There Are Bad Times Just Around The Corner

Hee's the final part of my nostalgic look at the Legion of Super-Heroes and my buying habits as a comic reader.
At the end of the 80s, Keith Giffen relaunched the Legion with collaborators and  longtime fans Tom and Mary Bierbaum. This dark and complex take on the team lasted nearly five years. I followed it almost to the very end and admire it for its power and subtlety. It was a bold attempt to deliver a truly Adult Legion- but it was unrelentingly grim and miserable: a de-powered war veteran Cosmic Boy; dopplegangers impersonating Mon-El and Lightning Lad; Timber Wolf devolved into a lumbering beast; a crippled Violet; traitorous philander Sun Boy reduced to an insane, blazing zombie; the White Witch an abused trophy wife; Blok in smithereens; even the Moon is destroyed and finally the Earth itself disintegrates! Also, attempts to untangle the skein of LSH history resulted in two brain-twisting time warps that introduced these analogues for the erased Kryptonians:

I think Laurel "Andromeda" Gand and Kent "Impulse" Shakespeare were my favourite "new" characters in the mosaic of the Five Year Gap LSH. But another long-neglected Legionnaire became an unlikely star of the series:

The satirical and often surreal humour that had made Giffen's Justice League International a huge hit in the late 80s brought some genuine light-heartedness to the war-torn world of the 5YL Legion. Perhaps in response to the gloom of the parent series, a bizarre spin-off debuted: the Adventure-era Legion reappeared on the Dominator-controlled Earth and a trio of new characters (Catspaw, Computo, Dragonmage) joined them.

 It's the 90s- better put a jacket on...

With new, more "serious" code-names, the Legionnaires fought a new incarnation of the Fatal Five, where Validus was replaced by another monster called Mordecai:

The Adult Legionnaires went  on the run and went underground. The early 90s was the era of polybagged comics and foil covers- and the two Legion books were no exception. Meanwhile, I had moved to the East End and had finally achieved my wilful goal of acting in plays. For money!

 2 Sannox Gardens 1990-1993

By 1994, however, with the sale of the flat I'd shared with Neil, I had had to move out of Dennistoun and was  back  in the bedsitter-land of Kelvinbridge, after nine months of misery in Strathbungo.. DC comics had attempted to reconcile some of the problems left over by the nearly-a -decade- old Crisis with a crosssover event entitled Zero Hour and for the third time, Legion history was rebooted. The new continuity sometimes followed the old one- sometimes it diverged completely. With the feeling I'd seen it all before, I only followed this incarnation of the Legion intermittently at first. It was a brighter, more youthful take- so much so that it's been nicknamed the "Archie Legion"- but with two books a month, my mid-90s income (working as a call centre monkey) only stretched so far in Forbidden Planet.
By the time I 'd decided to move out of Kelvinbridge and get my own mortgaged property, in my early 30s, covers by Alan Davis had brought me back to the LSH:

In addition to the arrival of CeCe Beck (*choke*) Projectra/ Sensor was now a snake with prosthetic limbs ("Sneckie"?) and a She-Hulk "homage" called Monstress had joined the team. A gal called Kinetix  looked like she was poised to be a new incarnation of the Emerald Empress and even Invisible Kid II was back. But then things, perhaps inevitably, had to get "grim and gritty" again. First in a series called Legion Lost, then in a miniseries, Legion Worlds, British writing team Abnett and Lanning killed off "Live Wire", "Alchemist", "Dreamer" and "Star Boy", leaving Karate Kid stranded on a monastery planet. The Legion was relaunched again. It didn't appeal and I bought precisely one issue:

Here's my old street in Dennistoun, where I lived from 1996-2005. I went from International Operator, sharing the flat with my lodger, Iain, to Recruitment Consultant, flying business class; to being made redundant; partied my way through several plays with STG; joined the Pension Service for a couple of months then began a four-year stint as an employment advisor in Easterhouse, all while at this address:

In the midst of the DnA Years, the Legion experienced a filip in the form of a two-issue limited series by Alan Davis:

It was the Adventure Legion again, more or less. And they suffered loss again- this time Cosmic Boy lost an arm; and Colossal Boy died.  He was also killed off early in the Archie Legion but is seen here in his 50s Space Patrol outfit, which I prefer to the Buck Rogers harness look. There was a comforting familiarity about this version and potential, it seemed.
By 2005, I'd accepted a job with East End Partnership and bought a new flat, just round the corner on Cumbernauld Road, largely for the view:

Long-time Legion fan Mark Waid had launched another incarnation of the 31st-Century's finest. He returned to the Boy/Kid/Lad names but often diverged with the origins and powers of the team. Hence Triplicate Girl is the sole inhabitant of her planet; Micro Lad belongs to a race of giants; Star Boy is black; Chameleon is androgynous and Dream Girl is killed off, to replaced by Dream Boy!. A long-absent Legionnaire also returned to the fold:

I stuck with this incarnation for about a year and a half but I didn't find the Youth Movement angle very convincing or relevant. I was surpised and intrigued however, when Jim Shooter returned for a third time to the Legion. I was back on a restricted budget again, having decided to return to University- also for a third time- to pursue a University degree. Nonetheless, a cover like this stirred up nostalgia:

I was disappointed garter-wearing Night Girl didn't join and new-look Subs Turtle and Sizzle were beaten by the somewhat-derivative Gazelle. But even more disappointingly, Shooter's tenure was abortive as the book was cancelled, yet again. Interestingly, for the man who plotted the downfall of Henry Pym, it seemed that he was turning Projectra into a vicious villain, using her magical powers to avenge the destruction of Orando.

By the middle years of the Noughties, I had succumbed to the wiles of ebay and was able to obtain some of the rarest Legion-related merchandise from the Bronze Age: the two Treasury-sized tabloid editions and the in-house fanzine Amazing World of DC Comics :

 To be honest, the artwork in the Wedding tabloid is sketchy and a little crude; the word balloon placing is erratic and the story's not that great. Curt Swan's classy art doesn't lose anything by being inflated for the format but the best thing about the first tabloid is that glorious cover. AWODCC has some of the strangest and least appealing renditions of the LSH I've ever seen.

 Can you go home again? Just before I went back to University, a crossover with Brad Meltzer's very dialogue- centred Justice League featured the return of the 70s Legion. This was followed shortly by Johns and Frank's take on the old saw of the LSH overthrowing a dystopian government:

This was pretty much the Legion as last seen in 1989, prior to the 5YL gap. Two innovations I liked- bringing in Colossal Boy's Durlan wife Yera as Chameleon Girl and placing 60s obscurity Rainbow Girl in the Subs (despite her connection to Johns' beloved GL-emotional spectrum concept); and one innovation I didn't- giving T-Wolf bloody Wolverine claws and enhanced senses!
The following Where's Wally-style series from Perez would have dazzled me in 1984 but as the man said: with age, you can't stomach the meat you relished in your youth:

Amidst Johns' patented gory superhero-slaughter, the final stage of the Noughties revamp saw former Legion members, like the Archie LSH's Gates,  folded into current continuity. To be fair, though, Geoff Johns' lasting legacy to the Legion was their frankly astonishing tv appearance in Smallville:

I never imagined I'd ever see the founders of the team on television, much less the Persuader and his Atomic Axe! Live-action wasn't the only tv domain for the LSH, though. They had their own Manga-flavoured animated series and a spin-off comic that I preferred to the Waid "Threeboot":

What's the state of the 31st Century union in 2011? Well, Levitz is back for a third time, scripting a series that feels very like the Larocque era of the mid-80s, with subplots that unfold very,very slowly, a new war brewing with the Super-Villain Legion  and an unfortunate number of ties to the hugely successful Green Lantern franchise:

It's spawned a spin-off  Legion Academy series, appropriately enough in Adventure Comics, with ornate pencils by Perez-devotee Phil Jimenez; a new incarnation of Chemical King;and a return for Black Mace and Shagrek from my very first 1968-vintage Adventure issue:

I'm picking these books up sporadically, in Inverness, Aberdeen or Glasgow, ensconced as I am in the Pictish Wilderness. Levitz's old-fashioned pacing is oddly suited to the Decompressed Age of comics storytelling so hopefully, his version of the LSH will have better legs than Shooter or Waid's.
Well, that was a surprisingly long journey! After all that, I never got round to either version of Kid Quantum, XS, Magno, Gear or Shikari. Looking back to the 80s reminded me of one of my favourite series, however, and its take on the Legion. First, a charming vignette for KK and a touching and definitive take on the Legion's second mutant member can be found here:

and the comical but equally touching tale of Fortress Lad by Mark Waid, introducing the astounding Arm-Fall-Off Boy, can be found here:

 I strongly advise any future Legion scripters to peruse Mighty Godking's website for some exciting pointers on how to use the team's long and intricate history to create Action and Adventure...

Next time: More nostalgia: Here Come The Girls


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