Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Lets retcon the Legion

With every reboot the Legion's history and favorite characters get a little more skewered. So how would you redoo your favourite Legionairre, or Legion villian, or supporting character(s)?

I think to save time someone should combine the characters of Shadow Lass and Nite Girl. Why because I'm anal like that. That and it just seams right.

So in a retcon would Dawnstar be from the Casino planet? j/k

Speaking of Dawny though, I never saw a need for another winged character (Shikari) with the same kind of power. I'm sure you can make a case for just how different they are but likewise for how similar they are.

So..Dawnstar could actually be from the Kwai-verse and the whole Legion Lost saga could boil down to a two part story about space-nomad Native American hunters who help the Legion defeat a Khundish or Dominator invasion of their universe.

No one dies and no one morphs into a universe devouring monster.

Some changes to homeworlds/species/etc

Marzal is a planet, not an island on Earth.

In the 20th century, a Daxamite named Lar Gand explored many worlds. One of them was Krypton. Its people called him "the star wanderer", or Mon-El.

Coluans are cyborgs. Removing the idea of Brainiac 5 as purely biological, unlike Brainiac, is necessary for believability. At a sufficient tech level, purely organic life becomes obsolete.

A retcon/reboot origin for Cargggites (can't remember if I've said this one here already): "a triple sun imbued all inhabitants with the power to split into three bodies.” What if this fairy-tale logic was actually true? Carggg orbits the three solar deities. Are they advanced AIs in plasma form, living suns like Solaris, or actual supernatural gods? We don’t know. It doesn’t matter. An ancient pact between the Trinity gave each one-third control over all Cargggites. Since this was impossible to define, they granted all life in the system the ability to split into three. A half-Cargggite will only be three if born under the rays of the Trinity.

I've definitely already mentioned making Princess Projectra and Sensor (yes, the snake) into entirely separate characters. It doesn't take much. It turns Orando into a multi-species planet, but why does it always have to be one species, one planet?

And... what if Kinetix were an elfin-catgirl alien to begin with?

And a retcon/reboot of the point of the whole Legion (probably the best justification I've ever come up with for a reboot):
http://www.legionworld.net/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=005414;p=2
I noted:
If the 30th century is postnationalist - that is, governments are not the primary structures - a superhero team can believably operate openly. There is no sovereignty for them to interfere with.
In this context, I can create a new definition of the Legion's point, and a different and fundamental way they were inspired by the 20th century heroes:
They live in a rational anarchy where culture alone is the primary organizing force. They are nostalgic for a time when precise laws existed and where people fought to uphold them. In short, people have forgotten what it means to be a hero. What Martin Luther King called "negative peace... the absence of tension" exists. The Legion fight to replace that with "positive peace which is the presence of justice".

Ooh, that's a need Carggite concept Triplicate Kid!

I also like the idea of the Mon-El tweak, the mechanical Coluans (who, IMO, are actual descendents of the original Brainiac, who was also a machine, not a smart dude who was good with machines) and separating out Sensor and Projectra.

I kind of like the idea of Jeckie-turned-Sensor after the death of Val, but the snake character could have different illusion-like powers, based off of hypnotism (and being a bit of a Saturn Girl / Projectra mashup, but occupying a different niche than either, just as Projectra and Shadow Lass pretty much do the same thing by screwing with people's vision, but occupy different niches), while Projectra's powers would be more holographic in nature.

I kind of prefer Shikari in every way to Dawnstar, and yeah, they are pretty much the same character. If a native American character is called for, I'd really like said character to not wear buckskins-of-space, have a chip on her shoulder the size of Montana and a traditional 'Indian' power like tracking (although she gets points for not putting her ear to the ground when she does so, like Tonto!).

I've got an obsession about the Cockrum characters that never really got their chance, and would love to see that space vampire woman introduced as a former lab assistant to Dr. Londo who was modified with bat DNA in a similar manner to how Brin was modified with wolf DNA, giving her some 'vampire' like powers, just as Brin has some 'werewolf' like powers. She'd also have helped school pre-teen Brin, among her other duties for the mad scientist, although she'd only be about five or so years older than him. One part big sister, one part may/october romance, one part young monsters in love, tied together by the unspeakable things Brin's father did to both of them?

My own Carggite notion;

For my Emerald Legion fanfic, I decided that Cargg had three moons, spaced precisely equidistant and sharing the same orbit, an arrangement that seemed patently artificial, but nobody knew who was responsible for. At the centerpoints between each of the three moons, also spaced equidistantly and sharing the same orbit, were a trio of wormholes that would open up and transport those intersecting it over vast distances. These also were obviously not naturally occuring, and it was believed that the moons were somehow moved into position (or *created there*) to help create these spatial / gravitational anomalies.

One led spinward, one coreward, and one across the core to the other spiral arm entirely, with Cargg being conveniently (too conveniently) located mid spiral arm, and serving as a transport hub to move rapidly from one end of the spiral arm to the other. (Talok VIII, for example, was at the end of the spiral arm, near where the wormhole exited, and would have never made contact with the rest of the UP if not for the Carggite wormholes!)

Carggites born under the gravitational influence of this peculiar arrangement have the potential to be able to replicate, but this potential isn't realized unless the Carggite is transported through one of the wormholes while a hyperspace engine is burned out. (Obviously this was first discovered by accident, but is now replicated annually as new Carggites are shuttled through the wormhole and inducted into the 'duo' caste.) Doing this through one wormhole allows the Carggite to duplicate. Doing this through a second wormhole allows the Carggite to triplicate. Presumably, doing this a third time through the wormhole that leads to the other spiral arm would allow the Carggite to quadruplicate, but the first time this wormhole was opened, an invasion by rapacious man-eating alien insectoids occured, and since then the third wormhole has been off-limits! (The wormholes can only be opened from Cargg, making Cargg quite literally the gatekeepers to the galaxy, and they charge a pretty penny to shuttle cargo from one end of the galaxy to the other, through their exclusive control of the wormholes.) Only relatively successful Carggites get inducted into the 'duos,' and only the elite get to be 'trios,' due to the expense of securing a berth on the annual flights (since they have to wreck a valuable hyperdrive to catalyze the hand-waving pseudoscience that allows the Carggite to call up 'other quantum selves' or whatever).

A friend and I have debated the whole Dawny-as-stereotype notion... one position put forward was that Starhaven was a deliberate tourist-trap (where casinos would not be out of place).

I personally find the notion that Dawny *has* to wear buckskin and be mainly 'a tracker,' and that Starhaven has to be low-tech as very rooted in stereotype.

Dawny as Kwai is interesting. In some ways, Shikari was largely a de-stereotyped Dawny... but it begs the question of the Legionverse having Native North Americans at all in any role.

I like this.

Too many futures assume a strong authoritarian government, benevolent or otherwise. To me, a real utopia would be more about 'live and let live' libertarianism, with a sense of responsibility to those in need - and to come together in times of crisis.

The Carggite scenario is brilliant, I must add. I have long favored the Dominator-experiment for most UP worlds' hereditary powers, but I like this a lot.

I would add that an effective Lu (as we saw in Reboot especially) makes Val a redundancy. I'd rather have no Val because (1) I'm tired of seeing him killed off, and (2) Karate is only one form of martial arts, and may have been exotic in the mid 60s but seems like a limited concept today. Yes, Val has a range of art forms, but he's still rather unnecessary.

I like Jeckie/Jecka being two different contemporary beings. Maybe even with a symbiotic relationship? What if the snakes are the source of illusion-casting, a smaller 'aboriginal' population largely welcoming of colonists but insisting on limited technology as it interferes with their own cultures/habitat. Jeckie's illusion-casting might be from being a rare human with the bility to master the snakes' craft, and also temperament/attitudes acceptable to her teachers. Jecka could have been a sort of other-race best friend, which might not sit well with other humans.

I'm tired of Tinya-as-brat as per the TV cartoon and Superboy's Legion. Preboot bold explorer Tinya works best, as far as I'm concerned.

I agree with Set re: Dawny, but prefer TK's Cargg. I admit I'm quite partial to sentient (even godlike) stars playing a role in their systems' life patterns. The wormhole theory is interesting, but seems a little too cumbersome for my tastes. sorry.

The idea of the star itself having a role in Carggite evolution sounds similar to what was done with the Vegan system in Omega Men, with X'hal being a 'goddess' and a manifestation of the sun of the Vegan system. It would be interesting to find out that *every* star has entities of energized plasma living within them, and that 'solar flares' are actually probes, sent by the creatures within to briefly explore the vast expanses of cold and hungry darkness surrounding their fiery homes (alternately, some solar flares are ridden by the sun-dweller equivalent of surfers, who enjoy the danger and forbidden thrill of 'touching the black'). Some civilizations of 'solarians' might even be in contact with each other (particularly in galactic cores, where the stars are packed in pretty close to each other, or in a Cargg situation, where there are three suns snug up against each other) which we would consider 'sunspot activity' as they send messages to each other (with the side effect of messing up communications for those on the planets orbiting their suns, which they never would imagine harbor a form of life themselves, composed of cold, dark matter).

It's a fine line with a Dawnstar-like character to have a character of any ethnicity that doesn't stomp on a stereotype, without being a total slave to political correctness. The associations even change over time, and at the time Dawnstar was introduced, her having luck powers would have drawn no attention at all, but these days, Native Americans are associated with gambling casinos, and it could be taken as a stereotype. Taking her 'Dawnstar' name more literally, perhaps the Starhaven of Retcon Legion land is settled by humans of native american descent who have taken to genetically engineering themselves, perhaps with some tweaked out Tamaranian DNA, to gain solar-powered bodily processes and winged flight and the ability to survive in space. Instead of tracking powers, she'd have the ability to channel that absorbed solar power into lasers (or just blinding flashes), as well as superhumanly keen vision. She'd end up with the same sort of 'create light' powers that Sun Boy had before he developed into a fire controller instead. Like Starfire, which I'm obviously riffing off of here, she'd be unique in her light-generating abilities, with the average Starhavenite being merely a winged space-traveller who feeds on sunlight.

She'd end up with a power that no other Legionnaire has (since even if Sun Boy, Ultra Boy and Superboy/girl/manbearpig can create fire or shoot heat beams from their eyes, it's not the same thing as lasers) and keep almost all of the same characteristics of Starhaven and the current Dawnstar. Update the costume to something sleek and silvery (black would be optimal for light-absorbtion, but silver just looks cooler. It's a space material, that appears reflective and shiny, and yet efficiently absorbs light!) and befitting a space-faring society such as Starhaven, and she's good to go!

I personally want a strong government able to keep the peace, but I simply felt that this version felt more futuristic and gave the Legion more reason for existence.
I never favored that version because, 1 - it's an unnecessary explanation in a universe already full of humanoid life, 2 - it makes Earth more special and important than it already is.
I don't like applying such notions of "redundancy". With Val, the problem I see is like Dawnstar. The Legion's only prominent Asian has to be the galaxy's best martial artist?
Open question: Can anyone retcon/revise Karate Kid to reduce this impression?
I was thinking of different powers. One would have illusion-casting, the other super-senses.

Given that Trips, Dreamy, Shady, Violet, and, to a lesser extent, Tinya, Imra, Projectra and Brin, have all been revealed to be various levels of super-competent at martial arts / hand to hand combat, Karate Kid himself seems a better choice to be a trainer, than a Legionnaire. (And really, why the hell doesn't the Legion have any support staff in the HQ? They should have people like M'Rissey and Gym'll and whatever working and / or living right there in the HQ, on retainer, or something!)

I love the idea of a Legionnaire who gets by without powers, but every darn Legionnaire (and especially the ladies) are also world-class martial artists, making him just one of an ever-increasing crowd of kung-fu Legionnaires.

As for the asian stereotype, I'd prefer an asian-themed Karate Kid to a purely caucasian 'American Samurai' great white hope riff, but would find an Afro-Brazilian capoeira mestre (just avoid 'he's got the glow!' references) or some sort of Talokkian melee / weapons-master who came to Earth to add Earth's combat arts to his repertoire to be even cooler.

I like both of those ideas. Karate Kid was a product of his time, when Kung Fu and Karate were generally Asian concepts. Now, with the growth of MMA, a martial artist could be from anywhere on Earth. Of course, the name "Karate Kid" would probably not fit.

On a different note, here is my idea for Timber Wolf. This started as the character background for a threeboot fanfic (the tale of how threeboot Brin and Jeckie came together), but since there was so little interest in the threeboot, I never wrote it. I took elements from various boots and the cartoon. (My apologies for the length.)

Brin Londo was born on the planet Zuun, the son of renowned scientist, Dr. Mar Londo. At a young age, Brin's father failed to obtain authorization to test the effects of the radiation from the rare isotype Zuunium, which Dr. Londo theorized could be used to create an army of super soldiers. Without official support from the UP, a crazed Dr. Londo decided to test out his theories on the only subject available to him, his 10-year old son.

The result increased Brin's already natural strength and athleticism and enhanced his senses, but left him prone to losing control. These problems seemed to increase after he was doused with radiation, which Dr. Londo did to Brin every few months.

Brin's mother, who was opposed to her husband's treatment of their son, tried to stop the experiments, but her efforts were thwarted. One time, when Brin was about 12, his mother tried to free him from her husband's lab, but Brin, in a feral rage, lashed out at her. She was only slightly injured, but terrified of what her own son had become, she fled. She left Zuun that same night, and never returned.

Brin remained with his father for another year, continuing the treatments, but blamed himself for his mother leaving and grew to hate his father for turning him into a freak. Brin was strong and agile, and capable of seeing and hearing things clearly at long distances, but with every treatment, Brin grew angrier and less in control of himself. Dr. Londo seemed not to notice these side effects, as he grew even more crazed about his plans to turn Brin into the perfect, super-strong, super-athletic, and near-impervious soldier -- and his fevered single-minded efforts crossed the line into insanity. Brin, fearing what was happening to him and finally realizing that his father would destroy him, left Zuun at the age of 13 by stowing away on a cargo ship.

For the next year, Brin led a hand-to-mouth existence. He found that his rages occurred less frequently now that he was no longer receiving radiation treatments, but he still feared what he could do when he lost control, which still occasionally occurred. For the most part, he tried to stay on the outskirts of society, but he found that he was well-suited to working mercenary jobs that took advantage of his skills as a solitary fighter, hunter and tracker. He also made every effort to avoid detection by his father, who was continuing to seek Brin's return so he could continue his experiments.

During that time, he learned of the Legion of Super Heroes. While Brin had little use for a team, he learned that one of their members was a noted scientist and considered to be the greatest mind in the universe. So Brin traveled to Earth and sought the help of Braniac 5, hoping he would find a cure for Brin's rages. However, while Brainy managed to find some short-term cures for Brin's rages, Brainy also discovered that the Zuunium treatment had a devastating long-term side effect. Over time (and with further exposure to similar types of radiation), the Zuunium would cause Brin's body to mutate into a more feral form. As Brin ages and his body breaks down, the rages will return, stronger and more difficult to control. Eventually, Brin will lose all semblance of humanity and become little more than an animal.

While on Earth, Brin rebuffed requests to join the Legion, believing his life was better suited to his lone mercenary work (which Braniac 5 found quite useful to employ). However, during his time with the Legion, Brin learned about some 20th Century heroes, including the Batman, who wore the symbol of a fearful nocturnal creature as a means of scaring his enemies in battle. The led Brin to adopt the wolf symbol into his own costume.

At the time of the new Legion reboot, Brin would look fully human, and be a "lone wolf" that the Legion runs across on occasion. However, his connections to the Legion run deep and he continues to hope Brainiac 5 will find a way to save him. Moreover, Brin is in love with Ayla Ranzz. (I would use Ayla in a bow to Legion tradition, though I actually liked Brin's relationship with Projectra in the threeboot, and thought her desire to 'rebel' against her family by leaving Orando would have been part of Brin's attraction to her.) Eventually, his love for and desire to protect Ayla will lead him to join the Legion full time. But he also has a secret he will not share with her. He has a deal with Brainy that, when Brin devolves too much to control himself, Brany will end Brin's life.

Brin's powers are similar to what they were at the end of the Shooter phase -- very heightened senses, strength, and agility. He is the best Legion tracker on land (as opposed to Dawnstar, whose powers excel in space). He also knows how to fight dirty, so he is perfect for espionage squad missions where obvious superpowers would stand out and less of a boy scout mentality is appropriate.

A Legion disconnected from the government is a worthy retcon. I've wondered if you could have a Legion just scraping by, financially, not supported by government or R.J. Brande. They could have flight rings and some tech, because Brainy is smart enough to build incredible things from cheap materials. But I think I would like to see what independence from (not hostility to) established authority could do.

One way to get away from the stereotypes, but still represent different Earth races, is to apply common racial family names and some physical features to the characters, but not the stereotypical powers - and no stereotypical dress.

The Asian character could be Ultra Boy - neither martial arts nor Eastern mysticism.

The martial arts specialist could be an alien - or Triplicate Girl, whose tri-jitsu was very powerful.

The native American could have lightning powers - and a twin sister, if one wanted to go that far. Et cetera.

The problem you run into if you do that is that traditionalists complain. Look at the negative reaction to alien Sneckie or threeboot Star Boy. People who have grown up with the characters being a particular way complain when they don't fit the historical representation of the character. And if you come up with "new" characters with similar powers as a way of avoiding those complaints, you get the complaint that it's not really the Legion.

In a way, a retconned Legion's diversity suffers from stereotypes because that diversity originally came about in the 1960s and 1970s when DC was trying to add heroes identifiable with particular racial groups (Asians, African-Americans, American Indians), and gave them powers and traits that "fit" their race. I don't think that means that Tyroc would have to be a 31st equivalent of a Black nationalist like he was in the 1970s Legion, but I think readers would balk if he was not at least Black.

At some point the old guys are going to die off and maybe the Legion will be able to fly along some new visionairy lines!

As to Dawnstar, REBELS has shown a Starhaven that was originally founded by the Anasazi.
They were kidnapped to be subjects in an experimental colony.
As a group, they look and act very 'Southwest Indian', only with wings.

At the 21th century time period, only one of them has space tracking and 'knowing where people are' abilities, and she's an outcast with stunted wings.

Vril takes off with her and it looks like he's going to make some changes to her, so that she fits into a containment suit.

Her name is Wildstar.
Oh, well.

If I were retconning Dawnstar, I would have made her a mutant Thanagarian.
I would keep the wings but make her more like her Bounty persona - perhaps a cop liason/mentor to the Legion from the Science Police, only with a more active roll than the originals.

The Brin/radiation deteriation thing happened in TMK and I'd rather not see it again, personally.

I prefer the wolf DNA approach.

Concerning Tasmia, Umbra is a combination of Shadow Lass and the Lady Memory character from the original Legion, I think.

So, I'd rather she didn't combine with Lydda.

I WOULD like Lydda to be, say Tasmia's sister, though.

I'd have Lydda go through the Shadow Ritual, and everyone thinks she failed.
Her father gives her an experimental 'warrior' drug that produces limited invulnerbility, superstrength, superagility/speed and supersenses.
But, for some reason, they only work in shadows or full dark.

That's when it's discovered that she DIDN'T actually fail the Rites, but only has the limited ability to form shadow around herself.
Lucky. (Or the ancesters plan well.)

As to Cargg, I think that stars might be sentient, in truth, so the idea of a tristar involvement in the life on it's planets sounds great to me.

I would retcon all the traditionalist away. No whiney bastards in my Legion by gum.

I really like that, particularly working in the 'lone wolf' angle where Brin is team-adjacent at the beginning, but slowly gets more and more involved in Legion affairs, through his solo missions.

On the other hand, I'd be interested in working Lyle Norg into this somehow. Perhaps Brainy isn't exactly burning down the lab to find a cure (in Brin's perhaps-paranoid-opinion), and he seeks out a second opinion? And then Lyle, being very good, but not figuring out how his own attempts at a cure will interact with treatments that Brainy has used to stabilize the deterioration causes a reaction that super-accelerates the mutations, forcing Lyle to own up to trying to end-run around Brainy and the two of them having to work together to come up with a more permanant solution to Brin's problems, while the rest of the team has to hunt him down, since he's escaped and is running around wreaking havoc!

That way we get to fold it all in, even a brief (two issue, tops) appearance by a feral devolved animalistic Brin, and leave nothing out. Once Brainy and Lyle have come up with a stable cure (which will build off of what Lyle started), the whole feral thing will become a sidenote. Some other teammmate might occasionally think that he's reverting or whatever, but Imra will point out that any signs of temper or moodiness leftover are entirely human, a result of his life experiences, and not something that needs to be 'cured.'

A lot of that was derived from threeboot canon, since Brin's solo status was established in his first appearance. In the fic idea, Brin would be doing his own thing (following his break-up with Ayla), but the Legion needs someone to protect Projectra as she leaves Orando to come to Earth. For political reasons -- to avoid riling up traditionalist Orandans opposed to Orando's entanglement in the affairs of the UP -- the Legion could not come to Orando to provide an escort. So Brainy suggests that Brin. Most of his powers would be relatively secret, and his enhanced sight and hearing could he useful in identifying out any threats to Jeckie

Lyle would work well. He did not fit the threeboot scenario because he was a new member and Brin seemed to have some relationship with Brainy and a sense of obligation to him before the threeboot began. I was thinking Brainy helping Brin in the past as a way of explaining why Brin would feel obligated to Brainy (which is part of the reason he would agree to play bodyguard to a spoiled, pampered princess).

I'm not as big a fan of the team hunting a completely feral Brin down. I've never liked feral Brin in any form (Furball, the animated show). I would think the rages would be similar to what we saw from Brin toward the end of the threeboot (after he was hit by the additional radiation from ERG-1). In this iteration, Brin would realize the danger he poses when he goes into those rages and want to stop them, but the bigger picture is knowing that those rages are just a precursor to what he truly fears -- completely losing his humanity. That is what really intrigued me about the idea; how would a person react if they knew at some future point (but with no idea of when), they would become little more than an animal. Key aspects of Brin's character are: (1) that he does not know when or how he will change, so there is a fear of the unknown, and (2) he knows his time as a "human" are limited. If he has already become feral and that was reversed, I'm not sure the unknown future would be so terrifying.

I definitely like that, since it creates tension within the team. Some team members would naturally mistrust a character who is unpredictable, while others, like Imra, would appreciate the impact of formative experiences. It also keeps Brin on the margins of the team, which is where I have always felt the character fits best.

Well, for starters, it would require a lot more politicking than we're used to. No more go-between to get your "interventions" cleared in advance. More importantly, no more go-between to smooth everything out for you if you can't pull off a heroic rescue;Or you can pull it off, but somebody powerful didn't want you to.

I'd read it. I'm guessing a lot of people would balk, though.



(snip)

Sure. You could also make a point of having more than one character as shorthand for each ethnic group. That would help. No reason why there couldn't be an NA Jo and a character like Dawnstar in the same series. (But, yeah, PLEASE lose the fringe and the damn Cosmo cut-shirt.) And make her skillset more varied, or at least more understandable. No reason she couldn't have both innate abilities and advanced technical abilties both related to the same use.

Two characters I wouldn't seriously retcon are Brainiac 5 and Shadow Lass. Some tweaking or melding of the different versions perhaps, but not an overhaul.

On the other hand, Saturn Girl could be a challenging retcon. She has so much baggage as the iron-butt, it would be refreshing to see her as more of a gentle psychologist/social worker type, very people-oriented. She could still be very strong but more of a velvet glove. It has occasionally been mentioned or inferred that she sees the depravity within people, and has to harden herself against what minds truly reveal. If she had been in training as a healer (instead of the Science Police background she got in the reboot), she could have had some balance to this with experience of successful treatment of the deranged and evil.

Perhaps, Imra should do some side work with childrem.
I think mentorship would be particularly good for her.
Kids certainly aren't perfect but evil isn't so hardened in them.
I see a lot of police officers work with children. It helps their perspective on life, I think.

And I only agree about Shady and Brainy if they're the Umbra and 5.1 versions, though!
I've grown to truly dislike the 'hanging on Lar' version.


Concerning Brainy, I think it's sad that people think that the smarter you are, the more impatient, hard and manipulative that you get.

I look at DaVinci, Newton, Gandi and Einstein and I don't see any of that disgust toward the life around them.

I also think that being kind is better than being smart.
And that someone with a super-intelligence would be able to understand just how much we can't and don't know, especially as mortals!
Their perspective should be one of humility, rather than always being egocentric.

Oh, well.

Imra in specific, and the 31st century in general, need to have some sort of rehabilitation other than Takron-Galtos.

At least half of the villains that the Legion fights should be 'redeemable' using some sort of rehabilatory / placement system, rather than just throwing them in a box with the likes of Validus. Imra would then spend time on the team, doing the superhero thing, and, somewhere in Legion HQ, she'd have former super-villains wandering in from time to time to work on parole-mandated counseling visits or whatnot, as she helps them find more productive (and legal) outlets for their issues and emotional needs (and more lawful and productive uses for their powers).

It's very much a comic-book trope that the bad-guys are beat up and sent to prison and come out as bad as when they went in (if not worse), which might be a fair representation of how our prison system works in the real world, turning kids who made a bad choice into hardened killers, but you'd think that 1000 years from now, with entire planets full of telepaths running around, there would be something a little smarter going on in dealing with criminals other than warehousing them, desocializing them and concentrating them together so that they can feed each other new and exciting methods of breaking the law...

And then there's the effect that a planet full of precognitives would have on prison breakouts. "Yes, we know you're planning an escape, Prisoner 1572. We've already arrested the accomplice who was sneaking in to rescue you. Six people would have been hurt and two killed during your rescue, and they are suing for emotional distress since they foresaw themselves dying in the fire you set to cover your escape. Both are still having nightmares about dying in that fire..."

Heh, that's a legal pickle. Can a Naltorian sue you for something that she stopped you from doing, but that has emotionally affected her anyway? Can a Titanian sue for emotional damages, because the nasty thoughts you keep broadcasting around him are affecting his ability to function?

Obviously, for a race with physical powers, such as an Imskian being stepped on by an inattentive co-worker, it's clear that the 'stepper' can be liable, but races with extra-physical senses take it to a strange new level.

The precog idea is interesting, but if you could have precogs predict behaviors from the already convicted, why not use them to stop crime altogether? Tha trope -- punishing people for what they will do -- is pretty cliched in sci fi, however.

As for Imra, I actually prefer Iron Butt Imra to something touchy-feely. I can see how constantly sensing other people's thoughts and emotions can harden a person. And one of the things I always liked about Legion women is that they were not wallflowers. I appreciated that a woman like Imra with a non-physical power was tough. (It's also why I liked post-kidnap pre-boot Shrinking Violet and threeboot Atom Girl.) I would be concerned that a kinder, softer Imra would wind up coming across like Counselor Troi on Star Trek: TNG.

Set:

(snip)

Quote

...It's very much a comic-book trope that the bad-guys are beat up and sent to prison and come out as bad as when they went in (if not worse), which might be a fair representation of how our prison system works in the real world, turning kids who made a bad choice into hardened killers...

I always figured that you're supposed to regard the bad guys who come out of prison in worse shape as the exceptions that prove the rule. You don't hear about the others, because they're either stopped beforehand in the manner you describe elsewhere, or they mess up once and then get better.

I always assumed that there were jails other than Takron-Galtos, just like there are various gradations of prison security in contemporary times.

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but you'd think that 1000 years from now, with entire planets full of telepaths running around, there would be something a little smarter going on...

As with some of the points FC raised earlier, I think that'd be a fascinating Legion that I'd get a kick out of reading. OTOH, a lot of fans would balk, and given the required formulas of superhero comics, it would be very difficult to pitch. If you're deterring 99% of the criminals out there before they even make a move, who does that leave for your team to fight ?

Oh, and in regards to Saturn Girl, what Reckless said. All the way.

Very, very clever villains.