Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Forgotten items of the DCU

Promethium. Introduced in the Perez/Wolfman run of Teen Titans. Basically, DC's answer to Marvel's Vibranium. Haven't seen it since, but since it was virtually indestructible, I think it would be a great Idea to return to.

Oh yeah. I remember some old references to Cyborg's new Promethium body and its indestructability. Using the material more is a good idea.

Edit: This prompted me to look it up on the DC wiki and see if it had anything more on it. Turned up a few interesting points:
- Arsenal used some in his body armour
- Deathstroke uses a variant of it in his armour and staff
- It was one of the five metals used by the Court of Owls to make Batman a bridge to the Dark Universe leading into the Dark Metal story line
- In Batman Beyond comics in 2019 the Joker Beyond's cyborg body was also made of Promethium
- Marvel also has an obscure metal called Promethium
- There is a real life extremely rare element called Promethium (with totally different properties)

So it hasn't been totally forgotten but I agree that it could be used more.

I'm surprised the Metal Men never had a promethium bad guy tbh...although promethium was really more of a big deal in the 80s and I don't think DC was really using the Metal Men so much then?

It would have made a good Metal Man! Good idea. Instead they made up another new metal Veridium for a while.

Steve Dayton used Promethium to create The Hybrid. It crossed over into Blue Beetle, and I think they were hoping The Hybrid might get their own book.

I remember both of them things!

I suppose Veridium might count as a forgotten item of the DCU, although tbh I prefer my Will Magnus cranky and human anyway (actually, having googled it now it seems Will's brother became a new Veridium as a bad guy?)

...and yeah, it seems like they were pushing the Hybrid for their own series at one point - I never really took to them but they're salvageable if someone had a really good idea for them I think!

Speaking of rare elements:

Back when Captain Marvel was in Timely (Captain Marvel Adventures #100, July 1, 1949) three mysterious, magical elements were introduced:
(1) Shazamium, a bracelet of which is used by the late wizard Shazam, allows the spirits of the dead to assume a visible, though intangible form. When used by a human, they also assumed a visible, intangible "ethereal form". Synthesized by the wizard Shazam himself.
(2) Sivanium, the "living metal", which Dr. Sivana uses to create innumerable golem-like duplicates of himself. Created by Dr. Sivana.
(3) Marvelium, the "world's mightiest metal", which is super-hard, indestructible and completely impenetrable. Even Sivana's ghost-like ethereal form could be trapped within a cube of Marvalium. Created by Captain Marvel with the wisdom of Solomon and a "brain machine". Marvelium is in some ways similar to DC's Supermanium.

Ooooh. Okay, remember the three demons from the JLA/JSA/Legion crossover from the seventies? they had what...bell, book and jar?

Very close, bell, wheel and jar.

Actually that wasn't their first appearance. Way back in Justice League of America #10 with the first appearance of Felix Faust was also the first appearance of the Demons Three and the three magical items that held their power.

They've popped up a few times mostly as trophy items in the JLA satellite including in the Avengers/JLA crossover, but also in the 90s during a fight between Faust and the Outsiders, and in the 2000s in the Traci 13, Black Alice, Zachary Zatara backup stories in Teen Titans.

So a few fan writers remember them but certainly not a lot.

The Green Bell of Ulthoon, the Silver Wheel of Nyorlath, and the Red Jar of Calythos!

They were created by the Timeless Ones in order to bind the Demons Three.

Ooh, Abnegezar, Rath and Gast (IIRC). They were funky. I had some old issue of Justice League where they killed some or most of the League, and only the Phantom Stranger was able to reverse it. (Batman died leaping off of a tall thing and the demon altered space so that the ground was closer than he expected, so that he smashed into the ground before he could finish his acrobatic tuck and roll, or something, which I thought was a neat twist.) It's interesting how many 'evil wizards' the comics tend to have compared to 'named demons.' DC's most prominent named demon is Etrigan, a good guy! (Although there's also really big name demon bosses like Trigon and Neron.)

I quite enjoyed the stories with the demons three! (the Legion appeared in one right?)

They made an appearance with Felix Faust on Super Friends, though they couldn't be referred to as Demons, there!

And Felix Faust was voiced by Peter Cullen -- Venger from Dungeons and Dragons!

Remember waaaay back when the changed Batman back into the dark avenger of the night? I think the very first story like that was the Secret of the Waiting Graves. The poppies...what if they were what the original Lazarus pits were based on? And that wasnt' the only field...

You are correct, Rick. Not only was Secret of the Waiting Graves (Detective Comics 395, cover date January 1970) the beginning of the dark and moody Batman, it was also the first time that Denny O'Neil & Neal Adams worked together.

Ann, you have a muuuch better memory than me, Madam. As I get older I can remember the vagaries of the little things, but not major ongoing storylines right now. There was a character Batman ran into that rode a harley, somewhere around Houston, I think. Can't remember the name, but he was a one off character I think. I can remember little items from way back when, but... not the particulars anymore. Still, I never know what the old gray matter will throw up, so it's always a treat.

Oh hell, how could I leave this one out... well, given the other methods to achieve this, but still....

Legion flight belts. I mean, Adam Strange has his rocket pack, and there've been other items, like the Icarus wings, but...Legion flight belts. I can easily see them adapted for use in the five years later storyline.

I've wondered about the fact that they used to give "consolation flight belts" to rejected applicants. Apparently, when they switched to flight rings, they didn't give those out, but for how long did they still give out the belts?

Right up until Brainy figured all his time had to spent creating Supergirl replicas, and outsourced the flight belts to ACME Propulsion. The word only got round after the third death from 1000ft. There's a reason so many rejects joined the LSV.

In my Tryouts fics, people who don't wow the judges, and don't flounce out vowing teary retribution after not winning membership, are awarded a flight belt as a consolation prize. Those who go on to become heroes on their own get a useful bit of technology. Those who are... less trustworthy, get a valuable piece of technology *that the Legion can remotely track.*

And of course the secret behind both flight belts and flight rings, and why they aren't all over the place, is that the anti-gravity element they are made with is proprietary technology, with Mon-El and Brainiac 5 sharing the patent! (There are other anti-gravity elements, like Thanagarian Nth metal, but none of them are exactly common, or freely available!)

As for Promethium, mentioned at the top of the page, I speculated back in the day that the reason it was rare and hard to come by has to do with it's source, the same extra-dimensional space that STAR labs was 'mining' that fateful day that Victor Stone lost his mom, and his legs, to one of the other inhabitants of that extra-dimensional space... (So it's dangerous to try and go back and get more, as well!)

It might be even more exotic, in that the 'extra-dimensional space' wasn't another dimension, so much as an area of space that STAR labs had altered through exotic tech so that the physical laws were different there, and they could, in that space, generate compounds and alloys that cannot be formulated in 'real space' with our 'real world' chemical and physical laws. Sadly, the effects on compounds and alloys were not all that was 'altered,' but also a bit of food that snuck in on a less-than-fastidious tech included some bacteria that evolved millions of times over a long weekend, which, to the bacteria in that area of exotic spacetime, lasted tens of thousands of years, evolved into a giant hungry snot monster! Victor got attacked by a hyper-evolved clump of bacteria that lived in a smear of mayo on the 'sterile-suit' of a tech who totally wasn't supposed to be eating lunch in his clean-suit!

And that hyper-evolved hunk of protoplasm also absorbs stuff, even memories!, from things it digests. It survived being ripped in half when the portal was closed, and slithered away into the sewers, feeding on rats and the occasional transit / sanitation worker or homeless person. These days, it calls itself Plasmus, and works with the Brotherhood of Evil!

The WhirlyBat from the Batman comics of the 1970's. It was like a mini helicopter that had vtol somehow. There were merchandizing products and everything.

I remember that! Cool!

The "Supermobile". Do ya'll remember that? Supes was depowered or some such, so he flew this supermobile that had arms on the front. It think it was meant for merchandizing, but would be really cool to reintroduce to the DCU.

Speaking of Superman-related items, he used to have a robot duplicate of himself that hung out in the fortress and would impersonate him when he needed Superboy and Clark to be seen at the same time. The robot wasn't quite *Super*-strong and tough, but could at least approximate his abilities, which seems like it would be handy.

The Supermobile was Awesome!

I had the toy from the Super Powers collection!

Presumably I still have it in storage.

The Whirligog that Grant introduced in Justice League.

And didn't the luck villian from Justice League use luck stealing dice, or am I misremembering?

It's actually a Kirby creation, from the Super Powers comics!

EDE's, I didn't know that. Thanks. Very cool.

Sargon's Ruby, I think it was. It, if I remember correctly, caused him to flip from good to bad to good. I think. Maybe.

I just know there was a ruby. Wasn't there?

And Star-Spangled Kid's cosmic belt.

Star-Spangled Kid’s cosmic belt was used by Courtney Whitmore when she became the new SSK. She later got Jack Knight’s cosmic rod and renamed herself Stargirl.

During some backstory about Nommo/Dr. Mist, of the Global Guardians, he was supposed to have been working behind the scenes for centuries, and imbuing gems with magical powers for others to use to do good. It would be neat if a few of the lesser-used 'magic gems' like the Ruby of Life used by Sargon, or the Blood Gem used by Bloodwynd turned out to be creations of Nommo, over the centuries!

I like how the 'Ruby of Life' under some writers seemed to impart a form of 'life' to inanimate matter, causing statues to walk, weapons to jerk free and attack their wielders, carpets to fly, curtains to wrap around foes, etc. Kind of a magic themed Life Lass, which is the kind of 'magic' character I like, one with a distinctive set of magical capabilities, and not just 'I do random stuff that works this week, and I'll forget I can do next week...'

Harbinger uses the Ruby of Life in her Legion Worlds fan fic

Very cool on Harbinger's part.

SSK used the belt sparingly in Infinity Inc. I think Thomas realised he'd made the series too crowded and worked to downplay a few of the cast. I'm pretty sure Skyman could fly, so the belt was presumably part of that costume too.

I was always curious about that. Skyman only seemed to fly, not much else, that I recall. Star-Spangled Kid, with the Cosmic Converter Belt, had enhanced stats, and could throw a bunch of 'stars' at people that disrupted machines and caused people to go unconscious, but he didn't fly, unless he was using the rod (which, IIRC, he sometimes did?). That suggests to me that the costume hid a gadget that acted like a Rod, not a Belt, and I'm 'eh' on that.

I kinda want whatever Skyman's packing under that skintight suit to have the abilities of the Cosmic Converter Belt, and allow him to throw those disrupting stars, and have slightly enhanced physical abilities, not just fly, since that seems more unique and interesting to me than Starman/Stargirls rod-based force/gravity blast-y powers. There's already multiple Starmen, and a Stargirl, Skyman would be more interesting to me if he went in a different direction.

I like that he straight up modified and altered the technology himself, and wasn't just wearing Ted's hand-me-downs. That's cool.

Even as SSK, you didn't get to see many of those powers either in II. Mainly flight again. Silver Scarab had some leadership ideas right at the start, but was too close to SSK in that role and in power set. Partly, as a result neither really stood out. Thomas was considering bumping either of them off as early as Crisis IIRC.