Ty Rockstar, Dream Girl, and Los Legionarios

Catching up on some random Legion-ness following my vacation...

Episode 8 of the spanish-language Legion history Los Legionarios is complete, and pretty interesting. If you don't know spanish, try translating them via Babelfish or Google. There's a link to each of the 8 segments (earlier, I posted links to the first three).

Photon Torpedoes has a quick look at Nura Nal: Dream Girl: Her Best Work Was on Her Back. It sounds dirty but it's a perfectly harmless commentary on how great a character she was when Paul Levitz was writing her.

The Comic Treadmill is all a-twitter about the upcoming Legion 15, which features some sort of return of Dawnstar, Blok (which I keep wanting to spell "Block", even though I know better), and Tyroc.

I don’t know how these three oldies will feature into the story - perhaps they'll be merged into one new character named Ty Rockstar - but I’m happy there will be a story featuring them (which shouldn’t be interpreted as an argument for the regular return of any of the three characters). And for those of you wondering where I stand on the issue, I am – in theory anyway – in favor of the decision to re-title the book Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes.

What were they thinking?

Heh. Typo Lad at What Were They Thinking keeps cracking me up with his Legion snarks. Relive classic sequences wherein we see:

• Superboy pops into Lana's room at night to give her a special birthday present
  
• Lana wants to kiss Clark but he bops her unconscious with some apples instead
  
• Superboy, Super-Pimp
  
• the latest episode of the Legion fashion show, starring Tyroc. "Brain. Go. Boom."
  

Retroview: Cosmic Boy in Legends

Comics Should Be Good is beginning an ambitious look back at the entire Giffen/DeMatteis JLA series on January 1st. Before that, though, they're doing the Legends miniseries, which introduced the new JLA (as well as Suicide Squad and the new Cosmic Boy miniseries).

You may recall that Cosmic Boy, an amateur historian, travelled back to the 20th century with his main squeeze Night Girl to check out what it was really like 1000 years ago, now that the Crisis on Infinite Earths has mucked up history (but nobody really remembered the Crisis, so how they could know that history had changed escapes me. But I digress.). He appeared in the first two issues of Legends, with a cameo in issue 3, before spinning off into his own mini.

It's not your typical review of the Legends series, though. It's an incredibly snarky, hilarious recap of the issue. Here's Cosmic Boy's role in issue 1:

Next scene: Cosmic Boy is eating in a diner.

Cosmic Boy: I love the past!

Brimstone: Raar. I’m gonna kick your asses.

Cosmic Boy: Holy shit. He’s bigger than a couple of villains who would only be familiar to people who read the Legion of Super-Heroes. I will now fly around him for a page and a half talking about what I’m going to do to him in my gay pink costume.

Cosmic Boy blasts Brimstone who swats him away.

Brimstone: Raar. I’m gonna kick your asses.

Cosmic Boy: Man, I’m lame.

Justice League: Need a hand?

Cosmic Boy: You really have to ask?

Justice League: Well, it sets us up to be able to do a roll call for all the children who are unfamiliar with us. Vibe! Elongated Man! Vixen! Martian Manhunter! Gypsy! Steel! Firestorm!

Cosmic Boy: Where the fuck is Superman?

Please go and read the rest of the issue 1 recap. Cosmic Boy also appears in the issue 2 recap and is mentioned in the issue 3 recap (but doesn't really appear, but that's OK because he only had a cameo in the issue anyway).

Ouch

I used to think Jim Drew was just a bit nuts when he got an Ultra Boy symbol tattooed on his arm. I'm a dedicated, dyed-in-the-wool Legion fan, but Jim took that one step further and is a dyed-in-the-arm fan. (I'll provide a link when I find a picture)

But then there's this guy, the Rev. O.J. Flow who writes for Newsarama. He's big into body art too, but his tastes run towards the comic book images. On his arms, legs, and chest he's got tattoos of Spider-Woman, Hellcat, Hawkman (as drawn by Perez), Dawnstar, Earth-2 Superman, a Mary Marvel lookalike, Earth-2 Robin and Huntress (from Crisis), Firestorm, Starfire, Wildfire, and Phantom Lady.

And I hate going to the doctor and getting a shot or having blood drawn. Yikes!

Reviews: LSH 12, Superman: Man of Steel vol. 4 TPB

Looks like I missed a review of LSH 12 in my earlier recaps. The Comics Shrew likes what's going on.

One of the necessary coping mechanisms of reading Legion is an appreciation of Elseworlds-type stories. Because, as often as the Legion gets rebooted, part of the fun has to be in discovering the new interpretations of old characters. In this, Waid has been close to spectacular. Not every change may be considered for the better, but he's definitely got somewhere to go with all of the Legionnaires and they are all pleasantly multi-dimensional.

The plot and purpose of the story arc... Waid has been very good about distracting us from the fact that it's pretty pedestrian. ... And you know what? It totally doesn't matter.

(Spotted via Good Comics)

A new review of the recent trade paperback Superman: The Man of Steel, Vol. 4 over at What's on My Musical Radar. DC is currently reprinting the early Byrne Superman stories from the late 80's (prior to the de-Byrning events of Infinite Crisis?). Volume 4 reprints the Legion/Death of Superboy/Pocket Universe storyline, from Superman (v2) 8, Action Comics 591, and Legion of Super-Heroes (v3) 37 and 38.

The series is, as a whole, very strong with Byrne doing a nice job staying true to the character but resetting what the editors at the time didn't feel the need for - in this particular volume, Superboy. For anybody who wants to understand the modern mythos of Superman, this is needed reading as it finally gets rid of the glitch that was created by Crisis and its aftermath when it was decided that Superman hadn't been Superboy even though the Legion of Superheroes wouldn't exist without him.

The middle story arc - the deletion of Superboy from the DC canon - is important reading and very well done. It references the near-invulnerable level of power that Superboy (and the pre-Crisis Superman had as well) as opposed to the more limited powers that Superman was briefly given post-Crisis.

Good stuff.

As always, go to my Legion reprint page for a list of what's been reprinted where.

Waid's new Newsarama interview on Supergirl, One Year Later

As you've probably already seen, Mark Waid has a new interview at Newsarama in which he talks (as much as he can say) about what's been going on with the current Legion title.

"One of the greatest creative strengths of the series - that it exists in its own little corner of the DCU - is, unfortunately, one of its greatest marketing weaknesses... because sales on all the DC books connected to Infinite Crisis are rising ... we're sort of lagging behind in the overall growth of DC in the marketplace. We asked ourselves repeatedly, ‘What sort of loud shot across the bow can we fire to get readers' attention without in any way compromising what we're doing? How can we 'connect' to the 21st century DCU without losing what makes the Legion's arena special? We discussed a half-dozen ways to do 'Superboy and the Legion Of Super-Heroes', but not a single one of them wasn't in some way convoluted or horribly retro. But when [Dan] DiDio suggested Supergirl, we knew we had something."

"Despite a lot of good work, we blew it with the post-Zero Hour reboot in '94. We were so desperate to be new and retro, to be innovative and familiar, to take no chances that might alienate the longtime fanbase, that we tried to be all things to all fans and ended up saying nothing. This time out, twelve years later, DC said to us, ‘This time, you have our full backing. Go all out and don't worry about the past. Reinvent the franchise from the ground up, as if it were being envisioned for the first time today.’ And it seems to have worked!"

Worked well enough that Waid can assure current Legion fans that when the series "leaps" one year ahead to 3006 with a sly wink and a nod to “OYL” (as opposed – according to Waid - to a full-blown 'Oh, my God! Where did Lightning Lad vanish to, and who are these three new Legionnaires?’ moment”), Supergirl will be an addition to the established series, not a major change to it, or continuity...

"Which Supergirl is it? Who is she, exactly, and how did she arrive in the 31st century?" asked Waid. "When she smiles warmly and answers those questions at the end of the first issue of Supergirl and the Legion of Superheroes, she drops a GARGANTUAN bombshell that leaves the Legionnaires literally slackjawed."

"Said bombshell is, in fact, a reverberation from an event in Infinite Crisis," concluded Waid. "I wish we could say more ... I'm dying to, because it's so cool ... but it's just too good a surprise to ruin."

Naturally, the various Legion-related message boards are running amok with speculation. The prevailing thought is that it's the latest version of Supergirl (as developed out of the Superman/Batman title). But if it's a reverberation from an event in IC, could we be seeing the return of the pre-Crisis Supergirl, plucked from a time before she died there? Remember, Marv Wolfman has repeatedly said that's how you could do a new Flash series with Barry Allen, since he was bouncing around the timestream before he died. You'd (and he) would have the knowledge that he was going to die and could exit the stage at any moment and go back to bouncing around time to his death.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's pre-Crisis Kara, wearing the costume of the current Supergirl since that's what the current Legion has in its past (although Matrix/Linda Danvers had a couple of costumes to choose from). And speculating even more wildly, with the return of the Multiverse, what if this is the Earth-2 Legion? (Although there was a comment by Lightning Lass, I believe, during the Crisis series that Earth-2 never had a Legion...).

What's the Earth-Prime Superboy have to do with all this? He's getting a new costume such that it would be a spoiler if DC Direct showed a picture of his new action figure. Maybe he dyes his hair and starts taking Profem?

Read my earlier post for eight possible Supergirls. Not all of them would be the bombshell Waid promises, though (like Supergirl 1,000,000).

Some reactions from around the comics blogosphere:

Photon Torpedos says:

I think this could be the shot in the arm that Legion needs right now. I like how Barry Kitson draws her on the cover to issue 16: sexy and powerful without making me feel like I'm looking at teenage porn.

Hey Kidz Comix has some interesting discussion on the matter in the comments section. "I'd just like to say that anyone who takes inspiration from Supertorso is automatically discredited in my book and probably is a bad person. :D"

A couple of Spanish-language blogs required me to use a machine translator (my Spanish is rusty enough, and this is easier on copy-and-paste).

Sergio Robla at the Zona Negativa reminds us in a post that translates and paraphrases the Newsarama (and translated back here) that

Having all this in mind, it was planned that the release point of the title would be during One Year Later, when the cards were already on the table. Evidently, what happens in the present in Infinite Crisis will not affect the future, since the future of the Legion has always been set after the events of IC, and Waid confirms that the last year of the current Legion title has always been post-IC.

Finally, Noticias DC has another recap of the Newsarama article. We find again the pitfalls of machine translation. The author paraphrases Waid:

12 años después de Zero Hour, hemos reinventado totalmente la franquicia sin traicionar el espiritu de la serie, y parece haber funcionado.

Babelfish translates this to:

12 years after Zero Hour, we have totally reinvented the tax exemption without betraying the spirit of the series, and it seems to have worked.

Add "franchise" to the list of words that doesn't machine translate from Spanish to English very well (like Invisible, which translates to Hair Net).

OYYUUUUUU ought to read this

Back on Nov. 18th, I presented a Tyroc trivia quiz in "honor" of his appearing on the cover to the upcoming Legion #15. Here are the answers. I know the whole blogosphere has been waiting patiently.


Part A. Fill in the blank (2 points each):
---------------------------------------------
1. What island is Tyroc from?
Marzal

2. What Broadway musical was the island's secret stolen from?
Brigadoon

3. What's Tyroc's real name?
Troy Stewart

4. What other Legionnaires were present to show that the Legion was colorblind?
Brainiac 5, Shadow Lass, Karate Kid, and Superboy ("Superboy" 216)

5. In his native language, what does "Tyroc" mean?
"Scream of the Devil" according to "Who's Who in the LSH"

Part B. Match Tyroc's yells (spelling approximate) with their effects (1 point each):
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1. EEYYAAAHH            a. spin
2. AHHRRRRRR          b. teleport
3. OYYUUUUUU          c. turn rubbery
4. ARRRRHHHH          d. wind
5. ZZZRRRUUGGHH    e. force field
6. UIUUIEEEE              f. sticky rain
7. ARRREEEEG            g. explosion
8. IRRRRWWWW        h. flame
9. CCCIIIRRR            i. lose balance
10. RRRYYYY              j. trees sprout tentacles


1-h EEYYAAAHH caused the Beta's jet packs to burst into flame
2-e AHHRRRRRR caused a force field that deflected their shots
3-b OYYUUUUUU caused Tyroc to teleport away
4-g ARRRRHHHH caused an explosion around Zoraz
5-a ZZZRRRUUGGHH caused Zoraz to spin like a top
6-c UIUUIEEEE caused the roads in Metropolis to turn rubbery
7-f ARRREEEEG caused sticky rain to fall
8-j IRRRRWWWW caused "the trees [to] sprout wildly growing tentacle wings!"
9-i CCCIIIRRR caused Superboy to lose his sense of balance
10-d RRRYYYY caused a "terrific wind" to be unleashed

Yells 1-3 are from "Superboy" #216, 4-5 from #218, and 6-10 from #222. These 3 issues are the "definitive" Tyroc yells, since Conway wasn't consistent in #263-265.

Bizarro World trivia

Coming out the same time as LSH 16 (March/April 2006) is the Bizarro World TPB, reprinting the hardcover that came out back in February. The Legion Clubhouse has the list of the three Legion stories, new to that volume. These are tales told by Bizarro, so unless someone tells me otherwise, they can be treated as a dream, hoax, or Imaginary Story.

Speaking of the Bizarros, prior to this book, we've seen just two in-continuity stories featuring the Bizarro Legion, one pre-Crisis in Adventure 329 and one post-reboot in LSH v4 113-115 (not counting any dreams, hoaxes, or Imaginary Stories).

Trivia Question: Which three people appeared in both stories as a Bizarro Legionnaire (or as they said in ADV 329, a member of the Legion of Stupor-Bizarros)?

What a revolting development

"Revolt of the Girl Legionnaires" (Adventure 368) got the one-panel treatment over at What WERE They Thinking? the other day.

LSH 16: Oh, THAT Supergirl!

Earlier, I had speculated which Supergirl would be appearing in the newly retitled Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes book. Well, now that the March solicitations are out, it's pretty clear which one it is, and some of my far-fetched ideas are still pretty out there.

The solicitation, via Newsarama:

SUPERGIRL AND THE LEGION OF THE SUPER-HEROES #16
Written by Mark Waid
Art and cover by Barry Kitson & Mick Gray
It’s 1,001 years later…and guess who’s joining the Legion of Super-Heroes? It’s just what you think…and nothing you expect!
On sale March 22 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US

(click to enlarge)

Update on 12/13:
Over on LegionWorld, artist Barry Kitson dropped some more hints early this morning about the future (no pun intended) of the Legion, whether it was One Year Later or not:

The book isn't skipping forward a year - we've always been post IC...the clues are there.

Supergirl's appearance won't rule out the reappearance of any past Legionnaires...in fact it may mean just the opposite...

Maybe it's the Earth-2 Legion? That might explain why they have Silver Age (Earth-1) comics.

On the same page, he has this on the drop in page count from 40 to 32:

The page count will be changing for two main reasons - firstly, we're going to be going onto the higher quality paper - which I'm really happy about - it should make the colors really 'pop'!
Secondly, to make it easier for us to avoid quite so many fill-ins - even with back-ups etc I was struggling to maintain all the detail and aim for as many 30 page stories as we could. Who knows, if we get well ahead on schedules we may get the extra pages back!

More costume goodness

Typo Lad continues his look back at Legion fashion with Phantom Girl ("How Tinya Got Her Groove Back"), Pulsar Stargrave (aka "Doctor Disco"), and Laurel Kent ("aka ICK Lass").

TPB reviews: Darkseid and the Teenage Revolution

[edited for formatting]

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that Comics Should Be Good was asking for suggestions on trade paperbacks to read. The new Legion TPB was one of those mentioned favorably. Well, he's read the book by now, along with The Great Darkness Saga TPB (For those keeping track, those are from The Legion of Super-Heroes volumes 2 and 5.), and he offers a review of each. Bottom line: GDS gets "I was always curious about this story, but it just didn't do it for me", while Teenage Revolution gets a cautious "yes":

It's too easy to make this a generational fight, and although he tried to mitigate a bit throughout the book, it wasn't enough. I didn't like that aspect of it, and it bothered me the whole time I was reading it. If it doesn't bother you, I say go for it - it's a fun superhero book.

You know, "Darkseid and the Teenage Revolution" would be a good name for a rock band.

For a list of other reprints, you can go to my Legion Reprint Page. Other TPBs with the Legion in it (content ranges from cameos to dedicated books) include the following:

Pre-Crisis


• Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told
  
• Superman in the Sixties
  
• A DC Universe Christmas
  
• LSH [vol. 2]: The Great Darkness Saga
  
• Crisis on Infinite Earths
  
• Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?
  
  

  Post-Crisis through Zero Hour
  

• Legends: The Collection
  
• History of the DC Universe
  
• Superman: Time and Time Again
  
• Books of Magic
  
• Superman: Panic in the Sky
  
• Impulse: Reckless Youth
  
• Zero Hour: Crisis in Time
  
  

  Zero Hour reboot to Titans/Legion reboot
  

• LSH [vol. 4]: The Beginning of Tomorrow
  
• Flash: Dead Heat
  
• Flash: Race Against Time
  
• Final Night
  
• Superman Transformed
  
• Kingdom Come
  
• JLA: World Without Grownups
  
• DC One Million
  
• The Kingdom
  
• JSA: Justice Be Done
  
• Superman: Our Worlds at War book 1
  
• The Legion: Foundations
  
  

  Current Continuity
  

• LSH [vol. 5] vol. 1: Teenage Revolution
  

More reviews of LSH 12

[edited to correct spelling]

Aya at Heroine Battleground likes the new book, especially you-know-who's arm-twisting appearance this issue.

There are parts of this Legion, that remind me of the 70s and early 80s. Some of the costumes are pretty cute or even sexy.

Now together with this picture [Princess Projectra] I can say, that the current run is a bit like a best-of Legion with elements from the 70s 80s and 90s. I like that. Give us more of that. I will stay with the title.

Sean Maher liked it too. Well, "liked" may not be the right word:

I really loved Legion of Super-Heroes this week. I mean, I fuckin' loved it. The title has come under fire of late for what folks are calling "pacing issues" or an overall slowness of the central plot. I really can't agree with you folks at all.

Kevin Brown at Silver Bullet Comics gives both the main and backup stories a thumbs up.

Waid knows what he's doing here. He's putting all the pieces in place. Showing us all exactly what the Legion is made of and how they handle the most extreme of situations. You can definitely tell he loves this book and its characters. He's having fun, and it's showing through to the reader. I have no idea how Waid is going to wrap this 13-issue epic up in the next issue, but he has me eager to find out. He definitely has this long-time Legion fan excited.

"Now Playing" Magazine's Tony Whitt gives another good review:

This has been one of the Legion's best years in a long time, and I can't wait to see how this first storyline resolves. Long Live the Legion! A-

Night Girl fashion show

It's the continuation of the Legion Fashion Show over at Typo Lad's. We saw Cosmic Boy yesterday, so naturally today we look at his stalker, Night Girl.

You know, back in the day, it seemed perfectly natural to me (in a comic book sense) for a girl to have such a crush on a guy that she convinces her father to give her super-powers so that she can go to Earth to join the Legion and be his girlfriend. No, no creepy stalker overtones there!

Typo has a picture of Lydda's old costume (black bodysuit with a bouffant hairdo) and her new one (black bathing suit with her hair down).

The costumes look pretty interesting in person, too. I saw them at the 1998 San Diego Comic Con, worn by then-15-year-old Sidra Roberts. Yes, it was vaguely creepy for me to be looking at a 15-year-old dressed in a sexy super-hero costume, but hell, they wear a lot less when they go to the pool or beach. Sidra's mom Sheryl Roberts helped her make the costumes, and of course they were a big hit (especially the new costume).

Here's Sidra as the Adventure-era Night Girl, and here she is as the Grell-era Night Girl. Sidra competed in some costume contest and won a Best Costume award that year. It doesn't sound like it was the main contest at the con:

She won The Best Costume of the Show, given by an indie publisher, and received a box of chocolate covered macadamian nuts, which pleased her immensely. Later, when I went to buy a comic or two from the man who awarded the prize, I discovered that he produces furry animal pornography comics. Needless to say, I didn’t buy any, but Sidra winning the costume award from him cracked me up.

Sidra, Sheryl, and the rest of the family still go to cons together and have been publishing the Collector Times monthly since 1998, which I think is pretty darn cool. They're Houstonians like me, and I might forgive Sidra for going to Texas A&M next time I see her.

Costume, costume, who's got the costume?

What WERE They Thinking is way more snarky than I am, so I'll let Typo Lad handle a look back at Legion costumes in his new Friday series, The Legion of Superheroes Fashion Spectactular! Cosmic Boy (of course) gets the first treatment.

Some reactions to issue 12 (updated 12/4)

OK, so contrary to what I said before, the new Legion is in this week.

Sean "Kid Dork" Twist muses on the darkness in the new title, how it spun out of the original Crisis.

Okay, Legion of Superheroes junkie here. Which is a difficult thing to be, since of all comic geek subsets, this demands the most dedication and patience.

... But she could be back when the Legion is rebooted, since the Legion is always being rebooted. It's part of the pain of being a Legion fan.

Being a Legion fan requires dedication, patience, and....a lot of time to think about things like this and write about them in your blog.

Chris' Invincible Super-Blog, on the other hand, liked this issue:

Pretty much every single thing about this comic is awesome, but it really doesn't get a whole lot better than Page 14. ... Waid and Kitson are unquestionably two of the best in the industry, and this book proves it every single time it comes out.

Diana Kingston's reaction was somewhere in the middle:

There's a lot of action going on, a lot of movement, and in that sense it's as strong an entry in the series as the other issues. However, one very problematic element in this particular chapter is an increased reliance on contrivance.... It's a bit much, really. Granted that Waid is operating on an atypically-wide scale, and it hasn't reached eye-rolling levels yet, but it still knocks a few points off.

Graeme McMillan, no longer on a Fanboy Rampage, gave the issue an "OK". He's wondering if there are deadline problems with the book and is upset that the pacing of the series seems to be losing focus as it heads toward a conclusion. He's not fond of the backup story:

This issue’s back-up, the first not written by series writer Mark Waid (Firestorm’s Stuart Moore handles the writing chores, instead) misses the lightness of touch that Waid’s brought to the book so far, as Lightning Lad spends some time explaining why the Legion exists in a very worthy and dull manner, apparently with the aim of getting into Saturn Girl’s pants. Which is an interesting seduction technique, to say the least, but you know kids these days and their dedication to democratic ideals.

Johnny Bacardi doesn't like the backup either, as "we're given a backup story which is a bit of a drag as Lightning Lad attempts to pitch woo to Saturn Girl by giving her a Legion rally speech of some sort. It's dull and kinda dumb." However, he said "I still think Waid has handled this whole storyline clumsily, but when he's on, this book can be good." He gives it a B+.

Los Legionários

Here's an interesting site, Heroe.com. It's a Spanish-language comics blog, and they're starting an 8-part look at "la Legión de Superhéroes". If you speak Spanish, you can find the introduction to the series (with a cover of LSH 300), followed by part 1 and part 2 already up.

If you don't speak Spanish, you can find machine-translated versions at Google for the intro, part 1 and part 2, but if you do that, you miss the little things like the Legionnaires names in Spanish (Cósmico, Saturno, and Relámpago were the founders). On the other hand, you can see why machine translations aren't all they're cracked up to be, as it translates "Invisible" in Spanish to be "Hair Net" in English. Ay yi yi!

The intro post has links to a past review of "Saga de la Gran Oscuridad" and a recap of Legion history from the Great Darkness Saga to the present.

Who's that Supergirl?

Today's Photon Torpedoes discusses Supergirl and the Legion back in the good old days, including one of Brainiac 5's greatest moments: building a Supergirl robot that would fall in love with him, and then forgetting that he built it.

The Legion I can survive without... but I finally realized life without you is meaningless!

That Cary Bates always did have a way with words.

Offsetting that, there's also a "F*$% Yeah!" moment worthy of Dave's Longbox when she and Superboy punch the crap out of Darkseid at the end of the Great Darkness Saga.

More Supergirl stuff

So here's what Legion artist Barry Kitson said over the weekend on LegionWorld, starting in the middle of this thread:

Well I guess Dan has let the cat out of the bag - yes - Supergirl will be in issue #16 (whether we actually play with a logo for an issue or two you'll have to wait and see - I thought it might be fun)

As I said the seeds for all that's about to happen were sown right from the preview and the appearance or not of Supergirl and other Legionnaires past/present and future are all part of the big scheme... it'll all make perfect sense by issue #36...or was it #63?

Anyway - hopefully when you read the story you'll actually enjoy it!

Just remember LSH had been a thousand (well 999 years) post IC since issue #1!

When asked about the "master plan", Barry said this:

Well rest assured it the Legion at the center of the plan...as to whether you'll get an idea of what it is or not.... wouldn't that spoil the surprise?

"Which Legion?" came next.

I'd like to give a really zen answer - along the lines of there any many but only one, grasshopper, we are legion are we not?...but then it didn't make sense to anyone but me...so...wait and see!

So.... which Supergirl? Listed chronologically in order of introduction, will it be:

1. Kara Zor-el, the pre-Crisis Supergirl of Earth-1 who survived the destruction of Krypton but died in the Crisis?
   
2. Kara Zor-L, the pre-Crisis Power Girl of Earth-2 who survived the destruction of Krypton, who survived the destruction of Earth-2's universe in the Crisis, and who is currently a member of the JSA?
   
3. Laurel Gand, the 30th Century post-Crisis, post-Mordruverse, pre-Zero Hour descendant of Lar "Mon-el" Gand named Andromeda who hasn't been seen since the Zero Hour reboot of the Legion?
   
4. The artificial being formerly known as Matrix, who survived the destruction of the Pocket Universe and later merged with Linda Danvers and became an Earth-Born Angel, who hasn't been seen in the DCU since her series was cancelled?
   
5. Linda's daughter Ariella, conceived when Linda traveled to the pre-Crisis Earth and married Superman (at the end of Peter David's run on Supergirl), who became Supergirl 1,000,000?
   
6. Laurel Gand, a 30th Century post-Zero Hour descendant of Lar "Valor/M'onel" Gand named [Sister] Andromeda who hasn't been seen since the most recent Legion reboot?
   
7. Cir-el, who claimed to be the future daughter of Superman and Lois Lane but who turned out to be a human genetically altered to seem at least partially Kryptonian, and who died thwarting a plot by Brainiac 13?
   
8. Kara Zor-el, the current Supergirl of the post-Zero Hour Earth who survived the destruction of Krypton?
   
9. Or someone we don't know yet?
   

Here's a field guide to the various versions of Supergirl (including ones I didn't mention, like the movie and animated versions).

I'd say definitely not Power Girl, she's too old for the Legion (she's at least in her mid 20's, if not older), and having her be Supergirl in one title and Power Girl in another is too confusing.

Since we'll see the "return" of Dawnstar, Blok, Tyroc, Wildfire, and Sensor Girl in a story about the multiverse's greatest heroes of the 30th/31st Century, plucking the Earth-1 Supergirl from some time before she died in the Crisis and having her live with the Legion isn't totally out of the question, as far-fetched as that may have seemed only recently.

The current Supergirl is the right age (she's a teenager), and her popularity would perk up sales of the Legion book.

And just to throw the wildest curve, what (if any) role will the Earth-Prime Superboy play with the Legion? We had speculated he would end up with the Legion (and with a new Legion-based costume). Maybe he'll dress in drag or something.

Legion remixed

Taken out of context, you can make old comics say whatever you want. Given the Legion writers of the late 50's and early 60's as well as the attitudes of comics of that time period in general, sometimes it's not very hard at all.

Take, for example, Dial B For Blog's "Saturn Girl, Bitch!".

Over on What WERE They Thinking, it's a look back at selected panels taken out of context. Not that in context they made much sense, though. For this week's Male Chauvinist Monday, Cosmic Boy has a laugh at Superboy's (and Saturn Girl's) expense. Typo Lad promises (threatens?) us with more Legion examples of "What were they thinking?".

In stores Wed. 11/30/05

In stores this week.... the Absolute Edition of Crisis on Infinite Earths, which includes the pre-Crisis Earth-1 Legion (I have to specify, since with Infinite Crisis, who knows what/where/when the current Legion resides).

The new Legion issure, LSH 12, was supposed to be out last week, but obviously it wasn't. According to Diamond (via Legion Clubhouse), it's not coming out this week either. Bummer.

Supergirl and the Legion?

From Dan DiDio as reported on Newsarama:

"Must have been a little sleepy from all the turkey I ate, forgot a few important pieces of information...

"Not sure how things can change One Year Later when the stories are taking place thousands of years in the future, but the future is about to get more exciting in the newly titled Supergirl and the Legion of Superheroes. And no, that is not a typo, wide awake now.

"Thousands" of years? What happened to Infinite Crisis "not really" affecting the Legion?

Hmmmm.... Supergirl and the Legion? Rampant speculation had Superboy moving to the 31st century, thus the reason for his new costume. I can't see Power Girl and her newly-found popularity in the current DCU adopting the Supergirl costume and name for a trip to the future when there's already one by that name, nor can I see resurrecting the dearly departed Earth-1 Kara Zor-el. It must be the non-dead Kara Zor-el currently starring in her own book.

Thanks to Mike Willis in the comments for pointing this out.

Favorite blogosphere reaction: You got your Supertorso in my Legion! You got your Legion in my Supertorso!

Diane Kingston doesn't like the idea:

So if the next issue of Legion is a jumping-off point, I'm taking it. Unfortunate, because that was the only DCU title I was reading, and I was really enjoying it. But apparently, anyone who isn't a devoted, hardcore, walking DC encyclopedia has no place in DiDio's DC.

Brains Don't Bounce

Paul over at Listen to Us, We're Right recounts a story about his meeting with former Legion scribe Tom Peyer (who happens to blog as SuperFrankenstein). Yes, the title of this post will make sense when you read that.

One thumb down for the TPB (updated)

Nala doesn't like the new TPB, LSH v5 vol. 1: Teenage Revolution.

It isn't necessarily that it is bad. It just isn't Legion of Super-Heroes really. I suppose it is somewhat like the new Battlestar Galactica is to the old 70s series to some degree.

[snip]

I think I would really have gotten into this if these were new characters and didn't try to something that evokes the Legion. That's where it ultimately fails for me on so many levels.

Update 11/23/05: Nala discovered the cover to the upcoming LSH 15.

all I could say was "holy jesus" in my best George Takei voice!

Online fandom

A few days ago, Jim Davis asked in one of the comments:

Michael, your "Legion of Super-Resources" page was one of the first Legion pages I came across when first online.

The very first, however, were the mailing list archives hosted by the same ISP that hosted your page, Idyll Mountain. This mailing list was once very active (dozens and sometimes hundreds of posts a day) and I often spent pleasant hours reading the archives.

Do you, or anyone else, happen to know what happened to these archives? Could they possibly be made available again in some form?

That got me thinking about how I found Legion fandom online when I first encountered the internets. It'll take me a little while to reminisce my way over there as I recount my journey through online fandom, but if you need a quick answer, it's "there doesn't appear to be, sorry." If you don't mind reading, you'll get the same answer in a few minutes.

I got my first computer in 1994 and after some experimenting in local BBSs, I joined Compuserve and found Doug Pratt's Comics and Animation Forum right as Zero Hour was wiping out the Legion. I had finally found some kindred spirits, people who I could talk to about my hobby who knew exactly what I was talking about and didn't look at me funny. Lots of fun people and big-name pros (Mark Waid, Kurt Busiek, Jeff Moy, Neil Gaiman, Tony Isabella, Bob Rozakis, Craig "Mr. Silver Age" Shutt, etc.). I made some friends online there, including Johanna Draper, who helped me when I ventured out into the big bad unmoderated world of Usenet in late 1994.

Shortly after I found Usenet, the rec.arts.comics.* (RAC) hierarchy was undergoing a change. Because of so much traffic, it was splitting up into more groups, one of which was rec.arts.comics.dc.lsh. There was a whole newsgroup just devoted to the Legion! I recognized a lot of names there from Compuserve, and by the time the San Diego Comic Con rolled around in 1995 I had decided that I could go and hang out with people I had never met in person, because we all had things in common. My 1995 con report mentions Joanna Sandsmark, Trish Mulvihill, Elayne Weschler-Chaput (now Riggs), Heidi MacDonald, Sidne Ward, Kynn Bartlett, Vernon Harmon, Jim Drew, David Goldfarb, and Troy McNemar, among others.

Around that time, Johanna told me about a mailing list she was on, called Legion-L (later LSH-L), hosted on netcom.com. We all know about mailing lists now, but that was new to me at the time. Turns out that this was at least the second Legion mailing list, the first of which was called Omnicom, hosted by Vernon Harmon on his cmu.edu account. Omnicom was a cross between a traditional APA (Amateur Publishing Alliance) published on paper and an internet mailing list, in that Vernon would manually compile the electronic postings:

Omnicom is an electronic mailing list. A new issue is usually sent each week on Tuesday and is mailed in multiple parts. It costs nothing to participate in (except for costs (if any) that you incur on your end for receiving e-mail) and no subscriber is required to submit anything. I have archives of all previous mailings available, but they are not yet available via ftp or automated mailer -- I process requests by hand-- therefore, there may be a delay in having your requests for back issues processed....just keep bugging me about it.

For some reason, CMU hasn't deleted Vernon's 10-year-old "Welcome, Legion fans!" web page that shows what Legion stuff he put online, but it did delete the Omnicom archives (and his FAQ, timeline, who's who, and appearances list - everything but the Omnicom home page. Some items, like the FAQ and timeline, were picked up elsewhere). Unfortunately, in a later conversation with Vernon, he told me that he did not have a backup for the list archives. So, unless someone else happens to have email from the early 90's, we're out of luck.

Briefly (ha!), back to the 1995 San Diego con... I was with a group of Legion fans who had met online, and we attended the Legion Dinner, a tradition for several years in San Diego. This particular one was a gathering of Legion fans involved in the paper APAs, as well as from the growing online fandom. I noted in my con report that it appeared to have been the first combined APA/mailing list gathering.

At some point around 1994-1995, the LSH-L list started, with Don Hearth as list admin. For all I know, it might have had to do with Vernon graduating and having to move the list somewhere else, but I'm sure someone out there will know. My email archives show that in January 1996, the list moved to Kynn Bartlett's company's servers at Idyll Mountain Internet (idyllmtn.com). To show you how popular the mailing list was then, I found an email apparently from Kynn with the stats:

When I went to delete last months' worth of messages from LSH-L, I decided to see if it was true that the message count dramatically increased after the move to Idyll Mtn.

For the whole month, we had 1208 messages in 2539K. This comes out to 39 messages in 82K per day.

Between January 1 and January 24, we had 759 messages in 1592K. This comes out to nearly 32 messages in 66K per day.

Between January 25 (the day the "move" Admin notice came out) and January 31, we had 449 messages in 947K. This comes out to over 64 messages in 135K per day.

So yes, it's not your imagination, traffic doubled after we moved to .idllmtn.com.

By April, my archived emails say that we were getting over 100 messages a day. But then again, there were really only two places for Legion discussion back then, LSH-L and rec.arts.comics.dc.lsh. In February, I started keeping track of the various Legion web pages, which turned into the Legion of Super-Resources page. Sometime in early 1997 the list went to another idyllmtn.com server, mlists.com.

I think Johanna took over the LSH-L list after a while, and then after she bowed out others took it over. The archives for all of the mailing lists served by mlists.com were held there.

I seem to recall a split in the group, but whatever the reason, by summer 2000 there was a group at both mlists.com (LSH-L) and egroups.com (Legion-List), which were taken over by yahoogroups a few months later. With Yahoo Groups, it was trivially easy to set one up and maintain it, so we got several groups devoted to Legion-related pictures (photos, art, etc.) and others for discussion.

My archives of my own posts show that my traffic to LSH-L on mlists.com abruptly stopped in mid-2001, with only a handful for the rest of the year, while traffic to Legion-List continued unabated. I don't remember why.

So, that's the history of Legion mailing lists, from my perspective. Kynn's Idyll Mountain Internet shut down sometime earlier this year, and mlists.com is not recognized. The Internet Archive has mlists.com from 1997-2004, but sadly, none of the time points have any of the Legion archives.

Meanwhile, for a time DC had a site on AOL, with creator chats and message boards. When the contract expired, DC moved to its own site and started its own web-based message boards. But for me, I was getting too busy and never got into them (or their successors, such as LegionWorld and others listed at the right) and since rec.arts.comics.dc.lsh is a ghost town, I mainly keep up with the mailing lists and that's about it.

So if there's anything out there you think I should be aware of, let me know and I'll see that it gets posted here.

Magic Wings

Scott over at Polite Dissent (Comics, Medicine, Politics, & Fun!) explains why Dawnstar's wings don't work. Apparently she'd need a 60-foot wingspan to fly.

I wonder how big a wingspan would allow lightspeed flight?

The Legion in Crisis

The last part of my last post got me thinking.... we'll be seeing Blok, Dawnstar, and Tyroc (who appear on the cover of LSH 15) as well as Wildfire and Sensor Girl (according to writer Stuart Moore). For anyone who has the original Crisis issues handy, was there ever a period of time in which at least these five are together and off traversing the multiverse? They could just be a time-tossed set of Legionnaires who appear in issue 15 in between panels of one of the Crisis issues.

You know, if not for the original Crisis, the Legion title would probably still be following the original continuity, one of the very few titles in which the characters actually showed the passage of time (growing older, getting married and having kids, new blood in the Legion, etc.). The founders would have been taking more of a mentor role (like Cosmic Boy did with the second group of Subs), others would have gotten married or broken up, some would have quit, and some would probably have died (and stayed dead). That what you can do with a team that's isolated in its own little corner of the DCU, unaffected for the most part by whatever happened 1000 years ago.

Back in the present, and Superboy-Prime will be getting a DC Direct figure (part of the Infinite Crisis line) in his new costume. DC won't show what the new costume looks like because the uniform itself is a plot spoiler. I wonder how they'll incorporate the Legion "L"?

Reboots

Here's the repost of a comment I made over at Scans Daily. Sollie7 asked if someone could scan in some Legion comics and explain Legion reboots. I obliged.

Let's see, how to explain the Legion reboots....

1. The original series up through the Crisis, 1958-1986. Superboy, Supergirl, yada yada yada.

2. In the wake of the original Crisis, Superman was rebooted, which retconned Superboy out. The easy way out was to just ignore Superboy in current continuity, but that got messy when the Legion (who knew Superboy) met the new Superman (who was never a Superboy), so they invented the Pocket Universe. That allowed them to keep *a* Superboy (but didn't explain how the Legion met Superman, since the PU Superboy died shortly thereafter). Still, it wasn't TOO messy, as long as you didn't think about it much. Then Giffen and the Bierbaums came along and jumped us Five Years Later into a dystopian future.

3. Very early in the series, a battle with the Time Trapper caused a brief reboot into the "Mordruverse", which showed what happened when Mordru ruled the universe. That story ended with the Mordruverse rebooting. This was only a single issue. This doesn't really count in the number of reboots, but it is a dividing line.

4. After the Mordruverse rebooted, there were never a Superboy or Supergirl, instead there was Valor (formerly Mon-el) and Andromeda, who were retconned in place of the Kryptonian duo. Still, it was mostly the old continuity and characters. Along the way, a group of "kid Legionnaires" called the SW6 Batch showed up. This timeline ended with Zero Hour.

5. The first true reboot came post-Zero Hour, with a new continuity that started from scratch, although it had parallels with the old series. You didn't have to have read the original stuff, but it helped. As time went on, it diverged more and more. It started with a happy and light future, led by Roger Stern, Tom Peyer, and Mark Waid, and then took a drastic turn to darkness once Abnett and Lanning came on. They killed some characters and introduced new ones. This series ended as the Legion was lost in space due to a battle with the Fatal Five (Hundred) along side the Teen Titans in last year's Titans/Legion Special.

6. Now we have the third real reboot (or the "threeboot" as some are calling it), with Waid and Kitson. Again, it starts from scratch and has some characters the same as the old series, but each reboot moves further and further away, and you don't need to have read the old series in order to understand the new one.

In my last post, Patrick asked in the comments if he was a super-genius of Coluan proportions to have understood the Legion (as well as the Multiverse). I think it's more along the lines of people who came in later had (or thought they had) to remember not only what's going on in current continuity, but also previous continuities.

"OK, I read a few Legion stories and they all had Superboy, and then I read another one where he died, but if he died, how can he grow up to be Superman? And who are all these guys with no costumes or code names, have we seen them before, and how come Mon-el is this guy Valor who is worshipped as a god? Why are they acting differently from how I remember? Andromeda is hot! They show her getting inducted into the Legion but I don't remember her from my old issues. Do I need to know all of this for the post-Zero Hour issues? OK, some of it's the same, but what's the same and what's different? Gah, I'm so confused!"

It'll be very interesting to see how Infinite Crisis affects the Legion. We've seen lots of other characters (and universes, and multiverses) come back from the dead, and we've seen the "original" Legion via Hypertime in the Kingdom books and in the previous Legion titel, so they're out there somewhere. The Earth-2 Superman is already back, as the pre-Crisis Luthor appears to be as well, so why not the return of the pre-Crisis (or post-Crisis pre-Mordruverse, or post-Mordruverse pre Zero Hour, or post-Zero Hour pre-threeboot) Legion? Maybe that's where Dawnstar, Blok, Tyroc, Wildfire, and Sensor Girl are coming from in LSH 15.

Continuity of Hawkman-esque proportions

Over at Comics Should Be Good, the Unwashed Masses give a couple of thumbs up to the new LSH TPB. Greg asked "Next time I go to the comic book store, what superhero trade paperback should I buy? The qualifications: it must be recent (nothing older than, let's say, 2001) and it must be published by DC and Marvel."

A good quote:

old-style Legion continuity (& cast size) were, yes, a mess--not quite of Hawkman/Phoenix proportions, but very hard to keep track of what was what without a scorecard.

Yes, it was hard to keep track of what was going on without a scorecard (or a Mission Monitor Board), but a dedicated fan could. Heck, Paul Levitz is on record that he had to have a notebook explaining where everyone was when he wrote the darn thing! It took the original Crisis to totally muck up a lot of DC's continuity, but I like the comment that the Legion's rewritten history was not of Hawkmanesque proportions - and he's only one person.

OYYUUUUUU!

As for Tyroc reappearing in some manner in LSH 15, I'm sure most people are saying "WTF is that guy doing in a disco jumpsuit?" Here is a Tyroc quiz I made up about 10 years ago (yikes, that long ago?) for the original LSH-L mailing list when it was at Netcom. I'll post the answers in a few days, but you can leave your guesses in the Omnicomments section.

Part A. Fill in the blank (2 points each):
---------------------------------------------
1. What island is Tyroc from?
2. What Broadway musical was the island's secret "borrowed" from?
3. What's Tyroc's real name?
4. What other Legionnaires were present to show that the Legion was colorblind?
5. In his native language, what does "Tyroc" mean?

Part B. Match Tyroc's yells (spelling approximate) with their effects (1 point each):
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1. EEYYAAAHH            a. spin
2. AHHRRRRRR          b. teleport
3. OYYUUUUUU          c. turn rubbery
4. ARRRRHHHH          d. wind
5. ZZZRRRUUGGHH    e. force field
6. UIUUIEEEE              f. sticky rain
7. ARRREEEEG            g. explosion
8. IRRRRWWWW        h. flame
9. CCCIIIRRR            i. lose balance
10. RRRYYYY              j. trees sprout tentacles


Perfect score: 20 points

Winner gets the satisfaction of knowing that they are an expert in Tyrocology.

LSH 15: Guess who's back! (wrong?)

Lightning Lad points me to a couple of hint-dropping posts on various message boards.

Over on Millarworld, LSH 15 co-writer Stuart Moore drops these hints about the Dawnstar, Blok, and Tyroc cover:

And it's a CRISIS tie-in by yours truly...but maybe not the CRISIS you think!

Maybe not THAT one, either!

(One of the most fun scripts I've ever written, by the way.)

On the Comicbloc forums (message #23), Moore says:

Originally Posted by Dokhou
>With Dawnstar must come Wildfire! (please)

Your wish is granted!

Sensor Girl, too. But even she's not my favorite character in this insane story.

In post #34 on that thread, Moore explains what his role is on this (and other) issues:

I've written backups for LEGION #12 & 14, and the lead story for #15. Mark Waid, whom I've known for years, has been involved at every stage.

Issue #15, as you've probably guessed, is kind of a CRISIS tie-in. But only kind of. And which CRISIS? Or which CRISES?

I can't say much more without giving too much away, except that it was tremendous fun to write. Hope people like it.

"Kind of" a Crisis tie-in?

Hmmm... I wonder if these are not the Levitz-era heroes time tossed (as temporarily as you can get when dealing with time-travel and parallel world-spanning stories like the original Crisis), but maybe another parallel Earth's Legion? Or the current Legion's Earth just happens to have applicants like the ones we used to know (too much of a coincidence, I think)? After all, there are subtle clothing cues, like Dawnstar never had her star emblem like that on her forehead, and Blok was in red and blue, not yellow and blue.

And there's been lots of speculation that the Earth-Prime Superboy could leave the 21st century post-Infinite Crisis DC Universe (or DC Multiverse) and travel to the 31st century to join the Legion (if he doesn't die, that is). That way you'd have your original Superboy/Mon-el analog in the Legion.

Legion subscription woes

It was pointed out to me that there's already another Legion-themed blog out there, Matthew's Legion Abstract. He's got reviews of all the issues so far, and describes this week his difficulties dealing with DC's subscription department:

But the whole thing still stinks. Bottomless pits of voicemail, e-mail addresses that bounce, impersonal form letters and a Rube Goldberg credit card system just do not cut it. It sends the message that DC doesn’t care about its readers. In fact, it sends the message that DC hates its readers and wishes we’d die.

I suggested he write to DC head honcho (who also just happens to be a former Legion writer) Paul Levitz, who'd probably want to try to fix the problem rather than have people talk about it on the internets.

LSH 15 - fan reactions

Of course, the appearance of Dawnstar, Tyroc, and Blok on the apparent Infinite Crisis tie-in to Legion of Super-Heroes 15 has sparked a lot of anticipation.

Photon Torpedos says "Dawnstar's Back":

... hoohah! I missed Dawnstar. I thank Barry Kitson for not changing her classic cleavage-revealing costume. Now you might be asking, who is this? She looks like Pocahontas in the future!

Dawnstar is a mutant, born with wings that allow her to fly through outer space. She doesn't need a spacesuit either, which convenient for you lonely and horny fanboys. Dawnstar can track anything with pinpoint accuracy through light years of space. Whoever dreamed this character up was smokin weed and listening to the Age of Aquarius on their 8-track tape.

You cannot improve on that costume. That body is like no other...full figured...kind of like JLo in outer space. Nuff said.

He's got a cool gallery of Dawnstar images.

Meanwhile, the Republic of Replicants looks over the February pickin's:

Barry Kitson's art is amazing and they do look like the Legion... And this month sees Dawnstar, Blok and Tyroc appearing. Could the last year's worth of books have been a dream..?

Levitz returns to writing (JSA, not LSH)

Newsarama reports that Paul Levitz will be taking a 6-issue arc in JSA (issues 82-87). Part 1 is drawn by George Perez and is set in the 1950's in an Earth-2-like setting (Superman and Batman both appear), while parts 2-6 are drawn by Rags Morales and take place post-"52".

He mentions that he already knows this will be reprinted in TPB form, and this will be only his second work to be collected as such, the first being a Legion arc. (It doesn't specify, but that's the Great Darkness Saga TPB.)

In stores Wed. 11/16/05

In stores this week: the first volume 5 trade paperback (TPB vol. 5 vol. 1? v5.1 or 1.5? My head hurts!), Legion of Super-Heroes Vol. 1: Teenage Revolution, reprints issues 1-6 and the preview from the Titans/Legion Special.

"Not Really"

Dan DiDio told Newsarama that the Legion will "not really" be affected or impacted by the events of Infinite Crisis. If this is "not really", I'd be amazed to see what "really" is.

ComicBloc has a leaked list of February solicitations (including LSH #15 and Infinite Crisis #5) and in addition to a whole lot of SPOILERS, select the blank space below in the solicitation to read what's in the issue:

* LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #15*
Written by Stuart Moore & Mark Waid
Art by Patrick Olliffe and Barry Kitson
Cover by Kitson
It's the Legion of Super-Heroes you thought you'd never see, as the greatest heroes of the 31st century become the greatest heroes of the Multiverse! Plus, the return of the ever-popular "Letters to the Legion!"
On sale Feb 22 - 40 pg, FC, $2.99US

And click here for a look at the cover. Major spoilers abound, you won't believe who's on the cover!

11/14 UPDATE Now that it's Monday, the official news is out. Newsarama has a full-size look at the cover. Yes, it's really Dawnstar, Blok, and Tyroc, or at least it appears to be!

A Field Guide to JSA Classified

The Legion makes an out-of-continuity appearance in JSA Classified #1, 2, and 3, each of which has had multiple printings, each time with a new cover. Only the first printing to issue 2 has the Legion on the cover (that's the one where PG "teams up" with the current version of the Legion, despite the fact that nobody in the present-day DCU has met them yet), so that's the one you want if you're not getting all three covers. The Legion has cameos in issues 1 and 3.

Here's a field guide to each of the covers:

1st printing	2nd printing	3rd printing
art by Amanda Conner art by Adam Hughes	art by Adam Hughes, pencil version of 1st printing	art by Amanda Conner, from image on 1st printing
art by Amanda Conner	art by Adam Hughes, pencil sketch	art by Amanda Conner, from interior art
art by Amanda Conner	art by Amanda Conner, new caption and coloring
art by Amanda Conner

This week: Infinite Crisis #2

In last month's "Crisis Counseling" column on Newsarama, Dan DiDio was asked about the Legion's involvement in "Infinite Crisis".

NRAMA: Let's wrap up with some rapid fire topics... Is the Legion of Super-Heroes involved in Infinite Crisis?
DD: Not really.

This month, we see that issue 2 has the "not really". Jef Peckham provides the play-by-play:

This may prove to be the only LSH connection to Infinite Crisis. Power Girl encountes the Earth-2 Superman. Drawn by George Perez, he explains to her the old story of the multiverse and Crisis on Infinite Earths. There is one panel there showing the heroes battling the Anti-Monitor. Among them are Levitz era Lightning Lad, Blok, Ultra Boy, Lightning Lass, Sun Boy, and Wildfire. In addition, on the Perez-drawn cover (depicting Power Girl looking at fragmented memories), Wildfire can be seen just above her cape in a segment with Powergirl, sandwiched between the cover scene to Justice League Of America 21 (the first JLA/JSA teamup), The Earth-1 Superman's rocket, and the Monitor.

The Legion is only on the Perez cover, not on the Jim Lee cover.

Being Anal Retentive

Although I don't post to Legion-related message boards and mailing lists nearly as much as I used to, I will take credit for introducing the phrase "Anal Retentive" (sometimes abbreviated as just AR or A-R) into the online Legion fandom's vernacular. I don't know how much (or even whether) it's used on other message boards any more, since DC's main boards came online right around the time I was cutting back. The earliest post to the rec.arts.comics.* (aka "RAC") newsgroups with that phrase that I could find is from April 21, 1995, when I posted my Anal Retentive Legion Reprint Checklist v1.02. By June, I was referring to my Anal Retentive Checklists for Bill Sienkiewicz and Mike Grell, which I had created and maintained even before I got online. I had them up on my web page by August, with references in my .sig which I used til late 1996. By Jan. 8, 1997, I posted notice of my Anal Retentive Legion Checklist, which was a simple checklist of what issues the Legion (or Legionnaires) had appeared in. I had other checklists, too, though:

As long as I'm hyping, I also maintain a Legion reprint checklist, which has a listing of which issues were reprinted where ... Plus, there's the Legion merchandise checklist, for those of you (like me) who are anal retentive enough to HAVE TO HAVE every single appearance. The merchandise list shows everything from trading cards to posters to t-shirts to Slurpee cups.

After that, the phrase popped up here and there in the various comics newsgroups, in part because I referred to it in my posts and in part because I co-wrote the rec.arts.comics.dc.lsh FAQ. In the FAQ, it's described in the "commonly seen abbreviations and terms" as this:

* AR: Anal-retentive, when used in conjunction with a Legion appearance, it usually refers to an appearance that only a true LSH completist would find it necessary to own.

You can do a google newsgroup search and find current examples of people using "anal retentive" in this manner, especially when referring to Legion collection. So there's the secret origin of "Anal Retentive" Legion collecting.

Now and Later

Couple of things I saw in the comic store last weekend....

1. DC Direct has a figure of The Composite Superman (who's actually a composite of Superman, Batman, and the Legion) as part of their "First Appearance" line. The figure is designed around his appearance in World's Finest 142, which had a cameo of the Legion and their statues (which, of course, gave Joe Meach his powers when struck by lightning). The figure is packaged with a miniature replica of the comic, about 2x3 inches, so add this figure to the list.

2. This month's issue (#7) of Solo, a DC comic which I hadn't heard about until recently, is done by Mike Allred. Apparently the concept behind the comic is that each issue is done completely by one artist, who's pretty much allowed to do whatever they want. In this issue, there's a Silver Age-y story featuring the original Teen Titans vs the original Doom Patrol - the Titans throw a swingin' party in Bruce Wayne's pad, which is one floor above the apartment of someone in the DP (probably actress Rita Farr). The Titans get too loud, hilarity ensues, and somehow the Phantom Zone villains and Mon-el enter the picture. At the end of the story, the Legion is monitoring the events of the party. Mon-el tells the rest of the Legion what a great time he had at the party, and that he remembered that the rest of the Legion showed up at the party shortly afterward. "Wait til you see what happened to Colossal Boy!" This story is extremely non-canonical. They make a cameo appearance in another story later that has about a million other characters, give or take. The cover was supposed to show Adam West's Batman doing the Batusi, but apparently there were rights issues and instead the cover on the stands shows the Silver Age Wonder Girl doing the Batusi instead.

Three reprint books coming up next month, as well as the regular issue:

1. In the Crisis on Infinite Earths: The Absolute Edition, in addition to reprinting the entire series in Book 1, it has a Book 2 that reprints the Eclipse/ICG Crisis Index and Crisis Crossover Index and also has (according to DC's blurb) "a look into post-Crisis events and aftermath stories, how the Superboy/Legion conundrum was solved, and a look at the 20th anniversary of this seminal event."

2. The first TPB from the new series comes out next month too. LSH Vol. 1: Teenage Revolution reprints issues 1-6 and the preview from the Titans/Legion Special. Wonder what Shikari has been up to in the new continuity? Technically, I suppose this would really be LSH (v5) vol. 1.

3. The other half of the Titans/Legion book, along with Teen Titans 16-23, is reprinted in Teen Titans: The Future Is Now. I don't have my issues handy, can anyone say which of these (besides the Titans/Legion special and TT 16) feature the Legion?

Plus, of course, LSH v5 #12.

Welcome to Adventure 247

Remember the "Legion of Super-Resources" page? I created that several years ago as a one-stop shopping place to keep everyone informed as to Legion content on the internet. Back then, we had our own web pages, and there was Usenet (rec.arts.comics.dc.lsh) for discussion, some mailing lists, and that was pretty much it. Then DC created their message boards, which then fractured into many boards all over the place, and there was no single place to go for the whole story. For a while it was the most-referenced Legion link, but I eventually stopped updating it (apparently in October 2001). Now there are other, more up-to-date link collections, and so I see no need to reinvent the wheel (or reinvent my page to have the same links). Thus, the new and improved Adventure 247.

So, I'm going to attempt to keep this updated with links to current news, previews, reviews, interviews, and retroviews. I also have lots of original content that I created for the various mailing lists in the last 10 years or so.

Finally, this begins my 30th anniversary of Legion fandom. My first issue was Superboy 212, the one where the Legion fights the Legion of Super-Rejects and Matter-Eater Lad leaves. It's cover-dated October 1975. What a long strange trip it's been!