But, in , the Five Years Later run radically re-invented the team in a way that fans hated. First created in the s by writer Otto Binder and artist Al Plastino, the Legion of Super-Heroes were characters essentially created so Superboy could have superpowered friends. The team grew to become something like a university for superpowered teenagers from all over the galaxy, working out of big splashy headquarters under the auspices of the United Planets and trusted by 31st Century Science Police. Many of the members hailed from different planets where everyone had superpowers.
Nicknamed Vi, she was the cute, girl-next-door type in the Legion roster. Vi was the sweet little sister of the team, better suited to stealth than punch-ups. Other members got their powers via accidents and experiments, but they all represented a plurality of sentient life throughout the cosmos. Part of the appeal of the Legion was how it stood in for the idea that young people from different cultures could make their era better by cooperating. Internal conflicts in LoSH stories generally revolved around familiar melodramatic plot points: romantic entanglements, culture clashes, cliques between new and old members, and insecurity over self-worth.
For years, the Legion of Super-Heroes stood as a symbol of a bright, shining future. As the real world changed, the futurism in LoSH comics became sleeker, even as it stayed brightly lit and sanguine.
Political intrigues, brutal battles, and crippling family secrets all challenged the team but the core optimism never wavered. That all changed in when a new Legion of Super-Heroes series began, drawn by longtime Legion creator Keith Giffen, who wrote it with newcomers Tom and Mary Bierbaum, along with co-plotting and co-writing assists from Al Gordon, who inked the book.
Giffen, Gordon, and the Bierbaums start off the run in elliptical fashion, checking in on various members of the Legion half a decade after the climactic battle of the previous run. As the story hops from planet to planet, we see how those worlds and heroes have stumbled into hard times or ill-fitting roles. Context is crucial for understanding the experimentalism of the Five Years Later Legion. Three years prior, DC Comics had rebooted its entire fictional universe with new talent and new approaches to their characters.
One storyline offered up a makeshift solution, which was that archvillain Time Trapper had created a pocket universe where a Superboy still existed. But that was a Band-Aid on a phantom limb that only highlighted the continuity headache and tonal dissonance between the new Superman books and the ongoing Legion title. Looking back at these comics, it seems clear that Giffen and the Bierbaums made the decision to lean into the disarray.
This shift in tone and status quo came three years after The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen caused a sea change on the mainstream comics landscape. Instead, the goal seemed to be a desire to channel the feeling of being in a transitional stage of life. The Legionnaires were perpetually portrayed as teenagers in previous volumes. Readers had seen other glimpses of the Legionnaires as adults before, but they were essentially older versions of the same well-adjusted characters.
The Five Years Later series started from the premise that the Legion members were something akin to teen celebrities and that their lives had the same ups and downs. Some of them found fame and fortune—Sun Boy mentions a paternity suit in one issue—while others wound up in brothels where the entire planet was a red-light district. As the run went on, continuity timelines were rebooted not once but twice. The reunions with cast members got more unpredictable, too. A male character took a gender-change pill—Sean Erin becoming Shvaughn Erin—to be in a relationship with Element Lad, who ironically was long interpreted as gay in the Legion fandoms.
This kind of detailed insight was was a huge change from previous iterations of romance storylines, which primarily happened in a chaste, high-school-TV-drama mode. Perhaps the biggest change was in aesthetics. Giffen had drawn the Legion for many years before this volume, to the point where some considered him the definitive artist for the team. But Five Years Later did away with their superhero looks in favor of more fashion-centric design. Eventually, Legion of Super-Heroes returned to a more familiar form: Teenagers in brightly colored super-hero outfits fighting interstellar threats.
Another line-wide continuity reboot essentially changed everything about the team a few years later. I regret the error. The A. Read on. Subscribe To Our Newsletter. This newsletter comes from the future. Evan Narcisse. Filed to: Legion of Super-Heroes. Evan Narcisse Posts Email Twitter. Share This Story. Get our newsletter Subscribe. Stop Comparing the New Coronavirus to the Flu.