Sheryl Roberts: My love affair with the Legion of Superheroes began with Adventure #300. I'm not sure if it was the cover that lured me in initially, but the idea of a group of super powered teens in the far future intrigued me as a child. Being from a time when men were men and women were girls, Saturn Girl of the Legion was unique. While Supergirl was worrying about which suitor to marry (and of course I was rooting for Brainiac 5) and Wonder Woman was worrying about what Steve might think if he found out she was Wonder Woman, Saturn Girl was demanding to go on missions deemed "too dangerous for a girl" and insisting upon equality when women didn't insist upon these things. She not only demanded equality, she led the Legion as leader for a couple of terms in the early days. This was a character I could relate to, having mostly male friends and insisting upon holding my own with them. I sometimes hear fans moan about how the Legion must portray a bright optimistic future, but if you go back and read those early issues there sure was a lot of scheming, betrayal, intergroup fighting and general discord within the Legion. Much like human nature now, in fact. And as Joe Singleton once pointed out to me, the only optimistic note about the 30th century was that we hadn't managed to blow ourselves up with thermonuclear war. What the Legion offered was the idea that a group of individuals from various places with differing viewpoints and personalities could pull together when it counted and do something good for the galaxy. For me, the Legion has never been about an optimistic future, the Legion has always been about teamwork and family, despite whatever else was going on as the backdrop. I always found it attractive that a group of people from far flung places and radically different backgrounds could find common points of interest and work together for the common good, despite the ongoing rivalries and personal drama. To me, that makes for good reading. As I grew into a teenager, I grew "too cool" for regular comics. I started reading underground comix and didn't rediscover the Legion until I was 19. Dave Cockrum and later Mike Grell presented an updated hip look to the Legion that I found appealing. I learned a very important lesson at that stage too, when I had to go digging through comic boxes in local conventions to find all of those back issues that I missed. I decided then and there that no matter how much I personally thought the Legion might suck at times, that I'd just better keep buying the issues anyway, because it was a heck of a lot cheaper than going back and buying back issues at exorbitant prices. It's pretty much a rule I've kept ever since. There were a couple of years where I couldn't afford to buy comics when my kids were little, but that was a situation where I knew I would be back buying those back issues as soon as our financial situation improved. The thing that made the Legion of Superheroes great for a whole generation of comics readers is that the characters aged along with us. The characters dated, got married and some had children about the same times that we were doing the same things. When we grew older with more complex problems, the characters grew too, and had similar issues to deal with. We were all swept along for the ride. I know a lot of people didn't like the 5 years later stories, but I for the most part did. To me, the Legion was the shining beacon of hope in that difficult time, sort of like right now, when they are the bright spot in the racially charged universe in Action comics. It worked for me, and it still works for me. I saw what Zero Hour was going to do long before they announced what Zero Hour was going to do. I literally took to my bed for days and cried. I couldn't exactly admit to my husband that I was crying over my comic books characters, but there you have it. I was grieving for my comic book characters, their universe, their children and their lives that I had followed since my own childhood. I was to be validated in my grief in just a few short years, by my oldest daughter. I hated the reboot. Oh, I hated the reboot. But I kept buying and I kept reading. About a year or two into it, I handed the rebooted Legion comics to my oldest daughter, who was about 14 at the time. I asked her to read it and tell me if she thought it was any good. Much to my delight and surprise, a new Legion of Superheroes fan was born. No matter what I thought of the reboot, that old Legion magic was still working, because I had proof in my own home. Not only did she like what she was reading, she went right on back and started with my Adventure #247 and started reading forward. She validated what I felt at Zero Hour by grieving too and I didn't feel so very alone anymore. While I did enjoy Legion Lost, I wasn't really much of a fan of the first reboot. It had its moments, but for the most part I was not entranced by the character development, the plot lines or much of anything else. There were two good things to come out of that whole period for me. One was that it sucked my eldest into the Legion fold. The other was that it got so terribly insipid that something snapped in me and I wrote something the few of my friends that have seen it called "The Vertigo Legion." I'm not a fan fiction writer, but man, I had to do SOMETHING to make the issues more entertaining, so I wrote the characters as how they would really be if they came from their stated backgrounds and were real teenagers. The few people who have read it say it's pretty funny and what was great, it could be read along with the Archie Legion as a background subtext. Thank God for the threeboot. It has all of the elements that drew me to the Legion in the first place. It features interpersonal drama, the variety of character, the complexity of emotion that drew me to the Legion in the first place. And it's got humor that stems from situations, it's not forced. And despite all of the personal disagreements that provide good drama, they can still pull together when they need to. It's great! I'm loving it. I've also been thoroughly enjoying the Legion over in Action comics. It's a look at an adult version of the Legion I would enjoy reading, too. DC has certainly given us Legion fans a heck of a ride this 50th anniversary year, and I am enjoying every minute of it. Ian Melton: The Legion of Super-Heroes, the LOSH, the Legion, a group of characters who made their appearance so long ago in Adventure Comics with Superboy. What appeared as a one off idea became a franchise all its own, growing out of and beyond Superboy. I love the Legion, I really do but as a concept, kids who all have super powers but whose names in girl, lad, or boy are a bit silly. Yet, they served as Superboy's friends in the future and would outgrow the trappings to become a sci-fi rollercoaster that has given us some of the greatest talent the comic book industry has seen (and Keith Giffen ^_-). The point here is that the Legion so long ago could have been done in one never seen again concept and instead became an idea that rivals the Justice Society in terms of members and impact in their own way. Glad to have the Legion, all of them. (Multiple continuities for the Legion ... a thought for a much longer article later.) Chris Karnes: My dad bought me my first Legion comic (Superboy & the Legion of Super-Heroes #197; Sept. '73) during a road trip from Memphis to Detroit; I was 6 years old. Coincidentally, that issue had the distinction of having "Legion ..." in the title; Superboy wasn't solo. The cover depicted Timber Wolf roughing up various Legionnaires in front of a huge full moon against a purple night sky. I was blown away! A club of teen super-heroes that Superboy visits in the future?!? Moreso, it appeared that some members even dated!? Shocking! I wanted to know more about the members and their powers, but I would have to wait months later to get and find my next Superboy/Legion comic -- #202, a 100-pager no less, which mercifully had a feature spread on all the Legionnaires, their real names, and a description of their powers. I was drawn to them not just for their adventures, but for the teams' camaraderie and romances. Long live the Legion! Sidra Roberts Roman: When I was fourteen, my mom, the Mad Editor, handed me a Legion of Superheroes reboot comic and told me she wanted me to read it and tell her what I thought of it. I'm no longer sure what initially hooked me on the books. I'd probably have to dig them out of their long box homes and re-read them. Knowing my own tastes and what I love about Legion in general, I'd have to guess that I liked a book about a large group of teenagers with superpowers. I remember being instantly attracted to Brainiac 5. As a nerdy outcast by the popular kids who was at times more at home with adults than her peers, I found Brainiac 5's intelligence and lack of social charms with his peers endearing. I also loved Lyle Norg, Invisible Kid who gave himself his powers in a lab experiment. I went on to become a Chemical Engineer and take a lot of chemistry labs. I was never foolish enough to try to ingest any of my lab experiments, but I have to admit, if they would have given me superpowers, I might have been sorely tempted. Whatever it was in the reboot book, I was a newly hooked Legion of Superheroes fangirl, and when I got caught up with the two years of reboot that my mother had been squirreling away and trying to figure out if it was still any good, I decided I NEEDED to read everything that had come before. So into my mother's comic collection I plunged, through the hokey Silver Age Legion books to the downright bad 1970's comics. As bad as the writing might have been at times, the costumes were equally funky and awesome. Then I started to get into the good stuff the Giffen/Levitz version of the team. From there I had to go into the unorganized comic boxes in my parents house, and boy, did I dig my way through them. Desperately, I searched and found my favorite incarnation of the Legion to date Adult V4 Legion. I know it's not the most popular incarnation, but it is my favorite. I love adult Brainy and Kono. It warms the cockles of my little fangirl heart and makes me laugh like no one's business. And the end at Zero Hour where they kill all of the Legion makes me sob like the big sentimentalist I am. I was reading the reboot. I knew they weren't really gone forever. It didn't matter. They were killing THAT Legion and I loved that Legion. Well, I didn't like the L* Legion that much, but I did love the adult Legion. Even thinking about the panel where they all clasp hands and go into oblivion is making me teary eyed. And by the time I'd worked my way up to it, I was stuck in a dark monthly corner of Legion I like to refer to as Crappy Harbor, where all the teenagers love one another and are HAPPY. Brainiac 5 should not be HAPPY. He's a snarky, shrewd bastard and I love him that way, thank you very much. The Waid/Kitson reboot was probably the best thing that happened to the reboot Legion in the end. I'm not as caught up with it as I'd like to be, but I still love it to death. Supes is okay. Bats is awesome. But the Legion of Superheroes rocks my world. I even have very few things to say bad about the animated cartoon. I might not like Brainy's weird Transformers nature, but I understand that I'm not exactly the target audience for the cartoon and little boys probably eat that stuff up. And anything that infects children with a love for my main man, Brainiac 5, is fine by me. Wally Flores Jr: I am reading the current incarnation of the LSH. I got into when I was a kid right before it received its first reboot (ya know Validus actually reverting back to a baby). Then, I decided, forget it. I tried again around '97-'98 at the recommendation of people on IRC's #Comicbooks. I got lost due to a relaunch. I stayed away for a while until the current reboot as Mark Waid and Barry Kitson was a teamup too good to pass up. It's finally the stuff I enjoyed when I was a kid again (I had some digests). While I am not getting my fix of my favorite member, Ultra Boy, I am still liking the series. Oh, and I'm very glad Supergirl is gone.

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