Legends (Event)

Operation: Humiliation is the name of a covert battle strategy commonly referred to as Legends. Shortly after the Crisis on Infinite Earths event, the New God known as Darkseid embarked upon a plan to weaken the resolve of Earth's faith in the super-hero community. He facilitated this covert scheme through his underlings, Glorious Godfrey and Doctor Bedlam.

History
Glorious Godfrey arrived on Earth and assumed the human guise of G. Gordon Godfrey. Using his powers of mental persuasion, he insinuated himself into the public consciousness as a civil rights advocate. Godfrey’s rhetoric encouraged self-reliance, claiming that mankind’s dependency upon super-heroes has made them weak. His influence quickly spread across the nation, and before long, large portions of the country’s population began to violently rebel against the super-hero community.

Doctor Bedlam's contributions towards Operation: Humiliation relied upon destroying the confidence of individual heroes. Towards this end, he downloaded his own consciousness into an artificial clone automaton known as Macro-Man. Macro-Man appeared in Fawcett City as a three-story high super-villain. Fawcett City’s resident super-hero, Captain Marvel, fought with Macro-Man in a battle that resulted in the latter’s alleged death. Believing that he had in fact killed another human being, Captain Marvel vowed to permanently retire from super-heroing. In reality, Darkseid had orchestrated the destruction of the Macro-Man on his own, with the intention of destroying Captain Marvel’s faith in himself. The plan briefly worked, but before long, Captain Marvel learned the truth about Macro-Man's demise and returned to active duty.

The Macro-Man incident made instant headlines and the news served only to enflame national tension. G. Gordon Godfrey used this opportunity to promote even further aggression upon the populace and before long, citizens were forming lynch mobs and hunting down active heroes with the intent of destroying them.

The violence became so intense, that President Ronald Reagan drafted an executive order, barring all super-human individuals from using their powers or even wearing their costumes. However, this action only served to hinder law-abiding heroes, leaving the super-villain community free to commit acts of violence without fear of reprisal.

The mystic hero known as Doctor Fate recognized that chaos was overtaking the country, and in order to maintain the cosmic balance, he began recruiting several heroes to his cause. These heroes successfully exposed G. Gordon Godfrey for the villain that he was and freed the minds of those under his thrall.

Principal issues

 * Legends #1
 * Legends #2
 * Legends #3
 * Legends #4
 * Legends #5
 * Legends #6

Principal characters

 * Amanda Waller
 * Batman
 * Black Canary (Dinah Laurel Lance)
 * Blockbuster
 * Bronze Tiger
 * Captain Boomerang (Digger Harkness)
 * Captain Marvel
 * Changeling
 * Darkseid
 * Deadshot
 * Doctor Bedlam
 * Doctor Fate (Kent Nelson)
 * Enchantress
 * Firestorm (Ronnie Raymond/Martin Stein)
 * Flash (Wally West)
 * Glorious Godfrey
 * Green Lantern (Guy Gardner)
 * Lisa Sutton
 * Martian Manhunter
 * Phantom Stranger
 * Rick Flag
 * Robin (Jason Todd)
 * Ronald Reagan
 * Superman

Behind the scenes
The story behind Operation: Humiliation was chronicled in the 1986 Legends limited series, written by John Ostrander and Len Wein. Legends is the first multi-title crossover event to take place within the modern Post-Crisis continuity.

Legends spawned several spin-off titles including:
 * Flash (Volume 2)
 * Justice League America
 * Suicide Squad (Volume 1)
 * Wonder Woman (Volume 2)

Related articles

 * Apokolips
 * Justice League of America
 * Suicide Squad
 * Task Force X
 * Warhounds