Trivia / Legion of Super-Heroes

• Alan Smithee: The final issue of the Threeboot Legion, which rapidly tied up all the plot threads before Final Crisis gave us the original Legion again, was apparently written by "Justin Thyme".
• Creator Backlash: Jim Shooter, after leaving his 2000s run, made a passing remark about Francis Manapul's art. He criticised Manapul deviating from his instructions as well as his less static layouts — which is something he's known for doing with every artist who doesn't use static layouts. Ironically, Manapul is one of the hottest artists of the 2010s and his intricate-yet-readable layouts are widely praised in the industry.
• Creator's Favorite: Artist Colleen Doran is well known as the biggest Element Lad fan in the business, to the point she snuck him into Dial H for Hero #7 and has drawn most of his profile pages. Fans were rather shocked she wasn't picked to illustrate the page focusing on Jan for Brian Bendis's Legion.
• Creator's Pest:
  • Cary Bates and Mike Grell, who worked on the book in the 1970s, hated Tyroc due to the racist nature of the Executive Meddling by editor Murray Boltinoff when he finally allowed them to create a black member of the team (namely the ideas that racial separatism is the norm in the Legion's time and the largest black nation on earth, Marzal, periodically vanishes into another dimension). Naturally, both men knew it was racist, thus intentionally made Tyroc ridiculous (giving him an outfit described as "somewhere between Elvis' Las Vegas costume and something you would imagine a pimp on the street corner wearing" and the power to alter reality by shouting) as possible.
  • Keith Giffen didn't like Karate Kid, openly said he'd kill him off if given the chance, and followed through on it. However, it also seems Giffen was aware that just because he didn't like Karate Kid, it didn't mean that everyone shared his hatred as he gave the character a respectful death.
• Executive Meddling:
  • All of the meddling with Superboy, but most notably the edict to purge Superman from Legion lore after they went out of their way to pull a saving throw to preserve the status quo via the Pocket Universe.
  • Jim Shooter's 2007-2008 run was also subject to it to some degree; his 16 issue story was cut off four issues from the end and he was first forced to add a character, then forced to remove him. He also had to write out two characters for the sake of a larger crossover even though that turned out to be pointless. Details can be found on his blog.
  • How Tyroc was created. The writers and artists were all equally disgusted that the editors forced them to include a black character who was both a stereotypical angry black man and a racial separatist, in a time when racism should've been eliminated. Paul Levitz ignored him completely during the 1980s.
  • Dan Didio was apparently responsible for the Legion's lack of a series before the Bendis volume, having apparently shot down every single pitch he received from writers who wanted to do their own take on the concept.
  • Devin Grayson's attempt to bring back the older versions of the Legionnaires in DC Pride 2022 was nixed by editorial insisting that she use the ones who knew Jon Kent.
• Fan Nickname: The "Cosmic Corset" for Cosmic Boy's Mike Grell designed costume.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Several examples of this throughout the series's history, including one of the earliest examples from The Silver Age of Comic Books: Jim Shooter, a teenaged fan of the series in the 1960s, wrote to the editors of Adventure Comics, arguing that the adult writers were doing a fairly poor job of capturing authentic teenage dialogue and characterization. In response, they let Shooter take over writing duties, and he produced some of the best-remembered stories in the team's history. It also served as his launching pad into the American comic book industry: he later went on to serve as editor-in-chief of rival Marvel Comics, and eventually returned to the Legion in the 2000s in a run that was cut short by Executive Meddling.
  • Also true of Tom and Mary Bierbaum, who were regular fixtures in several Legion of Super-Heroes fanzines in the 1980s before taking over writing duties in 1989, first alongside Keith Giffen, and then on their own. This led to some significant problems with Continuity Porn, Flanderization, and a lot of Ascended Fanon.
  • Dan Jurgens actually has a fan letter published in Superboy #202 in 1974. A decade later he would go on to pencil several issues of Legion of Super Heroes, and wrote the Universe Ablaze crossover with Titans (1999) in 2000.
• Running the Asylum:
  • Jim Shooter began submitting stories and layouts to DC in 1966 at the age of thirteen, after following the series as a fan. He returned to begin writing for the Threeboot incarnation of the Legion at the end of 2007.
  • The TMK run was infamous for sounding like overwrought fanfic elevated to canon. Because it was, in a manner of speaking (though whether or not it was actually overwrought depends on the observer): Tom and Mary Bierbaum (the "TM" in "TMK") were active participants in the Legion of Super-Heroes APA scene in the 1980s, and many of the ideas they introduced when they were writing the title were originally conceived in those pages.
• Teasing Creator: DC's creators love to tease things about the DC Rebirth return of the Legion. Saturn Girl has been present since the beginning of the relaunch, although no actual Legion comic was announced. Later, at Baltimore, DC would reveal that, when the Legion comic returns, the writer would be Dan Didio, Tom King, Hope Larson, James Tynion IV, Paul Levitz, Keith Giffen, Dan Jurgens or Yannick Paquette. Tom King wasted no time teasing people, with Saturn Girl making an appearance in Batman, with her drawing the Legion's symbol and Commissioner Gordon's speech bubble in very close proximity saying "who's taking on that burden" ^note King used a similar technique in Grayson. It would later be revealed that Batman will set up the Legion's return, though no writer for the actual Legion ongoing is confirmed.
• What Could Have Been: Has its own page.
• Word of Gay: Reboot Invisible Kid is in a relationship with holo newscaster Condo Arlick. This was stated by the creative team, and made it into the DC Character Encyclopedia, but was never actually shown on-panel.
• Writer Revolt: No one liked the idea behind the character of Tyroc, especially given that the writers had previously tried to introduce black characters. Mike Grell intentionally made his outfit stupid, comparing it to a cross between Elvis and a football player.

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