Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Changes coming to the Membership of the Legion?

Bleeding Cool is reporting a rumor of changes coming to the Legion: a reduction in the roster, with members to match the Justice League, a la this week's Justice League America launch.

Be careful: the article also spoils the events of last week's LSH No. 17.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/forums/front-page-comic-news/67485-death-legionnaire-future-legion.html

Great! More turmoil for the Legion can only lead to... well, cancelation, probably, although I will hope for better.

Cheers, rokk

I took that to mean the first Justice League team (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman and Cyborg), not the current JLA.

The tweak of the Justice League makes some sense, since in this universe, while most of those characters had an adventure or two before forming the team, the concept of "super heroes" was coined with the team thwarting the Darkseid invasion. Plus I believe they did something similar with the Reboot. As long as "Superboy" was still a member, I'm down.

And really, as much as I love the big team, I can understand why slimming it down to give each character focus would be considered a good idea.

Apologies, yes, I also took it to mean the first JL team, but my words were not clear.

Okay, you meant that in terms of the JLA members being there to counter the JL, I get ya. I thought you were confusing the JL for the JLA, which given the history would be a very easy mistake to make.

Anyway--I think a good exercise we could do is figure out who could be that roster that would be analogious to the Justice League? The comments on the article had a decent one to start with:

What kind of upside down world do we live in when the Avengers has something like twenty members and the Legion is being slimmed down under ten?

I also understand the slimming down of roster (even if I don't prefer that), and I think that the JL inspiration (instead of exclusively SuperDude) makes sense... but I confess I'm not sure why the Legion's inspiration is so danged important ... tell some new stories!... I've aleady seen a hundred "Legion was inspired by ________" stories at every re-three-pio-boot only to see them wiped away later. Who cares who they were inspired by?

More importantly for me, though, is that continued changes in direction do not bode well for the title's continued publication.

I think I hate everything I read there, and all of the responses to it, with the fire of a thousand exploding suns.

Oh yes, let's tie everything to the 21st century, so that when, as always happens, it all gets rebooted and everything changes, we're totally screwed over! Again.

This game is fun.

If the rumor is true, I hope they get a better gender balance than the basic JL.

While I would love to see Rond Vidar as GL, I won't hold my breath. Wasn't here some sort of GL story Paul was working at the beginning of his relaunch?

BC's list above does not include any founders. I don't see a place for Cos to be the counterpart for a current JL member, whihc makes me sad, but who knows.

I liked the Legion when it was a legion. If I wanted to read a version of the Justice League, I already have enough options for that.

A world where, in the wake of the success of the Avengers movie, Marvel is thinking big and expansive, while DC is all about slimming their franchises down and eliminating characters and backstories that they fear might confuse new readers or make properties harder to adapt to the big screen.

Instead of looking at fifty years of backstory and secondary characters as optional opportunities, they are being seen as brush in need of clearing.

If DC had made an Iron Man movie, they probably wouldn't have included a Happy Hogan or a Pepper Potts, and gone with new characters without all that 'confusing' past history.

And it probably would have been turgid and slow, like Superman Returns, or creaked under it's own ponderous and pretentious weight and endless speechifying, like, IMO, the last Batman movie.

You don't eliminate stuff you don't want to write, you just don't write it. Look at the example of Quislet. He's not around, but he hasn't been decapitated and eaten, either. If, after Levitz, a new writer comes along and has a great fire in his belly to write the great Quislet story, Quislet doesn't have to be rebooted or resurrected. He can just show up and say, 'I had to go home for a bit. Emergency on Teall, all better now!'

All this change and death and rebooting feels like the flopping of a landed fish, slowly suffocating and trying desparately to survive. This flailing seems unlikely to help DC's situation. I'm not sure this medium *can* survive, except by adapting and expanding into cartoons and TV and movies and computer games and other types of 'new media,' and killing off the intellectual properties that are your golden geese (and / or eliminating everything about them that made them successful in the first place, to fit some 'teams can't have more than seven members' marketing gibberish) seems a muddle-headed way of attempting this expansion...

^^^
This

Well, that would certainly explain why Giffen left so quickly.

The appeal of the LSH for me has always been the huge number of members (a favourite for everyone). Not quite sure how I feel about a slimmed down roster.

Unless of course, the slimmed down roster is just for the "origin"

What are they going to call the book?

"small band of super heroes?"

you know Harmonia LI, Dragon Wing, Glorith, and Chemical Kid are totally four of the spots.

I wonder if they will kill each character to slim down the roster.

Egads, Power Boy has posited the most revolting way possible to slim the roster. Makes me sick to think about it, and I wouldn't think it possible, but god only knows what the WB marketing department can pull out of their collective colons to transform our beloved book into "A Smattering of Super-Heroes!"

Hmm... perhaps even more revolting would be to merge the characters into composites!

Rokk Gand, Cosmic Boy of Daxam!

All the Legion women merged into a single Future Girl!

This decision on the part of Dc comics is tremendously stupid. In 60's The Legion Of Super-Heroes had 25 members and the histories were with 5 or 6 members every time.
This is best option of all.

Composite characters are indeed hideous, EDE, but they don't leave as nasty a taste in my mouth as Legionnaires killing one another:

Garth Ardeen, Saturn Boy of Tinath, asexual reproducer of mind-reading Validus babies.

I think this could be a positive development for the Legion of Super-heroes, because I have heard some of my friends complain that the characters don't seem to have personalities. A smaller roster gives the writers more time to work on individual character development and have the members do introspection so the audience can understand their thoughts and motivations.

I dunno. Having a large roster never totally hindered character development before. Why now? When I jumped on board this comic in the 90's the active members list was huge and I never thought of them as lacking personalities. I think they just need a writer who is interested in writing them as characters and not cannon fodder. Levitz already knows their personalities and so doesn't seem to feel the need to do so.

As everyone knows, the optimal size of any super-hero group is six. Each member of the group plays a well-defined role: The Everyman, The Girl, The One-Trick Wonder, The Gizmo Guy, The Weirdo, the U.G.L.Y.


1. The Everyman: This super-hero has no powers, or very limited powers compared to the others. He may have some special abilities, but no powers “far beyond those of mortal men”. Despite this, he is frequently the leader of the group, and / or the love interest of The Girl.
Examples: Batman, Green Arrow, Hawkman, Captain America

My choice: Cosmic Boy


2. The Girl: Aside from being female, she may have any other attributes. Frequently a female version of another hero. Usually, she is the only female on the team.
Examples: Wonder Woman, Black Canary, Hawkwoman, The Wasp

My choice: Saturn Girl


3. The One-Trick Wonder: Typically has only a single super-power, but is a complete master of that power. Technically, you are required to be a One-Trick Wonders to join the Legion.
Examples: The Flash, Elongated Man, Aquaman, Ant-Man / Giant-Man

My choice: Lightning Lad


4. The Gizmo Guy: Derives his powers from some unique, or mostly unique, device. Often a scientist, as the must continually maintain his super-equipment Sometimes absurdly powerful, as the abilities of his Gizmo become more and more poorly defined as time goes on.
Examples: Green Lantern, Red Tornado, The Atom, Iron Man

My choice: Brainiac 5


5. The Weirdo: Whatever his powers, he is so strange-looking, or so anti-social, or so much an outcast that he would be completely out of place if not a member of whatever super-hero group he belongs to. The Weirdo has become ever-more important as comics have become darker. To a certain extent, all of Marvel Comics’ characters are Weirdos.
Examples: The Martian Manhunter, Metamorpho, The Hulk

My choice: Chameleon Boy
2nd choice: Timber Wolf


6. The U.G.L.Y.: Unbelievable God-Like Yahoo. This guy could do the work of the whole team all by himself. He makes the others seem superfluous, but for some reason hangs around with them anyway.
Examples: Superman (the original U.G.L.Y.), Zatanna, Firestorm, Thor

My choice: Mon-El

Oddly enough, in the original Silver-Age Legion stories, Superboy tended to play the role of The Everyman: he was the ordinary kid from Smallville, the one through whose eyes we saw the wonders of the 31st century. He was held by the Legion in the same esteem as The Everyman is usually held by his team, and often the de facto leader (despite who ever won the Legion elections).


OPTIONAL: The Mascot
Examples: Snapper Carr, Rick Jones. (Superman, being a team unto himself, had Jimmy Olsen)

My choice: Proty
2nd choice: That little white monkey the original Brainiac and Brainiac 5.1 used to carry around on their shoulders. Was his name Koko?

My choices are driven, not by who is my favorite character, but by who I think would be popular among the kiddies. Although it is difficult to find a Gizmo Guy in the Legion, since everyone in the Galaxy generally has access to 31st-century technology. I suppose they could always resurrect Gear.

Note that this roster is very similar to the original animated Legion group, although with Superboy replacing Mon-El, and Bouncing Boy, Phantom Girl, and Triplicate Girl, a trio of one-trick wonders, replacing Cosmic Boy. (They both showed up in Season 2, making the animated Legion seem a lot more Legion-y, and less super-team-y.)

I will also note that these are not hard-and-fast roles: some characters are able to fill more than one role in the paradigm. As noted, all the Legionnaires are One-Trick Wonders.

In the Fatal Five, Validus is an U.G.L.Y, as well as a Weirdo. Emerald Empress is both an U.G.L.Y., a Gizmo Guy, and The Girl. Tharok is both an Everyman and a Gizmo Guy, literally. Mano is clearly a One-Trick Wonder, but also a Weirdo. The Persuader seems to be just another Gizmo Guy, though.

And may I just add... small roster? Bad idea.

Composite Legionnaire No. 3:

Brainiac Vi: the universe's littlest genius

Maybe a different thread for this.

I really hope they don't shrink the cast to just 10 characters or less, and I really hate all the suggestions on Bleeding Cool that everything in the Legion needs to be tied to the 21st century Batman, Superman, etc. I also reject the idea that we Legion fans should get out of the way with our demands that the Legion and it's universe have a sense of internal continuity, just so other readers can replace all of us. Part of the depth of the Legion universe is it's vast scope of characters and worlds. Nonetheless, Giffen promised that no one would be safe and that the Legion would lose their future tech to accomplish great things. Perhaps that is the foreshadowing that the Legion will lose a lot of characters soon. Will they all die at the hands of the Fatal Five? We shall see.

I don't like the idea of the Legion mimicking the Justice League. With the Legion set in the 31st century, It's membership should be more alien i.e. sci-fi. If the Legion must be slimmed down by editorial mandate, then these are the members I'd leave intact to give it a sci-fi feel, while not relying on too much future tech:

Tellus
Gates
Dawnstar
Chameleon Boy
Shrinking Violet
Dream Girl
Wildfire
Timber Wolf
Lightening Lad
Duplicate Damsel
Cosmic Boy
Invisible Kid or Tyroc

Yuck. Does this mean another reboot or just a new origin story?

I'm getting too old for all this upheaval.

Giffen promised that the changes would happen in-story without rebooting so that the changes would feel organic. If such drastic changes have to happen, I would prefer that it happen that way over rebooting or new origin.

Personally, I feel that if the Legion needs to change this much to try to gain new readers, then this series is on the chopping block of cancellation in the near future.

I tend to doubt these are Giffen-inspired changes. If anything, it sounds like the kind of editorial interference that apparently is responsible for Giffen leaving.