Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Lardy's Roundtable: How forgettable or unforgettable was SLSH/LSH between Earthwar and Levitz II/Giffen?

I'm with Lardy on Northstar. Marvel is quite better with him still around and the message (especially in the 80's) might not have been ideal.

Oh, I agree. The whole notion that a gay character needs to have an AIDS-related storyline is as offensive to me as the idea that a female character has to get magically pregnant (as happened to Ms. Marvel, among others) or raped (cue Sue Dibny) at some point, or a black character has to be a reformed criminal or something.

I find Shooter's issues to be more entertaining than the worst of Waid's, but I miss Waid's dialog. Shooter tends to have lots of talking. Waid's Cosmic Boy in a Shooter comic wouldn't stand out to me as egregiously verbose. Waid could churn out two or three issues in a row that would make me roll me eyes. Shooter will just have a word bubble or two in every issue that makes me scratch my head. (Irma's "take me, lover"). His dialog for female characters seems a little stilted sometimes.

I was a huge fan (one of three in the universe) of Bedard's and Calero's fill-in issues.

Waid got me to pick up the legion after nearly a generation away from it, and Shooter will keep me picking it up for the forseeable future.

Maybe you should bump Kent's old thread. You know the one I mean

*ticks another one off the list*

Yeah, that was the wrong message to send at a time when people were rampantly blaming gays for the disease and saying crap about it being "God's retribution" against them. Having Northstar be the flag-bearing gay character AND having him have AIDS would've played heavily toward that in a bad way.

BTW, has anyone heard whether Northstar was supposed to have eventually died from the disease? I always assumed he was supposed to because AIDS was considered a death sentence at the time. That would have just compounded the inherent problems even worse: Northstar is gay ==> Northstar has AIDS ==> Northstar dies. The subliminal message there for the reader would have jumped from the first part to the third part by implying that Northstar must die because he is gay. The message would've been that being gay is wrong.

Thank goodness that storyline didn't go through!

Still, mainstream comics have not made enough progress in portraying gay characters compared to other media. I'm not saying that every solo character has to have a gay supporting character or that every supergroup should have a gay member, but much more could be done than is currently and more effort should be made to avoid stereotyping when the attempt is made.

What I would specifically like to see is a prominent gay character in at least one of the three most well-known properties out there, Superman, Batman and Spider-man. How about a gay reporter at the Daily Planet? A gay executive at WayneTech? A gay roommate for Peter Parker?

Gay characters in mainstream comics mostly seem relegated to fringe books like Young Avengers or the Authority. Even Batwoman just isn't front-and-center enough! Let's see DC and Marvel put a gay character in their biggest, most visible sellers!

And, yeah, let's have an openly gay, not just read-between-the-lines, Legionnaire or two, damnit!!!

Realistically...Cobain said it best. Maybe in ten centuries forward, society would be liberalized to the point of indistinguishable sexuality. Every Legionnaire should be like that, but that'd just spook us medieval readers out.

As long as Shooter starts getting the whole team into all-out action, and fast! It's like one, big, prequel plot that I'm itching to get over. On the other hand, his writing's had improved from his very first run, but is lacking of much of the youth.

I agree. Sexuality of today, let alone 10-40 years from now, defies the straight-only future LSH has been trapped in. In a society where only a minimal amount of sex is for reproduction, and tech allows alts even there, there would be no reeason at all for "straight-only" to be predominant, or even a norm.

But LSH conforms the the Bonanza theory - stories set in other times are still aimed at and reflect the audience's era.

Yes, but: imagine what changes, not all for the better, not all in the direction of 'more choice', there could be in a thousand years.

Matthew raises a good point. We're assuming that things always change for the better in the future. They could change for the worse.

I'm sure we all hope that things would get better in a thousand years, but, if history is any indication, some things will get better while others will get worse. More, some things will travel in cycles (the economy for instance). Race relations, sexuality, etc., are not carved in stone. They will change depending on the politics and even the very definitions (i.e., is race only skin color or does it entail cultural practices? Does sexuality have to do only with whom you want to go to bed or is it reflected in other types of behavior, as well?) of the times.

Also, whether or not things get better or worse depends on who you ask. I have a dear, dear relative who is convinced that the world is getting worse. From her rather traditional standpoint on morality, it certainly looks that way. But in terms of recognizing and celebrating diversity, for one issue, I disagree. However, it drives home the point that one caring person's sense of progress is another's decline.

All of this may be a bit much for Shooter or any comic book writer to deal with, but it's something we should bear in mind when we talk about our own assumptions of how the future should be.

I predict Dueling will become acceptable again and people will start censoring themselves less they be killed! Awesome!

Well, there was some evidence of relationship oppression or control during Waid's run. Remember how Sun Boy's parents were the rare folks who met "in person"? If meetings were regulated like that, it's possible that 'other' relationships were restricted.

Of course, if the Legion represented teenage rebellion, it would make sense for them to explore all the sexual options previously closed to them. If anywhere in this future, it would happen among their movement.

The notion that teenage rebellion = sexual freedom or experimentation is another assumption that should be questioned.

Our frame of reference is, likely, the 1960s, during which kids did experiment with sex, drugs, and everything else as a means of rebelling against the conformity of the 1950s. But a future society of teenaged rebels might come at it from a very different angle. If their parents, for example, were openly sexual (but still repressed in other ways?), they might embrace a more conservative view on sexuality, perhaps even abstinence. The idea would be to do the opposite of whatever their parents did.

I don't know if Waid or Shooter addressed this at all, but I would find it refreshing to read something that took a totally different tack on what teenagers could rebel against.

And not only that, but in a thousand years, there's time for things to change direction many times. Dozens of times, maybe! If things change directions once or twice, we'll still be able to see the relationship between our situation now and the one in the future... but with enough changes, and all the combinations of the different *kinds* of things that can change... it could make the future completely unrecognizable.

Think of it this way. Where do you live? Now, what was life there, in that place, like in the year 1008?

That's true, Matthew E. Who's to say the future of 1000 years from now will be anything like what we think it'll be? (assuming humanity is even still around, of course...)

But, with the LSH we have--and it would require ANOTHER reboot to fundamentally change the concept of what future society would be like--it certainly seems like a relatable society to what we're familiar with. So it would be niced to see the state of homosexuality in the future at least addressed, directly. If you really think about it, the Vi/Ayla thing was fairly subtle for the most part, as was Mekt's relationship. Yes, everyone understood what was going on, but it was still mostly read between the lines.

So barring another reboot that tries to extrapolate a more radically evolved future, shouldn't the subject be broached in the current comics?

One thing that's being discussed in the here and now, is the ability to isolate certain traits in our DNA. It's conceivable that scientists could isolate a "gay gene" and parents could choose to 'gene-gineer' that one out of their offspring. Wouldn't that be a fascinating story to explore with Lyle or someone else...especially if that society deems that behavior 'deviant'?

I could see the other Legionnaires rallying around him and using the movement aspect of the 3Boot to its potential.

Paul Levitz has run into issues with some creators in the past, over a refusal to allow characters to be portrayed as openly gay.

Meanwhile, Shooter, who was EIC of Marvel when Byrne introduced the first gay character(and prevented Byrne from making the only gay superhero have aids), and was specualting that Element Lad was gay as far back as the mid 70's...which is the earliest I have seen any creator even being willing to discuss it, and even introduced a gay villain back in the Hulk(again, a first as far as I know)...is labeled a homophobe for towing what was probably the Marvel Stance on gays in comics.

I mean there were no gay characters in any way shape or form at DC when Shooter made his comments, and Marvel didn't' officially let Northstar be acknowledged as gay until 10 years after Shooter was gone...

I have no clue why Shooter got the homophobe label when he was in fact far ahead of most other writers..not just on sexuality, but also on race, drug addiction, and other social issues that comics were afraid to touch back in the SA.

While Paul Levitz gets a free pass...he didn't really make Element Lad Gay you know...he made Schvaughn Erin deceitful...


As for homosexuality and the Legion...I like Shooter's philosophy...

His intent was to have Ferro Lad be black and when Ferro Lad died no one was even going to notice his skin color, because it was no longer an issue. I think a similar approach should be taken with homosexuality....they exist and it isn't even an issue.


I disagree about how times go back and forth being a good way to portray the Legion...

#1. These people encounter alien races frequently and there are interspeices marriages...

Homosexuality shouldn't even register on the social richter scale of the Legion future. Neither should race...there are newer and way more extreme things to divide over in their time.

I mean once upon a time, black or blonde hair was a noticable difference...it's not now.


#2. Furthermore, what separates our time from a thousand years ago and even 200 years ago is our level of communication and selfawareness due to our ability to capture live history...once we deal with this stuff we shouldn't have to come back to it barring a total and complete technological collapse. Our collective memory is and conciousness is now greater then at any other point in history..so we should begin to move on in many ways. I mean we may be stupid, but we aren't that stupid....

I wrote a thing at Legion Abstract quite a while ago that's relevant here, especially to Superboy's last point.

Imagine a Year, Only a Thousand Years Longer !

In the year 1008, the place where I live now was inhabited by Timucua Indians, and had never been visited by European people.

Which proves your point!

This is one of the weaknesses of Waid's run: the poor "philosophy" behind the entire run. Things were way oversimplistic. The idea that people won't have relationships in person contradicts all history and basic animal desires. His entire generational content is seen through the eyes of 19th century Positivism.
That's why TMK was much stronger: things were murkier, some people were more open and others more "basic". Or conservative. There was conflict of ideas, but not as a generation conflict (also very poor Marxism in essence).
I really can't see teenage rebellion "fighting" for morals against "older guys". It's quite illogical.

I kind of agree with Superboy on that one and I still think TMK was when Legion had the biggest freedom on terms such as homosexuality and "race" exactly by acting as if it was normal.

At the same time, I can see that prejudice COULD still be an issue around some cultures. Right now, here in Brazil, a young handicapped-born indigenous girl was murdered by her parents because in their culture, she meant bad luck. This is 21st Century, among fluent-speaking natives.
Moreover, in old Greece, homosexuality was present, but it was never an issue. It became an issue for cultural and sanitary (!!!) issues in the Middle Ages. Even romantic love is a 18th Century creation!!!

Yes, those views exist, but people who say that morality is getting worse tend to mistake Ozzie and Harriet and Little House on the Prairie for actual history; people were no more moral (often far less) than today, even by social conservative standards.

First - how did Levitz make Shvaughn deceitful?
second - I agree, in a future with interspecies relations, gay human relations (or even gay human/alien relations) could not possibly be as big a deal (even if people still use such labels by then).

In general, I agree with you, Kent. People who look back to the 1950s, for example, as the golden age of morality tend to forget about segregation, Jim Crow laws, ostracizing women for being divorced, etc.

However, it's simplistic to dismiss such views as coming from television. My relative, who grew up during that period, looks upon the Catholic church as her source for morality more than Ozzie & Harriet.

It's been a long time since I read the arc so my memory could be way off, but IIRC Shvaughn was a male that was taking drugs to make him a female, and he never told Element Lad he was male when they were becoming involved.

So that was the way Element Lad was made gay....it wasn't that he was conciously gay, it was that he was tricked by Shvaughn. That's the way it seemed to me any. He was gay because of Shvaughn's deception...not because he was actually gay.

Seemed like a cheap way of doing it to me. If you want to make Element Lad is gay then just make him gay....


I've never liked the Legion's attempts at taking on contemporary social issues or doing heavy relevance type stuff...I do like what Shooter wanted to do with Ferro Lad though...in fact I think that was brilliant.

The Element Lad stuff OTOH I thought was clumsily handled...it came off as contrived.

I personally hope one day we do get to the point where most of the issues we have now are non-issues. That's the future I want to read about...I'm not saying I want the fugure devoid of issues...I just would like to think we eventually move past all the ones of our era.

That wasn't Levitz, though; that stuff was established during the Five Years Later era, written by Keith Giffen and the Bierbaums. In that story, Element Lad's attitude toward Shvaughn/Sean was that Shvaughn/Sean's external gender had been no more than a minor detail for Jan.

Ahh...ok. Hmm, seems like I remember it being the end of the Levitz era but I certainly could be off on that. LOL ok, so that means Levitz really didn't touch the subject at all...not even badly, and Shooter is the homphobe?


Right, but it wasn't a minor detail for Shvaughn...so it's not like it was portrayed as a non-issue of the future...and more importantly, it still plays as Element Lad being tricked and Shvaighn being deceitful IMO. I'm not gay and I haven't heard many gay Legion fans complain about the way that was handled...and so I don't really know how it was received by the majority of them but it seems to me to be a cheap way of doing it. I always assumed most of the gay Legion Fans liked it, but I always figured that was just because they were glad to have a gay Legionaire regardless of how it was done...

I still think Shooter's approach would have been better...like he intended to do with Ferro Lad and his skin color.


It's the way I would have wanted to see it done.


And really Lightning Lass and Violet was heavy handed too IMO.