Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes JSA/JLA/Legion Crossover (spoilers)

Awesome!

So we could all have our cake and it it too!

Yeah, I read that, and I can see how it's useful for different Legion versions, but I have my doubts about why it's worthwhile for present-day DC. So I'm not sure that's the final word on the subject; I think there's an aspect to it we haven't heard about yet.

It is something like I thought they'd make it. Have one past but multiple futures. So the branch point is the end of Infinite Crisis.

Just think. They can reboot the Legion 50 times now. Actually that should be the 50th anniversary event. A different 'boot each week.

Well, it does allow them to explore/explain such things as a "Kingdom Come" universe, a "Dark Knight" universe, an "All Star" universe, a "Superboy's Legion" universe, a "Titans East/West" universe (from the TT/Legion crossover that led to the launch WaK), a "Damian Wayne" universe, a "Seven Soldiers" universe, etc. It would allow them to do something along the lines of Marvel's Ultimate Universe & Zombie-verse.

In essence it would give DC the ability to allow creators to write even the Big 3 completely different than the mainstream universe without it impacting the DCU.

Oooooh! Maybe I'll finally get to read the ideal Legion then...the one without a Brainy!

It also means the Legion in JLA/JSA is not the old Earth-One Legion, no matter the outward similarities, and therefore has no obligation to strictly adhere to the old continuity. Chemical King, Tyroc, etc., may never have been Legionnaires, and Karate Kid's past is up for grabs.

The comment Supes said about KK imo though might be a clue that it is "our" Legion.

There is no "our" Legion. They are all our Legion.

technically, since Star Boy is not from earth he's not of African descent. which,not to get to detailed, I have always wondered why in sci-fi usually the whole planet is European looking. after all, if bi-pedal life developed on another world, chances are you would see varying skin tones, facial features, etc, etc.

as for Tyroc, Invisible Kid II and any other potential black LSH member, I hope they will be written the way black characters were/are written on shows such as Homocide: Life on the Streets, or the Wire(to name a few). varied, complex, flawed and varying income levels. I mean Sweet Christmas, not every black character has to be angry, low-income, and from the mean streets.

as for Tyroc's hair, the natural(a.k.a. the fro) seems to be making a comeback. but please, please change that hideous costume.

One interesting anecdote about race and science fiction that I came across recently (and which has a slight Legion connection):

One of the protagonists in a number of Leigh Brackett's stories is a fellow by the name of Eric John Stark. Despite the fact that he's described by Brackett as a black man, apparently every illustration of the character depicts him as white.

Depends on whether or not Xanthu was settled by earth people. If it was, then he's still of 'African descent.' The WaK version *seems* to be intended to be a different race entirely, with the whole 'can't process complex sugars' thing. (I mean, what are the odds that an entire planetfull of colonists from earth would be diabetic?)

Yeah, I actually went into that in my Emerald Legion fic. Talokkians had three to four different skin-colors (blue, black, purple and green), Braalians tended to have very similar coloration due to a small initial population, etc.

Thank you.

Well, to be fair, it just might be that the environmental conditions made it less likely they can eat sugar. It's more likely scientifically than human beings developed on the planet by themselves...

Or has comics ruined our likelihood meter THAT much?

If, for instance, human colonists of Xanthu found themselves forced to subsist on native Xanthuan foodstuffs for a few centuries, and Xanthuan critters / foliage didn't use complex carbohydrates / sugars to transfer energy, but some other molecule, then it would follow that the Xanthuan settlers would be forced to adapt (or, more likely, adapt themselves medically) to be able to digest the flora / fauna native to their new home.

Likely they'd have to get rid of the ability to digest sugars to do so. So yeah, that's wankable.

Or, yanno [waves hands furiously], 'a wizard did it!'

Didn't get a tickle, but that was the most memorable part of the issue and my favorite Legion moment in a long time.

I'm sure we're not getting the pre-Crisis Legion,and given the mainstream DCU's current bent it's 50/50 on whether these guys are all just cannon fodder. But it's sure nice to see that there are still a few writers that took away the same thing that I did from the Legion's glory days: they were a bunch of friends. Not all best friends, and sure, every now and then someone would go a little crazy and try to destroy the universe, but they were a bunch of friends with a club-house and some really neat powers and gadgets.

Did we ever get an origin story for the current Star Boy? Or find out anything about Xanthu? I don't recall seeing any of that.

I'm betting that when humans settled Xanthu it was inhabited by huge carnivorous plants that lured humans close enough to eat with sweet sap or fruits. Starboy's people evolved an aversion to sugars to resist the lure.

Then, of course, the plants evolved the ability to move to overcome the Xanthuan mutation. And, as the only logical course, Xanthuans all evolved the ability to make things super-heavy to neutralize the plants' mobility.

I just wanted to inject some reasonable science into the discussion.

I love it.

#1. Can't judge anything by what Superman is recalling. He has a hypnotic command to forget details he learned in the future while he is in his own century. AFAIK, it was never removed. And I am not talking about the ones Saturn Girl put in his head after the Psycho-Warrior.


#2. Geoff Johns and Co have the opportunity to right a grevious wrong done to both FerroLad and the Legion's place in history. Jim Shooter intended FerroLad to be the first black Superhero and it was only due to fears of a backlash by Southern Retailers that it wasn't done. Whether FerroLad is alive or not...he was supposed to be Black. At the end of his deathstory, after he'd proved what a hero he was and we had a tear in our eyes, it was supposed to be revealed that he was black, and the Legionaires weren't even going to notice that as something major. Right that wrong please. The Real Ferro Lad was black, he was actually the first black SuperHero, had Shooter not been constrained......and since he's never really been shown. Instead of turning StarBoy who was always white, black...which reeks of PCness or something...why not make the one who really was supposed to be Black, Black?


#3. Superboy was visiting the Legion right around the time that SensorGirl, Quislet, Tellus, MagnoLad and PolarBoy were admitted to the Legion. They were admitted in LSH#14 and Superboy was shown to be in the 30th Century in issues #12 and 13, and it was never shown when he left IIRC. The Pocket Universe Superboy actually recalled the visit where his blood was used to cure Mon-El...since that was after the Crisis, I put LSH#23 as the first appearance of the Pocket Uni Superboy, and LSH #12-13+, as the final appearance of the real Superboy.

#4. Skin color is largely an evironmental reaction. Simply put, light skin survives better in cold climates where the ability to absorb UV light(low melanin) is a boon. If you have too much melanin in a cold environment you will likely get scurvey or rickets and all sorts of other diseases. Dark skin survives better in hot climates since(melanin) blocks out the cancer causing UV rays that white/low melanin skin, is extremly sensitive to.

It takes about 20,000 years for a group of people to adequadly refelct this climate difference on Earth which is a temperate planet, in their skin color, but there's a reason all the people indigenous to Earth's hotter regions have dark skin, and why all the ones indigenous the colder areas have light skin...and it's got nothing to do with intelligence or athleticism.

After a thousand years of being on a cold low UV planet, or a dry one, or a hot lush
High UV one, only slight differences would be noticable, but they would be noticable. If Space Colonizers were using a scientific approach, even with the advanced sheltering techniques of the future, they'd probably tend to send dark skinned people to the hot and temperate climates where the ability to withstand UV is a boon, and light skinned to the colder or lower UV ones, depending on the types of work they would have to do to survive on those planets, to increase their chances of survival and reproduction.

Then again, they probably have a cure for all forms of cancer and UV issues, so maybe they wouldn't. Also, ones living in colder or environments would also be trending towards being more compact and shorter to preserve heat better.

IOW, PolarBoy really should be a tall lanky black guy if he was adapted to an extremely hot high UV planet, or at least trending that way, powers or not...he'd be a stocky white guy if he was adapted to a cold planet.


If it's a temperate planet there would be lots of variation in skin color of it's inhabitants...but if the planet were either an extremely hot or extremely cold, there would be virtually no difference in the skin color of it's inahbitants...example, after 20k years, a cold planet would have nothing but white people on it, a hot planet would have nothing but dark people on it. No racism at play there...just natural selection.

And there could be quite a bit more divergence as well...if the plantet was hot with low UV light, or cold with high UV light.

Or maybe Xanthuans can't metabolize sugar, because they are *made out of sugar!*

Star Boy is super-popular because all the girls want to see how many licks it takes to get to the tootsie roll center.

(Didja notice at the end of the latest issue that Inferna of Terror Firma ran to give Star Boy a hug, and Star Boy had a look like "The hell? Who are you, woman?" Sounds like Sun Boy's been talking out of class again...)

Scans Daily has the complete un-blacked out version of the Michael Turner covers here.

Dinah, Nura, and Karen could be triplets.
Also their heads seem to be in skewed perspective realtive to their heads. I can't say I'm too much of a Turner fan.


Now on Starboy... the parents said complex carbohydrates. Sucrose is a relatively simple carbohydrate. So presumably there's a problem with starch digestion. Not unusual because cellulose is also a carbohydrate that cannot be broken down in the human gut. Fortunately cellulose unlike starch is not water soluble. Though some forms do form hydrogels (mmmm oatmeal).

It could be just as simple as starch not breaking down in Starboy's gut and becoming osmotically active. I don't have to tell you that water in the gut leads to intestinal cramps and a quick run to bathroom.

Blast, done in by Occam's Razor again. That is the *obvious* truth.

The current Star Boy must be James Cullum, not Thom Kallor.

What if... Darkseid's curse at the end of "Great Darkness" actually was responsible, in some meta-metaphysical brainbending way, for everything up to and including "5 years later", Batch SW6, Bounty, Karate Kid's death, Tinya's death, End of an Era, Zero Hour reboot, Archie Legion, Emerald Vi, Terrorform Zoe, Sensor The Snake, this current snoozefest of an incarnation, the dropoff in interest from the fan base over the last 20 years, the mismanagement of the Baxter series from DC, Giffen going a little bit kaboodles, Mike Carlin and John Byrne's systematic attempt to decimate the Legion for all time, and possibly most nefariously, Cherr-Bear Gelato?

Think about it. Up to and during Great Darkness, the Legion of Super-Heroes was flying high, with brilliant writing, great art, great sales, and a huge fan base. After Great Darkness, it took a while, but things began to fray and tarnish, not only within the book, but outside the book as well. This led eventually to the Zero Hour reboot, which led to a slave race of Disney Racoons on Orando, which led to our current book...

What if this entire saga of the last 20 years was the result of Darkseid's curse??? Part of me is being facetious, but part of me is dead serious. If Reed Richards can figure out in the second-to-last issue of 1602 that everyone is living inside a comic book, anything is possible.

Maybe this crossover will undo the mass destruction Darkseid's curse has wrought on the LSH for the last two decades.

And maybe I'm high. But you have to admit, it almost makes a whacked out kind of sense...

Oh, and could this be the single longest LSH thread in the board's history by the time it's done? I bet it could...

So, are the books any good? I have forsworn Geoff Johns' JSA as the main example of everything that is currently wrong with DC books, and Brad Metzer's Justice League is not far behind. While I don't precisely mind seeing another, older, version of the Legion used here, I'm going to be very cross if its used as an attempt to "deboot" the Legion which will only manage to piss off and confuse even more people. So, read, or don't? I already have the copy (dad buys them; I mooch), so it's not a question of money--just whether I'll end up pissed of or not.