cleome46
or you can do the confusion 'til your head falls off
posted
quote:Originally posted by jimgallagher: I've always maintained that there should be an upper and lower size limit to a Durlan's capabilities. Say, no smaller than a mouse or larger than an elephant for example. Otherwise, the suspension of disbelief as to where all that body mass is supposed to go/come from is stretched a little thin, imho.
Yes.
Failing that, I'd like some kind of hand-wave along the lines of: Brande picked these particular Durlans to work for him precisely because they had exceptional abilities beyond what you'd normally expect to find from the majority of the species.
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From: Vanity, OR | Registered: Dec 2008
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Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
posted
quote:Originally posted by jimgallagher: I've always maintained that there should be an upper and lower size limit to a Durlan's capabilities. Say, no smaller than a mouse or larger than an elephant for example. Otherwise, the suspension of disbelief as to where all that body mass is supposed to go/come from is stretched a little thin, imho.
Also, what's the point of having Vi and Gim on the team, if Cham can do what they do?
From: Liberty City | Registered: Jul 2003
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cleome46
or you can do the confusion 'til your head falls off
posted
That, too, EDE. Violet would still likely feel more at home in the micro-verse than Cham would. Why in blazes should she be on leave if the team knows they're facing foes who can shrink to that degree?
(Yeah, I know. Because It's In The Script™)
-------------------- Hey, Kids! My "Cranky and Kitschy" collage art is now viewable on flickr. Drop by and tell me that I sent you.
From: Vanity, OR | Registered: Dec 2008
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posted
The pace of the main story is a bit slow, but issue #9 had some interesting moments. The artwork and coloring on the Durla scenes was top notch. It was interesting to see Chameleon Boy grow back the ripped uniform. The insults that Brainiac 5 hurled at the Durlans were a bit juvenile for someone with a 12th level intelligence.
The interactions between Brin and Troy were handled well. Hopefully, this is the beginning of a friendship that will continue to be explored. Brin needs somebody new to pal around with now that Blok is off with Mysa. Troy never got enough panel time in early incarnations for us to ever get a feel for the relationships he had developed with other members. There was a hint of a friendship between him and Shadow Lass in his exit story. It would be interesting to see that followed up on now, in light of their respective relationships with Earth Man.
The image of Tellus at the bottom of page 13 was striking. Again, it was enhanced by a nice color job.
-------------------- No regrets, Coyote.
From: Missouri | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Candlelight: And maybe Paul should stay away from here or just ignore our comments. There is just no pleasing this fan base.
Since we're praising him for playing up Timber Wolf's original super-acrobatics, I'd say we aren't all bad.
I had originally added a number of examples from posts on this thread, of how he can't win here. His addressing our questioning and dislike of Brande's accent was one but I included others. Then, I thought I was being too cranky or something, so I erased them.
I think that even without the examples, though, people should know that it's a fairly valid observation, sometimes.
-------------------- 'In the twinkling of an eye' I'll be dancing in the sky!
Come, join me!
From: Salem, Oregon USA | Registered: Aug 2003
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quote:Originally posted by googoomuck: Is shrinking down to microscopic size really an effective means of escape? Sure they may be out of sight but how far is it at that scale to the nearest doorway?
Yes, I thought about that too. Vi's power really only works because she has the flight ring.
quote:Originally posted by jimgallagher: I've always maintained that there should be an upper and lower size limit to a Durlan's capabilities. Say, no smaller than a mouse or larger than an elephant for example. Otherwise, the suspension of disbelief as to where all that body mass is supposed to go/come from is stretched a little thin, imho.
Again, I agree. In Tepper's books on kids with various superpowers, the shapeshifters had to add to their mass by ingesting things, depending on what they shifted to, or release mass, which they tried to do out of sight. Ugh.
The point being, getting bigger or smaller wasn't instintanious, but rather took time which extended according to how big, especially, that they could get.
Shifters who were more energy based might be able to shift quicker since they might actually be more holographic in nature, I think.
I also think that most or all, Durlans should not be able to get too big or small because that's more of a copying of Vi's or Gim's powers, which they're not supposed to be able to do. It's one of the reason's that I could never really buy or enjoy Yera's supposed taking over of Vi's position in the Legion.
-------------------- 'In the twinkling of an eye' I'll be dancing in the sky!
Come, join me!
From: Salem, Oregon USA | Registered: Aug 2003
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Set
There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met.
posted
quote:Originally posted by googoomuck: Is shrinking down to microscopic size really an effective means of escape? Sure they may be out of sight but how far is it at that scale to the nearest doorway?
The Atom and Ant-Man, etc. seem to get away with this sort of nonsense all the time.
"Watch me shrink to the size of a paramecium! And now I'll go over to that machine on the other side of the room and sneak inside and crawl around and find some circuits and bust them up!"
<Six weeks later.>
Huff, huff, huff, "Almost there! Just gotta climb up this cable, which, from my perspective, is a mile long..."
Registered: Aug 2006
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Set
There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met.
posted
quote:Originally posted by Candlelight: In Tepper's books on kids with various superpowers, the shapeshifters had to add to their mass by ingesting things, depending on what they shifted to, or release mass, which they tried to do out of sight.
In theory, the shapeshifters actual cells might be inflatable, kept compressed and 'dehydrated' at it's core when not in use, and when it needs to expand dramatically in size, it 'inhales' with it's entire body and puffs up, sucking in surrounding air to expand these cells, like ten billion tiny balloons, all at once, causing what, on the outside, appears to be a sudden change to a twenty foot tall tentacle monster.
The cells would have to be very elastic, and surprisingly tough, more like the cell walls of plant cells than the cell membranes of animal cells (and yet incredibly permeable, like animal cells, perhaps changing from one state to the other really fast, just as the outer membrane of an egg cell transitions from permeable to 'closed for business' the second that first sperm cell contacts it).
Being able to fill the cells with something more durable and weighty, like water, would make for an even sturdy 'giant form,' although, in the process of expelling this mass later, and contracting, the shapeshifter would be expelling a massive wave of water from it's 'pores' as it shrinks. With a bit of training, the shapeshifter could even learn to expel this water in a slightly slower aerosolized vapor, rather than a torrent, making it appear that it has 'dissapeared in a cloud of smoke' or pulled a vampire stunt and 'turned into mist.' (It's now much reduced form would escape during the visual concealment provided by said vapor, completing the illusion of 'teleporting' or 'turning to mist.')
Still, there's only so much compacting that could go on. Even if a cell could be 'dehydrated' and packed up to take only a few percent of it's regular size and mass, like some dried up husk of a 5000 year old kernel of maize waiting for moisture to bloom back into life, the shapeshifter couldn't get much smaller than a rat, and in that form would be unable to think much more than rat-thoughts, as the vast majority of it's brain cells would be dehydrated and packed away with the rest of it's mass...
It's possible, though, that like the maize kernal above, that these dehydrated cells could be shed and left somewhere. A shapeshifter of this sort in a hostile environment might hide for weeks, storing up nutrients to produce cells, then packing them away in caches all over the local area, so that he can locate them in a hurry and assimilate them to use to drastically expand his size (or replace mass that has been blown off of him by energy weapons, or that he has had to abandon to escape a situation by shrinking to small size and shedding excess mass, perhaps even in the form of a 'corpse' to fool his attackers into thinking that they've killed him).
Using 31st century technology, which has been demonstrated as having extradimensional storage devices (perhaps using Bgtzln tech?), he could even carry packets on his belt (or inside his body!) that contain hundreds or thousands of pounds of his own tissue and / or the 'filler' (water, air, whatever) he uses to expand his cells, stored away for when he needs it, and into which he can shed it when he is done using it.
The Durlan shapeshifting thing can be rationalized with a dash of pseudo-science and some logical connections to the rest of the setting (using Bgtzln tech to store mass 'off-site' for ease of transport, for instance).
It's the sort of thing that Waid probably would have devoted an issue to, what with his explorations of Naltor and Cargg and 'Big City' and Colu, but he never got around to developing Cham / Durla.
Registered: Aug 2006
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posted
The Atom's mass apparently shifts to another dimension when he shrinks. (citation needed)
It is possible that a Durlan's natural form is vaporous, (rather than, say, an orange humanoid, or writhing mass of slimy tentacles and eyeballs) but they need at least miniscule solidity in order to maintain conscious interaction with the universe.
Or maybe the law of conservation of mass-energy don't apply in the Earth-Overse.
Or maybe its all Quantum and Dark Matter and hand-waving.
-------------------- "So different from the Original Superman of Krypton!"
Registered: May 2010
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posted
We know from Cham that they are cold-blooded and born from eggs. They were probably reptilian or amphibian, but all that radiation killed off a majority of their population and the survivors did seriously mutate.
-------------------- Go with the good and you'll be like them; go with the evil and you'll be worse than them.- Portuguese Proverb
From: Illinois | Registered: Jun 2010
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posted
The good thing in this issue : no Earth Man. The bad thing : No female legionnaires (except the comatose Dawnstar).
-------------------- From Spain with glamour.
From: Valencia- Spain | Registered: Sep 2003
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Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
posted
The thing that puzzles me about Durlans:
If their shapechanging works by scanning/copying other things, then where the heck does their standard "offworld" form come from? Is there some species that actually looks like that that they are copying? Or how does it work?
From: Liberty City | Registered: Jul 2003
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cleome46
or you can do the confusion 'til your head falls off
posted
I assumed the standard form was meant to copy/echo the one they had before the Six-Minute War. Didn't we see as much recently when Cham and the others went back to "our" present to stop Brainiac's plan?
-------------------- Hey, Kids! My "Cranky and Kitschy" collage art is now viewable on flickr. Drop by and tell me that I sent you.
From: Vanity, OR | Registered: Dec 2008
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posted
Wasn't there something about the form being 'assigned' them by the UP? Maybe in SECRETS OF THE LEGION OF SUPERHEROES?
From: Knoxville, TN | Registered: Jul 2003
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Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
posted
As I recall, at one point there were numerous different Durlan forms corresponding to different tribes (hence the "Chameleon Men" from that old Supergirl story were retconned into a tribe of Durlans).
Also of note: Chameleon Chief, who is *not* a Durlan, but uses a Durlan-esque form.
From: Liberty City | Registered: Jul 2003
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