what led to the Pocket Universe/Death of Superboy stories evolving as they did. Also, I don't think it is a coincidence that Johns's "Secret Origin" seems very much a story of Clark's transformation into the adult Superman. Johns's use of the Legion thus far clearly indicates that, while a critical stage of Superman's development, they ARE a stage more than a destination. They saved Clark from a potentially catastrophic adolescent alienation phase, and taught him to wear his underwear as "overwear" without embarassment, and gave him a future legacy and direction for which to strive.

The "Hulk" I believe is the current version of Bizarro.

Not Kathy Lee Gifford, DC, Cathy Lee Crosby.

You beat me to the Bizarro thing, Nightcrawler. There are no Doomsday-like bony protrusions, and besides, I think some Kandorians kill him in the current Superman mags.

In the early 80s, there was a Superboy ad billed as "the making of a legend!" With that phrase, I realized everything wrong with Superboy as a regular seies: was about nothing of the sort, it was a wasted premise.

Rather than exploring how young Kal grew up, it became a sitcom with bad jokes. Episodes were interchangeable with no character development, character conflict was essentially absent - and numerous Supermanic elements (defending the secret ID, giant robots/aliens/supervillains) took precedence. Anyone connected with Superboy recalled how cruel a place high school could be (especially to the 'mild-mannered,' especially to kids whose wardrobe lacked any diversity whatsoever). Even the one element that could have been explored - his falling out with Lex - was generally taken as a given.

It could have been about a young Kal coming to terms with his powers, who he really was, and the agony of having to voluntarily join the lower caste of high school. That young Clark never made mistakes, never acted out, never did anything remotely teen-like, and that nothing but perfect harmony ever existed with the Kents made it a sad cardboard cutout of what it could have been (Smallville, in other words).

I agree with Doub that the Legion was a vital niche for Superboy. It was the only avenue to do anything fresh and meaningful with him.

I prefer Kal not appearing in costume until being Superman - it adds that much more weight to his first appearance (one thing Byrne and the Reeve movie did well). A costumed teen in a small town stands out like a sore thumb. To me, ideally, a teen Superboy limited his costuming to the future (a la the cartoon, from what I've seen of it). A costume in Smallville takes away from the character-building and only adds to the teen-secret-ID stories that seemed worn out by the 70s.

I agree with you 100% on this point Kent. I rather like the fact that Clark is taking his time in his teen years growing slowly into the hero he will one day become. But if he feels like flying around in the 31st century wearing a red and blue costume from time to time, hey who are we to complain, right?
Best of both worlds.

Legion references in the cover art:

In regard to the pickup truck: "Little do they suspect the pickup truck is... ME, Chameleon Boy!"

In regard to the Hulk: That is actually the first meeting with "The Boy with Ultra Powers" after Jo's wild night out drinking in the SoHo sector (note the Kitson-esque hair!)

Really!

OMG! I wrote "Kathy Lee Gifford"!?!? It will take many hours of meditation to cleanse the distaste of that slip from my subconsious.

But I still think Saturn Girl is Six, not Crosby.

I always thought Superboy running around Smallville was dumb so I was happy when Byrne got rid of that bit. In all honesty Superman needed the Man of Steel reboot in the 80's. The character had just been so bogged down with so much useless stuff that it was pretty much buried in crap with no way out except a total reboot. I do think so parts of it could have been handled better, but it was definetly needed.

I really like the angle Johns has gone with in regards to Superman and the Legion in that he did wear the costume when he was young, but only did it when he was in the future hanging out with the Legion.

If only Byrne had thought of that all those years ago we could have all be saved alot of grife.

In the Post-Crisis universe, Superman was merely the powerful new guy joining the crowd. There weren't just Golden Age heroes. To start from the top, Batman was older than Superman and had been active for a few years before him. This is why I was never interested in Superboy. There was this big gap in years between them, but they weren't that different. Superboy got involved in Superman-style adventures. What was the point in having the separate characters? What was the dramatic significance of the change from Superboy to Superman? Technically, in the early Silver Age, Superboy stories took place in the 1930s. Then when they decided Superman was in his 20s, not his 40s (this was a really significant point - why is it not widely documented when it happened?), they moved Superboy stories up to the 50s. Smallville never experienced WW2. Thus, it remained stuck in an idealized past. I've held for a long time that the reason Superboy was seen as dated was the sliding timeline. By the late 70s, Superboy stories would take place in the 60s. Smallville wasn't designed to tell stories in the social revolution of the 60s.

Credit where credit is due. Geoff Johns is not the originator of this idea, and I wouldn't want anyone to mistakenly infer that he is. Johns "borrowed" it from much more fertile and original minds -- the creators of the cartoon Legion, James Tucker and company.

The idea the Legion trained and inspired young Clark to be Superman is theirs, too.

I've only seen brief glimpses of the cartoon. Why do there appear to be 2 Superboys in them?

One of them is the Superman that the show started out with, pretty much as per comics with the exception that they didn't use the name Superboy. The other Superman was from the Legion's future and if I recall correctly, had original Superman DNA put in him plus advances in science made him immune to kryptonite. He was created by these other creatures to battle the show's new villain, Imperiax, it was his soul reason for existance.

Darn it. I miss the cartoon. Even crappy future Superman got kind of interesting by the end.