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Oh my, this IS a tough one, I've been a sucker for team books all my life; the X-Men, the New Mutants, the Legion of Super-Heroes, the JLA, the JSA (Who I mostly knew about through the JLA/JSA crossovers), the All-Star Squadron, Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol, the Batman Family (which I knew when it was at the more ... manageable scale of one Batman, one Batgirl, one Robin and then a replacement Robin and a Nightwing... not that I didn't like the additions, but...) and of course, the New Teen Titans. I'd even count the five principle Bronze Saints from Saint Seiya as a team.

All these have been part of my comic reading experience since the age of... well let's not go there, so picking one is like being asked to pick between a boxful of cute, but different puppies. It's almost impossible.

But, whilst I've posted a LOT of New Mutants and New Teen Titans and Batman Family stuff over the years, there was always one team which was THE team... and it might not be one you'd think of, but it holds a special place in my heart.

It was the first superhero team book I remember buying consistently and even then, in the late-ish Silver Age, it was HIDEOUSLY convoluted.

There were just damn many of them!

Heroes, villains, allies, friends, neutral third parties who wandered in and out, people who visited from completely different time periods.... they were all over the place! (I recall that being able to recite the entire roster of 26 members at the time IIRC) from memory was something of a badge of honour!)

Oh and the membership, so many weird, and in some cases downright goof,y powers. Some of which seemed practical, but not all suited to a space opera, but by damn they did their best to incorporate them. From Ultra Boy's "One at a time" super-powers, to Bouncing Boy, to Duo Damsel (Who I adore, but really, her power was to be a perfectly normal teenage girl who could... umm... split into TWO perfectly normal teenage girls?) to Matter-Eater Lad, to the ever-frustrating Princess Projectra, whose name was really hard to get the hang of pronouncing, and whose typical battle cry of "I shall project an illusion of..." bugged the hell out of me for instantly undermining her powers effectiveness... There was DEFINITELY something for everyone!

It took me several issues to wven work out what Light Lass' powers actually were, since the symbol on her tunic was sort of vague (turns out it was a feather), her powers vaguely defined (glowy hand energy stuff) and it just never occurred to me that her power was connected to light as in "absence of weight" rather than "the bright stuff" because what kind of a superpower was THAT?!? (In my defence I was quite young, and physics hadn't really been on my curriculum at the time)

But the sheer baffling chaos was half the fun, there was the Legion, and the Substitute Legion (which was made up of those who had failed in their application for the Legion, but became a secret backup anyway... and then became something of a "joke team" which I was never quite so sure about being a good idea, though it COULD be funny), and the Legion Reservists (most of whom lived in a different millenium), and the Legion of Super Pets... and the Space Canine Patrol Agents and The Wanderers and so on and so on. Of course, that's not counting villains like the Legion of Super-Villains, the Dark Circle or the Fatal Five.

I devoured the "Tales of the Legion" miniseries which told EVERYONE'S backstory, and they were all appropriately space opera-ish, from Element Lad being the last survivor of his homeworld (though unlike Superman, he'd SEEN all his family and the other Tromm-ites get killed in front of him), to Ultra-Boy getting his power from being swallowed by a space whale (And his name was Jo Nah... subtle guys, REEAAAL subtle) to Lightning Lad (and also, it was eventually revealed, his twin sister and big brother) getting his powers from being hit by lots of lightning thrown by a Lightning Beast... as you do.

The Legion suffered a lot from being a story set in the distant future, which reflected primarily 1950's and 1960's American views and technology and which was constantly being outdone bny reality in some ways (in much the same way as Star Trek TOS has super advanced tech in some areas, whilst it has clunky versions of tech we carry in our pockets every day now).

Dave Cockrum and Mike Grell came along in the seventies and made everyone beautiful and sexy and invented Cosmic Boy's magnificent boy-basque.

(Click on the above to see the Alex Ross take on it, just for fun)

And then Keith Giffen came along in the eighties and in his early years the Legion looked awesome, in a sci-fi sort of a way. He streamlined a lot of things, and redesigned costumes and made the previously rather bland White Witch an amazing, fragile looking, albino beauty with random antennae, and whose friendship/relationship with Blok, who was essentially a living five tonne boulder-based life form, was charming.

And the creation of the little Legion avatar icon things was neat... predating the concept of on-screen icons by a good few years.

Though it started fairly cleanly, it soon became apparent that the 1986 Crisis on Infinite Earths did the team no favours, by erasing Superboy from continuity, requiring the creation of pocket dimensions, and even more time travel shenanigans.

It still had some fun moments, like their updated recruitment process.

Giffens art got rather scratchy, and then there was the Five Year Gap where the evil Dominators took over everything and it all went weird and they even introduced younger clones (or were the then current team the older clones? It was deliberately confusing) who then went and formed their own team; The Legionnaires and Chris Sprouse and Jeff Moy and co may them younger and cute and rather fun...

And they had even MORE insane Recruitment Drives...
Plaid Lad

Then 1994's Zero Hour happened and boy howdy did the Legion grasp THAT one with both hands by basically completely rebooting itself into a shiny new, surprisingly upbeat and optimistic for the 1990's superteam which is sometimes referred to as the Archie Legion. They were teenagers again, and the tech was a projection of the 1990's rather than the 1950's (Which would soon date anyway, but at least gave them a fresh start) and it was great fun.

We had new takes on old characters, like Sensor the illusion casting snake, and the launch and development of this new Legion, first as a sort of a semi-paramilitary United Planet to asserting their independence and, and brand new characters likes the teleporting neo-Communist insectoid Gates, and the fashion and shopping-mad (and absolutely adorable) Monstress and... well I enjoyed it.

They fought villains and went on vacation and had completely random adventures, but also faced xenophobia (including within their own ranks which made an interesting change)

Then Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning came along and basically turned it into a much murkier, much less enjoyable title and IMHO it's been pretty much downhill ever since.

In 2004 there was a third reworking, called the Threeboot, which had the Legion being basically a subversive kids gang fighting against a super repressive adult society where everything was monitored and regulated.

Whilst that sounds like an interesting idea, a group whose battlecry is not "Long Live the Legion", but "Suck it Grandpa" just never remotely resonated with me...

I might not have been the only one because in 2009, after Infinite Crisis, DC's "Everything old is new again" seemed to kick in and we were back in a variation/continuation of the 1980's Legion without much of the charm (Again, IMHO)

I won't even go into the New 52 version, which was, again, sort of a hybrid of... stuff... until it's cancellation, making it the first time in a long, long time there has been NO Legion title from DC.... Make of that what you will..

Still when all's said and done, no one is quite so prepared for an instant, imposing crowd scene as the mighty Legion of Super-Heroes...