Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Fatal Five Spotlight: Mano!

Original description to follow, once I can access the Comixology site (stupid Marvel giving away 700 free issues!), but discussion can begin anyway.

I was just thinking of Mano today ... and how he can destroy whole planets ... and probably saw through Kryptonians and Daxxamites left and right.

From Who's Who:

"...he grew hostile and psychotic, often telling children terrible tales about the horrible ways he could kill them."

Who knew? Mano worked for DC Comics.

For someone who destroyed an entire planet for an opening act, he's been pretty sedate since then.

So... I was a little confused by the environmental masks/helmet stuff. Is the idea that Mano, as a mutant, could only survive in the post-chemical war environment that was toxic to everyone else? And thus needs to helmet to survive elsewhere?

Anyway, the other known native of Angtu was Magpie, so I wonder if Mano actually has yellow skin and bug-eyes like him.

Mano was my favourite Five member, mostly because he looked so cool and was so potentially deadly. It must have mostly been the look of him, as he's pretty much been a chump in every appearance I've read.

Reboot Mano started out interesting as a tortured victim of MacAuley's corporate malfeasance but then his story grew muddled with the Five. He betrayed them in a fit of conscious, and then he was back with them, then he wasn't.

I really want a dastardly evil Mano who's a bit of a loose cannon and pretty off his rocker. He's got the most room for improvement.

"The last of the universe's five worst public enemies is Mano, who, with a touch of a glowing disc on his right hand, can completely annihilate any object! He comes from the planet Angtu! Angtu's atmosphere consists of thick, smoky, noxious gases which are poisonous to all but natives of that world. Perhaps that polluted air caused the strange mutation with which Mano was born... As Mano grew, so did the power of his hand... and also the prejudice of his neighbors! Hated and shunned, Mano became bitter and vengeful! He plotted his revenge against the world that despised him... "The time has come! My power has reached it's peak! My parents are dead... I have no friends!" With that, Mano touched the ground beneath him, and, straining his power to the utmost, destroyed his native planet... and everyone on it! Mano reached another world where he launched his career as a hired assassin! He was successful until recently, when his capture was reported from the other side of the galaxy!"

Random weird fact: While the other members of the Five are all given a page for their introduction, Mano's spills over into a single panel on the next page!

So, Mano can survive in space unaided ... or he like jumped into a space ship?

... whatever, I'd like to see him crack open his helmet a bit and gas some legionnaires with those fumes.

Seems like he and Persuader have the same power otherwise.



yeah, me too. I want him melting off random faces for stress relief.

did any super villains become cheesily famous in the 5YL?

Saturn Queen went legit ... but did anyone go commercial? (besides the Westerner)

I can see Mano holding a deodorant can for the holo vids

"byyyy ... MManO!" (big smile)

Per random soon-to-be-dead Angtuan: "Look! It's Mano! But he's wearing a space suit!"

How exactly he got to another planet is a little mysterious though.

I believe the postboot version actually could survive in a vacuum, however. He was actually trying to kill himself when he blew up his planet.

It's also mysterious how that version go to another planet.

Blowing up a planet is supposedly not all that easy, at least in the 21st century.

from Phil Plait - Bad Astronomy blog:

Hey, got a one-megaton nuclear bomb handy? You'll need 57 quadrillion (5.7 x 1016) more if you want to blow up the planet.

Yikes. The total nuclear arsenal of every nation on Earth combined is probably somewhat less than 100,000 megatons, so we come up a bit short. That Death Star must have had some very large batteries in those reactor rooms.

If you have a real star handy, things are a bit easier. Detonating the Earth takes about as much energy as the sun puts out in a week. Note that if we covered the Earth in solar arrays, it would still take about 40 million years to collect that much energy, but still. There you go.


A matter of antimatter

Hey, wait a sec! In Star Trek they have antimatter. When you mix that with normal matter, it turns into huge amounts of energy. How's that stack up?

Well ... to blow up the whole Earth you'd need about a trillion tons of it. That's a lot: roughly the mass of Mt. Everest. An antimatter asteroid 6 miles wide ought to do it, if you have one handy. Personally, I hope you don't. Given that it currently costs hundreds of billions of dollars to make a single ounce of antimatter, you might have to work an extra job to cover the expense.


So maybe Mano's hand generates anti-matter. But where did he get his protective glove? So many unanswered questions about this character.

Lucky floating. Another super power of Mano's.

Were the people of Angtu Spanish speakers?

seems like "Mano" is the only Spanish word they know.



Those kids don't seem particularly smart.

"He stands out like a ..." "...like a freak!"

good one evil neighbor boys, good one.

Hmm... now I'm imagining Mano as a sterotypical Spaniard!

"I don't always feel like a freak on my homeworld... but when I do, I blow it up!"

^^The most interesting Mano in the world!

New geek meme!

Always thought Mano had the most potential for all the Fatal Five. I can't say I was a big fan of his original design, but LOVED his various redesings over the years, especially the Giffen 5YL version, but also the DnA (lame ANti-Sun-Eater origin) version.

This implacable killer whose touch is death and destruction. I might have tied him into the old world god of Shiva, but there ya go.

Mano, personality wise, always seemed the least interesting of the Five. He's been portrayed, on occasion, as a bit of a dim bulb (snarky comment from the Persuader, 'Does that helmet cut off all flow of oxygen to his brain?'), and, of the Five, only a step above Validus in leadership potential.

Is that truly all on him, 'though? Between Tharok and the Empress (and, to a lesser extent, the Persuader), he's hanging with some serious egomaniacs, and he might not *want* to fight with them over who gets to say that they are 'boss,' when it's kind of an honorary title at best (since none of them exactly take instructions gracefully...).

As for his power, it's, like the Atomic Axe, another of those 'all-or-nothing' deals. Either he hits you, and you're dead, or he flails around looking like a total chump, while people exposit how dangerous he is, because he can't actually be allowed to kill a Legionnaire.

If his destructive touch caused a matter-antimatter sort of reaction when he took his glove off, sort of like how Wildfire's anti-energy causes destructive blasts when he opens his various vents, Mano could well have a useful ranged feature, able to generate Wildfire-like or Human Bomb-like explosive blasts.

Still, how exactly he blew up his planet is unclear. Was the planet already somewhat unstable, and he went to a place where seismic plates met and started disintegrating important stuff? Did he annhilate the safety controls on a super-nuclear-power-plant-of-space that powered all of Angtu? If so, how did he survive that process? He's never been depicted as invulnerable on the 'surviving an exploding planet' level...

What might be a fun twist on his power if he unravels atomic bonds, not just causing matter to fall apart, but also absorbing that energy, and therefore strengthening his own atomic bonds. The bigger the item he destroys, the more invulnerable (and immortal?) he becomes. Destroying Angtu, however he did it, spreading his 'molecular fire' through the planet's crust or whatever, would therefore have strengthened his own atomic bonds sufficiently to survive the planet's destruction, and sustain his own existence perhaps for countless millenia.

Perhaps a suitable amount of force directed against him, Superman-like levels of force, could weaken him and tap his reserves of stolen inter-atomic energy or 'weak force,' and make him 'hungry' to eat another planet to 'recharge...'

That sort of change would give him incentive to keep using his powers, because every thing he disintegrates makes him tougher, and, in the wake of the destruction of his homeworld, he's come to think of himself as the ultimate survivor. As long as there are things to destroy in the universe, he can never die...

Also, and this applies to the Persuader as well, if you don't have a ranged power, and every single member of your traditional enemy (the Legion) can fly, perhaps you should invest in either a gun, or some sort of jet-pack or anti-grav harness, no?

"Ha, my touch can destroy anything!"
"Oh bother, it's Lightning Lass, and she's thirty meters in the air shooting lightning at me. That's so unfair..."

Mano could have benefitted from an anti-bullying campaign, or at least some sort of 'It gets better' video.

Annhilating your entire homeworld seems like a bad coping mechanism.

On the other hand, he did it before that lame copycat Lobo came along and tried to make it fashionable.

Rereading yesterday, I was reminded that Mano was Mordru's enforcer/spymaster in the 5YL Mordruverse:

Not being a big fan of the 5YL version, it did however have some very positive things, and one of those I believe was the use of Mano. He came across as truly dark and evil in the series; his quiet demeanor adding substance to his brooding psychopathy.

Kinda disappointed we haven't really seen him or Emerald Empress yet in the current saga. We know she'll be in soon, and hopefully we get Mano panel time as well.

PS - Mano never fully recovered from Jim Shooter's "Plunder Ploy of the Fatal Five" story in which Light Lass takes him down with a single swing of a shoulder bag!

I LOVE this Mano ... and crime lord Mano of the SW6 phase.

...and became the only other person to see him without his helmet:



What did she see? What did she see???

Maybe he's super attractive.

Mano is one space-hottie! Such bad luck his face is obscured by all that black mist.

He and Ferro are dead ringers?