From: [m--rr--w] at [fnalv.fnal.gov] (Sailor Elmo) Subject: [LSH] The Other General Information Post Date: Tue, 10 Oct 95 22:38:34 GMT The Other Legion General Information Post OK, so you've heard people yacking about Legion this and Legion that and you're wondering what the whole thing is about. What is the Legion? Is it worth reading? Will I be lost if I try an issue? Do I have to get a tattoo or some sort of significant body piercing to get initiated into the cult? This document is here to help answer those questions. It's posted on New Comics Day every time a new Legion issue is due out. What is the Legion? The Legion of Super-heroes is a team of people with super-powers operating in a science-fictional universe set one thousand years in the future of the modern DC universe. The team members are from many different planets and possess a wide variety of personalities and super-powers. All of the team are young adults; for the humans, that means they're in their mid to late teens. The Legion also has a large supporting cast, including politicians, businessmen, rivals, police officers, and scientists. Part of the appeal of the Legion is that its cast is so large and so diverse that you are bound to find someone you *really* like. The universe is the old science-fictional standard human-led federation of allied planets; in this case, the United Planets, headquartered on Earth. The UP is barely older than the Legion and still a bit shaky, which has had an effect on its sponsorship of the Legion. Crusty old gazillionaire businessman R.J. Brande co-sponsors the Legion, often in direct opposition to UP policies. Is it worth reading? Yep. Well, there are a lot of very vocal people who think so, at least. The writing is concerned primarily with thoughtful characterization of these young people and secondarily with spinning good yarns of good guys and bad guys. The art is from talented newcomers who produce clear and attractive work with room for improvement. Poster pages and impossible anatomies are generally avoided in favor of tight storytelling. I'm not going to make any grandiose claims to great literary status. The Legion is a standard superhero title. It is, however, a very well done standard superhero title. If that's your bag at all, you should give it a try. As of this writing, there are two titles: Legion of Super-Heroes (Lee Moder and Ron Boyd, art) and Legionnaires (Jeff Moy and Cory Carani, art). The books are written by Tom McCraw, Tom Peyer, Mark Waid, and Roger Stern. Waid has just left the books; Stern has just joined them. McCraw coplots and colors; Peyer and Waid script and coplot. Stern's role has not yet been set. The books are edited by KC Carlson. Don't beware the committee-appearance of the writing team; the books are very collaborative with a unified feel. Will I be lost if I try an issue? It'll probably take you a couple of issues to sort out the characters, but not much more than that. As mentioned above, clear storytelling is a focus of the series, which means that what you need to know is on the page. If you want to go all the way back to the beginning, you don't have to go very far. The Legion is less than a year old; it started with Legion of Super-Heroes #0 and Legionnaires #0, published in October 1994. The story of the team then continues in subsequent alternating issues of the two titles. I'll go into more detail below, but the issues after the #0 issues are not #1 issues, as you might expect. Legion of Super-Heroes continues with #62 and Legionnaires continues with #19 In addition, there are lots of friendly people on Usenet and the Internet who will be delighted to help answer any questions you might have. I'm still worried about this whole Legion fandom thing. What's up? Well, the short answer is that the Legion's been around since 1958, and in that time has spawned a lot of people who follow the book like it was some kind of religion, who delight in in-jokes and obscure trivia and fannish camaraderie. In other words, it's a whole lot like Trekkiedom, but much cooler :-) "But," I can hear you saying, "you just said the Legion started less than a year ago!" The long answer is that the Legion had a very long history. It started out with a guest appearance in the old Superboy strip, made a bunch more appearances in the various Superman Family titles, and eventually got its own strip in Adventure Comics. A 13-year-old Jim Shooter got his first job in comics writing for the Legion in Adventure, as it turns out. From there, the Legion had a backup slot in Action Comics, then a few appearances as a backup in Superboy. Eventually, they became the main feature, and the book was called "Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes". Superboy periodically time-travelled to the Legion's time in order to be a member of the team. By 1980, the Legion kicked Superboy out of his own title, and they've had their own book ever since. There have been four different series entitled "The Legion of Super-Heroes": v1, a four-issue reprint series; v2, the continuation of Superboy's book; v3, the first deluxe format series; and v4, the second, and current, deluxe format series. This long history, full of great stories and neat trivia and wonderful things, took a fatal blow with the publication in 1985-1986 of "Crisis on Infinite Earths" and in 1986 with the publication of "The Man of Steel", whose collective result was that Superman had never been Superboy. This left a huge hole in Legion history. Attempts to patch it led to further instabilities. Finally, Zero Hour capped the Legion's long history, and the book (which by now had grown to two titles, Legion of Super-Heroes and Legionnaires) was started over from scratch with a completely new history. Those are the #0 issues I mentioned above. The new history has many points in common with the old history and many new points as well. If you know the old history, many of the developments of the new series are old friendly stories, but not all. I want more! Head on over to http://www.peak.org/~djwilli/lsh.html for what's probably the best current Legion home page. There's a very active Legion mailing list, [l s h l] at [netcom.com] (mailto: [l--ts--v] at [netcom.com], with "subscribe lsh-l" in the body). Other than that, start yakking with the rest of us. You're in the right place. Welcome to the Thirtieth Century! And, Long Live the Legion! -- "LOGICAL FLAW COMICS: THE HULK. Doctor Bruce Banner succeeded in aiding a government team in creating the fearsome Gamma Bomb, the latest escalation of the arms race. This weapon, when dropped on enemy troops, turns even the least of them into an eight foot tall green (or gray) monster which can lift on the order of one hundred tons and is immune to bullets."--Mike Schiffer elmo ([m--rr--w] at [physics.rice.edu],[m--rr--w] at [fnal.fnal.gov])