Let's talk about this fine group of villains, shall we?
As the group was portrayed in the book, they were designed to have a personal vendetta against the Legion and to try to kill them based on that fact. They were "assassins of the super-heroes". I would always have liked to seem them more as payed political terrorists/hired assassins who basically took out high-ranking government officials. Maybe a story which shows them eliminating members of the U.P. assembly or something.
Posted by the boy with UltraPowers on :
i'd love to see this team again !!!
"Superboy and the Legion of Super Heroes" #253 was my first ever issue of the Legion !!! so i have fond memories of them ....
Matthew.
Posted by Portfolio Boy on :
Well, the LoSA wanted revenge due the the Legion's supposed culpibility in the destruction of their homeworld.
NOw, let's count. How many worlds have been destryoed postboot? Seems to me we could stock a Legion-sized League pretty easily.
And didn't the Dark Man play some part in the genesis of the Leaguers, other than Blok? This might be a good way to tie in the Fatal Five and resolve their outstanding plot dangler. Perhaps they are now working for the Dark Man who had them searching for some power source to imbibe recruits from destroyed worlds with powers, thus increasing the Fatal Five's numbers to a Devil's Dozen, and giving them a better chance in battle with the Legion.
Hmmm.... Does Wacker lurk here. If so, mark this thread with a [STEAL THIS PLOT] release.
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
Incidentally, I thought I'd mention probably my favorite rendition of the League is in the fanfic of our very own Danny Blaine!
Posted by DrakeB3003 on :
I know nothing about the pre-boot version of this team aside from the fact that Blok was part of it. I like the name enough to want to see an organized guild of *super* assassins -- it's just an inherently cool concept.
The fact that they're assassins also implies that dealing with them would require some of the Legion's more subtle members in terms of tracking or confounding them, which is always a nice change of pace.
Posted by Shadow Kid on :
Silver Slasher and Neutrax were very Workforce / Planetary Watch. Maybe they can return in that sort of capacity.
Posted by icefire on :
I love Titania and Lazon and was glad they were included in the last LSV!!!!
Posted by Danny Blaine on :
quote:Originally posted by Eryk Davis Ester: Incidentally, I thought I'd mention probably my favorite rendition of the League is in the fanfic of our very own Danny Blaine!
Wow, I just read this... HIgh praise indeed!
Thanks!
Posted by Super Lad Kid on :
The original Legaue story was actually a highlight among an otherwise dreary era. One thing about that story that has always bugged me, though. When the League's planet is being evacuated, the Assassins are shown as little children witnessing the event and harboring a grudge on the Legionnaires. Fine. But then it is explained that they were reare by the Dark Man and trained to hate the Legion. Problem is that they look just as old, if not older than the very Legionnaires that they have been trained to hate.
Posted by Danny Blaine on :
Maybe the Dark Man aged them all to make them combat ready.
I always enjoyed that story. I thought the Assassins were portrayed as very powerful and worthy opponents for the team.
I was kinda disappointed when they were absorbed into the LSV. I liked them as their own team.
Posted by the boy with UltraPowers on :
Titania and the Silver Slasher were always my favourites !!!
Matthew.
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
Jeepers! We need more discussion about the League of Super-Assassins!
Posted by Set on :
Lazon has one of my favorite powers, ever. I was a little kid, watching SuperFriends, and Black Vulcan would turn into a bolt of lightning and zap off into the distance and I was in love with that power. Lazon, able to turn into light (and later Monica Rambeau, aka Captain America 2, Photon 1 and Pulsar 1), captured that same feel for me, and I really wanted to see more of him.
Silver Slasher managed to be Wolverine-esque, without seeming at all derivative (unlike the dozen Image characters named variations of RipClaw, Warblade, Thornn, Killrazor, SlashFist, ad nauseum.).
Neutrax had very cool powers, the ability to shut anyone down (later seen on the cartoon version of Nemesis Kid, or in the Morlock Massacre-er Scrambler), and the floating dude in a wheelchair look made for a serious difference from the more athletic heroes.
Mist Master, again, cool powers, and not represented in the Legion (even if Element Lad could replicate much of his utility).
Titania had some stereotypical 'tough girl with a chip on her shoulder' characterization, but it would have been neat to see some sort of actual development regarding that. (The whole team had chips on their shoulders, for that matter, and, given the state of 30th century medicine, exactly why Neutrax was apparently crippled, and possibly Lazon as well, remains something of a mystery, one that might be explained by whatever the Dark Man did to them to make them the way they are...)
One thing I kind of expected, given Tharok's love of cloning technology, would be to see *multiple* members of the League of Super-Assassins running around. 'Oh, Lazon's dead. Wait, what do you mean he just killed the Braalian Ambassador?!'
And the clincher to the storyline involving the 'Legion of Super-Assassins' would be the original children, who have memories of the Legion leaving them to die, would *still* be children, sleeping away in suspense tanks, while force-grown clones of themselves are being used as disposable assassins by someone who is, fittingly, also a clone, of Tharok.
Finally rescuing the children from the Dark Man, the Legion would defeat the last of their evil clones (who would turn out to have limited lifespans, part of the Dark Man's system of control, after that accident with Blok...), and awaken to a world in which the Legion, whom they remember 'leaving them behind,' indeed came back and saved them after all!
And bang, new group of young Academy recruits, with some major personality issues due to the fact that everyone thinks of them as assassins-in-waiting or Manchurian candidates or whatever.
[ October 29, 2008, 12:25 PM: Message edited by: Set ]
Posted by jimgallagher on :
Wow, Set. Your ideas for this team are WAY more interesting than anything that's seen print on them imho. I never liked them, but it was partially because they were introduced in a very dreary Legion era with crumby art and stories. I hated when they made Blok a Legionnaire, but I have to admit that Levitz/Giffen turned him around for me and I grew to like him a lot.
Posted by Sketch Lad on :
I like the girls, but think the guys are all rather bland. I guess Lazon's the coolest of the bland guys.
In Who's Who, it states that Titania is easily influenced by others and isn't really all that evil, so I feel like there's hope for her. She's sort of a human, female Validus, I guess.
I've always liked Blok. I like that he had a crush on Mysa. I like that he found humans so confusing. His 5YL death was heart-breaking.
Posted by Set on :
Blok made a great foil / straight man to accompany the others, which made him kind of the most ironic 'point-of-view' character ever, in that he's an alien lump of rock trying to make his way in a world overrun with young white people, and he's being written as a PoV character for fans that are predominantly young white people...
It was like the ultimate 'metatextual' in-joke.
That delicious irony aside, he bored the crap out of me.
I did enjoy his not-really love affair with Mysa. It was so understated, unlike the equally sex-free Wildfire/Dawnstar relationship, that it seemed really gentle and cautious and uncertain, which kind of struck a chord with me, since it felt more 'real' than the overwrought soap-opera stuff going on with some of their team-mates.
Posted by He Who Wanders on :
I guess my standout impression of the LSA is how their childhood misunderstanding was perverted into hatred, and how they clinged to that belief even after they must have learned the truth.
This idea seems even more tragic today, in the era of suicide bombers, hijackers, and jihadists.
Posted by Lance's realm on :
I agree with what has been said before - this 2-issue story was a bright spot in what was otherwise a wasteland of Legion stories. To be honest, I really, really enjoyed this story arc. I thought the assassins had good powers, and even good motive.
I really never bought Blok having always been a rock creature, though. I thought it would be better if he had been born human - but maybe they thought that would be too much like Ben Grimm?
Posted by Quislet, Esq. on :
Well, in the first story it is stated that the Dark Man altered all of the children. It was a ret-con that made Blok having always been a rock creature.
Posted by Lance's realm on :
Yeah, I know. I still thought it was dumb.
Posted by Quislet, Esq. on :
which did you think was dumb, having Blok been made into Blok or the ret-con that he was always a stone creature?
Posted by Lance's realm on :
I think the ret-con was dumb. In the story in which the super-assassins first appear, the other assassins call Blok "cousin," and they say things like "because of the Legion you have become a hideous monster." For me, Blok's new origin just didn't work after that.
Posted by Silver Age Lad on :
But the others thinking Blok was once human could be part of the overall dupe of the Dark Man. Shame it wasn't explored more fully.
Posted by Lance's realm on :
Quis, I never thought of that. What an interesting idea!
Posted by Set on :
There's also the notion that *none* of the Super-Assassins where from the world in question, having been snatched from all over the UP and brainwashed into 'remembering' what the Dark Man wanted them to remember.
Posted by Uranus Lad on :
quote:And the clincher to the storyline involving the 'Legion of Super-Assassins' would be the original children, who have memories of the Legion leaving them to die, would *still* be children, sleeping away in suspense tanks, while force-grown clones of themselves are being used as disposable assassins by someone who is, fittingly, also a clone, of Tharok.
Ooh, I like that idea a lot. Why the hell aren't you writing the book Set? Since the reboot, aside maybe from Praetor Lemnos, The villains of the reeboot have been somewhat less than memorable. This, I could get behind!
I agree with jimgallagher, I didn't think much of the LoS-A art, and the story was pretty lame, as they generally were at the time, so they really didn't interest me and I'd completely forgotten about the Blok relationship. Seems like there's a lot of untapped potential there.