I particularly loathe (though still read, until my local comic store closed) the most recent version of the Legion, as it was based on a REALLY bad premise.

I really do feel that there is room for the pre-Zero-hour & post-Zero-hour LSH to exist as JLA/JSA type analogues of each other. I just wish I had the ability to read the Legion of 3 worlds comics, as the comic store went belly-up the week before it shipped.

So, if I had to choose, I’d pick up where Levitz left off, with the original characters, un-”growed up” and un-altered by timestream shifting or reboots. The original characters that stretched back to the first appearance of Mon-El. We’ve pretty much got them back with the recent Action/Legion of Three Worlds stuff, so I’d shift it to them. They are, after all, the original characters and I’d like them back.

Put the post-ZH but pre-Legion Lost reboot Legion into an all-ages book.

Put the post-Magic Wars, pre-5YL Legion into a standard book which would be the main title. (Am I the only one who’s sad to see Geoff Johns wipe out the Baxter era? There was a lot of good stuff in there, dammit! And I know it was out of continuity before, but somehow this feels worse– it’s an alternate future for ostensibly the same Levitz-era characters.)

And put the post-liberation of earth, pre-earth blowing up Giffen Legion, without SW6, into a mature-readers book.

They seem to be one of the more egregious examples recently of it’s-not-what-I-read-as-a-kid-therefore-it’s-bad syndrome, of which Johns has become more and more enraptured by as time goes on.

I liked ‘em just fine, personally. Even Supergirl didn’t bug me, since Waid found a good story hook for her.

IF I could have Legion my way, I’d do a combination- one where the history OF EACH INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER is studied, and the best elements of each is used. (The TV series was kind of like that.)

At that point, that seems like another bad move from DC to reboot a title after 50 issues, odd editorial logic.

But they didn’t come up or introduce those characters…they were introduced in the post-ZH, before the DnA run began.

And yes, there are also the fans Greg describes, who seem to follow any incarnation of the book with equal loyalty. To be honest, that’s as inexplicable to me as the above: if I like a comic it’s because of the work by a writer and/or an artist, so I follow them rather than a title or a character.

People who are asking for one particular era to come back are bound to be disappointed; it’s like asking for your childhood back. (If you’re saying you’d like to see Keith Giffen or Mark Waid or Paul Levitz themselves come back to the book, that’s another matter. I myself was interested both times Jim Shooter returned to the series, and both times I enjoyed the results immensely. Obviously I was in a minority there!) But no one incarnation of the series had a monopoly on being the “real” thing. Going back to an earlier version won’t suddenly make you the person who read that version, so don’t expect that.

If I must take a side here, I have to agree with Michael that there’s no creative point whatsoever to an aged Legion: that would be losing one of the critical elements that made the premise work in the first place. The prospect of old, surly, stubbly Legionnaires dealing with prostate exams and telling those obnoxious kids to get their damn flight rings off my lawn fills me with deep despair. Of all the things that wouldn’t be the “real” Legion, that would be the worst.