Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Brian Bendis & Ryan Sook relaunch the LSH

I know I complained about this before but I'm going to give the new Legion a try and I'll hype it at my store.

I still fully intend to do my stories with the other Legions at some point, but, I can't stand by my belief that all the Legions deserve the right to exist alongside one another if I'm not willing to give Bendis' group my support too. He wants to do his thing just like I want to do my thing.

And I do like the White Witch design and I'm wondering who the Lantern is.

...just really wish Garth and Ayla were still redheads instead of having brown hair with a slight red tint.

The Legion is interesting to me because we all have a version of "My Legion" which is the template that we approach all other versions of the team. I'm not sure any comics idea/character/team can survive being kept stagnant. As a longtime fan, I've had to be open to shifts in the Legion with each reboot/recreation/revisiting. Even Levitz's return to the Legion was a different version than the one he wrote in the 80s.

I personally hope that the redesigned Legion speaks to a new generation of readers.

I don't know how the new alien species stuff will be sorted. We do see how the portrayal of race/difference/alien species has changed over the decades. We no longer have the Shadow Lass or Ferro Lad hints at being Black, we don't have Tyroc's heavy handed introduction (although I will miss his original outfit). We've had Tellus and Quislet as Legionnaires. We have had a Black Star Boy. I'm not sure what the changes in these characters indicates about this future. I'm looking forward to reading it.

As for Bendis, he's on/off for me. There have been high points, but his part in orchestrating company-wide crossovers just put me off Marvel in the end (since the Civil War). His pacing is inconsistent for me; sometimes I feel like I missed an issue - or at least a few pages. I'm hoping that his Legion is more in line with some of the insights and relative consistency he's brought to Superman (and WAY before that - his runs on Ultimate Spider Man, Daredevil and Alias/Jessica Jones).

The more Legions out there the merrier, as far as I'm concerned.

I can’t say I've seen anything about this version yet that's wowed me, and generally I'd prefer more classic designs for the classic characters, but whatever. I'll give it a chance...

My main thing was always that making a new continuity would just muddle the stories I want to tell professionally someday, and I've been afraid creating a new one would only alienate more fans and potential new ones.

At this point, I think the best bet is to embrace the complexity. Acknowledge that there are tons of different versions of the Legion out there in the multiverse, and use that fact to your advantage. Have the Legion periodically visit alternate versions, both established and new. Go wild with it.

I’m open to new characters, but part of me feels a bit sad that we got new characters while so many great ones are not being redesigned / reimagined for this new version.

of course from a practical point of view, we can’t have too many characters on the team... too difficult to write.

will definitely give this a chance.

Hey there, Legion fans. I for one am really excited about this new Legion. I just take the attitude that the Legion is the stuff of myth. Each writer and artist is interpreting that myth as they see it. For me, the essence of the Legion remains through all the interpretations. I'm just happy to see all the Legionaires back again. There's a comic book shop in the same building as my office. Now I finally have a reason to visit.

Technically this is the first confirmation of Triplicate Girl as well, not that there was much doubt.

Did anyone notice that in the article, they kept referring to the "31st century?" Is this the first time they seem to have ditched the "32nd century" setting?

Updating my guesses now that we know more...

1. Colossal Boy - not confirmed
2. Monster Boy - new (Robert L. Chambers' (Caro, Mich.) "Monster Boy can assume any wierd form he chooses." - ADVENTURE COMICS #350)
3. Blok
4. White Witch - not confirmed
5. Princess Projectra
6. Chameleon Boy
7. Triplicate Girl
8. Barbara Reed's (Yuma City, Calif.) "Atomic Kid - he has the power of atomic radiation and the explosive force of an atomic bomb." - ADVENTURE COMICS #309 - new
9. Shadow Lass
10. Kid Fate or Gary Haught's (Akron, Ohio) "SPELL BOY - he has the power to cast a spell on any outlaw." - ADVENTURE COMICS #312 - new
11. Sun Boy - not confirmed
12. Gold Lantern or Dale Jenkins' (Chicago, Ill) "DAZZLE DANNY - has the power of temporarily blinding any person or animal with blinding colors. - ADVENTURE COMICS #314 - new
13. Bouncing Boy - not confirmed
14. Karate Kid - not confirmed
15. Dream Girl
16. Mon-El
17. Saturn Girl
18. Shrinking Violet
19. Superboy
20. Brainiac Five
21. Phantom Girl - not confirmed
22. Lightning Lad
23. Dawnstar
24. Cosmic Boy
25. Element Lad
26. Light Lass - not confirmed
27. Star Boy
28. Ultra Boy - not confirmed
29. Wildfire - not confirmed
30. Matter-Eater Lad
31. Timber Wolf
32. Invisible Kid - not confirmed
33. Mystery Immortal Woman

supergirl 33 by kevin maguire:

Here's the 5 page spread, Nightcawler

I think Emerald Empress has made it clear he’s not a fan of any of these major visual changes to the Legion, so it’s not fair to call him racist for joining the discussion about Lightning Lad IMO.

Especially since it seems to be a discussion that has created speculation beyond Legion World too:

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2019/0...l-33-destroyed-racial-concerns-spoilers/

I also hate the racial change to Lightning Lad but as I’ve previously mentioned, I think it’s ridiculous that DC doesn’t see the issue with creating yet another black lightning-wielding character. Good luck to any future costume redesigners keeping them all looking distinct. Garth’s costume already looks almost exactly like the one in the Black Lightning TV show.

It’s also totally boring. Black characters are already a minority so why pigeon-hole so many prominent ones with the same power set? How many black telepaths are out there? Why couldn’t Saturn Girl be “the black one”? Which is also exactly how tokenistic this change seems to be to me - “Oh look, now we have one black, one white and one Asian as founders. Racial harmony!” /s

And on a final note, I also think it’s disappointing that just because they’ve made Garth black, they seem to have moved Chuck back to white. I thought his new design with the dark skin and white dreads looked great on the Ryan Sook cover and it was also refreshing to see a black hero with that body shape in the DCU.

Anyway, let’s wait and see what the reprinted issues show us. As Rich Johnson says, it is weird that they’ve only pulled those two issues.

Only the gods and the future know if we are getting the black lightning lad legion or the white crew cut lightning lad legion. It does seem like the gods play dice with white and black.

People keep saying Lightning Lad is Black. I'm looking at the three last scans.

I don't see it.

I will say this: this is not MY Legion. And I'm glad. I'm an old man. Let this be somebody else's Legion.

(Not that I won't want to read it.)

So Supergirl #33 isn't listed in "The Road to Legion" checklist. So, Legion content or not?

Well, you're already a white male going by a female name, so you'd think you'd be more flexible.

(Personally, I'm curious as to why redheads seem to be the apparent obvious choice when a raceflip is wanted. It's a curious thing)


Because this is "the same" Saturn Girl who's been appearing on-and-off since Rebirth, officially.

(Exactly how they reconcile this version of Phantom Girl with he Btzgl seen in Terrifics is a separate question...)

Hey! Where is the "Ginger" representation in the Legion now?! The Ranzz twins were the only representation of this significant minority. No redheads? Oooh!

Just kidding. I am not a redhead myself. I admit to feeling uncomfortable about the darkening of the Ranzz twins and wait to see how their hair colour turns out. I guess by the the 31st (32nd?) century racial mixing will be fairly extreme and then there is the question of whether they are Home Sapiens Terra anyway or is their colour any different to green, pink or blue?

So no it is not about race for me. I didn't even blink at Threeboots dark Star Boy, but perhaps that was because I found that incarnation of the team so far removed from any of the previous versions that I just saw them as an "Elseworlds" type.

I feel equally uncomfortable about Cos's asian look. Where I live we have lots of asians and darker indian-asian skin tones, many of whom are close friends. it is more like I was looking forward to reading new adventures of characters I was familiar with and the visual imagery is different enough to make them a new character instead. Others such as Karate Kid flipflopped between asian-caucasian and I didn't care but the core group? I don't know. Perhaps I am more stuck in the past than I thought. While I read all the New-52 Superman he never completely felt like my Superman to me even though I thought he was a good character, and pretty much all they did to him visually was make him younger.

Still I look forward with excitement and interest to how this version plays out.

I am especially excited about how much DC is pushing this. We haven't had publicity for the Legion like this for years if ever!
Bring on the new fans and let them catch the fever. This will be "their" Legion and the previous ones will be the alternates but it doesn't matter. Just make it a big deal again and let more people enjoy it.

Sooooo, NONE of the "core" DC titles released this week here in Canada had those pages at the back of the comics, as stated by some on here! What gives???
Which issue(s), exactly, did you pull those images from Nightcrawler because I would like to pick up a copy.

Anyways, once the new Legion comes out I will only refer to the former Lightning Lad as Black Lightning!
.... you know, so as to help "support" Bendis's need to alter the founders to the point of non-recognition! It makes sense though if you think about it. The Founders are now made up an Asian/Oriental male, Caucasian female , and now finally after destroying thousands of perfectly good copies of Supergirl/Superman, we have an "African American/South Asian" male! That rounds out the Big Three!

Congrats Mr. Bendis for covering all your bases! Good job!

Thank you!

My wife and child are red heads. I tend to think of Lightning Lad as pretty iconically a ginger, more important than Cosmic Boy’s whatever ethnicity and even Saturn Girl’s icy blondness. And I agree that the DC needs another electrically powered black man like I need another 10 pounds on my midsection. But, I’m willing to see what BMB has in mind. I think it’s incredibly important for people of all types to see themselves reflected in art and pop culture and heroes. It’s why the Legion, even in its original white incarnation, appealed to so many of us nonconformists—the large cast gave us more opportunity to find a character with which to identify. I do wish the Legion had a red head, just for old time’s sake.

A totally random thought: the seeming association of Triplicate Girl’s distinct selves with color perception makes me think of the Martians from the 1950s George Pal adaptation of “War of the Worlds.” The aliens had a trilateral symmetry and an eyeball with the same 3 part color wheel structure as the new Triplicate Girl’s symbol. Also, the 1950s aluminum Christmas tree illumination lamp. Coincidence? I THINK NOT.

But to be even fairer, he did say:



So they're not exactly making up identity politics here.

Okay but it does creep me out a little they gave Karate Kid that weird "Bald but braided" hairstyle that was frequent in older martial arts characters, like Stuff the Chinatown Kid. Wasn't that hairstyle rampant in old Western stories or something?

^ Well yes, that does sound similar to the “poor, persecuted white people” mindset that seems to be prevalent in certain circles these days, but I give him the benefit of the doubt because:

a) I can understand EE’s frustration when a favored visual depiction of a character (which is, I think, a valid concern in a very visual medium like comics) gets snatched away at the last minute;
b) his prior criticisms of all of the changes to this Legion, not just Garth; and
c) I think we all recognize that English is not his first language and that sometimes his intent gets muddled.

But I don’t know EE so this isn’t a hill I’m planning to die on.

But I think this conversation (not exactly this specific one, I mean the general one about race-shifting characters and “what is too much change?”) is interesting and I’ve got strong thoughts about it.

First of all (though this mainly applies to depictions of comic characters in other media) I think it is a very valid complaint when the appearance of a character you have been looking at every week or month for however many years is changed, either significantly (such as race, gender, etc.) or insignificantly (such as hair color, costume, etc.). So it really annoys me when people hand-wave those complaints away as the petty grievances of someone who’s afraid of change, or worse.

Unlike books, comics are obviously fueled by both words and pictures so the visual appearance of the character you are reading about/looking at is clearly vitally important. And for many people, the visual depiction of the character IS the character. Batman must have about a hundred similar brooding, loner, urban characters who both pre-date and post-date him, but only one of them has all the features that make up Bruce Wayne/Batman. So IMO it’s perfectly reasonable for a fan to want and expect that consistency across mediums. Especially if that character has never (or rarely) been depicted before.

But it’s also obvious that society is only becoming increasingly more diverse these days, and in order to meet the expectations and needs of a contemporary readership, comics have to grapple with the problem that most of their most popular characters stem from a “whites only” period in time.

I personally prefer the approach the Reboot used. Keep the original characters as created but introduce and promote more diverse new ones to fill the void. I just wish they’d applied a bit more to the effort. XS and Kid Quantum II were great and Gear had potential if the story had run longer but they really should have built Dragonmage up more to fix the embarrassing lack of Asians on the team, and also introduced even more characters to represent some of the many other ignored cultures of the world.

I HATED the approach the Threeboot used. That was Tokenism with a capital ‘T’. “Oh no! We have an all-white Legion. Let’s randomly make...... Star Boy black! Great! Problem solved!”

I actually also like the approach Bendis is using - throw out everything (or almost everything) that came before and visually recreate the Legion from scratch. Change races, change species, don’t be beholden to anything but what suits the story. It feels organic rather than change to fill some quota or something.

I can definitely understand why for EE and others like him this huge departure from everything they’re used to would be an alienating example of “too much change” though. And if I was still at all attached to the Legion as an ongoing property I might have felt the same way. But luckily(?) for me, the story of the Legion and the entire DCU ended in 2011 with the damp squib of a finale that was “Flashpoint” so I’ve got no trouble looking at this new series as a new beast and a departure from everything that came before.

Blacula has right. I always love Tyroc, Invisible Kid II, Computo, Dragonmage Gear, XS and Catspaw and all the diversity in The Legion.... Kono, Veilmist, Tellus, Quislet, Gates.
But this 4boot changed everything... and the iconic characters...
Princess Projectra is no more the beautiful platinum blonde , now is a strager being with pink skin. Element Lad is a Green zombie.
But really ...if the reboot of Justice League.... has an afroamerican Superman, an asian Batman, a platinun blonde Wonder Woman, skin purple Martian Manhunter, skin yellow Hawkgirl, a cat Green Lantern readers would still buy the comic book? I do not think so
Is the same with the classic characters in The Legion.
And my complaint is ... if I had been introduced to Garth with dark skin first, I would have no problem. But they presented it with their classic appearance. They also did the same with Bouncing Boy, but vice versa, and I'm not very funny either ..
I just hope this version is not successful and return to the originals.
By making so many changes distort those created by artists in 60 years.
But it is sad that young people now, do not respect those who grew up with these characters. And I, like Blacula, think that The Legion died in 2011.