Legion Lost Archives

The definitive issue-by-issue collecting guide and trade reading order for Legion of Super-Heroes (LOSH), Legionnaires, & Legion Lost comic books in omnibus, hardcover, and trade paperback collections. Part of Crushing Krisis’s Crushing Comics. Last updated August 2022 with titles scheduled for release through December 2022.

DC’s Legion of Super-Heroes (LOSH) are a far-future team assembled from the best and brightest young heroes from many different planets, each with their own unique powers and physiology. Think of it as a cross between the Teen Titans and the Green Lantern Corps.

We usually think of DC comics as arranged by their publishing era, like Silver, Bronze, Post-Crisis, or New 52, which also tend to come with a continuity reboot (or, at least, a light reshuffle). Legion of Super-Heroes is different. LOSH fans do think about their heroes in terms of continuity reboots, but those do not line up DC’s publishing eras. LOSH is considered to be rebooted whenever their future continuity is radically changed such that not all new LOSH stories line up with prior ones.

Sometimes this happens right in the middle of series!

You can read and enjoy any LOSH story or series on its own, but to understand how certain stories rely on each other and where you can follow a specific group of LOSH characters, it makes sense to think in terms of reboots.

For many DC heroes, the first examples of this come with the Silver Age, or immediately after Crisis on Infinite Earths. Yet, the original LOSH) stories extend from the Silver Age through the Bronze Age and past Crisis on Infinite Earths. While they did have a slight pivot after Crisis in 1989 with “Five Years Later,” it was still within the same era of storytelling.

LOSH’s first major inflection point comes with Zero Hour in 2004, which begins what fans refer to generically as “Reboot” continuity.

Then, DC rebooted LOSH continuity prior to Infinite Crisis. This is known to LOSH fans as “Threeboot” era. Characters are sometimes referred to as “New Earth” versions.

However, there is a fourth reboot tucked into 2009 called “Retroboot” that kicks off with the Lightning Saga crossover. It’s called Retroboot because Geoff Johns retroactively inserted his version of the team back into the original continuity just after Crisis on Infinite Earths before handing the team to their author from that period, Paul Levitz. While the rest of DC reboots significantly after Flashpoint in New 52, LOSH continued their “Retroboot” era.

And, finally, Brian Bendis launched a familiar-but-new rebooted LOSH after Doomsday Clock and the explosion of the Source Wall in 2019 as a home for his newly aged-up Jon Kent.

This page exists thanks to research and consultation from @Atmageth!

Legion Lost #1

Written by Fabian Nicieza, art by Pete Woods

Rating: 2 of 5 – Uneven

In a Line: “Accessing the sensory patterns of this time period without the transuit filter — is like to see, hear, and talk while inside a pool of mud.”

#140char Review: Legion Lost #1 aren’t the only ones lost. Fast-paced issue w/a slew of chars whizzes by with little effect

CK Says: Consider it.

Legion Lost is a wobbly comic that I suspect improves greatly with any foreknowledge of the characters within or the events of Flashpoint.

The story? A team of superheroes from the future pops back into our present in a malfunctioning time traveling bubble, in pursuit of a villain carrying a contagion. They’re too late to stop him, thus their dilemma becomes how to retrieve him and retreat to chronal safety. However, there are some potentially deadly kinks in their plan.

Scripter Fabian Nicieza hits the ground running and never pauses for a second, wobbling be damned. I appreciated the non-coddling pace and the way his characters always restate the implied question of “what the hell is happening.” I came away with all of their powers and most of their names, if not their relationships with each other.

However, I wouldn’t call the experience pleasant.

Adding to the rushed tone is Pete Woods’s artwork, which looks like it tumbles out of his pen a mile a minute. I’m not sure what gives that impression. Maybe that the action doesn’t always track from panel to panel? Or maybe that the focus of his panels is always crisp and perfect, with perspectives and details bending away at the sides to thicker, heavily-inked lines.

(Also: the weirdly amalgamated logo is awful.)

I understood the book, and even enjoyed some of it, but it doesn’t seem worth returning to next month. I didn’t get the sense it was necessary to be telling a story with these largely charmless characters, and the story that was told wasn’t compelling enough to make me want to track down a seemingly difficult backstory.

Still, it seems like someone fresh from Flashpoint with some fondess for The Legion of Superheroes would be invested in the events that unfold.