Long Live The Legion!!! Legion of Superheroes: Millenium with Bendis and Sook An

[j9ac9k]

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I still can't stand that they took off Cosmic Boy's bubble helmet! It's "Lightning BOY", not "Lightning Lad," and they've been getting his and Saturn Girl's colors wrong for over fifty years!!

[Thor-Ul]

Ok, I admit I saw Matter eater lad and I was like "nooooooooo!!" but I will be cautious about what they do.

[kcekada]

Now i’m More interested in phantom girl.

Why, because she looks nothing like she did before? I think it would make more sense with Shrinking Violet -- and maybe that's still who it is. I actually expected her to look a bit more like a phantom this time around.

[kcekada]

Here's where i stand. I'm excited about the return of Legion. I think the new 52 Legion that was a continuation of the class Legion could have been good -- but it wasn't great reading, and the art was mediocre. Levitz was clearly not up to the task -- and I don't think bringing in Giffen at the last minute did any good -- in fact, it did the opposite if he was responsible for what happened with Star Boy, Sun Boy and Phantom Girl.

So it's been several years without any Legion. Now, we're seeing new designs and learning about a new series. I'll give it a try. But...

I think it's going too far astray from what came before. Why not have designs a bit closer to the animated series? Those were inventive, but I could still tell who was whom. I'm think that this version will ultimately fail the same way previous reboots did -- because it's throwing too much away.

I guess you either appreciate the history or you don't. I'm in the former category.

[Frontier]

Here's where i stand. I'm excited about the return of Legion. I think the new 52 Legion that was a continuation of the class Legion could have been good -- but it wasn't great reading, and the art was mediocre. Levitz was clearly not up to the task -- and I don't think bringing in Giffen at the last minute did any good -- in fact, it did the opposite if he was responsible for what happened with Star Boy, Sun Boy and Phantom Girl.

So it's been several years without any Legion. Now, we're seeing new designs and learning about a new series. I'll give it a try. But...

I think it's going too far astray from what came before. Why not have designs a bit closer to the animated series? Those were inventive, but I could still tell who was whom. I'm think that this version will ultimately fail the same way previous reboots did -- because it's throwing too much away.

I guess you either appreciate the history or you don't. I'm in the former category.

I definitely think the animated series did a better job of updating and modernizing the Legion's visuals while still keeping them relatively iconic and close to their traditional looks.

[Stick Figure]

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I literally don’t know if that’s a real cover or a parody of One. I’ll take the Sook art and designs all day over that!!

[HandofPrometheus]

I'm scared for what Phantom Girl and Ultra Boy might look like.

[HandofPrometheus]

I definitely think the animated series did a better job of updating and modernizing the Legion's visuals while still keeping them relatively iconic and close to their traditional looks.

I LOVE the animated designs. They were close to my favorite era of the Legion but a little different and little bit classic.

[Korath]

Times change was kind of my point. People didn't carp about the history when it actually took serious effort to catch up in it if that was what you wanted to do. Fast forward 40 years. Minimal to zero effort to catch up on the history, at zero cost if you are satisfied with the wikia, and people carp about the history.

Well, let's agree to disagree.

You think it's easy, for me, it is not, because of the sheer mass of material that new readers are expected to get, which is more often than not a convoluted mess. Jumping in whenever you want is just a myth peddled by long time readers because I don't have any prior attachment to characters I only read about on wikia. And if I don't care about those, I don't see how I could just come on board with issue number 151 without having read the previous 150. Which, considering the nature of the comics format, doesn't make for an enticing prospective, even with modern technologies.

[billee0918]

These designs have the right mix of the familiar and different. Definitely going to check this out.

[caj]

I think 'barrier to entry' is a concept that's used to avoid saying 'maybe I'm not interested enough in that' or 'maybe that's not for me'.
I'd wager that a lot of readers that don't read something because of a perceived barrier, would likely still not read it if it was to relaunch.

Imagine this...
Phoenix Saga and Dark Phoenix Saga.
X-Men #101 to 108 and 129 to 138.

Now... let's jump ahead about a year to #150.

Now #151 comes out.
A DC reader who already picks up a full load of comics each month has someone tell him how great X-Men is.
"Oh, I don't know. It sounds good... but that's a lot to catch up on. It just seems too hard to get into."

Now, imagine if Marvel relaunched X-Men after #150.
With a brand new #1, new characters, new costumes, no previous reading of X-Men was required, everything from before is kinda shuffled under a rug.
New readers come in, expecting the excitement that the Dark Phoenix Saga buzz promises them to find it's no longer the same book. Because it was relaunched just for them.
They get a great jumping on point, but the book is entirely different and could've been any new title.
And since the Dark Phoenix Saga no longer even matters anymore, there goes the book's previous audience, also.

Now, just replace "X-Men" with "Legion", "Dark Phoenix Saga" with "Great Darkness Saga", "DC" with "Marvel" and re-read that.

You just summed it up perfectly. I didn't read New Teen Titans until the first battle with Blackfire (I think somewhere around #23, 24, or 25). It didn't matter to me that I had missed a lot of great storytelling. Figuring out what came before was half the fun.

[WonderScott]

Just a thought: Bendis may be going for a "it all counts, but also doesn't" sort of way.

So, at this point I feel comfortable talking Doomsday Clock spoilers, and in the latest issue we learned that from 1939 all the way till now "counted"/happened on Earth-0. Superman showed up in 1939 the first time and joined the JSA. But then time rewrote itself and Superman's first appearance happened later and later, and everything shifted along with it. Then over in Bendis' Young Justice we see that inhabitants of other worlds in the Multiverse are becoming more and more aware of the continuity changes to Earth-0 because they directly affect them too since Superman and Earth-0 are the linchpin of the Multiverse. Then I saw these pictures from DC: Millennium





You notice how even though it's the current day continuity we still see what is clearly a very classic Cyborg on a Teen Titans team with a young Dick Grayson and older Raven? Notice how we see Flashpoint Aquaman and Wonder Woman on display?

Is it possible that by Booster Gold's time the world at large is well aware of the reboots to their world and the Multiverse? I mean, I feel like that's a fairly likely thing, right? They invent fairly common time travel after all, so it stands to reason that someone would've found out about all these shifts.

So, maybe the Legion has some idea that they an incarnation of them used to be a thing in another timeline? Even if that's not the case, it at least firmly says that technically there was an incarnation of the Legion in the 30th and 31st centuries as far as the DCU is concerned, and this, similar to how the Clark we have now is technically just a new version of the 1939 one, is a new Legion with a new history.

This is an interesting and excellent point regarding how continuity shifts and the multiverse could be used in story and the Legion’s awareness of all of it.

Overall, I like the wide range of character designs and changes in appearance. I’m looking forward to seeing if Bendis dives into some sci-fi concepts for the characters, their powers, the nature of their beings, and their perceptions of the world alongside all the space opera shenanigans.

[Konja7]

Well, let's agree to disagree.

You think it's easy, for me, it is not, because of the sheer mass of material that new readers are expected to get, which is more often than not a convoluted mess. Jumping in whenever you want is just a myth peddled by long time readers because I don't have any prior attachment to characters I only read about on wikia. And if I don't care about those, I don't see how I could just come on board with issue number 151 without having read the previous 150. Which, considering the nature of the comics format, doesn't make for an enticing prospective, even with modern technologies.

This is true at some extent.

If you enter in a story with characters you don't know, the story should make you care about these characters. Or the reader will not be interested in looking for more information.


In the new Legion, DC and Bendis want new readers can enter in this and start to care about these characters from the beginning.

[Anthony Shaw]

On-top of that Jon looks way more like his dad now. It's kind of weird.

I don't think that is too unusual. The genes in that family tend to be strong.

Depending on the artist (and continuity), Kal-El is the splitting image of Jor-EL.

[Anthony Shaw]

I definitely think the animated series did a better job of updating and modernizing the Legion's visuals while still keeping them relatively iconic and close to their traditional looks.