Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Official LSH 3 Worlds Thread #5 out (FINALLY!! - spoilers)

The Newsarama January 2009 solicitations preview is out and no Lo3W is listed. Presumably #5 has slipped to February.

I thought Polar Boy, Wildfire, and Dawny were going back to get Starman. In JSA 19 he seems tol hold some sort of key to a major victory.

BTW, does the Polar Boy here remind anyone else of Martin Short's Jack Frost character from "The Santa Clause 3?"

It's just the preview so far, so don't panic yet The full solicits have yet to come.

Polar Boy's spikey hair just annoys me. They seem to be making a joke out of him like they did the other Subs in Action, which I don't like.

No, no: the Subs weren't a joke in Action. Not at all. Johns found a way to split the difference between Giffen's portrayal of them as screwups and Giffen's portrayal of them as effective guerrillas.

The key is this: the Subs don't have a lot of power. They don't have the logistical advantages that the Legion gains from Brande's money, Brainy's intelligence, Saturn Girl's powers or Dream Girl's foresight. Their powers by their very nature aren't very precise; they can only be honed so far by training. So, to be effective, they try to compensate for all this by taking risks and being audacious. And Polar Boy has taken some of that attitude with him to the Legion.

I like the new Polar Boy, actually; he was very well drawn under Levitz but not as likeable. Levitz wrote him as a guy who was sort of the Frank Grimes of the Legion: he worked his way up from the Subs but found that the old-guard Legionnaires still thought of him as a Sub and didn't give him any respect even as leader. So Polar Boy could never relax as a Legionnaire; he had to be 'on duty' all the time. He was admirable but too earnest to be likeable. But I certainly wouldn't say that Johns has turned him into a joke.

I guess we'll know sometime mid-next year whether or not Johns had some special reason to have Garth and Brainy and various other characters act so massively out of character and turn Wildfire into a Red Tornado-reboot and bring Karate Kid back to life so that he could kill him again.

Until then, I'm gonna blame it on sloppy writing. Having not read his wildly popular Green Lantern stuff (which, apparently, involved killing a bunch of them, which is indeed wildly popular these days, but doesn't play well with an audience of me), I'm not prepared to give him a pass on *this* work I'm seeing.

I *really* dislike his spiky hair too. I am a SUPER-fan of practically every single design element Gary Frank brought to the Legion but Brek's spiky hair is the one thing that's got to go. I don't mind a little bit spiky but those things look like they could kill people!

Not sure I agree with your other points though Jim. If anything, I think Geoff is displaying his obvious affection for Brek with this portrayal. He's used him as one of the loudest voices in trying to keep the spirit and dream of the Legion alive (with Dirk first and then with Salu and Garth and the others) and has kept him front and centre of the action in both of his stories so far. He seems to be anything but a joke to me.

I don't think it's fair to blame Johns for the Wildfire as Red Tornado thing or the life and death of Karate Kid debacle.

The Wildfire revelation was an incidental element in one of the Brad Meltzer issues of that crossover, and really, that kind of "introduce a bizarro plot-point and then never do anything with it" device totally has Meltzer's signature all over it. (Sorry Brad - love your work but please learn to stop leaving loose ends after your stories for lesser writers to fumble with.) Anyhoo - while indeed being an extremely sucky revelation I doubt Johns was the brainchild behind it.

As for Karate Kid - that happened in Countdown, a book Johns had nothing to do with. I'd say the fault of that lies with Didio and Dini as the "masterminds" behind that drek, and Keith Giffen who, by his own admission, pushed-for and revelled in the chance to kill Val again.

Garth and Querl acting out of character I'll agree with you though. (Though I can kinda see stylistic/storytelling reasons for why he has them behaving the way he does.)

Let's remember something about Polar Boy. When the Legion first rejected him, it wasn't because his power wasn't good enough for the team; it was because he didn't have enough control over it. So once Brek realized that, he started to practice and get better at using his power, until he was good enough at it, for the Legion to accept him as a member.

Real quick note on sales. Not sure about the actual numbers but it seems all of DC has really gone down hill in the ranking across the board.

Read it.
It's pointless to speak about the art: That man is probably the greatest super-hero comic book artist alive and Mr Koblish has already skyrocketed within the inkers' all-time ranking. My deepest bow to both: this is pure visual power cosmic stuff.
The story has started to bug me quite seriously: to start with, continuity-wise, the incongruousness detracts a lot from this story. Then, there's all the previously mentioned array of idio(tic)syncratic characterizations, above all, Lightning Lad's. Another aspect that irks me very much is the dilution of several Legion villains within this enlarged LSV: the historical members, the League of Super Assassins and the enlisted soloists from the 1 st baxter LSH 1-5 could have been rounded with several others not yet shown, such as the Devil's Dozen or the members of the villain teams from the reboot like the Workforce or the Oversight Watch, or even threeboot's Terra Firma and Wanderers mk II. I can stand the Taurus Gang being there, but the Fatal Five or Universo? Mordru alone could give S-Prime a nice slice of humble pie and would NEVER follow anybody. Even the inclusion of this century's Justice League is a tad forced: the majority of the LSV's members is alien; it's like the Klan has an alliance going with the Bloods and the Crips...
Most displeasing of all is the the fact that Sodam Yat's (and, tentatively, Bart's) appearance shift/s the focus of this story from the Legion era to the DC Universe. All we're missing is either reinforcements from the 21st century or a LSH trip to our time and this can quickly become a trite fest.
(Thus said, I've experienced profound joy seeing the Mon-El-Shadow Lass, Wildfire-Dawnstar and, most of all White Witch-Blok combos in action).

You better not read #3!!

I agree with most of your comments but remember that some of the Justice League (Spider Girl RadRoy) have been in the LSV so no surprise there

Remember also, it's mostly Earth-Man's viewpoint that shaped the JLA. I got the sense that Roy, Spider-Girl and the others could give a Rats Arse about "Humanity First", but were in for their own reasons (power, kicks, etc). I DO expect Earth-Man to make a play against the others as soon as he soaks up enough of their powers.


And then Prime will feed him his liver.

Huh, I think you've found the one person I wouldn't mind seeing Superboy Prime kill...

I really hope Tellus, Quislet, Tyroc, Chuck and Tenz are found. At least the other Legionnaires have other versions of em showing up (not the same thing, but it's still something!) These others have no counterparts!

Chuck and Tenz do have counterparts out there, but they probably won't be in this story.


I want to know why Black Mace is the only Taurus outlaw we've ever seen since they debuted. I think he's about the least interesting of the bunch. A strong thug with a club. Whoopee. All of the other Taurus gang were way cooler than him. I'd especially like to see Quanto and Mystelor again.

Well, Quanto wasn't really evil, and at the end of the Taurus Gang story, he set about to re-habilitate Mystelor, so she might not have been either. That leaves Rogarth, who might even have been less interesting than Black Mace (a strong thug without a club) and Shagrek, who is probably too mindless to make for a story on his own.

Though Shagrek was seen attacking the White Witch (who was saved by Blok) in a brief vignette of an untold tale during the TMK era (I think it was issue # 10). And Quanto was seen in a prequel to the Taurus Gang story, in LSH (Levitz series) # 59.

I found Quanto to be a very compelling character. He's from an advanced race, who surely must condemn violent crime, yet he's allied himself with super powered thugs unquestioningly, because his superiors ordered him to do so. Later, he realizes that they've sent him to help "reform Mystelor, make her better, as beautiful inside as she is outside . . . and perhaps the others too." I find it intriguing that his superiors left it up to him to determine his true purpose instead of just giving him an explicit order. It's too bad we never saw him, his race, or Mystelor ever again.

This is the type of complex/ambiguous "villain" I wish DC would produce more of. His situation places him in opposition to the Legion, yet he's not evil or out for personal gain. He tells the other Taurus members to divide his pay among them as money means nothing to him. He's on a journey to find his purpose and he meets allies and opponents along the way.

... I have a fantasy that Dream Girl, who is the only Legionnaire absent from [the next] story, has gone off to find Quanto and try to help him redeem Mystelor. Perhaps a little romantic diversion from stodgy Star Boy could be an added bonus.

I always kinda wanted to see some other Super-Assassins turn to the side of the angels, other than Blok, who, IMO, was about the least compelling of them, both personality wise (the straight man for everyone else) and powers-wise (oh, he's really strong and tough, gosh, how did the Legion ever last that long without a strong/tough guy!).

Titania didn't really grab me (same reason Blok didn't, boring x2), but Silver Slasher, Mist Master, Neutrax and Lazon all had neat powers, that weren't already replicated among the LSH sets.

See this thread for groovy discussion of the League of Super-Assassins!

How did Blok get into the Legion without violating the redundant powers rule?

I guess it must have been his invulnerability. He couldn't be put out by radiation (like Ultra Boy), lead (like Mon-El), or kryptonite (like Superboy).

Didn't he originally have energy-reflection powers (or some such) that were soon forgotten about?

Or energy absorption, as mentioned in FC LO3W issue 2.

I predict that Rond's corpse will be reanimated and imbued with green lantern energy and he'll become a glowing green Legionnaire, much the same way Celeste Rockfish did once upon a time.

I don't really see the point. Why not just let him be an active honorary Legionnaire and keep his ring? I've never been overly fond of the Green Lantern corps, but if Rond was the only one left that'd be cool, and it would be nice to see him as part of the team, instead of just a once in a blue moon supporting character.

and blok could talk to rocks... that were living..