Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Race and the Legion...

No, really -- Catspaw was afro-american? Was that definitely established? I thought her coloring was just due to being catlike.

As I mentioned, I'm not sure if she's ever had a voice-actor, so of course she doesn't have an accent. It's not really possible.

The fact that they didn't mess up the writing to make it look like she had an accent on the page just makes her like Chameleon Boy or Shadow Lass, who *definitely* don't speak Interlac as their native tongue, and also don't have some sort of 'accent' written into their word-balloons.

Jacques is the only one who had to suffer that sort of silliness, a lame attempt to 'write' an accent. As a result, *Khunds* speak better Interlac than Jacques, and they made the dim bulb President? Yeesh.

Maybe we'll find out that on other planets there are other groups that come under the Legion umbrella (Lallor and Xanthu for starters and who know where else) that have a far more diverse make up - as for the lack of flight rings (the limiting factor to being on the core team) how about a Gil'dishpan member or two, isn't their tech supposed to be really advanced? Zymyr was able to selectively teleport large groups, and even a planet!

And if memory serves me right wasn't there a large group of zippy looking kids at the end of issue 12 waiting for Lemnos' Army? Whatever happened to them? surely at least one of these little groups thougfht it was a good idea to stick together and go off and spread the Legion word somewhere other than Earth?

I'm always a bit wary of reading accents - some work and some don't. Jacques always annoyed me as he used only 'simple' french, if he'd occassionally tried to talk a complete sentence in French it might have struck me as more realistic - even if it was only when he spoke with his sister.

Harbinger, Lemnos' zippy kids joined Sun Boy. Unless you mean other ones.

Yeah the only accent I was is an alien accent. A *kilk* in between sentences. Or the alien version of Mein Gott! Bozshe Moi! Sacre Bleu!

Maybe Gates throws in a *blarke*! Or maybe instead of having $&*! then can do some Interlac lettering. So we us Interlac nerds can decipher at home. Something else else like good grief!

to get back to EDE's original point, I would humbly suggest:

4. A (real, not fan-club) Legion so large we don't know the extemt of membership. Classic members, people like XS and Kid Quantum (either or both), alien members, and non-white members are all there. Obviously, this would be a challenge to coordinate, but no one's favorites would be excluded, even if they get rare panel-time.

Before this is dismissed out of hand (and I fully realize there would be good arguments to do so), I remind people of the early days of the All-Star Squadron (before Roy Thomas burned out), where we had the "classics" (the JSA membership) serving as a counterbalance to a core group of lesser-remembered heroes, who in turn were part of a literal cast of dozens.

This would/could insolate the LSH from further 'boots: just shift the focus of your core group.

A starting lineup could include three to five "classics" (traditionally 2/3 white 1/3 alien), two or three from the 70s/80s teams (generally non-white or non-human), a couple 90s/early 00s (generally black), Threeboot Val, and maybe one or two new ones as well.

This is interesting.

One solution would be to bring diversity by ethnicizing MORE of the characters, rather then making their backgrounds more general (which also = more generic.)
Remember when Lu was drawn with the larger lips and the more slanted eyes?
Definitely Slavic and beautiful and very 'in', today.
Tinya's eyes, like other Legionnaires', have changed over the years.
Val was last shown as mixed Asian/Caucasian..

Coloring, as a whole is extremely complex and rather unpredictable, too.

Colonies would most definitely retain their ethnic qualities, depending on how diverse the mix was to begin with.
Some groupings might even create a future group that looks humanoid rather than human, too.

So, I'd create ethnic diversity in the original Legionnaires.
Then, I'd add humanoid diversity with a few new, well thought out members.
Some classically 'from Earth looking', but more humoid looking, strange mixes of human features.

I'd follow with more and more active members of truly alien races.

One of the problems with 'aliens' is that the basis of understanding each other might be missing for a 'team' effort.

Just drawing beings that look different doesn't mean that they're alien.

One of Star Trek's problems was a small special effects budget. It was easier to make humanoid aliens than try to make believable aliens, although ST had some spectacular successes in that area, from time to time.
A drawing medium, like comics can create whatever they want, visually.
It's making the characters alien that's hared, especially if they're not going to come across as silly.
Especially where accents are concerned.

And accents are easy in TV or movies, unlike special effects.

Does anyone here notice some of the posts by non-native English speakers?
We have a number of them.
I find them very charming.
But, it's hard to copy.

The Legion is 1000 years in the future, that's approximately 50 generations.

Everyone speaks Interlac.

Given those two facts, it is unlikely that there will be the same 'racial' or dialect mix amongst Earthlings that there is now. As broadcasted media becomes more homgenised, so will accents to the extent that interlac will sound pretty much the same wherever on Earth you are from.

Equally with 50 generations of travel and inter-marriage, it is unlikely that the current racial boundaries will be retained. Until 20 years ago inter-marriage was unthinkable just about anywhere. Now, here in the UK, it is estimated that within 5 years 45-50% of all Afro-Carribeans will be marrying outside their 'race'. This is a trend that will continue and escalate. In 1000 years the world will be populated by people who pretty much all have the coloring of Beyonce Knowles.

Where this racial diffusion will not occur is on isolated colonies where a founding group breed without inter-breeding with others from Earth. So Starhaven's 'Amerind' people would stay as their founders looked. Similarly if Braal say was colonised by Italy before the Italians were subsumed into a homogenous Earth population, then the natives of Braal would have predominantly black hair and fair(ish) skin.

Based on what is likely to happen on Earth, Jacques Foccart is probably as anachronistic as the first umpteen Legionnaires being 'white'. But let's be honest, even today no publisher in the US could posit a situation where white America has been absorbed into "Coffee Colored People By the Score" any more than their 1950s predecessors could have shown black heroes or athiest heroes.

So the whole damn debate is pointless.

I agree with a lot of what you said SA Lad.
I also think that in 1000 years all Earthlings will indeed have the same skin tone. It's inevitable, and would be a logical evolution.

I remember back when the 3boot Legion debuted I was a bit surprised (not shocked) to see Star Boy as a black character. I thought to myself " hmm, that's different! Ok, why not?". Never once did it cross my mind that the creators were maybe trying to satisfy some color status quo or something. If they had they would certainly have made either Invisible Kid II and/or Quantum Kid II a part of the new incarnation.