Fly High into the Future: Legion of Superheroes Appreciation

[Flash Gordon]

Giffen 5YL all the way for me, followed by Levitz/Giffen, followed by DnA.

I can dig all of those. Giffen draws such a good Legion. I loved that issue of the last series he did with Levitz (even though I love Sun-Boy).

[Flash Gordon]

I think Imra is my favorite character. She's kind of a more competent Jean Grey and she's always been visually appealing.

[The Odd Man]

I can dig all of those. Giffen draws such a good Legion. I loved that issue of the last series he did with Levitz (even though I love Sun-Boy).

That panel featuring Dirk squashed was damn powerful. Great art by Giffen. You could almost hear him squealing "I'll get YOU, Sun Boy!"

[Pharozonk]

I can dig all of those. Giffen draws such a good Legion. I loved that issue of the last series he did with Levitz (even though I love Sun-Boy).

Giffen's 90's style did make it hard to distinguish characters during his 5YL run though.

[Nomads1]

Giffen's 90's style did make it hard to distinguish characters during his 5YL run though.

IMHO, Giffen's style was seriously ruined by the late 80's when he started experimenting too much with characters like the Heckler and Ambush Bug. Everything became too blocky and shadowey. When he returned to Legion, he was already trying a more Kevin McGuire influenced style, but it didn't last. In 5YL his style was better, however, there was still the Ambush Bug influence and while the 9 panel page was an interesting experiment, I have to say I found it limited too much his art. Frankly, I only came to enjoy again Giffen's art when he went back to his Kirbyesque roots already in the 2000s. I like quite a lot where he is now, artwise.

Peace

[Zero Hunter]

I am a little worried about the Legion appearing in the next arc of Justice League United. That book is just not good and I am afraid of how the team is going to be treated in the story. I was not impressed at all in how Wildfire and Danwstar were used in the Futures End tie ins, and a afraid the rest of the team will get treated just as shabby.

[nightrider]

I am a little worried about the Legion appearing in the next arc of Justice League United. That book is just not good and I am afraid of how the team is going to be treated in the story. I was not impressed at all in how Wildfire and Danwstar were used in the Futures End tie ins, and a afraid the rest of the team will get treated just as shabby.

Justice league united is written by Jeff Lemire, perhaps one of the best writers in new 52

[Zero Hunter]

Justice league united is written by Jeff Lemire, perhaps one of the best writers in new 52

That does not change the fact that he is writing one of the most boring books DC has going write now. I dropped it after 4 issues because the book is just dull as hell and Lemire just does not seems to be a good fit on a team book. To me it comes off as all he really wanted to do was keep writing Animal Man and the rest are just thrown in so he can do that.

Just because a writer is good does not mean that they are good on every title. Fans of writers just never seems to realize that.

[Pharozonk]

Let's do a list of the WORST Legion moments:

1. The death of Sun Boy

[Pharozonk]

2. The reveal of Shvaughn's gender and Element Lad's sexuality confusion'

[thetrellan]

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...)

I know it's been an entire season since you posted this, but I'll respond anyway. Where to begin?

To start with, I can see why one might want a "Legion of One World" after L3W. Clearly cramming every version of every hero from that time period doesn't make for a good 3-issue arc, even if the issues are extra large. The Legion doesn't work well that way.

That said, something like L1W wouldn't work for me. At least not as an LSH book. And the very series you refer to here from Adventure Comics provides a good example of why.

It's not fair to say that fans of the LSH of old begrudge giving new characters a chance to compete. In no way was the new group a functioning part of the LSH, not even after they graduated. How could there be competition when the Legion proper was nowhere to be found? I don't mind new members. What I mind is attaching the Legion of Super Heroes name to a book that is doesn't feature the LSH. The new members became a self-defeating clique. Self-defeating because newbies need to interact with the larger group if they are going to be considered a part of that group and learn from it. And besides, a Legion book with an entirely new cast isn't a Legion book, it's something else. Had it been advertised as something else, it could have been judged more on its own merits. They didn't do that, so the book could only disappoint as far as I'm concerned. Which is a shame. The artwork alone was to die for.

Bottom line, this could have been presented better. Bearing the LSH name, but excluding the Legion as we knew it, was a mistake.

I can see why they made it, though. The LSH is such a large group, comprising nearly every hero of the time period, that separating the team into groups and concentrating on those groups one or two at a time has always worked well for Levitz. It's also part of the reason behind the new52 book Legion Lost.

The thing is, the vast majority of these teams had strictly single arc life spans. The only real exception was the espionage team led by Cham. Ayla and Violet were in it also, and I think Timber Wolf or KK. But even that team only got together for the occasional arc. LL was a good idea as a temporary title only. Trying to make it a permanent situation only messed things up, especially when the other book continued to focus mainly on the newbies. The newbies were aided by some lesser members of the main group, but they were still the stars. The core membership was still nowhere to be found, and this continuing ill treatment ultimately killed both books.

I agree there should be a new Asian Karate Kid. What's more, I think it should be the old one's sister. Invent a sister if you must. But a sibling successor would fit in with legion tradition vis a vis Lightning Lass. By all means lets see more of the newbies, but let's see them integrate. Have a few develop friendships or relationships with older members. They live longer in the 31st century, right? Age won't matter much to them.

In fact, newbies mean that an already oversize group- actually more an institution at this point- was only getting larger. How do you effectively disband such an institution an make it stick? And it might not sit so well with those newbies either. They just finally got full membership status, and now you expect them to turn away? Dream on. Disbanding them was already tried once. Didn't stick. And most of those newbies were in tha Academy at the time. So this will be a second disappointment to them, and they might not take it lying down.

[Platinius]

Long live the Legion, I need not say more

[mathew101281]

my favorite Legion image

[The Darknight Detective]

The Legion was the first super group I ever read about. This was circa March 1973 and the issue was Legion Of Super-Heroes #3 (a reprint magazine). While the JLA became my favorite a few years later, I bought just about as many of the group from the future over the years.

Favorite members? Brainiac 5 and Saturn Girl.

[ultradav]

2. The reveal of Shvaughn's gender and Element Lad's sexuality confusion'

I'm not sure why this gets so much hate. It was so daring in its way and a good story.