Long Live the Legion?

I love the Legion of Super-Heroes. It’s a childish thing, I know…but the Legion is part of my childhood...one of my first great comic book reading loves when the 9 year old me started immersing himself in the fantastic, improbable, thrilling four-color adventures.

Loving the Legion…something that has continued from childhood into my continuing dotage…I am pleased that the ongoing cycle of their popularity has swung back to the popular side starting with Mark Waid and Barry Kitson’s reboot through the use of the team as important players in Justice League of America, Final Crisis, and the Superman books and on to the newest incarnation of their self-titled series (written by Legion legend Paul Levitz no less) along with a companion series in the pages of a revived Adventure Comics.

I’m enjoying it all. And, at the same time, feeling vaguely put off by it at the same time.

Partially it’s because the characters act and behave like adults (some of them are married and have children of their own) and yet the writers, for nostalgia’s sake I suppose, continue to have them refer to each other as though they were still children (above, for example, are Saturn “Girl”, a mother of twins, her husband Lightning “Lad”, and his twin sister Lightning “Lass”.) I have as much affection for the (sometimes silly) codenames the Legionnaires had the beginning but if you’re going to make them adults (which is fine with me, by the way) then you shouldn’t be trying to have it both ways by continuing to have them use names they had when they were teenagers.

But, much more importantly, there’s a very cynical edge to the Legion mythos that feels incongruous and self-indulgent. Waid’s reboot, for example, used a heated generation gap theme as its foundation while the later stories continue to focus on virulent xenophobia as the toxic element in the interplay between the Legion (who have always been an assemblage of beings from myriad worlds come together to protect the greater good) and the government (and apparently many people) of Earth.

The cynicism I spoke of earlier rears its head in the notion that we won’t have overcome petty prejudices like ageism and xenophobia after another 1,000 years have passed. It might make for good drama but it’s a sad (and lazy) commentary on the ability of beings to get past such 20^th/21^st century notions like those.

I understand that conflict is essential when telling stories but the Legion used to showcase how people from different worlds (and even different times) could come together…stand together…triumph together…over threats to the greater good. Legionnaires weren’t distrusted because they were young…or because they weren’t born on Earth…they were, instead, celebrated for what they were heroes who were will to put their lives on the line to make the universe a safer, more united place.

(Previous versions of the series had a decidedly dark edge…Keith Giffen’s "5 years later" reboot and Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning’s “Legion of the Damned/Legion Lost” run…and I quite enjoyed those but they were fighting against ominous forces coming from without and not from small-minded “Earth first” bigots who hate them no matter how many times they save the universe.)

Maybe that notion is not cool enough for modern comic book writers…if that’s the case it’s certainly a sad thing…for comics…for the Legion…for whatever young people who might find their way to comics (I doubt this overriding sense of mistrust and even outright distain for the titular heroes of the book would have engaged the younger me the way the “tales of Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes” used to back in the day.)

Maybe I’m just getting too old for these things.