“The Great Darkness Saga” from all-time-great LoSH creative team Paul Levitz, Keith Giffen, and Larry Mahlstedt isn’t just widely regarded as the best Legion of Super-Heroes story ever, it’s often placed among the greatest DC stories of all time.
Spanning nearly the entire cast of the Legion, “Great Darkness” pitted the expansive team against a renewed threat of Darkseid and the Anti-Life equation under the guise of a mysterious “Master” to terrifying death cultists.
An epic unto itself, the “Great Darkness Saga” brought classic elements of the DC Universe forward to the Legion’s future setting, at once re-contextualizing concepts such as Jack Kirby’s Fourth World in a wildly different context while also further grounding the Legion in the history of the DCU.
“Great Darkness” encompassed the true spirit of the Legion, interspersing the violent drama of a dark god’s ascent with the personal politics of Legion elections, romance, and intrigue.
In the end, “The Great Darkness Saga” changed the Legion forever, altering its trajectory, it membership, and its dynamics, while proving that even in the future Darkseid is one of the DCU’s most powerful foes.