Who said the annotations have to be just about the comics? To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the first episode of the Legion cartoon series (original airdate: 9/23/06), we revisited the episode with an audio commentary track, and then talked about it. As usual, I have notes! But this time I was able to go back and revisit this blog from 2006 (sorry that the hotlinked pictures don't work anymore!) and find some good stuff.
Back then, the blogosphere was in high gear, and it was pre-Facebook so people went to blogs for their news. I was updating this frequently with all sorts of links, the stuff you'd now see people posting to one of several Facebook groups. This cartoon was like crack to me. I mean come on, it's a LEGION CARTOON! Here is a quick look at some contemporary articles I rounded up for the first episode's premiere, more feedback and reviews from the next day, and some final thoughts and wrapup on the episode.
The series is now available on DVD and Blu-Ray (here's the original 2020 press release, from when they were only available from WB Animation, but now also available from Amazon) as well as streaming.
There's a persistent myth that the Supergirl/Legion episode of Justice League Unlimited was supposed to be a back-door pilot for a new Legion series, but both JLU producer Bruce Timm and LSH producer James Tucker both have shot that down.
- In a 2009 interview with Bruce Timm by ToonZone magazine:
- TIMM (ToonZone, 2009): We just wanted to do a Legion of Superheroes story, and again, going from the comics where Supergirl and Brainiac had a romance, we thought, "Oh, that would be an interesting thing to do with Supergirl that we hadn't done before." We hadn't really shown her as getting into more adult issues of romance and stuff, so it just seemed kind of like a fun thing to do. But it wasn't ever intended to be a backdoor pilot, no.
- But as to where the series came from then, we have to go to series creator and showrunner James Tucker:
- Tucker (Voices of Krypton, 2007): There have been Legion developments over the years, and they never... they've always gotten stalled, and I think the only reason the Legion got the green light this time was because Superman was going to be in it and there was a tie-in to the then-upcoming movie "Superman Returns". So the Legion itself as a concept is kind of a hard sell to an audience because you don't have Superman, and there aren't any characters in it who have any broad-based appeal to the average non-fanboy audience. And so in this day and age it's hard to sell an original cast of characters, you know, it's just a hard sell, especially when the market has to rely on toy sales, you know it's just harder. If I had my druthers, it'd be nice to do a Legion... and actually we do have a Legion story this season which won't have Superman in it. But you need him in it, you need the name recognition or you won't have a show.
- Tucker (The World’s Finest, 2008): Let’s get the myths out of the way. The Legion series was never tied to the Justice League Unlimited episode. Supergirl was never, ever going to be in the Legion. The true origin of the series came out of Cartoon Networks desire to have a Superman-centric series to premiere when the movie Superman Returns premiered. Superman as part of the Legion worked for them. So the series was originally developed for Cartoon Network, then they passed and Kids WB! stepped in. They, too, wanted a Superman-centric series with Superman fresh out of Smallville, learning to be Superman. That’s the reality.
But what’s the deal with SuperMAN vs SuperBOY?
- We can thank the copyright lawsuit for that one. In a nutshell (as small a nutshell as complicated legal cases can fit into), following the copyright laws of the 1940s as amended in 1976, Siegel or his heirs could file to reclaim the copyright to Superman in 2004 in a one-time exception, which they did. DC, obviously, did not want to lose (or even have to share) copyright to any of Superman, so they fought back in court. This happened coincidentally at the time when Superboy Kon-El died in Infinite Crisis, which really had nothing to do with the case – it wasn’t that DC couldn’t use the name Superboy, it was that they couldn’t use young Clark Kent in Smallville as Superboy. And it was also around this time that the new Legion show was getting set up with a young Clark Kent from Smallville who was called Superboy, and so the easy way around that was just to call him a young Superman. But WB had to go back and re-dub the dialog in the episodes that had been recorded to call him Superman instead. After years of litigation, in 2013 the judge found that back in 2001, WB made an offer of a payment of $3 million, an annual stipend of $500,000, a 6% royalty of Superman and a 1% royalty of his publications, and full medical benefits, and agreed to insert the line "By Special Arrangement with the Jerry Siegel Family" in all future Superman productions. The Siegel heirs accepted this offer at the time, and the judge ruled that this had terminated the Siegels’ copyright rights. (The Shuster heirs had already effectively signed their rights away in a similar 1994 agreement.) Read the Wikipedia article on the lawsuit.
- And that’s why we’re here to talk about the first episode of a new series called “Legion of Super Heroes” (with no hyphen), in a new continuity from what had been seen before, starring Superman.
Press release:
- LEGION OF SUPER HEROES, 11:00-11:30 am: In the year of "Superman Returns" at Warner Bros., Kids' WB! is proud to present a new series developed especially for the "Too Big For Your TV" block by Warner Bros. Animation, inspired by the DC Comics legend. One thousand years from now, a group of teenage super heroes travel back in time to recruit the greatest hero of all, Superman, and enlist him their fight against evil in the 31st Century. While their intentions were good, their time travel skills were not, and Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, Brainiac 5, Phantom Girl, Bouncing Boy and Timber Wolf end up going too far back into the past, accidentally retrieving the young Superboy instead (June update: the young Superman, before he moved to Metropolis). Together, this unlikely Legion of Super Heroes bands together to defend the rights of all free worlds and uphold the laws of the newly formed United Planets. That is, if they don't kill each other first. LEGION OF SUPER HEROES combines humor with high-stakes, grand-scale super heroics to create the ultimate sci-fi, super hero fantasy for kids of all ages. Each episode of this fast-paced, character-driven action comedy will pit Superboy and the Legion against otherworldly threats and adversaries who challenge the team on both super heroic and emotional levels. The series is executive produced by Sander Schwartz, and produced by Linda Steiner and James Tucker for Warner Bros. Animation.
- In the first weekend, this was the highest rated non-cable show in its slot. In the 10:00 a.m. slot, 61% of the TV sets were tuned to cartoons, and of that 61%, 8% of all TV sets on at 10:00 a.m. were watching the Legion, which was about 2.2 million people watching. Think about THAT one – The most recent issue (Supergirl & the LSH #19, during the Threeboot) sold about 43,000 copies, while 2.2 million people watched the Legion its first weekend. That's as many copies of the various Legion comics that have been sold, cumulatively, since from September 2000 to September 2006. As many people watched that one episode on one day as bought the last six years worth of comics combined.
So
who's in the show, anyway?
- Lots of Legionnaires whose Mission Monitor Board symbols are in the opening credits:
- Chameleon Boy, Chemical King, Ultra Boy, Shadow Lass, Lightning Lad, Timber Wolf, Karate Kid, Matter-Eater Lad, Dawnstar, Star Boy, Polar Boy, Element Lad, Saturn Girl, Phantom Girl, Blok, Triplicate Girl, Shrinking Violet, Superman, Brainiac 5, Dream Girl, Bouncing Boy, Colossal Boy, Cosmic Boy, Ferro Lad, Quislet.
- Then, in the flying sequence near the end of the opening credits, we see these guys:
- group 1 - Lightning Lad, Bouncing Boy, Phantom Girl, Brainiac 5, Timber Wolf, Saturn Girl
- group 2 - Superman, Star Boy (in his current Kitson costume, as a black man), Element Lad (pink and black, with long blond hair), Matter-Eater Lad (yellow and green, reboot costume), Shrinking Violet (pink and black reboot costume), Cosmic Boy (purple and black reboot costume). Then the point-of-view rotates and we see Colossal Boy (blue and red pre-Crisis costume), Triplicate Girl (split into 3), then they fly off into the Legion symbol.
Dynamic Music Partners got Emmy nominations for music for both seasons.
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