Legionnaires’ disease

You can also call it rebootitis, although Legionnaires Disease works nicely. It’s the tendency of comic book companies to simply hit the “do over” button and erase a comic book character or characters’ entire back history. Supposedly, this boosts sales and erases the dead wood from continuity. As often as not, it’s because someone feels the need to do repair work left over from an earlier reboot, sometimes from a different character or book.

But sometimes — as often as not, I suspect — there’s just a lack of fresh ideas, so a reboot is cobbled together to breathe something that superficially resembles freshness into a moribund series. I also blame the sick, twisted desire from some creators to deconstruct classic heroes until they stop being being, well, super heroes. It’s a post modern approach that can be entertaining, but would prefer that it be used for “imaginary” or “what if?” tales, or for entirely new characters designed for that purpose, like the “Watchmen” were. I don’t want to be told that a character I loved as a young kid was wife beater. C’mon.

I’m calling it “legionnaire’s disease, for a reason.

By my account, there have been six distinct versions of the Legion of Super Heroes, this includes the most recent version, the first issue of which I picked up today at Acme Comics.

Of course, any comic book experiences changes in tone, characterization and settings whenever a new creative team steps in and tries to make the characters their own and perhaps revitalize sagging sales. But sometimes, these constitute major changes in established series backstory, or continuity. Sometimes, the entire back history is erased and rebuilt to fit the tastes of perceived tastes — of modern audiences. For the sake of this post, I’ll refer to both as “reboots.”

1. The original deal. Three super powered teenagers from the future travel to Smallville and recruit the Superboy. For decades, this was the back story everyone generally accepted. The Boy of Steel was a regular member. Tales of the Legion would appear as backup or main features stories in various National Periodical comics. Eventually, the “Superboy” comic became “Superboy and the Legion of Superheroes” and then simply “The Legion of Superheroes.”

This version is the one that earned some of the most loyal fans in comicdom. These people voted every year on which member would be elected Legion leader. These are fans who created ‘zines — real fan publications — devoted to the LSH.

This version is the one that had superheroes die — remember the original Ferro Lad — long before the “Death of Robin” and the “Death of Superman” became cynical marketing campaigns. These characters had real personalities, real conflicts with each other, real love stories and real tragedies in their lives, long before Marvel Comics came along to take credit for inventing the concept.

Apparently having too much of a good thing, the powers-that-be at DC Comics decided that new readers were frightened away by fifty years of back stories over its entire line and decided to start over. The result was “The Crisis on Infinite Earths” 12-issue series that destroyed decades of carefully laid-out continuity. That was followed by John Byrne’s “Man of Steel” miniseries that retold the origin of Superman, leaving out any adventures of Superman as a boy.

Meanwhile, millions of Legion fans wondered: “Ummm … what about Superboy?” What about all these wonderful, beloved stories?

The result?

2. The Pocket Universe. Turned out that the Superboy who traveled to the 30th century was a version of Superman from a micro universe created by the Time Trapper, for some reason that escapes me at the moment. Every time Superboy traveled to the future or the Legion traveled to the past, they traveled back and forth between the “normal” universe and the pocket version.

Conveniently, “Superboy” died at the end of this tale.

Inconveniently, this didn’t explain the many times the Legion traveled to the past to share adventures with a grown up Superman, Batman, Justice League, nor did it explain away the existence of Supergirl, also a member of the Legion, who was literally erased in Crisis.

This wasn’t a complete “wipe the slate clean” revision, just an attempt to provide some sort of explanation to the Legion’s legion of fans, who would have been perfectly happy had things been left the way they were.

3. Five years later: The LSH was appearing in two different books: The slick, glossy Legion of Superheroes and the more pulp-ish “Tales of the Legion,” which reprinting the other versions 12 months later. THose books were cancelled and a new episode one as planned. Rather than pick up where they left off, they let Keith Giffen set the new book five years later By that time, it was explained, the Legion had disbanded, the Dominators were secretly controlling the Earth. This series introduced “Laurel Gand” as a replacement for the Crisis-erased Supergirl and renamed Mon-El as “Valor,” who for some inexplicable reason was worshipped as a God on many United Plants Worlds.

As reboots go, it wasn’t bad. Giffen can be a master story teller, when he isn’t trying for camp. He definitely went for the post-modern approach, but he didn’t totally try to reconstruct the heroism. He gave some of the Legionnaires feet of clay, then brought them back to become the heroes they were meant to be. He tantalized readers as he slowly revealed what happened to them over the years.

The rebooted series was progressing quite nicely, then out of the blue …

4. The SW6 batch. This sad era started when a vault was discovered that contained that appeared to be the original Legion, back in original costumes, before Lightning Lad lost his arm and before Ferro Lad and later Invisible Kid were killed. Were these clones of the original legion? Nope. Turned out these kids were the original legion, and the ones who have been knocking around the DC Universe for more than two decades were the clones.

It was around this period that I personally decided that the Legion had completely gone to hell. There was a an invasion by the Khunds, the older Legion adopted new pseudo identities and the Earth was destroyed. The “Legionnaires” comic was launched, featuring the Batch SW6 Legion in spiffy new costumes, spiffy new high-concept names (”Live Wire” instead of “Lightning Lad” and “Inferno” instead of “Sun Boy”) who met in the original inverted rocket-ship club house. They were based on the floating domes cities that was all that remained of Earth.

Meanwhile, the older clone heroes continues to bang around in their own book. It was poorly drawn and poorly plotted. Eventually, the powers that be decided two Legions could not stand, and another reboot was needed. So a plot line was conceived in which Cosmic Boy — the clone version, of course — is the being who became the Time Trapper villain. This immediately preceded …

5. Zero Hour. This was DC’s big-cheese follow up to Crisis on Infinite Earths. Turned out two 20th Century heroes turned villains decided to mess around with time, and the back stories of many heroes were erased and re-conceptualized. The Legion restarted from the beginning, when three teenagers with special abilities saved the life of the richest man in the galaxy, who then sponsored the creation of the Legion of Super Heroes.

It was a complete reboot. All history was tossed into the rubbish bin. Smell ya later.

From issue one, this series has been a retelling of the original back history, tweaked just enough to keep long-time readers guessing. Virtually every major storyline, ever major event, was retold, with slightly modified and sometimes new characters.

It was a chore to read at times. A spark of originality was evident in the Legion Lost mini-series. A group of heroes, during an attempt to stop a massively dangerous star gate, are thrown into another galaxy. During the course of their quest to return home, Element Lad — or was the character called “Alchemist”? I forget — became the million-year-old Progenitor, a villain who killed on a whim. The events that brought lost Legionnaire home left Element Lad and Live Wire dead.

The Earth to which these lost heroes returned was completely different. Stargate technology was no more. Each world fended for itself and the president of Earth turned out to be an arch villain from Earth’s past. Eventually, the Legion returned to full strength and they started planet hopping again, albeit with some new characters and slightly different settings. Call it “five years later” light.

Apparently, readers didn’t like it. So, someone came up with an idea to reboot again, the third time. Some lame team up with the Teen Titans that involved some sort of alternative world action. I didn’t buy the mini-series. Sue me. But it did lead to the this most recent version …

6. Everyone’s a Legionnaire. There is only one issue by which to judge this complete history-erasing reboot, the second within ten years. Basically, the United Planets and Earth are Paradise itself, supposedly. The book doesn’t try to retell the origin of the group, it starts with a fully formed legion, with flight rings and a clubhouse — that really looks like a place teenager would hang out. The Legion is explained as a group of youthful, idealistic activists who use their powers against the wishes of “adult” government, but with the grudging and stifling sanction of the UP. There are many small nods to old-timers like myself. As one character explained to another, superhero names are always an adjective followed by a gender-specific noun, like “Light Lass,” “Sun Boy” and “Shadow Lass.” None of this “Spark,” “Inferno” or “Umbra” crap.

I’ll wait to make a final analysis, but there’s a lot I like about it. Mark Waid’s a decent, journeyman writer and Barry Kitson is a competent craftsman of an artist, who is known for his work on Batman and LSH “prequel” L.E.G.I.O.N. from last decade. Star Boy is black. Phantom Girl (not “Apparition” — yea!) is wearing her bell-bottom costume from the Dave Cockrum era.

What I don’t like is that they are setting the Legion up as ‘war protestors,” with commentary about how old people send young people off to fight their wars for them. Apparently, the 31st Century has a military draft.

It’s too late to hope that there will be an episode in which old man R.J. Brande wakes up from a nightmare and the past 15 years or so of Legion anti-history has been erased, that Superman was always a teenage Superboy, and that Earth I and Earth II didn’t confuse anybody (that way, I could have me silver-age Hawkman back).

I’ll settle for a new series that retains the flavor of the original Legion of Super Heroes. And then stands pat. Lets hope this time is the last time some pushes the “do over” button.