Legacy Number

(Originally published 2/22/20, updated 11/22 to include the various Bendis-written series and miniseries)

Back in 2017, Marvel had a “Marvel Legacy” thing that temporarily restored “legacy” numbers to some of their long-running titles which had been restarted with new #1's over the years. DC later did the same thing for Action Comics and Detective Comics, primarily so they could take advantage of the issue #1000 (other recent legacy books to get renumbered were Wonder Woman and Flash). So I thought about doing that for the Legion - what would its legacy numbering look like? This is a slightly tweaked version of what I wrote back then.

Just for grins, here’s my take on where the Legion would be. I did not include one-shots, Annuals, weird-numbered issues that were line-wide (#0, #1000000, etc. - see footnote at the bottom), or miniseries that were outside of the main series. My math says the current version by Bendis & Sook, volume 8, would start at #660, but I may have done it differently than you did.

This is NOT a list of all Legion appearances renumbered such that Adventure Comics #247 is the new #1, etc. It also ignores the 81 issue run in Adventure Comics, because the Legion was starring in Adventure Comics and not a book titled The Legion of Super-Heroes, and this aims to track the theoretical numbering from the book that the Legion took over, which started as Superboy #1 in 1949. And the first 196 issues of that series were of course not the Legion’s book, but then the Legion took over the cover spot with #197. The title officially changed (per the indicia, not just the cover logo) to Superboy & The Legion of Super-Heroes with issue #231, and then just Legion of Super-Heroes v2 with #259 - "v2" for "volume 2", indicating that it's the second series that had the title "Legion of Super-Heroes", the first being a 4-issue reprint series in 1973. (Comparing to Marvel's case, for example, Captain America appeared in Tales of Suspense which changed the title but kept the numbering from Tales #99 to Captain America #100; Doctor Strange appeared in Strange Tales up to issue #168 and then the book got retitled to Dr Strange #169; see that Marvel link at the top for other examples of how they used miniseries to cover a gap when a regular series wasn't being published).

LSH v2 ended with issue #313, then it changed to Tales of the Legion #314-325 with new stories that came out biweekly with the new LSH v3 series for the first year. Tales #326 on up were reprints, so I’m discounting them. I count both the new Tales and LSH v3 books for this exercise, the only time I allow two ongoing books published bi-weekly, the first since it was the legacy book that kept the numbering and the second because it was the regular series at the time.

Two other times there have been two books published biweekly (LSH v4 and Legionnaires in the 5YL and Reboot timelines, LSH v7 and Legion Lost v2 in the New 52 timeline), but I’ll argue that the Legionnaires and Legion Lost v2 books were each a spinoff that focused on a different team for the most part and should not count as one biweekly title, unlike Tales/LSH v3.

I did keep Legion Lost v1 and Legion Worlds in my calculations - both miniseries - because each was the main Legion book at the time and they were planned to bridge the gap between the end of LSH v4 and the beginning of The Legion. (Note faux Blok’s comment on the cover of LSH v5 #15 below, that issue “should” have been #568, but that tally assumes that neither of those two limited series counted and also that the v4 #0 and #1M issues did count. You are, of course, free to make your own interpretation.)

No, Blok, it should have been #584 by my counting.

I'm eliminating all of the issues of Legionnaires, pre- and post-ZH Reboot for one reason: Legionnaires is the name of the series, it is not Legion of Super-Heroes. Legionnaires (and later, Legion Lost v2) was a spinoff book from the main Legion of Super-Heroes title. Leaving it out has nothing to do with readability, reading order, or who stars in it.

I'm also not including Valor, Timber Wolf, Legion Science Police, Cosmic Boy, Inferno, Karate Kid, The Legion of Super-Villains, Legion Secret Files, Legends of the Legion, Superboy's Legion, Legion of 3 Worlds, Legion Secret Origin, Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes, Adventure Comics, Secrets of the Legion, Legionnaires 3, Who’s Who in the Legion of Super-Heroes, Titans/Legion: Universe Ablaze, Legion of Super-Heroes: Millennium, or Justice League vs Legion of Super-Heroes, or any other ongoing or limited series starring the Legion or various Legionnaires, because they are all spinoffs. Likewise, I disregard the 4-issue Legion of Super-Heroes (v1, 1973) reprint series because its numbering was not used anywhere at the time, and Future State: Legion of Super-Heroes because it was part of a line-wide stunt (like #0 or #1,000,000 issues).

So my breakdown:

• #1-230 - Superboy (1949-1977) #1-230
• #231-258 - Superboy & The Legion of Super-Heroes (1977-1979) #231-258
• #259-313 - Legion of Super-Heroes (v2, 1980-1984) #259-313
• #314-325 - Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes (1984-1985) #314-325
• #326-388 - Legion of Super-Heroes (v3, 1984-1989) #1-63
• #389-513 - Legion of Super-Heroes (v4, 1989-2000) #1-125
• #514-525 - Legion Lost (v1, 2000-2001) #1-12
• #526-531 - Legion Worlds (2001) #1-6
• #531-569 - The Legion (2001-2004) #1-38
• #570-584 - Legion of Super-Heroes (v5, 2005-2006) #1-15
• #585-606 - Supergirl & The Legion of Super-Heroes (2006-2008) #16-37
• #607-619 - Legion of Super-Heroes (v5, 2008-2009) #38-50
• #620-635 - Legion of Super-Heroes (v6, 2010-2011) #1-16
• #636-659 - Legion of Super-Heroes (v7, 2011-2013) #1-24
• #660-671 - Legion of Super-Heroes (v8, 2020-2021) #1-12

That means that the new Bendis/Sook LSH v8 #12 would have been #671 in a legacy numbering scheme, the most recent number. A new volume 9 series would have to last 29 issues in order to get to legacy #700 by my count.

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Footnote: based on a question in the comments, I wanted to see what DC did when they resumed legacy numbering for Action Comics and Detective Comics.

• #1-881 - Detective Comics (1937-2011) #1-881
• The #0 issue came between #678-679 and was not counted as part of the numbering, because it was a line-wide thing and no numbers were skipped. Likewise, #1M was between #726-727.
• #882-933 - Detective Comics (2011-2016) #1-52
• Issues #23.1-23.4 were between #23-24 and didn't affect the numbering
• #934-present - Detective Comics (2016-present) #934-present

Action Comics is also easy:

• #1-600 - Action Comics (1938-1988) #1-600
• #601-642 - Action Comics Weekly (1988-1989) #601-642
• #643-904 - Action Comics (1989-2011) #643-904
• The #0 issue came between #703-704, and #1M was between #748-749
• #905-956 - Action Comics (2011-2016) #1-52
• #23.1-23.4 were between #23-24
• #957-present - Action Comics (2016-present) #957-present

So the answer is that DC did not include the #0 or #1M issues in their legacy numbering, just as I had also not done (independently, before I saw what they did). And the title wasn't being published during the 23.x books.