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

I think that the fact that in the 5YL stories, you had Vi/Ayla...Mekt/Holt...Jan/Sean (yes, there was a bit of hinting at their relationship continuing in some way before the whole thing got sacked) makes the editorial wishy-washyness on this subject all that more intolerable.

They had gay characters and retconned them back to normal. why was it alright back then, but not now.

Like I said before...Geoff cheated by backing up with the Legion to Crisis...even if Paul is taking the history back to when he left off...it's still ignoring things that happened to the characters we all loved from back then. But maybe it wasn;t entirely Geoffs fault...maybe it was editorial dictating again.

^In Paul's defense he's not beholden to anything Giff and the Bierbaums did with the characters after he left. Paul even says that he wasn't even trying to set up Ayla and Vi up as lesbians. What TMK did, however, was a natural evolution of what Paul did with the character.

It's certainly maddening how DC has backpedaled on gay and lesbian relationships, though. It makes less sense now to shy away from it now. It was bold and innovative in the early 90s. Now, it should be common and accepted. But it's not for some reason. It's mindblowingly frustrating.

I don't, however, think that every writer is equipped to portray a gay or lesbian relationship. There have certainly been some clumsy misfires over the years. I would hope Paul is capable of writing a same-sex couple, but I wouldn't be surprised if he weren't. It's not always so much disapproving of writing about the subject, I believe, so much as a lack of confidence in doing it well.

Yeah, just to be clear: I don't mean that it has to be a particular character or couple, CT.

It's just that... considering that Legion has such a large cast, and that it's supposed to be set in a more humane time than our own, it's just... always gonna' bother me that canon itself is actually falling behind other stories and universes that are set in our own time.

It's not necessary to have some dramatic coming-out in the middle of an epic battle. I figure everyone knows by now That's Not How You Do It.

I'm sorry, but I'm absolutely sure that he was killed in that story when Mysa was with Mordru.
I'll go look it up, I have those.
And I don't remember ever seeing him again.
But, I'll apologize if I'm wrong.
I frequently am, but I SO remember his death.

Edit:
I looked it up.
You're right.
He's beaten and the thing is eating him, Mordru says over and over again, for eternity.
Laurel flies in and fights the vampire, Vrycos.
Cham takes Rond's place, Mysa spells Vrycos, Rokk strikes a bargin and they all leave.
It's mostly in #3 and #7.

I'll have to find the other times he showed up.
I don't know why Laurel left the baby with the nursemaid rather than Rond.
Or why she went on the run rather than being with Rond.
sigh

Thanks for straigtening me out on that, but it makes his death THIS time even worse for me.

I'm know Rond was in the End of an Era books. I just looked at the first issue of that.

Mordru states something about Rond being devoured over and over in that initial rescue...and you do see him being devoured. Which is where it can seem pretty final, but it wasn't as he wsas rescued...and iirc impersonated by Cham at one point.

Laurel left the baby with the nurse because she and Rond were off fighting on the Khund warfront, iirc. Then later, he was captured by Mordru, stripped of his power ring, and tortured.

What consternates me is that she waited so long to try to rescue him. Not until after 5 more Legionnaires were captured did she go in to try and save the day.

I've always wondered why Rond couldn't be an active honorary Legionnaire and keep his ring.

I read # 4.

And . . . ?

It's not quite clicking with me yet.

Why did Rond go off to fight the Khund War if his GL ring was destroyed by Mordru?

Finally read it. I have yet to resynchronize my comic store run with the Legion's publication. It's complicated by the 2 Legion books at the moment.

I'm sure there's more to come with the Ardeen/Ranzz family. And I kinda liked the idea that Darkseid's fleeting presence on Avalon had profoundly corrupted their society. That idea, combined with Morrison's story in Batman 702 finally start to do something new and interesting with Darkseid -- that he is a god, a mythic presence made manifest that alters everything, everyone around it, like an infectious, potent meme. Nice stuff. As such, I don't care TOO much at the moment that the Avalon creeps were sort of anonymous. I think that may be the point -- they are mythic echoes of the real Darkseid.

I LOOVVED the Shadow Lass/Brainy scene, even though it was brief. Remember Brainy was the first Legionnaire Shady tried to get her hooks into when she joined, followed by Superboy and Mon-El. This was a NICE callback to that, and suggests to me that Levitz is realigning Shady's character. In the beginning, she was a seductress/warrior. Then, she got all conventional as Mon-El's squeeze. So maybe Paul is reverting her to form, which is certainly interesting in a team of monogamous females.

Color me as liking the scene of Earth Man with the xenophobe plotters. First, the immense irony that a clearly multi-ethnic group, that in today's world would be at each other's throats, is united in common cause to keep the "aliens" out. Second, it advances the idea that the whole Earth Man/JLE thing was more than just typical super-villain plot to take over the WORLD! It was part of a larger political effort. In that, I think there is a seed of an idea that makes the whole xenophobia thing sort of jibe with an otherwise utopian future. Xenophobia happens when a culture is under a lot of stress--economic collapse, war, rapid societal/technological change. That's CERTAINLY the case today. From that perspective, it's possible to view the very utopian success of the Legion's time as the source of the xenophobia. Rapid sociocultural change from the success of the United Planets, the prominence of the Legion, the creation of new interstellar trade & communication, etc. AND it makes sense that the very success and fame of the Legion would make them a focus of the xenophobic backlash. Anyway, the whole idea of xenophobia as a plot point makes more sense to me now. But it's still incumbent on Levitz to tell a good story with it.

On the GLC thing, it's worth pointing out that it was JOHNS, not Levitz, who made Sodom Yat a lonely wallower in self pity in the FC:LO3W book. Maybe Paul deserves blame for running with that idea. I prefer to think that Daxamites are uber-moody, perhaps always borderline depressive. Look at how Mon-El has been portrayed over the years. Mon and Sodom are 2 peas in a pod, if you ask me. They should start a 12-step program together. Maybe low levels of lead exposure, over time, cause depression in Daxamites, and Brainy's serum and the GL rings only counter the physical effects? I'm wondering now WHY Dyogene picked Kirt as the Earth Green Lantern? Was it because he's called Earth Man? Is he the most earthy because of his anti-alien attitudes? It would be great if Paul could give some insight into this, so it doesn't seem like a random plot device.

Well, if you'll reread my post above, you'll see that I used the word LATER.

Sorry, I didn't realize there was a 'before'.
In my head, there was just the scene of her leaving the baby with the nanny 'later'.
Of course, I could be wrong about that, too.

I just read #8 again (skimmed it, really) and saw the scene you're refering to.
These stories are amazingly complex and deep.
I don't remember much of it clearly, at all.

I'm gonna have to just reread the whole thing and try to compare it to this new era that we have now.

As for Yat, I think, for simplicity's sake, he's got 'Stinkin Thinkin'.

My family is ALL depressive, to one degree or another.
It's debilitating and of physical origin BUT how I let myself think hugely effects my state of being.

If I reject the past history, failures and hurts and turn my mind to possibilities and joys, I do much better.
Good ole positive thinking can and does work.

I don't understand why he's lived so long, did I miss the explanation?, but he must have had many successes and wonderful relationships and things.

I just really find someone with that much power constantly feeling sorry for himself to be, somehow, obscene.

I mean, the dude can FLY!
Through SPACE!
He's not even stuck to flying in an atmosphere.
geez

I don't get why he's lived so long either, but if he's so bummed out about living forever, why doesn't he just take off the ring and die?

Yes.
I didn't understand Jan sticking around to be the Progenitor, either, since his people thought of death as a transition to a greater state of being.

Sometimes, the writers step into the stories and cause blips of illogical consequenses that really stand out.

I liked it too. It made more sense that there would be some bigger power backing the Justice League. Earth Man is shown to be more of a hired thug than an independent operator, although the hired thug is getting independent. He may turn on his political masters, without embracing the Legion's ideals, and turn into something quite unmanageable.

Does EM absorb ALL of someone's superpowers or only one at a time?
Duplicate Boy and Nemesis Kid were limited, weren't they?

If so, is he stuck with that power for a certain length of time or can he dump one power to level up or use one more appropriate to the need?

If he's limited, he could be managed.
He might be managed anyway if he's kept away from invulnerables, telepaths and energy blasters.
Maybe.

In the recent-ish xenophobia storyline, he was holding the powers of at least a dozen Legionnaires at a time, including some heavy-hitters like Blok, and could use them pretty much as desired.

He's less like Duplicate Boy and more like Amazo, Mimic or the Composite Legionnaire (but with a 24 hour limit on storage, before having to recharge, IIRC).

He was also shown absorbing powers from the captive Legionnaires by just standing in the same room with them. He didn't actually have to touch them, although that may have been artistic license (since it wouldn't have been as easy / dramatic to draw him walking around and touching each of the captives...). Perhaps the cages they were in allowed him to drain their powers at a close range, or something.

[snip]

TBH, seeing a group of villains that are far more multi-ethnic than any team of heroes in the current DC-verse is leaving a bad taste in my mouth. It seems like one more thing in regards to race that TPTB over there couldn't be bothered to think through.



Maybe Levitz can spin something good from it. I guess we'll see.

Cleome, I couldn't agree with you more. One might think that the Legion would be a problem -- Silver Age vintage white kids. However, one COULD do a lot to make them a more diverse set of off-worlders and earthers. Levitz has done some of that in the past. I hope he picks it up again.

Yeah, doublechinner. I know what you mean.

Ironically, Pizza Delivery Girl had a link awhile back to a "recolored" Threeboot Legion that's pretty much as diverse as EM's current buddies. The juxtaposition is kind of sad.

I've often wondered what would happen if, out of the blue, they just started coloring Legion characters differently. This was kind of done with Karate Kid back in the 1970s (sometimes he was east Asian, sometimes he wasn't). I seem to remember the 3Boot Phantom Girl being sort of orange initially (was she from John Boehner's homeworld?).

Well, they changed Star Boy's race in the threeboot/cartoon, and the response wasn't particularly positive.

Here\'s a thread with previous discussion of race and the Legion that might be of interest.

Wow, that's pretty powerful!

He was shown recently to have to touch the person, Element Lad and Sensor Girl, for example.

The machines he used earlier, must have helped him.
How do you make a machine that syphopns off a person's powers and then transfers not just the energy, but the specific abilities, too?

We discussed somewhere here, what the sensation was for the victim and EM when he absorbed the power.
Apparently not much, since Sensor Girl didn't react in any way, or even seem to have noticed his touch.

That doesn't mean that HE doesn't feel anything, of course.

Perhaps his touch has a psionic side effect that somehow blinds the senses and/or mind of the victim to what's happened, unless it's completely obvious, like in Jan's case.
I can't imagine Jeckie not noticing his touch, ya know.

And if Saturn Girl read his mind earlier, when the Legion rejected him, did she not see how powerful he was to become?
I mean, he was a kid, NONE of their powers were that completely controlled and certainly not maximized.

Did she know that he was a sociopath?
It would seem to me, that if a telepath could read a mind as completely as Imra must have been able to, to reject an applicant, that said telepath would then, be under obligation to report said sociopath to medical and/or law inforcement authorities.
Yes?
No?