Report what comic books you have read today--and tell us a little something about it while you're here!
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The available evidence does not necessarily allow for any single moment of copying the entire SW6 Batch.
There is a detailed discussion here, but I must warn that it comes from a perspective that is not fond of the 5YL period.
The TLDR of it is that the best fit must be somewhere around #351 and #353. However, there are several thorny situations. Specifically:
* Lightning Lad would have to come from before #304 for plot reasons, but at the same time his dialogue heavily implies that he indeed comes from #351 or shortly after.
* SW6 had a Triplicate Girl as opposed to a Duo Damsel, so either she was copied before or during #340 or she had been somehow given back her third body after copying.
However, a commenter says that it was established in a letters page of the time that the SW6 Legionnaires came from between #349 and #350, with a few modifications made later by the Dominators (involving Lightning Lad's arm, Bouncing Boy's body shape, and Luornu's third body).
In order to avoid possible spoilers, I will point out that it was later strongly suggested that the Dominators may not be the only or even the main parties responsible for the existence of the SW6 Batch, thereby increasing the odds that not all SW6ers came from precisely the same time window.
Of course, for quite a while it was believed that the SW6 Batch might well be the original team and the older version the duplicates. IIRC the evidence was purposefully inconsistent or at least inconclusive.
It looks as if my decision has been made for me.
Thanks for providing that link, Luis, although I will probably wait a bit to read it, perhaps even until some point in the future after I have read the two 5YL omnibusses I bought. (I wouldn't want to read anything that would put me off them.) The TLDR was helpful; it's pretty much the way I remember the situation. I recall that "somewhere around #351 and #353" range; I may have moved it back for all of them due to the Ferro Lad situation. In any case, between v6/7 seems a better fit than between v7/8.
Sorry. Did I jump the gun?
No, no... not at all. (I'm glad to have the feedback.)
I remember reading 5YL and noticing that various members of Batch SW6 came from different parts of Legion history, although they were all from the Silver Age. Clones didn't make much sense, since some of the characters gained their powers by accidents -- Lightning Lad and Lightning Lass got their powers as teenagers from the Lightning Monsters of Korbal, for example, so those powers aren't genetic and clones wouldn't have them. Nor would they have the memories they did. "Time clones" would give them the memories, but as has been noted, physically they weren't all from a specific time. (Duo Damsel and Ferro Lad were contemporaries, for example; Triplicate Girl and Ferro Lad weren't.)
Since something timey-wimey was going on, I assumed at the time that the Time Trapper would eventually be revealed to be at the back of it, which would explain everything. But that didn't happen, but then 5YL became moot and I shoved all those questions to the back of my brain.
I remember reading 5YL and noticing that various members of Batch SW6 came from different parts of Legion history, although they were all from the Silver Age.
I don't think the "SW6" designation was ever explained. I don't know about the "6", but (metatextually, anyway) AFAIAC the "SW" stands for "Shooter-Weisinger."
The "Legionnaires" (a.k.a. "SW6 batch") first appeared in Legion of Super-Heroes (4th series, 1989) #24 in a five-page back-up leading directly into #25, but don't start there cold. I have read these issues before and even I was confused. The Legionnaires themselves adapt to life more that "Five Years Later" (for them, actually seventeen) far better than I did coming straight from Adventure Comics #358. But I've had the idea to skip directly from the Silver Age Legion directly to 2995 for some time now, and if I don't do it now, I probably never will.
The SW6 batch was discovered in an underground experimental chamber operated by the Dominators during Earth's war for liberation. they were eventually determined to be "temporal clones" which means, for all intents and purposes, these are (or "were"; this whole timeline has been wiped out) the Legion of Super-Heroes circa Adventure Comics #50 or so. Whether or not each individual chooses to buy into that premise, the key word in the concept of "willing suspension of disbelief" is willing. If one is willing, he'll have some fun; if not, it's not difficult to poke holes in the concept.
The Leagionnaires stick around as supporting characters for a year or so before being sopun-off into their own series. For my own part, I probably shoud be reading Legionnaires. I'm not in the mood to do that right now, but I'm not in the mood to continue reading Legion (1989), either.
If I remember right, Five Years Later killed off some of the "punk" Legionnaires, and some of the SW6 characters were killed off as well. I don't remember which ones, because by that time I was growing tired of the grim-n-gritty and was beginning to speed-read through Legion. Had I been more engaged, I would probably have examined the narrative reasons for why each casualty was selected. If anybody has any ideas now, I would be pretty interested.
The narrative reasons are pretty infamous, actually -- in that they didn't stem from the narrative at all. Keith Giffen put all the names of the characters from both teams in a hat and drew a bunch of them; they were the ones who died. This has become known in LSH circles as "Giffen's Hat Trick." His reasoning, I think, was that if it was truly random who died, the readers wouldn't be able to predict it, either... and also, he was a man who liked storytelling challenges and plotting from the seat of the pants. So it was a way to keep things fresh, and keep things loose.
Good Lord! (Choke!)
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