Legion of Super-Heroes Appreciation 2023

[Doctor Know]

I couldn't find an existing appreciation thread, so I figured I would make my own discussion thread.


Oh the Legion... From the height of popularity, to demonstrative obscurity. Where did it all go wrong?


I'm a big fan of the Levitz Legion from the 80s and the LOSH animated series from the 00s. I also read Levitz's second turn on Legion pre-Flashpoint volumes: Superboy and the LOSH, the Choice and Consequences. Nothing special or memorable there. I read the New 52 Legion and wasn't feeling it either.

I wanted to read more Legion stories but I wasn't sure where to start. I missed all the Reboot Legion (the one I admittedly know the least about) and I only read the early and later volumes of Waid's Threeboot Legion. I didn't read any of the volumes when it was renamed Supergirl and the Legion of Superheroes.


Marvel has the Guardians of the Galaxy and the Starjammers. DC has the Omega Men and the LOSH. So much more could be down with the property.

Please leave your recommended stories from any era here. Thank you.

[Factor]

The Bierbaum’s 5 Year Later run is a very big thematic departure after Levitz, but I lived their run anyway. I really recommend it.
So far I haven’t enjoyed Tom McCraw’s run which followed it, but I’m curious as I’m approaching the first reboot.

[M@Bowers2014]

The Bierbaum’s 5 Year Later run is a very big thematic departure after Levitz, but I lived their run anyway. I really recommend it.
So far I haven’t enjoyed Tom McCraw’s run which followed it, but I’m curious as I’m approaching the first reboot.

The 5 Year Later era is still my favorite Legion era to this day. And a lot of very bad things happen to some of my favorites in that run. It's just so well done that none of that matters. I've been reading since 1977 or so and I think that COIE and it's aftermath were the beginning of the end for the Legion. As far as it topping the charts anyway. Hopefully Geoff Johns can bring them back to the top where they belong. But hey, what do I know? I actually enjoyed the hated Bendis/Sook run and hated the 3Boot.

[Billy1977]

John Byrne destroyed the Legion with a pocket verse Superboy the best story that came after Crisis I would say Sensor Girl we all believe or some of us thought she was going to be Kara Supergirl not Jeckie the worst story what they did to Laurel Kent a Manhunter seriously?...

[Uncanny X-Man]

Great idea to have an official Legion thread!

My journey with the various LOSH comics is a bit of a strange one. I started with the Reboot Legion and specifically with Legion Lost. As a comic reader I was familiar with the concepts and characters but I never really read the Legion before and I was instantly hooked. I followed all of DnA's run as well as Mark Waid's Threeboot... I loved pretty much everything I read but I can't really say it turned me into a fan.

And then last Summer I decided I wanted to read a good epic and thought to give Paul Levitz's Legion run a try starting from Earth War and then skipping to the start of his proper run. I didn't realize I was in for a wonderful treat. Chris Claremont's work on the X-books is my favourite work of fiction of all time and Levitz's LOSH is a worthy companion to it. I'm a fan of the Baxter series in particular, it's such an excellent book from start to finish with so many personal highlights (the Universo Project, the Magic Wars, the Conspiracy, everything Sensor Girl...)

Following that... the 5YL run. I believe to this day it's still too dense, too sophisticated, too much a departure from what came before... and yet the entire Giffen run is a masterpiece in my book.

Looking at the future, I can only hope there is one. Geoff Johns basically confirmed he's doing something with the Legion but I'm dying to know if that's just a mini, if an ongoing is in the cards and who the creative team would be. And while I enjoyed the various Legion incarnations throughout the years, the original/Retroboot is the way forward for me.

[Bruce Wayne]

John Byrne destroyed the Legion with a pocket verse Superboy the best story that came after Crisis I would say Sensor Girl we all believe or some of us thought she was going to be Kara Supergirl not Jeckie the worst story what they did to Laurel Kent a Manhunter seriously?...

The pocket universe and the erasure of Superboy from the Legion is usually blamed on DC editor Mike Gold who had fits over CoiE. He is also blamed for the continuity problems on Hawkman in the 90s and early 2000s since he was editor on a good chunk of Hawkworld. Apparently both of which were due to some passive aggressive interest in sabotaging the post-Crisis DCU.

[Captain Nostalgia]

Lots of love for Giffen's 5yl run which is understandable, it's a classic....though i wasn't thrilled about the Timber Wolf fur ball transition.

I think the Zero Hour killed the Legion. It was never able to find its footing again after that.

[CaptCleghorn]

The 5YL Legion was a great way to break off from the Levitz era and to make it known this was not the same thing. What I found most telling wasn't that the basic setting was different (attitudes and circumstances), but that the cast was switched up to better show what would happen to a group after five years. It was dark, and it required more effort to read, but it was definitely worth it.

As for the Legion itself, the concept is GREAT for superhero funny books. Lots of heroes, a future setting, many alien races, massive threats. About the only thing I didn't like was the adherence to an exact 1,000 year jump into the future. That caused a sliding timescale problem where one could have easily been avoided. Say the Legion began in 3247. It handles a jump far enough into the future and it references the 247 number.

I'd love to see a Legion book again. Include some sort of Superman link, but go with the idea that if Superman or boy shows up, things are extreme. And the Legion does NOT need future counterparts to every DC concept of the present. Even though a superhero team is always going to be somewhat like the League, the direct counterparts should be fairly rare.

[Sutekh]

As for the Legion itself, the concept is GREAT for superhero funny books. Lots of heroes, a future setting, many alien races, massive threats. About the only thing I didn't like was the adherence to an exact 1,000 year jump into the future. That caused a sliding timescale problem where one could have easily been avoided. Say the Legion began in 3247. It handles a jump far enough into the future and it references the 247 number.

Agreed with that. The Legion setting is best when it isn't defined by stuff going on 1000 years ago, or being changed because of some ancient historical change that happened ten centuries ago, and will be retconned into irrelevance six months later anyway.

Superman never had kids! Get rid of Laurel Kent! Oh wait, Superman totally has a kid... Supergirl is dead! Brainy needs to freak out about it even though it happened 1000 years ago and he's literally always known it was going to happen, and he has a time machine and can visit her before she dies every day of the week for the rest of his life! And she's alive again anyway, so, oops?

Just tell good *Legion* stories, and let the 'present day' DCU take care of itself. Want a story about 1000 year future Tamaran, and concerned that Tamaran might have blown up a time or two? Whatever. Fake news. It's back, again. Or maybe the survivors of the last umpity-bleem planetary genocides settled on yet another planet and named it Tamaran, in honor of their last homeworld, that kept blowing up so many times.

Just avoid the temptation to have a future-Amazon, a future-Atlantean, a future-Kryptonian, a future-Speed Force-user, etc. on the team and turn it into the Justice Legion. The Legion has a *ton* of great characters, both classic (like Ultra Boy, Shadow Lass and Sensor Girl) and 'new' (like Tellus, Dragonmage and Kid Quantum 2), and doesn't need any future legacies of famous League heroes. It is more than capable of standing on it's own. (That said, I'd totally read a *different* book about a 30th century Justice League spin-off, with folks like Laurel Kent, Rond Vidar, XS and Thunder! Just don't sell it to me as the Legion of Super-Heroes.)

[Doctor Know]

I see a lot of recommendations for the 5 Years Later Legion. I read a synopsis online to get an idea what it is about. Time displaced duplicates of the younger cast, alongside the older cast seems to be the takeaway.

I have the omnibus of the first volume. I could start that and pick up the second omnibus ASAP.


I'm working my way through Supergirl and the LOSH (Threeboot) currently. I read the first two volumes by Waid (Teenage Revolution and Death of a Dream) years ago. I thought it was okay. I dug the changes to existing characters and the nature of this Legion's future. The villain (Lemnos) and his plan however, totally forgettable.


I'll do Dan Abnett's Legion Lost from the Reboot era next.

[Riv86672]

Please leave your recommended stories from any era here. Thank you.

^^^There was a series based on the short lived LoSH cartoon from the mid 00s.



Twenty fun fast paced issues w. nice artwork; it has the LoSH flavor without the convoluted reboot-itis the other books suffer from.

[kcekada]

Legion fans likely all got into the book at different eras. The highlights for me are (in order of appearance):

Jim Shooter/Curt Swan - 1st Mordru, 1st Fatal Five, 1st Karate Kid, Princess Projectra, Ferro Lad, Nemesis Kid, Chemical King

Cary Bates/Dave Cockrum - 1st Wildfire, 1st Tyr, 1st Infectious Lass, revamped character designs

Jim Shooter/Mike Grell/Jim Sherman - 1st Dawnstar, 1st Calorie Queen, death of Invisible Kid I

Paul Levitz/Pat Broderick/Keith Giffen - Great Darkness Saga, revamped White Witch, 1st Invisible Kid II, revamped Legion Reservists

Paul Levitz/Steve Lightle - Lighning Lass's electricity powers restored, death of Karate Kid, 1st Sensor Girl, Tellus

Although I enjoyed Giffen's 5YL run, it is not a highlight for me.

[Dagothoth]

Legion fans likely all got into the book at different eras. The highlights for me are (in order of appearance):

Jim Shooter/Curt Swan - 1st Mordru, 1st Fatal Five, 1st Karate Kid, Princess Projectra, Ferro Lad, Nemesis Kid, Chemical King

Cary Bates/Dave Cockrum - 1st Wildfire, 1st Tyr, 1st Infectious Lass, revamped character designs

Jim Shooter/Mike Grell/Jim Sherman - 1st Dawnstar, 1st Calorie Queen, death of Invisible Kid I

Paul Levitz/Pat Broderick/Keith Giffen - Great Darkness Saga, revamped White Witch, 1st Invisible Kid II, revamped Legion Reservists

Paul Levitz/Steve Lightle - Lighning Lass's electricity powers restored, death of Karate Kid, 1st Sensor Girl, Tellus

Although I enjoyed Giffen's 5YL run, it is not a highlight for me.

Don’t forget the legion cartoon where LGBT tumblr collectively wanted adult brainiac 5 to sit on Superman’s face

[Jim Kelly]

There was a period there in Paul Levitz's first run, when SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES was double-sized, with 34 pages of story and art, every month, issues 231 - 242, 1977-78. That was pretty sweet to have so much Legion each month. Quality may have varied, but it really expanded on what they could do in a single issue.

[Doctor Know]

Please share your thoughts about the Justice League vs Fatal Five movie from a few years ago.

This was a Bruce Timm production. Who admitted back in the Superman TAS special features for the episode “New Kids in Town”. That he was not a big fan of the Legion and had to have others tell him who was who and their roles. While it’s called JL vs the FF, this was definitely a Jessica Cruz centerpiece movie. Star Boy makes the big save in the end but the Legion play no part in the film. Since this is Timm’s continuity, Superman has no connection or history to the Legion. Also being a Timm continuity, Superman is jobbed hard to make the Fatal Five all the more dangerous.