Legion March Madness: Selection Sunday + First Four part 1

Welcome to Legion March Madness! In celebration of the 65th anniversary of the Legion, for the last year I've been polling members of the Legion of Substitute Podcasters Facebook group to pick a "winner" for each year of the Legion's existence. Some years had no or too few new characters, so I doubled up some years which left me with some wild-cards at the end. I ended up with 68 entries to correspond with the 68 slots in the NCAA Basketball Tournament. Now it's up to you to vote for an overall winner, March Madness style. 

Below is the bracket with each of the winners, seeded according to a formula I made up that considers the number of votes received, the number of voters, and a "strength of schedule" based on the total number of votes that week. Each bracket will have two days of voting, culminating with the winner being decided on the night of that day's "game". The winners will move on, single elimination, until we get a Sweet 16, Final Four, and a Champion.

You'll notice some small numbers on the far left and far right, the inside numbers 1-68 are the overall seed for the entire tourney while the outside numbers 1-17 are the seed for that bracket.

Now the First Four, played on Antares II, are the play-in games, to make the #16 seed in each bracket. Tuesday's games are in the New Earth (yellow) and Aleph (grapefruit) brackets. Click the Twitter poll to vote - note that the way Twitter embeds its polls now, it will open up a new tab for you to actually cast your vote. You'll have two days to vote, the poll will close on Tuesday night and the winner will move on.

It's the 65th Anniversary #MarchMadness Legion Tournament! Voting is open for 48 hours. Visit here for more! This is Poll #1, also look for Poll #2 for the other matchup. https://t.co/UNXYhPcvZu

— Legion Omnicom (@LegionOmnicom) March 12, 2023

It's the 65th Anniversary #MarchMadness Legion Tournament! Voting is open for 48 hours. Visit here for more! This is Poll #2, also look for Poll #1 for the other matchup. https://t.co/UNXYhPcvZu

— Legion Omnicom (@LegionOmnicom) March 12, 2023

Who do you think will be in the Final Four and who will win the tournament? Who's your Cinderella pick this year? What upsets do you predict?

65th Anniversary March Madness tournament, Legion style!

In honor of the Legion's 65th anniversary, welcome to 31st Century March Madness!

 

From January 2022 until March 2023, once a week I had put out a poll on the Legion of Substitute Podcasters Facebook group (also web, Twitter, Apple podcasts) asking the readers and listeners to vote for a person, place, or thing to represent the "Class" of a particular year. In general, I picked the significant (and sometimes insignificant) ones from the year they were first associated with the Legion, and I tried to capture all characters who appeared at least twice - or, in the case of ones like Fortress Lad and Arm-Fall-Off Boy, made a significant enough impact on the readers. The "Class of 1960", for example, consists of Chameleon Boy, Colossal Boy, Invisible Kid I, and Supergirl, while the "Class of 1998" consists of Driana Allon, Khund Chief Armorer Amilia Crugg, the Justice Legion L, the Legion of Executive Familiars, Dr. Ryk'rr, and Cary Wren. (For some of the later ones, like 1998, I had to post pictures and explanations of who they were, because even I couldn't remember!)

My idea was to then pit each of the "winners" against each other, March Madness style, so I came up with a seeding system based on the number of votes the character got, the total number of votes for that Class as a whole, and a sort of "strength of schedule" ranking based on the total votes that class got. Each week's vote was the equivalent of a conference tournament, and the champion gets an automatic slot in the big bracket tournament. It ended up that there were 59 slots for the 65 years of Legion history (I mashed together 1969-70, 1971-72, 2003-2005, 2013-14, and 2015-16 because there were so few new characters introduced in some of those years; and I included the first couple months of 2023 in with the 2022 class), leaving 9 openings to fill 68 slots. I decided to give 4 "wild card" slots to the highest-ranking non-winners, 3 slots to the list of characters I forgot to include along the way, and 2 slots to the list of L.E.G.I.O.N. and R.E.B.E.L.S. team members who I had forgotten to include. 

Then I placed each of them into a bracket based on the 2022 March Madness schedule, including which "games" are Thurs/Sat and which were Fri/Sun. Each round is associated with a Legion-related planet. 

For each entrant, there are a couple of numbers next to their names, the one on the inside being their overall seed 1-68 and the outer one being the seed for that bracket 1-17.

So each Tuesday through Friday of the tournament, I'm going to post a page here with all the "games" coming up in 2 days (so there are 2 voting days for each game), and then on Sunday I'll recap who's going to the Sweet Sixteen and Final Four. I'm putting all of the voting on Twitter, and then I'll consolidate the games here in one location.

• Selection Sunday: Sunday, March 12
• This is when I will post the complete bracket

• First Four: Tue/Wed March 14-15
• These are the four games on Aleph (gold), one for each bracket

• First round: Thu/Fri March 16-17
• Second round: Sat/Sun March 18-19
• Thurs/Sat: Weber's World (light yellow), Bismoll (light green), Kathoon (pink), Winath (orange)
• Fri/Sun: Cargg (light blue), Lallor (rose), Starhaven (gray), Braal (purple)

• Sweet 16: Thu/Fri March 23-24
• Elite Eight: Sat/Sun March 25-26
• Thurs/Sat: New Earth (yellow), Amazon Galaxy (green)
• Fri/Sun: Aleph (grapefruit), Planet Gotham (blue)

• Final Four: Sat April 1
• Legion's 65th Anniversary tournament championship game: Mon April 3 
• Ventura (dark green)

I hope it works out!

(Note: not associated with CBS or the NCAA, logo used for parody purposes only)

Testing

This is a test. Do not be alarmed. If it was real, you would have been notified.

Testing to see if something works, I hope it'll be cool if it does. Poll 1 of 3.

— Legion Omnicom (@LegionOmnicom) March 7, 2023

Testing to see if something works, I hope it'll be cool if it does. Poll 2 of 3.

— Legion Omnicom (@LegionOmnicom) March 7, 2023

Testing to see if something works, I hope it'll be cool if it does. Poll 3 of 3.

— Legion Omnicom (@LegionOmnicom) March 7, 2023

This was only a test.

RIP: Lee Moder

We recently lost one of the great artists of the Five Years Later run, Jason Pearson. This week we heard of the loss of one of the first great artists of the Reboot run: Lee Moder.

Moder only drew four covers for the Legion: 62, 64, 65, and 66. That's because for the majority of his run, the covers were by Alan Davis and Mark Farmer. He drew 36 issues of the Legion - 62-66, 68-69, 71-88, 90-92, 94-100, and 109 - over the course of four years (cover date 11/94 to 10/98).

As penciller on their first issues, Moder shares co-creator credits on Tangleweb, Inferno, Kinetix, Gates, and Lori Morning.

Best as I can tell, Moder's first work was the interior art for L.E.G.I.O.N. '92 #38 in April 1992. He did some work on Wonder Woman and Justice League International in 1993 and 1994 before becoming the regular penciller on the Legion book immediately following the Reboot. In 1999 he co-created Stargirl in Stars & STRIPE with Geoff Johns, and did the first 14 issues of that series. He did some work for Dynamite, DC, and Boom in the early 2000s, but was mostly out of comics by 2010. His last new work for DC was a Superman/Stargirl cover in 2015.

Here are his Legion covers:

RIP: Jason Pearson

I'm late in posting this: former Legion artist Jason Pearson passed away in December 2022, though his family withheld the information until January. 

Perhaps best known for his work on the Dark Horse series "Body Bags", Pearson started his art career on the Legion.

Via CBR:

Pearson's first regular assignment in comic books was working on Legion of Super-Heroes in the final year of Keith Giffen's epic run on the series, along with scripters Tom and Mary Bierbaum, and inker Al Gordon. The fascinating thing about this early work, though, is that Giffen famously used a nine-panel grid on Legion of Super-Heroes, and so in retrospect it is amazing seeing an artist like Pearson, whose work seemed built for splash pages, working in a nine-panel grid in each issue. He made it work, though, but I imagine that Pearson's splash page abilities played at least a small role in Giffen's final issue of his run (which features the destruction of Earth) being depicted in illustrated text pages...

The run finished in late-1992, which was a heady time for the comic book industry, especially for young hot talent like Pearson, only 22 years old at the time. There was DC, of course, but there was also Marvel calling...

In his blog, "It's OK, I'm a Senator", Tom Bierbaum mentioned Pearson a number of times:

• Catspaw was actually created by Jason Pearson during a Legion summit, and the visual was so nice there was no reason not to use her, though, admittedly, we never had a lot in mind to do with her. ... At one point he and we were trying to work out a "Legionnaires" fill-in that would have given more of her background, but  we didn't start thinking about that possibility until our time there was almost up.  Basically, Catspaw was just a woman on Earth when the Dominators were secretly nabbing people and experimenting on them.  
• Someone asked "Did you change the storyline mid-stream in regards to Bounty?  Her character seemed to change quite drastically from Giffen to Pearson." Tom replied: In fact, when Jason Pearson was pencilling the book, Keith was still plotting, so changes in the character were probably largely coincidental when pencillers changed.  As with Kent and Celeste, Al Gordon is your best source for info on Bounty, since he was the one supplying most of the ideas (he was, in fact, the creator of Kent and Celeste). But I don't recall that there was any really changes in the plans for Bounty. Probably what we ended up revealing in the Pearson-pencilled issues was different than what many readers were anticipating. And I don't think we ever took time to really explore the ideas and implications of the Bounty entity.  I remember Mary and I kicking around ideas for a story that explored the Bounty entity and showed it possessing people besides Dawnstar, but we never got the chance to pursue it.
• LSH 21: Starting with our back pages in #21, Jason Pearson began his stint penciling the Legion based on Keith’s layouts.  I don’t recall for sure, but I’m guessing these back pages during the “Quiet Darkness” were Jason’s tryout and he came through impressively.  While it was an adjustment to switch from Keith’s very distinctive style to Jason’s, I think the switch was worthwhile.  While Jason probably didn’t capture quite the grittiness and mundane detail that really set the tone for Keith’s Legion, Jason’s cleaner style probably made the storytelling clearer.  And most importantly, the arrangement kept the book a lot closer to a regular schedule, with much less interruption for fill-in issues.  That allowed us to tell the upcoming “Terra Mosaic” storyline in a much more consistent, uninterrupted manner than had been the case for our earlier arcs (which I guess were formally titled “Five Years Later” and “The Legion of Super-Heroes”).
• LSH 29: [Sade is] a character Jason Pearson created, but I don’t quite remember how exactly her ability was supposed to work. She could essentially disappear and blink back in somewhere else.
• LSH 32: I should mention that I really like the Jason Pearson cover of this issue. It shows a group of five Legionnaires being blinded by a flash of light (the explosion of the chambers), with the shadow of the five characters filling most of the cover. Most effectively, the shadow of Devlin O’Ryan’s hand is cast across his face. Really a nice imaginative piece by Jason.
• LSH 35: This is the issue where young SW6 Sun Boy confronts what’s left of the original Sun Boy, whose powers are burning him alive.  It’s an impactful scene that’s depicted on this issue’s cover, probably one of Jason Pearson’s best.
• LSH 38: The Sandman character Death makes a cameo when the destruction comes, as the planet is lost in a blinding flash.  Jason Pearson does powerful work in this issue and the two-page spread that shows the actual destruction really has a lot of impact.

Pearson only drew a dozen issues of the Legion book (22-24, 26-30, 32, 34, 36, 38), plus 11 covers (26-30, 32-36, and the 2995 Sourcebook) and some of the Skybox trading cards featuring Legionnaires. Here are his covers:

Flashback: how old were the Reboot Legionnaires supposed to be?

As the podcast is just now starting to get into the Reboot timeline, I thought this post might be relevant to resurrect (here's the original).

This came out over on the Compuserve Comics and Animation Forum. Back in the olden days, many of the comics creators were active on the moderated message boards (and to some extent on the unmoderated Usenet newsgroups). Among those on Compuserve were many Legion creators, including Mark Waid, Tom McCraw, Kurt Busiek, and Jeff Moy. This came out around the time of the zero issues, in response to questions about the various members ages.

Tom McCraw, writing to Mark Waid for confirmation, suggested these. Waid read it and never commented on it. Since we're doing a re-read, I will post the relevant panels as we see their ages (as of May 2994).

Forum:  Comics/Animation+ Section:  Comic Books

Subj :  Legionaires #0

To   :  Mark Waid Saturday, September 03, 1994  2:06:23 AM

From :  TOM McCRAW #679086

MARK,

In response to Juliana Kristi's question on the age of the Legion members I've  listed below.  Mark, You may correct me if I goof on someone.

Cosmic Boy -     Rokk Krinn  age 15

Saturn Girl-     Imra Ardeen age 15

Live Wire -    Garth Ranzz   age 14

Apparition -     Tiny Wazzo  age 15

Triad -        Luornu Durgo  age 16

Leviathan -       Gim Allon  age 17

Kid Quantum -   James Cullen age 16

XS -           Jenni Ognats  age 14

Invisible Kid -   Lyle Norg  age 16

On Chameleon and Brainac 5 I'm still trying to figure out the math on Coluan and Durlan timelines. (and it's making my head hurt.)

Hopes this helps anyone who wants to know.

Tom

From Legionnaires #0, page 2, panel 2, we get confirmation of the ages of the founders.

From the new Omnicom pages in "LSH: The Beginning of Tomorrow" TPB, here's Luornu's age. Either she just turned 16 after this page (published May 7) came out, or they revised her age down from 16 to 15.

I later (in 1995) asked Tom about the other Legionnaires who had joined since the above was written. 

Forum:  Comics/Animation Section:  Comic Books

Subj :  LSH CMMTS - LSH #76

To   :  Michael Grabois Wednesday, November 29, 1995  1:51:22 PM

From :  TOM McCRAW #1062756

Michael,

Here are some additions, even if they aren't Legion members yet or not.

VALOR-              Lar Gand age 18

GATES-        Ti'Julk Mr'Asz age 18

SPARK-            Alya Ranzz age 14

KINETIX -         Zoe Saugin age 15

ANDROMEDA-       Laurel Gand age 16

SHRINKING VIOLET- Salu Digby age 14 (almost 15)

Chuck Taine                  age 16

STAR BOY         Thom Kallor age 16

Lori Morning                 age 10 (even if she doesn't look her age)

No word on Cham yet, noone can really understand him except Lyle and Brainy is very vauge about his information.  Quote:  "Why does it matter?"

Hope this helps and let me know next time you want another up-date.

Tom

What's new in the Field Guide to Legion Cover Variants in 2023

The Field Guide to Legion Cover Variants

1958-2005, 2006-2007, 2008-2009, 2010-2011, 2012-2014, 2015-2018, 2019, 2020, 2021-2022

Unused covers, Second printings 

I have updated the Field Guide to Legion Cover Variants 1958-2022 (in 9 parts, as of this writing). New for 2023 are the entire Justice League vs the LSH series from 2022 (see part 9), which had a regular and variant cover for each issue. I recently found out that there was a Walmart pack variant of issue #1 that had a blue logo instead of a red and white logo, so now I'm on the hunt for that one. Also, even though they came out in 2023, I added the San Diego Comic Con 2023 convention exclusive versions of Supergirl & The LSH to the 2006 listing for that issue in part 2.

Let me know if you find something that you think I should add!

• Part 2 (2006-2007)
• Added the July 2023 Adam Hughes & David Nakayama convention exclusives to the 2006 Supergirl & The LSH #23 listing
• Part 9 (2021-2022) NEW
• Justice League vs Legion of Super-Heroes #1 - regular, variant, Walmart variant
• Justice League vs Legion of Super-Heroes #2 - regular, variant
• Justice League vs Legion of Super-Heroes #3 - regular, variant
• Justice League vs Legion of Super-Heroes #4 - regular, variant
• Justice League vs Legion of Super-Heroes #5 - regular, variant
• Justice League vs Legion of Super-Heroes #6 - regular, variant

Jimbo Fett's Reboot Timeline

Friend of the blog and friend of the podcast Jimbo Fett (of Jim's Legion Blog fame) has shared with me his best attempt at making the Legion Reboot timeline. As you saw in my 5YL timelines, some dates were given while others were implied, and some were just educated guesses (like "let's say it takes a day of travel to get from one solar system to another"). Jim has done that for the Reboot series and I offered to post it here. All the work and credit goes to him!

This will be a work in progress as we refine the dates (as needed) when we cover the issue on the show.

A lot of dates are referenced from LSH Secret Files #1, so that's just abbreviated as LSHSF in the table below. This timeline does NOT attempt to figure out when the 20th century events happened between when half the group got sent back in time in LSH v4 #84 and when they were reunited in #100 (but if anyone has come up with proposed dates, I'll be happy to post it or link it here!).

We know the "report by" date is 5/31, so the 5/25 date for the founding (and thus all the other dates that are keyed off of it) is somewhat arbitrary but a reasonable assumption.

Issue	Date	Event	Reference Info
LSH v4 #0	May 9, 2994	Brande is saved from assassination	Omnicom page from the "LSH: Beginning of Tomorrow" TPB
LSH v4 #0	May 25, 2994	Brande charters the Legion with Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, and Live Wire as the first members	In LSH v4 Annual #6 & Legionnaires #0 - "Report by 29940531", so this date is arbitrary based on 2-3 days between issues
LSH Secret Files #1	May 26, 2994	Legion captures Grimbor	Founding + 1 day (LSHSF #1)
Legionnaires #0	May 28, 2994	UP Senate is attacked	Founding + 3 days (LSHSF #1)
Legionnaires #0; LSH v4 Annual #6	May 29, 2994	Apparition and Triad join the team; draft notices sent out to Gim Allon, Lyle Norg, Jenni Ognats, James Cullen, Querl Dox, and a Durlan	Assume a couple of days prior to "Report by date"
Legionnaires #0	May 31, 2994	Date given for draftees to report (not shown)	Legionnaires #0
LSH v4 #62	June 1, 2994	Leviathan, Invisible Kid, XS, Chameleon, and Kid Quantum join; KQ killed in action	Founding + 7 days (LSHSF #1)
Legionnaires #19	June 4, 2994	Funeral for Kid Quantum is bombed, but mitigated by XS	Assume 3 days later. Brande to Brainy - "Your membership was approved last week"
LSH v4 #63	June 7, 2994	HQ opened	Founding + 13 days (LSHSF #1)
Legionnaires #20	June 8, 2994	Legion faces off against Mano	Founding + 14 days (LSHSF #1)
LSH v4 #64	June 9, 2994	Intro of Ultra Boy, Spark replaces Livewire	Founding + 15 days (LSHSF #1)
Legionnaires #21; LSH v4 #65; Legionnaires #22	June 12, 2994	Planet Hell, parts 1-3	Founding + 18 days (LSHSF #1)
LSH v4 #66	June 17, 2994	Andromeda, Violet, Kinetix drafted	Founding + 23 days (LSHSF #1)
Legionnaires #23	June 21, 2994	Girls night out; Invisible Kid invents the flight ring	Founding + 27 days (LSHSF #1)
LSH v4 #67; Legionnaires #24; LSH v4 #68	June 24, 2994	Tangleweb II; Assault on Triad	Founding + 30 days (LSHSF #1)
Showcase '95 #6	June 26, 2994	Legion Academy story	This has to take place prior to the fight with the Composite Man: Apparition and Andromeda are behaving somewhat civilly, and it's before Andromeda gets sick
Legionnaires #25; LSH v4 #69	June 28, 2994	The Legion fights and defeats the Composite Man; Saturn Girl hospitalized	Founding + 34 days (LSHSF #1)
LSH Annual #6	June 29, 2994	Shvaughn Erin officially assigned new role as Legion liaison; Zoe & Vi's trip where Kinetix loses her powers	Founding + 35 days (LSHSF #1)
LSH Annual #6	June 30, 2994	Shvaughn finds out she’s the new liaison and reviews the Legionnaires files	In order to make the Zoe/Vi story fit the timeline, Shvaughn doesn’t find out until the next day about her new assignment
Showcase '95 #6	July 2, 2994	Leviathan assists Shvaughn, Gigi, and Deacon in bringing in criminals	After LSH Annual 6 (since Shvaughn is the new LSH liaison), but before the Triangle War
Legionnaires #26	July 4, 2994	Micah Aven tries to aid Saturn Girl; the Workforce fights the White Triangle	A sick Andromeda crashes through the monitor room, so assume a day before LSH v4 #70.
LSH v4 #70	July 5, 2994	Brainy cures Laurel. Kinetix leaves.	Founding + 41 days (LSHSF #1)
Legionnaires #27	July 6, 2994	Introduction of Roxxas as a Daxamite	Andromeda recovered
LSH v4 #71; Legionnaires #28	July 7, 2994	Stargate network and Trom destroyed by the White Triangle Daxamites	Just before the Daxamite attack on Earth (LSHSF #1)
Legionnaires Annual 2	July 8, 2994	White Triangle War. Andromeda and Apparition apparently killed	Founding + 44 days (LSHSF #1)
LSH v4 #72	July 10, 2994	Memorial Service for the fallen Legionnaires	Estimated a couple days after Annual events
Legionnaires #29	July 11, 2994	Dirk Morgna taken hostage and mutated by Dr. Regulus	Founding + 47 days (LSHSF #1)
LSH v4 #73; Legionnaires #30 pages 1-19	July 12, 2994	Garth hunts down Mekt; Garth and Ayla defeat Mekt, but Garth loses his arm	Founding + 48 days (LSHSF #1)
Legionnaires #30 pages 20-22; LSH v4 #74; Legionnaires #31	July 15, 2994	Superboy/Future Tense (parts 1 & 2); XS is lost in the time stream	Founding + 51 days (LSHSF #1)
LSH v4 #75; Legionnaires #32	July 16, 2994	2-Timer parts 1 & 2	Founding + 52 days (LSHSF #1)
LSH v4 #76	July 18, 2994	Repairs continue. Gates & Star Boy join the team	Founding + 54 days (LSHSF #1)
Legionnaires #33; LSH v4 #77; Legionnaires #34	July 20, 2994	Starfinger attacks the Legion, Kinetix bargains with Mysa; Nara Minsork mentally interrogates Brainiac 5; Starfinger defeated and revealed to be Jan Arrah.	Founding + 56 days (LSHSF #1)
Impulse #9; Flash v2 #109; Impulse #10; Flash v2 #110; Impulse #11; Flash v2 #111; Impulse #12; Flash #112; Legionnaires Annual #3	N/A	XS, stuck in the 20th century, finds Impulse and they hang out before finding themselves helping to fight Savitar in "Dead Heat". Afterwards, she hangs out with Bart and then jumps through time, only to find herself meeting her grandfather Barry Allen in the 30th century, Ultra-Man in the far future, and the Time Trapper at the end of time, who sends her back to her time.	XS is lost in the time stream in LSH v4 #74, finds herself in the 20th century in #75, and returns at the end of Legionnaires #35.
LSH v4 #78; Legionnaires #35; LSH v4 #79; Legionnaires #36	July 22, 2994	With the threat of the Sun Eater, President Chu orders the Legion to assemble the Fatal Five; XS returns from being lost in time; back at HQ, Shvaughn, Lori, Tenzil, Chuck and Rond defend against Protean invaders; the Legion fights the Fatal Five; Fatal Five defeated, Kinetix returns to the team	Founding + 58 days (LSHSF #1)
LSH v4 #80	July 23, 2994	Chu's control of Starfinger and the Fatal Five is revealed. She is deposed and Brande is elected president	Founding + 59 days (LSHSF #1)
Showcase '96 #8	July 24, 2994	Leviathan, Gates, and XS go to Dagosk on behalf of the UP	Takes place before Leviathan is directed to take a team to Xanthu in LSH #81
Legionnaires #37	July 25, 2994	Lar Gand/Valor is re-christened as M'Onel	Estimate between LSH v4 #80 and Legionnaires #38
LSH v4 #81	July 26, 2994	The Legion attempts to help Dirk Morgna.	Estimate between Legionnaires #37 and #38
Legionnaires #38	July 27, 2994	Vi elected leader. The founders visit Titan.	Founding + 63 days (LSHSF #1)
LSH v4 #82	July 30, 2994	A Legion team visits Xanthu. Tinya's ghost manifests itself from within Jo.	Arbitrary date between the prior issues
Legionnaires #39	August 2, 2994	Strange things happen in the Legion HQ. The Legion is summoned to Vega to confront Regulus	Just prior to LSH v4 #83
LSH v4 #83	August 3, 2994	Leviathan dies in battle with Regulus	Founding + 70 days (LSHSF #1)
Legionnaires #40; LSH v4 #84; Legionnaires #41	August 4, 2994	Emerald Legion parts 1 & 2: half the team is thrown back to the 20th century	Founding + 71 days (LSHSF #1)
Legionnaires #41	August 5, 2994	Aftermath of the Emerald Legion. Funeral for Leviathan	Assumed - 1 day between LSH v4 #84 and Legionnaires #42
Legionnaires #42	August 6, 2994	Kinetix & others abducted by Mysa. Kinetix's powers returned. Garth appointed temporary leader	Founding + 73 days (LSHSF #1)
Legionnaires #43	August 10, 2994	Legion tryouts	Founding + 77 days (LSHSF #1)
Legionnaires #44; LSH v4 #88 (p 1-3)	August 11, 2994	Lori’s 11th birthday; Rond contacts the 20th century team; Mordru's tomb is discovered; new members Sensor, Umbra and Magno go on mission	Live Wire to new recruits - "You joined yesterday." Legionnaires #44 p 9 and LSH v4 #88 p 1-3 show the holo meeting between the two teams from each side.
Legionnaires #45	August 13, 2994	Mantis Morlo causes havoc on Vygra; Lyle elected leader	Founding + 80 days (LSHSF #1)
Legionnaires #46	August 15, 2994	M'Onel recruits Laurel Gand to search for Violet. Jeka and Reep go on a date.	Issue picks up just after prior with Thom taking Nura home
Legionnaires #47	August 20, 2994 (Oct 1996)	Crossover with 20th century team (issue partially takes place in 1996); entire Legion temporarily reunited in the timestream	Story opens w/Lyle & Dragonmage. Legionnaires #48 Lyle says this happened "yesterday"
Legionnaires #48; Legionnaires #49; Legionnaires #50	August 21, 2994	Emerald War begins; Legion, Workforce and Amazers unite to attack Mordru; Violet freed from the Emerald Eye; Mordru defeated	Founding + 88 days (LSHSF #1); Brande says Sklar was destroyed "today" - i.e., Legionnaires #48
Legionnaires #51; Legionnaires #52	August 22, 2994	Emerald War aftermath; Vi gains growth powers	Founding + 89 days (LSHSF #1)
Legionnaires #53	August 25, 2994	Lori uses an H dial; Magno considers his future; Monstress adjusts to the team	Arbitrary. A couple days after Legionnaires #52
Legionnaires #54	Out of Time	The Legion experiences an alternate reality on 1940s Earth	Current Legion only in timestream - but with Vi there no one from the 20th c. team realizes she's not still possessed!
Legionnaires #55	August 29, 2994	The Legion fights the Composite Durlan again	Legionnaires #54 was "last week" so at least three or four days since Legionnaires #53
Legionnaires #56	August 31-ish, 2994	M'onel's story to keep him away from HQ	Legionnaires are not to be found - as they are all in LSH v4 #100. Valor's encounter with the Khunds keeps him away from HQ
LSH v4 #100	August 31, 2994	COMPUTO defeated. Legion Reunited	Concurrent with Legionnaires #56, prior to Ferro mission & Outpost dedication
LSH v4 #100	September 1, 2994	Violet & Ferro defeat Medusa	Assume 1 day prior to Outpost dedication based on Ferro comments
LSH v4 #100	September 2, 2994	Legion Day - Dedication of Legion Outpost Allon	Founding + 100 days (LSHSF #1) - Outpost Allon dedicated; assumes Legion Day story takes place earlier in the day as Kinetix gives her cape to Monstress
LSH v4 #100	September 3, 2994	Mysterious Deep space anomaly discovered by Andromeda.	Story happens after Outpost Allon dedication given Andromeda cameo in dedication story

Jim says "The Reboot timeline goes along pretty swimmingly until LSH #100, when Carlson leaves and McAvennie takes over. Up to then, the 30th century stories take place in 2994. After LSH 100, McAvennie makes everything back to the old publish year + 1000 model, which completely throws off any timeline tracking efforts."

Coming eventually: Jim says he'll work out a timeline post LSH #100, which we won't get to in the podcast until late 2025.

Reprint predictions again

In April 2021, I made a bold prediction on what I thought DC was going to reprint in 2022, given that we had just found out that "Before the Darkness" vol 2 was on the schedule. I looked at the tea leaves and made what I thought were good, sound prognostications on what I thought the most likely reprint collections would be given DC's reprinting history of Legion volumes to that point. I figured we were good for any 3 of the 5. 

As it turned out, I only got one out of five right: the second volume of the Five Years Later Omnibus (which I'm still shocked that DC decided to reprint in the first place!). And we did get three, but not the ones I predicted.

🚫1. Bronze Age Omnibus vol 1: reprinting Superboy 172-224, last reprinted 2000-2003 in Archives 10-12; the last Silver Age Omnibus volume came out in 2020
🚫2. The Great Darkness Saga re-release: reprinting LSH v2 284-296, last reprinted 2011, though if this came out I expect it would be at the end of the year since "Before the Darkness vol 2" will come out in Jan 2022
✅3. 5YL Omnibus vol 2: reprinting LSH v4 #40-63, plus the Legionnaires series and half of the Valor run, all of which has never been reprinted; vol 1 came out in 2021
🚫4. Reboot vol 3: reprinting LSH v4 #74-80 and LGS #31-37 plus the Superboy crossover, and continuing the naming for this reprint series as "Legionnaires", all of which has never been reprinted; volume 2 came out in 2018
🚫5. Legion Worlds: issues 1-6 never reprinted, although solicited but cancelled in 2013; last Abnett/Lanning volume 2 came out in 2018

On the other hand, we did get one that I did NOT see coming, the Who's Who Omnibus volume 2 that also reprinted the entire "Who's Who in the LSH" series.

They both have nifty (if reprinted) Sprouse/Story covers, so maybe that's what it takes to get a reprint volume?

And of course, the one we did get that everyone saw coming was "Justice League vs the LSH". (Note that this did not have a Sprouse/Story cover.)

I still stand by my predictions on items 1, 2, 4, and 5 above as what SHOULD come out. But with the new DC management, my Naltorian future-prediction powers have departed and who knows when they'll return.

The Legion Forever

In mid-November, when we heard about the passing of Carlos Pacheco, who drew, among many other cool things, the Avengers Forever miniseries with Kurt Busiek. As a sort of tribute, I proposed on the Subs podcast that we come up with our own version of a Legion Forever team. The only ground rules were that it includes members or Legion-related characters from any timeline or any continuity, and the pitch had to include a rationale as to why they were together. Here's what I came up with: 

THE SETUP

Back in LSHv2 Annual 1, Computo discovered alternate realities via the tesseract storage portals when it possessed the entire Legion Clubhouse. When it realized it was going to be defeated, it uploaded a copy of itself in an unused tesseract that was later activated. It has been leaping through realities, setting wrong what once went right and trying to destroy the Legions of other universes. Enter Dr. Mayavale, who has gone straight and has chosen the following heroes to help him atone. We don’t learn until much later why he chose these particular people (I never figured out the reason, I'm leaving that as a problem for Future Me to get to). Mayavale recruited the team's leader, Threeboot Cosmic Boy, to his team via the Knights Tempus (and thus closing that plot point that got dropped).

THE TEAM

It's confusing who knows who. We have four females, four males, and two robots (one female-presenting and one male-presenting).

1. Silver Age: Hate Face
• Never met anyone else on the list
2. Bronze Age: Brainiac 5’s Supergirl sex robot
• Might have met Wildfire or M-E Lad
3. Bronze Age: Wildfire, in his original ERG-1 containment suit which allowed him to mimick the powers of various Legionnaires
• May have met the Supergirl robot but didn't know at the time she was a robot, although he would surely have heard about after she was destroyed
4. 5YL: BION (after it had been reprogrammed by Brainy)
• Would have fought M-E Lad as BION, fought and killed Duplicate Girl as Computo, had their powers as well as Wildfire's when it emerged and took over Danielle Foccart
5. 5YL: Matter-Eater Lad, with the innate power of the Miracle Machine
• Would have known about Hate Face but never met him, may have met the Supergirl robot when she was impersonating Supergirl, worked with Wildfire briefly, worked with Duplicate Girl (although she is a different version of the one he worked with in the 5YL timeline)
6. Reboot: XS (prior to the first L3W meeting)
• Doesn't know anyone else
7. Animated: Jordana Gardner, the Teen Lantern
• Doesn't know anyone else
8. Retroboot: Duplicate Girl
• Would have heard of Hate Face, maybe met the Supergirl robot, worked a bit with Wildfire but she got married and left the Legion at the same time as he joined (he would barely know her, but she worked with him periodically), hates BION because it's a version of Computo which killed one of her bodies, worked with M-E Lad in the Silver Age and with XS in L3W
9. Threeboot: Cosmic Boy
• Post-L3W, would have met and worked with an older Wildfire, probably didn't work too closely with M-E Lad in L3W, would have met XS and Duplicate Girl in L3W
10. Rebirth: X-Ray Girl
• Doesn't know anyone and nobody knows a thing about her so she's a blank slate to do whatever the writer wants with her

The Legion Forever team:

top row - Hate Face, Supergirl Robot, ERG-1, BION, Tenzil Kem

bottom row - XS, Jordana Gardner, Duplicate Girl, Cosmic Boy with the Knights Tempus, X-Ray Girl

Computo, the antagonist, vs Dr Mayavale, the savior of the universes

Let me know in the comments who your Legion Forever team might be, and why they have gotten together?

New Animated Movie Trailer

The trailer for next year's (sometime in 2023) animated movie in the DC Animated Movie Universe (DCAMU), aka The Tomorrowverse - not to be confused with the DC Animated Universe (DCAU), home of the TV series "Superman: The Animated Series" and "Justice League Unlimited" - came out today and I screencapped the video to see what I could see.

Here’s the exclusive first look from Legion of Super-Heroes! pic.twitter.com/RFw8HuOVjL

— Warner Bros. (@WBHomeEnt) November 16, 2022

Here's what we already knew, from the 10/13/22 Hollywood Reporter:

Kara, devastated by the loss of Krypton, struggles to adjust to her new life on Earth. Her cousin, Superman, mentors her and suggests she leave their space-time to attend the Legion Academy in the 31st century, where she makes new friends and a new enemy: Brainiac 5. Meanwhile, she must contend with a mysterious group called the Dark Circle as it searches for a powerful weapon held in the Academy’s vault.

It seems certain to me that the powerful weapon must be the Miracle Machine.

The cast, as listed in the article (with some spelling mistakes corrected):

• Meg Donnelly voice stars as Supergirl/Kara
• Harry Shum Jr. stars as Brainaic 5
• Darren Criss as Superman
• Matt Bomer as The Flash
• Jensen Ackles as Batman
• Cynthia Hamidi as Dawnstar
• Gideon Adlon as Phantom Girl
• Ely Henry as Bouncing Boy
• Robbie Daymond as Timber Wolf & Brainiac 4
• Yuri Lowenthal as Mon El
• Eric Lopez as Cosmic Boy & Chemical King
• Darin De Paul as Brainiac & Solomon Grundy
• Ben Diskin as Arm Fall Off Boy & Brainiac 2
• Victoria Grace as Shadow Lass
• Jennifer Hale as Alura
• Daisy Lightfoot as Triplicate Girl
• Zeno Robinson as Invisible Kid & Brainiac 3

Screencapping the video, and not worrying about images of Superman, Batman, or Solomon Grundy, I noticed that none of the following with voice actors appear in this trailer: Flash, Chemical King, Alura, and Brainiacs 1, 2, 3, and 4.

This is a new version of the Legion HQ we've never seen before. Note the tilted "L" with the comet, that's the Bendis/Sook version. Their influence comes up a lot in this trailer. Zooming in, we can see Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, and Lightning Lad at the center - none of whom have listed voice actors, by the way - along with Ferro Lad and Sensor Girl in a purple glow above them. Below them, it could possibly be Tyroc, Lightning Lass, and Karate Kid. At the bottom of the screen is Wildfire in an orange glow. (Maybe XS and not Ayla? Or even the Jazmin version of Kid Quantum?)

Then we have a shot at characters in the Legion Academy. From left to right: Quislet, Dream Girl, Triplicate Girl, Phantom Girl, Monster Boy, Invisible Kid (Jacques), Bouncing Boy, and Arm-Fall-Off Boy, with Timber Wolf as the instructor. Interestingly, Quislet and Dream Girl don't show up elsewhere in the trailer, while Monster Boy makes an appearance, but none of those three have listed voice actors. So either they don't make it, they get killed off, or they are just background extras with non-speaking roles. (Or maybe it's the Retroboot costume on Stone Boy and not Monster Boy?)

Triplicate Girl has a different skin color than we've seen before. Arm-Fall-Off Boy, Bouncing Boy, Monster Boy, and Phantom Girl are behind her. (Although now I'm leaning towards Stone Boy and not Monster Boy.)

Mon-El is introduced to Supergirl by Superman. Since he's not in the Academy class, he must be an experienced Legionnaire....

As is Dawnstar, who lands before Mon-El and Supergirl

Bouncing Boy shows off his powers. Only Invisible Kid and AFO Boy join Chuck from the Academy class, wonder where the others are?

Triplicate Girl uses tri-jitsu against a Dark Circle member...

... While Arm-Fall-Off Boy uses his powers. Rather than using them as clubs to swing, he controls his arms at a distance (similar to TDK in "The Suicide Squad").

Shadow Lass talks to the Academy kids, she must be a veteran as well.

The trailer shows everyone in a fighting stance, including the newly-introduced Brainiac 5 (with no hair). 

Brainiac 5 looks a lot more like his ancestor than any of the other versions over the years. Note that this movie has voice actors doing roles for Brainiacs 1, 2, 3, and 4 as well.

Brainy and Supergirl's meet-cute.

This is a call-back to the holo-statues outside the clubhouse, as seen in the first image. This is Cosmic Boy (who does have a voice actor), Saturn Girl, and Lightning Lad in front, with Sensor Girl and Ferro Lad flying overhead (none of whom have voice actors).

Closeup of Supergirl, revealing the details of her costume.

Supergirl mentions that she has met the Dark Circle before. 

Three rookies: Triplicate Girl, Phantom Girl, and Invisible Kid.

Dawnstar drops off Phantom Girl... 

...who plummets and pummels a Dark Circle guy.

Timber Wolf Wolverines his way through the Dark Circle.

Chuck flattens a Dark Circle guy in his own method.

An angry looking Supergirl flies out of LSH HQ.

Note that this is the name of the movie, it's not "Supergirl and the Legion". This is reminiscent of the 2006-08 animated series which also had the Super-S but didn't have Superman's name in the title.

Coming sometime in 2023. I notice that it does not say that it comes on DVD, and it doesn't say that it's streaming. I'd expect it to come out on physical media first, and then some short time later it will appear on HBO Max.

On the team (characters with voice actors known so far are in bold):

• Veterans: Cosmic Boy, Dawnstar, Ferro Lad, Karate Kid(?), Lightning Lad, Lightning Lass(?), Mon-El, Saturn Girl, Sensor Girl, Shadow Lass, Timber Wolf, Tyroc(?), Wildfire
• Rookies: Arm-Fall-Off Boy, Bouncing Boy, Brainiac 5, Dream Girl, Invisible Kid, Monster Boy, Phantom Girl, Quislet, Supergirl, Triplicate Girl
• Unknown: Chemical King