Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes New R.E.B.E.L.S. Comic Discussion Thread.

Very true.

By the way, Candle, are your summer vacation blues still getting you down, or are you feeling better?

Thanks for asking, MB.


THIS summer is a little strange because I'm struggling with a couple of things physically, and I might not be able to go back to working with kids because of them.

I wouldn't be able to keep up with the little stinkers or see enough to duck at the appropriate times.
sigh

The Lord'll open a door if He closes one.
I'm just not great at trusting or waiting.

Thanks again, your asking made me tear-up!
xsxsxs

(snip)

You can see a grab from just-before-5YL Giffen (I think... ) here that shows something similar. Just scroll down about 2/3rds of the way.

(Looks like it would hurt the perpetrator as much as the recipient, if you ask me. Unless your powers include altering your body density along with your form -- or unless your opponent is just a Ziploc bag full of tapioca) but that's comics for you. )

It seems likely that if a Durlan can form bone, horn, nail and other hard tissue in it's various forms, then it wouldn't be overly difficult for the Durlan to shape it's forearm into a bone or keratin blade.

Partial shapeshifting like that is always creepier than turning into a complete creature, IMO. Might be an uncanny valley thing.

MB posted my feelings well enough with exception, I like the uniforms and I think the writer's deserve a slap on the head for being so slow getting the story to this point. Only the fanatics are willing to pay $15 just to get to the story and by that time, the marginals have dropped and the books are on their way towards cancelation. How f-in stupid is DC?

3 * (Very true)

with additional kudos for creating new characters with potential (that wildfire-dawnstar frankenstein aside).

Another fine issue although I thought the art or maybe the inking looked pretty sloppy toward the end of the issue. Not bad but certainly not as polished as previous issues.

I have no issue with the pace as the previous poster seems to. I like that we are getting to know the players somewhat and I think the fact that they aren't all cut-and-dried good or bad one dimensional characters is great. Each has their own motivations for joining Dox whether he manipulated them into it or not. That and I can't wait to geek-out all the new Legionesque recruits.

Ciji didn't look like the 'sword through the brain' manuver hurt her.

Perhaps, Durlans have more metals in their systems to work with than humanoids.
And/or maybe, they have a lot less water/fluids, as well.

Do they need to eat 'food' to survive?
We've seen Cham eat, but does he NEED to?

His clothes are a part of his skin, we're told, so he might live on direct sun energies or even heat radiation.

We've never seen him take on matter or drop it, when he changes shape, no matter how big or small he gets.
Maybe, his tentacled, swamp dweller 'true form' is as much of an illusion as his orange humanoid form is.

Just some thoughts.

And ~
about Wildstar ~ why do fans insist of there only being one form of Wildfire?

Am I interpreting your comment correctly, BB?
Or is it just the combination of powers or the ugliness of the suit or what?

I always think that a new reality opens totally new options for characters so that new stories can be told.
The more characters are the same as originally seen, the more 'locked in' the old stories become.
And why would writers want to tell the same stories over again?

Do I have that wrong?

Or is the Wildstar comment because she's in the DC time period that she's in?
Please enlighten me.

Yup, that's the 5YL Giffen era.
He repeated panel after panel ~ time saving technique ~ and shadowing out most of the face was another.
sigh

Major Spoilers is a great site, thanks for bringing it up.

Ciji must have 'scanned' a metal(like?) creature who could do that, since we've been told in the past that Durlans have to scan something before they can copy it.
Cham's looked organic, Ciji's didn't.

Cham became Blok (on the same page of that display), too, after all.
We've always known he could mimic inanimate objects.

Maybe she did see Terminator 2!

(Insert 45-minute ramble regarding possible differences between external appearance and internal structure here.)

In the end, it always ends up being whatever the current writer needs it to be. I've defended that in the past, and now I'm stuck with it. (When trying to figure out how to approach skillsets in my own fan writing, I usually read contradictory and/or vague accounts of same until my head explodes. Then I flip a coin and go write. Sometimes I have a beer first, which helps. )

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Partial shapeshifting like that is always creepier than turning into a complete creature, IMO. Might be an uncanny valley thing.

See, that to me as a total "Aw, Yeah," moment. It's the thought of total disguise that has a much bigger "Yipe" factor for me if I let it.

(But I'm a collage maker when I'm not geeking out here, so that may have something to do with it. I once got into a near-shouting match at lunch with another artist when I insisted that the villain of Toy Story was really a hero who was the victim of bad press. )

(snip)

Yes, yes it is. My only gripe is that Peterson doesn't credit everyone whose art and writing he samples. Sometimes he'll mention it in his writing, but not always. It's confusing for those of us who've been through the fandom revolving door so many times.

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Ciji must have 'scanned' a metal(like?) creature who could do that, since we've been told in the past that Durlans have to scan something before they can copy it.

Yep. I've wasted countless minutes wondering if a shapeshifter could mimic a person they'd only seen in a 2-D or 3-D image, or on the air. Possibly they could, but with the caveat that the mimicry wouldn't be convincing up close. Maybe it would look flat or insubstantial around the edges, etc.

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Cham's looked organic, Ciji's didn't.

Ah, okay. I thought they were both organic in nature, but I only saw Ciji in action in the preview. Don't have the book in front of me, alas. That was a rare preview that actually made me sorry I couldn't run out and buy the book.

Is that a common complaint? Anyhow, it's not mine. I've no problem with mimics, there's only so many powers. I wouldn't want LEGION filled with LSH mimics but again, not my complaint.

I don't care for this character for the reasons I've stated; it's a frankenstein and derivative. The writer KNEW and I'd imagine wrote the character because it would be a mimic not just of two LSH characters but of two characters identified with each other. It's not imaginative, which isn't a crime but that it's a merging of Dawnstar and Wildfire makes it forced.

Also, IMO it was a poorly done origin. It's beyond my imagination that any living creature could so readily lose everything that made it living and adore the person that made it happen WITHOUT CHOICE. Vril could have said, I can make it possible for you to get out of here and be useful but here's what has to happen....

I think what was done was way beyond even Vril's characterization.

There's a light hearted moments potential right there.

I rather liked that they were 'brought together'.
It's a bit like poetry.
Something else else that can't happen, a love/joining that can't be, then, through art (Dox and Bedard) there IS a fruition.
Only before it happened, the other part.

I agree, totally and have stated so earlier (I forget the 'earliers' sometimes, sorry.)

But I don't blame Wildstar for that, I blame Dox and Bedard.
Wildstar is just who she is.
She hasn't fully realized what she is, yet.
When she understands, if she ever does, that he did it TO her rather than FOR her, we'll see what happens.

Yeah, we've certainly talked about it here.
With the blueray HD we've got nowadays, it's probably a piece of cake.

I'd scan the panel for you but I still need a printer/scanner.
The metalic part of Ciji's extension was what was so interesting about it, the weapons look.
Anyway, it's a minor point.
And you're right ~ it's always up to the writer(and sometimes the artist who just throws something in for the fun of it! Lightle told us he did things like that all of the time. )

I've always wondered about that, too. In the Marvel universe, one way this could be explained is to theorize that he's able to take on mass from some sort of extra-dimensional source at will, much as the Hulk is thought to automatically do when he goes from being human to being all green, muscular, and giant. In Cham's case, I suppose this would mean that he could also shed mass to some sort of extra-dimensional storage place when he assumes a form that's less massive than his true form, whatever that may be. Indeed, he wouldn't even have to necessarily understand that his power works this way in order to use it. Just a thought, anyway, which appeals to me because I think its kind of "neat."

Her wings were LONGER this issue!!!!!
Maybe even the other stuff, the ones that I've erased from the quote, will happen some time!!!

I like the idea of longer wings, too.

But do you know what else I think would help WildStar to look even better? A wig over her helmet so that you would just see her energy "face" under her bangs. Seriously.

Sorry, I was just giving some more thought to the comparison of Wildfire/DawnStar and WildStar. I just realized that WildStar is Wildfire in reverse.

Think about it. When Drake became Wildfire it made him moody and wistful because he had tragically once been a healthy, relatively carefree human who seemed to fit in well with his peers. WildStar, on the other hand, was a physically disabled woman with no real future or worth in the eyes of her peers. Accordingly, her transformation was an opportunity for her to enjoy wider horizons and make a positive difference in the world as a powerful superhero.

Small wonder, then, that she hasn't expressed any dissatisfaction with her situation, unlike Wildfire, who used to complain all of the time.

'Extra-dimensional storage source' works for me.
It sort of follows him around like an invisible pear wood trunk (with feet, of course.)
Neat is right!


Remember the Legion 1,000,000 AD story where the girl from Imsk (or was it Cargg?) carried her home system in a tessaract(sp) in a jewel on her forehead?!

Maybe, the mass storage place is like that and every Durlan is born with one or they get one inserted somewhere in their bodies during a religious ceremony after a certain age, like a rite of passage or something.
Cool.

Wings: I thought Wildstar was forming those using her power? She can make them as short or long or gone as she wants? Meeting her view of physical beauty due to her previous "disability?"

Or are they actually a physical part of her like legs?

I think that they're part of her power, yes (but her whole body is like that, now?), I don't know if she controls them consciously or not, though.
The times that we've seen her use them, they've been short and stubby, like her original ones.

This issue is the first that they've been long!

I'm not liking this book as much I ought to. But I agree with the general appreciation for Bedard's pitch-perfect Vril Dox. Making Starro look like a Frazetta/Mars character really doesn't do much for me. I don't mind getting away from the old giant Starfish look, but this seems very cliche and unoriginal. Along the same lines, and a key source of my meh-ness to this title, is that I don't think we've seen anything new from the DC alien races. Waid's 3Boot Dominator story pretty much ruined them for me for a long time. I don't mind seeing them as players, but I WOULD appreciate seeing some new and different side to them, and to all the other over-used alien races as well. As much as I want to see more space-based DC stories, I feel like this book has already gotten to late Next Generation/DS9 levels of cramped and predictable use of the same old aliens. One of the problems Star Trek had in its more recent shows is the strait-jacket of a crowded universe with predictable species. R.E.B.E.L.S. is getting there, too.

On the Durlan's powers, I've pretty much given up on their ever being a definitive and consistent use of Durlan powers. I figure that any given Durlan can do just about anything as long as it involves morphing part or all of their "bodies," even manifesting non-organic materials, duplicating a species' actual abilities, being the size of a skyscraper or a paramecium, or whatever. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

I have enjoyed all six REBELS issues so far. The artwork has been top notch and Tony Bedard has done a great job mixing in plot, action, varieties of alien planets and races, guest appearances, and introducing new characters all at the same time. This is the template for how I wish the Legion title would be conducted and I wish Mr. Bedard had more of an opportunity on it during his short run.

I would like to see the Khund, Dominators, Durlans, Citadelians, Spider Guilders all fight over planet systems, with LEGION in the middle defending them. The occasional Starro-like infestations would be fun too.

I confess I was disappointed with the "revelation" that Starro is actually some sort of Molly Hatchet. Starro is one of the really cool, bizarre untypical alien badguys in starfish form, and to humanoidize him seems somewhat of a copout to me. Here's hoping it's just Lobo-tomy under all the horns and chain mail controlled by the Real starfish.

Also, the WildStar character as a composite of two Legionnaires is disappointing. It takes me back to the Peyer/McCraw Legion days when LeViathan and Triplicate Phantom Girl and Jarth all emerged in the mindset that X-Men type characters with multiple powers are the way to go. The Legion has been and always should be a large cast of characters with individual, unique powers who team together to compose a fighting force. There are enough fighting groups out there who rely on 7-10 characters. The Legion/LEGION should have multitudes!

It's funny that you say this, because the new Starro's colouration and muscular arms made think that he might be Lobo underneath, too...for a while. Then I noticed that they actually do show his face in this issue, and it's definitely not Lobo's.

Ah, well. I miss Lobo, as rotten as he was at times.

By the way, did anybody else notice in the final panel that Amon Hakk was mistakenly drawn with more hair than usual? Personally, I thought that it suited him, because to be perfectly frank, I think that his mohawk haircut looks kind of lame on him.

Ummmm.
We all pretty much think the same thing.
But, kicking around possibilities is what we're sort of, here for.
Not?