Legion of Super-Heroes

A hero is defined by their villains, and the world of superhero comic books is filled with some of the scariest and silliest bad guys around. Rogues’ Gallery aims to settle the score and determine who is the true arch-nemesis for some of your favorite superheroes, and we need your help to do it! You voted to see who the Legion of Super-Heroes‘ ultimate arch-enemy was, and we’ve tabulated the results and assembled a video counting down the definitive top 10.

A hero is defined by their villains, and the world of superhero comic books is filled with some of the scariest and silliest bad guys around. Rogues’ Gallery aims to settle the score and determine who is the true arch-nemesis for some of our favorite superheroes, and we need your help to do it! The Legion of Super-Heroes may not get much love from DC Comics as of late, but they have some of the most eclectic and fun villains in the DC Universe. From traitorous members to millennia old mages, and the God of All Evil himself, The Legion have a sometimes surprisingly diverse rogues gallery, but who is the team's ultimate enemy?

DC Comics’ big summer event one-shot DC Universe: Rebirth #1 goes on sale this week, and the internet is abuzz with news, reveals and spoilers concerning one of the biggest comics of the year. The one-shot by Geoff Johns, Ethan Van Sciver, Gary Frank and Ivan Reis sees the return of familiar faces from inside and outside the DC Universe, and DC is already publicizing those revelations in the press, so we’ve rounded up the biggest developments from this blockbuster story from DC-approved sources like USA Today, IGN and CBR, for those readers who want the full rundown. If you don't want to be spoiled for any of the events of DC Universe: Rebirth #1 before the book comes out on Wednesday, go learn about some other comics you could be reading instead. Spoilers for the future of the DC Universe follow.

This week the fans of DC's TV shows finally get to see the live-action comic book crossover that we've all been waiting for, as Melissa Benoist's Supergirl on CBS gets a visit from a new friend from another reality when The CW's The Flash, played by Grant Gustin, makes his first appearance on her show. We're beyond excited to see what happens when these two DC heroes team-up on the screen, because it looks like the story could capture all the joy of superheroics that sometimes gets lost in other adaptations of the genre. To mark the occasion, we've put together a list of some of Supergirl's best team-up stories in comics, featuring Egyptian queens, unrequited loves, and many, many Draculas.

Just days after we first learned that The Flash would race over to Supergirl by March’s end, The CW teased their first official crossover with a vision of Kara in Barry’s “Welcome to Earth-2.” Eagle-eyed viewers also spotted a Legion of Super-Heroes easter egg as well, which tonight’s Supergirl revealed as another connection between the two worlds. What could it mean?

At a time when most of comics was tiptoeing around the notion of gay, bi and lesbian people existing – much less being portrayed well – The Legion of Super-Heroes was making text out of subtext with characters such as Shrinking Violet and Lightning Lass, and doing it during one of the series' most creatively daring periods. Yet as the fate of the character Shvaughn Erin illustrates, a step forward for some can often leave others behind.

Q: Do you think it's possible for the Legion of Super-Heroes to work today, or are the trappings too corny? -- @jdkrach A: My first instinct on this one is to say yes, and not just because the Legion was, for a long time, one of my absolute favorite comics. The entire superhero genre is, after all, full of corny ideas that have become timeless, right down to the fact that the entire thing is built around the idea of a very nice man who came from space and fools everyone into thinking that he's a very nice man from Kansas by wearing a pair of glasses. But the Legion represents an entirely different question. It's not just the optimism of a bright future and names like "Lightning Lad" that can come off as corny, it's the entire universe that allowed them to exist in the first place --- and for a team that's been rebooted more times than just about anyone else, they sure do seem to have a hard time keeping up.

DC's Convergence crossover is built around pitting cities pulled from different eras against each other in an ultimate battle to determine which continuity reigns supreme, and as you may already know just from reading that sentence, that can get a little confusing. With all the Gothams and Metropolises (Metropoli?) throwing their heroes against each other, we thought it might be useful to offer our readers a handy guide to telling Pre-Flashpoint from Post-Crisis with a series of Bottle City Travel Guides! Today, we're taking a trip to the Metropolis of the 30th Century! Well, one of many Metropolises of one very specific 30th century, so... this is already getting a little too complicated.

Ever since I wrote that Ask Chris a few weeks back about how I'd rebuild the Legion of Super-Heoroes, I've been seized with the desire to go back and re-read some of the classic Legion stories from the Silver Age, but when I sat down to do just that, I was really surprised. Not because the stories are weird, mind you -- I knew they were pretty bonkers from the first time I read them, and they certainly haven't gotten any less weird since -- but because they threw the light on one of the most grievous oversights of my writing career. See, as happy as I was with the lineup I came up with for that column, I left out the character who is unquestionably the most powerful member, the actual, official "King of the Legion." I speak, of course, of Bouncing Boy.

Each weekday, ComicsAlliance brings you a carefully selected variety of links from around the web about comics and comics-related media, including movies, video games, toys, and whatever else might be worth noting. Quite frankly, these are items you may just need to know about to have a productive day. Take a look at today's hand-picked links after the jump.