1966-1969: ADVENTURE era: Shooter

Jim Shooter hit the Legion, and neither would ever be the same. A fairly static, somewhat predictable super-hero team became dynamic, unpredictable, even manic. Readers could never tell what might happen next. Heroes teamed up with villains, characters died (then returned as ghosts), long-time members resigned, new faces appeared, we saw the Legion grown-up, new super-hero teams visited -- it was a heady, hectic three years that is universally acknowledged as The Legion's Golden Age. Two-part stories became the rule, rather than the exception. You didn't dare skip an issue, for fear of what you'd miss, and even the least of the stories were classics. Please note that I don't intend to imply that all of the stories listed in this section were written by Jim Shooter. But his influence certainly defined this era of Legion history. Picking the best stories of this period is almost impossible; they were all that good. My personal favorites, in no particular order, are: The Sun-Eater saga in #352/353, The Adult Legion (#354/355), "The Ghost of Ferro Lad" (#357), "The Outlawed Legionnaires/The Legion Chain Gang" (#359/360), "Escape of the Fatal Five/Battle for the Championship of the Universe" (#365/366), "No Escape From the Circle of Death" (#367), "The Colossal Failure/School for Super-Villains" (#371/372), "King of the Legion/Execution of Chameleon Boy" (#375/376), "Twelve Hours to Live/Burial in Space" (#378/379), and the tenth-anniversary story "The Origin of the Legion" in Superboy #147. And, of course, this period produced my personal Favorite Legion Story of All Time, "Mordru the Merciless/The Devil's Jury" in #369/370.