Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes by Geoff Johns

DC has announced that the Legion will return in “Superman” (fifth series) No. And surprise, surprise: Bendis has been writing “Superman” and “Action Comics” for two years.Īnd now he’s ready. There’s no better place to do that than in the Superman titles, given the importance of the Superfamily in Legion history.

Geoff Johns, DC’s chief creative officer, has been inserting Legion iconography and Saturn Girl in his “Watchmen” sequel, “Doomsday Clock.” And writing superstar Brian Michael Bendis, who moved to DC in 2017, told Newsarama that he’s been planning to bring the team back since he arrived at DC.īut before the Legion could return, Bendis (and Johns) had to prepare the ground. “The Legion of Super-Heroes began as a gimmick and took years to acquire momentum,” wrote the late Les Daniels in “DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes.” He went on to say: “Rarely a top seller but always a favorite of the most committed fans, the series became an experimental laboratory where a generation of comic book personnel got their training while they tried to stretch the boundaries of the form.” So when Saturn Girl, Lightning Boy (later “Lad”) and Cosmic Boy showed up in late 1950s Smallville and announced they were from a teenage superhero club 1,000 years in the future, it’s unlikely anyone at the DC offices expected newspaper columnists to be writing about them 61 years later. “Throwaway story” isn’t as much of an insult as it sounds in those days, DC didn’t pay much attention to its on-page history - what today is called “continuity” - and every story was seen as disposable. The LSH first appeared in 1958, with a throwaway story in “Adventure Comics,” then headlined by Superboy. But that enthusiasm launched one of the earliest, pre-internet fan organizations, and it still smolders today. The Legion isn’t among DC’s best-known properties, and its existence is more a testament to fan enthusiasm than editorial planning. And judging by the reaction on the internet, it’s going to make a legion of readers pretty happy. DC Comics is reviving the Legion of Super-Heroes with some pretty big names.

Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes by Geoff Johns