Trouble in Legion-Land

The cover of Legion of Super-Heroes #50.

One of DC's most beloved and long-running Silver Age series was the Legion of Super-Heroes. They began as occasional supporting characters in Superboy, Supergirl, Adventure Comics, Action Comics and occasionally Superman and Jimmy Olsen stories back in 1958, so they just passed the 50 year mark. Long time for a bunch of teenage superheroes from a thousand years in the future.

Well, the 50 year celebration was noted somewhat by DC, which had quite a few appearances and references to the characters in last year's books, has been republishing some of the better uncollected stuff from the 1980s, when the title was very hot, and produced a special 50th anniversary collection. There has also been a retrospective volume of essays titled Teenagers From the Future, which I recommend and will perhaps review here when I've finished it. But all is not well in published Legion-land, so to speak.

The Legion is notable in a lot of ways. It has one of the earliest and most numerous organized fan bases in the comics field - they started publishing a fanzine back in the early 1970s, long before the Internet made such efforts easy. The place to go for news and discussion now, by the way, is Legion World. It has a long and convoluted publishing history, and several major changes in emphasis that eventually resulted in actual rewrites of continuity, so-called reboots.

After their stint as guest stars, the Legion took over Adventure Comics in the 1960s for a long and acclaimed run. Pushed out by Supergirl strips, they moved to a backup strip in Action Comics, and then limped into backup strips in Superboy, an almost moribund title partly relying on reprints in the early 70s. But then they took over Superboy, which became Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, and then simply Legion of Super-Heroes by the late 1970s.

In the 1980s, the strip became hot, one of DC's most popular properties, while written by Paul Levitz and drawn by Keith Giffen. A new Legion of Super-Heroes title was begun with much fanfare and a new issue 1. This was actually volume three; there had been a brief reprint title in the early 1970s with the name. Volume three lasted until the end of the decade and the departure of Levitz when he became a full-time editor at DC.

And that's when things began to go wrong, many fans felt, for the Legion. The title was handed over to Giffen, who was also a writer, together with long-time fans Tom and Mary Bierbaum. They were permitted to restart the series with a volume four, but they began by explaining that five years had passed since the old series. The United Planets were in disarray, the Legion had dissolved, and the old utopia had become a dystopia. The story had a much more adult tone, and is still admired for its refusal to pander to the reader - you had to read carefully to keep up, and the story was sophisticated and elaborately based in the long continuity of the Legion. It was, to put it mildly, not a welcoming experience for new readers. The Legion's huge cast and long continuity had been pushing people away for years, of course.

There were other problems. The editorial decision that Superman had never been Superboy after the Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot of the entire DC universe had crippled the Legion, as the writers struggled to keep straight a continuity in which they could no longer refer to the most prominent character in the Legion for most of its history. After some very strange and unpopular decisions in v4 (blowing up the moon and then Earth, introducing young clones of the old Silver Age Legion, having a small group of Legionnaires adopt new identities and go rogue), DC gave up and decided to reboot the Legion franchise.

They kept the old numbering in the two ongoing series, which didn't help, but the fresh start was promising. At first it appeared that the writers were simply retelling the old history of the Legion with an updated sensibility and without Superboy; that was what I preferred. But over time it became clear that this was actually a different Legion and a new continuity. It bothered many readers that we would apparently never see the old original Legion again, but the new one was good for a while. However, many old fans didn't appreciate this new, bright and shiny Legion. They missed the complex characters and relationships and didn't enjoy callow teenagers in another utopia. Most fans called this version simply the Reboot Legion, but critics often called it the Archie Legion, or the Kiddie Legion. It probably didn't help that primary artist Jeffrey Moy had a relatively cartoony style compared to Keith Giffen or Steve Lightle's art.

Now Legion fandom began to separate into camps. There were the old grognards for whom the Adventure Legion of the 60s was best; a larger group preferred the recent Levitz Legion from the 70s and 80s; a smaller but vocal crowd preached the virtues of the Giffen dystopia, which most referred to simply as Volume Four or v4, despite the fact that v4 was actually still continuing; a new group preferred the new Reboot Legion. Some, like myself, appreciated each for its individual qualities, but it was all rather hard to take.

The Reboot Legion last for about ten years with declining circulation and many changes of direction and emphasis. They nearly lost me when they brought aboard writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning who went back in the dystopia direction; I really didn't appreciate artist Olivier Coipel. But of course there was yet another group of fans who liked the "DnA" Legion.

When it came to an end, to everyone's surprise, they rebooted again. The v5 Legion of Super-Heroes title (there had been some other intermediate titles, but none with the full LSH name) came to be known as the Threeboot, or the WaK Legion for the creators, writer Mark Waid and Barry Kitson. Waid started over without fuss or apologies, and leaped into mid story with Legionnaires who were about in the 18-20 range that had been popular for most of the run. Waid had effectively "reimagined" the Legion, carefully sorting out their identities and characteristics, changing some origins and appearances, and adding the notion that the young Legion were in a rebellious cold war with the stuffy adults.

I loved it; Legion fandom was not nearly so impressed. Many wondered what happened to the Reboot Legion, or wearily stumped for the return of the now long-lost original Legion, or simply didn't like the youthful rebellious bit (I thought that was hilarious - no one seemed to appreciate the fact that they didn't like it because they're old farts themselves!) And Waid and Kitson began to run out of steam after about a year. Supergirl was brought in and the book retitled Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes. Finally Waid and Kitson left the book in the hands of Tony Bedard.

About a year and a half ago, there was much excitement when old writer Jim Shooter, who had written two acclaimed runs of the Legion in Adventure and Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, returned to write the Threeboot for a 16 issue run, retitled simply LSH after Supergirl went back to the 20th century. This made a lot of old fans happy - Shooter is a good craftsman as a writer, and the stories became more dense with characterization and incident, and the personalities of the Legion closer to their original formats.

It recently, however, was announced that the Legion of Super-Heroes v5 would end with issue 50, and Shooter's 16 issue plot was going to lose four issues. While all this was happening, popular writer Geoff Johns had, to universal astonishment and some delight, revived what appeared for all the world to be the original Legion from before the "five year gap" that had started all the trouble. The old editorial edict that there was never a Superboy has now been lifted, and the old Legion began to appear as time travelers in Justice League of America and Justice Society of America, in a somewhat confusing tale called "The Lightning Saga."

Some fans are not certain that this isn't still another Legion in effect, since the later history of the original Legion apparently didn't happen as we saw it. Some call it the Lightning Saga Legion, or the Action Legion when they appeared in a well-received story with Superman in that title, or the Johns Legion. And the writing was pretty clearly on the wall for the now orphaned Threeboot.

Shooter got the shaft on his story. It has been obvious for some issues that the big climax was going to be a tight fit if all his story elements were going to be neatly tied up with a bow. That was what the solicitations promised, certainly.

But when the book arrived last Wednesday, shockwaves quickly rocked the fan community. Without warning, Shooter was off the book. The script was by "Justin Thyme". In other words, either Shooter quit or his script was rejected and replaced by an author who didn't care for his name to be attached. With justification: this is a dog's breakfast. Only the primary plot was addressed, hardly any loose ends were tied up, and both story and art were rushed and awful. I won't bother to discuss the actual events of the story, because I don't really want to think about it. I agree with a number of critics who now wish they'd simply stopped at 49 and left us hanging.

Rumors are flying, and I can't tell exactly what happened yet. Presumably Shooter will explain at some point. But there are a lot of angry fans, who were enjoying Shooter's take and feel cheated. That certainly describes me.

The only current Legion appearances are taking place in Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds, a beautifully drawn five-issue mini-series in which all three Legions appear in a big team up. There is vast unease about how it will all end up and what the future of the Legion holds. A new Adventure Comics is promised, but there is uncertainty about just how much Legion content there will be.

My prediction is that Geoff Johns and DC's editors have concluded that the Legion works best as an appendage to the Superman mythos, as it originally was. Or at least that this is the way to reintroduce a single, coherent LSH. So we will see them appearing as guest stars for a while, and then at some point, hopefully, they'll get their own title back. I'm not totally unhappy with the prospect, since I was pretty glad to see the old Legion again. But I do wish DC would make up their minds. And what they chose to do to finish the current title, the Threeboot, is not suggestive of the notion that they know what they are doing.