June 2007: Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st Century #1. J. Torres and Chynna Clugston launch a series for younger readers, based on the CW’s Legion of Super Heroes animated series (in which they’re joined by “the young Superman,” Superboy being something of a legal hot potato at this point). It runs 20 issues.
Also June 2007: Justice League of America #8. “The Lightning Saga,” a five-part crossover between the Brad Meltzer-written Justice League of America and the Geoff Johns-written Justice Society of America, introduces the Legion to the 21st century–but not the same Legion that was appearing in Waid and Kitson’s Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes at the same time. The “Lightning Saga” Legion is, in fact, a somewhat older version of the 1955-1989 incarnation, disregarding all the “five year gap” material published between 1989 and 1994. Let’s call them the “Mark 1.5” Legion. They go on to appear in Johns and Gary Frank’s nifty “Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes” story in Action Comics #858-863. (#858 is being reprinted for a buck next week, incidentally.)
October 2008: Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #1. Despite its title, this Geoff Johns/George Pérez miniseries is just barely a Final Crisis tie-in. It is, however, a team-up of three incarnations of the Legion–Mark 1.5, Mark 2 and Mark 3–which gives Johns a chance to seed a few storylines for his Adventure Comics revival, and Pérez a chance to draw a billion characters on every page. It’s a lot of fun.
October 2009: Adventure Comics #1. Following a #0 issue in April, Johns, Manapul and Clayton Henry relaunch Adventure Comics as an ongoing series featuring Superboy in the lead position and the Legion (Mark 1.5) as a backup. (For the sake of historical continuity and extra confusion, each issue has a variant cover picking up the original Adventure numbering from 1983, starting with #504.) The Legion gets bumped from #5-7, and there’s a four-part, many-writer tie-in with the Superman titles in #8-11. Paul Levitz and Kevin Sharpe take over with next month’s #12; the following issue will be numbered as #516, and shift to a new format with Superboy-and-the-Legion as the lead feature, and the Atom as a backup.
May 2010: The Legion of Super-Heroes volume 6, #1. In the launch issue that comes out this week, Paul Levitz returns to the Legion (working with Turkish artist Yildiray Cinar), picking up roughly where Johns left off. Levitz has noted that he’s trying to write “a good first Legion book… an introduction to the characters.” Maybe the sixth time’s the charm!
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