Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Legion Outpost Do-over question#1

In another thread someone answered a question about what they were going to do in the upcoming Legionless months by saying they were going to reread their copy of Legion Outpost by LW's very own Glen Cadigan and that answer inspired me to dig out my copy and start reading through it as well.
Great idea. Thanks! (it was either Kent or Quis)
So...

Why not redo some of the polls taken way back in the 60's by the old Outpost staff and take a look at how our perceptions have changed?

Ok? Ok.

..and why?

Just for the sake of argument let's say Dreamboy!
A precog in the Legion never worked well for me..at least not until Dreamgirl was shown to have a talent for using that power while fighting hand to hand (starting with DnA).
As a replacement for a well established, but now dead, character Db hasn't been shown as competent, useful or valuable in any way..and now he's even dropped out and disappeared from the pages of the book without any explanation at all.
Bah!
Dreamboy's a dud. Pack his bags, buy him a transmat ticket and boot him out.

Of the classic Adventure era/'70s Legionnaires, the first one who popped into my mind was Timber Wolf. His acrobatic powers and increased strength never struck me as original. These powers were, after all, easily duplicated by other Legionnaires (Karate Kid, Superboy, et. al.).

But, as a character, Brin really shined for me in "Timber Wolf: Dead Hero, Live Executioner" (SUPERBOY # 197): he was a sympathetic character who could be utterly dangerous when not in control of himself. Few of his subsequent appearances mattered to me until he broke up with Ayla and became friends with Blok, thereby becoming the hard luck hero and straight man of the team. I did think that his transformation in 5YL was going too far in the hard luck direction.

So, bottom line is, it depends on who's writing the Legion and what they do with each character. As such, I'm not sure I can voluntarily jettison anyone.

YK,

It wasn't me that said I'd read the Legion Outpost slowly. I don't have a copy of it. Also I think Levitz showed Dreamy using her power in a fight, albeit mostly to avoid blows.

Like He Who Wanders said, I wouldn't want to eliminate any Legionnaire. Although going back to the reboot, I think the Legion could have done without Thunder. And no offense to those who liked her, but to me she is a second-rate Andromeda who is a substitute Supergirl.

Ok, must have been Kent...I could look for the thread but I'm too lazy.


1 - Dreamboy
1 - T-Wolf (pre-S&tLSH)
1 - Thunder

Let me second the vote for Thunder. The only Legionnaire I actively hate. She was superfluous and annoying. As a matter of fact, put me down for two votes against her.

I did not follow the Reboot long enough to actually meet Thunder. My answer is quick and easy:

XS

For me, she was a token character from the beginning, squeezed into the Reboot just to have somebody new. Superspeed? Come on, how lame can you get...

As for the Threeboot, I would be challenged to name one character cause many of the carbon copy Legionnaires seemed just superfluous...

Classic? Hard to say. Maybe Timber Wolf, I never liked his feral look in the 70s, but that got better later on. And worse again during 5YL, but his Furball days were rather cool. Maybe Magnetic Kid. I don't know.

Tyroc - bad costume, cliche attitude, incomprehensible power.

Just all-around bad.

I know I might get the ire of the crowd here but just in general, Timber Wolf is pretty much redundant, personality-wise and power-wise. Nice character to have around, but not in the Legion, especially in the 3Boot. Chameleon and Gazelle can easily duplicate his powers, while Ultra Boy and Shadow Lass can present the criminal/recluse point-of-view.
As a corollary to Yellow Kid's analysis, which I won't debate because its his opinion shared by many, I think Waid squandered the potential of Dream Boy, Theena, the Wanderers, etc. He spent so much time building up the 3Boot Legion, he forgot about the world and the characters around them. I also follow the tenet that there aren't any bad characters, just bad approachs. If someone years from now all of a sudden tells a 3Boot Legion story with a great Dream Boy subplot, everyone's gonna go nuts. Some concepts now were benign and bland 15 years ago, like JSA, Iron Fist, Guardians of the Galaxy, etc. Once a character is given the appropriate time and creative team, it'll sell.

Total agreement. I couldn't vote against Dream Boy, because I don't know enough about him to dislike him/

If it was a choice between him and Dream Girl, sure, 'Don't let the door hit you on the way out,' but since there's never been such a choice presented, I've got no beef with him.

And if Shooter hadn't introduced M'Rissey, I *so* would have loved to see Theena in that role (and perhaps some explanation of her connection to the Dominators, which was dangled temptingly in front of us, and, in fine Waid fashion, snatched away and ignored). For that matter, M'Rissey and Theena could both be Legion 'non-coms,' who stick around the HQ on permanant monitor duty and 'Legion Diplomatic Corps' duty, answering the red phone whenever Madame President calls.

I would say more of a deus ex machina power. "Hey we need Tyroc to go real fast. How about if he yells 'OUO-OUO-IA' to go real fast?"

You could also say that the White Witch's powers were deus ex machina. But the difference is that she was developed as a character before becoming a Legionnaire.

Valid point. Chemical King, and sometimes Element Lad, also played the deux ex card from time to time, but that seemed to be more when writers weren't sure exactly what to do with their powers...

Silver age: Chemical King: Deus ex machine who never got off the ground. But since he barely appeared anyway, dumping him would be redundant, so I'll say Timber Wolf, for all the reasons HWW said.

Bronze age: Tyroc for all the reasons Set said. But since HE barely appeared anyway, I'll say Dawnstar, for all the reasons I've railed about many times.

Pre-Levitz era: Blok. Who needs a Legionnaire who moves in slow motion? I hated him at first, but he grew on me under Levitz.

Levitz era: Quislet. Ridiculous lame ass character who never should've been created.

5YL: Kent Shakespeare. Playing the super strength/speed card again?! You gotta be kidding me. Plus, hard to believe anyone will need glasses in 1,000 years.

Legionnaires: Catspaw. Puh-lease. Since when are claws and night vision good enough to get into the LSH?

REboot: Couldn't agree more about Thunder. Blech. Dial H girl Lori can get lost in a 2 for 1 deal.

Threeboot: I would say Dream Boy, but again, why ditch someone we never see anyway. I'll say Sun Boy, because I think leaving the team to go ride posse with a bunch of misunderstood genocidal juvenile delinquents is unforgiveable. Too bad though. I always liked Dirk before this. Blame it all on REALLY bad writing.

HWW:

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...So, bottom line is, it depends on who's writing the Legion and what they do with each character. As such, I'm not sure I can voluntarily jettison anyone.

Agreed.

Tyroc, for instance, just needs an origin rewrite and a new costume. His power makes about as much sense to me as most of the others do.

Chemical King would just need somebody writing who had a rudimentary understanding of chemistry, and would be willing to place believable limits on his powers, and so on. [Slips Matthew E. five bucks Canadian]

Dawnstar desperately needs some explanation of her powers that would clarify why (in best John Henry style) she's more valuable than a machine that can track. (Maybe that was covered in her intro. I don't have access to my copy, damnit.) Even more, she needs an origin and a planetary history that would break her out of what Bram Djikstra once called (in a slightly different context) "The cage of intuitive sainthood" that's used way too often with female and/or minority characters when they're not being paradoxically and irritatingly used as abuse-fodder and/or underclad eye candy.

There are always some characters I'm going to like personality and power-wise more than others, but maybe that just means the writers are successfully writing more than one type. In any given scenario, I'm biased against having a large number of punch-and-hit types at the expense of subtler stuff, because the latter is more interesting to me. However, I accept that you can't really have a super-team book without people who punch and hit.

Yadda yadda yadda.

I've noticed a recurring theme in the above posts: if a character's power seems redundant or ill-defined, that character is a prime candidate for the chopping block.

That's all well and good--everyone is certainly entitled to use whatever criteria he or she wants in order to eliminate characters--but to me a character is more than just a power. He or she has to resonate with me in some way that I can see myself (however marginally) in his or her boots.

XS, for example, was the new kid on the team who wanted eagerly to prove herself to the team and particularly to her crush, Cosmic Boy. She had the added baggage of being a legacy hero, though very little was done with that outside of a memorable encounter with her grandfather, The Flash. I suppose it's for all those reasons that I consider her essential to the reboot, whatever her powers.

Tyroc--agreed: A better constume and better defined power would have gone a long way toward making him a viable character. It didn't help his case any that the writers (or editor or DC in general) became so ashamed of the "first black Legionnaire" that they caused him to disappear for some 50 issues before writing him out altogether. Tyroc never really had a chance to grow as a character.

Thunder: I agree with Quis's assessment that she's a copy of Andromeda, who was a copy of Supergirl--but so what? Mon-El could easily be classified as a copy of Superboy (even down to having a near-identical costume with the colors reversed), yet that didn't stop him from developing into a unique and independent character (and the Legionnaire after whom I've borrowed my user name). CeCe Beck could easily have developed into her own character, if given time. I imagine that she was included because, after having exhausted the Superman Family characters in LSH lore, the creators sought to bring in some fresh blood by introducing a Captain Marvel Family character. Not a bad idea by itself and certainly no worse than the rationale for including some other Legionnaires.

Dream Boy? Not familiar with the character--but then, if I could jettison the entire threeboot, I would. [Ducks and runs to avoid irate fans of that era. )

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Monstress yet. Her power of super-strength was certainly redundant and she proved extremely unpopular as a character. Yet her refusal to see herself as ugly and her tragically doomed friendship with Element Lad added deeply powerful elements (pun not intended) to the reboot. In her case, I don't think her character was mishandled. I think she just wasn't quite what some fans expected in a Legionnaire.

So, again, it brings me back to the idea that no Legionnaire is redundant unless the writers make him or her so.

IMHO, Monstress was better developed as an interesting character in "Lost," which rather prooves your point, HWW. I also agree with you regarding XS. Dream Boy gained sympathy points with me, as there was little chance of him being loved by the Legion or fandom. I found myself rooting for the underdog. He could have been developed by a talented creative team (still can, I guess) instead of falling off the face of the Earth. His being an unresolved issue bothers me more than his unused potential.

Somebody in one of these forums mentioned that they were going to be playing a Chemical King like character in a game, and what would be some neat ideas for how to use that power, and I went off on a ridiculously long list of ways that being able to accelerate or retard chemical reactions would be able to do just about anything.

Naturally, I kind find the darn thread now. Grr.

Like everything that can't be located to prove me wrong, I hereby declare it *genius!*

Seriously, though, Chemical King's power is ridiculously awesome. But yeah, it requires a writer capable of working a computer and typing in the word 'wikipedia' to actually use interestingly.

True 'dat. Probably what bothers me most..but then again we get a lot of that in the Legion.

Ok

Timberwolf 2
XS 1
Thunder 3
Tyroc 2

Jim? Great post. Can you narrow that down to one? I'm keeping score..sort of.

Silver age-Triplicate Girl/Duo Damsel-"She can be come more than one person! AND??!!?!? If she had been more like Multiple Man (which she may end up being in Lo3W)able to make hundres of copies of herself, yeah but one or two? Sorry. Lame to me.

Others-Quislet (sorry, Quis,esq.)who was just annoying, any Khundian Legionnaire, and Monstress.

The absence of Cosmic Boy from the current series illustrates that anyone could be cut, and the Legion would carry on nicely (assuming DC let it... ).

I agree with most of the suggestions above, as being characters who never really developed strong affinities with readers. However, I think it would be interesting to remove Brainiac 5 and see who rises to fill his various roles as solve-all genius, creator of disasters and lovably stand-offish/emotionally crippled character.

Fat Cramer:

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... However, I think it would be interesting to remove Brainiac 5 and see who rises to fill his various roles as solve-all genius...

Funny you should mention that. Even though I'm actually a Brainy fan, I'll probably be the only one on the Legion section of FF.net who ends up not having him come back-- For exactly those reasons. (Flames ahoy !!)

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...creator of disasters and lovably stand-offish/emotionally crippled character.

Without the genius part, nobody would stand for the rest of it, I'll bet.

You mean 1 from each era? Or 1 from the current Legion? Or 1 from the Legion that was current back when the Outpost poll came out? Why do there have to be so many dang Legions?

If we're talking the current Legion, I'll say Sun Boy, but only because Waid ruined him with his stupid Terror Firma yahoos.

I really meant just one Legionnaire overall period but I really do like the way you guys have separated out the different eras...and I know the current Legion is doomed to the trash heap of history so I can't really see sticking to just this particular era either.

however, I'll go ahead and count that as a Sunboy, k?

Put me down for Laurel Gand.

Thong Lass never impressed me as anything more than another twisted Giffen attempt to ruin a traditional DC character. Call me prudish, but her ridiculous outfit and her on-again/off again 'thing' with Brainy (while married with kids) was totally un-heroic and an insulting homage to the real Supergirl. Racist Andromeda-Nun was a disappointment as well, but LG stuck in my craw a little more.

PS - It was my email mentioning the Legion Outpost and Teenagers from the Future