Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Would Kid Psycho be cooler...

if instead of being a pasty white guy in a turban, he was portrayed as some ethnicity that actually wears turbans on Earth?

Or would that just make him a bit of a stereotype?

I would have to say it would make him a stereotype.

Then, on the other hand, I've never had a problem with Dawnstar's headband or fringe leather.

Kid Psycho will never be cool. Its in the name.

Maybe if he was renamed Psychonaut?

Nah.

In the 90s he could've gone by: Psycho... Not!

Excellent! Party on, EDE!

Kinetic Kid would better represent his powers (psycho for psycho-kinetic, sure, but why did some yahoo decide to change telekinetic to psychokinetic anyway? They can't even be consistent, since they didn't change telepath to psychopath!).

Get rid of the 'dies a little when he uses his power' limitation, and have it just be exhausting if he overuses it like overexerting with physical strength to explain why it used to place a strain on him, make it more generally useful telekinesis, perhaps limited to 'force-pushing' things away, or 'force-pulling' them to him like a tractor beam (or even moving them around slowly, nothing quite as generally all-over-the-place as some comic book telekinetics), and he's basically as useful as other blasty sorts like Lightning Lad, only with some utility thrown in. And sure, he's got a turban. Might as well make him a Sikh or something!

Or an alien with a giant noggin under that turban, that he has to keep warm. But I think I prefer the space-Sikh instead.

Alternately, if going fully into caricaturizing a Sikh hero, have the force-bolts be just the first level of his power, and later develop the ability to create simple barriers, or, his signature move, a giant force-sword! (Nothing quite so fancy or 'do whatever I can think of!' as a Green Lantern's energy constructs, but still useful!). Cause there's three things a comics fan might know about Sikhs, turbans, beards and swords!

And if he ages out of the 'Kid' title, he can always borrow from Condo Arlik's moniker and be Kinetic King! (Just don't be all 'Lightning Lord' about it. Would be a bad look to have our only Sikh hero go all villain-y!)

90s Kid Psycho would just be called Psyko and his turban would be wrapped in belts covered in spikes and pouches....we all know we want it, let's not pretend

Would he have teeny-tiny feet that defy the laws of physics?

Maybe his name was Kid Sihko all along, and everyone just misunderstood because of his accent!

Anyway, I started thinking about this because I was thinking about the whole topic of racial diversity in the Legion for the umpteenth time, and it occured to me while I kind of hate retconning the race of any of the core Legionnaires, it might be less annoying if it were a more obscure character like Reflecto or Kid Psycho, and it might even lead to those characters being used more.

My regular reminder that Gnill Opral had the ability to punch thousand-year holes in spacetime with his 'psycho-force'

^^Hmm... wonder if that's the only the time a reference to a "consolation flight ring" is made? I'd previously assumed when they switched from belts to rings, this practice of giving out consolation prizes was discontinued!

EDE, I greatly dislike the race-retconning as well. Especially because it was done so cynically by Bendis and his editors -- one moment the Rannzes are White, the next they're Black! And stereotypes, to boot! Of course, I know that's not the only example, but I think it's by far the worst.

Let me make something clear -- I am Latinx, Half-Jewish, and to some undetermined extent Indigenous. And I could care less about weaponized progress in superhero comics!

That's because I believe that superheroes who have been around for a long time, such as the Legionnaires, have ALWAYS been inherently problematic on many issues, including race. The best that can be done with the Legion (IN MY OPINION) is to have some of the long-running characters be vaguely coded -- Salu Digby, sounds like her ancestors might have been a mixture of South Asian and English; Tinya Wazzo, could indicate Italian descent.

Which brings us to the elephant in the room -- my favorite character, Tasmia Mallor, was initially conceived as coming from a world of Black separatists (essentially the same origin that they'd give Troy Stewart several years later.) I'll come right out and say it -- I'm GLAD she ended up being exotic but blue-skinned, and I'll tell you why: because by the time I seriously got into the Legion, we already had SEVERAL Black and biracial Legionnaires, but ZERO explicitly LATINX Legionnaires. So, for me, it became like, Tasmia is mine, mine, MINE! Try to take her from me, and I'll make you sorry you were born!

I know that's an extreme stance to take, but I don't care. Instead of messing with the identities of established Legionnaires, either come up with new ones or insert new retroactive members into the team's distant past for greater diversity.

That's my opinion.

A bit like Raz, I think he'd just be given claws to be Kid Psycho these days.

I think of him as the Preboot Kinetix. Combined with the above, he could be Kineti-X, and have a team book with other moody legion rejects.

This reminded me of a scene in one of Anne McCaffrey's Pegasus series which involves the integration and sometimes exploitation of humans with teelpathic/telekinetic etc gifts. Most hire themselves out through an organisation that represents them and some employers are insisting that they should pay them less because they are taking less time to do certain tasks, so an energy vs effort experiment is performed where a set number of crates are moved from one place to another by three different individuals, one labourer moving by hand, one using a forklift, and one telekinetic moving them with his mind. Using blood tests to detect energy/sugar levels before and after they show that although the telekinetic takes much less time than the others, it still takes considerable effort requiring them to rest and recover after the task rather than immediately working more of an 8 hour day. Kind of a side note but so often when we see these sorts of powers, doing things with your mind is like easier than picking up a glass of water and rarely is the potential effort involved shown.
GAH!!!
I did forget that! He is really powerful.
Well put. I agree.

You could still keep the Kid Psycho name and have it make a bit of sense if, whenever he uses his powers to its fullest, he turns evil for a while.
Meaning "Yes, Kid Psycho unleashed his powers and defeated the bad guy!" is IMMEDIATELY followed by "Oh no, now we have to deal with Kid Psycho's evil side which is even worse than the previous bad guy!".
He can have relatively standard telekinetic powers as a base, so he's still useful in "regular" fights, but you have to be REALLY careful to have him go all-out or you risk having to deal with something more dangerous. As if Lightning Lad had the risk of turning into Validus whenever he uses too much of his powers.
This way you also solve Kid Psycho's main issue... besides his look... that you can barely use him. The fact that using his powers is detrimental to him is what makes him interesting, but if it's TOO detrimental then you either just use him a couple of time and he dies, or you don't use him at all.
Use him too much and his gimmick loses weight.
Admittedly my idea doesn't 100% solve the issue, but I think it could have more mileage.

Had Kid Psycho been a thing in the 90s, honestly I don't think they would've changed his name. After all that didn't happen to ALL Legionnaires, and both Legionnaires with "Kid" in their codename got to keep it.
I think that if you update him, he only gets to keep the turban if he's in the 20th/21st century like in the original version.
The whole reason why he wears the turban is to disguise the fact that he has a huge head, because he didn't want people to know he was an alien.
If he's in the 30th/31st century, would anyone really care if he doesn't look fully human?
The other option is that he wears a turban simply because the people from his planet wear turbans. That's it. Making more parallels to the way Earth people use turbans makes the Legion universe smaller.

I think this is more an indication of how Kinetix's powers were described. She began as "Preboot Life Lass", but her powers (especially after the whole depowered-and-repowered cat girl plot) can probably best be described as telekinesis that allows her to also reshape and animate objects, in addition to simply lifting them. more versatile than the "standard" telekinetic.

they also began describing her as a psychokinetic, but I prefer telekinetic.


I can imagine Kid Psycho and Kinetix and even Life Lass coexisting. Maybe Kid Psycho has greater raw strength (and he can punch holes through time with his psycho-force!) But Kinetix has more fine control (the reshaping objects) and doesn't, you know, kill herself with her powers).

as for Life Lass, maybe, uh, her animated objects can move on their own, while Kinetix has to actually maintain control over them.

enough to differentiate them. and besides, they're all useful powers, the team doesn't complain about having Mon-El AND Supergirl AND Superboy all together..

To Ride Pegasus was an amazing book! My favorite of Anne McCaffrey's books, and she's got a lot of great ones. The sequel was a bit darker than I wanted.

I agree! it was pretty good. I'm pretty sure I read the sequel but couldn't tell you a thing about it.

Kid Psycho would be much cooler as Cisco Kid.

Ah, but who's Poncho?

Tenzil. Tenzil said "He's a friend of mine."

Tenzil dressed Polar Boy up as Kid Psycho during that trial! to try to have him declared unfit for trial!

Ah, was he not dressed as Evolvo Lad.

Sadly, they did not escape in a Volvo.

Nor did they escape with Evillo.