How The Future of The 'Adult Legion' Was Abandoned For Good!

CBR

By Brian Cronin

Published Jan 1, 2019

In their latest look at abandoned comic plots, CSBG reveals how the 'Adult Legion' future was made no longer canon!

In every installment of Abandoned Love we will be examining comic book stories, plots and ideas that were abandoned by a later writer without actively retconning away the previous story. Feel free to e-mail me at brianc@cbr.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.

Today, I do a follow-up to a piece I wrote way back in August! In that piece, I noted that I would later write about how the things set into motion in that story were later abandoned by Paul Levitz, but I guess that part of the article was too small, as I got SO MANY E-MAILS from people telling me about how Paul Levitz abandoned that story. As I said then, I would eventually get around to it, and now this is that!

That article was about how a possible future for the Legion was treated as THE future for the Legion.

In Adventure Comics #354 (by Jim Shooter, Curt Swan and George Klein), we got a look at the future of the Legion. This was the longest "Adult Legion" story that we had seen at this point, with Superman traveling to the future to meet the adult versions of the Legion.

For YEARS, Legion writers treated what Shooter wrote in this story as sacrosanct, which is hilarious, as Shooter was only a teenager when he came up with these future plot twists, but they were treated like they were the gospel.

Shooter had Superman see some statues that were in honor of some dead Legionnaires, and only Ferro Lad was an actual established member of the team when this story first appeared...

Shadow Lass joined about a year later (with blue skin instead of Caucasian skin color). About a year later, the Chemical King also joined the Legion.

After the Legion moved over to Superboy's title, Chemical King fell in battle in Superboy #228 (by Paul Levitz, James Sherman and Jack Abel)...

However, when the Legion then took over the numbering on Superboy's title, Paul Levitz decided to finally do something about this whole "stuck with the Adult Legion" future situation.

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At the end of Legion of Super-Heroes #299 (by Levitz, Keith Giffen and Larry Mahlstedt), Shadow Lass suddenly shows up, using make-up to change her skin color and calling herself Shadow Woman just like she did in the Adult Legion story!

As you can see, the cliffhanger specifically was "is this time for HER to die, too?"

The next issue was the big 300th issue, with lots of guest-artists...

We see Shadow Woman come to the asteroid and she even makes a comment about her grave...

She ends up having to take down the asteroid by herself...

And everything seems to be going according to the fated history...

But nope, she survived! History has changed! The "Adult Legion" stories were now officially an alternate future (see how she even got a new costume right away so so no one could say, "Maybe she'll die on a different asteroid the next day!"...