Fly High into the Future: Legion of Superheroes Appreciation

[hondobrode]

5YL was amazing story-telling. Dramatic, realistic, and also very funny in parts(Tenzil...). They didn't take it far enough: SW6 had potential to be something rare: an in-continuity reboot. I wish they just saw that through instead of the post-ZH reboot. It could have been really great.

Totally agree with this.

5YL was way ahead of its time. The SW6 concept was one of the best things ever, and we had both titles. That, IMO, was what they should have followed. Zero Hour basically was a new coat of paint on the Legionnaires, and Giffen's Legion got axed.

Honestly, that's one of the best runs of any comic ever. Anything could happen. They were young adults in a dangerous broken world, long gone from being wide-eyed kids.

It was a huge mistake not having Legion relaunched along with the rest of the DCU, but I think editorially did it more as a favor to Levitz's than anything. You can't believe how many people picked it up and were completely lost or disappointed.

I'd kill to have Brandon (Prophet) Graham on Legion, but he's sworn to never work corporate.

[Marvell2100]

Totally agree with this.

5YL was way ahead of its time. The SW6 concept was one of the best things ever, and we had both titles. That, IMO, was what they should have followed. Zero Hour basically was a new coat of paint on the Legionnaires, and Giffen's Legion got axed.

Honestly, that's one of the best runs of any comic ever. Anything could happen. They were young adults in a dangerous broken world, long gone from being wide-eyed kids.

It was a huge mistake not having Legion relaunched along with the rest of the DCU, but I think editorially did it more as a favor to Levitz's than anything. You can't believe how many people picked it up and were completely lost or disappointed.

I'd kill to have Brandon (Prophet) Graham on Legion, but he's sworn to never work corporate.

Totally agree with everything in the bold. I thought that was one of the most innovative takes on the Legion ever. And then they throw it all away.

[ultradav]

Totally agree with this.

5YL was way ahead of its time. The SW6 concept was one of the best things ever, and we had both titles. That, IMO, was what they should have followed. Zero Hour basically was a new coat of paint on the Legionnaires, and Giffen's Legion got axed.

Honestly, that's one of the best runs of any comic ever. Anything could happen. They were young adults in a dangerous broken world, long gone from being wide-eyed kids.

.

Yeah, SW6 could have worked, and then we would have had the best of both worlds. But at the same time, it wasn't dependent on the long history, it could have been easy to jump on.

[colonyofcells]

With Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy being more popular now, my guess is there will be a launch of a Legion version based in the 21st century.

[hondobrode]

No question they'll be back, just how soon and who's doing it ?

[Pharozonk]

I don't think the Legion can survive under this current editorial regime. Maybe once Didio and Lee leave it can flourish again.

[Marvell2100]

Well they obviously aren't going with Superboy as the inspiration for the Legion in the New 52. So should they replace Superboy with another hero? Or could they use Earth 2 Superman/Superboy as the source? I know Supes is dead in this universe but they could still use him in that role. And actually having the Legion grow out of what happened to Earth 2 could be a better fit.

[joebleau]

Yes please bring back the LSH and kill that awful JLA 3000.

To Please all the fans of the LSH you have to bring back all the members from the different world ( gates, computo, Xs, Andromeda, Kent shakespear ect ect )

[Thor-Ul]

Yes please bring back the LSH and kill that awful JLA 3000.

To Please all the fans of the LSH you have to bring back all the members from the different world ( gates, computo, Xs, Andromeda, Kent shakespear ect ect )

That would be something nice to see. And would be give to the Legion a more diverse line up.

[Overhazard]

That would be something nice to see. And would be give to the Legion a more diverse line up.

I've always thought that the legion should be more diverse, that's actually my biggest complaint about them, it makes no sense that a team set 1000 years in the future has so many white people on it. More POC and alien looking aliens would only make the legion better.

[Merlion]

I stopped reading comics when the Legion ended. I will start again when the Legion is relaunched.

[Nomads1]

I've always thought that the legion should be more diverse, that's actually my biggest complaint about them, it makes no sense that a team set 1000 years in the future has so many white people on it. More POC and alien looking aliens would only make the legion better.

That was one of the things I liked about the Post Zero Hour relaunch. The membership was a great deal more diverse looking, not only ethinaclly, such as Kid Quantum and XS (Black) and Karate Kid (really oriental looking, this time around) but with more alien looking members (Gates, Monstress, Sensor, etc...). Original/Paul Levitz Legion was always too cookie cutter for my tastes.

Peace

[Sutekh]

After Legion of Three Worlds, I kind of wanted to see a 'Legions of One World' story in which only Legionnaires that only existed in a single continuity appeared. No Cosmic Boy or Saturn Girl or Lightning Lad (who exist in all three worlds), but yes to Tyroc and Shikari and Gates and Dream Boy and Kinetix and Blok and Gazelle and Kid Quantum II.

I'm a huge fan of the classic team, found various things to like in the Threeboot (Dream Girl, in that third issue? Best Dream Girl since the Universo Project!), particularly later when Shooter briefly was writing, and enjoyed a lot of the new characters introduced in the Reboot (Kid Quantum II, G.E.A.R., Shikari, etc.). Heck, one of my absolute favorite Legions is the one-shot AU Superboy's Legion!

Pretty much any Legion that isn't set in a grim dystopia, where planets keep blowing up and entire populations die and the heroes never actually save anyone, but run around from crisis to crisis and fail and cry about it, is a good Legion for me. Big challenges, like tens of thousands of mind-controlled Daxamites, and painful losses like characters like Ferro Lad or Karate Kid having to sacrifice their lives to save others, are all great and thrilling, but heroes should be allowed to be heroes and at the end of the day, even if some victories come at bittersweet costs.

The 'good news' shouldn't be that the entire universe was destroyed, but hey, at least a dozen or so super-heroes survived! Woo, happy ending, for anyone who wasn't one of the countless hojillions that died along with their universe!

(I blame that on Crisis on Infinite Earths, where it was a 'happy ending' that every man, woman and child on the various other Earths died horribly, except for the occasional Freedom Fighter, Justice Society member, Marvel family member and / or Charlton hero, who all just sort of skated free of the deaths of their entire worlds. Meanwhile, on Earth 3, the *Crime Syndicate* fights to the *death* to save their universe. They fail, but still, when the *Crime Syndicate* are the only people acting like super-heroes, it's a sad, sad new definition of 'hero' as 'rats who jumped ship and left everyone else to drown.')

As for diversity, it's come around. New members and members-in-training added by Levitz and Jiminez include Dragonwing (Chinese), Harmonia Li (Chinese), Chemical Kid (Phlonian, but looks Asian...), Otaku (Japanese?), Mwindaji (African), Glorith (unclear, but appears black), Comet Queen (shown with alien parents of wildly different *species*), etc. If Variable Lad hadn't 'died' (as if, he turned to gas in the same issue he was 'killed' by being turned to gas...) and Gravity Lad hadn't left to be with his boyfriend, there'd be another alien and a gay male on the team as well (with Ayla and Violet representing the bisexual/gay lady side of things). Hints that a new 'more Asian' Karate Kid was on the horizon were also planted (since Johns inexplicably killed off the previous Asian Karate Kid, Myg, after even-more-inexplicably aging him a few decades, as part of his 'write out minorities and bring back white dudes I remember from my childhood' kick...).

Not all of those new diverse characters were exactly loved, since the team has always been huge, and every pre-existing character had fans who begrudge new characters coming in and competing for increasingly-tightly-rationed page-space and panel-time, but Levitz certainly seemed to be making up for lost time, and adding a *ton* of diversity with this new blood.

(Harmonia Li was perhaps the only one that bugged me, sort of following the team home, being regarded with suspicion, then accepted as part of the furniture, and then, literally from one issue to the next, having a flight ring and being a Legionnaire! Can I become a Senator that way, just follow some people into the congressional building and hang around for a week, and then start making laws and stuff? Yeesh. Plus, a 3000 year old Chinese elementalist, who controls the *four western elements* instead of the traditional *five Chinese elements?* Either she's terribly confused about her ethnicity, or she's lying, or somebody did not check the Google to find out what sort of elements a Chinese elementalist would control...)

[thechief]

Bring back Ferro Lad!

[Zero Hunter]

That was one of the things I loved about the reboot was the return of Invisible Kid and Ferro. The reboot version of IK was probably the best character in the reboot.