It must have been fun to watch the series develop almost from the beginning as you have, Beardguy, with the continuity that built on the original series from 1958-1994.


I began reading myself with SUPERBOY 197 (1973), which was a great point to begin reading, as the series moved at that point from a few scattered backup stories into a full-fledged bi-monthly series under Bates/Cockrum. I loved the Cockrum and Grell issues, and lost interest after Grell left the series. Although I remained a huge fan of Grell's THE WARLORD series.

I actually quit collecting when I was 15 and felt I'd "outgrown" comics.
I'd stopped collecting with WARLORD 13, and a year or so later I was in a 7-11 and saw WARLORD 22 on the stand, and on a lark I picked up. And I was hooked again.
With access to a car that I saved to purchase when I turned 16, I sought out comic book stores, first collecting a complete Kirby run of KAMANDI 1-40, then Kirby's FOREVER PEOPLE, NEW GODS, MR MIRACLE, JIMMY OLSEN, DEMON and OMAC runs. Then I got all the Neal Adams DC books, and expanded from there.

I actually didn't start reading LEGION again till 1982, after I heard good things about Giffen's work on the series, purchased issue 290 off the stands, and enjoyed it so much I quickly worked my way back to issue 284 (where Levitz's second run began, far superior to his earlier 20-or-so-issue run that began with 225).

Since then, I've accumulated a complete run of Legion stories back to ADVENTURE 340-380, ACTION 378-392, SUPERBOY 172-258, LEGION (2nd series)259-325, LEGION (3rd series)1-63, and LEGION (4th series/five-year-gap)1-61 !
And scattered issues of ADVENTURE before that.

It's really fun to see how the series evolved. And I didn't fully see how well the Levitz/Giffen run drew such great continuity with the earliest Legion stories until I picked up these early issues.
The same is true of Byrne's FANTASTIC FOUR, Stern/Romita Jr's AMAZING SPIDERMAN, Mantlo/Hannigan's SPECTACULAR SPIDERMAN, and Simonson's THOR, all great new series that simultaneously capture the flavor of the earliest runs on those series.

I may at some point get the first two hardcover LEGION volumes, just because the earliest appearances are so hard to find, were so scattered, and are now fairly high-priced. I could have 20 stories in hardcover, for the cost of what 2 of those issues would cost in decent condition.
But most of these issues, if you get them in good condition, are 5 dollars or less each, especially at a convention. So it's not that expensive to get them in the original form.

It's a fun series, that shows how characters in a series can evolve, across several decades and severals teams of writers and artists, especially when those creators have a clear love for the earlier work. Tom and Mary Bierbaum, Colleen Doran and other later writers and artists on the series have letters and art published in these earlier issues. You can see their evolution from fans to professionals on the characters they love.