Zero Hour Legion of Super-Heroes

[Adset]

just finished re-reading the Zero Hour reboot legion (legion of super-heroes and legionnaires #0 through the end of each title, i'm taking a little break before jumping into legion lost). hadn't read these since they were hot off the presses in the 90s.

thoughts on the reboot legion? memories? favorite storyarcs? complaints?

i was born in eighties, so these were "my" legionnaires, i suppose. i've gone back and read most of the 80s legion stuff (and waaaaaay back to the beginning via those black and white showcase volumes), as well as the threeboot and return of the originals incarnations. but since the ZH reboot legion is what first got me into it all, it has always had a special place in my heart.

overall, i thought the quality dipped towards the end -- ANOTHER emerald eye appearance? -- and the DnA "legion of the damned" and "widening rifts" stories were a breath of fresh air, but i still dig the stuck-in-the-20th-century arc in legion (85-100 -- anyone else COMPLETELY forget that "genesis" was a company-wide crossover? i sure did), the original emerald eye arc with kinetix and shrinking violet, the return of m'onel, and mordu.

i will say the whole series needed 100% more karate kid.

[Zero Hunter]

I really liked the first few years of the reboot. It felt fresh while still feeling like the Legion. It started losing its touch to me when the split the team into two parts with one half being stuck in the modern day. Even then it was not that bad it was just not as good as what had come before. For me the point where things really started going bad was when the team from the past was brought home. After that up until DnA came in with Legion of the Damned it just got worse every issue with just few decent issues mixed in.

I will say I do think that the art choices really hurt the franchise in that era though.

[Lee Stone]

I really liked the first few years of the reboot. It felt fresh while still feeling like the Legion. It started losing its touch to me when the split the team into two parts with one half being stuck in the modern day. Even then it was not that bad it was just not as good as what had come before. For me the point where things really started going bad was when the team from the past was brought home. After that up until DnA came in with Legion of the Damned it just got worse every issue with just few decent issues mixed in.

I will say I do think that the art choices really hurt the franchise in that era though.

I agree about the art.

I had lost touch with Legion after Millenium because the Waldenbooks that carried them in my town had closed.
When we briefly had a comic shop (actually a baseball card shop that added comics just before Zero Hour -probably because of 'Death of Superman' & 'Knightfall' and the whole store closed during the '90s crash), I saw the two Legion titles and it never got my interest. The art wasn't to my liking, Legionnaires looked like kids and the whole alternate versions confused the heck out of me.

However, when DnA launched the 2001 series with a harder sci-fi angle, I was all over it and went back and got Lost, Worlds and Damned.

But it was over much too quickly.

[JLH]

I wasn't a big fan of this version and was especially disappointed that they had so many Legionnaires join right off the bat. I was looking forward to the Legion slowly building its ranks--but at the same time I have to admit I was longing for the introductions of some of my favorites like Wildfire, Dawnstar and Blok. I guess they just had no chance of pleasing me!

I'm currently re-reading the 5-years later Legion and Legionnaires titles and as soon as I'm done will be going back in time to whenever the Archives ended. As soon as I finish Magic Wars, I plan on hitting the Zero Hour LOSH to see if I enjoy it more the second time around. Don't expect to be there until late next year though! Here's hoping that by then DC launches a new (and hopefully entertaining) Legion title! They've been MIA for too long now.

[j9ac9k]

I loved Pre-Zero Hour Legion, so I stuck with the new team awhile, but Moy's art really turned me off. I liked that the characters seemed late-teens, early 20's and I ultimately liked the relationships and characters that were crafted. (except Sensor as a reboot of Jeckie and it killed me that they took so long to reboot WILDFIRE who had not been seen since Levitz's run and then the new Wildfire origin was horrible)

So, even though I had gotten to like the characters and relationships and the uniformed look to their design, I wasn't able to get *excited* about the team until DnA took over and we had amazing Coipel art. They ended up losing steam after a couple years in and the book fizzled out. Bringing back Darkseid was a hightlight from latter part of that run, but it wasn't great. And Legion of 3 Worlds could have been such a great epic, but it was a bit lackluster - they ultimately didn't know how to bring that idea to life.

[Custodes]

I really enjoyed the first year as well. It has been a long time but, I was excited to have two books a month having always been a Legion fan. Plus getting to start at the start after 30 years of a story line.

The Legion continuity had become very complex before this. I had read about 25 issues...not all or all in a row, of the earlier Legion book where they were all adults. Very interesting and different. But, I missed the beginning and was a bit lost. Calling each other by their real names was a challenge sometimes but added to the elite feeling of belonging to something which had gone on for years that was hush hush and secret. A private joke. It was not for the masses. But, was well written. Always wish I could have found an entire run of those.

Then there was the Legion 94 stuff too.

So, I think the Zero Hour books were nice...for a time. I remember losing interest and being bothered by it. I always wanted to love the Legion. When I was a kid I was younger than them. They were adults to me. Then I was the same age. Then a bit older. Now they are all kids. But, always there. I like their agelessness. I always preferred the Mort Books to the Julie books. The fans ten years older than me preferred serious Julie editing. Back in the early days anyway. When I impressed on my favorite books.

[The Whovian]

However, when DnA launched the 2001 series with a harder sci-fi angle, I was all over it and went back and got Lost, Worlds and Damned.

But it was over much too quickly.

I can't agree more with this. Sums up my feelings about it exactly.

[SJNeal]

I found the Moy's artwork childish at the time, but now I find it charming, and quite suitable to the era.

[Custodes]

And didn't Chris Sprouse do art on Legion, in a different style from his usual. Cartoony but,not exaggerated like his X-Men work.

[j9ac9k]

Chris Sprouse worked on the beginning of "Legionnaires" which was pre-Zero Hour starring the young clones of the original Legionnaires. (Sprouse worked on "X-Men?" You're not thinking of Chris Bachalo are you?)

[JLH]

Chris Sprouse worked on the beginning of "Legionnaires" which was pre-Zero Hour starring the young clones of the original Legionnaires. (Sprouse worked on "X-Men?" You're not thin king of Chris Bachalo are you?)

I'm currently reading the pre-ZH issues and am bothered by how immature and downright mean Lightning Lad/Live Wire and Sun Boy/Inferno are. They call a girl trying out for membership a fat, ugly cow, and even bully Invisible Kid (who can handle himself). These don't come across as the same characters who emerged and fought during the war with the Dominion and have dealt with losing both fellow Legionnaires and the Earth itself. It's a bit jarring.

[Montressor]

I remember being confused enough about the events that I called DC's offices and spoke with the editor of LoSH at the time, wondering if Legion #0 was a flashback or the start of a reboot. As a fan of 5YL I was not pleased.

[Adset]

i liked moy, especially compared to the rotating losh artists, who often struggled to make their characters look like people. moy's stuff was very clean (though, as mentioned, perhaps a bit cartoony). on the flip side, i found legionnaires incredibly wordy thanks to roger stern's scripts.

[Nomads1]

I've been Reading the Legion straight on since the mid-70's and have read quite a lot of the back-issues since then. Legion has always been favorites of mine. Great Darkness Saga is still among my top 10 of every thing I have read. All that said, the Post-Zero Hour Legion is still my favorite inccarnation of the team. The first couple of years, right up to the Legion going up against the Fatal Five and Cos' plan to take down President Cho was awsome. After that, it was still pretty good right up to the Split. Legion started getting more uneven, however, IMHO, Legionnairies was still great (despite Legion having better art. The Moy's really weren't what I'd call a selling point for the book. I kept waiting for art changes that never came, and that, IMHO, is one of the things that kept the book from being a hit). The Mordu saga was pretty good. After the team returned from the past, and continued divided with the Earth-based team and the Outpost team, things started to get really dull. I hated the Brainiac 5.1 upgrade, for I felt it erased a lot of his more abrassive personality (wasn't a big fan of the new look either, though the in-born force-field powers did come in handy). Stories started to have less impact, and seemed a lot of villain of the month episodes. DnA really injected much needed energy and gravitas into the book. However, what I most liked about the reboot Legion was how they fleshed out the characters. With few exceptions over the years, Legion pretty much was interchangable costumes and boy-lad/girl-lass/kid code names, with very little real personalities. IMHO, the PZH-Legion gave many of the long over-looked Legionnaires such nuanced personalities that it made them favorites of mine. Not all of them were winners. Original Wildfire, Timber-Wolf, and Element Lad among others, were much better, IMHO. But I'd never think characters such as Triad, Umbra, Shrinking Violet, Apparition, Invisible Kid, Matter-Eater Lad (this one, came out better from the Bierbaum's Leggionnaries) and others would become such favorites of mine. Even old mainstays like Cos, Saturn Girl and Brainy, to name a few, got more nuanced personalities, that, for me, made them MUCH more interesting. Plus, great new characters such as Gates, Kid Quantum II, Kinetix, etc... Even screw-ups like Leviathan and Live Wire were, IMHO, much more likable. As I said, not all of them were winners, but, the way I see it, they got more right than wrong. The general looks, inherited from Sprouse's Legionnaries were, for my tastes, excelent, giving the Legion a team look, while at the same time maintaining their individuality. Once agains, not all were winners (Colossal Boy 's costume were always among my favorites of the team, Leviathan's not so much. Plus, I felt they really spoiled Ferro Lad's character by not only giving him such a hesitant personality, while the Bierbaum's FL was really confidente and self-assured, but also by going with that inspid look, while Sprouse had come upwith such a good design for him), but I think they, once again, got more right than wrong. Characters like Gates, Sensor (I missed old PP Sensor, but I liked the snake-like Sensor's sweet personality. DnA kind of loose points with me for making her bitter, thugh I liked the updated mixed form), Monstress and others seem to make the Legion more varied, less human like (but that's not necessarily an advantage of this incarnation, for the were trying to do this with characters like Blok, Quislet, Tellus and others..) I liked the name changes. Always thought the boy-lad/girl-lass/kid code names too limiting. All in all, I thought the PZH-Legion had a lot of unrealized potential, but I still loved it. DnA brought it to another level, with more serious stories and better art, (and Simone and Jurgens swan song was quite good) but it ended too soon. I really never saw a reason for the threeboot Legion. With less than a decade after the reboot, the concept was still fresh. With a little tweaking, there was no reason Waid and Kitson couldn't have done their youth movement take with the PZH-Legion. What they did, IMHO, waekened the concept of the Legion as a whole.

Peace

[Nathan Irwin]

I am reading the post-Zero Hour Legion right now, since I recently finished putting together a full run of both series.

The Levitz-era team is "my" Legion. I read the book from 1980-ish up to about Crisis. I don't much care for the 5YL era; I found it depressing and frequently obtuse.

I'm only about 2 years into the run at this point, but I'm liking it a lot. Going back to square one with the property gives new readers an easy entry point, and having a younger cast returns the team to its original concept. The lighter tones is reminiscent of some of the humor Giffen brought to his first stint on Legion. It also makes the occasional dramatic moment, like the death of Tinya, more striking.

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I actually prefer Moy's art in Legionnaires to Moder's in LOSH. Joy is definitely cartoony, but it fits the tone of the book. Moder's just seems sloppy and unpolished.

I still have a ways to go with both series. From what I've read, the quality drops over time. But I look forward to seeing the turn DnA take with the book, once I get that far.