Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Levitz confirms who will join

I don't want Glorith as a villain!
That's already been done.
Granted, we've had a Lori but she was a time manipulator, not including the Dial, not a magic user and she wasn't really old enough for much AND she became the rather than .

And I also don't want Dragonwing to die.
She's interesting or rather, could become interesting.

They could introduce a Dragonmage and have Jo become the Green Dragon, add a renamed Zoe, Tenzil, Cham and Tinya for a 7 member subunit of the Legion - the Dragons.
Harmonia Li could mentor them.
Tenzil could be Jaws of the Dragon and he could be Dragonwing's boyfriend.

I never expected this thread to become so focused on sexuality!

I also was hoping Tel would become a member...he seems Legion material more than any of the others students. But if Star Boy survives the LSV storyline, his power would be redundant. Same as Power Boy....even though I like him, he doesn't really add anything new to the team. He's a combination of Jo and Tinya.

As for Dragonwing, I want to see more. The firebreath is pretty obvious, but what about the acid? Does she breathe that out separately, or is her power a combination of both?

I know Chemical Kid is a jerk, but he's effective, and the Legion does have it's share of jerks. Wildfire, Dawnstar and Sun Boy all come to mind! I like him a lot.

Some straight men (incl. writers) are okay with bisexual women only because it turns them on to watch or imagine the girl-on-girl action. For a percentage of those men, finding out the particular women in a given case are actually lesbians brings out hostility, which I put down to the idea of the idea that the men were therefore not welcome to join in the sexual action. (At least that's how such men have been portrayed when they were characters on TV. )

I don't know how that latter part might manifest in writers' feelings for characters, but then Ayla and Salu are most likely considered bisexual, given they've both dated men too.

I actually have no problem with Dragonwing power-wise, I think it's cool that we finally have another girl in the Legion's world who has a straight-up damaging attack power.

My problem with her is solely about her attitude...if she were a completely new character I could see them not finding out about her general ruthlessness and blase attitude towards killing until *after* she's a member of the team, but she has been training at the Academy and surely it's the kind of thing that Lu, Chuck and Lydda would have picked up on by now?

Few thoughts:

1) I have a hard time judging what Levitz is or is not comfortable writing re: sexuality. There hasn't been a whole lot of Legionnaires' "private lives" so far, beyond Shadow Lass/Earth Man. And I don't want to judge Levitz by stories he wrote 20-30 years ago, when the world was very different. I gladly add my voice to calls for Levitz to include more diversity in the sex lives of Legionnaires. I imagine if the Legion is going to skew younger with the relaunch, it will be increasingly anomalous for Levitz NOT to incorporate gays into the stories. We should perhaps also give him credit for including the Gravity Boy/Power Boy relationship, especially since Power Boy is a long standing (if minor) character of his creation, and he might have had a different, prior concept of the character. I think it's also worth noting that Paul is fairly judicious in his introduction of character subplots, so there's a good chance the tee-up of the Power Boy/Gravity Kid relationship is going somewhere.

2) I agree I was unfair with Dragonwing. I think my main complaint boils down to whether we've had a clear visual depiction of her powers. She's very cool looking, and I love what the artists have done with her. I'm just very literal -- I want to see Power Y manifested via appendage C or whatever. I think it's a neat story idea to address how a rookie, and an aggressive one to boot, learns to control her powers and her behavior so as not to be lethal. Some Legionnaires have powers that are pretty directly lethal to humans, some don't. It would make for a nice story, I think.

Well... yes and no. Not all young people are interested in sex. And even those who are might not make either sex or relationships their top priority. It depends on the character.

[snip]

I've always thought of them as such. Not that I'm the final word or anything. Though there's some confusion about this IRL, a character can be attracted to both men and women and still be monogamous. Not every attraction is going to be automatically acted on.

Yes, except doublechinner's point wasn't about any particular character but the group as a whole. The Legion is a big enough sampling of young people that young people's general propensity to hormone-induced behavior should manifest more than has been depicted, statistically speaking.

This group, LSH, 'as a whole', may not really be an appropriate sampling of youths, at all.

They are extremely motivated, committed and in life & death situations on a regular basis.

People like that, in situations like that may not have sex as a priority, at all, almost any of them.
I agree with cleome that phermones/attractions don't have to be acted on.

I submit that almost none of them are in the normal population.
Some young people may go whacky and experiment with everyone and seek nothing but physical selfgratification, but I don't really think that behavior is all that common.

I know movies would like us to think that, but I don't think it's true.
And in an especially highly motivated group like the Legion, I'd bet it's even less likely to be true.

Most of the lesbians that I've met, and I seem to have worked with many of them, seem to be bisexual.
Not all of them, of course, but many of them.
Gay guys, less so.
Many of the ones that I knew were mostly monogamas within their relationships, as well.

Anyway, that my two cents.

That's certainly one possibility, although, in my experience with military friends, that exact demographic seems to be more-than-normally-horny... It seems that the profession and mindset either is most attractive to people who may have already been hormonally supercharged, or the stressful situations they find themselves in heightens such attitudes.

Probably both, actually, with crazy dangerous jobs attracting already stimulus-seeking individuals, and the environment leading to lots of misattributed arousal...

That being said, most of the team are aliens, and might not react *at all* in the same way as humans do in these sorts of constant life-and-death situations (or have anything like human standard sexual mores or standards or practices, for that matter, not that we've seen much of that), and I'd rather read good stories with strong characterization (that may or may not include any sort of romance or sex, as appropriate for the story or character), than some bed-hopping oversexed Real World: Metropolis shenanigans.

One thing I enjoyed about Threeboot was that early in, we did see the Legionnaires socializing in the way that you'd expect of teenagers or young adults. I'm kind of a sucker for "off-time" stories. But even if the behavior you're talking about is universal among (and relatively unique to) people that age (and I have my doubts, remembering my own feelings and behavior back then), I really don't want it to be THE big driving force behind the stories. Teens and young adults also are capable of becoming passionate about and invested in music, entertainment, politics, and sports. All of that would be just as (or more) interesting to me than stuff about sex.

It's always subject to debate in action/adventure stories how "typical" we should expect atypical people to behave, especially in a culture that's not meant to be exactly like our own. So this is just one fan's opinion. No disrespect intended.

[snip]

When in doubt, so far as RL goes, I tend to call people what they call themselves. It seems to work well enough. I can't see into their minds (or hearts) after all, and I would worry otherwise that I'd offend by imagining that I know their lives better than they do.

If that makes sense.

Yeah, I have to say that it strikes me that there are a lot of aspects of the Legionnaires's lives more wanting of exploration than their sex lives.

"The only thing I know about moopsball is how to spell it!" -- Original Recipe Brainiac5

<span class="spoiler_containter"><span class="spoiler_wording">Click Here For A Spoiler</span><span class="spoiler_text">And you know after that scene took place, he totally went off and gave himself a crash course, via whatever Teh Future's version of Wiki is, because he hated the idea that somebody else knew more about a subject than he did.</span></span>

I'm still waiting for the lumna-organ to make a return!

Outdoor Miner's homeworld will probably spearhead its revival all throughout the U.P.!

...which could very well result in an above average libido, and, for that matter, a willingness to see oneself as exempt from the rules that govern the majority.

Which we have seen with Chemical Kid and Dragonwing.

I totally agree. The best friend/rival relationship, even in the relative background adds texture to a story. I'm thinking of Star Boy/Sun Boy playing holo-D&D; threeboot Shady/ both Atom Girl and Karate Kid in battle; SW6 Inferno/Live Wire. The best example, IMHO, is the incredible dynamic between Waid's Cosmic Boy and Brainiac 5, not only in and of itself, but also the necessary reactions and acquiescence of the other Legionnaires. In the reboot, Valor and Apparition spent the whole issue remaniscing, and their personal chemistry was actually more interesting to me than the (main plot) flashback.

You gave an excellent short list of "third characters" (music, entertainment, politics, sports) for the Legionnaires to respond to. Whether these come in the form of a "day off" storyline or interwoven into regular stories (off-hand remarks, etc.), I think you've hit on something important. We know these things are going on with the characters, right? How 'bout some of it on-panel?

I stand by my criticisms. The current Legion behaves more like warrior monks than teenage or young adult heroes. I too loved the vibrancy of those early 3boot stories -- "Was it the ultra-love?" -- and worry that Levitz has too old a view of the characters now.

I'm not sure what you meant by your response to me, cleome.


I DO agree that many things are important to kids, besides sex.
And should be.

I also agree with Set, that there might be the opposite reactions as well, given their combat immediacy state of mind.

Although, I don't really believe that it's a large percentage of them.
Many of our soldiers have monogomous relationships that they've built before and during their military enlistments and don't go off and have sex with everyone that they can where they're stationed.

And we may have had examples of those who think themselves above the laws and mores, but we also have the majority who don't.
Rokk and Imra, before Levitz trashed her recently, come to mind, as do Brainy and Shady, before Levitz recently trashed her.
Imra may have been attracted to Brin, but she didn't act on it, in the original run.

And the 3boot kids were so mixed up I don't count anything that they did as 'normal', I'm afraid.

I don't have a problem with relationships of a romantic nature in the Legion, I'd just rather see more of their other relationships and who they are as people rather than their sex lives.

I consider sexual relationships to be private, as long as they're legal, and I'm not very voyeuristic in those matters.

Shady, I think what cleome is saying is that whether or not a lesbian (to use an example) also seems attracted to men, if she identifies as a lesbian, then cleome will call her a lesbian.

I have quite a few guy friends back home who have sex and relationships with other guys, but adamantly deny they are gay. What they're doing is definitely gay by definition, but I've learned from experience to just agree with what they say A lot simpler that way.

I agree with your own post about seeing more of non-sexual relationships in the Legion. What do they do on their down time? Who hangs out with who? What are they like with their families? There's a lot to explore!

Yes, Thanks, IB. That's it exactly.

Cool! Glad I got it right, cleome.

Indeed, I'd like to see more of that sort of thing, and not just the Star Boy / Sun Boy friendship and the Phantom Girl / Shadow Lass friendship.

I wouldn't mind seeing some opposite sex friendships, that *don't* involve sex or attraction or unrequited love. It's fairly ridiculous how rare male / female *friendships* are shown on TV or movies or whatever. It's always all about the sexual tension and 'chemistry.'

The last time I saw a convincing one, it was Sisko and Dax on Deep Space Nine, and those two attractive single people only made a male / female friendship work because 'the hot chick' was the formerly male tutor to the other.

It would be encouraging to see that, 1000 years from now, a guy and a gal can hang out and neither of them be pining for the day they can reveal their true feelings.