[Legion Fan Club] Weekly Reader Week 51 Legion / Legionnaires – Double-barreled Excitement after Zero Hour April 16th, 2020

Welcome to this week’s Legion Excellence Entertainment Offering. We get to participate in one of those singular historic moments in DC Comics when continuity was relaunched company-wide AND once again the decision was made to run two Legion series at the same time about the same Legion, just like they did around 10 years prior in the mid ‘80s.

After Zero Hour: Legionnaires and Legion singing in two-part storyline harmony!!!

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Legionnaires (1993-) #0, 19-20; Legion of Super-Heroes (1989-) #0, 62-64

LEGIONNAIRES (1993-) #0 LEGIONNAIRES Zero The fledgling Legion of Super-Heroes gets in way over its head during its first official mission, investigating the attempted assassination of its mentor, R.J. Brande. Even the Legionnaires cannot prevent a second murder attempt—not without the help of some mysterious new recruits.

LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES (1989-) #0 LoSH 89 Zero With the timestream restored, it’s back to the future for the incredible origin of the 30th century’s greatest heroes. As the free worlds of the galaxy take their first tentative steps toward unity, multibillionaire R.J. Brande looks for a way to repay the universe for his lifetime of prosperity.

LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES (1989-) #62 LoSH '89 #62 Following the devastating events of ZERO HOUR, the 30th century begins its recalibration into the timestream…and the Legion of Super-Heroes is reborn !

LEGIONNAIRES (1993-) #19 LEGIONNAIRES 19 The Legion’s difficulties escalate when conflicts between the government and R.J. Brande intensify, problems arise related to the team’s newest member, and trouble falls from the sky.

LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES (1989-) #63 LoSH '89 #63 The Legion is caught in the crossfire when the sole survivor of an alien race comes to Earth to exact revenge from an ally of the United Planets.

LEGIONNAIRES (1993-) #20 LEGIONNAIRES 20 Some Legionnaires have second thoughts about the team after being forced into an all-out battle on the moon to save the life of R.J. Brande’s greatest rival.

LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES (1989-) #64 LoSH '89 #64 Live Wire fears that his powers are out of control and it may only be a matter of time before they erupt with lethal consequences. Plus, more is revealed about the mysterious rival super-team.

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Discussion (with spoilers):

  1. Does this version of dual storylines work for you? Is this better, the same or not as well done as the mid-80s double Legion series coordination?

  2. Which of the reimagined heroes are your favorites in this run?

  3. Was it a good thing or a bad thing that Zero Hour rebooted Legion in the ’90s? Why do you feel that way?

Next week, the prestigious Week 52 for the [Legion Fan Club] we hope to get to, shall be a surprise to all!

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Binged these this afternoon while my daughter napped.

I think these dual story lines work a little bit better, but I’m still not a fan of this type dual series but one story line. It has been done better in the past week’s readings were different aspects of a story, or character interactions were the driving force of each series while telling an overall cohesive narrative. Here it seems like you couldn’t collect just one series, you had to read both of them.

I really like XS, but I think that is because I know her from way back when I read Flash and Impulse. I’m not sure if I have read enough of this yet to pick up on different takes of characters - although the tension and anger between Live Wire (ugh) and Spark (ugh) was a surprise. I expected more chumly brother-sister relationship over antagonistic and grating brother-sister relationship.

Honestly, I think they handled this reboot well without just cancelling and restarting the series. They were different, but not extremely different if I’m not obviously seeing it. I do always love the different takes on Briany. Seems he is an easy one for people to dream up new takes on.

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A mix of good concepts that held up for several years and some not so great ideas for sure. I found the mashup of the Legionnaires characters with the Legion characters fairly on target, with some new concept characters like XS working well.

I also am glad that the names “Live Wire” and “Spark” didn’t stick.

Later today I’ll roll out a very unique one year celebration selection…ACROSS TIME!!!

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It is very interesting to see so many different iterations of this team. Have other characters and Teams been rebooted as much as Legion?

With so many team books it is a revolving cast of members, or with characters it is evolution with respect for times, and here is like someone blows a whistle and starts over with the same characters and place, but different personalities or twists on origins.

Which feels unique because they are not explicitly saying each version is a different timeline or hypertime or whatever.

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So I’m reading this through a digital trade I bought on sale on Comixology a long time ago, and I saw this introduction by Mark Waid that I thought was really interesting, detailing the origins of how the Legion Reboot came to be.

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Nice piece of comic book history there for sure.

I’m glad these various reboots lasted at least close to 10 years so we have a nice “continuity-bound book” for each of these versions.

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Agree, although would like to see “The Wanderers” at some point again for sure.

Any word on if another bound Omnibus for the Reboot is going to be released (like up through Emerald Vi, for example?) The Legionnaires volumes that @Jay_Kay references above are a great arc to showcase Garth’s story, but the set of stories right after that was great, too.

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Its funny, cause Waid, KC and crew spent a lot of time with discussing retconning only to reboot, then 15 years later, Johns and Levitz come back and retcon with kind of a shrug. :smiley:

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Guess we’ll see.

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I mean, Waid himself would come back and reboot his own reboot, so… :man_shrugging:

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Everything was getting re-booted at about that time. Not just the Legion. DC went through final crisis’, Fifty twos, flash points, infinite crises’. convergences and rebirths (and it’s still changing).

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I was glad when this version of the Legion arrived, It was right on time. The Five Years later version was, to me, a wonderfully written disappointment featuring the remnants of the Original Legion that had failed to “Save the World”.

What surprised me was that they even discarded the SW6 Batch Legionnaires that had just gotten their own bookl

One of the biggest changes was the idea that there weren’t “Applicants” for Legion Membership at first, but rather draftees, chosen by their home planets.

I suppose that once they decided to scrap the Legion’s continuity and start over, it made sense to have the new Legion in both of the books in extent. The dual book system seemed to work fine for about five years with an optimistic Legion, but stopped working for them once they took the Legion back to the grim and gritty.

Also… It should not be overlooked that Spock, Data and the Three Stooges made a cameo in LSH 62

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It would be interesting to take a poll on that, as far as which era of Legion is a person’s favorite. I’ll try that in the private club area later.

I definitely get the sense overall that everybody is very jazzed about the Legion from Zero Hour up through Final Crisis.

Me I’m glad to get just about any version of Legion I can I’m a desperate man.

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The various sci-fi and cartoon easter eggs that this team threw into the books all the time was one of the best parts of reading these stories. Even though they had these pretty serious (at times) stories, they never took themselves too seriously and always had some kind of a lighter element at some point in the stretch.

I agree - it worked for the first year and a half or so, then made not as much sense after the 20/30 split, then back on again after 100. At that point though (essentially when KC left as the line editor), the story arcs didn’t seem to have as much cohesion to them and problems started to seep in, which IMO is what led to the “grim and gritty” Abnett and Lanning approach.

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Preach, brother! :smiley:

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I just pretend it’s a “tribute” version if I don’t love the particular version of Legion, like the guest writers and artists are doing for Black Hammer right now lol…kidding.

I even liked the Legion of Super-Heroes animated series of 2006-8 or so, and I’m torn between Season 1 and Season 2, both have great stuff!

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I really liked it, too. I definitely liked S2 better since Vi had more to do (and was voiced by the amazing Kari Wahlgren), but love the overall show.

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  1. Does this version of dual storylines work for you? Is this better, the same or not as well done as the mid-80s double Legion series coordination?

Honestly, not really. It made sense back in the 80s when the roster was just so big that it was necessary to have everyone get their moment to shine, or the initial Legionnaires premise of exploring a different segment of this universe, but now it really does kind of feel like just stretching the same book over two separate books. I think if I were reading comics during this time I probably would have rather it just been one book.

  1. Which of the reimagined heroes are your favorites in this run?

Hmm, that’s a tough one. So far none of the characters we’ve seen so far feel all that “reimagined.” They feel true to who they were but written with a more modern sensibility. It was cool to see how the initial team sort of formed, from “Triad” being Brande’s secretary who proved to have a knack for it to the UP throwing new heroes at them.

…Actually, wait. There is something. While we got just a glimpse of them at the end of this reading, it seems like they’re reworking Lightning Lord and Ultra Boy being a part of it, which actually does feel very intriguing.

  1. Was it a good thing or a bad thing that Zero Hour rebooted Legion in the ’90s? Why do you feel that way?

I think the reasoning for it – getting rid of the Superboy/Supergirl ties – is bad, but I do feel like the decision to go back to the core team and showing their origins with honestly better writing was ultimately a good decision.

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It should be interesting once we get to that era (or we already have and I’m just way behind) because I’ve read a bit of that run and I honestly remember really liking it.

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I think I may have separate answers to these three questions, but I’ll start by responding to your …uh… response. :slight_smile:

1 - The two book approach didn’t bother me, as (at the time) I was doing that with Superman & Adventure, and (primarily) I think at least 12 Batman books. :wink:

2 - Coming in on the ground floor, in order of appearance, Lightning Lad, Shrinking Violet and Kinetix. The legacy leader who I remembered from old comics my parents bought me in the 70s, a kid I completely identified with, and the new girl who seemed really fun.

3 - It was great that it rebooted, as I got hooked! :smiley: But they also had about 3-4 years of some really good stuff as part of that restart.

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