The following is from Lying in the Gutters (08/18/08):

DARK DAZE

LITG has already reported on the cancellation of two Legion titles.  It appears this is just the beginning and we can expect a swath of cancelled DC books.
 

The following is from Lying in the Gutters (08/04/08):

CONTAINING MULTITUDES

More San Diego creator talk tells me that the Jim Shooter’s Legion Of Super-Heroes title ends with issue #50.

It will be replaced with a new Tony Bedard LSH project, and the Levitz/Giffen Legion project will also see publication.

I’m also told that the junior book, The Legion Of Super Heroes In The 31st Century, is also coming to an end with issue #20.

The future seems an uncertain place.

The following is from Comics Continuum (08/25/08):

LEGION OF SUPER HEROES: VOL. 3

Warner Home Video has provided The Continuum the box art and a clip from Legion of Super Heroes Vol. 3, due in stores on Sept. 9.

Vol. 3 collects five episodes from the first season of the series, which aired on Kids’ WB!: “The Substitutes,” “Child’s Play,” “Chain of Command,” “Sundown Part 1”, and “Sundown Part 2.”

Here’s how Warner describes the volume:

“The Legion of Super Heroes, a three-time Emmy Awards-nominee features the teen heroes Superman, Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, Timber Wolf, Brainiac 5, Bouncing Boy, and Phantom Girl as they fight crime and protect mankind from a swarm of devious villains.  In Legion of Super Heroes: Volume 3, Superman’s time in the 31st century draws to a close, prompting the Legion to hold its annual tryouts for a fresh crop of heroes to replace him.  The audition stars off with The Substitutes, a wacky band of rejects, and a mischievous wizard from planet Xerok who wreaks havoc in New Metropolis leaving only Phantom Girl to save the day.  The adventure continues as a new member, Ferro Lad, is inducted into the Legion to help Lightning Lad defend his home from an onslaught of cosmic storms.  The action-packed episodes conclude with the Legion’s biggest threat yet: the Sun-Eater, a galaxy destroying weapon of mass destruction.  Watch to see which Legionnaire makes the ultimate sacrifice in a grueling battle to defend the universe and save mankind.”

To view the clip, CLICK HERE.

The following is from Newsarama (07/21/08), updated from Comic Book Resources (08/06/08):

SALES ESTIMATES FOR June, 2008 BOOKS

“Qty Rank” refers to the number of units sold.  “Retail Rank” refers to the dollars per unit; higher priced items with the same sales will rank higher in this category.  “Index” is based off sales of Detective Comics.

The following is from The Wall Street Journal (~08/01/08):

HOW I GOT HERE: Paul Levitz, President and Publisher, DC Comics

by Dennis Nishi

Full name: Paul Levitz
Age: 51
Hometown: Brooklyn, N.Y.
Current position: President and publisher of DC Comics
First job: Clerk at a used bookstore in Brooklyn
Favorite job: Definitely this one
Education: A few years in the five-year undergrad/M.B.A. program at New York University
Years in the industry: 34
How I got to here in 10 words or less: Dedication, focus and loving what I do

Few people can turn their hobbies into full-time work and still enjoy it.  But that’s what Paul Levitz, president of DC Comics seems to have accomplished.  The Brooklyn native started writing for the comic-book company while still in his teens.  And on the long road to becoming publisher, he wrote for almost every DC title, including Batman, Superman, and the Legion of Super-Heroes.  Now 34 years later—and after weathering a serious superhero slump in the 1990s, DC is enjoying newfound success with its expanded lines of graphic novels, Internet comics, games, merchandising, and movies (including The Dark Knight).  Writer Dennis Nishi spoke with Mr. Levitz about his career at San Diego Comic-Con International, a four-day fan event that’s swelled in recent years to over 130,000 attendees.  Edited excerpts follow.

Q: What was your first publishing experience?

A: I started publishing my own fanzine from 1971 to 1973 called the Comic Reader.  It was really the first TV Guide for the business and it became the bible for the field.  I won awards for it when I was 15 and 16.  I eventually sold off the magazine.

Q: Did the zine open doors for you?

A: Definitely.  I got to know everybody through the zine since the industry was very New York-centric then.  I was up in the offices of DC collecting news when Joe Orlando, one of its legendary editors, called me into his office.  One of his writers had quit his assignment doing text pages and he asked me, “You wanna do them?”  I [told him I wasn’t] a writer and he said, “I read your fanzine and you can write well enough for this.”  Then I filled in for Joe’s assistant that summer as an assistant editor.  The guy I filled in for never came back, and I never left.

Q: Sounds like a pretty unusual turn of events for a high school kid.

A: You know, when I look back I can’t understand how a kid of 14 was allowed to do a lot of the things I did.  I guess the stars were aligned in some fashion.  At that moment I was [the youngest on the staff].  I wasn’t the youngest ever. Comics have historically had very young people working in the field.  Joe Kubert was one of the industry’s best artists when he was 13.

[…]

The following is from Newsarama (08/20/08):

The Legion of Super-Heroes at 50: Talking to Paul Levitz

In his role as president and publisher of DC Comics, Paul Levitz would know a thing or two about the Legion of Super-Heroes.  The team of super-powered teens from 1,000 years in the future has been an important group of characters for DC Comics since it was introduced in 1958 and is the focus of this week’s Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds event.

But as a Legion writer in the late ’70s and most of the ’80s, Levitz is also regarded as one of the most memorable and certainly fan-favorite writers to guide the evolution of the Legion of Super-Heroes during their 50-year tenure.  From his frequent use of the now-beloved Interlac language to the drama of his epic “Great Darkness Saga,” Levitz’s contribution to Legion history has not only greatly influenced ongoing fan loyalty to the team, but is credited by current Legion of 3 Worlds writer Geoff Johns as a “huge high point in Legion history.”

“Paul and Keith [Giffen] did what every creator strives to do when they get the chance to work on big, iconic heroes in the DC Universe,” Johns told Newsarama last year.  “You try to explore that mythology and build upon that mythology and look into the corners.  And Paul did that with every aspect of the Legion, between the characters and the actual world.  His future was fleshed out so well.  Every character had a relationship with somebody else, every character felt real, and their adventures were as much emotionally driven as they were story driven.  And that’s why his run caught on.  That’s why his run still stands the test of time.”

As Newsarama celebrates both the 50th anniversary of the Legion and this week’s release of Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #1, we spoke to Levitz about the Legion of Super-Heroes.  And following the tone of our discussion with other past Legion creators, as well as current Legion writer Jim Shooter, we talked with Levitz about why the Legion has lasted so long, the team’s importance to DC Comics, and whether the executive will ever write the Legion again.

Newsarama: With the Legion not only lasting 50 years but also being the focus of this week’s Legion of 3 Worlds by Geoff Johns and George Pérez, the team seems to be pretty timeless.  Would you agree?  And if so, why?

Paul Levitz: “Timeless” is a strong statement.  “Enduring,” certainly.  It always struck me that the most powerful characteristic that kept the Legion appealing to people was the diversity of characters on sort of an even keel.  If you go to play Justice League, most of the people want to be Superman and Batman — or Wonder Woman in your case, but in my days there weren’t very many girls wanting to play the game.  If you go to play Legion, then everybody could have their own favorite.  And I think that was part of the magic.  You could possess a piece of it in a different way in your head.

I think part of it also goes to the same power we’ve seen Pokémon exhibit in recent times.  Kids love worlds of secret knowledge.  “I know all 150 Pokémon.  I know which one will evolve into which one.  I’ve got the chart up here.  Oh mom, you’re so stupid for not knowing that Charizard and Charmander are the same thing on the evolutionary trail.”  I think the Legion had a lot of that going for it a generation before, and maybe people are discovering that again.

NRAMA: The Legion is credited by many as being the first super-team of the Silver Age.  Did the Legion help to launch the Silver Age and establish the tone of that era?

PL: I can’t make that one work.  I think when you look back on it as a historian, you put the pin of the timeline earlier than some other things, but when you look at the causality, the causality of the Silver Age seems to go fairly smoothly from Challengers to Fantastic Four on the one side of the equation, and then from Justice League to Fantastic Four on the other side of the equation.

But there’s no question Legion outsold any superhero group of the Silver Age until the end of its run in Adventure Comics in 1968.  Neither Justice League nor Avengers nor any of the more “minor” superhero groups sold as many copies as Legion was selling.  So in that case you could argue it was the dominant superhero group of its time.  It was the only DC superhero group that was monthly during those years, and it sold probably twice as many copies as Justice League for most of those years, and certainly more copies than any of the Marvel ones in that period.

NRAMA: During your time on Legion, one of the things with which you’re credited is giving the group a more mature direction.  Was that one of the goals at that time in comics?

PL: The second run I had on Legion came just at the moment when the direct market was evolving as an important force in the business.  When I did my first run on it from ’76 or ’77 to ’79 or ’80, the perceived wisdom of the business was we were creating comic books for the average American kid — or at best, the bright American kid.

By the time I came back, it was clear that the future of comics was going to be built off the bright older kid who was at least old enough to get to the comic shop, and that became a license to do more sophisticated lengths of stories, structures of stories, and to make the assumption that your reader was actually coming back every month and feed them a story that developed over time.  The first time I was doing that, it was a very novel idea — particularly for DC — to be doing extended story arcs and to be making that kind of assumption of age.

My first really long story in that first arc of my career — something called “Earth War” — is probably the longest story DC had published to date at that time.  It was five issues, and a couple of them were extra-length stories, so I think it exceeds the page count of any story DC had published by that time.  Marvel had certainly done things as long or longer, and certainly things that were much more sophisticated.  But it was a step in our progress as a company.

NRAMA: As the structure of the stories was evolving during that time, did the characters evolve for a more sophisticated audience as well?

PL: Well, once you begin to be able to tell a story over more time, then you have the opportunity to play off the personalities of the characters and the life events.  “Gee, I haven’t done anything to Vaneta in the last year’s worth of issues.  What can I do to her now?  Am I going to have her get interested in somebody outside her marriage?  Am I going to have one of her children develop an interesting bad habit that she has to deal with?  Or kidnap one of her kids and have her go on a rescue mission to deal with it?  Or am I going to have the mysterious person from her childhood come back and do something that affects her?”  All of those are a little unsettling for you.  And out of that you get good story material.

NRAMA: One of the things we’re doing as Newsarama talks to various Legion creators is asking them to name some of their favorite moments in Legion history.  And many of them have pointed to the “Great Darkness Saga,” which is often named by fans as a favorite as well.  Why do you think that story stands out among others?  And do you feel like you accomplished what you were trying to do with it?

PL: I think part of the reason it stands out for the people who were there at the time was that it was the first solid use of the Kirby “Fourth World” mythos outside of Jack [Kirby]’s own work.  For the stories that followed it taking place set purely in a “Fourth World” logic, it was the thing that made Darkseid a part of the DC Universe.  And I think for a lot of us who were at a magic age when Jack came to DC in 1970 and introduced Darkseid, that was a character of enormous power, and to see him firmly nested in the DC Universe was a very, very cool moment.  It was something I was very proud of doing at the time, and I think that had a lot of resonance.

It also was a very long and ambitious story for its time.  Again, this was probably something like a 125- or 130-page story at a time when most DC comics still were 22- or 44-page stories.  You’d have a rare 88-page story.  So hopefully, we used the length well and were able to do something that was unusually exciting as a moment.

NRAMA: When you came up with the idea of the “Great Darkness Saga,” was that a goal?  To bring Darkseid and the “Fourth World” into the DC Universe?

PL: Oh, absolutely.  That was part of the magic.  I’m not a very good villain creator.  That’s one of my limits as a comic book writer.  And it was an opportunity to take this incredible villain who the Legion had never faced before, who was powerful enough to hold off the entire Legion of Super-Heroes, and use him on a very cosmic scale story.  I don’t remember anymore if Keith [Giffen] was the first one who suggested it or I was, but both of us were big fans of Jack’s and of Darkseid in particular, and we had a lot of fun with it.  I guess it must have been me, because the first story on that arc, I did with Pat Broderick.  Keith didn’t come in until the second piece of that story.  So I guess it is my fault.

NRAMA: It’s all on your shoulders.

PL: It’s definitely not all me.  The reason people remember that story with the affection they do and the respect they do has a tremendous amount to do with the magic that was going on back and forth between me and Keith at that moment.  He added so much to that material — so much imagination — that my writing on that is better than probably any other story I did.  And a lot of that is a reflection of what Keith brought to it.

NRAMA: As you look back on your run on Legion, is The Great Darkness Saga what you would call your greatest accomplishment, and if not that, what else?

PL: I bow to the will of the people.  If that’s what people remember as the great story, I’m certainly willing to concede it.  I’m very fond of the Sensor Girl arc; I’m very fond of the four-issue cycle we did with Universo where the Legionnaires were prisoners on a prison world and I had an opportunity to really play with their heads; I’m very fond of the story we recently reprinted in the paperback An Eye for an Eye, with the Legion of Super-Villains; and mostly, I’m fond of the fact that, when I look back, I managed a 100-plus-issue consecutive run without screwing up, which is one of the rare feats of comics, for a writer to hold the mark that long.

NRAMA: Through this interview, you’ve talked about how Legion was the highest selling team through the Silver Age, how it launched the long-form story at DC, and how it brought one of DC’s most important villains, Darkseid, into the DC Universe — so is it fair to call the Legion of Super-Heroes an important part of DC’s history?

PL: I think it’s fair to say so.  It’s one of the 10, maybe, enduring books that have been published pretty well consecutively for a couple of generations.  It’s a very short list of creative concepts that have lasted with only brief interruptions.  You get past the longevity of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, and the next tier down are things like Flash, Green Lantern, Legion, Justice League, and Teen Titans now in modern times has caught up to that.

NRAMA: Does the Legion of Super-Heroes still hold a place of importance for DC?

PL: It hasn’t been at its peak the last five or seven years in terms of commercial importance, but it remains one of the titles that people want to see done well.  And when we manage to do it really well, usually the sales catch up.

NRAMA: You’ve mentioned Superman’s popularity a couple times in this interview, and he’s ushering the Legion into television with the upcoming Legion appearance on Smallville.  How important is Superman’s link to the Legion?

PL: I think it’s an important part of the mythos.  The logic of the kids going back to get the greatest hero of all time was, I think, a very resonant one.  You’ve seen in so many different media the magic of, if you could go back in time and meet someone, who would you want to meet?  And this was the comic book incarnation of that.  Plus, he’s a fun character to write.

NRAMA: Who are your favorite Legion characters?

PL: It depended on whose life I was playing around with at that moment.  Over the years, at different points, Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad, Timber Wolf, Element Lad — I had fun with so many of them.  Dream Girl, who I had no interest in as a kid, proved to be one of the most fun characters to write when there was a write-in fraud that made her win the Legion leader election, and I decided to let it stand because they had artfully figured out a way to dodge the official rules of the contest, and she turned out to be just a hoot-and-a-half to do.

NRAMA: Favorite moment that you wrote?

PL: I’ll stand by the majority vote and go with “Darkness”.

NRAMA: Favorite moment that you didn’t write?

PL: The “Death of Ferro Lad” cycle.

NRAMA: Why?

PL: Jim [Shooter] was obnoxiously good, and nobody has any right to be that good at 13 years old as a writer — and particularly if you look at it in the context of what was being done, at DC in particular but in comics in general.  The kind of storyline that he did there — the consequences of a hero committing essentially heroic suicide, sacrificing himself for the benefit of his team — the death of a character was still a very shocking thing in comics in, I think it was 1966, when the first of that came out.  And doing a realistic sort of ghost story around the sacrificed character, which I guess is six months or a year later, is astounding stuff for that time and just has tremendous emotional depth for somebody who was too young to have any emotional depth at that point.

NRAMA: You weren’t willing to call the Legion of Super-Heroes “timeless,” but you said it’s“enduring.”  Do you think the Legion is something that will endure long into the future?

PL: I hope so.  It’s had a great run and there’s no reason to believe it doesn’t have more in its future.

NRAMA: Would you ever go back to the Legion and write it again?

PL: They keep threatening me!  But I tell them they have to go and negotiate it with my wife.  I only left the Legion because I was at the point where the kids were young, it was knocking off three Sundays a month that I needed to be on a soccer field with my kids during the years when they actually wanted to see their father, and the day job didn’t let anything else fit with it.  It’s the sort of book I would love to have another shot at writing someday, if I ever get to be a writer again.  It’s just kind of hard to do with a day job.

The following is from When Worlds Collide (08/20/08):

Don’t Fear the Legion

In February of 2007, I met with Julian Darius, publisher of my first book, and threw out some ideas for a follow-up.  I suggested a bunch of things that I thought would make interesting book topics and ended by saying, “but what I’d really like to do is a book about the Legion of Super-Heroes.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.  The Legion’s 50th anniversary is 2008, and I’m sure DC has something planned.  Plus, the Legion’s such a fascinating topic, with its almost hermetically-sealed continuity, its continual reboots, the way it tells stories about the future and yet reflects the present.  It’s the perfect topic for a book of essays.  I don’t even want to write the whole thing.  We’ll get perspectives from a variety of writers and we’ll make sure all the major eras are covered and…”

I’m sure I rambled on endlessly, barely taking a breath between sentences.

To his credit, Julian not only supported the project, but he contributed the longest chapter on the era he holds dearest to his critically-inclined heart: the Keith Giffen, “Five Years Later” era.  And I wrote about how Paul Levitz is some kind of genius combination of Roy Thomas and Robert Altman.  And Chris Sims wrote about the zany rules of the Silver Age Legion.  And James Kakalios wrote about the Legion’s “Super-Science.”

You want a close look at how Legion architecture echoed and predicted architecture of the 20th century?  It’s in there.  An examination of sexual identity?  It’s in there.  A Matt Fraction introduction full of wit and mockery?  It’s in there.  It’s all in Teenagers from the Future: Essays on the Legion of Super-Heroes.

I’m not here to sell the book to you — it’s not even in stores yet — but it’s full of essays and explorations of all of the things that make the Legion of Super-Heroes interesting, from almost every perspective imaginable.

And it wasn’t difficult to find writers willing to write about the Legion, because for all of its supposed impenetrability, the Legion is one of those things that excites people.  It compels devotion.  It encourages passion.

The reason I even proposed the idea of a book to Julian wasn’t because I was some life-long Legion devotee.  I’d read some Legion comics growing up, and even though DC Comics Presents #43 (with its Legion and Superman team-up against a Sun-Eater) made an indelible impression on my ten-year-old brain, it was really the Legion of Super-Heroes Archives that turned my passing interest into an obsession.  I had purchased the first volume of most of the DC Archive editions, sampling Golden and Silver Age stories that I’d never read.  But the Legion volume was the one that sucked me in most deeply.  By the end of 2006, I had read all twelve volumes of the Legion Archives, and by the time I spoke to Julian in the later winter of 2007, I had collected all the missing back-issues and was halfway through my chronological reading of everything Legion.

So, yeah, the Legion was on my mind when we had that discussion.

And I guess I was right about DC having some plans for the Legion to celebrate their 50th anniversary, because look what comes out this week: Final Crisis: The Legion of Three Worlds #1, by Geoff Johns and George Pérez.

I’m sure plenty of readers thought, when this series was announced, “I can’t even keep one Legion team straight!  Now I have to deal with three of them???”  Meanwhile, every Legion fan around the world jumped up and high-fived each other.  You may have felt the shockwave.  And you, being a bit less obsessed the Legion than me, might have thought, “Ah, I’ll skip Legion of Three-Worlds.  Too many characters I don’t know.  It frightens me.”

But what I’m here to tell you is simple: Don’t Fear the Legion.

I’m sure Geoff Johns and George Pérez will give you a great introduction to the different teams.  I haven’t read the comic yet, but I can imagine giant flying hordes of Legionnaires zooming in from three different alternate futures.  I can imagine Superman-Prime punching Legionnaires heads off, and the remaining Legionnaires teaming up and lots of cosmic battles and all that good stuff.  But it’s a Final Crisis book, and with that many characters it will be difficult for Johns to give each of them any sort of distinct characterization.  I’m sure DC hopes that you’ll be fascinated enough by the appearance of the characters to seek out more Legion comics.  But where do you start?  The Legion is the largest super-team in history, and there are three versions to choose from?  It can be intimidating, but if you can overcome your fear, I have some suggestions about where you might want to look for more of your Legion fix.  Because once you get hooked, like I did, there’s nothing to do but give in to the pleasure of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

Because you probably don’t have infinite resources, I’ll restrict myself to ten essential Legion stories.  If you can track these down, you’ll have the beginnings of a Lifetime Legion Reading Plan.  And these ten stories will give you perspective on each of the three Legions.  You won’t need these comics to understand what Johns and Pérez are doing in their series, but reading these stories might help you appreciate why the Legion has such a special place in so many hearts.  (Either that, or you’ll think Legion fans are crazy, and you’ll steer clear of us at conventions.  Whatever.)

THE OFFICIAL “DON’T FEAR THE LEGION” READING LIST (in chronological order):

The Death and Resurrection of Lightning Lad
Beginning in Adventure Comics #304 (Jan 1963) and running through Adventure Comics #312 (Sept 1963), the fate of Lightning Lad shattered preconceived notions of what a long-form story might be.  Or maybe not.  But it was still a rarity, in those Silver Age days at DC, to see a storyline continue for more than an issue or two.  Pretty much everything was “done-in-one” back then, or “done in eight-to-twelve-pages,” to be more accurate.  So when Legion co-founder Lightning Lad perished and then stayed dead for nine months: well, it was a big deal.  Sure, not every issue advanced the death-and-resurrection plot, but many did, with even a gender-bending fake-out thrown into the mix as the soon-to-be Lightning Lass pretends to be her dead brother.  But her lack of an adam’s apple gave her away and she joined the team on her own merits.  And the saga features some of the best creators to ever work on the Legion, including Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel (who wrote the issue in which Lightning Lad died) to Edmond Hamilton (a former pulp novelist who helped pioneer the space opera genre) and John Forte (who was the emblematic penciller of the Silver Age Legion).

Bizarro Computo
After killing one of Triplicate Girl’s bodies (leading to her new identity as Duo Damsel), Computo the Conqueror (a giant yellow robot that looks like a maniac adding machine) seems unstoppable.  A trip to the 20th century Batcave gets the Legion what they need: a duplicator ray.  Used on Computo in Adventure Comics #341 (Feb 1966), they get a Bizarro-Computo who should easily defeat the crazed machine.  But, no.  It turns out that creating a Bizarro version of an evil computer isn’t the best idea, and now the Legion has two problems to deal with.  Even Bouncing Boy can’t save the day.  It ends in a maelstrom of Brainiac 5’s genius and an anti-matter ray, and if you can’t appreciate the insanity of a Bizarro Computo, maybe the Legion isn’t for you.  Or maybe you should skip ahead to the next entry, when the Legion started to get more “mature.”  Me, I love the Silver Age madness and fun of the Siegel and Hamilton era (both of whom apparently contributed to the Computo story), and to top it all off, this was the first Adventure Comics issue with the go-go checks on the cover.

Fatal Five and the Death of Ferro Lad
Teenage writer Jim Shooter broke into comics by looking at what he thought was DC’s worst comic book series: the Legion of Super-Heroes, which to him seemed corny and out-dated compared to the Marvel comics of 1966.  (The kid obviously failed to appreciate the genius of Bizarro Computo.)  He figured he could apply Marvel’s approach to the Legion and get paid for doing so.  And, shockingly, his plan worked, and he became the regular writer on the series at age 15.  He peaked at age 16, when he was assigned the task of ripping off the popular Dirty Dozen movie.  Not having seen the movie, but understanding that it was about some criminals enlisted to help the good guys, Shooter created the Fatal Five: Tharok, the Persuader, Mano, Validus, and the Emerald Empress.  The five most sinister criminals of the 30th century, drafted to save the world from the Sun-Eater.  The two-part story, published in Adventure Comics #352-353 (Jan–Feb 1967), remains one of the best Legion stories ever, with betrayals and reversals and a shocking ending in which the noble Ferro Lad (he of the metal mask to hide his disfigured face) punches out Superboy and flies off on a suicide mission with the Absorbatron Bomb.  It’s good stuff, and you’ll note that all three of there reading list entries feature Legionnaire deaths.  That was one of the things that made the Legion so compelling: characters could die.  And stay dead.  For unlike Lightning Lad, Ferro Lad never got a resurrection.  (Reboot, yes.  Resurrection, no.)

Great Darkness Saga
For a while “The Great Darkness Saga,” which began with a prologue in Legion of Super-Heroes #289 (July 1982) and ended in issue #294 (Dec 1982), was the only Legion trade paperback available.  For many readers, it was the pinnacle of Legion storytelling.  Written by Paul Levitz and illustrated by Keith Giffen, the story brought Darkseid into the 30th century at a time when DC didn’t seem to know what to do with the character.  Although he was the centerpiece of Kirby’s “Fourth World” comics of the 1970s, Darkseid hadn’t, by 1982, become the major DC villain that he would soon be.  But his appearance in “The Great Darkness Saga” gave the Legion the greatest threat they’d ever faced, and gave DC one of the most successful long-form stories in their publishing history.  If you haven’t read this story yet, ponder this scene: the entire population of Daxam (whose inhabitants have the same powers as Superman) rises up from the planet under the control of Darkseid, on a mission to destroy the United Planets (including, of course, Earth).  That’s the scope of this story arc, and nearly every character in Legion history joins forces to face this seemingly unstoppable threat.  If anything’s the precursor to Legion of Three Worlds, it’s this one.

Legion of Substitute Heroes Special
Released on April Fool’s Day in 1985, the Legion of Substitute Heroes Special applies Keith Giffen’s mocking hand to some of the Legion’s most endearing supporting cast members.  The Subs were created in the Silver Age as sincere also-rans — characters who weren’t quite good enough for the main team, but offered earnest help whenever possible.  Giffen spotlighted their more absurd qualities in this one-shot special, applying his “Ambush Bug” brand of humor to a story that featured the 1970s Brainiac-in-the-future character known as Pulsar Stargrave along with ex-Legionnaire Matter-Eater Lad and Subs like Chlorophyll Kid and Porcupine Pete.  Though some Legion fans dismiss this issue as pure silliness, it’s a comic masterpiece (in every sense of the word).

The Sensor Girl Mystery
Between his work leading up to “The Great Darkness Saga” and his final “Magic Wars” arc, Paul Levitz wrote one hundred consecutive issue of Legion stories.  Although “The Great Darkness Saga” was easier to collect in trade-paperback format, I think he reached the peak of his storytelling in the “Who is Sensor Girl?” arc which ran from Legion of Super-Heroes #14 (Sept 1985) to issue #27 (Oct 1986).  Even with Crisis on Infinite Earths popping up in the middle of the arc (and eventually damaging the Legion forever with the removal of Superboy from continuity), Levitz kept the mystery of the strange, masked Legionnaire alive.  Many thought it was Supergirl, somehow saved from her death in Crisis, while others remained baffled as to Sensor Girl’s true identity.  Even though the year-long story featured different villains, the Sensor Girl subplot remained essential and developed gracefully from issue to issue.  Levitz’s attention to characterization and interest in relationships over fight scenes was a precursor to the decompressed comics of today.  Except, with Levitz it didn’t feel decompressed at all.

Five Years Later
After Levitz departed, and basically gave up writing comics entirely (other than a few stories here and there) to focus on his executive duties at DC, the Legion was relaunched and reimagined under the guidance of Keith Giffen who bumped the continuity five years into the future (making Legion time 1,005 years ahead of our own) in respect for what Levitz had done.  But those five years must have been catastrophic for the Legion, because by the time Giffen (with the help of Tom and May Bierbaum) began his tale, the Legion was defunct, the characters out of costume, and barely anything was recognizable.  Giffen’s complex, deeply dystopian run repelled old Legion fans an boggled new ones, but it provided a fascinating perspective on the core Legion concepts.  He even introduced a group of Legion clones (“Batch SW6”) who resembled the Silver Age team in appearance and attitude.  Seeing the classically garbed characters next to the tattered remains of the “Five Years Later” team provided a stark visual contrast, and supposedly Giffen even considered revealing that the clone team were the “real” Legionnaires, which would have subverted all expectations.  Giffen never got to finish his run as he’d planned, and he left the series the only way he knew how — by literally blowing up the Earth — but his work from Legion of Super-Heroes #1 (Nov 1989) through issue #38 (Dec 1992) is a fascinating look at a much more mature approach to the Legionnaires.

Legion Lost
Between the loss of Superboy due to the events of Crisis and Superman’s post-Crisis revamp, and the devastation wrought by Giffen’s run, the Legion could never go back to what it once was.  It could never again be a team of optimistic young heroes (inspired by Superboy) who formed the coolest club of teenagers ever.  So, in the wake of Zero Hour, the Legion was rebooted, starting over from scratch with innocent youngsters Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, and Saturn Girl forming the team all over again.  Only Lighting Lad was called “Live Wire” now, for some reason.  And retelling 1960s stories in the 1990s didn’t really work, even with the efforts of Mark Waid and Tom Peyer and other talented writers.  All was saved, however, when Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, and a young Olivier Coipel joined forces to produce a 12-issue series called Legion Lost, taking the team in a brand new direction.  Moving far, far away from prior Legion territory, Legion Lost was a kind of “Odyssey” meets The Heart of Darkness mash-up, with Legion stalwart Element Lad turning into a deranged Mr. Kurtz as the Legionnaires tried to return home.  It was a dark superhero saga that reinvigorated the Legion after years of dull, simplistic stories.

New Foundations
Abnett/Lanning Legion eventually spun into a new ongoing series, titled simply The Legion in December, 2001.  The Abnett/Lanning version combined some of the Levitz-style storytelling with the reboot philosophy of retelling classic stories, only this time with a slightly more mature spin.  It was certainly much lighter than the “Five Years Later” incarnation, but after the events of Legion Lost, the sense of lightness that had filled the post-Zero Hour team was gone.  Abnett and Lanning’s best work on The Legion ongoing was their quite transformed retelling of “The Great Darkness Saga,” which ran from The Legion #25 (Dec 2003) to issue #30 (April 2004).  Titled “Foundations,” Abnett and Lanning brought a menacing Darkseid into the future and, perhaps most notably, brought Conner Kent, Superboy of the 21th century into the 31st, making him a part of the Legion for the first time.  While Abnett and Lanning hardly broke any new ground with “Foundations,” it’s an extremely well-executed Legion story that shows how classic characters and situations can be effectively reinterpreted for a contemporary audience.

Eat it Grandpa
In 2005, the Legion was rebooted yet again, for no apparent reason other than a tenuous, after-the-fact Infinite Crisis connection.  But Mark Waid and Barry Kitson offered a new take on the Legion in Legion of Super-Heroes #1 (Feb 2005) through issue #30 (June 2007 — by then retitled Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes).  Waid’s new approach was to show the conflict between the teenage Legion and the adults in power across the universe.  The generation clash was the main theme, but Waid also used the large cast of characters to emphasize notions of morality and heroism.  The injection of Supergirl into Waid’s run at the midway point helped to lighten the tone, but the thirty issues work together to tell a unified, science-fiction story of superheroics in the future.  Unlike other incarnations of the Legion, the Waid/Kitson “Threeboot” had no explicit contact with the DC continuity of the past other than an amnesiac Supergirl.  They never traveled back in time like the previous versions of the team had.  They were inspired by vague, comic book legends of heroes long gone.

From the looks of Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds, Johns will cherry pick one Legion team from the Reboot era and another from the Threeboot era and combine them with his own version of the post-Levitz/Giffen team as seen recently in Action Comics.  If you like what he does, jump into the Legion with the above list as your guide.  There’s plenty of future history to go around.  Don’t be shy.  There’s no reason to fear the Legion.

The following is from Newsarama (08/19/08):

The Legion of Super-Heroes at 50: Talking to Jim Shooter

It was superheroes meets science fiction.  In 1958, a fraternity of flying teens from the future first appeared in Adventure Comics #247 as the Legion of Super-Heroes was introduced to comic book readers.

A few years later, a 14-year-old named Jim Shooter wrote his first story about the Legion of Super-Heroes in 1966’s Adventure Comics #346.  Over the next decade, Shooter would help define the characters that won the hearts of DC Comics readers, making his mark on a team that is not only still around 50 years after their introduction, but is at the center of this summer’s Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds mini-series.

Newsarama celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Legion of Super-Heroes this week with a look back at what makes this concept so compelling to the people who have created the stories over the years, and a look forward at what’s coming up for the futuristic heroes.  We start with Jim Shooter, who returned to the characters last year when he took over the Legion of Super-Heroes ongoing series more than 30 years after his last story in 1976 about the superhero team of the future.

Newsarama: Jim, let’s start back before you ever wrote the Legion.  When you were just a fan of the Legion, what was it about them that really captured your interest as a young person?

Shooter: I wasn’t actually a fan of the Legion.  I loved the idea of it — young heroes in the future — but the comics weren’t my favorites.  What caught my attention were the covers.  In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Adventure Comics featuring Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes had some really wonderful, intriguing covers.  I was usually disappointed by the stories.  The Legion seemed to have incredible potential that was untapped.

NRAMA: Once you started writing them, did you discover new things about them?

JS: At first, I modeled the Legionnaires’ personalities after my high school classmates.  I thought I was cheating, that a “real” writer would be able to make everything up.  I soon learned that real writers did that, too.  As I went along, however — the cliché thing to say is that they took on lives of their own — but it’s true, they sort of did come alive in my imagination and become more real to me.  As I worked with them, and as they interacted, I found myself discovering things, realizing things about them that I didn’t expect — and I got to know them better than I knew any of my classmates.

I also discovered how really wonderful the idea of the Legion is.  It’s set in a non-dystopian future, which is refreshing these days, with limitless possibilities.  The heroes are young men and women who are ordinary on their own worlds who become heroes because they want to be.  They’re off on a magnificently noble, naïve quest to make a difference in the universe.  Throw in the raging hormones that come along with their ages and it’s a writer’s dream.

NRAMA: Is that why you think their appeal has lasted all these years?

JS: Yes.  Also, I would say that during the 1960s, the Legionnaires “aged” a bit — moved from seeming very young-teen to near-adult-teen.  So did a lot of the older fans.  So did I.  We all grew up together!  Nothing comparable has ever happened in comics.  I doubt that anything like that has ever happened in serialized entertainment of any kind.  Therefore, there is a hard core of people, like me, who love the LSH, who have been indoctrinating newbies ever since.

NRAMA: Past visions of the future often start to feel dated after awhile, but the Legion future has remained pretty constantly appealing.  What is it about this vision of the future that has translated well to audiences over several decades?

JS: The fact that it’s a positive future is key, I think.  I know I’m weary of post-apocalyptic futures.  Also, it’s a “recognizable” future — not so different or weird that people can’t relate.  Technology is advanced, but people — beings — are the same, and most things track with experiences today.

NRAMA: What are the things that you’ve contributed to the Legion of which you’re the most proud?

JS: I don’t know.  A few characters, a few opponents…  I guess the best thing I did was not totally screw it up.  I think I preserved, and built upon, the vision of the founding creators.

NRAMA: Who are your favorite Legion members?

JS: The original three, I guess: Lightning Lad, Cosmic Boy, and Saturn Girl — though I love them all.

NRAMA: Let’s talk about your current run on Legion of Super-Heroes.  What was your goal for the series, and do you feel like you’re achieving it?

JS: I want the characters to come alive for the readers the way they’ve come alive for me.  I hope to introduce enough things that are new, interesting and exciting that readers just can’t wait to see what happens next.  I hope to tell a story so compelling that they don’t dare look away.  I feel like I’m doing my best.  I have no doubts that Steve “Magic” Wands will execute the lettering with his usual rare excellence, so… if my stories are good, if Francis Manapul and Livesay convey them well enough in the art, if JD Smith’s coloring serves the story, if production does its job properly, if it all comes together, then I think we have a chance of achieving the goal.  The readers will let us know if we succeed.

NRAMA: Are you on the Legion long-term?

JS: As long as they’ll have me.

NRAMA: What’s been the most fun thing about returning to these characters and reviving them through their new series?

JS: It’s been fun getting to know them all over again.  Mark Waid did the heavy lifting part of “reviving” the characters, and some have been changed since last I wrote them, but, for the most part it’s been done in interesting ways that I can relate to.

NRAMA: What’s coming up in the series?

JS: Let’s see… there will be a bunch of new opponents introduced, four new Legionnaires, an engagement, a tragic death, major changes in a couple of long-established Legionnaires, two returns, two departures, and a partridge in a pear tree.

NRAMA: Do you think the Legion will be around another 50 years from now?

JS: It wouldn’t surprise me.  There’s something wonderful about this series.  Even if it were to go away for a while, it’ll be back.

NRAMA: Any chance you’ll be writing it?

JS: I’d only be 107.  Why not?

The following is from Newsarama (08/18/08):

Legion of Super-Heroes at 50: What Makes the Legion Cool?

by Vaneta Rogers

The Legion of Super-Heroes has more than stood the test of time.  From an upcoming introduction to TV’s Smallville to a highly-anticipated comics series this week, the flying futuristic teenagers in the Legion of Super-Heroes are not only still around 50 years after their introduction, but the team has been getting a lot of renewed attention.

First introduced in Adventure Comics #247 in 1958, the Legion of Super-Heroes is a group of super-powered teenagers from 1,000 years in the future who are inspired by the legend of Superman.  The team’s introductory story, which saw the young heroes traveling back in time to visit a young Clark Kent, will be the subject of an episode of TV’s Smallville this fall, and a Warner Bros. cartoon series recently introduced the team to a new generation of TV viewers.

And while comic book fans just got a revived ongoing Legion series a few years ago and a recent Superman-centered Legion story in Action Comics, this week’s Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds mini-series will focus on the team even more in a highly anticipated summer event that will determine the future of the DC Universe.

In a fictional landscape inundated with sci-fi versions of the future and superpowered space heroes, the Legion has somehow stuck around and continued to resonate with readers.  In celebration of the team’s 50th anniversary — and as Legion of 3 Worlds is set to begin — we start a series of Newsarama features this week by talking to a few of the comic book creators who molded the team to find out why the Legion of Super-Heroes has such lasting appeal.

“Despite the futuristic setting and extra-terrestrial planets, the Legion is all about us,” said Geoff Johns, the writer behind Legion of 3 Worlds and the team’s upcoming Smallville appearance.  “The idea of a team composed of aliens from different worlds working together to prove that a united universe can become a reality will always be relevant.  There are themes within the Legion and the various members that touch upon things we can all relate to.”

Johns said the idea of a fun futuristic space story may be what first attracts people to the concept of the Legion, but it’s the basic human qualities of the characters and the familiar problems they face that make the stories continue to be popular with audiences.

“My favorite superhero stories are the ones that on the surface appear to be a fun, big superhero story, but underneath are really about us,” the writer said.  “Our struggles with faith, loss, finding inspiration, overcoming our fears, striving to be the best we can be — that’s really what Legion of 3 Worlds is about, among many other things.

“And in Smallville, we’ve got an element of embracing your destiny, or questioning those that tell you who you’re supposed to be.  There’s many more in the episode I’m working on,” Johns said of his upcoming television work with the Legion.

Mark Waid, who’s had a hand in introducing two versions of the Legion — once after a Zero Hour reboot and more recently with the new series — said he thinks the Legion of Super-Heroes was also able to stay popular over the years because the team has so many members.  In fact, there are so many different heroes and powers that the team actually passed a rule allowing only 25 active members at a time, and all members had to have a unique power.  This led to the start-up of a Legion of Substitute Heroes, many of which continue to be fan favorites despite having been rejected from the Legion roster.

“I think the size of the group has everything to do with it.  The cast is so huge and so sprawling that there’s somebody there for everybody,” Waid said.  “And you get that great sort of feeling of, I’m a fan of this one character that nobody else likes, but that’s OK.  That’s my special attachment to Shrinking Violet or Timberwolf or whatever.  It’s like when you find this band that nobody else knows is cool yet.  You get that sense that I know something that nobody else gets.  And I think that’s a big part of the Legion’s appeal.”

The writer said the team’s large size is also what separated the Legion from other comic book teams that attracted young readers over the years.  “With a group of five or six X-Men, you either like Wolverine or you don’t.  It’s not like everybody has their wildly favorite X-Man.  Like nobody likes Cyclops — some people might, and I do, but if you ask a random poll, it’s not like people go, ‘Jubilee’s my favorite!’ all the time,” Waid said.  “But with the Legion, what’s cool is it’s a big enough group of heroes that every fan can find someone in that group who is their favorite.”

While the number of heroes on the team itself may have been attractive to audiences, the Legion of Super-Heroes is also unique because it exists in a time period far in the future that was established when the term “high-tech” wasn’t understood.  Years before Star Trek built a loyal following with its space-traveling futuristic vision; the Legion introduced the idea of a sci-fi future that still resonates with audiences despite being 50 years old.

“I think this version of the future has lasted so long because the Legion was one of the only ongoing science fiction series that put forward a positive future.  That made it stand out,” said Keith Giffen, who both drew and wrote Legion of Super-Heroes in the late ’80s and early ’90s.  “There were threats and all that came roaring in, but for the most part, it was flight rings and snazzy headquarters and a fun future.  The Legion is the idea that the science we have now did what it was supposed to do and made our lives better.  It was a pretty Utopian future.  All the different planets were getting along and you never really saw ghettos or any of the Dystopian things that a lot of the futures deal with.”

Giffen said it was also fairly unique in that it focused on teens in the future at a time when the audience was made up of mostly kids.  “The primary audience back then was young people, and here you had a future through the eyes of young people,” he said.  “If you’re a kid, what’s cooler than a club of superhero kids?  They had their own clubhouse and everything.

“That was before you started seeing more mature storylines and comics taking themselves way too seriously, and I admit I had a hand in perhaps making the Legion more Dystopian during my run on the series.  But when it started, comics were kiddie fare.  You were trying to grab the pre-pubescent teens in there.  I guess flying around in the future had a certain appeal — I know it had an appeal for me when I was a kid.  When I was reading them, growing up, there was this sort of a wow factor in there.  It may not have been the best science fiction book or the most well-thought-out in terms of science fiction and logic, but it resonated,” Giffen said.

And as the readers of the Legion of Super-Heroes grew up, so did the Legion members.  While new versions of the Legion have been launched to appeal to a younger audience, the original Legion that will appear in this week’s Legion of 3 Worlds is made up of adults.  The various versions of the Legion are now nostalgic to many older comic book readers, which makes this week’s Legion of 3 Worlds all the more enticing because it includes three versions of the team.

Yet Dan Abnett, who was the driving force behind one of those Legion versions with his co-writer Andy Lanning, said that no matter what version of the team may have attracted readers over the years, the basic concept of a team of kids helping make a brighter future is what keeps the team so relevant.

“The Legion has survived because it’s a thoroughly appealing future,” he said, “and it’s deeply tied to the very core of the DC Universe.  Let’s remember, it’s been made over several times, but even the most extreme makeovers have retained the basic essence of the Legion.  It’s a future that pulses with nostalgia for all of us: this is a feature we’ve all grown up with, whichever version of it we’re nostalgic about.”

The following is from The Washington Post (08/18/08):

DC Comic’s Paul Levitz Talks “Dark Knight”

Levitz began working for DC while still in high school, and has worked for there for more than 30 years, most notably as a writer on the Legion of Super-Heroes and as an editor of the Batman line of books.  He’s been president since 2002.

[…]

Falls Church, Va.: A lot of people will cite The Dark Knight Returns as the big turning point in comics, but I just wanted to say that “The Great Darkness Saga” was the first time I ever said to myself, “This is it.  This is everything that comics can be.”  You’ve never gotten enough credit for it, but you raised the bar and changed the industry right there.

Paul Levitz: Thank you very much.  I don’t think it remotely compares to what Frank did in The Dark Knight Returns, but it’s certainly one of the things I’ve written in my career that I’m proudest of.

[…]

Philadelphia, Pa.: Thank you for the Legion of Super-Heroes.  Are you planning on writing anything else in the future and, if so, what?

Paul Levitz: I have a Legion plot out to Jim Lee for a special book of his work that’s being produced next year, and I hope I’ll be able to do something more extended.  Dan DiDio keeps talking to me about a Legion miniseries with Keith Giffen, and I would love to find the time.

The following is from Comics Continuum (08/16/08):

BRIEFLY

• The final issue of DC Comics’ The Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st Century will be #20.

The following is from Comic Book Resources (08/13/08):

CCI: LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES 50TH ANNIVERSARY

Though the panel was advertised as a celebration of 50 years of the Legion of Super-Heroes, in truth Comic-Con International’s The Legion of Super-Heroes 50th Anniversary presentation covered only a fraction of that time, ranging from when Mike Grell took over as artist from Dave Cockrum in 1974 to the re-start of the series during DC Comics company-wide Zero Hour event in 1994.  Panelists included DC publisher and former Legion writer Paul Levitz, writer-artist Keith Giffen, artist Mike Grell, writer Geoff Johns, artist Colleen Doran, and writers Tom and Mary Beirbaum.

Paul Levitz accepted an inkpot award for Al Plastino, who drew the first Legion story in Adventure Comics #247 in 1958.  Plastino lives on the East Coast but could not attend the convention.  Levitz then asked the panelists for their favorite memories of working on Legion.

Mike Grell talked about taking over for Dave Cockrum, saying he couldn’t have done it without Cockrum’s sketchbook.  He later found out that although Cockrum himself had redesigned nearly all the Legion’s costumes during his tenure, he too needed the sketchbook to keep them all straight.

Keith Giffen said his favorite moment was killing Karate Kid twice.  Later, a questioner reminded him that he had actually killed the character three times, referring to “The SW6 batch,” a group of younger clones who populated a second Legion comic, Legionnaires in the early ’90s.  This observation prompted Levitz to ask, “Does it count as mass murder if you kill the same person twice?”

Colleen Doran told of how she got her start working on the Legion, saying she had a major crush on Element Lad and while producing fan art for Interlac, the Legion fan club newsletter, Giffen called and asked her to work for DC.  A contractual obligation prevented her from taking on the book as a regular assignment, but she did produce Element Lad solo stories and pin-ups for about 18 years.

Geoff Johns said that he liked the Legion of Substitute Heroes, partly because Polar Boy was short and got kicked out.  “I could relate,” Johns joked.

Tom Beirbaum mentioned his take on Tenzil Kem (Matter-Eater-Lad), whom he made a Senator.  Mary Beirbaum said she wanted to name Laurel Gand “Flying Buttress” after finding the phrase in a dictionary.  She was overruled, though, and the character was later called Andromeda.

Levitz reminisced about first discovering the Legion through the Adventure issues and about later taking over Legion of Super-Heroes when Jim Shooter left.  He was supposed to work with Grell, but he too left before Levtitz’s first issue.  When Levitz returned to the book for a second run, he wrote 100 consecutive issues.

The remainder of the panel was devoted to audience question-and-answer.

Which story do you wish you had done?

Levitz and Grell both replied “The Death of Ferro Lad.”  Giffen said his favorite was Earth War, while Doran replied, “Any issue Jimmy Janes drew.”  Johns and both Beirbaums said they would have liked to have created “The Great Darkness Saga,” with Tom Beirbaum adding the Forgotten Legionnaires stories to his wish list.

What do you love about Legion?  Why does it have such longevity and so passionate a fanbase?

Grell answered, “LSH fans are the most loyal and dedicated bar none.  The reason is that the book is a great entry point.  A young cast, exciting multilayered stories.  And your first comic is always a favorite.”

Mary Beirbaum agreed, comparing the huge Legion cast to Pokémon and noting there is always at least one character that kids can identify with.  Johns said that the depth of the mythology is a draw, while Tom Beirbaum added that the Legion was “Way ahead of its time, dealing with marriage and death years before other comics.  It was very radical.”

What are you going to do about the loose ends left after the reboot, specifically with XS?

Johns said that XS will play a major part in the upcoming Final Crisis: Legion Three Worlds miniseries, adding that artist George Pérez “wants to draw every Legionnaire who ever was.”

Are we going to see the Subs and Duo Damsel?

Johns said readers could look forward to Duo Damsel in Legion of Three Worlds and “She’s now Uno Damsel.  But she splits into hundreds.  ‘I don’t know how I ever got anything done with only three of me.’”

What character gave you the most trouble?

Giffen replied, “Karate Kid of course” and said that was why he killed him three times.  Tom Beirbaum said Dawnstar while Levitz chose Matter Eater Lad.  Grell said Colossal Boy’s costume gave him trouble and added that the death of Invisible Kid was difficult, explaining, “It was my very first issue.”  Grell said the editor warned him he would get hate mail since he was replacing a fan favorite artist on a book with fiercely loyal fans, and killing a popular character.

Are all these reboots good for the book?

Gifffen said, “We do it out of fear.  Paul’s let it be known, you screw with my kids, you hit the street.  It’s safer to take it in another direction.”

In response, Levitz referenced his Eisner win earlier in the weekend, saying, “That was a humanitarian award I got last night, not a mass killer award!”

Over the years, has Paul Levitz ever had to fight to prevent the book being cancelled?

Levitz said he was “lucky enough to never have to.  Nobody ever wanted to kill it.”

We know why the Zero Hour reboot happened, but why Mark Waid and Barry Kitson’s Threeboot?

Levitz said “the nature of the Legion is so complex, that when the book is slipping, the easy answer is to start with a blank page, rather than work with the existing stories.”  Giffen explained that he implemented a five-year gap when he took over because “I knew what I wanted to do, but didn’t want to be the one to dismantle what Paul had done.  Moving the story five years forward put a little distance between them.”

Why the lack of minority characters in the Legion?

The consensus seemed to be that “the fear of doing it wrong” was a major reason.  Grell and Levitz both pointed to the broader context of the political climate of the late 1960s as a reason creators avoided or were prevented from using minority characters.  Fear of decreased sales and backlash from both white readers and minorities made DC cautious.  “This still exists with supervillains” Giffen said.  “Nobody wants to make a black villain who does horrible things and then gets his ass kicked by a white hero.”

Why do some characters get changed a lot, and others don’t?

Giffen said simply, “I’d get bored and change things.”

Levitz ended the panel by thanking the fans, saying, “We got to play with some really cool toys, and the only reason we got to play with them was because you guys kept saying, ‘Please, take them away and do something fun with them.’”

The following is from The Pulse (07/31/08):

SDCC ’08: THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES 50th ANNIVERSARY PANEL

A room filled to capacity was eager to discuss anything and everything associated with the 50th anniversary of DC’s premier sci-fi superteen team.  Enthusiasts Paul Levitz, Mike Grell, Keith Giffen, Colleen Doran, Geoff Johns, and Tom and Mary Bierbaum spent time answering questions and talking Legion lore with eager fans.

A CCI spokesperson praised the work of past LSH contributors the late Otto Binder and Al Plastino.  An Inkpot Award was also presented to Levitz to give to Al when he returned back east.  Levitz acted as moderator for the panel and began by asking some LSH questions.

QUESTION: What is your BEST LSH memory?

MIKE GRELL: When Joe Orlando called me and asked if I wanted to work on the Legion.  My family and I had just moved to NYC and I was looking for work.  Legion was my big break.  I gladly accepted the job.

KEITH GIFFEN: Killing Karate Kid.  [The audience clapped and laughed when he mentioned this.]

COLLEEN DORAN: Getting offered the job by Keith.

GEOFF JOHNS: I don’t really have a story yet, since I haven’t been working on the series that long.  I did like Polar Boy years ago, since he was short like I was at the time.

TOM BIERBAUM: I loved Matter Eater Lad and enjoyed writing him.

MARY BIERBAUM: The Legion is how I met Tom.  [The couple has been married for 26 years.]

PAUL LEVITZ: I remember reading a coverless Legion story while I was getting a haircut at the local barber shop.

Then the audience was then allowed to ask questions.

QUESTION: Which LSH story is your favorite?

PAUL and MIKE : The Death of Ferro Lad by Jim Shooter.

KEITH GIFFEN: The Earthwar saga.  He felt that story showed the Legion’s potential.

COLLEEN DORAN: She liked any story Jimmy James drew.

GEOFF JOHNS: The Great Darkness Saga.

TOM BIERBAUM: Both the Great Darkness Saga and the Forgotten Legionnaires stories

MARY BIERBAUM: The Great Darkness Saga.

QUESTION: Why is the Legion still so popular?

ANSWER: The consensus was that their were so many characters to look at and experience.  The whole Legion saga was a modern American Mythology for young people to read and understand.  The Legion itself is so limitless with so many characters and possibilities.

QUESTION: What happened to XS after Zero Hour?

GEOFF JOHNS: She will appear in the Legion Three Worlds mini-series.

QUESTION: Any more Duo Damsel?

GEOFF JOHNS: Yes, in the new Legion Three Worlds mini-series.  Geoff let a little out of the bag by mentioning one scene where Duo Damsel replicates hundreds of her duplicates; and says that she was so limited with only three copies of herself.

QUESTION: What character did you have the most trouble writing or drawing?

KEITH GIFFEN: Karate Kid, of course.  That is why he killed the character three times already.

TOM BIERBAUM: Dawnstar.  He thought it was hard for readers to relate to her.

MIKE GRELL: Colossal Boy, due to his demanding costume.  It was too hard for Mike to draw.

PAUL LEVITZ: Matter-Eater Lad

QUESTION: for PAUL LEVITZ: Did DC ever consider cancelling the series?

PAUL LEVITZ: Since the Legion fans are so loyal and vocal, no.

QUESTION: Why did the third reboot of the Legion happen?

PAUL LEVITZ: Due to a lack of sales at times, new creative teams have been called in to increase Legion sales.  Those new teams and DC management feel that it would be best to work from a clean slate.

Paul then mentioned two more deceased Legion creators — E. Nelson Bridwell and Dave Cockrum — to a thunderous applause from the audience.

QUESTION: What Legion story or storyline did you work on that was the most embarrassing?

PAUL LEVITZ: The fact that the Legion was always in a state of perpetual adolescent immaturity no matter their physical age.

KEITH GIFFEN: Blowing the Earth up was a big mistake.

COLLEEN DORAN: She wished she were a better artist at the time.

QUESTION: Why haven’t there been more black characters in the Legion?

ANSWER: The consensus was that there was genuine fear of lessoning sales in the South; or, complaints by black activists if the characters weren’t to their liking.  Either way, DC editors and management felt squeezed by such pressure.

The panel then ended with a thunderous applause by the audience.