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

[DGraysonWorldsGreatestSpy]

Comic Books were never designed for sustain long form stories that change nothing in the way a graphic novel or novel does. The Legion is not even the first Future story told and some like Batman & Robin had completely different future 31st Century stories that don’t feature the Legion. The story for every character has changed since Action Comics # 1 many occurring before the Legion became the dominant future timeline. DC is not deliberately trying to push fans away but fans have developed a false notion that there ever was a still point where continuity was cohesive and stable. For example Dick Grayson had no desire or any destiny to take over the Mantle Of Batman, there are no comic book fans who have been waiting since the ‘40s for this to happen.

[Anthony Shaw]

I believe it's...

1. A grown up Jon
2. Pink transported to the future and given Saturn Girl's name (and a descendant of Halo made her a costume)
3. David Cassidy grown up and sent to the future as Lightning Lad
4. Puck from Glee sent to the future to be Cosmic Boy
5. Brainiac 5.5
6. An interesting looking Shadow Lass that somewhat reminds me of Nox (New Olympians)
7. A Chameleon Boy not ashamed to flaunt being alien
8. A Wildfire that looks decent
9. A Blok that I swore I've seen in a F2P mobile game somewhere
10. Dani Moonstar after Apokolips turned her into the avatar of Death... oh, I mean Dawnstar
11. Clayface IV... I mean Sandface... No, I mean Dream Girl (well she at least now matches Thom's JSA look)
12. Brother Power the Geek cloned and renamed Element Lad
13. One of the forgotten Masters of the Universe characters brought back to be Matter-Eater Lad
And at least 19 others, most of which appear to be on the cover to #2.

That is a flawless breakdown.

[protege]

I believe it's...

1. A grown up Jon
2. Pink transported to the future and given Saturn Girl's name (and a descendant of Halo made her a costume)
3. David Cassidy grown up and sent to the future as Lightning Lad
4. Puck from Glee sent to the future to be Cosmic Boy
5. Brainiac 5.5
6. An interesting looking Shadow Lass that somewhat reminds me of Nox (New Olympians)
7. A Chameleon Boy not ashamed to flaunt being alien
8. A Wildfire that looks decent
9. A Blok that I swore I've seen in a F2P mobile game somewhere
10. Dani Moonstar after Apokolips turned her into the avatar of Death... oh, I mean Dawnstar
11. Clayface IV... I mean Sandface... No, I mean Dream Girl (well she at least now matches Thom's JSA look)
12. Brother Power the Geek cloned and renamed Element Lad
13. One of the forgotten Masters of the Universe characters brought back to be Matter-Eater Lad
And at least 19 others, most of which appear to be on the cover to #2.

Yeah, i’m Sorry I asked.

[caj]

I believe it's...

1. A grown up Jon
2. Pink transported to the future and given Saturn Girl's name (and a descendant of Halo made her a costume)
3. David Cassidy grown up and sent to the future as Lightning Lad
4. Puck from Glee sent to the future to be Cosmic Boy
5. Brainiac 5.5
6. An interesting looking Shadow Lass that somewhat reminds me of Nox (New Olympians)
7. A Chameleon Boy not ashamed to flaunt being alien
8. A Wildfire that looks decent
9. A Blok that I swore I've seen in a F2P mobile game somewhere
10. Dani Moonstar after Apokolips turned her into the avatar of Death... oh, I mean Dawnstar
11. Clayface IV... I mean Sandface... No, I mean Dream Girl (well she at least now matches Thom's JSA look)
12. Brother Power the Geek cloned and renamed Element Lad
13. One of the forgotten Masters of the Universe characters brought back to be Matter-Eater Lad
And at least 19 others, most of which appear to be on the cover to #2.

Amazing. You hit the nail on the head. Seriously, some of them look like paint splatter.

[Zero Hunter]

I figured out where I had seen this version of Blok before. Shale from Dragon Age.

[Frontier]

I figured out where I had seen this version of Blok before. Shale from Dragon Age.

Shale at least looks like they have more of a neck...

[twincast]

Replying to a handful of posts that stood out to me on the last few pages after a very long absence (part one):

However, my main point is you don't need to see or read any of these extended canon to understand the story in films. They mantain the films enough independent from the rest of canon. So, they're pretty accessible for new audience.

I disagreed with their reasons for ditching the EU, but I understood them. However, they totally failed at the execution, making the loss all for naught. Some of the new stuff is really good, sure, but the status quo at the beginning of TFA is a barely coherent, convoluted mess even with the new canon materials and utterly confusing based on what little the movie provides alone. (And they managed to achieve this again with TLJ. I would be impressed if I weren't so appalled.)

OK, it's compare and contrast time again.

Here are the new designs by Ryan Sook below the classic originals. Which ones of these do you like better?

Blok: The classic one looks a little bit like a gray Thing with more clothes, the new one looks very much like generic rock monster #72548938. So, classic.
Dawnstar: The original is prettier, the new one is more practical. (Goes for both the costume and the wings.) I'd like something between these extremes.
Nura: The new one is so out there, it really depends on what they do with it. So far I don't hate it.
Jan: I take it that you deliberately went for the Preboot looks most similar to the new ones? Errection Lad here is probably my least favorite of Jan's outfits over the decades so far, and while I ain't thrilled with his new design, he doesn't actually look like a swamp zombie on the cover, so with this particular pairing I'd have to vote for the new one.
Tenzil: The slim glutton may be a fairly common trope, but it's also a fun one; certainly better than all-new all-different Matter-Eater Dad here.
Kal/Jon: Like some other costumes of this new Legion (specifically Garth's and Imra's as well as - to a lesser degree - Querl's and Rokk's), parts of Jon's have way too much texture for anything not live-action, and the lower legs and lower arms could stand being mostly red, whereas the shoulders would look better blue, but if drawn "lazily" (i.e. less busy), I'd actually prefer his to Kal's. ... Basically what I'm saying is death to the red trunks.

Generally my favorite LSH costumes are the SW6/Reboot/KC ones as they tickle the sweet spot between individuality and uniformity for a team such as the Legion. You absolutely can go with either extreme, but unlike the JSA, the JLA, the Invaders, the Avengers, and most of their respective spin-offs and spin-offs of spin-offs (and so forth), which consist of solo heroes (or villains) who for one reason or another decided to band together for certain threats, the LSH (like most mutant teams) has always been "team first", but without being mere cogs in a machine like most agents of A.R.G.U.S., S.H.I.E.L.D., and so on, so a clear common design thread connecting their literal threads without making them look like carbon copies of each other makes the most sense to me. (On a side note, whenever somebody in comics - or a (real or fictional) fan thereof - insists that they are wearing a "uniform", not a ("childish") costume, my eyes roll virtually all the way to the back of my head. Are you the only one who wears this outfit? If yes, it is by definition not a uniform. Period. Deal with it.)

I kind of really doubt they'd go that far with her here. The Endless isn't something I expect Bendis to touch on.

She very much looks the part, though. And nobody else looks as ... noncorporeal, so it's IMO hard to think of as a coincidence.

I don't mind the re-designs but I'm bothered by the fact that, from what I gather, Clark now has no history with the team whatsoever and now their entire interaction is with Jon? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm actually happy about this - assuming, of course, that Clark keeps his incarnation of the Legion "in the background" and recognizes these teenagers as alternative versions of his friends. (And if he does not, they'll surely eventually add this back in again, so... *shrug*) I'd rather his kid were playing with his friends' kids instead of with altered doppelgängers of his friends, but them's the breaks. Each incarnation of the Legion has its own connection to the House of El (in addition to an indirect one through an incarnation of Lar Gand of their own each):
Earth One LSH: Earth One Kal-El & Earth One Kara Zor-El
Post-CoIE LSH: Pocket Universe Kal-El (who - to needlessly double the inanity by not fully fixing the imposed problem - never had a cousin)
Post-ZH LSH: New Earth Kon-El (with New Earth Bart Allen being this Legion's closest - yet still tenuous - connection to the present instead)
(Kingdom Come LSH: Kingdom Come Kon-El & Kingdom Come Matrix - just for the record)
Threeboot LSH: New Earth Kara Zor-El (which poses the only long-term problem, see below) - and technically Earth Prime Clark Kent, but not as a member
Retroboot LSH: New Earth/Post-Rebirth Kal-El (with IIRC some oblique references to a Supergirl that was, which seriously screws with continuity)
Bendis's LSH: New Earth/Post-Rebirth Jonathan Kent (who to my unceasing astonishment has AFAIK yet to be canonically called Jon-El)
(plus a few more in mini-series and on TV, most of them with their universe's version of Kal-El)

I think the new designs go too far out of the way to look 'alien', myself.

I am of two minds on this. On the one hand I don't like mucking too much with established characters, but on the other hand it has always been beyond ridiculous that most of the Legionnaires are of a dozen or so sentient species that are super-powered homo sapiens sapiens in all but name (and for the most part light-skinned Caucasoid ones, to boot), and they are new incarnations... So, if anything, this is the one good thing about yet another reboot.

[twincast]

Replying to a handful of posts that stood out to me on the last few pages after a very long absence (part two):

If the "barrier to entry" is a myth, why there are so few new readers in superheroes comics.

The fact that DC or Marvel try to make stories more accessible for new readers (not that they actually achieve it) proves that they think a certain barrier exists.

One word: Price. Another word: Value. Since the '90s crash Big Two comics have been stuck in a self-inflicted hyperinflating feedback loop of ever more expensive collectors' items for an ever smaller collectors' market. Production values to match may justify part of that, but if those price you out of the competition in perceived value (which lies mostly in the roughly accurate assumed amount of story based on page count), drop them like a hot potato!

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

<...>

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.

That is basically a revisit of acknowledging Hypertime in-universe, and there's a juicy trippy story in exploring that beyond the tasty morsels in Doomsday Clock, but I doubt Bendis will dive deep into any of this as it runs exactly counter to the "accessible" mission statement.

Exactly.

Which is why I said it's one of the numerous myths of people who do not really care either way and never really will. It also seems now its one of the many copouts to help some "stay in the conversation" to push other intentions.

To be fair, it isn't a complete myth. Well, not so much in and of itself, but when comparing to other options. Personally, I would have started with Spider-Man and Batman comics in elementary school in the '90s (instead of catching up on them digitally later on) if I had known a shop in my home town to carry them consistently (like they did - and still do - with Disney comics), but when the manga boom hit in my teens I found it very much a relief to know that almost all stories would get an actual ending, which discouraged me from diving into super-heroes comics, but soon after came Ultimate Spider-Man et al. with the sweet combination of a fresh jumping-on point to a deliberately kept small number of series and thitherto uncommon extremely convenient collected editions, which then provided the basis for me to spread out from Earth-1610 to (monthly releases of) Earth-616 and New Earth. Several years later event fatigue and slaughter fatigue had made me drop out of Earth-616 and Earth-1610, respectively, almost completely, and the New 52 killed several series I was avidly following in one fell swoop. The point of this anecdotal personal account of mine being that having jumping-on points out of or low in continuity - like DC's new line of graphic novels formerly known as DC Zoom and DC Ink - to hook people is a good thing, but rebooting your main universe is pure folly.

As for the Legion's reputation for having a complicated continuity, that is entirely undeserved. It was one of the first super-hero series to actually have continuity and it was the first to really get screwed over by retcons (the Earth Two series had an easier transition to New Earth, Hawkman was a minor title, and frankly both share a similar reputation since that time, anyway), but neither of these have been even remotely remarkable among the Big Two for decades now - and other than said messy series of patches between Crisis on Infinite Earths and Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! trying to fix what the former broke until giving up on this with the latter none of it has ever been complicated. Every Legion reboot has been a clear cut and almost entirely self-contained, making them much easier to keep track of than any given popular DC hero like Superman or Batman, which have in turn since been hit with a semi-regular series of retcons (Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis, New 52, DC Rebirth, and occasionally in between), often gradual, and never quite clear on what is all canon now.

HBO didn't dumb down Game of Thrones for accessibility they put a deep quality product out there and the masses moved toward it even though it wasn't obvious or easily understood and predicted.

They didn't? [Urge to list all the depth (including prophecies) Dumb and Dumber removed for the express purpose of "accessibility" and all the utter nonsense they added because they couldn't write cohesive stories with consistent characters (let alone competent commanders) if their lives depended on it intensifies.]

I’m not even sure Newer characters like them will even be on This team. Do we have a roster of some kind?

For what it's worth, going by the very, very green costume (and Element Lad already being covered), I'm pretty sure the lad behind Jan on the cover is Condo Arlik. And I seriously hope the lad behind Dawnstar is Lyle Norg (and written much like his Reboot incarnation). (And the two better be dating.)

[protege]

Replying to a handful of posts that stood out to me on the last few pages after a very long absence (part two):


One word: Price. Another word: Value. Since the '90s crash Big Two comics have been stuck in a self-inflicted hyperinflating feedback loop of ever more expensive collectors' items for an ever smaller collectors' market. Production values to match may justify part of that, but if those price you out of the competition in perceived value (which lies mostly in the roughly accurate assumed amount of story based on page count), drop them like a hot potato!


That is basically a revisit of acknowledging Hypertime in-universe, and there's a juicy trippy story in exploring that beyond the tasty morsels in Doomsday Clock, but I doubt Bendis will dive deep into any of this as it runs exactly counter to the "accessible" mission statement.


To be fair, it isn't a complete myth. Well, not so much in and of itself, but when comparing to other options. Personally, I would have started with Spider-Man and Batman comics in elementary school in the '90s (instead of catching up on them digitally later on) if I had known a shop in my home town to carry them consistently (like they did - and still do - with Disney comics), but when the manga boom hit in my teens I found it very much a relief to know that almost all stories would get an actual ending, which discouraged me from diving into super-heroes comics, but soon after came Ultimate Spider-Man et al. with the sweet combination of a fresh jumping-on point to a deliberately kept small number of series and thitherto uncommon extremely convenient collected editions, which then provided the basis for me to spread out from Earth-1610 to (monthly releases of) Earth-616 and New Earth. Several years later event fatigue and slaughter fatigue had made me drop out of Earth-616 and Earth-1610, respectively, almost completely, and the New 52 killed several series I was avidly following in one fell swoop. The point of this anecdotal personal account of mine being that having jumping-on points out of or low in continuity - like DC's new line of graphic novels formerly known as DC Zoom and DC Ink - to hook people is a good thing, but rebooting your main universe is pure folly.

As for the Legion's reputation for having a complicated continuity, that is entirely undeserved. It was one of the first super-hero series to actually have continuity and it was the first to really get screwed over by retcons (the Earth Two series had an easier transition to New Earth, Hawkman was a minor title, and frankly both share a similar reputation since that time, anyway), but neither of these have been even remotely remarkable among the Big Two for decades now - and other than said messy series of patches between Crisis on Infinite Earths and Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! trying to fix what the former broke until giving up on this with the latter none of it has ever been complicated. Every Legion reboot has been a clear cut and almost entirely self-contained, making them much easier to keep track of than any given popular DC hero like Superman or Batman, which have in turn since been hit with a semi-regular series of retcons (Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis, New 52, DC Rebirth, and occasionally in between), often gradual, and never quite clear on what is all canon now.


They didn't? [Urge to list all the depth (including prophecies) Dumb and Dumber removed for the express purpose of "accessibility" and all the utter nonsense they added because they couldn't write cohesive stories with consistent characters (let alone competent commanders) if their lives depended on it intensifies.]


For what it's worth, going by the very, very green costume (and Element Lad already being covered), I'm pretty sure the lad behind Jan on the cover is Condo Arlik. And I seriously hope the lad behind Dawnstar is Lyle Norg (and written much like his Reboot incarnation). (And the two better be dating.)

Who’s condo Arlik?

[Superlad93]

That is basically a revisit of acknowledging Hypertime in-universe, and there's a juicy trippy story in exploring that beyond the tasty morsels in Doomsday Clock, but I doubt Bendis will dive deep into any of this as it runs exactly counter to the "accessible" mission statement.

I agree. I doubt he'll dive deep into it all, but rather just leave the implication there up in the air through some quick verbal exchange to give a nod to older fans (and the Legion of his childhood).

[Comic-Reader Lad]

Who’s condo Arlik?

Chemical King.

[kcekada]

Being the Bendis made Iceman gay, I doubt that he'll shy away from a same sex pairings -- so I could see the revival of Chemical King/Invisible Kid pairing. It would be nice to see Chemical King get his day. He was rarely used to good effect before being killed off -- I guess because he doesn't have splashy powers.

[j9ac9k]

Being the Bendis made Iceman gay, I doubt that he'll shy away from a same sex pairings -- so I could see the revival of Chemical King/Invisible Kid pairing. It would be nice to see Chemical King get his day. He was rarely used to good effect before being killed off -- I guess because he doesn't have splashy powers.

You'd also need a writer who understands chemistry, which can be a tall order these days since you can't just wing it like the old days when nobody would call you out on faulty science. That's why they tend to like pseudo-science more. That or they thought he and Element Lad were redundant.

By the 32nd century, you'd think they would all be poly-amorous and just date whomever regardless of gender - I'm sure some of them won't even have a "gender." As long as it's just the way it is and they don't make a big deal about it, that's what I would think for the future, but I doubt Bendis would go that far.

[manwhohaseverything]

Speaking of relationships, He can do whatever with other characters. But, i hope and pray he doesn't decide to push jon into any kind of relationship nonsense. He was a ten year old kid, who hadn't even had his first kiss. Now suddenly , i have to read a grown up jon with a girl or a boy?Yuck!! Teenage angst and relationship drama is not something i was ready for with jon.
Jon was the only kid, that actually felt like a kid to me. Alas, now i am afraid they are going to ruin that. I want him reverted back dammit!!!!

[Thor-Ul]

You'd also need a writer who understands chemistry, which can be a tall order these days since you can't just wing it like the old days when nobody would call you out on faulty science. That's why they tend to like pseudo-science more. That or they thought he and Element Lad were redundant.

By the 32nd century, you'd think they would all be poly-amorous and just date whomever regardless of gender - I'm sure some of them won't even have a "gender." As long as it's just the way it is and they don't make a big deal about it, that's what I would think for the future, but I doubt Bendis would go that far.

In another time I could agree with you, but I think than would not be possible. I mean, we in century 21 have people who believes earth is flat.
I think than there can be planets were people are poly-amorous, but also must be there others were the relationships are more conservative and others who are even represive or non exitant and all interaction is between remote comunication. I would like a Legion who have members with diversity of opinions and beliefs and yet can cooperate to make a better universe for evryone.