The wonderful Tom Bondurant ponders the Legion of Super-Heroes in light of the cancellation of the most recent series:
For someone who’s been a part of Legion fandom — perhaps even casual fandom — Legion lore may be best acquired gradually, one issue at a time. It only feels like five, ten, twenty, or forty years if you step back and realize how long it’s been since you started reading. (That story about the Nightwing/Batgirl wedding produced a similar feeling in me, when I realized Dick’s been Nightwing for almost 30 years, and it’s been 25 years since The Killing Joke.) The great irony (for lack of a better term) of our current age of reprints is that if you wanted to, you could probably catch up on a good bit of Legion history, given enough time and effort. Like any other long-running series, LSH is now this big chunk of info-matter — a thing to be mainlined in marathon reading sessions, and not so much doled out issue by issue, month by month. The question then becomes whether there’s still a market for all that old material. Again, conventional wisdom seems to be that there will always be a Legion book, because there’s always been a Legion book. If that circular argument remains unbroken, it means simply having a Legion book isn’t as big a question as justifying a Legion book — which, again, goes back to all those relaunches.
Much more in the link. Speaking as a hardcore Legion fan for decades now – Yes, I am old – I have to shamefully admit that, as much as it pains me to say this, I’d be very interested in seeing a new writer take over the book following the last three + years of Paul Levitz handling the team for a third time. The Legion needs something to get people interested again, and it’s clearly not what’s been on offer for the last few years. I’m only hoping that, whatever replaces Legion of Super-Heroes as a title this time around, it’s more upbeat than the past storyline…




