Bendis taking legion from clark

[Crisis]

If I’m correct, it’s now:
Clark: original legion
Kon-El: Zero hour Legion
Kara: Threeboot legion
Jon: Rebirth Legion?

Clark (Post Infinite Crisis): retroboot legion of earth 0, Kara (Post Infinite Crisis) Retroboot legion of earth-0 and Earth 33 (3 boot legion)

[kcekada]

I'm okay with it. It's no longer anything like the classic Legion -- and Superman is pretty far away from the version I loved -- who was Superboy as a teenager. If they ever bring back that aspect of the character -- then I would expect a revival of the Legion connection. It just doesn't work as well if Clark was never Superboy.

[Jim Kelly]

Was Clark Superboy or not?

[manwhohaseverything]

Was Clark Superboy or not?

No. Conner is the first superboy in this continuity.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

No. Conner is the first superboy in this continuity.

Are you sure about that? Bendis has kept things kind of vague about Clark's teenaged years.

[GSman]

Are you sure about that? Bendis has kept things kind of vague about Clark's teenaged years.

Has he though? We've already gotten a good look at Clark's timeline post Reborn, and his time as Superboy is seemingly gone.

[Jim Kelly]

Well let me put it this way--was Clark a superboy or an ordinary boy? It seems like the extent to which he was a super-hero in his youth goes up and down with some regularity.

[manwhohaseverything]

Well let me put it this way--was Clark a superboy or an ordinary boy? It seems like the extent to which he was a super-hero in his youth goes up and down with some regularity.

He had superpowers, i guess. But, he was not costumed superboy

[Bored at 3:00AM]

He had superpowers, i guess. But, he was not costumed superboy

In all the interviews I've listened to with Bendis on Word Balloon, he has straight up said that his view is that Superman's history has been rebooted, revised and tweaked so many times now that he considers everything in continuity, even the stuff that doesn't fit.

Keep in mind that originally the new LSH was meant to be set in the 32nd Century so that the new team wouldn't invalidate any of the prior versions of the Legion. My guess is that either Bendis or DC editorial decided against that, so as not to overly complicate things, but I'm sticking with Bendis's original notion and will continue to assume Clark was Superboy, who had adventures with the LSH in the 30th Century, but just doesn't remember at the moment due to time shenanigans.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Has he though? We've already gotten a good look at Clark's timeline post Reborn, and his time as Superboy is seemingly gone.

I don't think anything is nailed down right now in terms of continuity. I mean, we just saw Clark as Superboy joining the Legion of Super-Heroes a couple issues ago in Doomsday Clock. That was a flashback to older continuity, yes, but the fact that they explicitly reference it and show that all these various incarnations of Superman over the decades are the same man, whose history is constantly changing, is a pretty good indication that we shouldn't ever be too concerned about what Superman does or doesn't remember at any particularly moment in time.

The big takeaway here is that it's all happened to this Superman. Whether or not he remembers being Superboy is less important than the idea that he absolutely was Superboy at one point in his life, and wasn't Superboy at others. He's Superman. He bends steel with his bare hands and soars over tall buildings. Nothing in his life is normal, let alone his personal history.

[manwhohaseverything]

I don't think anything is nailed down right now in terms of continuity. I mean, we just saw Clark as Superboy joining the Legion of Super-Heroes a couple issues ago in Doomsday Clock. That was a flashback to older continuity, yes, but the fact that they explicitly reference it and show that all these various incarnations of Superman over the decades are the same man, whose history is constantly changing, is a pretty good indication that we shouldn't ever be too concerned about what Superman does or doesn't remember at any particularly moment in time.

The big takeaway here is that it's all happened to this Superman. Whether or not he remembers being Superboy is less important than the idea that he absolutely was Superboy at one point in his life, and wasn't Superboy at others. He's Superman. He bends steel with his bare hands and soars over tall buildings. Nothing in his life is normal, let alone his personal history.

That argument would make even injustice canon. It is also part of the hypertime metaverse.clark just doesn't remember his pregnant being beaten to death and his entire city getting nuked by basically at his hands.

[Desmark]

The Legion accepting Jon without a test or tryout task makes no sense as they not only put Superboy Clark through his paces but also put him through a hazing ceremony and took him down a peg making him cry even though he was supposed to be their inspiration. Just shows how times have changed or perhaps it will come up later in their book.

[kcekada]

I expect the original Legion and maybe Kal-El as Superboy will show up at some point -- probably in a Bendis Legion story. The will exist in a Hypertime reality. I've come to grips that this is an all-new, all-different Legion. It will have to fly or fail on its own merits.

[jamgut]

The Legion accepting Jon without a test or tryout task makes no sense as they not only put Superboy Clark through his paces but also put him through a hazing ceremony and took him down a peg making him cry even though he was supposed to be their inspiration. Just shows how times have changed or perhaps it will come up later in their book.

Perhaps an ugly incident led to the Legion banning hazing. Recall what happened when those teens humiliated Carrie in the Stephen King book.

[Doctor Bifrost]

Something semi-related occurred to me. In comics, all things are essentially temporary. Yet the notion of United Planets is supposed to last a thousand years or whatever.

Related to that, in a comic that came out in the same month and is supposed to give us an overview of the next 1000 years leading up to the LSH and their era, it is established in continuity that Earth is going to have a Great Disaster, almost all humans are going to die (or be buried in stasis chambers or whatever happens to them), and anthropomorphic animals are going to rule the world, mainly using limited, old-style technology.

Where are the friends of Earth and its humans in the 1000-year glory days of the United Planets during all this? They just let it happen? They didn't try to help out? Is Great Disaster Earth still in the UP, or did the UP just turn their backs? I mean, we have two comics, practically simultaneous, both trying to set up the future history of the UP and the LSH, and they don't seem to have much to do with each other.

I also didn't like Superman declaring "I'll speak for Earth." You'd think that, in the spirit of the creation of the UP, Superman would call in the United Nations so Earth can speak for itself.

Frankly, I think it's way too early in the history of the DCU for the United Planets. It's going to get in the way of everything writers will try to include in Earth's future history of the next 1000 years.

I also thought that Superman had a pretty bland reaction to the decision of the Council to, effectively, execute his father. ("We're sending him back to a planet that's about to explode. We don't do this with most other time travelers, but, you know, he's been a problem, so it's death.") You could argue that they're just "restoring his destiny," but in fact they're making a decision - maybe his destiny was to spend the next 20 years in an Oan Sciencell, or something else. Kal-El has two small panels of looking shocked, and then the execution-by-exploding-planet of his father is left behind. Now, I hated bringing Jor-El into the present and making him crazed (along with Krypton's new backstory, which I think is an unwieldy mess), but this seemed like a pretty anticlimactic end to it.

I don't like what they've done with Jon in general. Lois and Clark allowing him to go off into space, at age 12, with his crazed and unreliable grandfather. The kid being essentially kidnapped, kept away from his parents, and tortured for five years (which, if taken seriously, would really do a number on him, but he doesn't seem particularly traumatized). Time-twisting to turn that into him being "aged up," which is a terrible cliché. And Lois and Clark missing out on raising their son from 12 to 17. It's all pretty wretched.

In comparison, letting him hang out with the LSH from time to time doesn't seem like a big deal. (Letting him just move to the future for years of his life does seem like a big deal. But I haven't seen the details yet.)