Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Reading the Legion: Archives #3

Sorry, I use babynames.com for my aliases.

Adv. 327

Beautiful summation. Describes the story very well.

My thoughts:

Jailed for trying to join the LSH under false pretenses! Sounds pretty harsh but I guess the Emergency Board is the reason.

How many moons have we seen explode now? Thank goodness for Supes and Mon. (The Klingons sure could have used them in ST:UC.)

(Memory check: When did Zoon get respelled as Zuun? 5YL?)

Gee I wonder why they are called camelephants?

I'd forgotten that Zoon has three different coloured suns. (Apparently different to Cargg's three suns, at least they didn't give Zoonians triplicating powers.) Interesting sf concept, spoiled only by "Our three suns rotate"! Blah! Would it have been so confusing to write "Our world rotates under the three suns". (Sorry, science nerd attack.) Looking at that picture we must be facing north with the red sun setting in the west and the yellow sun rising in the east. (Now I've gone and done it! Shh! Science nerd sit down in the back row there.) Also interesting to see the background colouring relating to the three suns. This is new to me since once again I first read this as B&W reprint. Nice effect. (Science nerd mutters something about shades transitioning and I hit him on the head.)

Our villain must also be a bit superstupid to cover his face but not his hands - or is it part of the plan to leave such a revealing clue?

Ah so Ayla's instant infatuation is reciprocated - surprise, surprise.

Pretty good cliffhanger here - "I'm not what you think ... I'm not a human being at all!"

With that big splash page devoted to emotion rather than a battle scene we are really meant to feel Wolf's tragic circumstances and I think it works well.

(Interesting to note that the image of Dr. Mar Londo looks like the image of a father figure in Wolf's daydream splash page. Not surprising knowing the story but is it an intentional clue or accidental?)

Love all those other worldly locations from this period - "Fungus Forests", "Ebony Mountains"

Ah, zuunium is spelt that way! Was I remembering this rather than the planet name?

Hey Brainy don't you know it's rude to go poking around people's places without permission? Bet you didn't have a Zoon search warrant either.

Never did understand the changing clothes bit. It might make sense if there were other androids so Brin would see them wearing the same clothes as him. Then the artist messes it up completely by putting the clothes Karth Arn now wears as the son on him as an android and then swapped to Brin to pretend he was an android. Doesn't make sense.

I have always liked this story. It feels like it flows well, good plot, timing works, good emotional heart tuggers but not overdone. One of the best of this era. My only wish is that more Timber Wolf writers would go back to these roots. I can understand Brin's loner tendencies coming up now and then but his powers are pretty well defined here. Repeat after me: Timber Wolf is NOT Wolverine.

In all the years I have read this story I just accepted the other androids, but when I read it this time it started me wondering what "life" was like for them, and since they can think and feel then I consider them alive. Excellent point HWW.

My experience was pretty much the reverse. I encountered this story at a similar age and didn't read about Thora until decades later. If I came away with any thought regarding girls' behaviour it was that girls are basically nice and thoughtful unless they are being controlled, a somewhat naive view but one that reflects my continued view towards people in general. Interesting to see how much difference a story order can make.

Yes! More False Pretenses Lad! More!

On a (slightly) more serious note I agree that Karth Arn is a character worth exploring more and seeing retunr in various villainous or not so villainous roles.

Karth An would indeed make a neat recurring villain for Brin, occupying the same sort of role that Dr. Regulus serves for Sun Boy.

I can imagine the editors were eager to encourage girls to read comics and printed a higher percentage of letters received from them.

Or maybe they were just fascinated that the received them in the first place so they got more attention.


I didn't read the story, but the science nerd in me keeps thinking that rotation has nothing to do with the other bodies, it's "revolving" that implies a relationship between sun(s) and planet, or planet and moon(s).

Adv 328

Wouldn't that ancestor helmut be useful with the current genealogy craze?

Molock's bust! Nice continuity touch. Guess they thought he was bad enough to warrant a bust, with an anti-gravity ray no less. Maybe Moloch had it made originally and they keep it as a trophy.

More androids! Do they have life? Again nice continuity.

Poor Vi. The artist even makes her look worried on her planet image.

The Bouncing Boy story continues. You know this was one of the things that always appealed to me as a youth. LSH had a history which was important and constantly acknowledged, long before most comics started doing that.

Lightning causes clouds to form?! I mean suspension of belief is one thing but lightning causes clouds to form?! And people wonder why science is in trouble in schools. Actually this comment is inappropriate since LSH does more to make kids interested in science than just about any other comic around. Still it would be nice to see them get it right a bit more often.

So now the super-heroes also control the weather? Nice thought but it's a wonder they have time for doing any other little thing like fighting bad guys.

Ah so this is how we incorporate the cover into this story - it's an illusion.

Ha! I knew he was too arrogant to be a good guy! Nice evil gloat at the cliffhanger. ALthough if I had been shown up like that I wouldn't have gone whining to the bully for help. Poor play Star Boy.

It just occurred to me (probably been commented on heaps before) that Command Kid's powers are basically the same as Projectra's - both from a supernatural / magic source as well. However Command Kid's use is protrayed as much more effective than Jeckie's in this era. Sexism again, or just wroter's lack of imagination?

Golden anniversary? That's 50 years. So if Rokk is about 15 now (?) then his parents had him when they had been married for about 35 years making them 55+. I guess Rokk was a late arrival (very late) although a much later story will suggest that humans live longer in 30C so I guess it's slightly believable. Also I remember Rokk saying that 14 was considered an adult on their planet so that knocks it back to about 50. Maybe on his planet couples are "married" as babies which puts their age at his birth to about 35, but then I wonder who Rokk is married to? No that doesn't work. I guess they were just older than we thought.

Good on you Tinya, don't take any lip. We all know you could have taken them yurself.

And the Supersaps get sent away on a wild goose chase again. They don't usually list super-gullibility in their powers.

OK everybody let's line up in the "I'm feeling useless even though I have a unique superpower and have saved the world multiple times" queue.

Message to all villains - don't sneer, you never know who might be watching.

Their monitors tape scenes and you can play them back? How supersciency! (Not all things age well.)

Some ok bits but on the whole I didn't like this story. It had potential but the "oh please make me wonderful like you Command Kid" really turned me off. It was interesting having a new artist who I think gives the legionnaires a slightly younger look, but I'll disagree with Jan's final comment and say I'm glad that we have seen the last of that thing or its kind.

You're right. "Our world revolves under three suns" would be better.

I wonder what a planet with a binary star system, and one of that systems gas giants having grown into a brown dwarf, making for a trinary system in which two suns are at the center, and a third one is rotating around in the outer orbits, would be like.

No, I assumed the point would be that it revolves around all three as if they were a single star (if that's actually what they were trying to say). "Rotating under three suns" makes more sense than "revolving under" if all they were trying to say was that the planet has three suns.

But I'd like to think that the story itself might divert me from dwelling on such semantics.

Wasn't Command Kid a lone villain? They're often powered up compared to single Legionnaires, who are part of a group so they neither need to be as effective, nor would it serve the purpose of giving the whole group something to do if any one of them were.

So if say the Justice League were up against a speedster, one would think he or she would be faster than the Flash.

My understanding of the story wasn't that Command Kid was more effective than Projectra - his powers were effective merely because people believed his illusions to be real. I thought Command Kid and Projectra were pretty much equally powerful.

Brings up an interesting point: are Jeckie's powers publicly known?

These planetary photos must be the equivalent of driver's license photos.




I've always loved this about the Legion, too. Bouncing Boy shows up again, non-powered, in 341 (which was the third Legion story I ever read). While it was nice to see a repeat performance--he gets his powers briefly restored in that story, too--it's even better that the Legion's history actually went somewhere and story arcs such as this were resolved. BB eventually did get his powers back permanently.

Well, more or less permanently.

On the difference between Command Kid and Princess Projectra:

Like all long-term Legionnaires, Jeckie's power was almost certainly public knowledge. It's unclear how long CK was with the Legion, but it must not have been very long--not long enough for word of his power to have gotten around, perhaps.

It's also worth noting that CK did not have to contend with super-villains who were used to fighting Legionnaires. He faced only bank robbers and other low-life thugs, many of whom would have probably been alarmed to discover themselves surrounded by a ring of fire, whether they knew the nature of his power or not.

Another consideration is that CK's power is described as the ability to create hallucinations whereas Jeckie was always said to create illusions. While the two words mean essentially the same thing, they have slight differences in connotation. From The Free Dictonary, "hallucination" is defined as

1.
a. Perception of visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or gustatory experiences without an external stimulus and with a compelling sense of their reality, usually resulting from a mental disorder or as a response to a drug.
b. The objects or events so perceived.
2. A false or mistaken idea; a delusion.

whereas "illusion" is defined as

1.
a. An erroneous perception of reality.
b. An erroneous concept or belief.
2. The condition of being deceived by a false perception or belief.
3. Something else else, such as a fantastic plan or desire, that causes an erroneous belief or perception.
4. Illusionism in art.
5. A fine transparent cloth, used for dresses or trimmings.

So perhaps CK did something to affect people's minds, making it harder for them to resist his hallucinations, whereas Jeckie affected only their senses.

Besides, when Jeckie went up against super-villains (such as Nemesis Kid in SUP 208, and the Fatal Five in SUP 198), her illusions were quite effective.

I don't know if it was often very clear what Projectra meant by illusions.

The Threeboot Projectra very explicitly created psychic illusions, so that if she created an illusion that you were falling, it didn't matter one bit that you knew she was creating an illusion, because you felt yourself falling with every sense you had (even senses she might not have *known* that you had, as the illusion was affecting your brain, not your senses).

At times, 'classic' Projectra's illusions have been revealed by people with special senses (Superman seeing through Sensors illusions of the Legion of Doom headquarters in the swamp, in the Action / Justice League appearances, for instance), which suggests that, at that time, under that writer, her illusions were just visual light holograms, which infrared or whatever senses could spot as fake (and suggests also that she wouldn't necessarily fool other senses, and an illusion of 'fire' wouldn't have a thermal signature, wouldn't feel hot, wouldn't produce burning matter smells and might not even make a crackling noise!).

Even if all she could do was visible light holograms, that's still Shadow Lass x fiddy, so the manner in which she was often portrayed as helpless was, IMO, kind of egregious.

"Oh wah, it's illusion chick. Just ignore anything that suddenly appears. Crap, I'm blind!"

"Yeah, I made an illusion of a bucket over your head. And since it isn't real, you can't ever remove it. Yuk it up, chuckles."

That would have been interesting if Jeckie had created illusions that never went away. Wvery time Nemesis Kid woke up, he'd see that monster coming at him. No wonder he took his anger out on Karate Kid.

So did postboot Sensor - it was highlighted to the point that her illusions actually didn't show up on-camera (she also did some mind-reading on Vi post-Mordru, before Salu retreated beyond the point she could read, forcing R.J. to step in).

The problem with her being a pure psychic is that... basically, it turns her into Saturn Girl-lite. Everything she can do, Imra can do better; at least if she's creating holograms, that's unique and can work in a variety of situations. Otherwise, you need to get Imra out of the way before anyone turns to her - at least Mirage on the New Mutants, who had a similar "psychic illusions" shtick, was on a team without a "proper" telepath to do the same thing (and even then, writers ultimately found it limiting enough that she went on a magical mystery tour of powers, and she's currently depowered).

Postboot Sensor affected all the senses as well, and directly. An interesting tidbit in LSH 117 - Brainy and Lyle, who were viewing her through the Anywhere Machine, didn't see the illusions she was projecting to the doctor who was about to cut her up. Brainy's explanation was that the lightrays being carried through the Machine didn't carry Sensor's illusions.

Legion Lost under DNA had Saturn Girl maintaining a fake Apparition for a time. Sensor could probably do the same thing, since she can affect all five senses, but again - Saturn Girl could as well.



When she came back as Sensor Girl though, her powers were greatly heightened. When Ultra Boy tried using penetra-vision to see her identity, all he saw was an empty costume.

Heh. Magical mystery tour of powers. That's one way to describe poor Dani!

What's a "planetary photo" in the Legion's time?

I originally was under the impression that the reason he saw an empty costume was that the Sensor Girl that everyone saw was itself a projection, and the real Jeckie was actually standing right next to him, maybe making rabbit ears behind his head.

That certainly would have been a smarter use of her powers than simply disguising herself, as she would still be a target for enemies.

Illusion casters sure can be difficult to write!

Seriously, if I had powers like Jeckie's my first priority would be to create a doppelganger of myself that I presented to the world, maintaining it as a sort of default setting, just as Jo keeps his invulnerability on when not using another power and Cham maintains a standard humanoid form when not morphing.

I remember feeling vaguely disappointed that this was not the case when I saw her sitting at a table talking to Brainy with her own face and hair but wearing Sensor Girl's costume.