Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Earthman does not belong in the Legion

In our society we do not put murderer's and criminals in our police force..we put them in prison where they belong. What Mr. Levit's has done with Earthman is morally wrong.

The only way for this to even remotely work for me is that OVER TIME, Earthman comes to a realization that what he has done is a great crime and he feels genuine remorse and wants deeply to atone for his actions. This of course takes time, and even then he should serve out his sentence in prison. We do not need to be telling people that they can lie, cheat, steal, and kill without having long-term consequences.

Sorry Mr. Levit's, the story you are telling is just morally wrong.

While I initially agree that Earth Man does not belong on the team (AND to add insult to injury, does not deserve GL status!!) I **AM** very curious as to where Paul Levitz is taking this.

I think we just need to step back, take a breath and see what happens.

Might this all go tits up? It could... but there's also lots of interesting ways for this to play out.

Maybe we don't put murderers and criminals on our police forces, but we have supported governments led by criminals and murderers, as long as they took our side against other criminals and murderers.

hmmm. maybe he can be said to be crazy or remorseful...eventually.

but i'd prefer if he went back to absorbancy boy or even went by reflecto if he were truly repentant.

the gl ring is supposed to fight evil. even sinestro was good before he went all yellow.

he's not even magneto where we could understand his motivation.

i think it's creepy to let a racist into the legion.


it does reek of sensationalism like much of issue 1. but i'm still buying ....


and: absorbancy boy needs a kryptonite. he's too powerful.

I don't think Earth Man is going to be in the Legion. I think he is going to be the start of a new Legion of Super Villains.

in general, no. but there are the occasional bad cops who get protected, despite having committed various offenses that
would land you or I in prison. Thankfully, there are rare, but they do exist.

Also, the more authority one has held, the more likely one is to face a politically determined decision than one of justice. Earth Man was not the equivalent of a street-level bank robber; he was more of a Pinochet, where even the decision whether to try him becomes a political nightmare. Since it seems Earth Man still has political allies in power - there was no full purge of xenophobes/supporters - this becomes a politically viable avenue for the government, if not the Legion.

quite the opposite, in my opinion (but I respect yours). He is taking the opportunity to explore a nuanced outcome of the situation Johns created. Rather than just have the bad guys sent off to prison and everything is hunky-dory, we get to see a less savory alternative, in which it takes more than punching out the bad guy to save the day.

In contrast, a simplistic cops-and-robbers style story that pretends every wrongdoer never gets away with it is a fiction that bears little reflection with our real world. Yes, it's a nice moral fable - but immoral in the sense of perpetuating a fiction that does not exist to the extent you seem to suggest (and never has).

I think you are over-exaggerating the impact of a comic book, and ignoring the level in which those things already occur in the real world. Levitz is not creating the situation you decry; he's merely addressing it in the form of fiction.

If Earth Man *isn't* redeemed (through a cliched heroic sacrifice, saving some cute little green alien child, if not a more complicated and meaningful life choice), it just continues to paint the picture that humans are irredeemable jerkwards, and that Superman was an even bigger nincompoop for encouraging the Legion to attempt to redeem Superboy-Prime, instead of smoking him like a fine Cuban.

I'd rather the less common story, where the person with the wrong ideas gets a clue and earns some redemption, rather than the bog-standard 'bad-guy gets his comeuppance, and nobody EVERY deserves a second chance' that we are inundated in this age of intolerance.

I want a future Legion that has a dose of hope, and not fatalism and futility, where nothing the Legion does will ever matter, because their foes are utterly stained with black icky evil, and should be killed off, rather than rehabilitated.

Don't get me wrong, I loathe Johns presentation of the 31st century, where if baby Kal-El had rocketed to Earth, kindly old Ma and Pa Kent would have shot in the face with a plasma rifle and buried the body in the backyard. But it's done, and Levitz is taking the harder path of *dealing with it,* than just doing what too many Legion writers have done before and just ignoring or retconning stuff that they don't like.

I don't like that the story even happened, but Levitz is working with the crap that's been put on his plate, not dumping it on the ground and starting over with 'Fourboot.'

In the past some criminals (mostly juvenile delinquents...but still criminals) were given the option of joining the Army or Marines instead of going to jail. It was felt that they could repay society in that way and possibly learn to lead a different life. I doubt Sergeants & Lieutenants that had to deal with them appreciated it but they had no choice in the matter.

Likewise, because of the politics, the Legion has no choice in the matter if they want to stay headquartered on Earth. Politics does come up with very odd compromises to resolve difficult situations and the Legion has found themselves in the middle of one.

Besides this isn't the first time that the Legion has been forced to accept a new member based on political necessity. Wasn't the whole premise of the reboot (or was it the threeboot?) based on the concept of the Legion being accepted and authorized by the UP if they took in representatives from other member worlds? That's how we got Quantum Kid I, Gates, and others as members and Colossal Boy/Leviathan as Leader as I recall.

It's kind of similar to Andromeda in the reboot.

Myself, I'd prefer the Legion leave Earth rather than put up with the political bs, though.

omg me too!!

and that's still a viable option, if the EM route doesn't work out. But I think it's a neat idea to explore - not that I want EM as a permanent fixture.

Of course he doesn't belong in the Legion; that's the whole point of the story. It's the source of conflict! You don't get good stories where everything is always happy playtime and everybody agrees; you get it when you have characters with strong identities who are prevented from fulfilling those entities.

What Levitz has done here is not morally wrong; he's honouring the Legion by giving them tough problems to deal with. That's what you do with good characters.

I understand your outrage, Bouncing Bear, but like Matthew said above, that's the point of the story. The Legion is as outraged as you are that they have to admit a racist, homicidal maniac into their ranks.
Therein lies the drama, the conflict, the story.

[snip]

Bouncing Bear:

Quote

...In our society we do not put murderer's and criminals in our police force..

I'm sorry to say that you're assuming a lot here, BB. Cops IRL have committed some pretty egregious crimes against the people they're supposed to protect.

Whether Levitz meant it as such or not, he's at least managing an echo of real life here.

I'm interested in where he is taking it because I hope he does get Redeemed if he is going to be the Green Lantern of the Future.

A lot of people here seem to be talking about Earth Man getting redeemed or becoming remorseful or learning the error of his ways or whatever as if that's all it takes to make this Earth Man-Legionnaire experiment A-OK.

What about his punishment?

Even if Earth Man realises what he did was wrong and changes his tune, he still has the blood of innocents on his hands and needs to face the penalty for his deeds.

I'm getting really tired of characters in comics committing atrocious acts and then having an about-face, and then all the so-called heroes just carrying on like that was all it took to see justice delivered.

No. We live in a society that punishes those who commit crimes, not just tells them what they did was wrong. I think that's what BouncingBear is getting at when he writes

"We do not need to be telling people that they can lie, cheat, steal, and kill without having long-term consequences."

and I agree with him.

That all said, I think Earth Man is a good villain and I think Paul probably does too so I don't see his tenure with the Legion lasting all that long. But I'm sure it's going to create some good tension and storylines while it does.

Can you add a ^some up there? My father was a decent and caring Police Officer.

I understand the desire to want to see this as a morality play - bad guys get punished. I really do.

But if we see nothing but that, Legion (or any comics) just become a never-ending slugfest. If every end has to be the bad guys getting caught, we are back in the cliches of Code days.

rather than nothing but happy endings, a story that gets under our skin and makes us think and debate is, in my opinion, a better avenue to go.

In reality, how many of the truly worst offenders ever get the Joe Friday ending?

That part is also a bad cliche, I agree.

But I really doubt Levitz will go that route. He's clearly trying to deal with the unpleasant ramifications of the Action story, not erase it. I see this storyline as an engine for futher conflict - the sort of conflict that a fist-fight can't solve. And that's a good thing.

I hope it isn't a story of redemption, that the lack of justice for EM's crimes becomes a sticking point between the Legion and Earthgov.

First of all, Earthman hasn't accepted the offer yet, and second, even if he does, I doubt he'll be with the Legion long.

At least the Legion is showing outrage to the situation. Not so long ago, Projectra's planet got destroyed and not only did the Legion hardly react, but Sun Boy went off and joined the ranks of the killers. And when he decided that was a bad idea, the Legion accepted him back with open arms (with a few exceptions). That was a crap story. I'm hoping for a better outcome to this one.

What I'm wondering is, why does only Earthman get a get out of jail free card? He was the ring leader of the Justice League. The others could be said to have just been following orders. So why do they have to rot in prison while the true bad seed goes free?

It's only issue #1. I'll wait and see where this is going and hope for a strong and interesting story.

Okay, sorry. I thought that the "some" was pretty much understood... since I didn't put an "every" or "most" in front of "cops."

Well, hopefully Paul will make Earthman a Legionnaire then a Green Lantern soon after, and THEN turn around and blow his miserable head off a few issues later, ... you know, for dramatic effect.
That way that @#%!er is out of the picture and Paul gets to discard whatever commitment he made about keeping the Green Lanterns-in-the-future torch with the DC brass.

Don't get me wrong ... I love the whole GL mythos, always have, through-out the decades of reading comics and through all the changes and revamps, etc. I just don't want to see it in the Legion's timeline, except for an occasional passing mention, maybe a glimpse of a GL from the Earth sector. Just for flavour, nothing more.

Fingers crossed here.

So I've just been thinking about Earth Man again... and I'm having trouble remembering what his actual crimes are. Most of the things I was accusing him in my mind of doing in Lo3W were actually done by Superboy-Prime.

So does anyone remember what evil things he's actually done?

I can think of a few.

Superman and the Legion -

1. He captured the Legion and tortured certain members.
2. He (allegedly) killed Double-Header.
3. He (allegedly) threw Infectious Lass into the Time Stream.

Legion of Three Worlds -

4. He aided the LSV in their attack on Metropolis which led to various people being killed, including Karate Kid II. (But I don't think we actually saw him kill anyone himself did we?)

Anyone got any more? If that's all he's done then other than the Double-Header thing I don't think he's so irredeemably bad after all. I still prefer him as a villain but if he's not actually personally responsible for the death of anyone then I'm a lot more comfortable with the Legion accepting him as one of their own - even if it is only temporarily.

He may or may not be responsible for;

1. Throwing Mon-El into the zone.
2. Ripping off Polar Boy's arm.
3. Blinding Color Kid.

i predict Earth-Man will die within 6 issues, sacrificing himself for earth or another legionnaire. hopefully Rond Vidar will be revealed to be alive and become the GL. he's too cool a character with a great backstory to be killed off without ever seeing him in action as a GL except for his debut against the time trapper.

I actually hope not - unless there's some irony (like remaining a complete unrepentant xenophobe, but accidentally saving an alien Legionnaire - and misremembered for that deed as a 'sacrifice')

the more I think on it, I really would rather not see a simple redemption (and unless done really well, no redemption).
Ideally, I'd choose for him to perish during a state of internal conflict - that he would partially see through his own self-deceptions, but be unwilling/unable to eat enough crow to finish the job.

It is hard to see him as a GL, the more I think on it - the ultimate non-terrestrial power system.