YMMV / Legion of Super-Heroes (2020)

• Audience-Alienating Era: What it eventually turned out to be, as a poorly thought out In Name Only reboot with some admittedly decent artwork that was badly edited and lacked any of the aspects fans of the Legionnaires cared about while proving unappealing to new readers thanks to lack of character development and pointless dialog.
• Awesome Art: One of the few things fans agree on is Ryan Sook's artwork is gorgeous. Issues 8 and 9 were also praised mainly for the multiple artists getting to bring their own take to this Legion, if only for a single page.
• Bile Fascination: By the end of Justice League Vs Legion of Super-Heroes, the only reason people have bothered to look at Bendis's take on the Legion is to see if it really is as boring and pointless as Legion fans have been accusing the series to be.
• Broken Base:
  • Fan reception to Bendis' take on the Legion has been divided since the moment it was first announced. Some Legion fans are happy with a new continuity and a fresh start, believing the franchise vision of the future needed to be updated, alongside Ryan Sook's gorgeous designs. Others argue the book is an incoherent, poorly edited mess where most of the Legionnaires simply stand around in the background or ramble on about nothing, and another continuity reboot is only going to make the Legion more inaccessible for new readers. By the crossover with the Justice League, even the most diehard fans grew to hate the Bendisboot as Bendis's plots went nowhere and characterization came to a complete stop.
  • Ryan Sook's designs, while previously receiving unanimous praise from the fandom, have begun gaining criticism due to complaints of many of them being overdrawn with too many unnecessary details such as excessive piping and clashing layouts. While some have argued they're simply updates of previous costumes (Chameleon Boy's harkens to his animated counterpart and Princess Projectra's is reminiscent of her 70s design), others have argued they're yet another example of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
• Creator's Pet: Gold Lantern has received the most focus and attention out of every new Legionnaire added to the cast, to the point he's repeatedly hyped up in-universe by the team for supposedly having an awesome backstory. A good chunk of the plot is built around the mystery regarding his ring and the beings who empowered him, to the point he's ostensibly the main character of Justice League Vs Legion of Super-Heroes. None of this has actually done anything to endear him to Legion fans, who repeatedly mock the character's spotlight hogging by joking about the incredible things Gold Lantern will do eventually. One particular point of contention came from DC's Festival of Heroes anthology dedicated to Asian and Asian-American characters, where Gold Lantern was the only Legionnaire to be given a profile (although Karate Kid and Dragonmage received a pin-up by Philip Tan).
• Die for Our Ship: Fans of the Damian/Jon pairing have been screaming for Saturn Girl's head mainly because of her disdainful treatment of Damian in the third issue when she wipes his memories despite Jon's vocal objections. After Jon and Imra became a couple, the hatedom for Imra only intensified.
• Don't Shoot the Message: Bendis's attempt to make the Legion look more racially inclusive was one of the few things people pointed to when telling others to give his Legion a try as previous versions were historically mostly white humanoids. But that defense quickly worked against Bendis when it became obvious none of the examples of Race Lift were thought out in advance, to the point of making this comic look even more racist by accident and Bendis's efforts clearly being seen as nothing but performative.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Tis The Season To Be Freezin' featured a Bendis!Legion tale written by Rich Bernatovech and Travis Mercer including the debuts of new versions of Polar Boy and Comet Queen. The two have largely been accepted by the Legion fandom as the only fully enjoyable aspects of the Bendisboot specifically because they're updated versions of preexisting characters who haven't lost the core of their original selves, unlike literally every other Legionnaire under Bendis's pen.
• Ethnic Scrappy: Bendis's decision to give Lightning Lad and Lightning Lass a Race Lift was critically torn apart by readers as it became clear it truly was a last minute decision. Accompanying Garth and Ayla being made Black in this setting was their homeworld Winath being changed from an agricultural paradise to an overcrowded ghetto, with the Ranzzs having a very large family shoved into a dirty apartment while the twins regularly protested police brutality. Fans argued about the twins being given such a stereotypical backstory while proponents of the Bendisboot vainly argued it was meant to be more "inclusive." The racist undertones only became more obvious when Lightning Lad's chemistry with Saturn Girl (who remained white in this setting) was completely removed while she was paired off instead with another white Legionnaire (Jon Kent). As such, the Bendisboot's Ranzz Twins often gain the most discussion on how poorly executed and accidentally racist Bendis's Legion ended up being.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The amount of Schedule Slip the series and its follow-up Justice League Vs Legion of Super-Heroes has suffered from is rather ironic since Bendis's Legion only exists thanks to Doomsday Clock having been delayed for so many months between its issues.
• Narm:
  • The blatant hyping about newbie Legionnaire Gold Lantern, despite that the character has done practically nothing to justify such a reputation, makes it hard to take the character seriously. It's reached a point where fans eagerly joke about all the amazing, exciting things Gold Lantern will eventually do.
  • Lor-Zod's line "I LOVE MUH GRAND-BABIES" in the eleventh issue is incredibly cringeworthy and rather awkward despite the fact that it was meant to be cute. The over-the-top exclamation, use of all capital letters, and "muh" just sort of ruins the moment. When he says it again at a lower volume in the twelfth issue, it's clear this is how he regularly refers to his grandkids which only makes it worse.
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • The Bendis Legion as a whole has set off numerous Legion fans who view this iteration as a shoddy imitation of all the previous Legions. Common complaints about Bendis's take on the Legionnaires are that practically none of them have any real development and only vaguely resemble the characters In Name Only. Those who have received the biggest ire are Saturn Girl (for blatantly being a major Jon Kent fangirl to the point she wonders if she might've accidentally brainwashed the team into recruiting him, up to her now dating him making her seem like a creepy, self-obsessed stalker), Mon-El (who is an Adaptational Jerkass, a jealous descendant of Jon, and a bad father) the Ranzz Twins (due to their backstory reeking of racist undertones thanks to receiving a Race Lift by making them both Black yet giving them a stereotypical backstory that seems totally out of place for a story set a thousand years in the future), and Karate Kid (whose redesign included giving him a hideously outdated Manchu braid and making him Chinese also came across as racist for treating Val's Asian heritage as interchangeable). Not helping matters at all is knowing this Legion only sought out Jon Kent because they were convinced he had to help them despite that Jon did nothing at this point in his life to warrant such praise, while the Legions that recruited his father only did so as a way to say thank you for being their inspiration without pressuring him. It's telling that the only story to come out of this Legion that fans unanimously enjoyed was in Tis The Season To Be Freezin' and had the virtue of Bendis not being involved in its creation at all. The Bendisboot's unpopularity has been noticed in Green Arrow (2023), wherein Lian Harper grows exhausted by Brainiac 5 and Saturn Girl's unwillingness to answer her questions or do anything about finding her grandfather until after she browbeats them.
    Lian Harper: Are you sure you're the Legion of Super-Heroes and not the Legion of people who fly around and do nothing?
  • The Horraz are seen as ill-fitting knockoffs of the Khunds (a war-bound race that frequently clashed with the Legion), and President Brande is viewed as an ill-fitting knock off of R.J. Brande as well as Jeanne Chu and Winema Wazzo of the Reboot Legion (all three of whom served in a presidential role in the Reboot).
• The Scrappy:
  • The Horraz, the villain group that's been menacing the Legion since the start of their series haven't been particularly well-received since they appear to be simply generic bad guys who, for some reason, are considered the biggest threat to the galaxy.
  • Saturn Girl has steadily become the most disliked member of the cast. Fans of Jon Kent and Damian Wayne dislike her for erasing Damian's memories in the third issue and disregarding Jon's feelings on the subject. That the two become a couple in the ninth issue has only made the dislike worse. By the twelfth issue, dislike for Imra grew when the very first page presented her confessing she may have been the reason why the Legion wanted to recruit Jon as a result of her unwittingly exerting her mental powers to manipulate her teammates. The result is a character who comes off like a stalker fangirl who may have manipulated her friends into taking Jon from his family, and then has isolated him from his best friend.
  • Mon-El's characterization as an angry Kryptonian and direct descendant of Jon Kent has been rubbing veteran Legion fans the wrong way due to how whiny and generally unpleasant he is, a stark contrast to the friendship Mon had with Clark Kent in the previous volumes. The decision to make him a father of three children despite being so young has also been criticized, not helped by the fact he doesn't seem to be a good parent and apparently foists his children on his grandfather on a regular basis.
  • Gold Lantern has become a repeated target of mockery from readers and other Legion fans due to the character frequently being hyped in-story as amazing and awesome, even though he doesn't actually do anything that amazing to warrant his reputation. Fan comments regarding Gold Lantern tend to consist of talking about all the amazing things he will eventually do.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The Legion going from traveling back in time to meet Clark Kent because he was their inspiration and inviting him to spend a day in their time, to the Legion recruiting Jon Kent because he was the United Planets' inspiration and want him in the Legion because they think they need him has been met with criticism. It makes the Legionnaires come across as genuinely selfish and inconsiderate to the fact Jon spent five years being traumatized throughout time and space and he still hasn't been given a chance to stop and breathe. Contrast to the original Legionnaires, who only invited Clark to join as a way to say thank you for being their hero and ended up proving beneficial because it helped both sides become better heroes. It doesn't help that Jon technically didn't do anything, yet the Legion acts like he's the equivalent of Space Jesus. The frustrations over this change grew worse with the twelfth issue's revelation that Saturn Girl may or may not have mentally coerced the Legion into thinking they needed Jon just because she was obsessed with him.
  • Whereas the most consistent origin of the Legion's foundation involved Rokk, Imra and Garth saving the life of R.J. Brande and Brande being inspired by their youth and heroics, here the Legion's basically a glorified P.R. stunt orchestrated by President Brande and fans have been complaining it lacks the true spirit of why the Legionnaires came together in the first place.
    • Coming off that, aside from being Chameleon Boy's parent, President Brande lacks nearly everything remotely resembling R.J. Brande's past characterization to the point she's more like President Jeanne Chu of the Reboot Legion which has left fans wondering why President Brande was ever made to be R.J.'s counterpart in the first place.
  • Dawnstar being given the last name "Gr'ell" was clearly meant to honor her co-creator Mike Grell, but ended up being yet another example of the multiple instances of racist implications due to sounding nothing like an authentic Native American surname from any known indigenous tribe or race. Grell himself didn't seem to care for the nod, because while he did return to illustrate Dawny's spotlight page he refused to draw her in Ryan Sook's new costume to the point he wouldn't even feature the new energy wings and instead featured her with feathered ones.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Many of the newly redesigned Legionnaires aren't given anything to do in most issues beyond simply standing around. The biggest example of this would have to be poor X-Ray Girl, a brand new member created mainly by artist Ryan Sook. She's appeared in every issue but has yet to say or do anything, even a quick throwaway line, and didn't even get the dignity of being named until Sook's designs were released with the first trade collection. Alongside X-Ray Girl are Entropy Kid and Radius Lad, two more Legionnaires created by Sook who only got to appear in the background of the tenth issue. In the case of Entropy Kid and Radius Lad, that was also their first appearance and unless you had seen Sook's character designs in advance you would've had no clue to look for them.
  • Issues nine and ten were hyped up with the belief every Legionnaire would receive a page dedicated to them. That turned out not to be true, as several Legionnaires were skipped over and received no focus, including Shrinking Violet, Matter-Eater Lad, Karate Kid, Sun Boy, Star Boy, and as mentioned above X-Ray Girl, Entropy Kid, and Radius Lad. By the end of Justice League Vs Legion of Super-Heroes, some of these characters never even spoke.
  • Bendis's take on Lightning Lad has little to no chemistry with Cosmic Boy and Saturn Girl, and if you were to remove him from the series nothing would change in any significant way. It's telling because of Lightning Lad's past role as The Heart of the founders and even more glaring after Bendis gave him and his sister a Race Lift to make the series more inclusive, while also making their backstory suffer from a huge amount of racist stereotyping regarding Black characters. In short, Bendis's attempt at giving Lightning Lad a Race Lift to be more progressive ends up being pointless when the character's potential is wasted.
  • Some who are still angry about Jon being aged up have argued there could've been a Legion series even if he was a kid. Recalling the way the adult Titans frequently doted on Arsenal's daughter Lian, it was entirely possible to keep the adult Legionnaires and have them act as Jon's surrogate aunts and uncles. That way DC could've avoided yet another Legion reboot and Jon's fans wouldn't have been alienated by his development being rushed and his personality getting watered down.
  • There's no mention or implication that Lightning Lord exists in this continuity. Among the many loathed changes to the Ranzz siblings (especially considering how much bigger Garth and Ayla's family now is), the fact their older brother and one of the most iconic villains the Legion has was Adapted Out in this volume was yet another strike against it from irate fans.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Many fans can admit that the core ideas of the series are solid; a proper deck-clearing for the Legion was necessary with how convoluted the Legion continuity had become, Ryan Sook's redesigns and art are gorgeous and perfect for the Legion, and the new Legionnaires have potential. But many feel that Brian Michael Bendis just was not the writer for the job, and that his execution is severely lacking. Tellingly, Tis The Season To Be Freezin' — the only new Legion story so far to be written by somebody other then Bendis (Rich Bernatovech and Travis Mercer) — was actually quite well-received.
  • Queer fans have been quite vocal about the lack of LGBTQ+ representation among Bendis's Legionnaires, to the point the only known queer characters to appear in this series at all aside from Jon Kent (who is bisexual) were Garth and Ayla Ranzz's two mothers. One of the biggest arguments against Bendis's Legion has regarded the apparent straightwashing of the team with no clear or implied queer romances among any of the Legionnaires despite Bendis's Legion being so heavily toted as "progressive" with its multiple examples of Race Lift. It wasn't until DC Pride 2022 featured Dawnstar being identified as bisexual and Brainiac 5 as demisexual that this Legion gained any real queer rep outside of Jon, and that was only because Devin Grayson was forced to use Bendis's Legionnaires (the original plan being Retroboot Dawny being identified as bi with Brainiac 5.1 of the Reboot Legion identified as demi). Even after DC Pride 2022, Bendis did nothing about queer rep or made any reference to Grayson's inclusions.
  • Those who vainly tried to defend the various examples of Race Lift were met with arguments about how random Bendis's choices were rather than importing takes from different Legion volumes, such as Star Boy being made Black in the Threeboot and Timber Wolf being presented as Black coded from the 2006 cartoon (due to his voice actor Shawn Harrison). Coupled with the complaints of racism in the choices that were made, from everything said about the Ranzz Twins to Ultra Boy and the native Rimborians being made dark skinned by default and turned into a vicious, war obsessed world with Ultra Boy espousing colonizer rhetoric about his people needing to become more "civilized" which he enforces by beating up those who disagree with him, it only diminishes this volume's attempts at being inclusive. The one example that was met with a positive reception was Ferro Lad's inclusion as a Black teenager like Jim Shooter originally intended, but would've been more noticeable had Bendis used him beyond a couple of pages just to showcase the character's new ethnicity.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The Legionnaires recruiting Jon Kent comes across as selfish and irresponsible of them since they view him as the founder of the United Planets. The thing is, Jon only suggested the creation of the United Planets and didn't have an actual hand in its formation or leadership. And on top of that, none of the Legionnaires think after he lost five years of his life thanks to his grandfather Jor-El dragging him across time and space that maybe the last thing he needs is, well, getting dragged through time and space again but now with the added responsibility of being the Legion's inspiration. Even worse, they're more than a little dismissive about one of the most important people in Jon's life: Damian Wayne. So much so, they don't hesitate to wipe his mind into thinking he's having a dream, something Jon strongly objects to. They insist that Damian does something bad when he's older, but we don't know what it is...
  • Coming off this, the Legionnaires become a bit more sympathetic at the expense of Saturn Girl taking the brunt of scorn when she admits she possibly used her powers to force the rest of the Legion to recruit Jon. Even if it was an accident, the idea of Imra's mental abilities being that powerful and her having such little control over them makes it seem like she had no business leaving Titan if she didn't have better control of her abilities.

---