Why's the "5 Years Later" Legion run so good?

[Superlad93]

Wow. Legion of Super-Hero fans are super helpful. To the majority of you, than you.

The book honestly sounds more like a novel from the Song of Ice & Fire line than it does a superhero book, and that legitimately fascinates me.

So, as a new fan with only a glancing knowledge of the Legion, could I conceivably go into the book and treat all of its world building and callbacks the same way one would treat Roberts Rebellion in the Game of Thrones show and books?

[Flash Gordon]

Wow. Legion of Super-Hero fans are super helpful. To the majority of you, than you.

The book honestly sounds more like a novel from the Song of Ice & Fire than it does a superhero book, and that legitimately fascinates me.

So, as a new fan with only a glancing knowledge of the Legion, could I conceivably go into the book and treat all of its world building and callbacks the same way one would treat Roberts Rebellion in the Game of Thrones show and books?

100%.

I think it stands really well on it's own, and works as a narrative all it's own. Brandon Graham's Prophet feels a lot like a spiritual sequel, to me.

I would say dive right into it and just let yourself fill in the backstory. There's a lot of other LoSH material worth reading, but you can touch on that later ya know?

[caj]

Wow. Legion of Super-Hero fans are super helpful. To the majority of you, than you.

The book honestly sounds more like a novel from the Song of Ice & Fire than it does a superhero book, and that legitimately fascinates me.

So, as a new fan with only a glancing knowledge of the Legion, could I conceivably go into the book and treat all of its world building and callbacks the same way one would treat Roberts Rebellion in the Game of Thrones show and books?

I honestly think it would be to your advantage NOT to know too much about past Legion history. Everything would be new to you and you could learn the characters without needing to know a lot of the back-story. Then, once you've read it, you can go back to the silver/bronze age and see where the characters came from and who they once were.

[Lonewolf36]

I love the 5 year gap Legion. If you really want to enjoy it would suggest you track down the Legion of Super-Heroes 2995 Sourcebook done by the writers of the 5 Year Gap. Bios on characters, time lines ect. If you can't fimd a copy to order on line send me an private message i have a digital copy i will share. Again it enhances the series so much more.

[Orf with his head]

5YL was my first foray into LOSH, and I loved it, still do.

I didn’t know any of the characters, but didn’t feel confused or lost when it came to who was who.

The one thing I really loved was the LGBT aspect brought to the book with Mekt, and later on with Shaun/Element Lad.

It was one of the first comics I had encountered where gay/bi relationships were used.

I was so gutted when it was rebooted due to Zero Hour, when I felt it could have continued.

[j9ac9k]

5YL was my first foray into LOSH, and I loved it, still do.

I didn’t know any of the characters, but didn’t feel confused or lost when it came to who was who.

The one thing I really loved was the LGBT aspect brought to the book with Mekt, and later on with Shaun/Element Lad.

It was one of the first comics I had encountered where gay/bi relationships were used.

I was so gutted when it was rebooted due to Zero Hour, when I felt it could have continued.

And of course Ayla and Vi! I loved their relationship and miss it in subsequent iterations of the team.

[EmeraldGladiator]

The scripting was brilliant I would always say three to 5 comics were required for a trip to the restroom if you were to read them in there, however you would barely halfway get through one issue of 5YL Legion. It was dense world building and required attention, however I didn't realize how much I missed the bright costumes and cleaner feel of the earlier version of the Legion until the Batch SW6 version popped the scene. I instantly wanted more of them and less of the adult Legion, which is when I knew for all the good scripting the direction was a failure.

[Comic-Reader Lad]

I love the 5 year gap Legion. If you really want to enjoy it would suggest you track down the Legion of Super-Heroes 2995 Sourcebook done by the writers of the 5 Year Gap. Bios on characters, time lines ect. If you can't fimd a copy to order on line send me an private message i have a digital copy i will share. Again it enhances the series so much more.

Well, as I said earlier, I've already posted the 5 Years Later history pages on the first page of the Legion Appreciation thread in this forum, so that would be a quick way for anyone to check out Legion history as it stood at the time. It even goes back to the beginning and gives the new retconned version of the Silver & Bronze Age history.

By the way, for those of us who didn't like it, it has to be remembered that we are comparing the 5YL direction to what we knew before, and it was a pretty dramatic change in look and tone from how the Legion was written in the 30 years prior.

If these were brand new, never before seen characters and concepts, it would have been easier to take for a lot of us, but then part of reading the series was the shock value in seeing familiar characters undergo such radical changes, so I guess it could go either way.

5YL was my first foray into LOSH, and I loved it, still do.

I didn’t know any of the characters, but didn’t feel confused or lost when it came to who was who.

The one thing I really loved was the LGBT aspect brought to the book with Mekt, and later on with Shaun/Element Lad.

It was one of the first comics I had encountered where gay/bi relationships were used.

I was so gutted when it was rebooted due to Zero Hour, when I felt it could have continued.

While it was certainly novel in comics at the time to explore LGBT relationships, I think DC handled it clumsily -- it's to be expected, I guess, given that it was relatively new territory for mainstream comics.

- You had Joker call Batman "darling" in Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns, which had a backlash from the LGBT community because it seemed to link Joker's insanity with being gay.

- You had the gay character in New Guardians named "Extrano" -- Spanish for "strange." Plus, he was dressed in a stereotypically flamboyant style that was insulting to both gay people and Spanish people.

- Then, you had the Shvaughn Erin story in Legion. If memory serves, Shvaughn was a guy who fell in love with Element Lad so he took sex-change pills or underwent some sort of operation to change himself into a woman so he could pursue Element Lad. To me, this is very insulting to gay people because you would think in 1000 years, there would be no shame attached to being gay. I don't remember every detail of the story, but I do remember that there was an element of shame on Shvaughn's part, which felt really wrong to me. It's funny that in the 25+ years since that story was written, it feels even more misguided than it did back then. Not to mention horribly out of date, which is the last thing a story set in the future should be. To me, the story is the "Tyroc" of the late 1980s. Just as a lot of people thought Tyroc was instantly outdated upon publication in 1976, the Shvaughn Erin story felt the same way to me when I read it.

[joebleau]

It was/his a hit or miss.

Im a long time fan (from the adventure comics era). and for me it was a real pleasure reading it trying to find all the cue all the subtility. A little bit depressing ( wait till you see Death herself) but a really good read.

[Fromper]

While it was certainly novel in comics at the time to explore LGBT relationships, I think DC handled it clumsily -- it's to be expected, I guess, given that it was relatively new territory for mainstream comics.

- You had Joker call Batman "darling" in Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns, which had a backlash from the LGBT community because it seemed to link Joker's insanity with being gay.

I love how that was answered in the pages of Flash.

[Zero Hunter]

I was so gutted when it was rebooted due to Zero Hour, when I felt it could have continued.

I kinda think it had run its coarse by the time the reboot came along. The one thing I was really disapointed with is that the editors knew they were rebooting the whole thing anyway so why not get someone to write the book that really wanted to tell and epic story. Between the Legion and Legionnaries books they could have written the most epic Legion story of all time with no rules to worry about with anywhere between 12 to 24 issues to tell it, and instead they just limped to the end with the really lame End of an Era story. Imagine taking that whole last year of both books and just going crazy? They could literally done ANYTHING!! Killed characters, married off characters, destroy whole planets, have an epic finale battle with the likes of The Legion of Super-Villains or the Time Trapper, ect, ect. It was just stupid they did not just let the writers go nuts. Look at how fondly people look back at Alan Moores final Superman story before the Crisis reboot. The Legion could have had the too.

[Jim Kelly]

Funny thing is I don't feel like the Alan Moore two-part story had much to do with all the Superman comics that had appeared before it. It was like Moore was just parachuted in at the last minute to wrap up the Superman story--instead of taking a year or two to have the regular writers bring it all to a satisfying conclusion, where they could have really gone nuts with killing off characters, marriages, etc.

But maybe the reason why most series don't get that kind of send-off is because the editors don't know for sure what's going to happen. Like with the Legion, it was always possible DC could waffle on their plans and at the last minute decide to keep things as they were. So the editors always need to play it safe, just in case plans go south.

[Thor-Ul]

The 5YL was very in the zeitgeist of their era. You can see them like a Dark Knight Returns style of story, were the original more idealist characters became bitter when the world went down to the drain. It was from the time were the dystopias Mad Max style had became dominant in fiction and the happy tomorrow tales had become obsolete. It was interesting? Yes, it had its high points, but it was a total departure of the spirit of the Legion book.

[Mike]

My least favorite version of the Team.
I dropped it after a few issues.

[Zero Hunter]

My least favorite version of the Team.
I dropped it after a few issues.

Just curious have you ever gone back and tried to read it after you dropped it?