Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Crowning Moment Of Awesome

Ayla, having just regained her lightning powers, preparing to confront the entire LSV

Ah, you grabbed my two. I love the Time Trapper's reaction to the appearance of the Infinite Man:

Or words to that effect; unimpressed to the point of derision.

And for Mon-El in V4#4 I was going to phrase it "Mon-El punches the Time Trapper so hard the universe ends."

Lash and Rhino discover long lost Legion letter writer Thomas Fatsi, and convince him to post on Legion World.

Invisible Kid II facing following the leader of the Darkness and staring him right in the eye...

Blok turning against his teammates and eventually joining the Legion

Oddly enough, my favorite Blok moment may be in the alternate reality where he betrays the Legion, blowing them all up for the Dark Man!

Brainy failing to predict how Quislet would vote in his trial.

For Brainy, that's more of a Crowning Moment of Epic Fail (see also going insane, creating Computo, etc).

Way back in the story arc that revealed Yera had been impersonating Violet--when the Imskite renegades had captured Reep, figuring if their fancy bag could hold Yera, it could hold any Durlan.

Reep: "Repeat after me. All Durlans AREN'T the same!" and he turns into this HUGE monster critter, easily tearing the fancy bag apart in the process.

This second one is fairly recent, so I'll put it in spoiler tags.

<span class="spoiler_containter"><span class="spoiler_wording">Click Here For A Spoiler</span><span class="spoiler_text"> Mordru So awesome I made the magic words my new signature.

Mysa would also fit another TVTrope: Beware The Nice Ones. </span></span>

There's a moment in the 5YL Legion that jumps out at me as a crowning moment for two characters, Jo Nah and Wave (aka Spider Girl).

5YL is really, for me, Jo's story. Yeah, a bunch of other things happen, but following his emotional journey without Tinya from the second issue to the last is what really resonates with me.

When we get to the moment I'm thinking about, Jo has already -

- Seen Tinya "die"
- Started a damaged life without her
- Been brought back into the Legion fold with the support of his friends
- Been sent back in time to fall in love again with her doppleganger (later revealed to be Lord of Chaos - thereby breaking his heart again)
- Come back to his present and made his peace at her grave
- Been introduced to the SW6 Tinya... and had all those feelings come crashing back at him
- Started a fledgling relationship with Spider Girl
- Then, after all that... as Zero Hour hits, and the very fabric of time is unraveling... Mon-El tells him, "Wait a minute... when I was in L.E.G.I.O.N. there was this girl there who looked a lot like Tinya."


Faced with all that set-up, Jo is basically thrown into a complete state of indecision. What does he do? Does he risk almost certain suicide in following what is the thinnest of leads on the unlikely possibility that it's her?

Then, as he is clearly in the biggest emotional decision of his life, thinking, "God... What do I do?" his sort-of girlfriend Wave puts her hand on his shoulder and simply says, "You go."

Immediately, Jo has a look of resolute determination. (fantastic Stuart Immonen artwork here). Yes... he would go. There was no choice at all.


Crowning moment of awesome for Jo, for making the only decision that would let him be true to himself... and crowning moment for Sussa who, in spite of her own feelings, knew that she had to help him.


Man, I love that scene:

http://www.majorspoilers.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/00UltraBoy/Ultra33.jpg

Animated series Bouncing Boy.

During the season finale, the Legion works with the Fatal Five to stop the Sun Eater. Predictably, they're double-crossed, all the other Legionnaires captured, and the Emerald Empress steps into the bridge to confront BB...

only to find out that he'd sent Shrinking Violet to sabotage the Eye, because they'd anticipated this from the start.

Kinetix telling Spark and Violet to turn their backs on power and come home - which was essentially Kinetix telling HERSELF that, since they were in her head at the time.

Element Lad's grueling months-long work to get his comrades back home after they were thrown outside space by the rift.

As mentioned above, Live Wire resigning and sacrificing himself to kill the Progenitor-Omniphagos creature.

Gates saving Kid Quantum II from being killed by Ra's, and accidentally chopping off his arm.

The three founders, Brainy, RJ Brande and Element Lad send the rampaging Daxamites to a red-sun planet just in the nick of time, at the end of the White Triangle arc.

The Reboot Legion coming together to expose President Chu and defeat the Fatal Five.

Andromeda finally coming to her senses and beating Roxxas up, with help from Violet.

XS saving the rest of the Legion from the bomb planed in Kid Quantum I's coffin.

Invisible Kid saving the rest of the team on Planet Hell, upstaging Brainy as he does so.

Brainy "tricking" Computo into evolving and becoming enlightened, after he takes over the Earth.

Mon-El: Defeating Tharok by tricking him into declaring himself leader of the Legion, thereby assuring that Validus would turn on Tharok (Superboy # 190).

Matter-Eater Lad: Recommending first his brother and then Calorie Queen to take his place in the Legion -- this after each of them had tried to betray or defeat him, showing that Tenz was a forgiving guy who saw the best in everyone.

Invisible Kid I: Sacrificing his life to stop Validus -- and then getting to spend all eternity with a gorgeous ghost girl.

...and then giving her brother Mekt the definitive butt-kicking he deserved in the next issue ("Brother or not, you're not my blood anymore. I'm sorry, Mekt")

For that matter, her streak continues when she rejoins the team and tells Nura she'd better not mess with her powers again.

Thanks for the bump up, EDE I vaguely remembered we had a thread like this, but couldn't for the life of me recall the title!

Looking back, it seems that the CMOAs we've chosen are based more on the sheer HEROISM (bravery, guts, cleverness, determination) of our beloved Legionnaires than just their sheer power or aptitude in using their powers.

This includes jimgallagher's list of "quiet" Legion moments on the first page.

I'll add:

1) Postboot Nightwind and Infectious Lass taking out the terrorists Lantern and Arrow
2) Wildfire merging his energies with the Sun (so that's what happened to him!!)
3) Kid Quantum II, Element Lad and Wildfire (postboot) closing the Rift against all odds
4) Monstress telling her origin to Shikari in Legion Lost 2. It struck most because we all knew Monstress as this cheerful sweet girl, only to find out she'd had such a traumatic past!
5) Shikari leaving the peaceful Kwai to fight alongside the Legion against the Progeny
6) Postboot Dragonmage turning himself in for releasing the Elementals
7) Oddly enough, Dawnstar's time on Kol (?), the world where she met Jhodan. Just seeing her hug Brainy was a big thing, but so was here inner struggle between Jhodan and Wildfire.
8) Magnetic Kid's sacrifice; it could just as easily have been any other Legionnaire, but he chose to do it.
9) For Chemical King, it would be his own sacrifice, but I have trouble with it because he seemed to have a deathwish. It was a bit too heavy-handed for me, unlike with other Legionnaire
sacrifices.
10) Computo controlling Tharok's robot half, then standing her ground when he switched said half off!
11) Catspaw trying not to scream in pain so she wouldn't lure her teammates into a trap

So now we have CMOAs for (I'm too lazy right now to put links or descriptions, I'll probably go back and do it one day):

Andromeda (postboot)
Blok (preboot, "Dark Man wins" reality in LSH 300)
Bouncing Boy (Preboot and animated)
Brainiac 5 (preboot, postboot)
Catspaw
Chameleon Boy (preboot)
Chemical King
Colossal Boy (preboot)
Computo
Cosmic Boy (preboot, postboot)
Dawnstar (preboot)
Dragonmage (postboot)
Dream Girl (preboot, threeboot)
Duo Damsel (preboot)
Element Lad (preboot, postboot)
Ferro Lad (preboot)
Gates
Infectious Lass (postboot)
Insect Queen Lana Lang (preboot)
Invisible Kid I (preboot, postboot)
Invisible Kid II
Karate Kid (preboot)
Kid Quantum II (postboot)
Kinetix
Lightning Lass (preboot)
Live Wire (postboot)
Magnetic Kid
Matter-Eater Lad (preboot)
Mon-El (5YL)
Monstress
Nightwind (postboot)
Phantom Girl (animated, 5YL, preboot)
Princess Projectra and Sensor Girl (preboot)
Quislet* (Brainy failing to predict its actions)
Saturn Girl (preboot, postboot)
Shadow Lass (preboot) and Umbra (postboot)
Shikari
Shrinking Violet (postboot)
Star Boy (animated, preboot)
Stone Boy (preboot)
Superboy (preboot)
Supergirl (preboot)
Timber Wolf (postboot)
Ultra Boy (5YL)
Veilmist
Wave/ Spider-Girl (5YL)
White Witch (preboot)
Wildfire (5YL, postboot)
XS

Sun Boy, Lightning Lass, Saturn Girl, Superboy, Chameleon Boy and Proty bring Lightning Lad back to life

Rond Vidar + Andrew Nolan (Mordruverse)

RJ Brande + Cos, Garth, Imra, Brainy, Jan (postboot)

The Subs (Polar Boy, Night Girl, Fire Lad, Chlorophyll Kid, Stone Boy, Color Kid) + Brainy (Preboot)

The Subs - Fire Lad, Chlorophyll Kid, Color Kid, Porcupine Pete, Stone Boy, Infectious Lass, Invisible Kid II, Ronn-Karr (5YL)

The Reboot Legion as a whole (Fatal Five/Chu sting)


Missing Legionnaires without a CMOA - not counting 5 Year Gappers only since they tended to have precious little screen time

Chemical Kid
Celeste Rockfish
Comet Queen
Devlin O'Ryan
Dragonwing
Gazelle
Gear
Glorith
Harmonia
Impulse (Kent Shakespeare)
Kid Quantum I
Kono
Magno
Sensor
Sizzle
Superboy (Kon-El)
Tellus
Theena
Thunder
Turtle
Tyroc

When Harmonia Li did anything.

Form the to do List - Kono's bravery in battling BION who had already really hurt Laurel Gand.

Impulse taking out the Persuader in a move that the fatal five member will never live down.


some other moments for me...

Saturn Girl leaving a flower, and a message, for Darkseid - Baxter Annual 4.

Timberwolf against the hordes of Lythyll to fulfil Karate Kid's last request.

Shrinking Violet telling Lightning Lass about having changed her whole life, with an invite for Lightning Lass to do the same. That or Shrinking Violet punching out Micro Lad after she got out of the sense tank.

Spider Girl, having beaten a path through some of the Legion, surrendering immediately to Infectious Lass. No one wants to mess with an in control Infectious Lass.

Agreeing with Ultra Boy meeting with SW6 Phantom Girl, Mon El destroying the Time Trapper, Sensor Girl taking down the Fatal five while Karate Kid's last wish to go down in battle doesn't work against the same group. The Dominator chamber Subs, Invisible Kid II in charge of Earth's resistance/ volunteering to see Darkseid.

Oh, when was with? I'm an Infectious Lass fan and would like to read this.

On the To Do list, I'm of two minds about having started it. On one hand, it helps add organization to a title that contains nearly 100 different characters. On the other, a CMOA is supposed to be so awesome that it's stuck in the "top of mind" space in your memory! So if no CMOAs come to mind for a certain character, we might be "forcing" it to try and think of one!

The infectious Lass moment (it took ages to find after all these years, a sign of a true moment of awesomeness that it has stayed with me) is in v4 #43.

Well the to do list does let us think about those characters. They might not be the characters that we think about first, so good job.

It's not like it's there to prohibit anyone adding great moments of awesomeness for the others.

Thank you! I shall go check out the Drura moment. I think I can vaguely remember it.

Oh, I didn't think it would prohibit anyone. I just thought that moments which were remembered because of the list
might be a tad less awesome than moments which were remembered even without the list! Thanks for the appreciation

That last line did start off at first as "You may have unleashed The Wars of Comparative Awesomeness." but I got sidetracked and changed it.

But you might have, when this is done

Ah, I wouldn't continue it if it had started. I stand by the Legion principles that everyone has something unique to contribute, and the whole is much better than the sum of its parts!

That's the way I look at it. A good number of those quieter moments make all the difference to the those characters who perhaps are the heavy hitters.

Dang...I loved Jo (as he has been my favorite character ever since I picked up a Legion book) and V4 just cemented every reason why. Great retrospect on his journey.

Devlin O'Ryan openly taunting Mordru...and let's face it. Was he 100% sure that his powers would work against him?