Legion of Super-Heroes question for the hardcore fans

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I've been reading the Supergirl in the Silver Age TPBs and when the Legion of the Superheroes first meet Kara, they mention that they are the children of the original Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl that Superboy met in the LSH's first appearance.

What was that all about?

[Comic-Reader Lad]

That issue (Action Comics 267) from 1960 was a pretty early appearance of the Legion -- in fact, it was only the Legion's 3rd appearance in comics -- and so the rules were not established in concrete yet.

In some early stories, they also referred to the Legion as coming from the 21st century instead of the 30th.

Eventually, everything got straightened out and when the Legion visited Supergirl again in a later story (Action 276, where she joined the Legion with Brainiac 5), the "children of" angle was not mentioned even when they referred to the earlier adventure from Action 267.

My speculation:
I think the idea was that Mort Weisinger, the editor of the Superman titles, felt that readers would be confused as to how the Legionnaires could be the same age when visiting both Superboy and Supergirl. Since Superboy was an adult in Supergirl's time, it would make "sense" to the young readers that the Legion would also be adults and have kids of their own.

I guess he later decided, as the Legion kept appearing more and more, not to have two Legions (parents & their children), and trusted his readers to get the idea that they could travel from the future to Superboy's era or Superman's era and still be the same age.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

That issue (Action Comics 267) from 1960 was a pretty early appearance of the Legion -- in fact, it was only the Legion's 3rd appearance in comics -- and so the rules were not established in concrete yet.

In some early stories, they also referred to the Legion as coming from the 21st century instead of the 30th.

Eventually, everything got straightened out and when the Legion visited Supergirl again in a later story (Action 276, where she joined the Legion with Brainiac 5), the "children of" angle was not mentioned even when they referred to the earlier adventure from Action 267.

My speculation:
I think the idea was that Mort Weisinger, the editor of the Superman titles, felt that readers would be confused as to how the Legionnaires could be the same age when visiting both Superboy and Supergirl. Since Superboy was an adult in Supergirl's time, it would make "sense" to the young readers that the Legion would also be adults and have kids of their own.

I guess he later decided, as the Legion kept appearing more and more, not to have two Legions (parents & their children), and trusted his readers to get the idea that they could travel from the future to Superboy's era or Superman's era and still be the same age.

Thanks. I assume some continuity nerd explained it away as a time shenanigans on the part of the Time Trapper or something

[Adset]

that really threw me, too, when i first started dabbling with the silver age legion w/ those black-and-white showcase collections.

[Anthony Shaw]

Thank goodness the 10th Doctor explained it all.

[Jim Kelly]

I don't know if it needs explaining away. I know that sometimes when the stories were reprinted they would change a balloon or a caption to fix the apparent errors in some stories. But I like my reprints to be faithful. For example, there's a panel at the end of their debut story in ADVENTURE COMICS 247 where a few other Legionnaires appear--and in my LSH ARCHVES, one of them is re-coloured to make him look like Brainiac 5. I hate that--I want the authentic colouring--besides which it becomes a continuity error via retcon, given B5 didn't show up until later in the chronology.

Some fans have created theories and chronologies that include these missteps, but I'm grown up and I know that they just made these gaffes either because they forgot or they wanted to change a previous fact (like maybe at one point they thought that the 21st century was more credible than the 30th century) or they wanted to make a clear division between Supergirl and Superboy. There was also the story in SUPERMAN 147, where Superman meets the Legion of Super-Villains (who are old) and also meets the Adult Legion.

As I've been slowly re-reading these stories of late, I just have to overlook some of these things, because when you add it all up it doesn't make sense. For instance, the LSH deny Supergirl admission because she became over 18 (due to Red K) and the Legion only adds one or two members per year. So if they age out of the Legion, and they admit only a couple new members per year, how do they have so many members? They would be in a constant state of gaining a couple of members and losing a couple of members per year. These rules are soon overlooked anyway, as they start to admit many more members at a rapid pace.

Another way to look at it is Supergirl and Superboy don't really know what's going on. The LSH play tricks on them and maybe they do this because the actual reality is much different from what they want Supergirl and Superboy to know. I wouldn't be opposed to someone creating an explanation for the gaffes, if it resulted in a good story. But I don't want major retcons just to fix harmless faults.

[j9ac9k]

CBR covered Supergirl's meeting with the Legion as well in this article:
https://www.cbr.com/supergirl-legion...first-meeting/