Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Legion of Super-Heroes #4 (spoilers)

Believe me: That's one reason I'm sorry that I wasn't an active fan when the show was on the air and when the first wave of Threeboot was still being published. I sure as blazes had no problem with Star Boy as a POC.

While it's not in the thread linked to above, my 'issue' with Star Boy's color change was that it didn't technically have anything to do with him being black. He was called out as Xanthuan, and it was even mentioned in the first half-dozen issues that Xanthuans can't process sugar and have different metabolisms than humans.

He's not in any way representative of African-descended persons of color, he's just an alien in blackface, making him worse than a racial caricature or a stereotype or a 'token,' because he isn't even that.

He's a *fake* token, no more representative of a human of African descent or dark coloration than that goggle-eyed alien sitting co-pilot next to Lando Calrissian was representative of Asians (or Jar-Jar Binks was representative of anything other than George Lucas' bewildering lack of taste and good judgement...).

'Check out how inclusive we are! We let an alien in who looks exactly like a black dude!'

'No actual black dudes? From, like, Africa? Or Great Britain? Or Sheboygan? Or that colony world settled by the !Xhosa?'

'Uh, no...'

Not to be nit-picky, but most humans don't process sugar well.
That's why it ends up killing so many of us.
Especially us diabetics.

Does that mean we're not human?
Ummmm, us humans?

I'm diabetic. But that's not a *racial trait* for my species. It's something wrong with my pancreas (or, more specifically, a sign of my pancreases displeasure when I allow my weight to go over a certain magic number...).

But it's not really relevant to whether or not a dark-skinned Xanthuan counts as 'having a black Legionnaire,' and I certainly didn't expect that my assertion that 'Xanthuan does not equal African' would be translated into 'are you calling me not human?'

I know lots of skinny diabetics, actually.

Okay, another example: most asians can't digest cow's milk, either correctly, healthly or completely.
The ability wasn't developed in them during the dark ages like it was in Europe among the people there who survived the famine's more if they could.

My point was that individual traits that apply to vast numbers of people or to certain ethnic groups, like color of skin or inabilities to consume certain foods properly, etc., doesn't mean that one isn't human.

Xanthan's may be Earth colonists or somehow related to Earth. They obviously have people of either African descent or people of a parallel development.
Which ever, they still qualify as human, just like Imra, Garth, Rokk and Lu do, even though they're from other worlds.

And yeah, I thought my comment would catch you off guard.
:giggle:

[snip]

First of all, it's pretty harsh to use the term "blackface" for what's essentially a realistically drawn character.

Second of all, when I think about all the stuff we already handwave in the dual "realities" of lite SciFi and superheroes, it seems inane to me to suddenly get all hyper-realistic at the notion of an alien humanoid who has an appearance that differs so slightly from my own. If aliens can be bipeds who breathe oxygen and have blond hair and ten fingers (despite allegedly having no ties to Earth) why is THIS suddenly a huge, deal-breaking problem?

There's something very disturbing about that to me, especially when I saw the vehemence about it on some other fans spaces. Kind of depressing, seeing one's own fandom behave like that.

I agree with you on a number of issues, but on this you've lost me.

As for the tokenism issue, the problem isn't that one character is a POC but rather that more characters were not. I don't know what drove Waid and Kitson's decisions in that regard-- but, yeah. It's disappointing to me. Maybe one of the most disappointing aspects of the series' run.

And, no-- I don't feel like the character was WRITTEN to be a stereotype. He was very much written like the original Star Boy, so far as I could tell. In fact, he hewed much closer to the original version in terms of character than did some of the other Threeboot Legionnaires.

As to the animated series, all this supposed pressing concern about how somebody with no Earth ties could look Black is pretty much null and void. Since the writers never dug into the character's origins.

I don't even know why I'm going down this path, but there are illnesses associated overwhelmingly with certain racial/ethnic groups. Think sickle-cell anemia, for instance. Or Tay-Sachs.

Ditto. But my *species* is homo sapiens. Not 'fat guy' or 'skinny guy.'

But that's just nit-picking. The point I was trying to make is that painting an alien black doesn't really 'include' the readers who may or may not be humans-of-color, anymore than having some dude with tentacles talk in Yiddish is 'inclusive' of a Jewish presence. (As opposed to Gim, who *is* Jewish, and yet doesn't in any way 'act Jewish' or 'look Jewish' or serve as some sort of Jewish caricature, which is, IMO, pretty cool. For that same reason, I prefer Invisible Jacques as a black Legionnire than Tyroc, since Invisible Jacques happens to be black, while Tyroc's backstory is interwoven with some freakish morality tale about slavery and justification for him 'hating whitey.')

If anything, Star Boy looking like a black man serves as an excuse for not having any *actual* ethnic presence.

'Oh, we don't need a black Legionnaire. We have Star Boy, who'se an alien, but hey, he *looks* like a black man...'

It would be the same as having a Legion of entirely male characters, and then saying, 'We don't need to have a female presence, because we have Chameleon Boy, who can look like a woman.'

I'm sure it's terribly inclusive to all the Xanthuan readers, 'though.

Someone that's not a black human being passed off as a black human presence in the story? A black man's role filled by someone who isn't actually a person of that ethnicity? That's pretty much exactly what blackface was, a means by which a production could have a black character without actually having to put a black man on stage.

The Legion should totally have more persons of color. Painting an alien yellow isn't going to convince me that the Legion is getting all asian-friendly anymore than painting one a darker shade of brown feels like a respectful inclusion of that ethnicity.

This is a good point. It's already suspension-of-disbelief time when an 'alien' looks like Superman or Element Lad or Violet or Lu (or even Brainiac Five or Shadow Lass, whose only physical differences are fairly unspectacular color variations not found on Earth).

An alien who looks exactly like a black man, or an asian, is no more silly than an alien who looks like a white man.

But I don't think that a black (or red, or yellow) skinned alien should be considered a representation of a human of ethnicity.

All that threeboot Thom 'represents' is Xanthuans, some or all of whom happen to look like humans of African descent. Which means that changing his coloration accomplished exactly nothing towards the goal of including a nonwhite human ethnicity in the Legion, since he's not even human.

It's almost worse than not changing his color, because it's shining a bright light on the fact that the threeboot Legion had even less less *humans* of color (since Dawnstar, Tyroc and Invisible Jacques were not part of this 'boot) than the classic continuity.

[Similarly, I didn't really ever think of Gear, from the Reboot, as a black character. He's some sort of techno-organic construct. He *looks* like a human of African heritage, but he wasn't. Since he was hanging out with a group that included some combination of Invisible Jacques, Danielle Foccart and one or more Kids Quantum, who were, despite being native to Xanthu, not defined as aliens with different metabolisms than earth-humans, and quite possibly having been seeded from Earth by Valor, Gear didn't bug me, since the part of the 'only colored characters on the Legion' weren't being played by people who wasn't part of any human ethnic group.)

For the same reason I don't think threeboot Thom is a compelling example of a black character, I don't think of Garth, who looks kinda Irish/Scottish, as a representation of those cultures / ethnicities, nor do I think of Imra, who looks kinda like a Swede, as representative of Swedes. They are from completely different cultures, and I'd consider touting the writers for representing Scandinavian swimsuit models with their presentation of Imra just as much of a copout as Thom as Our-Man-from-Africa.

My problem with Threeboot Thom is similar to the problem with Reboot Jeka: Let's take a character who has existed for decades, and since this is a new continuity, let's change something essential about him/her because we've got a clean slate.

In Jeka's case it was for shock value and supposedly to give the Legion a more alien look. In Thom's case it was to make the Legion look more ethnically diverse. In either case they could've brought in other characters from old continuities (like Tellus or Tyroc) or create entirely new characters, but they chose to mess with existing ones and alienate people who were fans of those characters in the process.

Why they went that route is a mystery. To me it's lazy, disrespectful writing and is inexcusable.

Totally agree Chief

When you look at the current Legion, there have been 8 Terran Legionnaires: Colossal Boy, Invisible Kid, Bouncing Boy, Karate Kid, Ferro Lad, Tyroc, Invisible Kid II, XS (the Allen side at least). Five out of eight are from the smallest ethnic group (caucasion) which is pretty non representative of the various Asian and African peoples.

The most powerful character to me is XS. Barry Allen's grand-daughter, cousin to Bart and she is mixed race. Lots of credit for that one. And probably the most realistic. With mass travel and inter-marriage, 31st century Earth will probably be populated enirely by Beyonces

Threeboot Thom was a thoroughly enjoyable character. It's a pity that the run ended before he could be more fully developed. Much has been made about the current version of the team being "inspired" by the original. That concept is more legitimately applied to an honest to goodness reboot. Threeboot Thom was inspired by previous versions, but he was his own character. Taking advantage of a new reality to correct the racism of the omission of the 60s team was just the opposite of lazy and disrespectful. It was absolutely the right thing to do.

You're right that Threeboot Thom was an enjoyable character; he certainly had some potential. I agree 110% that the Legion needs more diversity.

But why exactly would it be necessary to achieve this by assigning a previously caucasian character a new race? Why?!?

I say it's lazy because Mark Waid could've used the opportunity to reimagine Tyroc and turn him around into a really great, memorable character. Hell, he could've used Jacques instead of Lyle Norg! Or, heaven forbid, he could actually create a new character of color!

I also think disrespectful is apt because Thom Kallor is a character who's been around for around 40 years. I'm absolutely sure that he has his share of fans. Those fans have always known Thom to be a caucasian with brown hair. Sure, he's not a marquee character like Superman, but wouldn't it be awfully strange if Kal-El was rebooted to look like a Native American but otherwise had all the other tropes of the character, all in order to make DC seem more culturally diverse? No! It would make no sense and would be seen by fans as a slap in the face and an obvious case of trying to manufacture political correctness!

I dunno, maybe it has to do with my own intimate connection with the Legion as a fan. I mean, I wasn't bothered at all when Marvel's Ultimate line recast Nick Fury as a black man. While I'm not all that big of a Nick Fury fan, it didn't bother me. I think part of that is and was that the Ultimate line has always been presented as an alternate version (with the "real" MU still retaining the classic caucasian version), whereas Threeboot was presented and intended as a replacement and new canonical version of the Legion. If Threeboot hadn't failed, then we would still be discussing it as the Legion rather than a Legion!

Maybe that's the critical difference for me, or maybe it's because I'm such a Legion lover. I imagine it's the same reason why there was such an uproar over the "makeovers" such characters as Jeckie, Drake, Ferro, Jan and some of the others got during the course of the Reboot.

Again, I'm all in favor of more diversity among the Legion and in comics in general, but doing so at the expense of a classic character IS both lazy AND disrespectful in my opinion.

But this wasn't the same Thom. He wasn't previously caucasian. He was new character inspired by the original. Gim was different too. He was from a land of giants. Jan was different. His powers were changed. Lu's back story was totally new. Shrinking Violet had a completely different personality. These types of changes were in context for the threeboot. There really isn't any point in doing a reboot if everything is going to be the same.

The lack of diversity in a team of 20 plus members was too big an issue to just ignore. Yes, Waid could have made some of the other choices you mention. But he didn't. The choice to change Thom's race wasn't any more or less disrespectful than other changes he made. And unlike some of the other changes, there was a legitimate point to it.

Yes, I do acknowledge that there were some pretty significant changes to those other characters in Threeboot, BUT--and this is going to sound superficial, I know--all of those characters at least LOOKED ABOUT THE SAME as their predecessors! Waid tried some tweaks and twists to make those other characters perhaps a little more interesting, but Gim still looked like Gim, Jan still looked like Jan, Lu still looked like Lu, etc., etc.

Thom sticks out like a sore thumb because he's suddenly a black man! I mean, if this was part of Waid and Kitson's mission statement, then why not make Gim appear Asian, Rokk appear Native American and so on and so forth? It makes Thom look like he's there to be the token POC while there are other existing POC Legion characters available to be used. Why should all the other Threeboot versions resemble their former incarnations, but not Thom? It's ridiculous!

Hell, if nothing else, still call him "Star Boy" but have his real name be something else! I'd have no problem with that! Sure, I'd miss Thom, but at least I'd treat this new guy as his own character and not wonder why such a seemingly random change was made to a familiar character.