Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Does DC hate Dream Girl? (may contain spoilers)

I haven't posted in quite some time, but the latest issue of Legion really ticked me off.

Okay, so we have Dream Girl, arguably one of the most popular members ever--so popular in fact that readers elected her leader back in the day. During the Levitz/Giffen era, Nura was written very well.

Over the years, we've seen Nura reduced to an overweight joke in one Legion version, and an airhead flake in another. In the current reboot, Nura was the first member to have any REAL character development that grabbed me as a reader. So, NATURALLY, they kill her off, and the only way we see her is in Brainy's mind.

Now, if that wasn't enough..we finally get Dream Girl and Brainy's 'romance' at center stage, and not only do we have HORRIBLE art by a 'fill-in' artist, but to add insult to injury, 'spirit' Nura is beaten and HAS HER EYES CLAWED OUT, thereby losing her powers.

Well, I've just about had it. I'm holding out some small hope that we'll see the Nura from 'Lighting Saga' somewhere, back to her old kick-ass self...but I'm not holding my breath.

I haven't read #47 yet, but I've seen some of the discussion and know that these terrible things have happened to her.

I can't understand it either. But there's a lot I don't understand when it comes to treatment of Legionnaires. Why can't TPTB just give us an awesome, kick nass Legion that looks and acts like we are accustomed to them looking and acting, and give them amazing new adventures? Action Legion comes close! Just kinda off. George Perez is on the right track, at least.

As a Dream Girl fan, I've had to cling to every little positive scrap I could. It'd be nice if she could just do her thing and we could watch and enjoy it.

It also works the other way. For much of Legion history, Dream Girl was arguably the weakest Legionnaire, until Levitz found a way of making her work.

As for whether she was a joke character Five Years Later, that's a matter of opinion. I didn't see her that way.

Reboot Dreamy started out as kind of a bubblehead, yes, but then DnA rehabilitated her and Gail Simone gave her a great scene. I don't think much of what Shooter's done with her, but she was an excellent character under Waid. Overall I'd say that DC *likes* her, even if they don't always quite know what to do with her. Much like the rest of the Legion.

I completely agree with you, Knowjack, as my post on the issue 47 thread indicates.

There's a larger question at stake here that has been percolating in my mind for awhile, as a result of Keith Giffen's homicidal feelings towards Karate Kid.

Here's the deal -- the Legion has a huge cast of diverse characters. To me, that's one of its key strengths, because every reader and fan can find at least one character to identify with, and at least one character to really hate and wish bad things on.

The problem is that creative teams increasingly approach working on the Legion with the same attitude. Now, with such a large cast, I don't expect ANY creative team, no matter how talented, to have a handle on or interest in EVERY Legionnaire. Mark Waid loves Cosmic Boy and Brainiac 5, so the entire 3Boot is consumed with those characters and the rivalry he creates between them. Fine.

But the creative teams long ago (starting perhaps with Giffen) went beyond the "focus" approach to actively destroying Legion characters, maybe because they didn't like them or understand, maybe because they thought it would be a cool story. Problem is, it violates their role as stewards of the property -- one of their key goals should be to not leave the property all f@#*! up when they leave the book.

Ironically enough, the first time I remember this being a real problem for a creative team was for Claremont & Byrne during the original "Dark Phoenix" saga. It was a brilliant idea to turn Jean Gray into an all-powerful destructive force of nature. But, when they had her destroy an entire solar system of asparagus people, they simply couldn't go back to the status quo ante. You can't commit planetary genocide and just go back to romantic drives in New England in the convertible with Scott Summers. The comics readers of then (and now) expect momentous stories to have momentous consequences that don't undermine the original story. And who was it pointed this out to Claremont (cue irony drums)? Then editor-in-chief Jim Shooter. As a result, Claremont wrote Jean Gray killing herself and made comics history.

Given what Shooter has said about the bitter end of his current Legion run, it's not a stretch to guess that he's taking a scorched earth approach to the property. However, that DOES pretty much guarantee that THIS Legion won't be seen again after FC:LOTW ends. I guess it must be fun to have an ego big enough to bring down a creative property with you when you crash and burn.

I love Dream Girl and I hate what they've done to her, but I think she'd be one of the most difficult Legionnaires to write for.

Only if you are a lazy writer who doesn't bother to understand the character.

Compare with Johns' quote from Brainy "....playing dumb, Dream Girl was fond of it when we were kids. She didn't want to intimidate Star Boy when they were dating"

I find this interesting. Why? Because I'd be more likely to kill a character I liked because it would have impact. If I didn't care about a character, I wouldn't feel capable of writing a good last story for them.

He said one of the most difficult, not impossible. I don't have early Waid so I don't know if this version was flirty but just because a woman is strong doesn't mean she can't also be flirty. Are ALL strong women to act the same way? That's not characterization IMO.


Understand the character? WHICH character? There have been many incarnations. I concur with Jim as far as powers go. Put hands to temple and faint. Gets old quick.

Heroes grow through tragedy or upbringing. Unbringing worked for Supes because there were years and years of Kents. If Dreamy is to be a interesting character, something interesting has to happen to her is my feeling. I wasn't quite ready for a blinding and a power removal. I did like the Dreaming aspect because that's not been done and it connects Legion to a very popular and powerful aspect of DC; Sandman. Sandman, a guy in a funny costume until Gaimen made the connection between "The Sandman" and dreaming.

Potentially a very interesting connection for Dreamy. She doesn't really need eyes, one could argue the character would have been more powerfull all along without vision. A path to gain back her powers, trials in the dreamland could be an awesome arc.

That would be great, if she could work her way back to regaining her powers - or even corporeal reality - and give Brainy sh*t for imagining her as his adoring bimbo.

Which is the get all of the complaints. It's not like she's really acting flirty here. It's more telling that Brainy actually thinks that way, when outward appearance are he's only interested in his tech (probably because it also does what he wants it to).

mostly it's that she posed the ultimate writer problem: if you have a character that knows what's going to happen, why wouldn't she just tell everyone? why would they ever be surprised? couldn't they just stop everything before it happened? she has a lot of the issues that most time traveling things have (why wouldn't the legion just go back and save all their dead friends?).

you can never have them be surprised because "hey, why didn't dream girl see this". every writer has to deal with her in a different way. waid and bedard used her a thread and as a bookending function, to create a feeling of roundness to their stories. dream girl would predict something, and then there would be this foreshadowed threat throughout the book. waid solved her pretty well, I think, by making her a literal dream with a lot less self agency.

he also pointed out the problems with knowing what would happen next, all of these are set up with her interactions with brainiac 5. from the very beginning, there's the question of whether or not she's infallible, for example, a problem of "acceptance" of the future as is. the whole planet of naltor tries to "blind" their younger generation to the bad things coming instead of trying to stop the big-bad, and then there's the idea of stagnation and a general lack of creativity, problem solving ability, etc.

i think it's a sort of tragic, sad power too. it says a lot that when the future looks especially bleak, querl tries to make her feel better by telling her that maybe her powers aren't infallible. she has a conversation with saturn girl where she says something to the effect that she has a feeling that she'll never have love and other things like the others.

i think bedard's arc was a great example of using her. putting her inside querl's head created a nice dynamic where she had to warn this guy that has his own agenda and way of doing things and he's such a bitch that we're not sure if he's going to listen. she starts out the story to warn him, and it finished with the reveal that he was acting on her information.

shooter opted to ignore her, pull her out for a second and characterize her as a completely useless ditz, make sure querl got to bang her, then blind her violently and take away her powers so he wouldn't have to deal with her. together with being married off in the cheapest manner possible made this extra amazing. i think it's telling that people are thinking this nura is so out of character that she might be querl's weird delusion. if that's true, it would be absolutely ridiculous considering that saturn girl and dream boy have verified her existence already and that previously she was behaving very IN character when she appeared in his head.

so, she presents a problem for writers, kind of a problematic god-mode character thing, but if you're a clever writer, you figure out a way to define her powers, put limits on it, or figure out ways to play with the idea.

It could be quite possible that this Nura is really just in Brainy's head.

Regardless the end is coming so this Nura will eventually not matter.....I think there will be another total reboot anyway so hoopefully we will get the confident, flirty, seeing Nura back.

#47 was just a disgusting issue............it made me now even want to pick up the remaining issues....this issue made me hate the Legion right now.

Part of the way Nura's powers have been dealt with in the past is by limiting their scope, by blurring the meanings of her prophecies and by making her have to sleep/dream in order to see them.

Last boot, the sleeping limitation was removed (as well as some of the puzzling parts of her visions) and her powers became much more dynamic and useable in practible ways.

I agree that connecting her to the Dreaming realm has so many story options and adds a huge interest to her possibilites.
I thought the same when Shadow Lass/Umbra and I think, Star Boy too, were made a part of the Shadow Realm.
And a similar effect happened during the 5 yr.later boot when Mysa joined with Amethyst, adding the Gemworld's powers and history to her own.

As to her blinding, I haven't read the issue yet, but I HAVE just read 'Oedipus Rex' and blind soothsayers have been around for a very long time in literature.
Which is probably why Shooter resorted to it (tried and true, so to speak).
To bad the idea's become a cliche.

(I obviously feel Blockade Boy had a couple of great things to say! And I agree with him.)


Sketch ~ I know how much Nura has always meant to you.
I'm sorry she's been used so badly lately.
Let's hope this whole series of unfortunately stupid developments is soon gone and forgotten.

One could only hope. I did not like a lot of the threeboot changes, but I *loved* the butt-kicking ex-'PreCop' Nura.

For all the changes he made to Chameleon, Triplicate Girl and Colossal Boy, it was Dream Girl that really clicked, and I think that's possibly why he advanced a plotline around her (as bodiless 'dream' girl).

But issue 47s characterization was just bad. Even if it was just a fragment of Dreamy warped into the kind of girl that Brainy thought she was, that just makes Brainy look bad, for thinking that she was such a hands-fluttering 'helpless female.'

I've defended a lot of Shooter's steps, but this one is not, IMO, defensible. Perhaps the two-issue version of the 'wedding of Brainy and Dreamy' wouldn't have drawn things in such a broad two-dimensional brush, but I'm not going to give out a pass for what he *could* have written, barring editorial interference. This is what he *did* write, and it wasn't good.

That was no version of either Querl or Nura that I want to see again.

Except in thise case, losing her sight correlates with losing her prophetic sight. Almost an inversion of convention - not that that makes me like it.

I guess I should've expanded more on why Dream Girl would be so hard to write for. Her power has to have limits put on it so that she can't foresee every future event with absolute unfailing clarity, which would ruin the story and allow for no surprises or plot twists. Yet with too many limitations, she becomes useless. Striking that balance would be very tricky for the writer, as opposed to almost any other Legionnaire who simply has to flex their muscles or point and shoot to operate their powers.

The focus almost has to shift to her personality to make her a real player among so many characters whose powers outshine hers. And her personality has varied widely depending on who's writing her. She's been portrayed as a condescending snob, a capable scientist, a vain and shallow flirt, a narcoleptic bimbo, a disciplined martial artist, a capable leader, etc. etc. It seems that each writer flails around trying to find her character to the point that no one knows who she is anymore.

The difficulty of writing for Dream Girl is evident throughout the 70s and early 80s, during which she barely appeared. It was too hard to use her, so most writers ignored her. She appeared in "The Gun that Mastered Men" in S/LSH #198, the backup story with Karate Kid in S/LSH #201. She appeared in about 2 panels in #203's "Murder by Remote Control". Then she appeared briefly in the Tyroc v. Absorbancy Boy story [where the colorist colored her as Saturn Girl on the cover because he didn't know who she was] and that backup where she, Brainy, and Cham foil an assassination attempt, and that's about it until the fans elected her leader in the early 80s and TPTB decided they finally had to dig her out of mothballs and actually use her. And even then her term was cut incredibly short, compared to the last 3 leaders before her: Mon-El, Wildfire, and Lightning Lad, whose terms lasted for years.

Now she's been killed, maimed, blinded and/or turned into a figment of Brainy's imagination. Who else do the writers have to struggle so hard to write for?

I don't think the character is that incredibly difficult to write for. First of all, Dream Girl wouldn't dream EVERYTHING that is going to happen. One does not dream every minute they sleep and the frequency of visions could be moderated easily enough to prevent over use. If I was writing for the character, I would keep her knowledge detail somewhat lacking when she does have a vision of the future. A lack of detail opens up a varied amount of interpretation.

Rather than giving her the complete picture, it could also be presented in bits and pieces over the coarse of several visions. This could keep the character used frequently enough so that she doesn't get thrown on the "Forget" list. These visions should be designed to actually foreshadow events for the reader without giving the plot away. Panels could be spent with Dream Girl discussing what she saw (but didn't necessarily understand). If she was shown discussing a vision she had about a particular Legionnaire, the writer could spend a few panels showing her talking to the subject of the vision. Other panels could be shown of the subject getting all rattled because Dream Girl had a vision about them.

Because they come in bits and pieces, it would be up to the Legion team to discuss what the vision meant and a variety of character interpretations could occur in the text. With a variety of interpretations between characters, the writer could provide clues to the plot as well as red herrings for those Legionnaires who start barking up the wrong tree when attempting to discern the meaning of the visions.

The writer needs to understand that she will not dream everything and therefore not be the ultimate answer to every storyline.

I think it was effective when they showed her more competant at martial arts because she "knew" what her opponent was going to do in advance and so she could react to it in time. That I liked, it was a good addition to the power and made her more on par with the others in fighting capability as well as add humor to the text. However, just because she might "see" how one opponent acts in the fight, it doesn't mean that in the vision she saw the guy standing behind her. Suddenly "Wham!" she's knocked unconscious anyway. It shouldn't be treated as "all around vision" but more like tunnel vision.

Jim, don't forget the handful of appearances illustrated by Jim Sherman.... in the story where Wildfire and Superboy fight over the election. In the Sden story. In the Infinite Man story. Then, later, there was that Sherman issue that he inked himself with the pirates. I think the antagonist was the engineer. Um, Nura was a major player in the Dr. Mayavale story.... hey, it had a Perez cover!

Dreamy's platinum beauty was incomparable. She seemed to come and go, making each of her appearances special and a surprise. No one questioned her validity as a member of the team.

The fact that Levitz made her all vampy and silly was fine, because she was shown to be more competent than ever, too.

However, I agree that she was shown to be a big clown 5YL. The reboot Dreamy was a narcoleptic ditz until DnA made her cool again. But then the series ended. Threeboot Nura was definitely competent yet flirty. The perfect blend of the best of what came before. Then they killed her. Again, I haven't read #47 yet. I'm sure I'll have opinions about it.

I think after the legendary way Levitz wrote her the runner up for writing Dream girl would have to be Waid. Let's face it, when Levitz wrote her she made team leader and he managed all that with the help of us voting fans (I voted for her), to award her this responsibility during the Great Darkness Saga. Nuff said there...
Mark was bang on with an even stronger/smarter and fresh version of her early on in his stories and apart from killing her off too early, did a great job with her corporeal self post death.
I'm convinced now that had Mark stayed on the series he would have not only brought her back but with an added power level of perhaps the added ability to "attack" an adversary in their dreams (or something like that).
Shooter poo-pooed all that in one unremakabley lame and confusing issue.
Thanks Jim, I'm sure gonna miss ya!

That was one of the things that turned me off to that entire run. I picked up very few of them, and when I did, Dream Girl was put through some Khundian ordeal that transformed her into *the competent useful character I already knew* but had the side-effect of making her dour and closed-off.

It was a huge step backwards. Either they destroyed her power and utility, and made her the passive recipient of her visions, more of a victim than a super-hero, or they gave her back her control and turned her from a vivacious and life-loving young woman into one of the walking wounded, shunning her former friends (and boyfriend).

I was wondering if she was going to end up with a 'dream-self' sort of astral projection power, similar to what Raven used to do in the Wolfman/Perez-era Teen Titans.

Nura's combat precognition (and the other Naltorian 'pre-cops') was, IMO, the best idea Mark Waid had in this entire run. The whole 'I fall asleep and maybe my power happens and maybe it doesn't' thing never worked for me. It was too passive, too reactive. A super-hero, IMO, should be in control of her powers, not controlled by them. (And this applies to characters like Rogue or Scott Summers or half the characters on Heroes. Learn to use / control your darn powers! Practice! Train! Try!)

This is a problem for me. I don't require all members of a superhero team to be skilled, competent, effective, or in control. Having powers doesn't necessarily make things easy. At all. Especially a team like the X-Men or the threeboot Legion would be likely to attract less-than-capable supers. How can I get across that to like a series, I don't have to admire or want to be like the characters? Maybe this is why I warmed up to the threeboot immediately. If I think about it, I didn't find most of the characters *likable*, but I was *interested*.

For the X-Men, with, at any given time, somewhere between one and eight telepaths able to instantly train people in languages (even alien ones) or a lifetime of medical knowledge or whatever in the blink of an eye, and, historically, with a 'Danger Room' and intensive training regimen (where Warren once complained to Kitty that she'd be expected to be able to take the Blackbird apart and put it together with her eyes closed before she was 'ready'), I think that there's very much no excuse for those who make it onto the 'field team' not being the ones who have actually learned how their powers work, 'earned their stripes' and gone through some serious training.

With the Legion, less training-focused and less rife with telepaths who can magically teach anything in seconds, those aren't issues, but instead, we have the issue that many Legionnaires represent the most notable hero *of an entire planet.*

A hypothetical Dream Girl who couldn't be bothered to train her abilities wouldn't just an insult to her fellow Legionnaires (since her lack of dedication could endanger anyone counting on her if she's ever really tested in a dangerous situation) but a disgrace to the entire planet of Naltor. She also sounds like a fairly unsympathetic character, along the lines of threeboot Projectra or Lester Spiffany, convinced that she deserves special treatment despite not actually doing what it takes to *earn* the respect and trust of others.

Fortunately, that's not what we've seen. Classic Dream Girl's powers developed over the years, as did her personality (and her bosums, apparently), until she was selected leader and proved to be competent, skilled and proficient with her skills and powers, and not the 'Fainting Lass' who originally joined the team.

I've never seen the Legion as all about the powers (with Karate Kid being exhibit number one of powers not being the end-all, be-all), but about the characters themselves. If any yob with powers could join, despite no effort to do anything to better himself, Mekt would be as valid a Legionnaire as Garth.

The characters don't have to be *nice,* by any means (and I don't think any iteration of Brainy, save for the cartoon one, has been a terribly nice person), but I want to be able to respect them for *trying* to be good at what they do, and not just be passive victims of whatever situation (or circumstance of birth) gave them super-powers.

Many Legionnaires have developed their powers beyond their races traditional limits (Chameleon Boy and Cosmic Boy and Saturn Girl, for instance), while others have pushed *themselves* into becoming more effective 'heroes' (Triplicate Girl and Phantom Girl). I think that this is what makes them well suited to be Legionnaires, rather than random Bgtzl'n #58712.

If a Legionnaire (or an X-Man) said, 'Yeah, I don't need to train, I've got cool powers and that's all I need,' I wouldn't really have much respect for that character at all. I certainly wouldn't want them on a team of heroes that represents the best and brightest of the United Planets, or to have such an entitled punk representing *my* home-world before the galaxy!

This is one of the intrinsic differences between boots. Your "representing a planet" fits perfectly with the reboot, for example, bt not the threeboot. At least originally, this was an all-volunteer team. And considering how they defined themselves, it's likely that many people would volunteer despite not living up to superheroic standards. That was one problem with the Waid-Kitson concept, I'll grant: it excluded tryouts and rejects, since you didn't even need powers - the only qualification for being a Legionnaire was wanting to be one.

Well, and there being a ring for you!

In the Adventure era, Dream Girl joined to stop one of her visions, then she quit.
She got back in by dressing as a robot, convincing Brainy, somehow, that she was really Supergirl and freeing Mysa from that gang (Devil's 13 or something like that.)

Nura never really worked at anything before the reboots ~ like one of those girls the press likes to show off nowdays. They don't really do anything either. We call them celebraties!

She had an incredible will, a great mind, a power full of possibilities and got by most of the time on her looks.
She was always narcistic and self-indulgent.
I thought she was absolutely in character during Zero Hour, unfortunately.

I think in the reboot she was finally coming into her own as a hero. She'd gotten a bit dower but she was a general in a war. People were dying at her command.
It would grow you up quick!
Would she have remained that way?
Probably not, but we'll never know.