LSH

(This was first published in 2013. I'm pretty happy to see at least some of my reasoning also occurred to the DC higher-ups.)

I did not see any Legion content in comics this week.

I have been pondering the Legion's popularity. In this post over on Legion Abstract, Matthew worries that the Legion is going to be cancelled, and wonders if "...the audience for the Legion of Super-Heroes may have permanently shrunk to the point where these characters just can't support their own title anymore."

I've also been cataloging the Legion's appearances from their first cancellations, the run in Action Comics and Superboy, which has got me thinking about Superboy.

They kept trying to ditch Superboy. He resigned, then came back. He resigned again, then came back again. He finally left permanently...and came back again. Eventually, he died.

The Earth-247 Legion eventually gained Superboy (Connor this time) as a member. There was Superboy's Legion. With the Earth-Prime Legion, Supergirl took the place of Superboy. The renaissance of the current Legion started with adventures involving Superman.

Why? What is it about Superboy?

(This was originally published on October 9, 2011)

I've been looking around at reactions to Legion of Super-Heroes #1 on the web. They fall into two categories.

First are the Legion readers, who seem to be relieved and delighted that the reboot has left the Legion reasonably unscathed -- and, especially, that there hasn't been a Fourth Reboot.

Then there are the non-Legion-readers. I will summarize their reactions below:

(This was originally published on December 24, 2010)

I just realized that the current (Retro) Legion is something that we've seldom seen in science fiction. Bear with me, and we'll get to it in a moment.

In SF we're used to the idea of divergent timelines: two or more universes that share the same past, but have different futures. To borrow Doc Brown's graph from the Back to the Future movies, divergent timelines look like this:

(originally published December 8, 2009)

Steven King's new book, Under the Dome, takes place in a small town that is suddenly walled off from the rest of the world by an impenetrable dome...

(This was originally published on October 19, 2009)

Just to let everyone know: It has not escaped my notice that Jimmy Olsen has been floating (presumed) dead in Metropolis Harbor for over a month now, and nobody -- not his "best friend" Superman, not his coworker Lois Lane, not his boss Perry White, not even the Daily Planet HR department -- seems to have noticed or seems to care.

(This was originally publshed on Septermber 14, 2009)

Has anyone noticed how the Legionnaires are getting subtly younger since "Superman & the LSH" and L3W? In Superman etc, they looked to be contemporaries of Superman's, say early 30s. Now they look early-to-mid 20s.

(This was originally published on April 30, 2009)

I'll have a fuller report on this week's comics, including L3W #4, soon. But first, I have some reflections on what Geoff Johns is doing in L3W. Specifically, I believe that Johns is codifying a unified meta-history of the DC Multiverse(s), and putting the Legion squarely in the center of that history. 

Earth-Prime is a Special Place

(This was originally published on November 2, 2008)

As I see it, there are three basic possibilities at the end of L3W: (1) All three Legions wind up in separate universes; (2) Some stay and some go away; or (3) All three Legions stay in the same universe.

Let's consider the third possibility: three Legions (or, at least, their surviving members) all in one universe. What to do?

(This was originally publoshed on September 20, 2008)

I'm sure this is just wishful thinking, but everyone is speculating about what will happen after Legion of 3 Worlds, so I thought I would throw in my two bits.

Way back when there was a DC Multiverse, the Justice League of Earth-1 and the Justice Society of Earth-2 got together every summer for a two- or three-part adventure. These JLA/JSA crossovers were very popular, and they ranged all over the multiverse (the Legion even co-starred in one of them). Eventually it all culminated in Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Legion continuity has always been a double-edged sword. The complexity of the Legion's vast cast of characters and detailed history is often cited as a barrier to new readers. Who wants to pick up a Legion comic, knowing that just to understand what's going on, you'll have to learn dozens of characters and huge amounts of backstory?