Casualties of Retcon VI: The Legion of Super-Heroes

Changes to the Legion of Super-Heroes have included such drastic shakeups that this case, perhaps, deserved earlier treatments than others of the "Casualties of Retcon" columns. Unfortunately, as the difficulty in explaining just exactly what happened or should have happened or used to should have happened have built a layer of delays into completing this column. The ethos of the amateur comics journalist on the Web forces me to attempt at least a half-hearted explanation that someone, somewhere, can understand.

As I write, Web rumor suggests the cancellation of the most recent version of the Legion of Super-Heroes book. I can't say if the actual concept borders on a convalescence, such as that forced upon Hawkman, once he became utterly incomprehensible and inexplicable, or if this only means a few months before the launch of another book about the same superhero team.

I can say, however, that the Legion concept, understood from its inception through its most recent incarnations, approaches the unfathomable, thanks mostly to frequent reworking. That most of this happened in a series of attempts to clarify rather than obscure the history and concepts represents a particularly ironic development.

I have to give a disclaimer here: The cascading complexity of the Legion continuity provides a fertile ground for errors of interpretation and of facts. This column derives from a knowledge of Cockrum-Grell era LSH stories; a copy of Legion of Super-Heroes #300; slightly over a dozen incomprehensible comics portraying two or three versions of the Legion between 1989 and 1993; consultation with several FAQs that attempt to explain this whole bloody business; and a recent occasional dabbling in Legion titles.

If you have every appearance of the Legion in its own and other titles since their inception; or if you simply know better on a point or two, bear with this column. The rest of us would just like to understand what has caused all the confusion.

Douglas Nolan's Dreams

Way back in the days before Crisis on Infinite Earths (or its sequels), a story appeared in which Douglas Nolan, the berieved twin of the superheroic Ferro Lad, dreamed through the possible permutations of the Legion of Super-Heroes. His dreams sought to find for him a reality which redeemed both his life and his brother's death; Braniac V untangled this mystery by use of convenient devices like "dream-viewers" and "dream-amplifiers." When Douglas finally found the right timeline, he vanished into it, ending both his suffering and the interminable pre-Crisis plot threads connected to the death of Ferro Lad.

Legion of Super-Heroes #300, which appeared in 1983, celebrated something of a false milestone, since this title began as Superboy, became Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes sometime around issue #200, and dispensed with Superboy (excepting frequent guest appearances) shortly into the 200s of the book.

However, the Legion of Super-Heroes began only a little over ten years after Superboy first appeared in comics (in 1947), and the first fifteen years or so connected them firmly enough to him that one might justify the celebration of such parallel anniversaries.

The book itself sought to pay tribute to the various stylistic and conceptual periods of the history of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Therefore it contained chapters done by previous creators who worked on the title, most conspicuously Curt Swan and David Cockrum (with Mike Grell conspicuously absent. Each such chapter depicted an alternate timeline, either present or future, where a story had worked out differently or a small decision had ballooned into severe consequences, and the majority of these pieces ended with something horrible happening or with older Legionnaires reflecting on some past tragedy.

Consider Legion of Super-Heroes #300 a What If? or "Elseworlds" piece in many fragments, all specific to the Legion book itself. DC had, at that point, a number of devices with which to explore alternate versions of its concepts, including the Earth-(Pick a Number) model of the (multiple) universe and the "imaginary story."

This book, however, portended what would happen to the Legion of Super-Heroes. So many retcons have affected the Legion now that DC rebooted the concept to clear away the annoying and counterproductive need to explain away the changes. The Legion therefore has suffered through at least four versions; and, grotesquely, not all appeared consecutively. At least two of these ran concurrently.

The Original Legion (Pre-1985)

Though it involved several changes of style between its inception at the dawn of the sixties and its deconstruction/reconstruction after Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Legion of Super-Heroes premise followed something like a linear path.

They began as juvenile heroes geared to a juvenile appeal as a back up feature to Superboy stories. The changes in the industry brought about by Marvel Comics' innovations forced DC to evolve, and DC's properties also evolved; by the mid-to-late sixties, Legion stories attempted to appropriate the Marvel soap operatic themes (not very well) and cater to a slightly older comics reader.

It took David Cockrum, with his stylish makeover of this entire body of swarming youthful heroes, to fully bring the Legion of Super- Heroes into the contemporary comics model. He pounded the starch out of the costumes, shaking off the 1958 look that afflicted many of them (Chameleon boy and Lone/Timber Wolf) and firmly planting others in the fashions of 1973, done 2973-style (Phantom Girl). From the point of this makeover on, the Legion of Super-Heroes mostly kept pace with the standards of the industry and also enjoyed periods of commercial success.

This Legion, which we may call "Version 1" or "v1," represented the longest continuity streak that the franchise would enjoy, including interrupted publication over a period of over twenty years before the reboot. Though the version 1 Legion had over a decade of history before Cockrum reinvented them for the seventies, the roughly college-aged interpretation he gave them would predominate even after their revision that followed Crisis on Infinite Earths.

After Crisis

Some of Byrne's retooling of Superman and his history had consequences that affected the history of the Legion of Super-Heroes, way back to its inception. The original premise assumed that a group of super-powered teenagers 1000 years from now would see in the legendary Superboy a model that would inspire them to their own heroic careers. Unfortunately for the Legion, Byrne removed Superboy from the Superman canon. As of the Superman reboot of the eighties, Superman had only developed his powers gradually as he matured and had not taken on a superheroic persona until he adopted Metropolis as his home city.

Legion stories therefore had to ignore or deal with the problem of the absence of Superboy and Supergirl from their rosters. Characteristically, varied writers tried pieces of both approaches, and came up with the "pocket universe," a small, created reality that contained the Kurt Schaffenberger-era Smallville where Superboy had lived and acted. The Time Trapper, that pandemic rapscallion, created this pocket universe for some difficult-to-detail reason centered (probably) around Superboy's inspiration of the Legion of Super-Heroes to form.

John Byrne, back in his Superman days, touched on the issue in a story where the Legion travelled into the present (post-Crisis, in-continuity) and encountered Superman, who altogether failed to recognize them. This provided the Legion some important clues about the existence of the Pocket Universe and its accompanying Superboy.

Other details would accrue during the march to the nineties, including the notion that Mon-El (sometimes known by other, similar monikers or the pretentious handle "Valor"), whose origin connected him to the twentieth century, had provided the actual inspiration once credited to Superboy. With this precedent set, DC could begin to substitute ringers from the planet Daxam for the missing Kryptonians, and subsequent Legion treatments typically availed themselves of the supply of Supermanlike aliens from just that planet.

However, other developments tended to spiral out of control, including the Time Trapper's continuing connection to continuities presumably put to rest by Marv Wolfman in the 1980s. Just retaining the "Pocket Universe" represented a continuing taint of the old continuity on the new, a taint which would contribute to its demise after less than ten years.

Things would soon escalate, and two more versions of the Legion would appear. This would suffice to confuse as a series of developments; but DC evidently had entered a strange editorial territory that allowed it to present two versions of the Legion simultaneously.

Two Legions?

DC, at the dawn of the nineties, figured that a market existed for the Legion in two configurations. The more retro-styled, and generally lighter, youthful Legion reflected the roots and original concept; but many of the character developments that pushed key players in the Legion mythos happened to older Legionnaires.

That readers might like a cheerful/youthful Legion and an older/darker Legion does not involve any travel into dementia. However, DC's decision to print a book for each of these versions of the Legion of Super-Heroes suggests something strange went on in the offices where hidden figures make editorial decisions for comics.

The few issues of L.E.G.I.O.N. that I managed to pick up in dime and quarter bins suggest that DC considered this the cutting-edge, trendy one. The experimentation (as expressed in drastic deviations from the Legion of Super-Heroes form) tends to implicate it. L.E.G.I.O.N. dealt with a Legion of young adults, not too different in age from where Cockrum-era, Grell-era, and early Giffen-era treatments left them. However, this book put these heroes in the present day, where they could interact with contemporary prospects like the bellicose Lobo(!). The stories really showed an ability to depress, such as the story arc where the Braniac V-like Coluan tries to badger his pregnant girlfriend into aborting her pregnancy because he finds it inconvenient. That issue ended with everyone angry at everyone else, the team disbanded, and its headquarters in ruins.

The younger Legion, in their own book, did much less to spread misery and despair among their readers. Arguably, this constituted pandering in order to attract a younger market (note that "pandering" means appealing to a disliked or disrespected audience; you decline the verb such that "he appeals to me" or "he targets to you" or "he panders to them." In any case, whatever this bifurcation portended or intended to portend, the books started intersecting.

The younger Legionnaires, for instance, occasionally encountered the parents of their adult counterparts. One scene involved Invisible Kid (the original) encountering his parents, who recalled his death (from one of the first Mike Grell pieces in the early 200s of Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes). Situations like this made confusion about; hints proliferated, suggesting that the young Legion contained clones and the adult Legion contained originals; other hints suggested the converse; other hints suggested an admixture; and everything suggested some great forthcoming revelation that would explain it all.

Then Zero Hour happened, and the Legion did more than endure another imcomplete and confusing series of retroactive continuity changes. Someone recognized the mess that had built up over the years, and the Legion started again from its first days, launching what FAQs describe as the Reboot or v4.

After Zero Hour

The Legion played an important role in the Zero Hour crossover, partly because it dealt with time travel (rather than interdimensional travel, as had Crisis on Infinite Earths), and partly because Zero Hour revealed that the robes of the Time Trapper contained someone who looked like and claimed identity with Cosmic Boy. Much of that particular relationship managed to fuse a series of cliches into a single event.

Zero Hour may have happened because DC had not immediately attended to the reworking of many of its characters in the aftermath of Crisis on Infinite Earths. Though Superman received his makeover early on, other characters would wait years until DC attempted to redefine their characters for the post-Crisis continuity; furthermore, during the entire time that such characters awaited renovation, their more-or-less original forms would still appear in stories. The continued absence of DC's Hawkman attests to the consequences of this delay.

The Legion of Super-Heroes enjoyed a larger, broader, and more vocal base of fans, so the body blows to the lines of their history did not push its books out of the marketplace. Thus, the Legion did not end up in some limbo like Hawkman (after Zero Hour or the Justice Society (after Crisis).

The new version of the Legion appeared, forming around some incident involving their long-term sponsor from Levitz/Giffen days, R. J. Brande, who sometimes connects to Chameleon Boy (or whatever name he wears lately) as his mentor and adoptive father, and also sometimes comes from the same planet (Durla) and sometimes from the twentieth century (stories in L.E.G.I.O.N. '90?). This rebooted Legion enjoyed many things in common with the very first version that appeared as a supporting feature in Superboy stories back in the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations.

This left the Cockrum-Grell v1 Legion fans and the dark-themed L.E.G.I.O.N. fans unrepresented; after all, settling on a single version of the Legion must inevitably omit the other versions. By the time this had happened, comics had entered the age of the Internet, when web rumors can destroy titles much more easily than they can help them survive. Much Web buzz grumbled and groaned about the Legion as a "bunch of kids" (as if kids have no business reading or appearing in comic books), but at least the v4 Legion attempted to build a single history by starting from first principles.

Winking at the Confusion

Perhaps problems result when writers take too much of a "damage control" philosophy to their treatment of retcons and not enough of a "window of opportunity" view. As an example that could serve to demonstrate one way of making lemonade from the lemons hanging around in continuity, Tom Peyer and Roger Stern, two writers capable of throwing the occasional storytelling curve-ball at readers, played with the continuity problems in the recent Legion of Super-Heroes #105" in a story called "Reality Check."

Longtime Legion readers recognize the Time Trapper as a recurrent problem that the young superheroes of the 30th century must confront. His persistence suggests that one should view him as a form of herpes, since the incurability and irregular reappearance of symptoms (especially in times of stress) match well when one compares the villain to the virus. The Time Trapper has played roles, including retroactive ones, in the major revision events in DC comic books, intimately involving himself in the troubles that surrounded both Crisis and Zero Hour events; he, of very few DC figures, might enjoy awareness of both the old "multiverse" DCU and the new, deceptively similar "Hypertime" model.

This qualifies the Trapper to play master of ceremonies (or, perhaps, court jester) in tales taking jabs at the mess that results from imperfect continuity cleanup.

Therefore, in Peyer and Stern's story, the Trapper has captured a number of the Legionnaires (as published in June 1998), and, for his own inscrutible, incomprehensible, and usually self-defeating purposes, confronted them with armies composed of the various versions of the Legion of Super-Heroes that appeared between reboots and revisions. At first, the monstrous and the cynical/nihilistic (L.E.G.I.O.N.) versions cause much grief, either by direct attacks or by hystrionic explosions of unsolicited angst.

However, the "birds-of-a-feather" principle asserts itself, even in the Trapper's extratemporal neighborhood, and the various versions of the separate superheroes find they'd rather team up and clobber the responsible party (no, not Marv Wolfman, give the man a break; I mean the Time Trapper). So, therefore, we get to enjoy little moments like the gang of variously-styled Ultra Boys going to town on the monstrous versions of the Legion and whatever other uglies that the Trapper unwisely chose to unleash against our youthful and virtuous stalwarts.

This story, while not really important to the history of the Legion nor to whatever univese model DC Comics currently favors, does demonstrate that many of the miseries evoked by retcons can recede if writers themselves don't take them too seriously. In this kind of story, especially where time-travel rears its awkward head, writers have the freedom to dispense with the dogmatic side of the mirthless Hard Continuity Principle. They can acknowledge or ignore any story ever printed that licensing allows them to reference, and need recognize some pieces by no more than a sneer if the original calls for no more than a disdainful dismissal.

What Can DC Do?

The alleged cancellation of DC's Legion book(s) suggests the option of subjecting the world to another reboot of the Legion concept. DC should resist the temptation, because, instead of allowing future writers to ignore the chaff and resell the wheat, such reworkings invite stories that attempt to explain why things changed, why someone remembers something that didn't happen any more, and why a comics buyer could find so many incompatible versions of the Legion of Super-Heroes under various titles in the quarter bins.

Given that so many of the confusing elements of the Legion originated in retcons, DC would do well to call a moratorium on future housecleaning of the Legion franchise. Perhaps five years would work. Such a moratorium might do much to end the confusion by allowing readers to recognize some common, continuous, and permanent elements to the stories.