Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! LSH 45 ~~~~~~~~~~~~ SPOILERS!

Wow, APB,this is a case where I really wonder why someone would continue to waste their time and money. I guess it makes for dramatic message board posts.

I think the French Maid is the chainer, not the chainee. Each to their own fantasy I suppose.

I like a complete collection. And, believe it or not, I'm an optimist (and a perfectionist, which makes for endless disappointment).

I can certainly understand that. That's why I've stuck it out all these years, too. The idea of missing even something terrible is worse than the prospect of never seeing it for myself.

Well, here's to next issue!

right now i feel a weird sense of guilt if i don't buy LSH. i buy one for my self and one for my cohort. if there's variant covers that means i'm buying four issues. as much as it's rubbing me the wrong way, i don't want legion to get canceled and i like manapul's art. if i could only buy copies that had no words...

Great issue.
Beautiful splash page!
Francis, your version of Garth is stunningly attractive.
I found the Imra/Jo scenes fascinating.
It seems Imra is ashamed of her carnal feelings and wanted to be caught. Hence,the pantry & letting herself get caught in the act by Lyle.
Brainy's manipulation of Ayla & Thom was hysterical, especially the panel of him smirking while saying "FEH!"
M'rr'ssy atoned for his unbearable smugness in the beginning of the issue by looking so adorable near the end, reading his comic book in his fuzzy socks.
Finally, while three pages of Gim topless is a nice start, lets see if we can get that up to a full twenty-two. please?

Thoroughly enjoyed this issue - loads of character work, absolutely beautiful art (like El's new interlac 'e' clasp for his cloak) and I couldn't find a colouring mistake (a first!).

I don't understand why everyone is getting so upset about Imra and Jo's little encounter - they are healthy teenagers (read - walking hormones!) in a tough situation - he's always been shown in the 3boot as a total flirt and she's stressed and trying to deal with an unhappy relationship. And given that Shady was a bit flirty with TW maybe UB and Shady have a fairly open relationship - could we be seeing the beginning of the Legion's first openly polygamous relationship.


Brainy was great, M'Rissey was great, Garth was great, Gim and Salu were great, it was all great IMO! I hope they keep up this quality of work for as long as possible.

My guess is Shooter is trying to do three things with these "different pairings".

1. He's trying to give the readers something new.

2. He's letting the characters experiment with relationships prior to really finding their one true love.

3. He sees the personalities different than many readers do and as a result we see Saturn Girl being projected with a low self-esteem.

Though I haven't yet read the issue panel by panel, I did give it a good look-over after buying it. I did read the entire Saturn Girl/Ultra Boy kitchen scene and I didn't find it all that odd. The reason is because....Ultra Boy is a womanizer and manipulater, he can read them like a book based on body posture, language, and events occurring around them. He recognizes that Saturn Girl is not being treated the way she would like by Lightning Lad and for his own desires, chose to exploit it. He fed her some lines and because she started listening to him and stopped reading his mind, she fell for them. My guess is she will be hounded with some guilt, I guess we will find out.

I don't think Ultra Boy is being portrayed as someone without a personality at all. In fact because everyone keeps talking about what he's been doing in every issue, how he's manipulating the women tells me that he very much has been given a personality. He's a womanizer, a user, and selfish. Sounds like a personality to me. Are there people like that in the real world? Absolutely. These are the strongest traits of his personality in this series with this author, and so they are standing out.

As for Saturn Girl's personality, she is being portrayed as someone with a lower self-esteen than what most readers are use to. Again, the author is in my opinion trying to branch things out, explore the characters, and give us something new. Whose to say that down the road Shooter doesn't plan on having events boost her self-image so that she later represents what readers are expecting to see based off of previous incarnations of Legion. I see these personality differences and love interest moments as just that....setting things up for the long haul, what readers are use to.

My guess is when Ultra Boy and Phantom Girl get together, Jo will go through some changes to reflect the influence she will have on him. Saturn Girl will eventually receive an image boost from other events yet to take place.

Out of character? No, just working them up to what readers expect in the long run.

Haven't gotten it yet but am enjoying the discussion. Sun Boy as a womenizer, one was enough. "Traditional" Jo was more to my liking, by far, then this one. His behavior had a clear development. His upbringing being rough, parents unavailable, he was loyal to a fault to those with whom he did get close. For his gang or his love he would do about anything.

The premise that he becomes this person after his experience with Saturn Girl is an interesting thought.

The thing is, we know so little about most of the threeboot Legionnaires. I go with the notion that they are similar, but different from the other versions, until I see otherwise.

We did get to see the Imra / Garth hookup of the threeboot, so they are a relatively recent couple, and not at all the Garth and Imra that we grew up with.

After all, this universe has a ginger-haired Mekt who heads up his own non-villain super-team and an Imra whose mom is a UP delegate.

Between Gim's mom, Tinya's mom and threeboot Imra's mom, having a Legionnaire for a child seems to be a good career move, politically.

"Look, I need the public exposure if I'm going to win this election, Lester. Can't you just, I dunno, buy a seat on the Legion?"

If there, hopefully, will be a long run. A lack of classic villains, various counter-rebel kids having scuffles with the rebellious Legion, and just one war. Jim did add a generous amount of (sometimes mis-)characterization within his plot freeze early this year, and with the tie-in to Lo3W coming up... I guess you could say that the post-IC Legion is in the bag. Hope not.

And Jo and Imra hooking up? It better be hormones. But why is it still taboo, ten centuries later? That's a little hard to sell, considering how sexually-saturated society is today.

At least something was brought over from W/K... the Star Boy/Light Lass combo. They do make sense as a strategy in battle (or as physical forces in Brainy's little experiments)... but as living, alien humans... not so much.

As I'm reading the discussion, coming to mind is, the killer with losing Shooter is, I just can't think of a DC writer so good at creating NEW characters with staying power. It took him exactly one page to come up with Giselle and an issue to come up with M'rissey and several others that intrigued the board. Fruit Boy anyone? Johns writes established characters sometimes with greatness (Rogues). Will Shooter's characterizations have staying power if they are generating this much controversy?

The controversy seems to be with his handling of established characters, not the new ones. (one exception was the pirate leader and his mate)

I agree that the complaints are about established characters. However, that complaint bothers me a bit. This is not the preboot or reboot, so Imra is not in a relationship with Garth that has been established as stable. Moreover, one of the gripes I heard about the reboot is that it re-did preboot stories so it seemed like a retread. So now we have Shooter trying to shake things up and give the threeboot characters some characterizations and relationships that conflct with the preboot -- and people are complaining. It seems like a no-win situation for a writer. If you keep things like they were in the preboot, they will be attacked for being unoriginal, but if you change things, you will be attacked for deviating from tradition.

Another very good issue. Lots of fun to read. Interesting sub-plots. Funny to see Jo "experiment" with Imra - reminds me of "A cold and lonely corner of hell" when Timber Wolf (nearly) had his go with Saturn Girl... not so cold over all the continuities, this little telepathic...

The more I am reading Shooters run, the more I am sorry to see it go. I doubt this incarnation will survive L3W, but I also doubt that a new writer could continue Shooters satisfying way of writing - you just have to get a handle on these characters. If you don't have it - like Waid - you're in for disaster...

It is not the strength of Irma's relationship with Garth, but the fact that she is in a relationship. Hussy jokes aside, that would be something important to her. It is more about Irma has always been strong-willed and having a need to be in control. And that has been shown in this version of the Legion. That such a person would so suddenly give in to her emotions and surrender control of a situation, leaving herself vulnerable rings false.


If this had been played out more, I would have believed it better. (I know Shooter doesn't have the time to play it out)

Have we really seen Imra's need for control outside of her "professional" life? Until the scene with Garth a few issues ago (which people criticized for showing Imra as weak), did we ever really see them interact much in private so we could get an understanding of the dynamics of their relationships?

I know a number of highly competent people who are control freaks in business, but do not demand control in their personal lives. In some ways, the need to control their outside lives is an attempt to overcompensate for low self-esteem, which they only reveal in unguarded momenets.

I suspect that people just assumed Imra is always strong-willed and in control, but I'm not sure that is established in this boot. Moreover, to the extent she did exert that control in her personal life, can we say if that control relied on her powers? Who is to say that some of her current behavior may be the result of her inability to control other Legionnaires. Perhaps, in the past, she could have just told Ultra Boy to go away and that would have been the end of any flirtation, i.e., she would never have reached the point of giving in to temptation. He exchange with Garth might also have gone differently and the whole situation could have been avoided. I wouldn't be surprised if some of this has to do with her promising not to tamp down on Legionnaires.

Time constraints or not, Jim is making an effort with making new characterizations with those established Legion themes and players, or any remaining ones that were brought over to Threeboot. But in the case of the Imra/Jo shakeup... I have to concur that it was a little sudden. The buildup in prior issues include one of them being seen in their underwear and that one calling the other a "boss-babe". But for a potentially fourteen issue long run, JS is packing a lot to give threeboot the right treatment.

I really enjoyed it! I echo many of the positive remarks here. Thankfully fjm is back! Great art!

Glad to see a triangle between Jo-Imra-Garth. The old one with Timberwolf was very Wolverine-Jean Grey-Cyclops (though them being in laws almost really made it more interesting).

Is Shooter setting us up for a bigger team? We see the Legion really getting taxed here. I really hope so. I don't mind the 50 member roster! It's a big universe.

I haven't read this issue yet but when I read here about Saturn Girl and Ultra Boy and when I read in earlier issues Saturn Girl's attraction to him, it occured to me that at one point during the dreadful Mon-El story arc that Phantom Girl and Saturn Girl kind of merged to be able to talk to Mon-El and maybe that merging had some lasting effects.

someone posted this link in response to the imra-jo situation over on scans_daily, with indication towards the part on "negs"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seduction_community#Interacting_with_women

oh my GOD @__________@!!

if shooter is having jo use this on purpose and then imra figures it out and, i dunno, kills him? horribly? then it'd be okay. does anyone think it's going this way? maybe? god, i wish. but...

man i cannot get over the fact that she's SUPER CRAZY HOT and a TELEPATH and somehow doesn't know she's hot.

like... honestly i'd accept this characterization from ANYONE NOT A TELEPATH. it just doesn't make sense guys, even if someone IS a teenager @__@

it either means imra IS dumpy and ugly, or that she's not and she hears people thinking she's hot CONSTANTLY and disregards it and is completely insane.

*sobs* ahhh god. so painful.

you know i'm FINE if they break up, i'm fine if she sleeps with jo, if she sleeps with querl and lyle to boot. just... make it... make sense.

you know people can dislike writing because of the style, or because of the things that happen (i love couple B but they just write about couple X, etc, I wish ferro would come back, WHATEVER), but i'm really disliking this writing because there's no consistency or common sense going on. i wouldn't care if they were fighting a planet full of clowns and dressed like giant starros, as long as they behaved in a way that made sense.

Ah! Now that's one I hadn't thought of. We haven't seen that Phantom Girl has any interest in Ultra Boy in this version, but she could harbour some deep emotions. I guess any external explanation for Imra's behaviour (this, or some mind control) makes more sense to me than the idea that she really has the hots for Jo, or is seeking self-esteem through casual sex.

Seem to recall a threeboot scene where an SP Offcial claimed half the UP Council had kids who were Legionnaires. Of the core group only Saturn Girl's has been verified, but there was an adult Durlan depicted in that panel.

This would only really apply if Jo has the power to control his thoughts and trick Saturn Girl into reading his 'fake thoughts,' since he *says* that Imra is a babe (the exact opposite of the 'neg' strategy you referenced, meaning that if he's a 'playa,' he's doing it exactly backwards!), while he *thinks* that Imra is 'dumpy,' as she points out.

He's not the one who applies the 'neg.' She is the one who brings out the word dumpy, and, when called on it, he *still* tries to soft-pedal it by saying that she's attractive anyway.

And she's *still* reading his surface thoughts during the conversation. "You think I'm dumpy!" "Ew, stop thinking that!" So he'd not only have to be able to fool a telepath with the initial delivery, but maintain the deception, even while using his ultra-speed later in the scene, indicating that it isn't one of his ultra-powers, but something else entirely. [Maybe he's a Skrull?]

If Jo were using a 'neg' as described in the article, he would have walked into the room and said, 'Wow, you look like hell. You should go to the med-suite.' to tear down her self-confidence and put her on the defensive from the start, while then backpedaling from her reaction and acting genuinely concerned with how exhausted and beatup she looks, thus manipulating her into getting agitated (physically aroused) and then just as quickly shutting her down and making her feel guilty for biting his head off for expressing concern, leaving her in a heightened emotional state, but with nowhere to 'put' those feelings, and therefore, more likely to be physically attracted (misattributed arousal, or the famous 'makeup sex' where a couple get in screaming matches every Thursday so that they can have smoking hot sex on Saturday, sublimating the energy and 'passion' of their anger into their sex), while also being more likely to experience a 'social exchange' reaction (popular sales technique where you do something unsolicited for someone, and then take advantage of their gratitude to pressure them to do something for you, which, in pick-up terms, would be sending a free drink to the table of a girl, in hopes that she'll feel obligated to talk to you) and a nagging guilty need to reward the dude whose head she just got manipulated into biting off, exactly as he intended.

The 'artist' makes the target feel like it's her fault that she took his innocent comment wrong, *and* gets her fight-and-flight worked up, because arousal is the same physical reaction, regardless of whether one is scared, angry or horny, and getting someone scared or angry, and then switching gears and taking away whatever made them scared or angry, but leaving their heart pounding and their body 'all fired up with nowhere to go,' is a common way to get someone in bed, whether it's a couple that fights all the time or some teenagers who dare each other to go to horror movies.

Jo's clearly not 'doing it right,' according to the article. If Shooter is trying to portray Jo as a 'pickup artist,' he's apparently not read this article, because Jo not only is doing it wrong, he's doing *the opposite* of what is recommended.

And that sort of stuff wouldn't work on a woman able to read your surface thoughts anyway, since it's impossible to fool her in this way, as she outright proves when she calls him on what he's really thinking, as opposed to what he's saying.