Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Celebrate Youth

(Well Scooter, if you're not gonna start one then I will)

Yeah, okay, Celebrate Youth.

Whatever.

But youth is wasted on the young, isn't it.
Hell - puberty, zits, permanent arousal, school exams, peer pressure, trying to be older than they are. Nah, they can keep it.

Is it just that they're prettier, their bodies are generally firmer, and they don't know the meaning of the word 'responsibilities'? And their political views are based on pure ideology with no facts to back it up. They think they know everything, but have very little concept of reality.

And what kind of way is that to pick the guardians of the universe?

If the Legion consists of not only the super powered core, but everyone camped outside as well, what happens if some oldies join them? Do they get shunned because of their age? Isn't discrimination of 'old age' as bad as discrimination of 'youth'? Are they allowed to consider themselves members?

Which beggers the questions - if they are considered members, then why can't we have older core super powered members? Surely there are some around.

Or, if they get shunned, then what is the upper age limit, and what happens when Brainy, Cos et al hit that limit?

Is it not about mentality, rather than age? Surely there will be quite a few older people within the UP that have had a lot longer to be sick of the sterility, but haven't had the super powers / financial backing / political savvy to do anything about it. And a lot of them could well be banged up in jail at present, for minor infringements of minor social laws. Which makes them criminals, of course? Even though they were perhaps trying to do exactly what the Legion are?

Anyways - how many of our Legionworld members would be young enough to join the present Legion as it stands? Half a dozen out of over 1000?

Where does that leave us? Surely we 'oldies' would have a lot more to offer the Legion than 1000 kids who would rather play their PSPs, get drunk / stoned, and run around trying to get laid (not that I object to any of these passtimes). Oh, and nicking things.

Or are we all to be excluded because Father Time has taken us too far on our journey?
How does that make you feel, really?

You can't make me get off your lawn.

(PS Although... is 29 even young? And eep! Only two months until I'm 30! )

Have you never met my good friend, Mr Twelve-Bore?

I've been wondering the same thing Numf. Does this Legion have a version of Carousel where the members hit 21 (or whatever age they consider to be old) and are escorted out of the clubhouse? When does it stop being about age and start being about the ideal?

And Wayne, you turn 30 about 19 days after I turn 40. Does this mean we couldn't be in the same Legion?

I never thought of that. Legion = Menudo.

lol, menudo. Barry mentioned something about having to grow. So hopefully Cos or Garth (the "elders") well get a clue in a bit.

Eat it Grandpas!

I knew someone wouldn't be able to resist it - no surprises it's Cobie.

But lets be honest, if you were going to be employing a plumber, or a dentist, or lawyer etc. etc. etc. do you necessarily go with the youngest, best looking one?

There may be a certain appeal, but if you want the job done up to a certain standard then you get the person BEST SUITED TO THE JOB. Normally the ones with a certain amount of experience.

Whereas if you want a lap dance then you don't necessarily go for the one with the most experience, you go with the pretty ones generally.

So what I'm trying to say is that the Legion should set up a Gentlemans Club.

And that way we can all celebrate youth.

Wait a second, is that right?

My easily misled youthful mind likes where this is going...

I think the key idea is that being a super-hero is an incredibly novel concept in the Legion's world. It's like rock and roll. Why is it the case that, in the fifties, you didn't suddenly have a bunch of fifty-somethings playing rock music? I mean... surely there were musicians with more experience and more ability than Elvis or the Beatles who could've applied those talents to making rock music. But, by and large, they didn't.

So by that, do you think then we no longer have a Legion whose members just received their powers through heredity or are commonplace to their native planet? Or did their parents just not apply themselves, thinking the UP would be fine without them?

Well, I guess the main thing is that there's a big step from "having powers" to "using one's powers for super-heroics". Lemnos, when describing his abilities, said something to the effect that "I guess you kids would refer to it as a super-power", which I take to mean that while the average person with special abilities may use those in various ways, they aren't thinking about it in the standard "comic book terms".

And that brings us back to the stagnation of Utopia. How long have these people been living in their paradise that no one thought their special abilities might be used best to help others? Have there been no natural disasters or even ones caused by their technology that didn't make someone stand up before the Legion? And if saving RJ wasn't the driving force behind this version, what rallied the Founders? What was the trigger?

Part of it is that the Science Police have done such a good job of 1) convincing everyone that they are the most qualified to handle anything that arises and 2) covering up what really happens. I actually wonder if the whole "1000 years of peace" thing is even true, or just something that people have been educated to believe.

One thing I'm really wondering about is the comic books. Where do they come from? It seems improbable that they are really antiques, so who manufactures them?

Mylar v213? Someone has to be reprinting them, I agree. Are they the product of the current Crisis? Harkening back to when comics existed in the DCU (Flash reading the Flash, etc) and they actually have survived 1000 years as an entertainment form? To me that seems highly unlikely. Maybe someone discovered my electronic collection, reversed engineered the old data storage technology and Princess Projectra paid to have a special printing plant put into production.

EDE wrote:

and:
Great minds think alike .

When I start to feel old, what I find helps is to go outside and throw a cop. Long live the Legion!

Or is it, in fact, better to burn out than to fade away?

Should we actually be saying 'Short live the Legion'?

R.J. Brande always struck me as being "younger" in attitude than many of the Legionnaires -- in a host of story lines. Imagination and daring count.

Youth is a state of mind. I started actually collecting comics -- only what I read! only three short boxes! -- at age 38. At about the same time I began collecting winged-humanoid art in earnest from the Internet. (I wonder how much of this came about from my parents having passed. Hmmm.) And I stopped being embarrassed about it, and started enjoying it.

Good lord, I just posted K. Leung's "photo" of me, or my mind's-eye view of me (see avatar), amidst strangers in a LiveJournal ripping-on-comics-characters thread. And the ridicule from MacQuarrie and others bothered me not a whit. If that's not a practical bit of age not fazing you, I don't know what is.

So I'd be showing up in the square with all of them. Besides, in a thousand years, isn't 50 going to look like 21, anyway? So who's going to know?