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

[twincast]

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.

I wasn't around at the time, but the argument I have heard most often is the ill-informed one of redundancy. Of course, Chemical King's powers actually can be explained by science, whereas Element Lad's can not, so I've always preferred Condo's. However, CK's are typically harder to show without telling than EL's, so I understand the latter being better suited for a visual medium than the former, but this doesn't mean that Condo can't be done well.

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.

Well, genders are just boundaries of normative behavior for each sex as socially constructed in different societies over the millennia. Humanity would be better off if we dropped the concept entirely and just let everybody be themself without any prejudices regarding how people like to dress or what they do with their own genitals and so on and so forth. But since we sadly aren't there (yet), I fully understand the desire to align with the normative gender of the other sex, even if using the same terms for genders and sexes makes things unfortunately imprecise for everyone. One would hope interstellar societies to have progressed beyond this by the time of the Legion of Super-Heroes, but that honestly feels to deep for Bendis - or the target audience - to explore, despite being a traditional sci-fi concept. That said, at least one Legion timeline so far has achieved literal sex changes (albeit through a rather improbable and ineffecient manner), so, if not on a philosophical level, at least on a practical level this should be able to get covered in this timeline as well.

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!!!!

Hear, hear!

[caj]

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.

I thought Lyle/Invisible Kid was in love with a female apparition named Myla.

[Comic-Reader Lad]

I thought Lyle/Invisible Kid was in love with a female apparition named Myla.

I posted some relevant pages in the Legion Appreciation thread, but I believe in the Archie Legion, it was implied that there was something romantic between Invisible Kid and Chemical King -- and it built on post-Crisis Legion stories (like Secret Origins 47) that retconned a deep friendship between the pre-Archie versions.

Here are some relevant posts from the Appreciation thread:

https://community.cbr.com/showthread...=1#post4204788

https://community.cbr.com/showthread...=1#post4206344

https://community.cbr.com/showthread...=1#post4206346

https://community.cbr.com/showthread...=1#post4206359

[Stick Figure]

Would anyone even be called Lightning boy or Dream Girl in the future? Seems like people would move past such gender specific names. I mean if this is just a title about heroes in the future they’re missing an opportunity to show how society would evolve by then. I’m a Bendis fan so I’m hoping he does something with that.

[DragonsChi]

Would anyone even be called Lightning boy or Dream Girl in the future? Seems like people would move past such gender specific names. I mean if this is just a title about heroes in the future they’re missing an opportunity to show how society would evolve by then. I’m a Bendis fan so I’m hoping he does something with that.

The whole point of the Legion was that they wanted to model after heroes of the past and especially SuperBOY. You take that aspect from them and they are no longer the Legion of Superheroes but some other team entirely. Heck these costume changes are pushing the very edge of the concept of the Legion already, what your suggesting would break it.

[twincast]

The whole point of the Legion was that they wanted to model after heroes of the past and especially SuperBOY. You take that aspect from them and they are no longer the Legion of Superheroes but some other team entirely. Heck these costume changes are pushing the very edge of the concept of the Legion already, what your suggesting would break it.

The Reboot Legion worked just fine with almost none of that.

[DragonsChi]

The Reboot Legion worked just fine with almost none of that.

Are you talking about The New 52 version that only lasted 16 issues?

Or the one that came after but that was still in the New 52 that only lasted 3 issues?

Please clarify which repeated failure of trying to change the Legion to far that you mean.

[protege]

Chemical King.

I’d love to see chemical king again, but I think i’ll Wait to see what bendis actually does with him.

[twincast]

Are you talking about The New 52 version that only lasted 16 issues?

Or the one that came after but that was still in the New 52 that only lasted 3 issues?

Please clarify which repeated failure of trying to change the Legion to far that you mean.

The only one commonly referred to as Reboot Legion, oh Great Guardian of Legion Lore: The one that lasted for a decade from Zero Hour till Infinite Crisis.

[DragonsChi]

The only one commonly referred to as Reboot Legion, oh Great Guardian of Legion Lore: The one that lasted for a decade from Zero Hour till Infinite Crisis.

I never said I was the Guardian of Legion Lore. I'm just looking for clarification to your statement.

I'm still looking btw. How was that version so pulled away from the original concept? I would think that a lot of the elements where still there? Please explain your stance and point to actual evidence to support your claim.

Maybe your right and I missed it or maybe we are talking two different things or maybe your just saying that for the sake of saying it. *Shrug*

Edit:

Are you talking about L.E.G.I.O.N? Because that would be, LIKE I SAID, a entirely different team from the Legion of Superheroes.

[twincast]

I never said I was the Guardian of Legion Lore. I'm just looking for clarification to your statement.

I'm still looking btw. How was that version so pulled away from the original concept? I would think that a lot of the elements where still there? Please explain your stance and point to actual evidence to support your claim.

Maybe your right and I missed it or maybe we are talking two different things or maybe your just saying that for the sake of saying it. *Shrug*

You were the one who narrowly defined staying true to the original concept as needing a) old-school super-hero names (which actually less than half of GA/SA/BA 20th century heroes even have) and b) inspiration from "SuperBOY". Of this the Reboot Legion had kept only a couple of the Boy/Girl/Kid names, yet captured the spirit of the SA Legion just fine. And proclaiming that something as superficial as the costumes could be "pushing the edge of the concept" is utterly ludicrous, no matter how ugly most are.

[j9ac9k]

It seems there are things in place to explain the (possibly anachronistic) use of "Lad/Lass" names since the original concept of the Legion is that they were intentionally referencing their heroic inspiration. Superboy. However, yes - the reboot worked fine when Superboy was removed. I don't think you have to have the Superboy connection to have a good Legion, but since it seems Bendis wants to use it, then yes - that could be the explanation for the names. So... I think both arguments are valid.

[twincast]

Catching up on the earlier pages...

I think the "timelessness" of the Silver Age style Legion designs is really just related to whether or not you have a specific fondness for that era and aesthetic. The older Legion designs always looked dated to me. Intentionally dated, sure, but intentionally dated is still dated.

Yep. Only a few of them can really be called timeless. Most look very much specifically of their time.

When I think LoSH I think Levitz and those designs.

You do. I do not.

Anyway, I love the Legion but refuse to read Bendis comics. This news saddens me. Somebody tell me Bendis's DC work isn't as bad as his Marvel stuff. His X-Men was universally reviled (exaggerating I know) and LoSH is a similar property (giant cast, giant shadow cast by classic stories in the 70s and 80s) and I am anticipating bad results.

The first season of Naomi is pretty good (although its ending has pacing issues), but it's a solo book of a brand-new character, so that was to be expected.
The Gemworld main plot of the first six issues of Young Justice is pretty meh, but the team members are written well most of the time, and the flashback sequences bridging the established characters from their last appearances to the present day have been great. And the first issue (#7) of this new arc is fantastic fun. Anyway, it's certainly better than anything Geoff Johns has ever done with the characters, let alone any of his successors on Teen Titans.
While I ain't a fan of what little I've read of it myself, the only thing that really sucks about his Superman and Action Comics so far is that he aged up Jon.

I gotta he honest, I don't get the hate for Chams new look
The others I get but I'm not seeing the problem with his.

Agreed.

Considering that Bendis is incapable of writing more than two or three character types, can you imagine how 34 interchangable characters are going to sound? I really fear for this.

That is a well-established legitimate concern.

Hopefully this version will lean away from the X-Men / Marvel analogues some had been gradually evolving into. Sun Boy, originally able to generate light, and then heat, has been more and more just a Human Torch clone. Polar Boy, radiates cold, and then he's Iceman, creating massive ice constructs. Saturn Girl, somehow using 'telepathy' to stop a falling stone pillar and smash a window, because apparently someone forgot that she's Imra Ardeen, not Jean Grey... And good old Timber Wolf, with incredible super-agility and strength, mysteriously gets claws and regeneration, because, apparently, you can't predate Wolverine without being mistaken for Wolverine despite being like, a foot taller...

I'd love to focus on what makes them different and special, not what makes them 'like the X-Men.'

I agree, but knowing Bendis I wouldn't hold my breath.

I think it's fair to say that in the Silver and Bronze Ages, the Legion ladies didn't really have much in the way of physically threatening powers.

I think it's why Andromeda became a favorite when she was introduced in the 5YL Legion. She was a replacement for Supergirl and she was powerful.

Since then, the subsequent Legions have done a good job in introducing female Legionnaires that could hold their own in a fight, but Saturn Girl, despite having probably the most screen time of any female Legionnaire historically, has never been able to do too much in a fight.

I don't really want them to go the Jean Grey route with her and add telekinesis to her powers (on the other hand, since this is the 32nd Century Saturn Girl, then such a power change would be easier to take), but I do think they need to do SOMETHING. I just don't know what other mind-based power would be useful in combat. If they do give her telekinesis, I'll get used to it as long as they don't try to crank it up to Phoenix-levels.

Well, that is really an artifact of the time. Sue Storm similarly started out as the weakest member of the Fantastic Four, only to be successfully revamped into the most powerful.

I just wonder if a full-scale Legion reboot has legs in a modern comic climate.

Bendis isn't the sales juggernaut he once was and Ultimate Spider-Man was catching lightning in the bottle in it's time. I don't think you can repeat that again, especially for a brand that's more niche and in some ways difficult in the modern era like the Legion. Comparatively Spider-Man is a cakewalk.

I'm not sure if the designs will catch on and if Bendis will be able to overcome his writing issues to capture the Legion as they should be. So I'm anxious as to how this will all go over.

All good points. But in the end there's nothing else to do but wait and see - and hope for the best.

[DragonsChi]

You were the one who narrowly defined staying true to the original concept as needing a) old-school super-hero names (which actually less than half of GA/SA/BA 20th century heroes even have) and b) inspiration from "SuperBOY". Of this the Reboot Legion had kept only a couple of the Boy/Girl/Kid names, yet captured the spirit of the SA Legion just fine. And proclaiming that something as superficial as the costumes could be "pushing the edge of the concept" is utterly ludicrous, no matter how ugly most are.

You still aren't stating what version your talking about.

and the version I'm thinking of still drew inspiration from the heroes of the past. Regardless if they barely addressed them or not.

So yeah without a little of bit of that "Old Timey" goodness thrown in, even if it's just a small taste of it, it steps out from being a true Legion of Superheroes comic. It becomes something else with same name.

I'm not even saying I wanted to be that way. I'm just telling how it is.

[Konja7]

Well, genders are just boundaries of normative behavior for each sex as socially constructed in different societies over the millennia. Humanity would be better off if we dropped the concept entirely and just let everybody be themself without any prejudices regarding how people like to dress or what they do with their own genitals and so on and so forth. But since we sadly aren't there (yet), I fully understand the desire to align with the normative gender of the other sex, even if using the same terms for genders and sexes makes things unfortunately imprecise for everyone. One would hope interstellar societies to have progressed beyond this by the time of the Legion of Super-Heroes, but that honestly feels to deep for Bendis - or the target audience - to explore, despite being a traditional sci-fi concept. That said, at least one Legion timeline so far has achieved literal sex changes (albeit through a rather improbable and ineffecient manner), so, if not on a philosophical level, at least on a practical level this should be able to get covered in this timeline as well.

Even in a progressive world, not all people would be agree with the concept of gender you have.

However, the Legion shouldn't represent how future will really be, but a fantasy for the target audience.

The first season of Naomi is pretty good (although its ending has pacing issues), but it's a solo book of a brand-new character, so that was to be expected.
The Gemworld main plot of the first six issues of Young Justice is pretty meh, but the team members are written well most of the time, and the flashback sequences bridging the established characters from their last appearances to the present day have been great. And the first issue (#7) of this new arc is fantastic fun. Anyway, it's certainly better than anything Geoff Johns has ever done with the characters, let alone any of his successors on Teen Titans.
While I ain't a fan of what little I've read of it myself, the only thing that really sucks about his Superman and Action Comics so far is that he aged up Jon.

In fact, Naomi is doing pretty well in sales (especially considering it's a new character). Its sales started low, but have grown. Naomi sold more than Young Justice this in May

That's why I hope the new Legion of SuperHeroes book has the luck of Naomi.