The Legion of Superheroes

The Legion of Superheroes

A very popular comic book team brought to us by DC comics was first introduced in Adventure Comics #247 in 1958. This team has gone through possibly more reboots and retcons than any individual character but its original iteration was based around Superboy, who was Superman when he was a teenager. He had met lightening boy, Saturn girl and cosmic boy. These three had formed a superhero club using Superboy as inspiration and they time traveled to recruit him as a member. As the team gained attention lightning boy was changed to lightning lad. They then were granted more stories in Adventure Comics and alluded to more heroes in this Legion including; Invisible Kid, Sun Boy, Bouncing Boy, Phantom Girl, Shrinking Violet and a few others.

In September of 1962 the Legion of Superheroes was granted their own cover, titled Superboy in Tales of the Legion of Superheroes. They would have to share billing space with Superboy for a couple of years but as the series gained popularity Superboy was dropped from the title.

The first major event for these stories is the death of lightning lad who was killed off in issue #304 and revived in #312 because we all know comic book characters can’t stay dead. After the team was dropped from Adventure Comics and replaced with Supergirl. Superboy was added back to the title. Superboy starring the Legion of Superheroes became the next evolution of the team.

Due to a villain's plot against the team Superboy left the Legion and the book was retitled for the Legion of Superheroes themselves, finally receiving their own title.

1970s bring some weird pairings like Bouncing Boy and Due Damsel and Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad (the downfall of Saturn Girl really). I’ve already done the Lady Comic Book History episode on her but she is one of the only comic book heroes that got worse as time went on, and more misogynistic as time passed…its so angering.

The Five Years Later storyline was when more poor decisions started happening, Super-boy was retroactively removed from the team and there was really no reference to him at all. This set off a string of retcons that made absolutely no sense, in true DC fashion.

A new title in a much lighter tone was launched in parallel with the original title called the Legionnaires, This caused more issues than solutions and were resolved by an entirely different writing team in the Zero Hour storyline. In 1994 the team was rebooted again and the original continuity was basically rendered irrelevant. When the team was rebooted Lightning Lad was renamed Live Wire and an unnecessary amount of superheroes were added to the team. Including XS, Barry Allen’s granddaughter, Kinetix and Gates.

After a Teen Titans crossover the team was rebooted again…This new series included Chameleon Boy, Star Boy, Colossal Boy, and Phantom Girl. With all these reboots Post- Crisis on Infinite Earths was clearly another reorganizing time for DC and the Legionnaires. The Post-Crisis version of the team appeared in Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes. Now this really markss the full downfall of the team because to me the whole point of the Legion of Super-Heroes was to be wildly different then the Justice League, these were superpowered children who trained and saved the planet they were also almost fully cosmically bound and bringing Superman into it really overshadows their purpose and history.

New 52 was a shit continuity for everyone. There is not a single redeemable thing to come out of New 52 so we’re gonna go ahead and skip that. The Legion of Super-Heroes once again got their own title in 2019 but only lasted until 2021 before it ended.

Then we have the new animated Legion of Superheroes movie that was released on HBO Max this year. First of all don’t watch it, it's a waste of time, second of all they got Kara’s characterization so terribly wrong and I hated it. Batman, Superman and Flash have no business being in this movie…at all. They serve no purpose and for a movie titled for the Legion they are unnecessary that said Jensen Ackles is perfect to voice Batman. However irrelevant his character's involvement was. The Legion started off as a really great team with Saturn Girl being my favorite member, now they’ve been rebooted to hell with no recognition of how awesome they used to be. If you want to read them I recommend starting as far back as possible, luckily DC is pretty good about having their back issues up on their site for digital consumption.

Well that's all for the legionnaires but I will hopefully have the Fantastic Fours background done soon!