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Michael Grabois On How Many Legion of Super-Heroes Series There Have Been
posted October 4, 2008
 

Looking at it one way, Kyle Garret is wrong when it comes to how many series the Legion has had. He missed the first one.

In 1973, DC had a 4-issue series titled "Legion of Super-Heroes", it ran #1-#4.

In 1980, the title previously known as "Superboy" and then "Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes" changed the official title of the book to "Legion of Super-Heroes". This was the second title to carry that name, and is known in fan circles as "v2". It ran #259-#313, and as Kyle noted, changed again to "Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes" and ran until #352. "Tales" did have new stories for the first 12 issues before switching to reprints.

In 1984, DC published the Baxter series, which was titled "Legion of Super-Heroes". This was the third book to carry that title, thus it is known as "v3". "Tales" started to reprint this series until that title ran out of steam an was cancelled.

In 1989, the Baxter series was cancelled to make way for the Giffen/Bierbaum "Five Years Later" storyline. The new book was called "Legion of Super-Heroes" and is known as "v4". In 1994, in the wake of Zero Hour, the Legion was rebooted but their title was not, and it kept the same numbering until it was cancelled with #125. After that, the Legion starred in two miniseries and then a new title called simply "The Legion". That one ran 38 issues.

In 2005, Waid and Kitson rebooted the Legion again and put the team in a new book titled "Legion of Super-Heroes". As the fifth book with that name, it is "v5".

Thus, there have been five series titled "Legion of Super-Heroes", but only four of them were ongoing. Other ongoing titles, as he mentions, were "Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes", "Legionnaires", and "The Legion", not including the brief title change in v5 to "Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes".