Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes What can be done to save the Legion?

Interesting.

Scott Kolins maybe? Anyway, obviously something is stopping real innovation here, and I'm betting Levitz, who has always been a bit more grounded and meticulous in his world building, especially since he caught hell for one of his more whimsical scenes in the Legion years back (having Mon-El to the White-Dwarf star through the galaxy to power Brainy's Time Machine)

Different strokes for different folks.



Superman and the Legion of Superheroes was a fun story.

But it was a fun Superman story. I want good Legion stories, and these are different animals.

Examining "Superman and the Legion" a little bit, what's the general arc of that story? The Legion has failed -- the future has failed, the youth has failed. And the only way to succeed is by going back in time and getting someone from the 20th century to fix it all FOR them.

I'm not against a dystopian Legion per se, but I am against the Legion losing their agency in their world/universe/story.

Now I don't complain about 'Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes', because that's a Superman story; it was a story told in the Action Comics book, it had Superman right there in the name, he has every right to be the star of that book. But it's not a Legion story. It's not even as much a Legion story as the current Action Comics book, really, insofar as it did even LESS to capture the wonder and magnificence of their far away epoch.

The more you examine it the more it falls apart, if you're looking at it from the perspective of a Legion fan; the laughable return of a bunch of minor continuity character points as the main antagonists (and with horribly simplistic motivations of rejection, if I do say so myself), for instance, the portrayal of the future-man to be even more sheep than the current ones.



I have no doubt that the book would be financially successful -- but I have equally no doubt that I wouldn't be satisfied, and that Geoff Johns is fundamentally the wrong person to write that book.




As I said, different strokes for different folks. "Legion of Three Worlds" is absolutely one of the worst Legion stories I've ever read. And it's important that I stress "Legion stories", because it's told ably enough (although it's a bit dull and cumbersome, I think). But it's a betrayal of everything the Legion of Super-Heroes is about.

The work of Geoff Johns is primarily nostalgia driven, and I don't mean that in the sense that most in comics tend to. It's not just that he's using old continuity or trying to recapture the Silver Age, it is that all present day drama stems from something from out of that character's past -- hidden mistakes of theirs or of trusted authority figures in their 'universe'. That's what makes him, then, such a terribly ill fit for the Legion of Super-heroes -- everything he does is backward looking, and that franchise is all about moving forward.

Waid, who changed so much and himself has a deep reverence for the past, understood that. Comparatively speaking, Legion of Three Worlds is almost EXCLUSIVELY about the past. There are homages to the old JSA/JLA team ups, with useless explanations as to the nature of the crystal ball they once used as the Legion goes in search of said crystal ball. The story is used for not just one but TWO resurrections of 20th century heroes, Superboy and Kid Flash, who by the Legion's reckoning would have died a millenia earlier. Time Trapper gets revealed to be -- Superboy Prime, that old 20th century villain (granted, for this one he at least left some wiggle room). Much of the book is about reconciling various past versions of the Legion with each other, continuity wrangling, rather than just getting on with telling a good story.


The book is OBSESSED with the past. Completely and totally. Even the artwork - and I love George Perez - but even the artwork has a sort of dated feel to it.




Just my opinions. YMMV.

This is really a pretty simple task, though. The first arc of any individual's 'run' on a title should contain a lot of this information.

In the dream world in which I'm writing the Legion of Super-Heroes, the first arc has the Legion facing off against a time-traveling villain - say Epoch, Lord of Time. It's a great big science fiction battle where the Legion is facing off against a literal Legion of Epochs, each from slightly different moments, all tearing up the time stream, bringing together the Worlogog or the Eternity Brain or what have you. It's big sci fi fun, but it's not the battle, or the antagonist, that matters but what happens as a result. Because in the very first issue, in the very beginning of it, a girl from 20th Century earth is caught in a time sink brought to that far flung future. And thanks to all the manipulations of Epoch, for that first (3-4 issue) arc, Brainiac 5 can't send her home quite yet. Through her eyes you're introduced to the Legion, and the future.

It's important that this is just a girl, not a superhero, because the girl is us, right? And to a superhero, perhaps such things are quotidian, but to us? It would be pure magic. And while the Legion might be blind, jaded to the every day miracles that fill the skies and the streets and the minds of the 30th century(Just as we, today, take for granted pocket sized wonders that illuminate the eye and the mind and connect us in heretofore impossible ways, so to do THEY take for granted point to point teleport, the panopoly of planets waiting for the tread of their boot, the geometry of time travel), she wouldn't be. And her wonder would be OUR wonder, and we could maybe get a sense of how incredible the 30th century is through virgin eyes (not to mention basic information about our Legionnaires).

The first arc of any good Legion run should be about what the Legion IS. If it were me, the next would be about what it ISN'T, and what it COULD be.

That could be a great entry point for non-Legion readers and introduce the rest of us to a new manifestation of the team, seen through the eyes of an ordinary person. Who among us hasn't imagined what it would be like to be transported to the Legion's future?

We got a bit of a taste of that in the very early days when Superboy and Supergirl were first brought to the 30th century and taken on a tour of different sites.

I'd leave the super cousins out of any Legion story, except as a reference. As far as I'm concerned, any version after the initial one - postboot DnA, WaK, 3boot - which introduced Superboy or Supergirl into the story went downhill quickly.

Exactly.

I think one of the things that has really been lost from the Legion of late -- outside of the Waid issues of the Threeboot -- is some perspective on just how fantastic the SETTING is. That, to me, is almost more vital than any individual member of the Legion, and so often it lies fallow, unexplored.

Show readers how FANTASTIC the space in which they exist is, and how much MORE fantastic the Legion is STILL; even in this utopian era, a wonder. Show them not just who the Legion is, but why they should care. Make every issue a journey of discovery, a flood of set pieces and character moments.

It is an Age of Wonders. Show us.

New readers, old readers...I think everyone can get behind that.



I don't think it needs to be particularly taboo, but playing too much with that kind of past continuity invites complications. It happened, he was around, if the story calls for it or editorial calls for it it can be made to work, but it wouldn't be a crucial part of my long term plan, yeah.

Wanted to respond to this more in depth but didn't have the time.



It's a fair point, and there comes a time when you have to recognize that about yourself, and step out of his hobby. Easier said than done, when it has given you so much pleasure over the years, but putting away childish things and all that.

I still have a passion for, and fervent belief in, this medium, and even the superhero genre. I believe it can be great. I believe it can be BETTER. And I believe it can appeal to you, me, and kids. Not by talking down to the least among us but by encouraging them to stretch themselves.

I really believe that people WANT to learn, they want to get something out of their entertainment. So much of who I am and what I know and what I like I was exposed to through entertainment of some sort; as a younger kid in highschool I didn't understand 1/20th of the sources that informed Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol, but I knew quality when I saw it, and I knew I WANTED to learn more. I come back to that run every couple of years, looking for references, and every time it gives me something new to chew on; holographic universes, dream palaces, gnostic cosmologies.

There is no reason a "Legion" writer can't throw a reference in to Jackson Pollack or Arthur Miller (I use them because I've specifically thought of scenes that might do just that), so long as it's either non-vital (re: additive, for those in the know but not deleterious for those in the not) or it is succinctly explained.

There was a strange psychology at work in even the Golden/Silver Age books, stories that made an effort to say more than it appeared at first glance.



I see two problems with this, myself.

One, it feels a bit of a cheat to change the entire cast, repopulating it with your own creations. It feels lazy, and arrogant, and selfish to me to create an entirely new cast so that you don't have to work with anything that came before. That strikes me as a little bit similar to the reboot concept, albeit less confusing.

Two, this kind of wholesale 'one thing or the other' approach strikes me as divisive, and unnecessarily so. I don't think the cast has to be 'all new' or 'all classic', but some mix thereof. I'm not sure you lose or gain any stories from one and not the other.

Certainly I feel a number of characters should essentially stay out of the limelight, stay retired or dead or what have you. Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel are trainers -- that's where they'll stay, and for the good of it. The occasional story of them making a stand with their dew eyed students - as Giffen did in 5YL - is welcome and appropriate, but we don't need them in the Legion. Much of their story has come to a (happy) end.

Ditto Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad. They're happy, they're content, they're on Winath on the farm doing their thing, and there is no reason to drag them into anything (though I DO think a new Saturn Girl is something I'd want to see/explore; the whole concept of telepaths is such an interesting one to me, and I think there are some novel ways to explore the psychological impact of telepathy).

As I see it, those characters might come out for special occasions, might make a cameo. Perhaps as one of the big crescendos to a battle you have Cosmic Boy really up against the ropes, trying to lead the Legion (for he, in my vision, is the Captain America of the Legion) to victory against impossible odds. And perhaps two old friends take the field once more, to help a friend save civilization one more time (though, in such a crescendo, thematically the original 3 would INSPIRE the victory, but the newer recruits would be the ones to EXECUTE it).

But I digress. Some stories are finished, should be finished. But some stories are still very much vital -- I can so, SO many ways to go with Brainiac 5, Mon El, Wildfire, Shadow Lass, White Witch, Blok.

No reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater, I think.

Yes they are. But a 'Superman and the Legion' story is no less a 'Legion' story than are the dozens and dozens and dozens of 'Superboy and the Legion' stories. He is a long-time member and friend of this team after all.

And even though this storyline appeared in Action Comics, and Superman appeared thoughout it, I respectfully question how anyone could consider this MORE of a Superman story than a Legion one. Everything from the setting to the majority of the characters that appeared throughout it (including heroes, villains and supporting characters), to the history and stories it drew upon, to the repurcussions it caused, are all front-and-centre Legion elements. This story seemed more Legiony to me than some stories I've read in a book titled The Legion of Super-Heroes.



We must have read completely different versions of this story because I never saw any pages where the Legion just sat around while Superman did all the saving for them. Indeed, one of the things that I loved most about it was that Geoff Johns high-lighted the fact that these were all long-time childhood friends who cared for each other and needed ALL of their powers as teammates to overcome the odds.

As for the dystopian aspect - no one is more of a supporter of the optimistic-future setting for the Legion than me, but having this story start in the pits of despair and then travel to the highs of victory makes it no less a Legion story than many similar ones such as 'Legion of the Damned', Legion Lost and practically the entirety of the 5YL series.



But I am looking at it from the perspective of a Legion fan. Me! And I don't get what was laughable about the return of any of those characters. Certainly nothing was laughable about their portrayals here. Is it just your knowledge of how they were introduced in the Adventure-era that makes them laughable to you? That precludes the re-introduction of a whole host of characters if so.

And if it's just their 'rejected applicants bent on revenge' aspect? Well, that has a long and proud tradition in the Legion's universe! Not to mention, half of them have been out-and-out villains for a long while now.



There's no doubt that Geoff Johns knows his DC Comics history and utilises it often, but to say that that's ALL he does betrays a glaring unfamiliarity with his work. I hate to sound like a big Geoff Johns-booster here because I have multiple problems with the man's writing but his work on Green Lantern alone, especially his creation of 6 whole new corps of ring-bearers and the dozens and dozens of characters that populate them, is testament to that. He may use DC's long and wonderful history to inform some of his story ideas but they're never a crutch IMO. They're just there for the older fans to recognise and appreciate. I'm sure newer fans never even notice them. And I'd rather have someone to do that than just make nonsensical whole-sale change just for the sake of it being 'new'. Which brings me to...



Are we talking Reboot or Threeboot Waid here? Because if it's Threeboot Waid then I don't think he understood a single thing about what made the Legion work at all. And I definitely do not think any one of his 'new' ideas had any sort of future-lasting potential to them. Confirmed by the way they were all soundly rejected by the majority of the readership and most subsequent writers on the book.



I completely agree that Legion of Three Worlds has its problems - the Superboy (Kon-el) and Kid Flash intrusions most of all (though some could argue that they're allies of this team) - but we must remember that it was always going to be a tie-in mini-series to a DC-wide event first, and a Legion mini second. And that event was all about weird time travel/multiverse fluctuations.

So of course they're going to use it as an opportunity to team up the various versions of the team - something that many fans had been longing to see. By its very nature then, a story like that is going to employ a degree of navel-gazing and back-story explaining. And for what it was, and for being able to juggle the multitude of characters as well as he did, I think Geoff Johns did an admireably enjoyable job with this Legion story.

I also think that to judge how Geoff Johns would write an ongoing Legion book based on how he wrote this very different sort of one-off event book is completely unfair.

But that's all just IMO too.

The main positive thing I can say about Legion of Three Worlds is that it wasn't the complete and total slaughterfest of Legion characters that I was expecting from Johns. Other than that I thought it was a pretty wretched storyline.

"Superman and the Legion" was perhaps the best story since this whole retroboot thing began, but that to me is an indication of just how bad this version of the team has been. From the basic implausibility of the main plot motive (so, Earth Man finds this buried tablet saying Superman isn't from Earth, and suddenly most of Earth's population becomes space-rascists? What?) to turning loveable, bumbling rejects-turned-criminals into deeply disturbed and sadistic villains, there's just so much to dislike about this story.

I think what Johns was trying to do with "Superman and the Legion" was twofold: First, to present a motivation for the Legion of Super-Heroes to continue its existence. The second reason is to connect this motivation to a concept that readers in 2013 resonate with (my college is holding a Diversity Summit this week).

DING! DING! DING! Was it in this thread or the other one that someone was saying that Legion stories need to reflect more of the concerns that face today's readership, rather than the 1950s ones? Well, it's no new issue but I can't think of many problems more prevalent in society today than xenophobia.

I don't want to get into too much of a game into which "Superboy and the Legion..." stories were really Superboy stories and which were Legion stories; as you know, they were often split, some were more about the Legion, some were more about Superboy, sometimes it was just a backup about the Legion sans Superboy, etc.

But all that you list, that doesn't make it a Legion story, anymore than Wolverine in the Savage Land is a Kazar story. The Legion, the future, it's all just there to highlight how amazing SUPERMAN is, to support and complement his arc, his struggle, his journey.

And again, I won't knock it -- it's a Superman story, it's SUPPOSED to be about how spectacular Superman is. Johns did his job, and did it well. But, ultimately, the lesson there is that where the Legion failed, Superman succeeds. And, again, that's diametrically opposed to what I think the Legion is about.







And that's well and good, but they didn't EFFECT anything. They ran around, but their big play for success? That was bringing Superman from the past into the future to save them from something too big for them to deal with themselves.

All that you say is true; it was a nice, heart warming tale of childhood friends. Yet again, that's the bedrock of the story; nostalgia for the past. And that carries all the way through -- the future is DYSTOPIAN, and only a hero from the PAST can set things right again.

I don't mean to chide you for liking that story or liking that message, but I think it runs directly counter to everything that a good Legion story should try to say.



Indeed, as I said earlier I'm not against the idea of a dystopian future (although for 5YL that dystopia was WROUGHT by re-manifestation of old world superstition and ritual, as represented by magic, so that is perfectly aligned with the thematic underpinnings the Legion), but here it works to a very specific purpose; to glorify the PAST, to make us FEAR the future. Again, not what the Legion is about.





You're clearly not a true Legion fan! You've been brainwashed, you fool!

Kidding, of course, kidding. I shouldn't have been so universal there, and I certainly don't claim to speak for all Legion fans (indeed, I appear to be in the minority).




I just find the backwards-looking nature of the whole thing - picking up these nothing characters designed to be throwaways and trying to turn them into a 'badass' threat to be a little sad. Sort of the way Moore (unfairly and inaccurately) mocked Johns for basing 5+ years of storytelling around an 8 page story he (Moore) wrote back in the 80s. Again, the obsession with continuity minutiae, the 'backwards focus', comes out everywhere.







Au contraire, mon frere! I'm actually an old school Johns fan; I posted on his message board at comicbloc during the very earliest days of its existence. I've read everything the man has ever published at DC or Marvel (brief as the stint there was).

I've interacted with him personally, at length, and still do. He's a spectacularly great guy, with an unerring eye for what works and what doesn't on the page, and his instincts on how to connect people emotionally to his characters are dead on and so focused. I in NO way mean to degrade his skill; he does what he does and he does it better than anyone, and he's earned every inch of his popularity.

But there are some guys ill suited to certain characters or franchises. Grant Morrison is, bar none, my favorite writer currently working in comics in any capacity, Alan Moore inclusive. And I think he's probably the most versatile man in comics, too. But I'm not chomping at the bit to see him write Spider-Man.



I've written at length already about how I see JOhns' work or where I see it, but succinctly; it's not just about using the history of the DCU, it's about the thesis at the base of his work. You point to Green Lantern, but that's as good an example as any other; the main character conflict there was Hal's anger and disassociation from those around him thanks to the death of his father. Which happened when he was a child. THAT is the thematic underpinning there, Hal trying to overcome the burden of that in various ways (manifesting first as a fight against fear, then as a fight against death itself, finally as a fight against the emotional distance he put between himself and others). It's all fine - although a bit thin for some 10 years of writing - but it's all looking at the past, trying to overcome traumas of the past.

You cite the Emotional Spectrum, and that was an addition, and a powerful one, but I'd argue that urge to look to the past was once again present, because Johns really stopped there, didn't he? Once that concept was introduced and begun in earnest (post-Sinestro Corps War), that was the series, the series was that.

As an interesting aside, I think part of the problem I'd have with Johns' Legion is part of the problem that I felt developed with DnA's Legion. In summary, the antagonists were the story, the story was the antagonists. There wasn't a lot else going on but the conflict at hand. And whatever character stuff you got was in response to that.

But part of what made Levitz's Legion so great was that it was juggling all these wonderful subplots, some of which entertwined with a main antagonist, but some of which were just journey's of discovery and character development that were their own end, and had significance only in future characterization. That lack of singular focus, and that diversity of plot/tone/whathaveyou I think is important for the Legion moreso than most books.





I'm speaking to the Threeboot Waid, and yes I know it was often not well received, but I maintain that a lot of the conceptual work there was brilliant. I thought the characters were shallow, off putting and utterly uninteresting in the extreme, sometimes repulsive. But so much of the idea work there -- the Legion as a youth movement, all the various weirdness associated with the Legionnaires (Chameleon Boy as a truly alien character, the origin of Duplicate Girl, the whole Giant-Who-Shrinks inversion for Gim), the Bottle City of Colu, all the various innovations and explications of transport or data processing or what have you (my memory is foggy now) that came out when they were being sabotaged.

Waid changed so many of the trappings and the set pieces and even the character dynamics of the Legion when he came on for his reboot, and I don't love a lot of what he did there. But what he absolutely, fundamentally got right was that he made it a book about the future, about social change, about the difference youth can make in society, and about the imperative to do so. It's a run about being informed by, but not obsessed with, the past, and that is what the Legion is all about.





But it was first and foremost supposed to be a Legion story, right? "Legion of Three Worlds", focusing on the Legion...it's a Legion story. None of the intrusions I decry were in any way related to Final Crisis. Not a single one was mandated or required by that event, and in no way did "Legion of Three Worlds" support the "Final Crisis" narrative, or even effectively tie into it. So divorced and off-the-mark was it that Morrison had to hastily script a bridging scene, ably drawn by Carlos Pacheco. And, yet again, in some 3 pages gave me more a feeling of "The Legion" than all of Legion of Three Worlds (though, again, this wasn't a Legion story and it showed).



But 'what it was' is the most important part for me, and if 'what it was' is fundamentally WRONG for the Legion, then I'm not going to be satisfied, certainly not supportive of more.

I hope that is not coming off as me being against change, because I don't think that I am. But I do believe that certain core tenants of what a book, a character, a team, are about should be maintained, or something new should be created. I think Johns either didn't see it or didn't care to do it, and so I don't particularly want to see him on the book.

IN reference to your last bit, I'll not deny Johns' technical skill in pleasing fans and giving us some great moments and fun forays into lore. What's more, he has a significant skill in communicating what makes a character cool, and relatable, in almost no time at all, and it is this that has made him so popular. Talking about the craft with him, seeing his enthusiasm, there is no mistaking that this is a passionate and smart writer, and I feel uncomfortable being put in the position of 'hating' on the man's work, because that isn't my goal at all.





I'm not. I'm judging it by the entire history of his work, both on the Legion and on every other book he's ever written and published.



Goes without saying, brotha! I'm enjoying the discussion, and hope you are to! No hard feelings intended.

I think his goal there was pretty obvious, and I totally get what he did and why he did it. It's the mechanism behind nearly all of his storytelling choices; he wants to make these characters relatable, their world relatable.

But I think there are other ways to go about it.

Xenophobia has been a part of our society since long before the 1950s. It's no more relevant now than it was then, and the Legion has ALWAYS addressed it. The difference is only in the manner, and how thick it's laid on.

But as we talked about in the "essence" thread, diversity is one outgrowth of the thematic underpinning of the Legion concept.

Let me just say, over on comicbookresources there is a thread asking "which characters can't you get into".

The number of replies with "Legion of Superheroes" is absolutely heartbreaking.

http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?446895-Characters-you-just-can-t-get-into/page2


SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!!!!!

Well, yeah. I'm sure that was also Waid and company's goal when they made anti-alien sentiments a central feature of the reboot Legion's world in 1994.

The problem is that the preboot Legion's society wasn't like that. It was a world in which the integration of aliens into Earth culture was taken as given. There were examples of prejudice, most notably against Durlans, but that had as much to do with suspicion about their powers than with the simple fact of their being aliens. So, to present something as a continuation of the preboot Legion, in which a massive amount of the human population could be turned into anti-alien hysterics on an incredibly flimsy excuse just doesn't ring true.

Now the one place that a substantial "Aliens go home!" sentiment does crop up in the preboot Legion is near the very end in the Legionnaires series. But the set up there is that evil aliens have infiltrated and controlled Earth's government for several years, murdered tons of people, eventually resulting in the actual destruction of the Earth and the death of tons of more people, and at that point, faced with food scarcities, some of the survivors actually decide that they want to kick the aliens off "New Earth". Now *that* is a pretty powerful motivation for even the most utopian of future societies to develop anti-alien prejudices.

By contrast, the idea that based on one flimsy piece of evidence dug up out of the ground that contradicts all of the other vast information that had been accumulated about Superman's history, the average citizen of Earth would suddenly grab his torch and pitchfork and start burning down the house of Joebob Alien that he's lived and worked beside for years just seems incredibly silly.

I like to think that, had Johns gone on to become LSH writer as was originally planned, he was going to reveal Earth Man had Universo helping him with his "Aliens Go Home" plot. *sighs dreamily for what might have been* I am almost sure he would have, and it would have been fun.

Exacerbated by the fact that many of the 'aliens' they were railing against were folk like the Braalians, Winathians and Titanians, who had pretty much been established for decades as colonists from Earth.

Yeah, some anti-Durlan hysteria isn't completely out of the question, since historical records state that they helped the Dominators and Khunds invade the Earth a long time ago, and they are kind of creepy, pretending to be friendly orange humanoids with antennae when they are really green tentacle monsters. Even Daxamites, when they oh-so-rarely leave their planet, must be existentially terrifying. A single person capable of pushing the moon down on Metropolis if the whim takes him, and, not so long ago, having been enslaved by Darkseid and sent to terrorize Earth?

But Winathians? Carggites? Rimborians? Not factually aliens, and not even remotely 'alien' or 'scary.'

Then again, this was around the time that it was asserted that Projectra's heart was in a different place (or that she had two of them?) because she was an 'alien,' so who knows what the hell Robinson and / or Geoff were thinking...

I'd forgotten about that aspect!

I'm pretty sure that even Universo's hypnosis can't make this plausible.

The only solution: Everyone in the story was on Cosmic King's space-dope!

The clue, of course, is in how strung out everyone looks in Gary Frank's artwork...

I bought the TPB of that a while back and I was just SO creeped out by the art. There was a scene where Brainiac is smiling and I was fully expecting him to have rotted out teeth from too much heroin.

AHAHAHAHA

Nice.

Anyway, I'm not too concerned with some of the absurdities of the plot or the suspension of disbelief necessary to make it work (it's implausible, but it's comics so I'll go with it).

For me it's more about the message underlying those choices, that necessitated those contrivances.

H8ers!

This was the last best Legion story! There is so much else to criticize since then !!!!

I didn't say I didn't enjoy it! I just said that the Legionnaires looked like they needed an intervention! XD

They were "suffering from exhaustion".

... as the celebrities say.

Frank does some mean *crazy eyes* too!

But his Superman looks much like Christopher Reeve. big +