Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Adventure Comics #517 - SPOILERS

So since is before Ultra-boy joined the team, they have no knowledge of this, I see.

But as far as comics go, things changed a lot more from the Silver Age to the 1980's than from the 1980's today. Which means you'd have to say that not only isn't this the original Legion, the 1980's Legion wasn't the original Legion either. And this is a lot closer to the 1980's Legion than the 1980's was to the original.

I'll have to disagree with you on this. Superficially the current version resembles the 80s version more than the 80s resemble Adventure. But the comic book medium itself in the 80s still was closer to the 60s than it is now.

In the 60s and 80s comics were a broadcast medium aiming at broad audience. They were available at a wide variety of retail outlets. The comic industry today is the ultimate narrow-cast industry.

While the Legion is starting similar to the late 1980s at current, I'd say the greater possibility is that the modern storytelling will pull further away from the 80s than the 80s were from the silver age.

Forces I see pulling in this direction include

1)in the 80s you had an almost uninterrupted publication history for this Legion;
2) there were the vestiges of the CCA (which would naturally preclude crazy 'adult-oriented' turns of character);
3) and most importantly several hundred thousand paying fans who would not tolerate such drastic changes to their heroes.
4) in the 80s editors were trained in the old need to ensure a neverending battle (ie a stable status quo that lasted hundreds of issues) while today editors are more likely to want to shake things up or let a hot creator have their way to try to attract a bigger audience.

The way I see it, retcons and a recasting of past stories with modern sensibilities is only going to accelerate.

I don't know what you guys are talking about. This was my favourite issue of Adventure so far. And I think Saturn Girl was acting completely in-character all the way along. She talks a good game about not wanting to misuse her powers, but she crosses that line a lot. I'm looking forward to the next issue.

We have our Vulcan parody! Instead of the Summers brothers we have the Ardeen brothers.

I don't about 31st century Earth or Titan, but teenagers in this day and age have sex and live with the consequences. I remember being at my locker, and there was a girl talking to another girl she gave money to so she could have an abortion.

That being said, I did tons of mean and stupid things when I was a teenage girl. I think this was an instance of Imra being an arrogant teenager.

I read it. I also read most of the reviews here as well.

I like the story but I agree this title needs to go somewhere quick. I recently read some of the old Adventure stuff and would love if Paul touches on some old stories from a different point of view.

Didn't think Imra's half naked outfit was out of character. First time I was introduced to her she was dressed like that.

gads
That's NOT what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about BRAIN DEVELOPMENT and what goes with it.
Young teens are going through hell physically, mentally and emotionally, hormones and grow spirts and confusion.
And that goes straight through to the 20's, imo.
Part of the problems in Vietnam with the soldiers was that the average age was around 18.
In WW2 it was about 22.

And this doesn't have anything to do with treating children with respect.
I ALWAYS treat children with respect, I just don't treat them like adults.

It's not about wheither they should have sex or drink, either, although I think that's way too young for either, imo.

And, as far as I remember, the Legionnaires were quite a bit older when they started tackling heavy hitters like the Fatal Five and the Sun Eater.

I realize that kids like the kids-in-control idea.
I did as a kid.

That doesn't make it logical or 'correct'.
It makes it child like.

There's an army in Africa/the Middle East of children, forced by adults to do adult things like having sex and killing people.
It destroys them.

As an adult, I look at things differently than I did as a child because I can understand consequences.

Comics can ignore them because they're comics but if a question is asked about the sense of that ignorence, I think someone should answer as an adult.

That's all.

I don't know if it would be best to continue this conversation in another thread, but what about the argument Wolverine presented in an X-Men issue?

He argued that as recently as WWI young teenagers fought as soldiers, and were treated and expected to behave like adults. The concept of teen years did not exist prior to WWI.

Of course with life expectancy increasing, it makes little sense that the Legionnaires would be considered adults. Unless of course there was some massive depopulation or infertility (the price of the pollution futuristic cities bring) that we don't know about.

[snip]

Actually, so am I. I'm hoping she relents so far as the mind-wiping thing goes.

Exactly!
That was what I was trying to say before.
Children act as children and their experiences influence who they become.
You can't expect adult actions from children, imo.

Nice post, brigort.

Although some children are much more perceptive then others.

I'm not saying "smart" I mean perceptive.

Just remember Wolverine said it.

sigh
Did you know that Hebrew men aren't traditionally considered 'adult's until their 30th birthday? Just something I've read.

In England there was a town where no one was over 21.
Everyone was dead in a couple of generations.

There may have not been teenagers before, but the rich British send their children away for schooling for well into the late teens, early 20s.
Not the poor of course, historically.

The Children's Crusade included children up through teens.

Anyway, I'm done.

That would be a nice 'out' here. Teen Imra makes a mistake (the mind-wiping). Later, she corrects that mistake.

The thought that many years, or a decade or more, have gone on with this retcon in play, and that it's going to turn into a 'point fingers and judge the dirty girl' guilt-a-palooza doesn't inspire confidence.

Imra doesn't need the Scarlet Witch 'women can't handle power' treatment.

Mindwiping Superboy

1) was done without personal reasons playing a part in the decision
2) was done with Superboy's knowledge
3) was done during the Silver Age where the writers utterly failed in treating some things seriously, mindwiping being one of them

I wonder, has Paul ever heard of Identity Crisis?

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Thanks for posting it, EDE. As I said, the content didn't bother me as much as the writing itself and the lifeless art/storytelling abilities to tell that story. That's why I agree completely with Levitz in terms of "what", but not in terms of "how".

Were they called Super-Condoms of Space?

On a side note, The most effective contraceptive of the 30th Century was the Planetary Chance Machine.

"Not tonight dear, I was made team leader and have a headache..."

Maybe they were Nerf planets on the planetary chance machine.


Okay, I said before that the art was pretty decent on the preview pages, but now that I've seen the whole story, it's pretty inconsistent.

As far as the story itself, I thought there was a page missing between Saturn Girl running into the paparazzi and then all of a sudden she's in costume and flying alongside the others and a cop. What was up with that?

It was a quick read and I wasn't very impressed with the story. I thought it was lame that the cop turned her back on the bad guy to tell Saturn Girl to leave. Rookie mistake even to this armchair action hero. Would've been happier if she'd thrown herself in harm's way to protect Imra rather than invite the bad guy to pop her.

RE: the sex scene. I didn't like it. Yes, I know that teenagers "hook up" (hate that phrase), but not Imra. In my mind she's the original no-nonsense, all business workaholic, with no time for that romance foolishness, let alone getting drunk and having a one night stand. She's solid will power who doesn't allow herself any weakness. The ultimate perfectionist. She'll get around to having sex when and if it fits into her career path and not just with any guy who happens to buy her a drink. She'll choose her mate logically and impassionately and then will put all of her perfectionism into the relationship just like she did with her career. She might even save herself for marriage.

This did not fit the character that I've read about for the last 40 years AT ALL.

RE: the mind wipe. That DID fit the character. She's done it before. She'll do it again. Her perfectionism makes her arrogant. She thinks she knows what's best for herself and everyone else. No ifs ands or iron butts.

IMHO, of course.

P.S. I get that Paul is trying to make her all complex and give her a motivation for her perfectionism and iron clad control, but it just didn't ring true with me at all.

I agree with jimgallagher that the drunken one-night stand is more out of character with the way I've always understood Imra, but I'd also say that the mindwipe, while it might have precedents, sounds to me like they're pushing beyond those precedents to a level that I'm not particularly happy with.

Paul hasn't worked with kids who are 11 to 16 if he thinks they're not just that, kids.

I agree that the older they get, the more they can handle adult types of situations, with verying success, given the child and the event.

We can assume that they're more mature in the DCU, but then, he's just proven that they're not really able to handle things, hasn't he?

Sounds like you and many others are putting Imra on a pedestal, and that's why this story is ultimately failing for you all. Always remember, the more we build up our heroes, the more likely we are to learn they have feet of clay.

I'd say the criticsm is apt, but I'd argue that this Imra has yet to become that Imra yet. This is a proto-Imra whose story here even precedes Adventure 247. Presented here is one of the lessons she had to learn from in order to become the Imra we all respect and admire. She does two things here we know she will regret later (indeed she already does) having done. This story works very well as an object lesson for her that will inform her later decisions and make her stronger for having already made mistakes.

That said, she's still had her weak moments later in her career. In addition to those already mentioned, there was the incident with Timber Wolf in the "Cold and Lonely Corner of Hell" issue very early in the original Levitz/Giffen run. You could argue that both stories were written by Levitz, of course, but it happened. So she's certainly had other moments of weakness.


Yes, there's PLENTY of precedent (or technically antecedent) for this in Imra. Maybe one could argue this incident shows why she never crossed the line as far as she did here in subsequent stories. To say it's entirely inconsistent with things she did later on just makes no sense. We don't call her "Ironbutt Imra" around these parts for nothin'! If you've got the power and the belief in your own self-righteousness, it's quite possible you could justify abusing it. Doing it this early may have provided just the crucial lesson Imra needed to restrain herself later on and not go as far as she did here. But she still used her power questionably in a few key instances.


Look, I don't know if I'm in LOVE with this story, but can we admit just one thing? The problem here is NOT that what Imra did in this story was impossible or unjustifiable with what we know about Imra and what's been established with the character--the problem is that it puts a tarnish, a dark underbelly if you will, on an era of the Legion that many of us consider innocent, almost sacrosanct. It's a retcon and a dirty one that leaves a bad taste in our collective mouths. THAT's the problem we have with the story! Admit it!

Paul is not by any stretch of the imagination a bad writer, and I wouldn't exhibit this story to prove otherwise. Taken on it's own, it's a solid character piece with some interesting and realistic themes explored within it. The problem lies with what baggage the reader brings with him or her to it and how the content of the story interacts with that baggage.

In any case Paul makes it clear that this is a story arc, and I, for one, will definitely be sticking with it to see how that arc plays out.

That's actually part of the problem I have with it. I've always understood Imra as being who she is because of years of training on Titan to teach her the self-discipline and control necessary to be a telepath interacting with a world of non-telepaths. So she's already Iron Butt Imra when she joins the team. The idea that she somehow has to "learn those lessons" after she joins the team just strikes me as wrong-headed.

It'd be like inserting a story of how Cos learned to be such a hardcore team player after the Legion's founding. That's not something he has to develop during his stint with the Legion, because it's already part of the character due to his pre-Legion sports experience. That's part of why he was picked by the computer to be the leader. It would just be explaining something that doesn't need an explanation.

That's plausible, certainly moreso than what we've seen so far on this thread. But Imra's training doesn't automatically make her infallible, any more than Cos's experience as a team player means the possibility of him doing something more more maverick-like can be completely ruled out. And let's not forget that those aspects of their characters were retcons themselves.

In any case training, no matter how extensive, is never guaranteed to cause one to have no lapses contrary to training. It happens all the time! And as far as we know, this was Imra's first trip into the wilderness, so to speak. The possibilty that she's going to make mistakes is perhaps higher while she's still getting her feet wet.

A very neat point that. Imra has to learn how to responsibly use her telepathy *after leaving Titan?* Apparently, being Dr. Aven's 'best student' meant that she completely flunked basic telepathic ethics 101, and had to go hang out with some non-telepaths before she figured out how to use her Titanian gifts responsibly...


Chief Taylor has a point as well about this portrayal of Imra offending our own baggage about the character, but it's not just pre-Crisis baggage. Paul himself wrote LSH #1, which we all read not three months ago, and he was praised to high heavens for the compelling and inspiring portrayal of Imra, searching for her children. And now he's tarnishing the character *he* just set on that pedestal.

Similarly, this act, for me, tarnishes the Garth / Imra reunion we saw in issue 3, where she tells him to 'open for me' and he explicitly trusts her in his head, and he offers words of confident comfort, that 'we'll find them.' He's shown as completely 100% trusting and supportive, and she's now been retconned into a woman who has been engaged in a calculated deception for a decade or so. His trust, all 'awwww' and woobly two weeks again, is now a sad moment, as he's gone from one half of a really strong marriage to a blind fool, who doesn't really know the woman he married.

Even the Brave & the Bold snappy patter between Garth and Rokk about 'It's okay if it's your pink fuzz' is tainted by the thought that Garth is making mildly scurrilous innuendos about *a guy who just slept with his girlfriend.*

The incident isn't just bad in and of itself, it's rippling out to spoil other bits of interplay between the three Founders, as there is suddenly this dirty secret under the surface of their interactions.

In Lo3W, Rokk made it pretty darn clear to Garth that he feels like he gave up his life (including romance) to devote to the team, so that Garth (and Imra) could go off and do whatever. That statement, coupled with the mind-wipe, is also *vastly* different now.

We already know from Dr. Arthur Light, who was mind-wiped by someone far more experienced with mind-wiping than teen Imra, that the trauma can lead to mental problems. Is Rokk's entire personality now a warped thing, all stunted like a bonsai tree, due to the aftereffects of that singular event? Who would have have been? Will he require extensive counseling to become anything at all like the man he would have been if Imra hadn't done that?

Will the anger and sense of betrayal from the discovery of this lead to the Founders breaking up and leaving the Legion again, as Rokk discovers that his inability to have a romantic life outside of the Legion stems from meddling from someone he trusted?

Will Garth ever trust Imra as powerfully and inspiringly as he did in issue 3, and did Paul write that scene (and the Imra-love in issue 1) just to put Imra (and her marriage) higher on that pedestal before tipping it over, to make a more emotionally effective crash?


I'm reminded of gypsy curses. The greatest curses aren't just 'die in a fire,' but they wish for all sorts of *wonderful* things to happen to the curse victim. Win a lottery, meet the woman of your dreams, become successful and recognized in your chosen field, huge wedding, birth of a beautiful son that the entire family rallies around. And then, one dark night, there's a crash in the nursery...

The best curses shower one with gifts, before ripping them cruelly away, and that's how the Imra-love in issue 1 and the Garth/Imra reunion in issue 3 feel now to me, like setup to make her more likable, so that it's more effective when she's dragged down.