I can’t believe I actually managed to do the entire original version in less than five years!
We will begin 2025 with the so-called “5 Years Later” era, but since I will be handling it slightly differently I ought to clarify a few things.
First of all, in no particular order:
How the era is defined and called
Luckily there is no problem the beginning and ending of this era: it starts with Legion of Super-Heroes volume 4 number 1, and it ends with issue 61 after Zero Hour.
So why am I not calling this just “Volume 4”? Because confusingly enough, the volume WILL continue after issue 61. In fact, Volume 4 lasts all the way until the year 2000 and issue 125.
But also, this era will give us TWO regular series, with the addition of “Legionnaires”… which only has 18 issues in this continuity, with the rest being part of the Reboot until issue 81.
There are two other names for this era:
- TMK Legion: from its three main creators, Tom & Mary Bierbaum and Keith Giffen. I’m not too fond of this definition because it gives the impression that the three share equal responsibilities, but they clearly don’t: Giffen is the main drive early on and later completely disappears.
- Glorithverse: most of that happens in this volume is due to a retcon created in-story by the character of Glorith, so the term is sometimes used. But I decided against this for several reasons. There are MULTIPLE retcons created by Glorith, so the term can theoretically apply to different ones, and they’re already confusing enough as they are. Plus the term is used way less than “5 years later”, Glorith already gets way too much attention, and I just don’t care for her.
And finally, 5YL is an acronym that is both universally understood by Legion fan and is very useful!
Why not skip to the “Retroboot”?
This came up a couple of times in the comments and I’ve given it some thought, but I’m keeping things to the chronological order of the published continuities.
What is sometimes called the “Retroboot” follows the Lighting Saga, and picks up things by completely ignoring the 5YL Legion and continuing the original continuity… except not really, since it has its own gap and its own retcons.
I’m going chronologically because the Retroboot doesn’t happen in a vacuum: some of the things happening there are caused by the reactions of fans and writers (mostly writers, let’s be honest) to the previous reboots.
So we will be eventually looking at things in the published order: 5YL -> Reboot -> “Threeboot” -> Retroboot. Not the chronological order because, well…
Who says the Legion is confusing?
Fewer individual reviews
This will be the major change from my usual style of reviews: for the most part, I will try to do the reviews in batches instead of singular issues.
There are certainly exceptions, as there are certain issues and storylines that I plan to review in the usual detail, but for the most part I will try not to.
I have many reasons for doing this, and since this is the biggest difference I feel like I have to talk about all of them.
1) A lot of this is going to be a slog for me to get through. I’m mostly doing this retrospective for fun and, to be blunt, I get little enjoyment from this era. Some of it caused by…
2) The Grid. It gets better once Giffen leaves, but it’s brutal early on.
3) Lack of familiarity. This is the first Legion era where I’ve read most stories ONCE, and most of the ancillary material (more on that later) I’m going to be reading for the first time.
4) Bleakness. While I disagree with the idea that you can’t do a dark story about the Legion, and in fact I’m going to defend some later storylines that have been divisive among readers… this era, especially early on, can be just too damn depressing. Even going too far a couple of times, becoming mean-spirited.
5) Technical issues. The Grid already makes it hard to get through pages, but what the heck am I supposed to do with the text pages that provide lots of information? I appreciate the worldbuilding and some of it is VERY interesting, but how am I supposed to review it in detail?
6) I want to get to the Reboot. It’s going to be closer to my view of the Legion and I know I’m going to spend the entire 5YL period thinking “I could be reviewing something else right now”.
How the counts will be affected
The existing counts will be continued; the minutia of the membership counts will be discussed in a separate post, and I will also be keeping track of The Grid.
Ancillary material
I’m going to try to be as thorough with this era as with the previous ones.
Both main books will be covered: Legion of Super-Heroes Volume 4, as well as Legionnaires (which is after Volume 4 issue 41).
But I will also be covering the Timber Wolf miniseries, which I’ve never read before and is quite infamous among Legion fans since it’s consistently mentioned as one of the worst spin-offs, if not THE worst.
But we’ll also be looking at the Valor series, which will follow the 20th century adventures of Mon-El (kinda). Another first for me, as I’ve only ever read a couple of issues before, and which will also bring A TON of cameos. Most of which will be lumped together because, from what I can tell, Mon-El doesn’t do a whole lot of stuff there.
Oh, and since I’ve been talking about Mon-El instead of Valor…
How naming conventions will work
This era skips the classic codenames for the most part. In fact, most of the characters will be called just by their civilian name only.
Which I think is one of things that alienated readers not intimately familiar with the Legion. And since I know some of my readers became Legion fans thanks to my reviews (which is one of my proudest achievements, you guys rock!) for consistency I will still be using the codenames even when they don’t.
Which hopefully will also help making things a little less confusing once the “SW6 Legion” shows up.
No sub-eras
Just counting Volume 4, Legionnaires, Timber Wolf and Valor, this is going to include 107 issues… and that’s not even including the various cameos, Zero Hour and the Secret Origins issues.
If this was any other era, I would be separating this into smaller and more manageable parts. But since I will be grouping multiple issues together, and since I want to get through this as quickly as I can while at least trying to keep a certain amount of detail, I’m going to treat this as just one colossal standalone era.
Its dedicated page will group the issues by publishing year, for easier traceability, but sadly there’s going to be only ONE final Legion Award session for all of this.
Conclusion
I’m being straightforward: I don’t like this era. But it IS important to the history of the Legion, it has its diehard fans, and I’ll be the first to admit that it HAS its own redeeming qualities.
So I’ll do my best to keep an open mind… even if, generally speaking, I agree with Spider-Boy.
