Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! legion 48 spoilers

Well then, perhaps you could try doing the same, instead of quoting my post in a snarky reply and expecting me to follow some gender-based double-standard that I did not know in advance that required me to not reply in kind.

How about the notion of the three female characters being offensive heavy hitters, and the single male being a purely defensive player?

I think that's pretty subversive of a genre that often falls into the gender-cliche to have guys with super-strength or energy blasts, and girls who have empathy powers or precognition or telepathy.

*That's* what *I* was talking about, and I would think that you might have some interesting insights as to what sort of comics characters do subvert the genre, and which ones utterly fail to do so.

(For instance, it would be easy to dismiss the Teen Titan Raven as a poor portrayal of a female character, with her 'traditional girly powers' of empathy and being the team bicycle, ferrying them around, with out of control emotions, the very model of the 'hysterical female who can't be trusted with power.' A counter-example from the same creative team, with 'traditional boy powers' and a 'male' attitude, Starfire, super-strength and energy blasts, very much the aggressor in her relationship with Nightwing, but she also may fail to be considered totally subversive because of her cheesecake outfit.)

I don't consider Night Girl exposing half a breast, in a comic that had Element Lad wandering around stark naked while strangers invaded his home space and violated his privacy, to be a stoning offense. Ayla sobbing as she's threatened with rape? Very offensive portrayal, to me. Night Girl's torn top showing less flesh than Shadow Lass shows when fully dressed? Not so much.

set: my quote was not a personal attack upon you, it was a disagreement with your comment. i did not make reference to all your concerns being the product of hate and therefore invalid.

many female characters have very distressing situations concerning their wardrobe or lack thereof.

let me be clear. nothing is INHERENTLY wrong or bad or sexist or whathaveyou with nudity. (for the record, i draw naked things alllllll the time. my art is full of naked people). But there is also nothing inherently liberating about it either. You have to consider the purpose of the outfit or lack thereof. Is this being used to tittlate? is the scene just cheesecake? is the character being objectified? Is it being used satirically? Is there a reason to the nudity?

yes i KNOW that male characters lose their clothing quite a bit. But I think even the most sensually minded person would have a hard time claiming that these presentations are intended to be exhibitions of cheesecake.

most of them, to MY eyes, seem to intend to look more...grizzled? i'm having a hard time finding a word other than "badass". In other words, the character looks "cooler" because it's a show of having less protection against whatever he's fighting. however, when a female loses her clothing in a comic, she does not inspire a feeling of "this lady is a badass". she tends to be presented to the reader in a manner that is more "this lady is sexy, look at her lack of clothing".

Element lad's lack of clothing seemed more for the purpose of comedic value, shooter is obviously making strong comparisons to a hippie or bohemian attitude. i think if a female was presented in that context, with an assumption of illegal drugs, excessive flora and a penchant for a smelly animal, it would ALSO be more comedic and reasonable and not offensive to my senses. (i also didn't feel any sort of sensual reaction to him in this either, to be clear.)

Also, there's the matter of choice. Element Lad CHOSE to be naked, and he was very much not bothered or embarrassed at being naked. Shadow Lass had a similar exchange about nudity with Timber Wolf earlier on which I'll get to later. But Night Girl did not choose to be nude, her clothing was lost in a fight and she looks very shamed and embarrassed by it.

There was a scene in an earlier issue where Saturn Girl is recovering in a tank. She's obviously completely naked in there. I remember commenting on this to FJM on the pencils for this saying how impressed I was with his skill here. She looked relaxed, totally at ease with her nudity, only focused on the message she was getting over her ring. The fact that she was naked in a tank went wholly uncommented upon. She looked very pretty but not at all compromised.

i thought this was excellent, that they were just teammates naked in the tanks and they were all so comfy with it that none of them had to even comment about it. it was pretty much a locker room sort of atmosphere.

However, this sadly went awry when Shadow Lass had a bizarre exchange with Brinn where he asked if she wanted the privacy screen up and she said no, that she enjoyed the view. to me, this is a bizarre, unneeded sexualization of their interaction for no apparent reason and where it was much stronger without. Now Shadow Lass is oogling her teammate while he's, for all intents and purposes, healing up?

i was not impressed. for the record, no, it is not empowering to make a female character ape the objectifying behavior of her male counterparts.

My problem is not that Night Girl's half a breast was exposed. It was that it was removed violently, without her consent and in a manner which was embarrassing and compromising way that, to my eyes, is intended to be "hot". this is made even more unappealing when we know that FJM toned it down.

even a character like starfire poses lots of problems for a feminist reading. in an writer/artist's hands she can be either a strong female character or an exotic fetish object, concerned only about what dick thinks about her that exemplifies the characteristics of "the emotional woman" (her powers are emotion based if i remember correctly). BUT I DIGRESS, THAT IS NOT LEGION. But Shadow Lass, as our resident "scantily clad warrior lady" archetype can have the same pitfalls. she started out, even in shooter's run, to be wonderfully casual about her culture (her utterly blaise reaction to her people immediately going to rip apart that monster's body). i found the one other scene we got out of her (the healing tank exchange) to be weirdly forced. i'm fine with her liking a good roll in the hay, but...it just seemed WEIRD. just like ayla's "i don't like to sleep alone" thing was... just weird!

i'm a big believer in "show it, don't say it" style of writing. and i would even accept a "lonely ayla" or a "wanting sex ayla" if it was presented in a more mature fashion. maybe it's his slap-dash writing devoid of pacing, but presented in such a rapid and statement driven fashion, it smacks of trying to make girls really into sex because it's "hot". conversely, i feel like male characterization is slowly being built up (lyle, garth, jo), even projectra is being built up to evil-ness (still not reasonably, but generally easier to swallow as it's slower), but the sexual aspects are all bizarrely quick and stuffed in.

And, one last point, I feel like i'm constantly seeing comics where female nipples are freakishly erect and RIGHT THERE. AHH it drives me crazy, because it looks like they're not wearing a bra and their boobs are...WEIRD shaped ahhh. whereas I've never noticed a male package carefully and bizarrely outlined (male nipples tend to be absent as well, not that i'm complaining). So if shooter shows us the top of a guy's goods (....or...the...bottom? I dont...know) then i will totally forgive him and will definitely call him fair minded in the world of cheesecake.


excessively long post...OH GOD HOW DO THEY GET SO LONG AHHHH

oh one other thing... i didn't mean to make this the "talk about the issue" thread!!! i realized later that i'd given it a title like those others, i was just trying to show you guys the pages but wanted to warn of spoilers!! it seems like usually someone else makes that thread and i thought it was sort of an... official thing?! so i'm really sorry if i stepped on anyone's toes!

i have NOT read this issue (i've stopped buying them because of last issue). i want to make it clear that all my comments are based on the posted pages and other things. uh... uhh so... if there's someone that usually makes the official thread, i'm sorry?!

From a plot perspective, I figured they'd reject her, but the reason they gave was pretty lame, and she struck me as being far more useful than Gazelle. How likely is it that she'll ever be anywhere without any energy source whatsoever? If nothing else, she can hum to herself to build up energy since she said she could use sound. If she had lost it after the Sun Boy charge, they could have used the old "you need to learn to control your powers" (or Shooter could have more carefully defined her powers), but saying it's too easy to be without an energy source is ridiculous.

Gazelle says she can to all those marathons in 10 minutes IF she's charged up. So after 10 minutes of fighting she crashes and becomes an instant liability.

And while I certainly appreciate three powerhouse female characters, I thought Night Girl losing her top was lame, especially followed by Sizzle's comment.

It's really too bad Shooter didn't get his full run. Despite some weird character bits (the Invisible Kid thing came out of nowhere, too), I've enjoyed his overall ideas and Francis' art. But now he has two MAJOR threats to take care of in two issues, and that's going to hurt storytelling.

Looks like we're talking about the issue here, dear. There's no "official" thread poster for each issue. Some members have a "thing" they'll do like Sketch Lad's infamous Hair threads or "Calling the Roll for Issue # ___" but anybody can start a thread and get the ball rolling.
Heck I wanted to say something so if you hadn't started this one I probably would have.

I think you're right. I've gotten a little lost reading this series. UPYH, a gazillion wannabe Legionnaires, bad guy Terror Firma turned good guys turned bad guys again, Wanderers, Subs and now Reservists. When will it all end?

When will it all end? At around issue #50

Light, wind, and gravity are also pretty ubiquitous energy sources.

I was also annoyed that LL said a power had to have offensive capabilities to be eligible. Since when? Phantom Girl anyone? Shrinking Violet? Triplicate Girl? Invisible Kid? Brainiac 5? Dream Girl? Shadow Lass?

None of these Legionnaires' powers are particularly offensive, but they all manage to make contributions to the team.

Pretty good issue, in my opinion, even though it was one page shorter and it all seemed kinda rushed (thanks, Didio! I was just hoping for a Flamebird Action Comics! Fans were waiting for that for a long time!).
Sun Boy's subplot has clearly suffered for that.
This issue (and some of the allegations for "reservism") were just as crazy as they were back in the Sixties (Bouncing Boy anyone?), so I think we should all take it with a grain of salt.
The story is way more intriguing than Slugfest of 3 Worlds, which looks better than it is for being a George Pérez book.
I'll miss Shooter/Manapul's Legion, definitely.

is the "duplication of powers" thing been shown to be a rule in this universe? i don't think we've seen it come into play before and all tryouts happened off panel previously, yes? i think in the past, tryouts were used to showcase some of the legion's rules and traditions. i want an issue on time bubble hazing!!

jim:

is it a writing plothole or was LL just drunkenly making up NEW rules for THIS tryout, you think? or is this a show of "we have defense people on the team, we need more heavy hitters"?

People tend to react differently in different times. Right now LL is gearing up to defend the UP from the invaders, so it makes sense that he is going to be looking for offensive heavy hitters. Now, while i agree that Sizzle seems like a heavyweight, there are plenty of instances where the may be no available power source. Not only that, but she said bring it on in effect to sun boy, and was "full" well before he hit max power. Therefore, of an energy base format, Sunboy is the better choice.

Again, yes, the reasons may be "lame" to us, the reader, but we are not writing the story, we are the readers. To a certain extent, the characters help to write the story by their given personalities and abilities, and the situation.

In real life, people make decisions all the time that others look at from the outside and say "wtf" to, but they aren't in the situation.

And she was not completely rejected. The legion realized that there was plenty of worth to her abilities, and moved to take advantage of them when appropriate.

As to Night Girl, c'mon...my wife, a feminist, has on more than one occasion looked at my books and pointed out the beefcake. A guy is in a fight and half his clothes are gone, and only a stray wisp of smoke or a stragegically placed piece of wreckage covers his package and it isn't meant to be "hot" to the folks that enjoy naked men? Nah.

Night Girl engaged ultra boy in battle. Her clothes got torn. I guarantee that when two guys go toe to toe, odds are something is gonna tear, usually a shirt, and usually around the neck area. UB had a costume that was more rugged. NG didn't. PC squeamishness aside, it made sense from a reality standpoint. Was it a little cheesecake? Probably. But if everyone in comics was "ugly", it wouldn't sell. Thats not an endorsement, i don't buy the T and A books out there, it simply is. And it will always be until humans transcend being human.

The human animal is the single greatest driving force on earth, and to try to pretend otherwise is hypocracy. straight folks like shots of the other gender in titilating situations, and gay folks like shots of the same sex in titilating siuations. Such is life.

Was Dream Girl shown or even mentioned in this issue?

The wedding and Brainiac 5 wanting to nap was mentioned in passing.

as a lady that likes the ladies, seeing girls likes this does nothing for me. for titillation, it fails miserably, it just comes off as... sort of sad when i see it. and i know some heterosexual men feel the same way, that they're being talked down to or condescended towards. (is 'condescended towards" even english...)

Yep points been made again, we know....time to move on.

i can't believe you guys! the legion needs a good reason to reject people? this is incredibly kind and polite compared to the tryouts from the silver age.

Sizzle just got an invite to the JLE!

And that's a very good point. When the male action heroes have their tops torn (or, in rarer cases, their trousers blasted away), they very rarely are shown blushing and hiding themselves.

I'd have been much more impressed with that scene if Night Girl had merely looked *annoyed* and come back with a punch to Ultra Boy's head (her arm cleverly drawn to obscure the exposed flesh, naturally, in fine comic-book nudity style).

This was a *good* long post. I totally agree with where you were coming from here.

Did Gazelle make anyone else's Spidey-sense tingle, or did you take her at face value? She's been enigmatic at best, vitriolic at worst--and now she wants to be a Legionnaire?

Something else else's amiss here. If Gazelle was going to naturally segue into a Legionnaire, it seems we missed a few steps. Mole, anyone?

Haven't read any other posts yet. I loved this issue. It's Francis' best IMO. Probably one of my favorite overall issues yet. I am a sucker for tryouts though.

I think there's still room for cultures to consider "modesty" without being backwards. We don't know her backstory but this would be a good starting point for it to be different than those members who see clothing only as a decorative item with places to store stuff.

By now I would have thought that at least one Legionnaire would have thought the belly button a pretty cool place for their Legion Ring. I shudder to think where U-Boy would put it.

BABY-AC Five.
That alone was worth the price of admission. If there's a parallel earth Legion in which Ayla and Brainy are a battling romantic couple, I so want to read it.

The story was great fun, and Francis' art was stronger than ever. The whole issue was complete delight -- exactly want a want in a Legion comic book. I look forward to next month as I have every other, but with the tinge of sadness it'lll soon be supplanted by the repellent fraud (imo) DC calls the "original" Legion.

But, hey, it's great to know I have a free pass to bore and annoy other fans by restating ad naseum my utter contempt for the Johnsboot LSH, and to derail threads with my lopsided, narrowed-minded opinons without ever reading another issue of it ever again. Gosh, I can even *start* a thread about an issue I have no intention of buying! All I have to do is look at an online preview or flip through a few pages at the shop before I begin complaining and I should be good to go. Cool, huh?

Haven't read this yet, but the arbitrary nature of Legion membership decisions IS a hallmark of the series. And the idea that the team needs different capabilities at different times is a good one. I have to admit, I also kinda liked the "Saturn Girl secretly tests everyone" idea that Johns came up with in Action. Yes, it's just the kind of too-clever-by-half Johns invention to explain arbitrary past continuity that begins to annoy you if you read Johns's books. Having said that, it's also just a REALLY good idea for keeping charismatic whack jobs and other fragile psyches out of the Legion. Unfortunately, once you introduce it, you can never have a "traitor joins the Legion" story. Hey, wait a minute. If Saturn Girl scanned everybody, how'd Nemesis Kid get in!?!?!? Was it his nemesis power tricking Imra's mind probe? Or is Johns just lazy? Damn infuriatin' Johns!!!!

I guess it just means that Saturn Girl isn't infallible.

It's a fine Legion tradition, goes back years'n'years. Why, I'll bet there were even traditionalists that didn't like Dave Cockrum's "soft boot" back in the day but since Al Gore hadn't invented the internet yet we never heard much about it.

Post away my friend!

Who was it who said that, for him, the Legion died when they moved out of Adventure into Action?

Traditionalism is one thing, but, to me, too many Legion fans set up arbitrary and impossible standards for Legion stories to live up to, and of course the only ones that can live up to them are the ones they bought when they were twelve.

Got in my second read: still fascinated.

Don't Understand
"Baby-AC" what's that mean?

Fav lines
"How long do you think it'll take. The candidates are waiting..
"No, let's wrestle."
"Is it hot in here or..."

The Candidates

Cham voted for everbody. I love Cham, even moreso the way fjm illustrates him.

some pretty heavy hitters voted against Gazelle.


Four winners in looks, costuming and personality IMO. I love that Night Girl is in the throw-back, the only traditional costume. Gazelle's is beautiful but isn't that more of a "gnu?" Sizzle's looks more of a paint job that clothing, the "S" is cool. Turtle's armor look is most attractive, the shell a bit goofy but I think there's a reason for it.

Turtle: has my interest the most. Turtle was the only NEW candidate that Saturn Girl voted for. hmmmmm. Strikes me as the "youngest." A bit of post z-hour Ferro and Ferro Lad, daring, but youngish. A Turtle, with a shell, that's something a kid comes up with and do they even have turtles on Doopa? That leads me to my next thought.

???Something else else about the comic reading in this Legion... have they actually ever met Superman or is he only a comics character??? Could this character have been inspired by TNTs?

He's from the planet of the tourists Projectra attacked and I might add, sure she left when Sunboy came in but that was also the same time Turtle began his audition.

Sizzle: a frequency convertor. Don't think I've seen that super power before. No jading here, she strikes me as someone that has had a happy life. A terrific look, maybe from the planet Tyraz? Having Sunboy ramp up instead of just blasting her was a well thought out practicality.

Gazelle: looks stunning. The ten minutes at max power is a big detriment. Gives Brainy something to play with. She seems to be the one being set up as the one to be suspected of being the trader. She's okay with the Legion but still hates the UP.

Night Girl: that opening page of her battle with U-Boy made up for years of being under appreciated by Legion writers. Can Manipul draw a fight or what! She's more than power, she's got skills. Notice the arm-bar. There's some competitiveness with Jo that would be followed up on if not for the re-reboot. sigh.

Tech

I think Shooter does better than anyone in DC comics at incorporating science and tech but I really don't think the basis of communication will be digital/binary 1000 years from now. With tesserects and dimensional crossing and biologically based computation, Shannon's laws will long since have been shattered.