Originally posted by Invisible Brainiac:
I'm reminded of the hero's journey from literature class.
It's not what a hero is capable of doing, but whether the hero actually chooses to do it.
That's definitely one of the reasons why I like some of the 'lower-power' Legionnaires, like Karate Kid, Triplicate Girl, Timber Wolf, Shadow Lass, Phantom Girl, etc. to the 'powerhouses' like Wildfire and Superboy.
It feels 'more impressive' or 'more heroic' to me when a character is legitimately out of their depth, and finds a clever way around a problem, or thinks outside the box, and *doesn't* necessarily have a super-power that can easily handle any situation.
And it super-impresses me when you've got a situation like in the Judas Contract, where Slade & Terra take out all of the Teen Titans, but for Dick Grayson, who, with no powers at all, totally surprises Deathstroke and gets away.
Ultra Boy is an interesting powerhouse, in that he's defined by what he *can't* do, and by how that requires him to think fast in combat, and make creative use of his limited one-at-a-time abilities. I like that sort of thing. It's the complete opposite of the really old days, when Superman would be confronted with something, and suddenly pull a new power out of his arse, like super-hypnotism or super-ventriloquism.
That's why I'm more a DC fan than a Marvel fan - DC is brighter and shinier, or at least it was. Hopefully they'll continue to be. That's what sets them apart.
I like both the 'can't win / gets no respect' aspect of Spider-man and the 'feet of clay' aspect of heroes like Thor (kicked out of Asgard for being an arrogant jerk) and Iron Man (recovering addict who thinks he knows better than everyone else) *and* the more positive aspects of some DC titles.
Unfortunately, I haven't seen the more positive aspects for a long time. Too much killing teen heroes and blowing up planets and women stuffed in refrigerators, over the last decade or so, and, while I also like mature storylines, I find these sorts of things less 'mature' and more 'sensationalistic' and
immature.
Hopefully, too, Gates and Yera will be revealed to have faked their deaths instead of just being returning via a twist in time or something like that. I'd love to see these two show some ingenuity.
Yera, damaged as she was, could well become a threat, and have to be 'snapped out of it' or 'talked down.' Durlans, from what we've seen, don't have discrete brain tissue, but have their organs permeating their entire bodies (the picture of her cut in half kind of suggested that as well). If that's the case, she's just had half of her distributed network 'brain' teleported away from the rest of her, and one half or the other half could well suffer massive separation trauma and 'die,' or could live on as a quasi-sentient animalistic shapechanging predator, with only memories of pain and loss and fear driving it.
If half of her remembers enough or recovers enough to be able to function, she might have to hunt down and re-absorb the other half (and finally 'pulling herself together' mentally and emotionally), rather than allow it to run around eating stuff (and, possibly, people!) in an attempt to regain it's own missing mass. (And, being alien, it's possible that most earth life-forms aren't terribly nutritious for it. It might have to eat certain rare elements, or only specific parts of living creatures, like livers or pituitary glands, or something!).
And, later, John Carpenter will make a movie about her, at some Antarctic outpost...
Gates has probably been captured by some anti-alien group, who wants to interrogate him to prove their paranoid theories that he's an advance scout of an invasion force, or dissect him, or whatever. Then again, that might be too obviously similar to what happened to him in his home universe, where he was captured and used to power stardrives or whatever. Fabian probably has something even cleverer up his sleeve...
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to understanding. And thanks again, too. Your response is much appreciated.
