Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Legion of Super-Heroes 37(Spoilers)

She died? Near rape scene? Huh? I thought I had read this issue too but... the whole character left me unimpressed, guess I have to reread the issue

I'm willing to bet 100 ergloks that Glyco will recover quite nicely.

Become a Legionnaire? Maybe. But she would also be a nice step toward inhabiting the 3boot LSHverse with non-Legionnaire characters for us minor-characters adorers to praise and love. I mean, she has a name and everything, unlike most (all) of the "outside" little-L legionnaires and the Wanderers.

OBJECTION to anyone outside of Taryn Loy from Bismoll using the codename 'Calorie Queen'.

Or she could simply be Chemical Queen...

I vote for Sugar-Lips. With the hyphen. Never been a Legion character named Sugar-lips, it would seem about time.

Didn't Shooter say that a Legion Academy was going to be instituted? 'Glyco' would be an excellent first student.

I think I-Kid would agree...

Actually, I kinda hope she stays dead. When she was first shown I thought "hey, a future Legionnaire already, man Shooter doesn't waste time." thus her "death" certainly shocked me. But I like the idea that Shooter threw us a curve ball. I like the idea that Lyle (and the reader) is shown that this universe isn't a safe universe where the Legion gets to save everyone. (and I know Lyle and the Legionnaires already know this based on WaK continuity, however, I see this as a statement to new readers and old readers that Shooter isn't just going to write the OLD Legion).

Anyways, I think it would lessen the surprise of her death if Shooter had her live, at the same time it is certainly set up to where it is a possibility. However, I just like the idea that Shooter set up something so cliched and then threw convention out of the window by killing her.

The story line has potential either way, if she dies it would bring it home to Lyle about the risks that the legion is taking and may be part of the reason for the Costume change. If she lives their a possiblity for a romance and possibly a legion canidate.

It does have potential either way. And let us not forget Shooter has no qualms about killing off his recently introduced Legion characters (Ferro Lad).

I wish they'd flesh out some of the 20 some odd characters we've already got before introducing new ones. This reboot is 3 years old and we know next to nothing about almost all of the current team.

I would have agreed with you at one point, Jim. But frankly, by the end Waid made it hard to care about them at all.

With new blood to bounce off of, maybe my interest in the 20 can be resparked.

Amen to that! I too find it hard to be intrigued by new characters when legionnaires like Element Lad need further exploration. Too many new characters was one of the reasons that Waid's legion failed for me... I couldn't keep track of who was a Wanderer, etc...

Another "Amen" from Germany The undevelopped characters were probably in the end the most devastating element of Waids run. The Legionnaires were nothing but plain faces in costumes. Recently reread the run and did not care more for it than during the first read... it's just not working.

Certainly it is hard to give 20 characters a different personality, but you could have demanded at least more than two characters (Cos and Brainy) actually getting one...

Not to mention all those other characters who kept on popping up every few issues like Theena, the Wanderers and the incredibly bad written Terror Firma...

I am always going to be grateful to Waid's run, because it made me(and I imagine others) a LSH fan. without Waid's reboot, I would never have dreamed of reading this book. and as long this group doesn't get shunted aside(which I am kinda sure it will) for the LSH running around in the rest of the DCU(which is rather poor marketing given the sales on this book) I will stay with it.

I think you guys are overstating the case about Waid's characterization. True, we didn't get a lot of backstory about many of the Legionnaires, but I was quite impressed with the way he portrayed their personalities. I think Chameleon, Invisible Kid, Dream Girl and Triplicate Girl in particular were well done.

I found it interesting that the Waid Legionnaires were so often dead wrong about each other.

Example;
Chameleon thinks of 'Micro Lad' as a moron, and gets really exasperated explaining to him how his powers work *directly after Micro lad proves that he knows exactly how they work* with the line, 'Mmm, minty.' Really Cham, do you *really* think Gim had no clue that your breath weapon wasn't deadly poison when he shoved his face into it and commented on the smell? But Cham's got the idea in his head that Micro Lad is a moron, and so he goes on acting all haughty, when he's the one who ends up looking dumb, for refusing to see what's right in front of his face. It's a *massive* change from the Chameleon Boy who was a natural actor, one of the four smartest Legionnaires, a key member of the Espionage Squad and all-around on the ball about people and their personalities. Indeed, in every instance where he shapechanges in front of his teammates throughout the Waid run, even when he's impersonating teammates like Sun Boy and Ultra Boy, he doesn't manage to fool the other teammates, and acts notably out of character, as if his alien viewpoint has effectively crippled his ability to function as an infiltrator or 'chameleon,' since he's utterly incapable of understanding the people he's trying to pretend to be. (It'd be like Projectra having the power to create visual illusions, but being color blind, and thus never being able to craft *convincing* illusions.)

There are tons of other instances of Legionnaires just outright slamming each other.

Cosmic Boy smashes his way into Brainiac Fives lab to discover that the scheming bastard wasn't actually up to anything. Dream Boy all-but calls Lightning Lad brain-damaged to his face. Pretty much everyone refers to Ultra Boy as a moron. Cham's the 'poisonously bitter one.'

There's tiny cliques of characters that can barely stand each other (and tend to bicker even when they are together), and the rest are 'the enemy,' to be spied upon, lied to, manipulated and sabotaged behind their backs.

It's definitely not like any Legion I've seen before. They work against each other more than the Secret Society of Super-Villains used to...

Shooter seems to have started mixing this up from day one. Karate Kid flips out because Lu is endangered and hurt, when the Waid run portrayed them as members of rival factions. Lightning Lad has a queasy moment when he realizes that 'my Imra' is in danger, whereas the couples in the Waid run have never seemed to have the slightest concern for each others safety (indeed, the only commentary has been Shady's jealousy when Ultra Boy is sent on a mission with Supergirl, and even that has to include some teammates insulting each other). Invisible Kid has a 'human' moment as well, which was refreshing to see, since he's been lying backstabbing turns-on-his-friends creepy-Supergirl-stalker Lad during the Waid run (man, did that Supergirl-shrine plot ever go anywhere? Did Lyle ever even *talk* to Kara?). Ayla does slam on her brother (as she had during the Waid run) *but also* sticks around and helps him throughout the entire issue. In short, she actually acts like a sibling, all-too-willing to point out where Garth is falling down, but never failing to be there with her hand out to help him back up.

I'll go along with all of that except the stuff that involves Chameleon. Here's my trick for figuring out Chameleon's interactions with others: Chameleon is a mirror. Whatever he says and does mirrors the person he's dealing with. Whatever anyone says about Chameleon is really something they're saying about themselves. It *astonishes* me how much sense this makes of everything.

For example, the Micro Lad thing. Yes, Micro Lad understands how Chameleon's power works, and Chameleon's smart enough to know that... but Cham blows up at him, explaining it, because that's how Micro Lad deals with people--he gets mad at them for calling him Colossal Boy! Then, when Cham says something to imply that he thinks Micro Lad is stupid... what I get out of that is a suspicion that Micro Lad has some kind of secret from the rest of the Legion, like he's an SP infiltrator or something, and he's smug that they don't suspect anything.

So, when Cosmic Boy calls Chameleon the poisonously bitter one... that means he feels poisonously bitter himself. Which he does! When Triplicate Girl calls him a prankster, that means that she's a prankster herself. Which she is!

Chameleon is a masterpiece of a character.

The Legion's own 'mirror master', huh?

So does that imply that in that scene on a space cruiser with Imra, Cham was trying to figure out how to reflect Saturn Girl?

I think Dream Girl and Cham *were* two of Waid's best-written characters, with the previous discussion in mind.

Not so sure about Invisible Kid or Triplicate Girl. The first, mostly due to preference of a previous version, I'll concede. I never saw enough of Lu to give her this status.

Brainiac 5 and Cosmic Boy were written well, though I didn't particularly enjoy either of them under Waid. Brainy was way too much Vril and not enough Querl Dox. And Cos? Too much focus on 'leader' Cos and not enough on Rokk Krinn, IMO.

I think I enjoyed Waid's Light Lass, Shadow Lass and Micro Lad the most.

I like this Light Lass more than any 'other' Ayla, and I'll miss Waid's characterization of her. I hope Shooter more or less maintains what was begun with #1. She's almost alone in that category, for me.

Shadow Lass has been fun and interesting enough that I don't mind that she's different than Shady I or Umbra.

Micro Lad- I like the silver-ageness of his origin (though it should've been a city on another planet, not Earth), I like his brother, I like having him alive again. He's a bit more complex than his idol, Jo. He really hasn't had much focus, so maybe it's unfair to include him.
Especially when I excluded Lu for more or less the same reason.

I would've said Sun Boy up until he took off with Terror Firma members and quit. I can't quite reconcile that with his previous behavior, even though Waid was obviously leading up to that as part of the character's 'journey'.

The positive things about Phantom Girl mostly came from the art, and from what she *didn't* do-- huddle in corners and make bitchy comments or plunge into a defining love relationship.

I kind of like cock of the walk Ultra Boy. I hope Shooter doesn't induct a Kryptonion or Daxamite for a good long while. I wanted to see UB function as the team heavy hitter. I really haven't had that itch scratched enough. I hope there's more substance underneath, though.

Element Lad has been a huge disappointment.

So, I'd add Light Lass and Shadow Lass to Dream Girl and Chameleon as those who deserve to be counted among Waid's best-written Legionnaires on my own personal roll.

Well, I've finally managed to log in so here's my thoughts on issue 37-

Great dramatic start - straight away we're introduced to the baddies - and aren't they just nasty!(ok)KK punching it's guts out is a bit much I thought but liked the interaction between KK and PG. Poor Trip though - 3,000 of her wouldn't be able to do what one KK can? She needs some hand to hand combat lessons quick!

Star Boy, Saturn Girl, Timber Wolf and Invisible Kid are, to me, the perfect team - they have physical prowess, psychic skills, stealth, energy manipulation abilities and intelligence - the perfect mix IMO.

Saturn Girls personality finally shown through - from her initial apology to Mr Boone for using telepathy to telling TW to shut up, getting her mother to help (will her loyalties be tested in the foreseeable future? I think so!), to taking charge of the situation, to saying "Grife!" - a great word! - to her rather sarcastic "Good luck to you too Mr Boone" Thought her telling IK not to disappear as possibly the most useless request in Legion history though.

Liked the new monitor board - it included Dream Boy! hoorah! Hope Shooter uses him as if he has Pre-Commando training he could be a match for KK as a brawler, and he has better hair! Lightning Lads statement about sending UB to search for rats while sending IK to Triton was great too, nice to see IK is still the whipping boy of the team

And IK, his character came through too - it was clever how he changed the subject when his father was mentioned onto Metabolism Maid, the Super Snowboarder ... of Space. And some of his best friends are freaks - is he talking about the Legion? He must be!

The fight scene with Meta Maid was a bit clunky, though a good way to show her potential. Good to see IK lending a hand. She must survive, there was way to much time spent on her for her to die so soon. Surely she's in some hibernation state - maybe the beasties zap will re-energise her? Oh and "Y-d'lay" Tritonians yodel! This made me laugh.

Also good to see Star Boy lash out, he's been underused IMO so it's good to see his potential finally be used in an effective way.

The UPs treatment of the group is very suspicious - so much for being an autonomous arm when the under-checker guy can cancel their transmat facilities use so abruptly. Does anyone else worry that the UP is setting the group up to take a fall? Projectra being stripped of her royal priviledges does not bode well, also I though it was the most effective use we've seen of her abilities in a long while.

And seven pre-approved candidates? Hmmmm I wonder if the UP will make the Legion accept some weak candidates as part of it's undermining of the group? I think they'll foist a Braalian onto the group as a replacement for Cosmic Boy as he is too dangerous - he's intelligent, charismatic and most worrying of all for the Powers That Be is he is independently minded! I know what I'd like to see - An Amazon, a Tamaran, Gates, Quislet, a Gil'Dishpan Green Lantern (I think Kent suggested that several years ago and it's remained with me as a good idea), Reflecto - would he be apologetic for the trouble he caused at Dream Girls funeral or have a new obsession to freak us out over? Be nice if his white hair was feathers so we could have a Shi'ar representative in the Legion And of course I want a Gorilla in the group. That's my 7, somehow I doubt I'll get any of them though my fingers are crossed.

This was the first issue in quite a while that really interested me, the art was fantastic, the colouring - apart from the Imra/Alya mix up - was superb, the characters were well written and the plot is engaging. Can't wait for 38 now.

I can't take credit for that idea, Harbi. I can't recall ever suggesting a Gil'Dishpan legionnaire, but I suppose it could work. Thus far we haven't really seen any GDs altrustic or idealistic enough (let alone friendly enough to hang with humans), so it would be an interesting departure.

My approach to 31st C GLs, on the other hand, would be a big departure from 21st C GLs: the Guardians are long gone (where? what happened? a mystery I'd leave unrevealed) and the GLs that remain (2-300 at most) would generally be regarded as religious fanatics, and not taken seriously as authorities. Moreover, there would be several factions among them.

To me, a full-functioning GLC in LSH era dimisishes the LSH's importance. Also, I like the idea of change over time; a status-quo GLC in 31 means that no serious/permanent impediment can really challenge the 21st-C GLC; you know they'll regroup at some point, and any dispersal/threat will be a short-term roller-coaster ride (a la the post-Crisis era). To me, hints of an eventual falling apart of a central, organized GLC leave more mystery than an assumed continuation as-is.

Or, to put it another way, Smallville is much more interesting than Silver Age Superboy stories (and not just because it's better written): Smallville sets its own course with no definite presumtion of where we wind up (almost any assumption can be twisted into something new and fresh), while with SA Superboy, we already know the fates of the entire cast.

One thing I've suggested more than once is to cast Comet Queen as a Tamaranian. Come on, it's a natural, isn't it?

Could have sworn it was you Sean that suggested it, oh well, guess my memory is going! To whomever it was, thanks for the idea, once I get time to get writing fanfics again I'm going to steal it

Like your idea of the GLs being asmall semi mystical group - again that's an idea that'll percolate around my subconcious until I begin writing again, thanks!

A couple more comments on issue 37 - the use of "Florg!" as a curse - while I'm all for cusswords I'd like to see some oldies return - what was wrong with "Squajj"? Wouldn't the different Legionnaires bring different slang into their conversations?

I liked Boone saying he was used to "Telepathicom" - a great new word that didn't need any explanation. The Snowboarding thugs slang was interesting - haven't we all felt "Draggy" at times? Expanding the vocabluary like this without beating us over the head with explanations adds to the richness of the series IMO.

Another thing that struck me was how large Alya's bosom was drawn - just as well she has antigrav powers or her back would be killing her!

The five pages posted on Newsarama kind of reassured us about Metabolism Maid - Giselle - so that's a relief as there's been too much senseless death in comics. Another poster - sorry, too lazy to go rereading the whole thread to find out who - suggested Kid Dynamo as a name - one of the first pop records I bought - Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles - had a song called that on the B-side! Great minds eh?

I don't mind the constant changing of fake swear words so much, because we tend to change our own slang at the drop of a hat. What was 'cool' when I was a kid is now 'hot.' Somewhere in the middle, someone actually said, 'gnarly' or 'rad.'

So sprock and squajj and florg, all fine. These things come and go.

Up here in Newfoundland, a number of people still say "Right on!"

I kid thee not.

The young hipsters around here in central Illinois say it too. Along with "dude" and "awesome." Gets on my last nerve I'll tell ya.