Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! The Legionnaires At Their Best

For Duo Damsel, I'd choose Adv. 369, when she saved those 2 truck drivers while Superboy and Mon-El were standing around wondering what to do.

A small moment I like for Lightning Lad is when he catches his sister and flies her to safety after she's shot out of the sky in Adv. 347.

For Phantom Girl, I'd choose the issue where she stands by her man--Adv. 316.

For Wildfire there are a bunch of moments for me:
-- both his origin where he "dies" to save Gim and his return, when the saves the Legion from Molecule Master
-- When he faces down Omega
-- The issue where he tells his origin to the trainees. It showed his hot-headedness at the same time as showing his humanity, team spirit and genuine role as mentor, gaining Lightning Lad's respect in the meantime.
-- The Great Darkness where he manhandles Dawny, throwing her out of danger while holding off three of the Dark Servants before getting blasted.
-- His pursuit of Dawny when she's on her Grand Tour
-- Legion Lost when he faces off with the Progeny armada.

Hmmm...
For Dream Girl, I'd advocate for Waid's issue spotlighting (maybe number 4(?) of the current run. Or, I'd vote for the last issue or two in the Who is Sensor Girl plot--showing off her leadership, some combat, and some melancholy at sensing Mentalla's future.

For Element Lad, definitely his orgin story, whichever number of Adventure that was.

For Saturn Girl, the last issue of the Universo Project (or the entire Universo Project) or the Adventure story where she plans to take on the Khunds by herself (until Garth steps in). Or any other story where she just decides to take things on by herself.

For Phantom Girl, I would nominate Superboy #220, where she defuses a bomb at the center of a planet. The impressive thing about this feat is that everyone, including Jo, urges her not to do it because of the immense risk. But she chooses to be heroic rather than safe, and ends up saving the day.

From the Subs: Stone Boy's greatest moment was during the trials to see which Sub would become a Legionnaire, he apparently gave up his chance in order to keep innocent people from being hurt.

That and the time he defeated Pulsar Stargrave!

Kid Quantum II: when she created a memorial for Element Lad on Trom. A quiet moment, no glory or sacrifice involved, but real and three-dimentional, IMO.

M'Onel: Another quiet scene. He sits talking with Traid about the future of humanity. This was after the final defeat of the Demon's Head, with the Hypertaxis problem still not fully addressed.

STAR BOY:

Adv. #342. He accepted his unjustifiable explusion with good grace and immediately went on to join the Subs.

Adv. #350-351. Tricking his former teammates as "Sir Prize" in Adv. 350-351.

LSH v.3 #306. In the flashback to the Takron-Galtos mission, he ended a prison riot after his Kryptonian-level powers suddenly deserted him.

LSH v.4 #61. The moment near the end where threw caution to the wind and swept Dream Girl into his arms.

Legion Worlds #4. His display of power during the Robotica invasion of Xanthu. Training to be a "portable black hole."

The Legion #13. Used his powers on a massive scale to prevent Warworld from disrupting Earth's gravity.

The Legion #33. Lifted the Credo mothership off the planet and did a little dance with Nura at the end.

In the current series, the scenes where Thom questions Rokk's ethics vis-a-vis Projectra (issue #6) and later forces his way past her guards to check on her welfare (issue #18).

I agree with Dr. One about Ultra Boy in the annual V.4 #1. That's definately his defining story.

For Mon-El, I'd say TMK #4, where he comes back to the Legion finally, and proceeds to destroy the Time Trapper, knowing full well it'll end that timeline. His belief that a Legion would still exist and his determination to defeat the Time Trapper really showed his heroic side more than any other moment to me. That's when I really knew that I loved the character.

If you were going to include the Subs, it'd have to be Terra Mosiac (forget the issue numbers).

My personnal favorite Karate Kid moment is when the five Legionnaires learn that they have only 15 minutes to live (late Silver Age) and Val decides he wants to spend his final moments going out in a blaze of glory, so he hunts down the ENTIRE Fatal Five and battles them by himself.

Drake, your thoughts on Wildfire echo mine as always. All excellent pics.

Matthew, this thread rocks. Great idea.

For Chameleon Boy:

Superboy and the Legion of Super Heroes #249, a story called "Murder Most Foul". Ultra Boy is framed for murder. Reep reveals himself to be sly, intelligent,thoughtful investigator and a loyal friend while coming to grips with one of the greatest threats the Legion ever faced - Brainiac 5 covertly loosing his sanity.

Another thought for Saturn Girl:

"The Legionnaire Who Killed" from the Adventure days. Star Boy kills a man in self defense. The team votes on whether or not to expell him. The girls all show sympathy and vote in favor of letting Thom stay. Saturn Girl remains true to the principles the Legion was founded on, and votes for expulsion. I think this was truly the start of her "ice queen" or "iron butt" persona. We certainly knew after that she wasn't the typical "girl Legionnaire".

I agree. Wonderful Cham spotlight. However, it was in # 239, not 249.

Thanks for the correction. Memory isn't what it used to be...

I didn't see any for Brainiac 5 so here are my picks:

The final showdown with the Time Trapper when Brainy lets loose the Infinite Man to put the smackdown on TT ... that story had a good moment for Rond Vidar too ...

Another choice is the annual where Querl is trying to help cure Douglas Nolan of his insanity ... it's always nice to see moments of compassion like that.

LSH v3#50. That was a good one, indeed.

I think that was LSH v2#300.

A couple that came to my mind...

LSH v4#0 for Rokk, Garth, and Imra. The quintessential telling of the Legion origin.

And I definitely add my vote for the "Tenzil Kem Trilogy": LSH v4 #11, 14, and 49

For Kid Quantum II, Legion 6 has two great scenes: one where she takes out Brainstorm (complete with snappy patter!) and one where she stands up to Cosmic Boy and convinces him to head for Metropolis to help the civilians.

I'm going to be preparing another 'The Legionnaires' entry for Legion Abstract in the next week or so and I wanted to give you all a chance to chime in with predictions.

This is going to be a special entry because I'm going to be doing four Legionnaires at once. These are the four Legionnaires who, in my opinion, had signature appearances in 'For No Better Reason', the four part Gail Simone storyline that ended the 'The Legion' series a couple of years ago. (That's the storyline where four villains named Devil, Canary, Lantern and Arrow turn off all the technology in the Metropolis area for some reason I never quite caught.)

So your challenge is to guess which four Legionnaires I have in mind. I will say that one is obvious, two are not exactly obvious, and one is probably far from obvious.

If anybody manages to guess all four before the post goes up (and I don't know when that will be) I'll mention you in the article and you will experience a great deal of satisfaction. (I won't reveal the answer here; I'll just put the article up and let everyone see.)

Most importantly I want to let you all know that I'm keeping track of all the suggestions in this thread and I appreciate everyone's ideas.

Okay, I didn't do the thing from the Simone story like I said I would. Instead I did Invisible Kid. Well, I had to.

But this is another one that I'm extremely proud of, and I'm looking forward to seeing what people here think of it.

How did Cosmic Boy's hair colour affect the battle of Helegyn? Find out here ...

Very interesting & insightful - as usual, Matthew.

I'd have to review the issues, but I wonder if Lyle's provoke-react-slap down approach to life is really focussed on men in authority/powerful males - father, Cos, Elysion, Karate Kid. He acted differently with Atom Girl. Triplicate Girl was provoking him (when he was developing the three planets idea to defeat Lemnos) but he didn't react to the bait.

Would Jo be "immune" to Lyle's behaviour? He is very powerful, but (apparently) nowhere near as bright as Lyle. Still, he doesn't seem to do this with Brainy - maybe it's a physical power thing he's reacting to, not mental dominance. Which makes his adoration of Supergirl a little more complicated.... It should be interesting to see how he reacts with Mon-el.

Great analysis Matthew! I think there is more to the fact that Lyle is by far the youngest of the Legionnaires in play here. He is a freshman in a "school" full of juniors & seniors. The other guys treat him as a snot nosed kid (for the most part) and it rankles so he takes every opportunity to challenge or lash out at them the best he can. He also harbors resentment at authority figures because of his father so he would have issues with the older guys as well because of this.

Lets not forget that these are no ordinary guys. For the most part, they are all alpha males and Lyle is trying to establish his place in this pack.

Brainy is the exception I believe because it was Querl who saved him from his abusive home life, giving him a flight ring to make his escape. He is also the only person around from which Lyle can "learn" or so he believes.

As to the girls...what pre-teen or teenaged boy isn't entralled with beautiful girls (assuming this Lyle isn't gay )? They can do no wrong and their attention (any sort of attention) is all he wants. They can tease him unmercifully (worse than any of the guys) and he will blush but love the attention (and fantasize about what that attention means )

Good points all around.

I can't decide if Lyle only behaves that way around powerful males or not; we haven't seen him interact with enough other characters. In the case of Vi, in his mind he had already provoked her with his accusation of spying, so that may be evidence for either side.

Is Lyle the youngest? He acts like it, and he's certainly the most junior in experience (not counting Dream Boy), but chronologically I don't think it's at all safe to say (considering different species, different societies, different planetary lengths of years...).

Or even if he is. Just a different kind of enthrallment. But, no, if he was gay I don't think he'd be considering Cosmic Boy competition for Kara.

I really enjoy reading your analyses of the Legionnaires, ME. Your thoughts are interesting and offer new insight into long-cherished characters.

The pattern leading to a slap-down behavior ascribed to Lyle gives me a bit of inroads into a character I've had trouble warming up to, this boot. For that, I thank you.

I find the wanting to disappear/power of invisibility link somewhat off-putting-- but I think it is a pretty apt description of the Lyle we've been seeing (hee!).

Nothing at *all* like reboot Lyle-- who may have wanted to disappear, but only to be sneakier and get the goods on any and everyone. How to relate power to personality traits for the previous Lyle? Secretive smartie gives himself the one power that would be most effective against someone who possessed the one non-super power of observation that so characterized the Lyle-Norg-that-was. Lyle was the emobodiment of the term 'eagle eye'.

And he wasn't shy about using the info he observed, either-- though that doesn't readily translate into a super-power analogy. Though he did give himself his super-power...

Sigh-- I miss that Lyle quite a bit. It's hard for me to accept that he's such a newbie and an outsider in this LSH. Cognitive dissonance!

I don't remember any of the issue numbers...

For Ultra Boy, he returns to Rimbor, and is accused of a crime (a woman is incinerated by a blaster, and it's made to look like he's killed her with his flash vision).

For Timber Wolf, the visit to Lythyl to honor Karate Kid's last request. (mentioned also upthread, #13 of the Baxter reboot?)

For Karate Kid, the fight with the LSV, from breaking out of the 'power-suppressing' restraints to his sacrifice at the end.

"Murder Most Foul," SLSH #239. I really liked this one.



Correct.

The sacrifice was in LSH v3 #4. I think his escape from the restraints was in that issue, but it might have been in the previous issue.