Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! The Colu Thread!

So, I'm grooving to the WaK version of Colu. These are some random thoughts on it.

It seems to me that if you have a race that's as superior intellectually to other races as the Coluans are supposed to be, then one major question you have to address is why they haven't used their superior technology to conquer everyone else already. The obvious solution is that the Coluans aren't interested in conquest. Their primary interest is in knowledge, not in power. They've managed to solve the need for additional land through the use of their shrinking technology, and presumably have other solutions to ensure the other basic needs of their population are met, so there's no reason to fight other worlds over resources. And their force field technology provides the ultimate defense against races that might try to conquer them.

The way I see it, the Coluans can simply isolate themselves on their homeworld, and occupy themselves in pure intellectual and scientific investigation, without having to worry about anything else outside their planet. To the extent that there is knowledge to be gained through exploring the universe, I think it would be cool if they developed very Silver Agey space telescope technology that allowed them to spy other worlds.

They joined the U.P., although we haven't seen their delegate. All through Legion history, we haven't seen Coluans who have left the planet other than Querl Dox. (Even in the Magic Wars, there was a comment that he'd lived on other worlds thus knew things they didn't, like survival skills.) It's odd that some of them wouldn't have wanted to leave, for good or ill purpose. Perhaps the guys who left to conquer the galaxy were tracked down and subdued.

However, I have to question that they wouldn't have explored other worlds at some point, set up colonies or at least trade. Or have they adopted a strict policy of autarchy? Even if they are and have been self-sufficient, wouldn't there have been some resource from another planet that they would have found interesting or useful? I suppose they've established a free market economy within the confines of their own world, or Brainy wouldn't be wasting time trying to think up a new economic paradigm.

Another question is whether the 3boot Coluans have the same aversion to robots/inorganic intelligence as did previous versions. With all that thinking, who's minding the store? Growing/manufacturing/cooking the food? Cleaning the floor?

They're snobs, you guys....

Mrs. Brainiac's space monkey looked like it was more than a pet. It looked like a lab assistant/technician to me.

That could be why they joined the UP. Import all food stuff, have a few non-Coluans to do the menial tasks. Frees up time for thinking.

Remind me to join the UP and get someone for those menial tasks!

Continuing with all things Colu: names of their three moons? W!nk3n, 81!nk3n & Nød?

I think it would be cool if, at some point in their early history, the Coluans engaged in exploration of other planets, but soon encountered a few warlike alien species. Maybe one of those species was the pre-Holocaust Durlans. Perhaps they made the decision, rather than to have to develop their technology to fight with these races, to instead isolate themselves on their world. Thus they were having to solve the problem of planetary overpopulation at the same time that the post-Holocaust Durlans were (re)discovering fire.

I forgot about the Durlan holocaust - in that context, his comment to Cham makes sense. (Of course, Brainy never makes an error!)

Another thing with the population is the Coluan lifespan - it's been 300 years, and I think I saw a 600 year span in one of the Levitz issues. That's always a point raised in discussion of Earth longevity - if everyone lives extended lives, where will all the people fit? Someone (?) could probably do the math - if you live 300 years, but still have children in your 20s & 30s, and they have children in their 20s & 30s - how many people are there in 300 years? And if you have the means to support everybody, especially without the need for galactic conquest, well, why not? I'd still like to think there were some Coluan Luddites arguing against this - but if we want the detailed history of Colu, we may have to write it ourselves.

What about the recent revelations in Teen Titans? Brainiac said that he used Indigo to kill Donna Troy because she (and the Titans) would play a major role in Coluans ruling the universe in the wake of the Crisis.

So is it Brainiac who is powermad or is it their whole culture?

About the population thing, maybe they just observe strict population control measures? With theior intelligence they've probably already computed the optimal rate of population growth or something.

Or maybe they're just too busy thinking to have children - Grife knows the two acts don't seem to be able to coincide.

I've wondered what effect the extended lifespan has on population. Without having much knowledge about how long their fertile years last, it's hard to make much of a comment on it.

I'd imagine that Colu has a "steady state" population policy. The birth rate would be low.

To achieve this, tally up the deaths in one time period and issue warrants to have an equal number of babies.

In a market economy scenario couples would bid/ask the price of such licenses, ie pay or be paid an amount to have a baby depending on supply/demand for warrants and or what the percieved lifetime potential for a Coluan child was. Indeed choose your own valuation method.

In each year they'd need to replace 1/300th of their population (53billion) if they lived 300 years. What this means for the average Coluan couple depends on what FC and EDE said above.

I wonder if they would have a steady state policy, though. They've got a virtually unlimited amount of land (since they can keep shrinking stuff if they need more), and assuming they've got solutions to other resource needs, there's really no need to artificially limit the population size.

True the fact that the pop reached 16 trillion shows that they seem to enjoy procreation over a great many things.

OK Brainy lied, the shrinking technology has nothing to do with data storage, it's all because Coluans are oversexed and like to make babies.

One issue of Flash which featured Wally time-travelling showed a Coluan who had come to Earth and was being attacked by a lynch mob. It may be that other occupied planets are not exactly welcoming of Coluans, due to worry/jealousy about the difference in intelligence levels.

It doesn't answer why they couldn't colonize another world, though. Perhaps because Coluans tend to lack the sort of pioneer spirit needed to colonize a new world, and thus are more inclined to find a way to allow themselves to stay at 'home' and keep studying instead.

Previous visions of Colu haven't been so entirely mechanical... even the Computer Tyrants (in early issues of L.E.G.I.O.N.) left some undeveloped areas and had some plants and such growing. The preboot Colu had deserts, oceans and snow caps. Postboot (2) Colu also had plants around. To be honest, I prefer that vision to this "completely computerized world," simply because it seems more predictable to make the 'smart' planet all computer-y without any sort of natural life growing outside.

Any ideas for where to get more information about previous versions of Colu? I'm curious, but I haven't been having much luck on finding anything at all, except for an incredible painting of it on DeviantArt.

You can download Chaim Keller's Legion Help File (good up to the Abnett/Lanning series), or Wikipedia.

Thanks.

If you're looking for visual images, I have scans of scenes from the different versions I could email you.

That would be great. Thanks.

That'd be the Imskians. I hope they go into more detail about that. Did they have any free time for fun? How well were they educated? What were their families like? Did they choose their own mates or did the Coluans make those decisions?

Oh, and most importantly, how does all this effect Vi?

Could some Imskians have stayed on as paid servants, once they were freed? I wonder if the rest of the U.P. knew about Imsk slavery, or if those sneaky Coluans managed to keep it all secret. Certainly a story that needs telling.

Coluans no doubt sit all day with with their thinking caps on. I'm guessing that the slavery as seen from Brainy's point of view was a somewhat symbiotic relationship from the average Coluan or UP person's perspective.

I'm guessing that B5 freed Imsk, causing a lot of grief for Colu and this is a reason for his exile. Part of his revolution at any cost philosophy I think.

I made a complete survey of this a while back

Chewy Brainy Candy - Imsk and Colu

http://www.legionworld.net/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=004445

Like Computo, the Colu story just repeats itself. All three versions of the Legion (pre-boot, post-boot and WaK) have a storyline in which Colu loses its technology and the inhabitants are immobilized. Pre-boot was the Magic Wars, post-boot was the Elementals disrupting everything, WaK was Lemnos. Each version also has Brainiac 5 at odds with the rest of the planet.

So, anything else interesting to do with Colu besides turning the citizens into idiots?