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

Going with a 'linked but seperate' version, like the Roman mystery cults that kludged Demeter, Selene and whomever together into one composite entity, you could make an Elseworlds version of Luornu that is a composite entity that splits into the White Witch, Dream Girl and uh, someone else... (Perhaps Imra? Perhaps a female version of Brin? Perhaps Dawny?)

I vaguely recall a tripartate male grouping, from when I was writing the original post, and skipped them because of thier boyness, but they've completely left my brain...

Edit: looked it up. I was thinking of the Hindu Trimurti of Brahma (creator), Vishnu (architect, preserver, shaper) and Shiva (destroyer). Making Element Lad, Brainiac 5 and Wildfire into a modern Trimurti, with Jan as creator, Querl as 'builder' and Drake as destroyer would be kinda spiffy.

I toyed around with that notion, back in the day, and constructed a variation where Trom (and the Controllers, and Oans) were either physically or spiritually descended from the archetypal shapers / imposer of order, and the Somahturans were descended from an archetypal creator race (retaining on the ability to create micro-life, with their 'create disease' power being the last dregs of the original biogenesis abilities of the parent race). The destroyers would not have left behind descendents or inspirations, but themselves would still have lingering survivors, waiting to come forth and wreck havoc once again!

I just thought it was funny to pick two completely unrelated characters, Element Lad and Infectious Lass, and give them ties to a primordial past that neither of them has any knowledge of.

I LIKE IT! Except I'd go for spitting out the green fire, what can I say I'm a sucker for tradition.

There are too many superboys. Dev-Em, Ultra Boy, Daxamites there are just too many Superboy knock offs. Lets do some retconning. I'm not really interested in getting rid of the knockoffs as I am cleaning up the origins. First Ultra Boy. Lets say some group like the Controllers decide to take over the multiverse with an army of Supermen. So they decide on a mass clonning program of the greatist hero known... Superman. The attempt at getting some Superman DNA could be an interesting story in and of itself. The DNA is used to create a clone. However given the difficult nature in getting a perfect clone to work, the original Legion clones from the sixties would die after 48 hours of being let out of thier tanks, vats, tubes, chanbers...whatever. This first clone has Supermans powers but due to a glitch can only use one power at a time. Tadah its Jo Nah. The Controllers continue thier experiments and manage to perfect a clone. But the clone proves unruly and there is a scarcity of Kryptonite in the future(that would be a new plot device). So the controllers abandon that clone. Presto we now have Dev-Em. The Controllers third attempt is also succesful and this time the Controllers genetically engineer a new weakness into these clones to make them easier to keep inline. Now I never really liked the idea of a weakness to lead. However unless someone would like to come up with something else I guess I'll stick with lead. Anyway we now have a new origin for the Daxamites. Now I realize this causes some timeline questions. We simply solve those by having the 20th century Controllers be the ones performing these experiments. Anybody remember the Invasion mini-series, you know the one with the gene bombs. The Controllers place Jo-Nah and Dev-Em in suspended animation. They are then later freed from suspension at later times, not necessarilly at the same time or location though.

Now how about working on some villians. I'll start with Tharok. Although I kind of like this character I always thought his origin needed some cleaning up. I thought that since his species was never described in detail we could fill in some blanks as far as this character goes. In other words how could he survive his own origin? I started thinking of Planarian worms. His species can regenerate damage to thier bodies, however the explosion that blasted him in half prevented the regeneration from taking place by effectively cauterizing that part of his body. Now how Tharok's clone, The Dark Man...coolest villian name EVER, had psionic abilities and the original did not is beyond me. So lets give Tharok mental powers! Icluding his cybernetics this would make Tharok a far more imposing villian than his previous incarnations. Not to mention a more formidable leader of the Fatal Five.

Now as far as Emerald Empress goes, the Emerald Eye IS an artifact of Oa. The Empress should use the eye for more than just flight, force attacks, and force fields. In other words generate constructs like the Green Lanterns. I'd keep a weekness for the eye. I don't know about using Kryptonite though. Maybe some other radioactive substance.

I like Validus as is. However I'd drop the mutated by Darkseid son of Lighting Lad and Saturn Girl origin. I like the idea of a rampaging force of nature that came from nowhere.

I wouldn't change Mano's origin, but I would limit his powers though. I mean destroying an entire planet with one touch is a bit much. I think I would scale him back only allowing him to be able to disintergrate a certain volume of mass.

As for the Persuader I'd definitley make him alot stronger than your average humanoid. I would start him out in a gang of thieves That would consist of the Persuader, the Black Mace, and Elvo(of the Wanderers). The gang raids a long forgotten weapons storehouse. Maybe somewhere on Orando(?) This would be because of the medievil nature of these weapons. Each character then goes his separate way, with Elvo reforming himself at some point.

In Emerald Legion, my version of Tharok used cybernetics and an internal computer to replicate Coluan level intelligence (and bionic limbs to give him limited superhuman physical ability, around Timber Wolf level, which he rarely used), and of the exact same species as Validus (so he'd have small fangs, a large smooth head and three-fingered hands, but be much slimmer and human-sized). Validus became his organic doomsday weapon, grown to have the strength of many thousands, but a weak childlike mind easy for Tharok to control. Validus' enormous brain was made from cloned tissue stolen from dozens of telepaths of different species, and by Tharok's standards ended up being something of a failure, able to use that potentially planetary-scale telepathy only to generate blasts of pure psychic devastation, and not do anything 'cool' like probe minds or take over small cities with mental domination.

If I were to go a step further and make a psionically potent 'Dark Man' incarnation of Tharok, I'd say that this came from the same research, only refined, as he would have implanted psi-active tissue stolen from Titanians, etc. into his own brain (with the same cold efficiency that led him to implant himself with all sorts of cybernetic stuff). He'd end up with diverse and potent psychic powers, but also become fractured somewhat in psyche, and become not just malevolent and mercenary, but unpredictable and psychotic!

Persuader would definitely need to have some sort of special connection to his axe. He'd be pretty worthless as a recurring threat if you could turn him into a regular schmoe by disarming him / locking his axe away behind a force field. A little bit of increased strength might be cool as well, but I like the idea that he is earth-descended, so perhaps his increased strength is chemical in nature, the result of the 30th century version of steroids, or something.

I do like the idea of some magical armory being raided that led to Elvo, Black Mace, Persuader, etc. gaining their special weapons. Tying it into other Legion lore, perhaps that special arsenal was housed on the Sorcerer's World, where these items of terrible destructive power were taken to keep them out of the hands of bad-guys. The raid on Sorcerer's World, unprecedented in it's boldness, might somehow have triggered the evolution of Mordru into a force of darkness (was he the guardian of these relics, discredited among his peers for failing to protect these items? Was he their 'man on the inside' who helped empower them, making him the LSH version of Loki / the Enchantress, empowering villains like the Absorbing Man / Wrecking Crew? Was he just an honest science-fearing sorcerer who lost someone to the raid, and developed an irrational loathing for the rest of the universe, a desire to strengthen the Sorcerer's World agaisnt such invasions, by conquering the planet and making it into a magically potent force to be feared by the rest of the galaxy!).

Mano seems like a perfect character to merge with Wildfire, or to make a similar sort of entity, pure anti-energy within a special suit, causing anti-matter destruction with a touch. Having a plotline where the Fatal Five steals a Wildfire suit (or just cybernetically raids the Legion HQs databases to get the plans to make Wildfire suits) for Mano, upgrading him to a flying, energy blasting menace on par with Wildfire! There doesn't need to be a direct connection between Wildfire and Mano (making them brothers would be cliche and should be avoided), but having them both be survivors of a similar sort of research could be neat. Perhaps Wildfire was the first, and the disaster that led to his creation destroyed a power plant and led to some deaths. The research *should* have been scrapped, but one researcher on a distant world attempted to replicate it on a grand scale, and succeeded in destroying all life on his world with the devastation that followed his 'rebirth.' (Nothing so over the top as the planet exploding, just radioactive firestorms spreading through the atmosphere and sweeping over the continents. The planet itself would be a colony world, relatively recent, or some sort of technological backwater that was attempting to 'catch up' with UP technology by taking this shortcut and allowing this discredited researcher to boost them into the future, unaware of how dangerous his ideas really were!)

Alternately, perhaps Mano was first, and Wildfire came after, in which case Mano would be outraged that Wildfire has managed to aquire such a superior suit from Brainiac, compared to what Tharok provided Mano. In confrontations between the two, Mano would attempt to 'tag' Wildfire and rupture his suit, causing the usual anti-matter explosion (and denying his nemesis the advantages of his suit).

I've devoted much less thought to the Emerald Empress, since I made her a 'good guy,' taking the place of R.J. Brande in the formation of the Legion, in my only serious foray into retcon / fanfic.

Grimbor. Another villian with a cool name. And very underused too. I thought a good retelling of this character would go well with the recent political climate in the U.S. Grimbor and Charma actually work for the UP as "interogators." Grimbor would perform the interagations and Charma would use her powers to seduce the prisoners and get info from them. Sort of good cop bad cop. A member of the Legion espionage squad(chameleon boy), on a tip from a UP member who is against torture, posses as a criminal to uncover sentient rights violations. Grimbor and Charma are exposed and jailed. From there the rest of the origin story pretty much follows the original story for Grimbor and Charma. Charma dies in prison during a riot and Grimobr snaps. This would however give Grimbor a slightly darker edge to his character. But no more giant chains around the Earth though. I always thought that was way to much of a stretch for a story.

The Time Trapper. Long time villan of the LSH, but without an origin story. In my mind I see him/her...it(?) as entropy personified. So I would make TT a member of the Endless from the Gaiman Sandman stories. The Trappers m.o. for messing with the timestream and creating alternate dimensions is that TT is trying to find a way to end all of existence. Its the Time Trappers job nothing personnal.

This would however be a good set up for bringing back the Infinate man. Infinate man represents circular time. A living causality loop himself the Infinate man is diametricaly opposed to the Time Trappers designs. The two villans could sqaure off from time to time(no pun intended). Or the two villans could be used as the basis for a long running story arc. Or even better the two characters could face off in a multiple issue epic struggle that spills over into the pages of other comics ala crisis. It could be called the Time War, or the Chronal War, or The Continuity War. Any way you want to call it that story would be freakin EPIC!!

For the last year, or so, I've been building a Legion universe based on a Federation of 3s.

The foundation is the Carggite Federation of Planets, with Cargg at the center, literally. The other member planets have been artifically moved into a spacial relationship to each other, forming a systems wide and deep 'triangle' around Cargg.

Without going into too much detail, the ruling govenments usually have a triune rulership/presidency/whatever.

Carggite genetics is spread throughout all of the various planets' populations to one degree or another.
This results in 'rulers' who are either classic 3 in 1 individuals or identical triplets (some planets have separate genders possible, others don't.)

One 'trilogy' is Nura, Mysa and Jecka.
Jecka functions as Princess, Nura as Prophetess and Mysa as Priestess.
Together, they are the heirs to the 'joined' worlds (teserected)(sp) of Orando, Naltor and the Sorcer's/Gem World.

The Winathian twins become the Winathian triplets and Jo, Val and Brin are aspects of each other.

There's a lot more, needless to say.
I'm just glad that someone(s) else is thinking in 3s for the Legion!
oops +

This idea lends itself pretty well to the idea of the Hindu trimurti.

Mekt associates best with Shiva, the Destroyer, obviously.

Garth associates best with Brahma, the Creator. He's both a Founding Legionnaire, the first Legionnaire to die saving others and one of the first Legionnaires to have kids (with the other being Imra, obviously). He's all about creation.

Which leaves Ayla only Vishnu, the Preserver, who, archetypally, is the force that stands between Creation and Destruction, and gives meaning to everything that occurs between those two polar opposites. It's not immediately apparent that she fits this role, but, of the three Ranzz kids, she's the one who chose to stay home and preserve her family, she's the one who chose to come join the Legion to 'hold his place' in the Legion when Garth died, and she's the one who returned to home and family after he returned, only returning to the Legion, again, to replace her brother when he went on sabbatical to get married and have kids. She ends up being the balancing force to Garth's actions, and, in a trinity-based storyline, she could also be the balancing force in Mekt's life as well.

Has Ayla ever been team leader? That sort of position would fit well with a preserver-archetype role, as she would become the one 'holding the team together' in a tough time, while Garth would be great at creating and initiating things, but less suited towards keeping them functioning afterwards, and Mekt would be more prone to tear things apart...