Another ‘Legion’ Ends
DC Comics told Newsarama that the current Legion of Super-Heroes title will end with the publication of issue #50.
Dan Didio, DC Senior VP and Executive Editor, explained "I thought that [writer] Jim [Shooter] and [artist] Francis [Manapul] have done a terrific job with the series, and ’50’ seemed like a really nice number to bring this series to a conclusion."
Jim Shooter broke into comics by writing for the Legion in Adventure Comics when he was only 15 and created many of its now famous characters and villains. When he was asked about the book’s cancellation, he remarked, "It’s a drag, but I get to finish most of my story. It would have finished in Issue #54, but Issue #50 is going to be a 30-page story, and I’m hoping people will be intrigued enough that they’ll want to finish the story …. I understand new comics sales are not doing so well right now. Which is weird. Just look at this crowd. Everyone seems so excited about comics."
This current Legion series came about as the second attempt to completely reboot the characters from scratch (nicknamed the "threeboot" by fans). Originally tackled by Mark Waid (Kingdom Come) and Barry Kitson (JLA: Year One), the new series was meant to bring in new fans since the Legion had been doing poorly on sales for some time. In an interview I held with Mark Waid soon after the book’s launch, Waid commented that DC had believed it to be necessary to "throw out the baby with the bathwater" since other attempts to bring in new audiences, such as the critically-acclaimed Legion Lost story by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, had failed to increase interest in the team. This strategy had been used before of course. In the late 1980’s, the Legion stories were pushed forward five years to show the characters now as all being older and dealing with a harsher, crueler future than they had been used to. And in the early 1990’s, after the crossover Zero Hour, the Legion had been re-booted from scratch, altering their names which were now considered hokey (Lightning Lad become Livewire, Element Lad became Alchemist, etc.).
In the reboot, Waid brought back the original code-names that not been used since the early 90’s (changing Livewire back to Lightning Lad, Apparition back to Phantom Girl, etc.), yet altered many of the characters and re-interpreted their powers and nature. Originally, Colossal Boy had been a young man who could grow to great heights. In Waid’s continuity, he was actually from a society of giants and, in his mind, his power was that he could shrink to Earth-man proportions (thus, he often argued his name should really be "Micro Lad"). Waid also changed the book to be less a group of heroes bound by a need for justice and more about the Legion representing a movement towards social change, directly challenging their society that had become obsessive about social taboos and maintaining routine, predictable behaviors at all costs. Whereas the original team had often cried out "Long live the Legion," Waid’s team would grin sarcastically as they shouted "Eat it, grandpa!"