Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Light Lass or Lightning Lass

Do you prefer Ayla to have electricity or weight powers, and why?

Her weight powers are definitely more unique, but I'm going with electricity.
They're just way, WAY more versatile. I feel like the number of ways you can show the ability to make things light or weighless is a bit too limited... we've seen some very creative uses, yes, but how long until you run out of them and she keeps doing the same things over and over again?
Electric powers prevent Ayla from becoming a lightweight (pun intended). I know there's a ton of heroes with the same exact power already, plus her brother is in the same team... but if the Legion is big enough to have two or three guys with the same powers of Superboy, it can accomodate two electric heroes.
Perhaps you can emphasize they use them in a different way or introduce some limitation that prevents them from working together too often.
What do you think?

Electricity or weight powers? single choice
	Electricity powers
	Weight powers
Votes accepted starting: 12/12/21 02:34 AM
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I prefer the antigravity powers all other things being equal but she's a better character with the lightning powers and it suits her personality more imo - SW6 batch Gossamer was the first time I never actively disliked a Light Lass, she was always so useless beforehand!

Lightning Lass. No contest for me.

Hi CA! Haven't seen you for a minute or two.

I'm definitely team Lightning Lass. Like you said, definitely more suited to her personality, and its her OG power set.

Lightning powers - agree it fits her personality, and less restrictive.

Also, the anti-grav powers pale in comparison to pure telekinesis (Kinetix, Tellus), or even Nightwind's wind powers, or Reboot Star Boy's expanded control of gravity... And they don't quite have the fun factor that Matter-Eater Lad or Bouncing Boy provide. (though I agree, the anti-grav powers were used well in SW6 and Threeboot versions).

Ayla could be way more powerful as 'Gravity Girl,' if the powers are used well, but Lightning Lass just is so much more active and dynamic and she is a much more aggressive and interesting character with those powers, so I voted for Lightning, even if it's 'just' a zap power which any fool with a blaster can replicate and they are generally my least favorite powers.

It's like My Hero Academia. The girl with the 'make stuff float' powers is way less dynamic and interesting than the dude who makes explosions, even if her powers are potentially more useful.

I also just realized that, thanks to the Flight Ring, every single Legionnaire can make himself/herself weightless. Not the same thing as having Light Lass powers, but still....

That reminds me: In LSH 284 (first issue of Levitz Mk2,) Ayla makes Blok lighter, but the Flight Rings come into play somehow...sorry, I don't remember clearly right now. Will check my copy of that issue later today.

Didn't Blok require a special ring because he was so dense that a regular one didn't work properly? It's been a while, I might remember this wrong.

Lightning for the personality, definitely. The weight powers were usually kind of boring, but I think in the 3boot Waid gave some twist to them that added punch.

Her threeboot personality is a bit different, too, right?

My unreliable memory burbled up the notion that he required *three* flight rings, initially, to get off the ground, but then Brainy made him a special one?

I have no idea if that's a real thing, or something I am making up right this second. Such is my brain.

I remember the 3 flight rings! I think other than that it took Ayla levitating him? I am only half-remembering as well though

Threeboot Ayla was fun, I don't know if they made her more powerful so much as Waid just put more thought into what she should be capable of...I honestly can't think of a single time classic Light Lass ever did anything remotely cool though lol - she and Jeckie were my least favourite members until the 80s

I voted Lightning too for much the same reasons as everyone else stated.

That said there was at least one really good scene that showed just how powerful she could be in Threeboot LSH v5 #7. On Colu she realises there is someone around they can't detect (Lemnos) causing all the problems and really lets loose with her powers to catch them out. Everything within several hundred meters goes flying up and away including parts of the structures ariund them (as it would if gravity was suddenly completely negated - everything on the world still has the enormous rotational velocity of the planet and would go flying off in to space). The rest of the team can only hang on thanks to Cham turning into a giant multi armed and suckered beast that clings on to the surface and to the other legionnaires. Their Flight rings are not up to the task.

She is enormously powerful in this scene (causing a huge amount of incidental destruction as well) and I wish she was portrayed this way more often.

(On a personality level I had thought that it was Brainy who instructed her to do it, but no she was the one who realised they had a snooper and came up with the solution herself.)

This was also the issue where the unpleasant Brainy explained why he was so disgusted with ere, because she (and Star Boy) embodied one of the most fundamental and easily most powerful forces in the universe and they used it as a play-thing - at least in his opinion. This was a nice setup by Waid to her showing what she could really do.

That was the scene I was thinking of, stile! Light Lass really smoked Lemnos out.

And of course, Light Lass in Superboy's Legion had full-fledged light powers, making her easily one of the top powerhouses (and making her code name have much more sense IMO)

Re Blok, I remember the three flight rings - Light Lass said so herself when the team fought Organus!

I voted electricity, but I actually really like the weightlessness powers. If Ayla had always had the anti-grav powers, I would prefer those, but there's something uncomfortable about the Adventure continuity version of the character having her powers changed essentially without her consent.

Ayla's personality and power set were some of the best and most inventive parts of Waid's run. So I chose Light Lass.

I, too, vote for Light Lass. As Lightning Lass, I find her powers boring and a repetition of Lightning Lad, to the deteriment of both siblings.
As Waid demonstrated, Ayla does not do enough about her power. I am reminded of her fight with the Chemoid during Dr Marlo (?)
invasion, when she was fighting a Chemoid that constantly changed to a heavier element everytime she makes it light. Her solution?
She cancelled her power and the Chemoid dropped through the floor. There is so much she could do, make a villain light and cancel,
and light and cancel, letting gravity work for her, and the villain bouncing up and down. That will certainly take the fight out of them.
Have you ever been lightless? No much you can do in that situation. Making the boots heavy and light in turn will make the villain spin
like a top. How about making a machine light, toss it at the villain and then, negate her power? I could go on and on

These are great arguments for Ayla's light powers and when they were used well.

I am reminded of those scenes in Marvel movies where Thor pins someone with his super-heavy hammer...

If the Legion were a bit more friendly to gadget using heroes (or heroes who used gadgets in combination with their powers), a Light Lass who carried an assortment of nets and bolas from a heavy-gravity world that weighed many hundreds of pounds normally, but she'd made light as a feather in her grasp, and used to subdue foes, could be interesting. "Oh, the blonde is throwing a tiny rope at me! I'll snap it like the flimsy string it is! What? It dragged me to the ground? Why is it so heavy!!"

There's definitely a ton of stuff that could be done with the "Light Lass" powers that would make her far more interesting than just having her as yet another female version of a male hero. I also agree that I hate the way her powers were changed in the original version, however.

I'm not sure there's any reason she couldn't have both. Maybe Garth could have his own secondary powers as well?

I know what Garth Secondary power is! he can share his power for a while by looking at someone else's eyes. That's how Imra could shoot Lightning bolts out of her eyes!

In the cartoon, Ayla lived for a decade as a sentient cloud of energy. Then she was restored to her childhood form by her brothers, Brainiac 5, and Shrinking Violet. It would be a logical step from there to give her gravity-based powers as she grew older.

One fan writer had her rapidly age in a short period of time until she caught back up with her twin, and her lightning powers were released.

I personally think it would be more interesting to have her age in "natural" time. It would be tough to explain to the neighbors back home that your twin was lagging behind you by 10 years after everyone believed she was deceased. Except Garth, who had left home to try and find her (?). This was at the very least implied in the Founders' origin story. Possibly his parents still believed as well, and he had begun the search at their behest.

I prefer her as Light Lass. As a kid I hadn't encountered an anti-grav superhero until Ayla. She was awesome! So much potential with powers like that, and yet she was underutilized (for the most part).
This will always be my "first love" for the character.

It's funny how we tend to orient on the first version of the character we meet. Mine was the reboot Spark, so I have a soft spot for her specifically, but pretty much like all her incarnations. Her growth and journey in the "original" Legion is pretty amazing when you think about it - coming in as a replacement for her brother, first impersonating, then on her own, then being changed into Light Lass, the Timber Wolf relationship (and the affair with Ultra Boy ), to her leaving the Legion. Her story in V3 is just as good - regaining her lightning and the relationship with Vi. Really good stuff there.