Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Convince me that Projectra is interesting

We've had threads like this before on Shadow Lass and Colossal Boy (and perhaps there are others I'm not aware of.)

I've never really been a fan of hers, but it's only in recent years that I've come to outright dislike her. I find her sense of entitlement understandable but still off-putting. And I think she was a bad choice to be Sensor Girl -- her story had been told, there was nowhere left for her to go but deeper into the hole of irrelevance and unlikability.

All of the above is strictly my opinion.

And as for Sneckie, I can see why it would upset people, but I've never lost sleep over it.

That said, I would be interested to hear fans of hers explain to me Projectra's appeal to them.

In a civil manner, of course. Civil on my part and theirs.

Though I liked her visually in her '70s costume, I really only found her interesting after Val's death and her transformation into Sensor Girl. While I can see how she could be seen as a flat character even then, the subtext of her being a grieving widow and seeming, ironically, more regal than ever was impressive. To me, Projectra being Sensor Girl is so much better than if it had been Kara as intended. It's the only outcome for me. Her killing of Nemesis Kid and later, effectively, of Sarya are huge moments in her story that distinguish her, in my mind, from any other Legionnaire. And it all came from cutting her from Val's tether because she had previously been defined by that relationship and from her frequent role as damsel in distress. (I'm a fan of Val, make no mistake, but his death undeniably enabled her character to finally grow.)

Anyhow, I'm sure that everyone knows all of this--and detractors won't be "convinced" by it, but that's why Jeckie as Sensor Girl is interesting to me.

I've always been really fascinated by this panel. The idea of being trained from birth to be the leader of her people, and the whole notion that her membership in the Legion was effectively part of that training, kind of intrigue me. I have to agree that she has very rarely been used well, though. The fact that she became so defined by her relationship with Val was super-annoying, however.

She was a lot more interesting after Val died, throughout the Baxter/Sensor Girl period. In 5YL, she was back to being cardboard and I can't say I even recall much of what she did in the Johnsboot or the Levitz v.6 and v.7 (except that baffling scene with her and Val flying away at the end).

One of my all-time favourite Projectra stories was when she dealt with Brainiac 5 regarding his snooping in her quarters. She clearly has the upper hand and uses it to squash him in such a politely aggressive way. I can't think of another Legionnaire who would have dealt with him in such a manner.

I've always like Princess Projectra. Sensor Girl was ok but I was always bothered by the "secret identity" thing. Yes, yes she killed Nemesis Kid and Imra was trying to support her, etc....

My whole thing with someone with this sort of unlimited potential is where do you start and stop with this super power? She can literally make you believe anything she wants you to believe, which could impact her opponent in more ways than I can list. The limit of that mental manipulation would only be contigent on her strength/stamina, concentation and willpower. She can make you believe you are fighting anything or anyone. She can make you feel as though you were at the bottom of a deep pond with not enough time to make it to the surface, thus feeling like you "drowned". That might not kill you but might give you a heart attack that WOULD kill you!
See what I mean?

How do you use her in a group setting without upstaging and outshining the "star of the show" ... let's say Superboy for example?

With this amazing character that was introduced to us into our beloved book way back when, the writers were given this HUGE job to flesh out the character. I believe she has never been used to her full potential, even as Sensor Girl, because the writers never really knew how to handle that unlimited power of realistic illusion-casting without the fear of going overboard with her powers. It was just easier for them to have her share the action and shine here and there, plus drape her over the arm of Karate Kid as a way of including her.
*Let me just insert here that I absolutely loved Val and Jecky's relationship and those stories where they showed us their affection for each other were among some of my personal favourites!*

I think we have yet to see a writer really take us to the full parameters of her powers. Let's hope we can see that some day.

Just consider that the most recent writer to try his hand at her was SO intimidated by her that he basically gave her one page of intro/recruitment by the founders, enough to whet our appetites,and then.... nuthin'! LOL
Yep, twelves issue "maxi-series" as I like to call it now, of the new Bendis Legion (well, 14 if you include those last 2 issues of, well, whatever they are) and even he was too nervous to touch our Princess!!!

just sayin'

Original : After death of KK it was a neat scene of her taking care of NK.
As Sensor Girl her essentially mercy killing Emerald Empress was interesting. Retroboot at the end showing up with a new KK was interesting but then it ended.

Reboot: She was a snake which was kinda trippy to read. She was shown to be quite compassionate and I was hoping her and Chameleon would become an item and they had a cute date or two. Her transformation was wild.

Threeboot: annoying but kind of enjoyed this one as she was memorable with the tragedy of her parents/planet; dating the dangerous loner timberwolf seems to pair well with a rich kid. The appearance of having her start to go to the dark was neat and unfortunately the comic finished up before seeing where that was gonna go, but not before putting some damage on Phantom Girl and having a pretty good showing against Saturn Girl herself I believe.

Bendisboot: Not much to go on but I liked her look and her quick intro with Saturn Girl was okay.

She is potentially extremely powerful, you are right. Funny enough, two of the most amazing (in my opinion) uses of her power were against Mordru.

Adventure Era - the first Mordru story, letting Mordru believe he destroyed the Legion successfully

Reboot = the battle against Mordru, also letting Mordru believe he had killed the Legion and their allies

^^Which is kind of interesting, considering her powers are magic-based (at least in the original), so you would think she would be less effective against an uber-powerful sorcerer like Mordru.

The White Witch also pretty easily countered his spell in that Adventure Era story!

While in the Reboot, Mordru's blast was deflected by a combination of magic-using Mysa, telekinetic Kinetix, and energy-casting Particon!

That's an interesting point of view. The implication is that the potential was always there, and there's truth in that. One problem I had with Jeckie, pre-Sensor Girl, was how useless her power often appeared to be when it was displayed. Though there were exceptions, she was often the perfect example of the "weak girl" Legionnaire. As we all know, they tended to have the less impressive powers. Even Supergirl was usually left out of the line-up in favor of her cousin, seemingly because she was the exception to the rule.

What I loved about her turn as Sensor Girl was we FINALLY saw that potential unleashed and see her emerge as a force to be reckoned with. I don't like, however, that the secret to her success was that enemies didn't know who she was and what her powers were. The implication that her powers would be ineffective without that secrecy was bothersome. But at the same time, I don't feel this aspect was over-emphasized, so the overall effect was still impressive. I honestly feel Levitz did a tremendous job overall showcasing the strengths of the female Legionnaires in a way no other writer had done consistently.

I admit that original series Projectra only had a few really compelling story lines, but I never felt I disliked her. The only time I disliked her was in the 60's issues because she often refused to fight in bigger battles, but most of the female member didn't fight at this time because of sexist writing and only saturn girl and supergirl were allowed to fight sometimes. So although I don't think she was ever a negative character I do admit her original story line wasn't to adventurous either. However Jekka or Sensor from the original reboot is another story, I found her development for independence from her father and speaking out about non-humanoid equality was quite interesting. I loved her friendship with Cham and her story arc about coming to terms with her new body, although short, was very interesting to read. Also it was a super badass panel where the writers actually allowed her to kill NK in revenge.

It was never clear back in the day whether or not her illusions were constructs of energy creating actual light and sound, or purely mental creations (which, if so, might only be visible to certain people, and not to others, allowing her to do useful things like black out an area, but leave allies able to see!). And she invariably chose to create the most unbelievable 'obvious illusions' like giant monsters suddenly appearing or something (where an illusion of SPs suddenly running up and shouting 'freeze!' from behind the villains, tricking them to turn around and waste attacks on the fake SPs, would be more convincing in most cases).

And then she got relegated to Val's armcandy and it became a case of 'Life after death. After his death, she got a life!' Sensor Girl was great, and the scene with Sarya was particularly powerful. I liked her a lot more, and she seemed to be written more intelligently, as Sensor Girl, than she ever was as Projectra.

I didn't mind her regal attitude. It was just part of her character and background and made her different to the rest of the legionnaires. If I knew her personally I might find it rubbing me the wrong way but as a character in a story it was interesting.

I agree with the others about how cutting her free of Val gave the writer more freedom to make her a person in her own right. I too love that scene of her reaction to Brainiac 5's apology. The strength of her personality based upon her upbringing of regal right was allowed to shine in the later Baxter era. Sure the idea behind it of some people being more suited to ruling because of their ancestry is not something I can agree with, but it fit with her story and she was still shown to place the same value on everybody even if she had a different attitude to leadership.

Her 5YL tenure did seem a backstep to me as to others, although I enjoyed her appearance in the Mordru/zombie war even if she didn't get to do much beyond deliver a warning.

One "Adventure" era story that has always stood out to me was the last one to appear in Action Comics, "The Legionnaires Who Never Were" in #392, where she and Saturn Girl return from a mission to be accused of being spies by the other legionnaires. Although short it is a fun mystery story and she is the central character trying to solve it while being imprisoned by her compatriots. She succeeds showing resourcefulness and smarts along with a demonstration of her power that even fooled Brainiac 5 of all people.

Agreed Paladin, on all points you make.
Levitz did do quite an amazing job with Jeckie, in all her various forms which he wrote! I miss that.

Illusion powers often depend on the opponent being unaware of what the hero's real power is. Once you know that the dragon you're fighting isn't real, you can just stand there and sigh and say, "Is that all you've got?"

For me the most interesting thing about her is that she brings a different perspective from the other members. Whether because she's royalty, or because she's not from a technologically advanced planet, or because of her roots in magic, she has a different worldview.

I also think that focusing too much on her powers makes her less interesting. The best part of Sensor Girl IHMO is the shift in her personality and how she interacts with her teammates, not so much any kind of "ZOMG most powerful member ever!" aspect that I think gets blown up out of proportion sometimes.
Her powers have always been more than simple holograms: remember that she was able to make her power work against the freaking Sun Eater. To me she works best when she's one of the wildcards: Legionnaires who don't have very spectacular powers and consistently get underestimated by villains, but can turn the tide of battle because they are unpredictable and VERY good at what they can do.

She could seem a little too full of herself in her Sensor Girl era sometimes, but I was okay with that as it fit the character and was rather obviously connected to some coping mechanism for her loss.
She got a little less interesting in the 70s because she was overshadowed by Karate Kid, while in the 80s while it's my favorite version the comics could sometimes focust too much on her.

I actually rather liked her reboot version but I really wish she was a different character, it would've have been fine to acknowledge that she was based on another (a Shikari/Dawnstar situation), it would've made her stand out... honestly I think the character would've been really liked by the fandom if she wasn't a rebooted version but a new character entirely.
On that version I liked the representation of a non-humanoid, her rejection of her planet's society, and she had character interactions with other Legionnaires that were simply adorable.

I share your opinion on the threeboot version, though, I just couldn't find that Projectra interesting at all. One of the very few instances where, for my tastes, Waid missed the mark.
No opinions on later versions since I've read very little retroboot and no Bendis.

I do find it interesting that Sensor Girl felt more 'regal' to me than 'Princess' Projectra ever did. Projectra had little crowns on her booties and called herself a Princess, but her body language didn't scream poise or confidence, so much as hesitation, and she was, too often, IMO, the fainting damsel that leaned on big strong Val to get by. Sensor girl stood in a confident pose, hands on hips, much like the Supergirl she was originally intended to be. Much more like a queen.

I see what you did there

I wonder if she would've used the codename Queen Projectra if if wasn't for the whole Sensor Girl thing. She would've between with Saturn Queen and Comet Queen... talk about wildly different characters!

I honestly thought Jeckie was such a waste of space pre-Sensor Girl....the only Legionnaire who annoyed me as much as her was Light Lass because both of them have powers with incredibly useful applications but most of the time they were written as if Timber Wolf and Karate Kid had just taken Jeckie and Ayla on in a roleplaying game as love interest NPCs so they could get some more character points or something

In Jeckie's case she had so much potential if she'd just been even a little bit cunning with her powers occasionally but she always defaulted to "giant space monster appears out of nowhere" which even the most moronic henchman must realise is obviously an illusion at some point.

She only became worth anything to me as a character when Karate Kid died. The way she killed Nemesis Kid was badass as hell, and her application of power as Sensor Girl was about a million times more effective than anything she'd ever done as Princess Projectra. More importantly, she developed a personality beyond damsel in distress. She was regal, commanding, a little enigmatic even after we found out she was Jeckie....the relationship they built up between her and Sarya was legitimately really interesting...it's a shame they ended the series with Magic Wars and moved straight to 5YL (and I say this as a massive 5YL fan) because I would have loved to see where the Legion could have gone with Sensor Girl and Timber Wolf leading them. Such an oddball couple, but with Karate Kid being Brin's best friend I think they could have developed a fascinating dynamic. I wouldn't want them to have become a couple necessarily, but it would have been nice to see someone on the Legion give Timber Wolf a little more respect than he usually got considering everyone else just treated him like the team dumbass by then.

funny enough, I remember Projectra being much more bad-ass under Shooter. That Mantis Morlo story, she lead the away team to Orando quite well (Dream Girl, on the other hand, didn't do much on Naltor). She stood her ground well vs. Persuader and even Validus in the first Fatal Five story, too.

it was only after the Adventure Era ended, that I remember Jeckie slipping into the damsel in distress personality. I remember her moping and crying a lot when her cousin tried to usurp the throne, for example...

I buy that...I haven't read heaps of that era but from the stuff I have seen with Luornu and Shady it does seem like Shooter was a bit better at actually writing women as individuals who were allowed to have characteristics beyond "hopelessly devoted to her man" and "swoons well" when he wanted

She...

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Did the... thing?