Browsing through an old image folder, I found a couple of interesting Legion of Superheroes titbits

[icon_uk]

Whilst digging through a folder of images which I haven't looked at in years, I was delighted to find these which I located years ago, but haven't been able to find since.

Back in 2001 Steve Lightle did some sketches for a proposed animated version of the Legion of Superheroes which never got off the ground (It would be another 5 years before a Legion cartoon series actually hit the airwaves, and would be quite different from this)

Bear in mind these are sketches, not finished designs. You can see the aim was to significantly reduce the average age of the Legionnaires, whilst the bad guys tended to look the way they always had.

Here we see the core three Legionnaires, plus Brainiac 5 (and Koko, B5's "pet" monkey for a deal of the post Zero Hour Legion, and a hark back to the Silver Age Brainiac, who kept a white space monkey as a pet, presumably to give him someone to monologue to). They're facing off against the Fatal... ummm. Four, as Mano appears to be out having a manicure or something.



"EMERALD EYE!!! I Choose you!!"

As you will note, the Pokemon craze was in full flow when this was being put to gether, as one of the concepts seriously considered was having either side able to upgrade their powerset into a new form, or most likely two new forms as fights escalated...

Lightning Lad appears to upgrade to Johnny Thunders Thunderbolt, and then Zzzax, whilst the Empress goes to a Genie type mode with the eyeball extending from behind her on a thick optic nerve, and then an unattached flaming eyeball!



Not sure how I think that would have played as a cartoon, and if I recall correctly Mr Lightle was not terribly enthused by the idea, but they're a cute couple of images I thought you might like to see.

The legality scans comes from this rather fun comics website, and is a copy of THE Legion poster put together by in remarkably Keith Giffen.



And since no one does a crowd scene like Perez, it's only fair to give hiim his chance from "Legion of Threee Worlds"!


Tags (No way in HELL am I going to try and tag all the characters!!!)  group: legion of superheroes, char: lightning lad/livewire/garth ranzz, char: saturn girl/imra ardeen , char: cosmic boy/rokk krinn , char: emerald empress/sarya of venegar, char: tharok, char: validus, char: persuader/nyeun chun ti, creator: george perez, creator: steve lightle, creator: keith giffen, title: legion of three worlds

Comments

[ulf_boehnke]

We need a "too many characters to tag" tag for pictures like that.

Or at least a "crowd scene" tag.

[aaron_bourque]

I think the George Perez tag covers it.

[cmdr_zoom]

It really does.

[curlyjo1]

No one does them better.

[grazzt]

Makes me feel sad for the rest.

...

Sorry, I can't help myself.

[kingrockwell]

Or the Legion of Super-Heroes tag.

[btravage.livejournal.com]

What's Lady Quark doing there?

[perletwo]

IIRC, Lady Quark ran around in the L.E.G.I.O.N. series for a time, post-Crisis.

[icon_uk]

As a member of L.E.G.I.O.N., rather than the Legion.

[kingrockwell]

Speaking of, is that Strata at the bottom, or perhaps another Dryad native?

[icon_uk]

Given the shiny appearance and a Legion/LEGION involvement being more or less required, it pretty much has to be Strata.

[cleome45]

I love it when heroes and villains can enjoy a good photo op together. [nostalgic sigh]

A couple of folks in the Three Worlds pic look close to shouting, "PRIME, YOU BLOCKHEAD!" Peanuts-style. Especially Cosmic Boy. This amuses me.

[wasabi.livejournal.com]

Or a collective "AAUGH!" as the continuity football is once again whisked away.

[joasakura]

I spy with my little eye, SNECKIE!

[kd_the_movie]

I'm sure it would've been better than that lousy LoSH cartoon we did get. I really wish the Dini/Timm team would've gotten the license to do the series.

[icon_uk]

Surely you mean "the massively entertaining cartoon, which was a damn sight more fun than the wretched DnA series which appeared to defacate quite liberally over the post ZH Legion, or the improbably tedious Threeboot"?

And Dini and Timm never had a licence to do anything, they were hired to work on Batman, Superman and JLU, they had no outlay in the process. When the time came for Teen Titans, The Batman and Legion, they wanted to try something new and for the most part succeeded IMHO.

[kd_the_movie]

Well this is where we differ. I don't really have much of the DnA run (just the Foundations trade and a few issues after that) so I can't comment on it and I liked 3boot (well Waid/Kitson 3boot anything after doesn't exist to me).

But as far as the LoSH cartoon goes? I just didn't enjoy it all. I thought they tried too hard to replicate what made the Teen Titans cartoon great (the animation style, keeping the cast small compared to the actual size of the team, just the overall "feel" of the series) and the lack of a few notable Legionnaires (Cos as a 2ndary character? No Wildfire?) and Superman being huge presence took up character time and development that could've been used elsewhere.


It just seems they could've gone in a far better direction than what the series was, and Dini and Timm seemed to at least understand how to handle big casts (JLU) which is a big part of what the Legion should be.

[icon_uk]

You think the LoSH animation style was like the Titans? Really? I'd say it was no more like the TT style, than the TT style was like the JLU.

The trouble with Dini (Who wasn't actually involved in JLU, he left the team after JL) and Timm handling a large team was that we had been there and done that with the JLA, I can see why the Titans and the Legion wanted to be something different. And the Legion acting as discreet teams that rarely met up was actually an interesting way of treating them and quite in keeping with the classic Legion's storytelling style.

I can see why Cos was left out a lot, he's a natural leader, level headed and charismatic, and that would make for less interesting team conflict. And I just plain never liked Wildfire (Whiniest character in Legion history EVER) so didn't miss him in the slightest! :)

But of course, different strokes and all that! :)

[ravenous_raven]

I think the reasons for a lot of all that is because they wanted the cartoon to appeal to viewers who weren't comic book readers and therefore didn't know the team (and therefore wouldn't miss missing members). From that logic, Supes was the hook to get people interested in the show. From a brief viewer who wasn't reading comics, hard copy or online, the series did its job.

[koschei]

They could easily have made the 1st season of the series about the formation of the Legion based upon the idealism Superman represents to their time period rather than having him dominate proceedings

[icon_uk]

Yes, but that wouldn't have sold anything like as well as a concept. For better or worse, "Superman" gets everyone's attention in a cartoon as he's a worldwide brand, "The Legion of Superheroes" does/is not.

Same reason the New Teen Titans got Robin leading them, he was a built in draw, in a way that Kid Flash and Wonder Girl did not.

[koschei]

Except that Robin's prety much always led the Titans.

And "future superheroes inspired by Superman" sells and sounds a lot better than "super powered kids abduct superman to the future to help them beat folks they couldn't beat on their own"

[icon_uk]

Actually Marv Wolfman didn't really want Robin to lead the New Teen Titans, but appreciated that he drew buyers. He wanted Wonder Girl to lead since he felt he'd have more freedom to use her as she wasn't appearing in anything else at the time.

And I think we got the "teenagers inspired by Superman" in the very first episode where Clark comes to realise what his future legacy will be, it's partly why I wish they'd been able to use the name Superboy rather than Superman, since Clark SHOULD have felt unready to take on the role of SuperMAN instantly, but could appreciate that being SuperBOY served a useful transition for himself.

[koschei]

While I'm sad that all the queer characters either got dequeered/hadn't gotten around to their storylines about that yet, I've just spent the week deciding that I quite like the Threeboot legion -- it and the cartoon being my only real exposure to the Legion.

I agree with you that introducing Superman into the Legion -- though doubtlessly loyal to the Gold and Silver Age recidivists -- was a narrative mistake because it made the 31st Century into part of Superman's story rather than what should have been the other way around. A Legion series shouldn't have reduced Cos to a supporting character nor made he and Lightning Lad into entirely unlikeable pricks.

[icon_uk]

Lightning Lad has been an arrogant jerk since the Bierbaum's created the SW6 Livewire, Retconning him into more of a hotheaded reactionary made him more easily distinguishable from Cos because up until then they'd more or less been the same guy, with Garth just a bit more bad tempered.

[okkult3000]

As godless animals scratching in the dirt are ignorant of the great works of literature, so too are the younger generations ignorant of the DCAU. Further evidence of the universe's continuing decay.

[icon_uk]

Not sure what you mean there, I'd put decent money on me being older than you, old bean. I not only recall watching the first episode of BTAS ever broadcast in the world (at 9:30am GMT in the UK, several hours before it hit the US screens) I am able to recall the 1970's New Adventures of Batman being broadcast for the first time, and I go back further than that!

[okkult3000]

I didn't loose an arm storming the beaches of Normandy to come home and have my cartoon credentials questioned!

[cleome45]

[snerk]

I wouldn't be back in the fandom at all if not for the cartoon. Of course, being out of work also helped. [shrug]

Okay, it wasn't perfect, but I love it anyway.

[bluepard]

I don't think I would have enjoyed the cartoon if they were quite that young. And the whole idea of turning the Legion into Pokemon pains me.

Cute pics, though.

[koschei]

This.