davidh777

So this may be an overly ambitious thread, but I love the Legion, and not only do we have the Kids WB series and the Supergirl title running, but on the way are another Showcase Presents and this Eye for an Eye TPB, which sounds like it may be a bit of the reprints we've been waiting for. Maybe someday they'll resume the Archives as well!

Patman

Looking forward to the Jim Shooter run on LSH (plus the new artist Manapul draws like Chris Bachalo, which isn't a bad thing). I've also been digging Action Comics with Johns and Gary Frank, a very fun read for me.

Adam Tyner

For another few days, at least.

I'm looking forward to Shooter's return as well. I've been a rabid fan of all of the Legion's various incarnations for years and years (I'm nerdy enough to have a page of original art from Jeff Moy's "Legionnaires" run framed a few feet away from me, even), and I have to admit to not thinking much of this latest reboot at all. I was intrigued by the mistrust and sinister undertones of its earliest issues, but anymore, it's a book I buy purely out of habit.

Patman

I first got into the LSH when Mike Grell came on board to do the artwork in the mid-1970's. Then went back got a few Superboy and the LSH back issues before the Grell run when Dave Cockrum did the art (and came up with tons of costume designs for LSH members). Loved James Sherman's short run on LSH (the beginning of the Khunds and Dominators storylines). Kept up with them in the mid 1990's (most of the Giffen and Bierbaums stuff), but then lost touch with them until the recent Mark Waid/Barry Kitson LSH revival. Damn, I feel old.

Adam Tyner

If you get a chance, give the post-Zero Hour reboot a look. I know a lot of people have mixed feelings about it, but I find the first few years pretty tremendous. It's one of very few runs I'll periodically pull out of the closet and read from start to finish.

davidh777

Is that in TPB?

Adam Tyner

Not much of it. "The Beginning of Tomorrow" collects the first issues of the reboot, but that's it for years and years' worth of material. I seem to remember hearing a rumor that there was going to be a TPB collecting the White Triangle arc that quickly followed what's collected in "The Beginning...", but that never panned out. Definitely pick up the first trade if you can, and I'd bet you can find a lot of the issues that followed in the discount bin at your LCS.

davidh777

I do have that one and thought it was pretty good. That's the frustrating thing about Legion TBPs and HCs. The last couple DC Archives were pretty minor material (albeit with great art). Would love to see some of the subsequent stories reprinted.

ytrez

I follow pretty much the same path but stopped when before the Waid/Kitson run. I think there were younger clones or something of the Legion running around when I stopped.

Adam Tyner

Yeah, the "SW6" Legion...introduced in '91 in LSH, got their own spinoff, Legionnaires, in '93.

Superboy

They really need to put Legion Lost in a TPB.

Laertes

I loves me some Legion. One of my favourites when I was a kid. I know I'm in a minority, but I really liked them at the end of the Levitz run, right before the 5 yr gap. I liked those costumes, and I liked the team then--I liked Shadow Lass marrying Mon-El without his consent. I would be quite happy for them to pick up there, when they're a bit older (late 20s, early 30s?) rather than starting them as teens again.

That, to me, was one of the beauties of the book (besides the sprawling cast): that the characters had aged from teens to adulthood--gotten married, had children and grown up. I liked Vi and Lightning Lass hooking up, (if they did, can't remember), and I thought that just towards the end, with Magnetic Kid and Tellus, they were getting the neat mix of older and younger characters, with the older ones acting more as mentors.

yeah, that was good stuff.

fujishig

I'm a longtime LOSH reader too... I picked up the older stories in those little paperback collections. I think I stopped around the Sensor Lass/Quislet era, then picked it back up after the time gap.

If you ignore the implausibility of the clone storyline (which ones are clones, which ones are real) in the pre-Zero-hour stories (LOSH v. 4), you'll appreciate the art. The regular Legion book had the older Legionnaires, and that went into some dark story about them being on the run and changing their looks. Immonen was on the art, and did a great job. The Legionnaires book had the younger team, was a bit brighter, and had Chris Sprouse, and occasionally Colleen Doran and Adam Hughes on art. I actually loved the complex, darker Legion in the Giffen/Bierbaum days, though it fell to the inevitable reboot.... there was a ton of stuff that was mired in Legion continuity that Legion fans either loved or hated (how about that Shvaughn and Element Lad reveal?). And the artwork was pretty great throughout... Giffen in his pre-Trencher days, Kitson on L.E.G.I.O.N., and Jason Pearson along with the aforementioned artists. They also did an admirable job replacing Superboy with Valor in continuity, and introducing Laurel Gand in place of Supergirl, since Crisis tore those two away from the Legion.

Zero Hour rebooted them, and thus brought a new, younger Legion. They revamped the series by reintroducing all the characters and keeping little nods to past continuity here and there. However, I think they were kinda caught in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't kind of conundrum: Legion fans either complained that the stories were just exact copies of the old Legion (in which case, why did they kill my beloved Legion) or complained about the major changes they made to Legion history (snake Jeckie). IMHO, they kinda lost their way around the time the team split up and part of the team went into the past during Final Night. The creative team seemed to change regularly, there was some mysterious anomaly that changed a few characters that didn't seem to get properly explained, and it slowly ran itself into the ground.

DnA and Copiel started Legion Lost, and I have to admit I hated it. It was darker, but almost too dark, the Legion was reduced to a small cast for the duration of the series, and Copiel's art was not polished enough to make it work. When they did the post-Lost relaunch, Copiel's art had evolved significantly.

Waid and Kitson's new reboot was a culture shock, but I grew to like it, though with the old pre-gap Legion showing up, I'm very very confused...

Adam Tyner

I agree with fujishig as well, although I loved Jeff Moy's artwork so much that I still adored "Legionnaires" even when half the team was stranded a thousand years in the past, although its sister book seemed so much colder by comparison. It definitely lost its way after those earliest year -- really, LeVIathan? ::shudders::

I didn't care much for Legion Lost at all either. DnA and Coipel's run in the waning days of the monthly was too unrelentingly dark for my tastes anyway, and I gave up on Legion Lost after just a few issues. Coipel's art was so chaotic that I was halfway astonished he was considered a professional artist, although his style is almost unrecognizable now compared to those earliest days.

Superboy

Holy shit. You know your Legion! I agree with most of your sentiments, although I really didn't mind the reboots. I felt like the Legion was so displaced from the DCU that it could have been all over the place and still a great book, even though continuity was basically non-existent.

The Legion always changing, mostly due to inexplicable changes in the space-time continuum is something of a constant, especially within the past 10 years of the Legion. There was even a totally new (though old...) 30th Century/Legion now from the JLA/JSA Lightning Saga. While this can irk many fans, I'm really flexible when it comes to this type of storytelling because it really gives the writers the ability to step into the wider DCU (which really, didn't happen often as it could have, and didn't produce the kind of results most people, myself included, were happy with), but at the same time, allowed them to shape the 30th Century and the Legion into whatever they wished. I for one loved the latest Legion reboot, with themes of youth being lost and powerless in a police state. I found it really refreshing compared to the over-glorification of youth and lack of raw character that plagued the Legion post-Zero Hour.

I was really surprised to re-read Legion Lost and see Copiel's name as the artist. His work on House of M really shined and it really shocked me that the artwork could be so mediocre. It was really the one thing that really dragged down the story for me. However, I did love the Legion Lost/Legion World/Legion transition. It was nice to see a story carry on for more than 6 issues in the modern age.

I too am confused with the appearance of the old legion, but hey, seeing as how the Multiverse is back, who cares?!

fujishig

Don't get me wrong, I loved seeing the old Legion, and if they were going to bring them back, they had to go with the pre-gap Legion. The Sensor Girl/Karate Kid thing still confuses me, though.

Just realized that I missed preordering the first issue of the Supergirl-less Legion of Superheroes book, because they changed the name and I didn't change my pull list in time... doh!

As far as volume 4 of LOSH: I caught on really late. I remember having the second issue of the title, and only recognizing Ultra Boy, realized it wasn't the Legion I remembered, and dropped it. A couple of years later, I was scouring the backissue bins looking to complete the series. I think it was that second Annual that came out, detailing how Mon-el/Valor had become the new inspiration of the Legion in the absence of Superboy that pushed me over the edge.

davidh777

Are the Supergirl trades worth picking up? I spent a lot of years away but caught up with some of the reboots via trade, and I thought Teenage Revolution and Death of a Dream had some entertainment value.

davidh777

Just finished Showcase Presents LSH #2 and the last few issues are Jim Shooter. Can't wait for #3, though I already have a lot of those stories in the Archives series (hmm, on second though, why wait for the B&W when I can read them now?).

I was kind of hoping that the Showcases would sell well enough to go further than the Archives series, but the first two have covered roughly the same ground as the first five Archives, so that'd be around five Showcases to cover the 12 Archives, and I don't even know if they'd consider going past a certain date.

mrhan

That's when I started collecting them, too and got all the back issues that Dave Cockrum did. I told a friend of mine that only collected Marvel that Dave basically copied his costumes that he designed for LSH and redrew them for the New X Men. He thought I was BSing until I showed him an issue with Saturn Girl and and X-Men comic with Storm side by side.

My favorite short story was in #210(?) when Grell did his version of Karate Kid and made him look like Bruce Lee. I met him a few times and he signed the "1st Issue Special" of Warlord for me. Really cool guy.

fujishig

It was more than just copying... he took some of the rejected/unused ideas for LOSH and used them for X-men (Nightcrawler being perhaps the most popular example of this). And then during his run on X-men, he "created" the Shiar Imperial Guard which had exact analogues to the then-current Legion, (kinda like Roy Thomas's Squadron Supreme was the JLA)... though they were later redone a bit in the Byrne years to not-so-closely resemble the Legion, particularly during the Dark Phoenix saga.

mrhan

At least he wasn't pulling a Rob Liefield and plagarizing other people.

fujishig

Right. Didn't mean to imply he stole anything, all the designs were his ideas, and the Imperial Guard were more of an homage, not an intentional rip-off.

davidh777

Not to hijack my own thread, but where's the Absolute Warlord already?

JasonF

Absolute Warlord is probably unlikely, but Grell is working on a Warlord revival due out this spring, so it wouldn't surprise me to see some sort of reprint of the original issues.

As for the Legion, I'm a long-time fan too. I started reading with Zero Hour, but went back and filled in almost all of the pre-Zero Hour issues. Ever since, the Legion has been my favorite group of characters.

Adam Tyner, I love your taste -- Jeff Moy is great. People dismiss his run as "Archie Legion" but I loved his art on the book. Of course, I'm probably biased since Jeff is a friend of a friend.

davidh777

Even TPBs would be fine with me. I thought they would have done it when they launched that craptacular new Warlord a couple years ago.