Legion Of Super Heroes fans - what would you like in a new book?

[Hypestyle]

Is there an updated Charter/Constitution of the Legion of Super Heroes, that folks can read? Maybe an author can come up with something.

[WonderScott]

I'd hire a team of a writer who's good with action and soap opera, a sci-fi/futurist thinker to help develop new and interesting concepts/ideas to explore in the Legion era, and an artist that's good with a cast of thousands and can design a new look for the Legion, that plays with their retro-space age vibe, but push it forward.

The New Lost in Space show on Netflix did a good job of providing new designs, lots of mystery and some eeriness, drama, and some space age conundrums.

DC could help move the Legion forward by breaking with the usual writer/artist dynamic to include someone else who can provide some theoretical insight into alien life and science, alongside all the relationship drama.

[kcekada]

Speaking only for myself, I have said that I want to see the Legion pick up from that era - not because I hated the 5YL Legion - those are among my favorite stories of all time. However, that felt like such a complete story that by the Zero Hour hit, it felt like an ending. And also, it started out amazing and ended ... not so great. It had taken so many of the characters so far afield from where they started and where had lived for so long that it was a mess.

You summed it up very well. This run was very much in keeping with the deconstruction of the traditional super hero that was trendy in the late 80s. It made for interesting stories -- but it didn't lend itself to an ongoing series. It had to end at some point. I recall when they destroyed Earth (with some cities becoming satellites), that I really missed the classic Legion where things weren't as dire as the 5YL series.

Now, I wasn't thrilled about the reboot -- it was a bit pie in the sky -- and they were missing the artistic genius of a Cockrum or a Giffen. While it's appropriate to give Paul Levitz so much credit, people often forget that it was Dave Cockrum and Keith Giffen who were also responsible for moving the series forward artistically. But it's difficult to attract great artists to Legion because of the huge cast (which is a big part of the appeal for me).

[oasis1313]

Anything but Mike Grell.

[caj]

The 5YL Legion was the Dark Knight version of the Legion. Very much a product of its times,all gloom and depressing. You can argue than the stories were good or bad or if you like it or not, but essentially this version was against everything the legion represented as a title: the legion was about optimism, a better tomorrow, were the humanity had reached the stars and lived amazing adventures. The 5YL was something more cyberpunk, were depiste the advances in technology, life was horrible.

I can appreciate the good writing of the 5YL Legion, but it was depressing IMO. I had a subscription to it and every month when it would arrive, I would have knots in my stomach before I read it. I mean, I actually dreaded reading it because I never knew what act of torture my favorite characters were going to endure. The fate of Sun Boy was the final blow for me. I couldn't take it anymore.

[Ropeburn]

I can appreciate the good writing of the 5YL Legion, but it was depressing IMO. I had a subscription to it and every month when it would arrive, I would have knots in my stomach before I read it. I mean, I actually dreaded reading it because I never knew what act of torture my favorite characters were going to endure. The fate of Sun Boy was the final blow for me. I couldn't take it anymore.

It was Star Boy for me. Bald and a baseball coach? Really? Science never came up with a cure for baldness? Just humiliating for the character. After that i just randomly bought the book.

[Jim Kelly]

Did you mean Laurel Gand or Laurel Kent. It was a long time ago, but I think Laurel Kent turned out to be a Manhunter.

While I liked some aspects of the MILLENNIUM crossover event, having so many people turn out to be Manhunters (either robots or humanoids) was something I did not like at all. For instance, it totally changed the character of Wally West's father. Wolfman & Perez had established that Wally had a good relationship with his parents--one of the few Titans who had both his parents living and in a healthy marriage--i.e. not Trigon and Arella.

It would have been better if it had been like the Skrulls, where Manhunters would have secretly replaced the characters and at different points in the timeline. It doesn't seem plausible that Laurel Kent could have been around all that time in the 30th century as a Manhunter robot without someone detecting that. It makes more sense that a robot had just replaced Laurel before it was found out.

It's also funny how in fiction everyone who is a robot has robotic machinery under their skin. Surely if you were making an artificial human you would just make them out of organic material so they'd be indistinguishable from other humans.

This is one of the bad things about the future Legion having all these connections with the present DCU. In so many of the crossover events, things that were happening now had to also happen a thousand years in the future. Even if the LSH didn't have records of the past, why would a threat so neatly return exactly one thousand years in the future like clockwork?

I'm torn on this issue, because I see that making connections with characters like Superman helps to bring more readers to the Legion. Yet making the Legion continuity beholden to whatever is happening in the DCU at the moment has been the biggest threat to their existence. The virtue of having so much separation in time should be that the creators can do whatever they want with the team without having to make it fit with the rest of the DCU--yet so often the opposite happens.

[CaptCleghorn]

This is one of the bad things about the future Legion having all these connections with the present DCU. In so many of the crossover events, things that were happening now had to also happen a thousand years in the future. Even if the LSH didn't have records of the past, why would a threat so neatly return exactly one thousand years in the future like clockwork?

This is a reason I support going to a year that's not exactly 1,000 years in the future. The year the book takes place in ever changing and now is subject to the same shifting timeline as present day stories. Call the year 3247 and go from there. Time can advance at its own pace and we're not looking at a first appearance in 2958 and current stories happening in the year 3018.