Well seeing that he's going to have Ultra and SG hook up I'm thinking BLASPHEMY!!!!!!! According to previews one of the Legion's longest love affair between two Legionaires is changed forever, the top two being (in accordance with current line-up) Ultra and Phantom Girl and LL and SG. The way I see it, the LoSH is going to see another reboot because of Final Crisis and specifically the Legion vs Legion mini series fast approaching, so let Shooter screw whatever he wants, were probably getting the Legion we all know and love back soon......I hope.......

How many Legions? I'm sure there are some great web pages, but "roughly speaking", Chronologically:

1a) "Pre-Mordruverse" This is the Legion that (for the most part) appeared in any Legion comic that you would have read up until issue 8-ish of the Giffen post "5 Year Later" arc. The touchstone to this group was that they travelled through time to meet Superboy. Superboy joined the Legion. Post-Crisis, Superboy was from a "pocket" dimension created by the Time Trapper; Superboy died; the Legion took revenge on the Time Trapper. This continuity ended when Mon-El enacted "final" revenge upon the Time Trapper.

1b) "Oddball pre-Crisis* Legions" There were quite a few "one-shot" type Legion stories (most in the Silver Age) with "Adult Legion", etc.

1c) "The Mordruverse Legion" (1 issue, immediately following the "pre-Mordruverse")...not really a formal Legion, but a mixed group of folks that tried to recreate a "proper" Legion history, because Mordru ruled the Universe.

2a) "The Glorithverse": This was essentially the "original" Legion (1a above), but with a Daxamite (Lar Gand, aka Valor) penciled in as the Superboy replacement (and having adventures in space with L.E.G.I.O.N. et al instead of in Smallville), and another Daxamaite (Laurel Gand, aka Andromeda) penciled in as a Supergirl replacement.

The weirdest thing about this Legion (IMO) is that it's continuity more-or-less was exactly the same as the "1st Legion" right up until that continuity vanished...with I think the only change being that none of the Time Trapper/Superboy stuff happened, so Valor (once Mon-El) didn't end up killing Glorith (who replaced the Time Trapper).

2b) The "SW6 Batch": These were carbon copies of the Legion from the early of the (1st) Jim Shooter era. Think of them as clones that were put in stasis. Except they weren't clones. At least not all of them. How can you tell which ones were the originals? If something happened in the Legion book that you didn't like (Element Lad and Shrinking Violet being gay-ish, ME-Lad getting fat from eating the Miracle Machine, Star Boy growing a beard, Ferro Lad dieing)....it happened to a clone. Really. Did I mention that Lightning Lad was really Proty? And he married Saturn Girl?

Anyway....This is the reason there were two Legions running around for the end of the Giffen/Bierbaum run. This continuity (2a and 2b) ended during the Zero Hour. It turned out that Rokk Krinn (Cosmic Boy) was really the time trapper. All along. Really. It explains why he wore pink for most of his career. Really.

3) The "Reboot" Legion. Aside from "Starman", this was probably the best thing to come out of Zero Hour. We still had two Legion Titles, but they were basically a bi-weekly Legion title. This was a re-do of the Legion. It started out with the original three (with subtle changes, explaining why we have a "Live Wire" heroclix figure) with some new members added (Gates, XS, Koko the monkey) and some great twists on the original mythos: Brainiac 5.1, LeVIathan, etc.

Anyway, I dropped the Legion after this book lost it's charm. I think they got "Lost" and I don't really know if they had a graceful exit.

4a) The "Threeboot" Legion. This is the Waid/Kitson run in which the Legion is fighting "Granpa". Seriously. I read the first arc, and had no interest in what was essentially an Elseworlds story. Jim Shooter is still writing this Legion.

4b) The weird alternate Legions: At least one "adult Legion" appeared at the end of the Superman/Batman ("Elseworlds") arc. Loeb. Ignore.

5) The "double-plus-unboot" Legion. This is the Geoff Johns Legion. They met/trained Superman before he became a full-time Metropolis-based hero. They starred in the JLA/JSA "Lightning Saga".

Specu-spoilers follow.


As of this moment (Summer 2008), nobody knows anything close to the full history of the "unboot++" Legion. It appears that their history matches the "pre-Mordruverse" history up until the end of the Levitz era's "Magic Wars" (aka Volume 3, the "Baxter" era, pre-Giffen/Bierbaum).

Thanks for the wrap-up, tidge.

I kind of liked the "Threeboot" Legion, but when I heard rumors of the impending Legion-Crisis, I kind of stopped caring. Thanks DC! I'll wait and see what happens next.

Not a straight matchup. Otherwise we wouldn't have had Sensor with Karate Kid still alive. I don't think this will have anything to do with the SW6 batch as that would just get to complicated. Actually I expect no explanation at all, and that after The Legion of Three Worlds story we'll have a "The Best of" Legion survive and get a definitive history of that one at some later point.

Tarnish

While Tidge's assessment is incredibly accurate, if I may offer a (slightly) more simplified versioning history (stolen from a post I made at Legionworld.net):

The "Original" team was found in the early Suberboy/Supergirl stories, then Adventure Comics, Action Comics, and then appearing regularly in "Superboy" which became "Superboy and the Legion" in #231 (1977), then "Legion of Super-Heroes" (Referred to as V.2) in #259 (1980), and finally "Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes" with issue #314 (1984 - After issue 325, "Tales" only ran reprints).

Now, When v2 turned into "Tales", DC launched a new "Legion of Super-Heroes" Series in Baxter Format that ran at the same time (84). This was called v.3 and ran 63 issues ending in the Magic Wars (1989).

Then DC restarted the series with Legion of Super-Heroes #1 (1989 - Set Five Years after the last series, known as v.4). This continued the Legion stories until issue #61 (1994). At the same time the "Legionnaires" series was running up until #18.

All of this constitutes the "First" series of Legion Stories (As others have mentioned, early in v4, Legion history was rewritten to axe Superboy and Mon-el and introduce Valor. It eventually also introduced the SW6 Legion 'alternates' who spun off into the Legionnaires series. This time period has caused no end of debate in fandom as to its merits).

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The "Second" Legion started fresh with the two Zero issues of LSH and Legionnaires (1994), then jumped into the fray continuing the old numbering with #62 and #19 respectively. These ran until "Legion of Super-Heroes" #125 and "Legionnaires" #81 (2000). Then the team moved into the Mini Series "Legion Lost" (2000), followed by "Legion Worlds"(2001), and finally into a new book simply called "Legion" (2001) which ran until #38 (2004). This Legion ended in the Teen Titans\Legion special.

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The "Third" Legion was introduced in the same Titans/Legion Special and started in their own book "Legion of Super-Heroes"(v.5 - 2005) Which is the one that runs currently (although it was renamed "Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes" for issues #16-36).

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Finally, A Legion has turned up in the JSA/JLA crossover and Action Comics which reassembles the "original" Legion, but only up until somewhere in the v.3 run, after which it seems to be different (no Five Year Gap). This is what people are calling the "Action" Legion or the "Lightning Saga Legion".

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Legion of Three Worlds combines the "Second", "Third" and "Action" Legions.

Thanks for that summary rouge2, I had considered adding something similar to my post but I thought it would make it more cluttered.

How was the hand-off between Legions two and three done?

The Legion and the Teen Titans teamed up to try and stop the Fatal Five who were tearing down the walls between alternate timelines to add to their number ("The Fatal 500"). In order to repair the damage being done the Legionnaires and Titans used some Bariny Tech, but the teams got separated and the Ttians were thrown into the "Titans Tomorrow" time, while the Legion simply vanished. The exception was Shikari, who was thrown into what appeared to be 31st century Earth, but was obviously not the same one. The POV suddenly changes, Shikari vanishes, and we see the new Invisible Kid of the "third" Legion defy his parents and run off to join the group.

Shikari later shows up in a panel of Infinite Crisis where she's reunited with "her" Legion when Alex Luthor separates out all the Earths..

perfect and awesome.

so, what are the 3 Legions we will have in "Legion of 3 Worlds"?

Legion of Three Worlds combines the "Second", "Third" and "Action" Legions.

NOT the original Legion?!

I CAN'T believe it!

Well, the "Action" Legion is the original up until the time around the original Crisis, then their story deviates in a way we haven't been told yet.

that is PERFECT!

perfect! it will be awesome!