Legion World Forums LEGION OUTPOST Mission Monitor Board I don't like it when... (Legion version)

This is a forum to speak out, comment, dis and otherwise b*#!h about anything that bugs you regarding how your favourite (or any for that matter) Legionnaire is currently written in either book. Or you can critique any Legion-related event that is currently going on in the books which is bugging you at the moment.

I'll start by saying how really annoying it is to see Jo most times portrayed as the "dumb jock" of the team instead of the seasoned, experienced hero that he's grown to become.

...Ultra Boy gets no respect and that has to change soon!

My pet peeve is how certain character types all get lumped together, and Brainy and Imra have both suffered greatly from the fads that smart people are dicks and telepaths are immoral manipulators.

1) Vril Dox is a fun character, but I really don't like it when Brainy is portrayed as 1) crazyflakes, 2) socially retarded, 3) unethical and / or immoral. He's hardly the only one. Reed Richards and Batman have also suffered from a case of being too smart for their own good, and turning into morally bankrupt 'I'm always right!' despots, whose choices end up causing more ethical dilemnas than they resolve (OMAC satellite? Civil War?).

2) Emma Frost *is* a manipulative jerk, and I love her, but over the years, Professor X has become more and more Machiavellian, and even Jean Grey was later shown to regularly abuse her powers on people who annoyed her. Imra suffers greatly from this, having *apologized* for having to enter her friends minds to free them from Universo's mind control, and, in other interpretations, mind-wiping allies willy-nilly, or even being alluded to having used her powers to seduce them.

I like a little moral complexity and that I won't necessarily agree with everything a character, even a heroic character, does, but does Brainy really have to be shown walking through a field of dying people, complaining in an internal monologue that some equipment he wants might be damaged? Does Imra really need to be retconned into having started mind-wiping her friends as a teenager, and now, perhaps a decade later, *still* having not grown as a heroic character and made amends?

Ick. More Brainy and Imra, please, less Vril and Emma.

I'm with you up to a point, but I've been re-reading Baxter and Tales recently and Jo IS impulsive and doesn't think about things very much. You see this in the Dev-Em Dark Circle stuff, also when they go back in time and face the Durlans, and when they are trapped on the Controller planet. So the precedent is there, especially since the whole Emerald Dragon era never happened.

I DO object to him being an ###hole as per the Shooter depiction, but that's something different. Him being somewhat of a "Jock" however, I can live with.

The gratuitous sex stuff is really annoying me. Not just because it opens the door to misogynistic comments from fans (like there's not enough misogyny in pop culture already), but because it's such an obvious way to push readers' buttons.

C'mon. The only way they can give characters any depth or explore underdeveloped sides of their personalities is with creepy and/or inexplicable sex stuff? @#$%&!

Yeah, yeah, I know the whole Cos/Imra thing and Shady/EM business is supposed to show that "It's not your parents' Legion anymore, Kids." But I don't find it edgy or daring. I just find it off-putting and a waste of space. If I wanted to read a Vertigo comic, I'd buy one. [sulk]

...Brainy is portrayed as an eccentric introvert.
I want to see more of the innovative inventor and hero, and less of the snarky, sarcastic critic.
I want to see that smart superhero with a heart of gold he was in the Silver Age make a comeback.

that really bad stereotypical writing of Vi as a man hating angry person is used. Men and women kidnapped her and did it to her, yet she, a sky, sweet person, comes out of the sens tank hating all men? at least, that was the way she was suddenly portrayed.

You'd think someone like Nura would be a bette fit for that, being "dream girl" that is constantly viewed as a sex object.

I don't interpret Vi that way at all, rickshaw1. She didn't become a Hater of All Men. She hated her boyfriend for abandoning her and she hated the man who made her a prisoner. That's not all men.

She also underwent a pretty severe mental and physical attack on her person, and that will, in fact, change a person a lot. It's not unlike situations where a person seems "transformed" to everyone who knew them before- after a severe event like a car accident that impacted the brain, or a heart transplant.

I don't like it when...

Page restrictions and the constant over-emphasis on big, pretty panels of art seemingly make it impossible to obey the general rule of "Show, Don't Tell."

I didn't want Yera to tell us about how much it sucked to not get work because of prejudice. I wanted 3 or 6 or 9 panels SHOWING how much it sucked. To cite one of about ten dozen examples in recent stories.

Exposition is fine, but in moderation, DC. Pretty please?

I don't like it when....

Brainiac 5 was shown as afraid cowering down to Earth Man...which I find it very contradictary to the Brainiac 5 we know who is not afraid of Darkseid, Superboy Prime, Time Trapper, etc whose power can snuff off the entire Legion! (Mordru, Omega, Infinity Man, etc). Come on....Brainiac 5 afraid of Earth Man?!?

Many more to come...heh.

I don't like it when....

XS has been missing for almost one year in Legion book. Groan!

...everyone else gets to read the books before I do.

[sulk]

Having just reread the first four issues of the new series:

...Green Lanterns are everywhere. Hey, I hope it boosted sales for ya', DC. But to me it all just felt tacked-on and fake. Especially when a supposedly wise and far-seeing species managed to present a known xenophobe with the keys to a multi-planetary LE agency-- like there was no other immediate choice available anywhere.

No matter how many times I reread it, I still just sit there scratching my head and thinking, "WTF?"

Character's powers (and experience using them) are ignored for the sake of the plot.

Timber Wolf doesn't bother using his actual power of super-acrobatics, because he has to go all Wolverine on Sun Emperor, and demonstrate powers of partial invulnerability, claws, etc. that he plain shouldn't have.

Element Lad doesn't bother using transmutation to directly affect Immortus, or to trap him in a massive block of inerton, but instead tries to make an explosion that ends up hurting him, instead of Immortus.

Phantom Girl gets hurt because she forgot to phase, 'cause, gosh, what's her power again?

Invisible Jacques blabs in combat and gets smacked around. (To be fair, I think he always did that...)

Shady repeatedly puts up a field of darkness, and then gets shot (in the arm) because, in all these years of super-heroing, it's never occured to her to *move* after obscuring her position, allowing anyone with a six-second attention span to shoot where she was just standing and hit her, since she's still standing there, waiting to get shot.

Good grief. Is this the Keystone Legion?

Related to Set's points above: If they're going to borrow Wolverine's skillset and tack it on to TW, then they ought to borrow the Invisible Woman's skillset and do the same for IK2. Whoever decided that Sue Storm-Richards should use invisible force to travel, make shields and weapons and the like has my ever-lasting gratitude.

(Like there's never been cross-pollination between the Big Two before? C'mon, DC!)

IK2 could definitely use something other than invisibility, even if it's just a spanking new attitude. Batman proves that one can be an effective hero without any powers, so there's really no excuse for Jacques to be Exposition Lad.

Most of the powers I'd be inclined to stunt off of his invisibility, such as projecting his image elsewhere (perhaps multiple elsewheres, at the same time) or become intangible or teleport or manipulate / negate light, poach off of Projectra, Tinya, Gates, Sun Boy and Shady, so I think I'd rather he just remain Invisibility Lad, but be useful and competent outside of his powerset.

With such a large team, it might just be easier to strap new powers onto the lad than try to make him like Dr. Midnight, a dude who can make it dark, and yet also has other stuff that he contributes to his team, like medical skills or political connections or combat training.

And yeah, Sue's pretty awesome. I love that she's generally the powerhouse of the team, but hasn't gone all Jean Grey or Scarlet Witch with it.