Long Live the Legion

Legion of Super-Heroes has had a devoted fan base that dates back to the team’s creation in the late ‘50s.

Originally conceived as a one-off for a Superboy story, the Legion grew and expanded over the years, becoming one of DC’s consistently popular features. Encompassing dozens of characters and decades of stories, it still managed to attract new fans as years went by.

The series has seen its ups and downs, with multiple re-boots culminating in a crowd-pleasing un-reboot just before The New 52 hit that restored something akin to the original pre-Crisis concept. But mismanagement during The New 52 led to a cancellation after two years. Since then, fans have waited patiently for a new incarnation. While the characters have popped up here and there, no new ongoing series has been forthcoming.

The advent of Rebirth promised the return of a classic Legion series. More than a year in, fans are still waiting, with DC assuring them that something is in the works. In the meantime, they’ve had to make due with a few appearances from Saturn Girl, stranded in the present day, cooling her heels in Arkham Asylum. Recently, DC announced that another fan favorite, Phantom Girl, would be appearing in a series that riffs on Marvel’s Fantastic Four, also set in the present day.

While waiting for DC to provide some concrete information on the team’s future (the franchise’s 60th anniversary is in 2018), here are a few things creators should keep in mind when tackling a Legion of Super-Heroes book.

Focus on the Favorites

While this might seem obvious, it’s amazing how frequently Legion creators disregard characters that fans love, writing them out, killing them off or just stranding them in the background. To some extent, it might be understandable that a writer or artist who’s spent a lot of time with the series might grow bored with the old standbys. Legion has produced lots of colorful characters in its almost six decades and naturally lends itself to introducing newcomers. It’s tempting to want to explore less developed heroes.

But the fact is that when Legion strays too far from its most loved characters, fan interest tends to stray with it. The ’00s revival of the team succeeded because the founding trio of Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl and Cosmic Boy was front and center. Creators are prone to writing out or minimizing that trio in favor of newer team members and it never works. Any successful iteration of the team needs Garth, Imra and Rokk at its heart.

But more than the founding trio, Legion has many core characters that fans love. One of the biggest problems of the New 52 era was disregarding established favorites for newcomers. Another disastrous misstep was stranding several fan favorites (Wildfire, Dawnstar, Timberwolf, Tellus, Gates) in an ill-conceived spin-off set in the present day. While the focus on some of the team’s biggest names wasn’t a bad idea, divorcing those characters from the rest of the team weakened the franchise.

Back in the parent book, longstanding fan favorites like Colossal Boy, Blok, Black/White Witch and Sensor Girl were written out, while the likes of Star Boy, Element Lad and Sun Boy were either pushed aside or used as supporting characters to the newbies. And don’t take that as a knock on the new characters. All of them had potential and some were well used, but fans buying a Legion of Super-Heroes book expect to see their favorite characters on a monthly basis. They don’t expect “A Bunch of Newish Young Adult Heroes with Some Legionnaires Around As Tokens.”

Reunite the team and keep the veterans in the mix. Don’t jettison the newcomers, but better calibrate their roles in the book. Fans can take a large cast and the required ups and downs of prominence for various cast members. But they won’t be happy with so many favorites nowhere in sight.

The Bright Future

One of the aspects of Legion of Super-Heroes that always engaged fans was its concept of a positive future civilization. That’s not to say that stories didn’t take dark turns over the years. Some of the most memorable sagas (“Earth War,” “The Great Darkness,” “The Villain War”) went to some especially dark places and rattled the Legion universe. Being functional doesn’t preclude some big challenges.

But in recent years, there’s been too much of an inclination to push Legion into the “dystopian future” mold that, quite frankly, there’s already too much of in futuristic fantasy stories. That set-up is too easy at this point, and feels too derivative of any number of other franchises in the greater fantasy/adventure fiction sphere. Tackling a universe with a basically positive cast is a bigger challenge, to be sure, but it’s also part of what has always set Legion apart.

That’s not to say that Mordru or Universo can’t try to take over the universe, mucking things up quite a bit. Fans expect the Khunds or the Dominators to attack or Legionnaires to wind up marooned on distant, uncivilized planets from time to time. You can do “universe shaking” without pushing the well-trod “dystopia” path. It might be more effort for creators, but it pays off.

Think Big

One of the best features of the Legion concept has always been how versatile it is. It easily encompasses story scopes from major cosmic crises to intimate character sketches. While some of the quieter moments are sentimental favorites for many fans (Wildfire/Dawnstar ‘shippers will still rhapsodize about “A Shared Destiny” more than three decades later), the fact is that Legion is a stage for the kinds of stories that just can’t be done in other books (or at least, not as effectively).

Part of it is the large cast, of both team members and colorful supporting players, and a big stock of memorable villains. Creators can devise combinations that can support just about any kind of plot.

But with a widescreen, epic ethos built into the concept, it gives creators a chance to explore big themes, big ideas and big action. Some of the best stories developed gradually, percolating along as background sub-plots until they ripened into compelling star attractions. Late ’80s gems like “Who Is Sensor Girl?” or “The Universo Project” were great examples of using the Legion canvas to tell dynamic, complex tales that made effective use of the cast and the franchise’s long history. Shepherding ideas through months of gradual build and then letting them explode into galaxy-spanning drama is almost the book’s mission statement. Creators should come aboard this book for the long haul and have plans of how to make the most of the plethora of assets available. Any creator who expresses a thought along the lines of “I didn’t know what else to do” should probably not be on this book.

Skip the Mayhem

One of the grimmer DC Universe elements that Rebirth seems calculated to address is the whole “darkness for the sake of darkness” trope. And honestly, that’s a relief to many fans. No one takes issue with a dark turn that’s well set-up, executed in a way that engages fans, and has a profound impact that’s thoroughly explored and dramatized on the page.

What fans saw in the most recent iteration of Legion was a lot of senseless death and violence for not very good reasons. Things like the destruction of Saturn Girl’s home planet or the rise of a new Fatal Five could be compelling plot moments, but the dramatic “why” of the developments never seemed to come together.

In short order, fans saw the deaths of characters like Earth Man, Sun Boy and Star Boy, often in grotesque or pointless ways, and the maiming of other favorites, like Mon-El, as well as other kinds of gratuitous abuse visited on any number of characters. To a large extent, a lot of that was undone when the Legion reappeared in Justice League United a couple years back and most fans were only too happy to look the other way with those retcons.

That’s not to say that there can never be a death in the book. Looking back, past character deaths have had significant impact. Think about the legendary sacrifice of Ferro Lad, or Karate Kid’s dramatic swan song. Both were impactful and pushed the series in a number of different ways. Killing off a character just because “that’s what you do” is cheap and tired. People read the book to see their favorites in action, not to see them snuffed out pointlessly.

Be Weird

From the earliest days, creators took advantage of the Legion premise to let their imaginations run riot. A wide array of colorful aliens and worlds have threaded into the narrative over the years. In time, the team’s members began reflecting some non-humanoid diversity (Tellus, Gates). With a universe-spanning concept, incorporating as much oddness as possible has always been a benefit.

But it’s not just the outré looking characters that fans have loved. Wacky concepts like Bouncing Boy, Matter-Eater Lad and the Legion of Substitute Heroes became fan favorites. They were sometimes goofy and often provided a lighter contrast to the more angst-ridden members of the team. Creators need to stretch and have some fun with the series, too. When the creators are enjoying what they’re doing, it shows on the page and the fans can join in, too.