Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Spaceopoly Justice League Idol!! (WE HAVE A WINNER!!!!)

I had mentioned that my first reaction to seeing Fire and Ice join was a little underwhelming.

The opposite was the case in seeing Booster Gold. It's not that I was reading his ongoing title. I think I had a single back issue. It's that he had an ongoing title and was DC's new star. The JL was now getting in people with their own ongoing series again. I've since read that all the big guns were still pretty much off limits.

Just as Firestorm was in the '70s, Booster Gold was a hero who stood out as being about the only non derivative central character of his decade who could hold his own title(Legion ring aside). Aztek would be the '90s equivalent.

Like Firestorm, his personality stood out too. Heroism came hand in hand with commercialism for Booster. That's not to say he wouldn't do the right thing. Just that the book realised that he would starve to death on good deeds done.

The Conglomerate (horrible title) was a welcome release from Bwah ha ha for a while. The Blue & Gold team was also initially good, but Bwah ha ha'd to death.

My younger self didn't see much of Hal Jordan out of back issues. He was either exiled, or had quit and he was replaced pretty much by Firestorm in my attentions.

I always enjoyed Booster and Beetle separately. I liked the Blue Beetle out of Crisis and then his own series, with his Spider-Man-lite sarcastic humour coupled with a serious take on heroing. The trouble with Ted was he ended up pulled in too many directions character-wise once the Funny League got traction, and that eventually ruined his own book as people wanted the decidedly sillier practical joker.

I never read Booster's solo series, so I have no idea if his portrayal there was markedly different from his JLI portrayal. But he was certainly a different sort of hero.

I think Ted and Booster faced the same challenges - the heavy emphasis on the immaturity in the JLI books could make them seem like caricatures sometimes. Booster should never have been outright dumb (someone as effective in battle as he should have been downright clever!); Beetle, having been a wealthy businessman, should have had a tad more maturity.

Come to think of it, I liked them best towards the start of the JLI era.

I've loved Ted and Booster since both were arguably the stars of the JLI era. I can't really affirm Ted's effectiveness as a solo character, having never read his series, but I sure missed him when he was taken out of the League. And once he was killed off, I've missed him like crazy.

I never read Booster's original series, but his more recent one was one of the very best series DC had going for some time before. Booster is absolutely a viable solo superhero! My favorite issue was the one that I had my one-and-only letters page appearance in reference to it. It served as a beautiful elegy to Ted and was crafted by Giffen, DeMatteis and Chris Batista.

I still wish, though, that a Blue & Gold series would have materialized at some point. I just know it would've been something special!

If you think about it, many of the characters who've made it this far have been killed or otherwise damaged by DC: Shayera, Firestorm, Ted, Ralph, J'Onn and arguably some of the others.

I read a few Booster issues later on and I think he was fairly wealthy. As was Ted with Kord inc. The loss of both fortunes is one of the driving forces in their JL appearances.

Ted was more of the wise cracking hero in his series than Booster, my memory cell tells me. Probably due to his Charlton comics origins that made him a little kooky. He had the Mad Men as foes for example.

I think the league allowed them to show a lot more of their flaws than you would have seen in their solo series. They practically led each other into each disaster. In a way they brought out a little of the worst in each other, but they came through as heroes and found close friends along the way.

Beetle, unfortunately, did not really survive the Bwa-ha League transformation, turning from a serious sort of Batman-lite, to a jokester screw-up who was either saving Booster from a bumble of his own, or being saved by Booster from his own bumble.

I suspect that the stink of his JLI 'funny incompetent' characterization probably led to his death, as much a result of nobody in the superhero community taking him or his investigation seriously, as anything else.

Fire, Ice, Dr. Kimiyo Light, Guy Gardner, etc. also didn't come off too well in their JLI characterization, being re-introduced as pin-up party girls using superheroing to boost their publicity, or a shrill overserious 'straight man' to the rest of the goofballs and their whacky antics, or otherwise kind of unseriously or unheroic.

Some pulled out of that era and have gone on to be taken seriously, like the Martian Manhunter. Others, not so much.



I was hugely excited to see them again, after being introduced to Green Flame and Icemaiden in the Superfriends. But then 'Fire' was nothing like Green Flame, a proud Brazilian woman with command of a mystical green flame that could burn hot or cold or be shaped into illusions (or used to change her costume). And 'Ice' was ultimately revealed to not have been the original Icemaiden at all! They changed in characterization, in origins, in powers, in name, and, of course, everyone in that era with energy powers seemed to have energy hair / ice hair replacing their normal hair, at various times, which was kind of boring and repetitive. (Firestorm being the exception!)

'Fire and Ice' felt like a huge bait and switch, to me. Somebody was listening to too much Pat Benatar (is there such a thing as 'too much' Pat Benatar?) when they came up with that 'brilliant' idea, I guess.

If LWL doesn't return in time, how will his votes be determined? Drop Hal, move the others up a notch and leave his sixth spot blank, I guess?

Yes, that is probably what I'll do. It's the best way to not "waste" the large number of points for 2nd place, 3rd and so on.

I did PM him though, so hopefully he can amend his vote.

I'm hoping I can close the round at 10 to 10.30pm so I can be in bed by around 11.30

Oh yes, I read the issues where Booster tries to save Ted (despite Rip Hunter's warnings). Then they return to the present and find that without Ted's death, Max Lord has taken over the world! After their first squad with Ollie, Carter, Pantha (?!) and Mad Dog (!?!!) fails, they regroup and gather J'Onn, Fire, Ice, Guy, Batman and Mr. Miracle, and rescue Kimiyo.

Both Booster and Ted shone there. Booster doesn't run away from responsibility and tries to make things right; Ted does one better and willingly sends himself back in time to die so he can set the world right again.

A Blue & Gold series would have been great. One that kept the banter and crazy get-rich-quick schemes but also humanized the pair and made them more competent.

I'm really happy they included Kimiyo too, despite her short tenure in the League; they even picked her over, say, Dr. Fate or Captain Marvel. Maybe they wanted to make up for what could have been. And she was the one who killed Max in that timeline too; I wasn't too surprised as it seemed like something she would do after Max killed her two kids.



Booster's anger (and some of the heroes' guilt) at this was understandable, though I still find it a bit hard to swallow that nobody even thought that Ted might be on the right track. He's saved the day many times before - he fended off Eclipso by himself once, and figured out how to defeat Starbreaker another time!



I think Guy suffered the worst, as thothkins has mentioned before he became downright unlikable and even dangerous.

Fire and Ice were OK, I felt they were truly heroic (and Fire's need for publicity was tamer than Booster and Beetle's get-rich-quick schemes!

Kimiyo I've written about elsewhere. But I think her initial JLI era appearances were very well-done, she was most emphatically NOT a b*tch yet retained enough of an edge to not be a pushover. Sadly, her second stint in JLE turned her into a mild-mannered woman with almost no confidence.



I have the opposite experience. I knew Fire and Ice as JLI members long before I even knew that the Global Guardians existed. I liked what I saw. I wonder if Fire and Ice would have had a warmer (heh, no pun intended) reception had they been totally new characters.



I wonder how many others had the same experience. Besides the Satellite Era, my main experience with Hal as a Leaguer was his very short stint in the JLE. And he was there for only about 20 issues. But I liked that version; he was a bit reckless and flippant, but responsible enough. He showed good leadership skills. I also liked his contrast to the more stoic and serious Aquaman and Dr. Light, and how well he complemented the more carefree Ralph and Wally and the flirtatious Crimson Fox.

This is my only ploy:

1.(Pre-Flashpoint) Firestorm (Ronnie Raymond)
2.(Pre-Flashpoint) Booster Gold
3.(Pre-Flashpoint) Blue Beetle (Ted Kord)
4.(Pre-Flashpoint) Wonder Woman (Diana)
5.(Pre-Flashpoint) Zatanna
6.(Pre-Flashpoint) Black Canary (Dinah Laurel Lance)

Unless remaining voters chime in in their favor, two of my top 3 are goners. Heck, if their votes go the wrong way, I can easily lose all three! thothkins likes these charcters and hasn't voted, so we'll see......

(Pre-Flashpoint) Vixen 80
(Pre-Flashpoint) Firestorm (Ronnie Raymond) 40
(Pre-Flashpoint) Blue Beetle (Ted Kord) 20
(Pre-Flashpoint) Flash (Barry Allen) 10
(Pre-Flashpoint) Hawkgirl/Hawkwoman (Shayera Hol, Silver Age) 5
(Pre-Flashpoint) Booster Gold 1

(Pre-Flashpoint) Firestorm (Ronnie Raymond) for Hal

Got it, LWL, thanks!

Yeah, it felt like an after-the-fact excuse for why nobody took it seriously enough to do anything, particularly in a DCU where it's been established that one of several Superman / Flash like people can literally check out a situation across the planet in a tenth of a second without really impacting their day or inconveniencing them, making it less of a case of 'I don't have the time,' and more of a case of 'I just spent more time telling you I'm not going to help than I would have just helping.'



I think I might have liked that even less, for a different reason. It was a running gag at Image (mentioned in several of their books) that super-teams followed the 'new team formula' of having a couple men from other teams, an established loner dude, and 'a couple of bimbos nobody has ever heard of.' This was meant to poke at how Marvel and DC both tended to form teams out of established secondary male characters (Black Lightning, Metamorpho, Changeling, Robin, Kid Flash), and then, because they had such anemic established female characters, ended up having to round out even their big name teams with brand-new female characters like Raven, Starfire, Katana and Halo.

Image could get away with that joke, because *all* of their teams were 'bimbos nobody has ever heard of,' (since they'd just launched that year) and they weren't in the position of trying to field team built from squads of leftover '50s and '60s c...Charlton, etc. that were over 90% male.

And so, had JLI been constructed from a bunch of guys we'd seen before, and a couple brand new women, it might have looked like 'we don't have any good classic female characters, or enough of them to have any significant number of 'B-Tier female characters,' so here's a couple of new ones...'

That's a good point, Set. When teams are formed in the modern day, I always prefer existing characters to new ones just because there are so many old and unused characters lying around.

At least by now we're seeing a more even male-female ratio on teams.

On your link - I'm a bit surprised the first Black Canary wasn't part of the All-Star Squadron!

Exactly. I think that's one of the reasons we didn't give those new Legionnaires as much of a chance as we could have.

They were a diversity gold-mine (Harmonia, Dragonwing and maybe Chemical Kid being Asian, Glorith being black, Gravity Kid being gay) and yet, because they replaced the (much less culturally / racially / sexually diverse) Nightwind and Lamprey (and the less popular Power Boy, Crystal Kid, Visi-Lad and Urk...), they had a serious uphill struggle.

I'm not a fan of the 'unpleasable fanbase' / blame the customer argument for why creators run away from the Legion (or any property, for that matter), but after decades of expressing disappointment that the 30th level Legion future was so overly white, Levitz must have felt like we were pretty unpleasable with our reaction to the new infusion of diversity he was attempting. (Whether or not that new infusion of diversity could have been handled better, is another story...)



Very true, and we have for quite awhile, actually. When the 'All-New All-Different X-Men!' showed up in '75, there was no issue at all with the team being Cyclops, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Banshee, Wolverine, Thunderbird, Sunfire and Storm, seven dudes and one woman because they were already rocking the diversity boat by replacing a 5 person team of white americans with one that included a bunch of foreigners, including a Russian and a black woman!

Similarly, the Justice League has itself often been a 'big seven' of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Arrow, Aquaman and some other person (Manhunter, Cyborg, whatever). Six dudes, one woman, usually.

But by the time of Giffen's Justice League International, the original Batman & the Outsiders, Wolfman/Perez's new Teen Titans, there were teams with two or three different women, not just 'a bunch of guys, and Wonder Woman, who also operates as their secretary during meetings, because that's in no way facepalmworthy...'

The 'six dudes, one woman' mainstream Justice League of the nu52 was kind of a bummer, given decades of getting it better than that. Replacing Cyborg with Hawkwoman in the 'founding seven,' would, IMO, have been a bolder move, since they were using Vixen, Black Canary and Zatanna in other places (JLI, BoPrey, JLDark) at the time. They could have tied her into the Darkseid story in a different way, having her be a Thanagarian envoy sent to Earth to help foil his plans with her training, experience and space-faring-race-tech, putting her in a similar role as 'tech person,' while giving her some unique alien perspective on Darkseid's planetary invasion tactics that the Earth-based League could benefit from, perhaps even hinting that her people, after repulsing his invasion of Thanagar at heavy cost, had sworn to keep an eye on him and send agents to help other worlds under threat by his forces, just to spite him.

Gosh. Now I want to read that. Hawkwoman as alien protector (with her own spaceship!) sent to help Earth fight off Darkseid, and founding League member...

And, just to be utterly contrary, I'd love to see the internet crack in half, catch on fire and sink into the swamp if Marvel were ever to actually produce the 'Bromo Superior' teen mutant title they've joked about, consisting of an all *male* team (Hellion, Rockslide, Broo, Anole, possibly Sunspot and Cannonball).



I was just looking at it again, 47 people, and only 4 of them women (and, being the generation they came from, none of them black or Asian, either...).

And then I was like, 'Oh, there's a fifth girl, next to Sandman!' and then I enlarged it and it was 'Sandy, the Golden Boy.' Ha. Sandy's a pretty boy.

There were a few missing from that splash (notably, Liberty Belle).

Here's a comprehensive list (though Power Girl, Huntress and Red Tornado should not be on there, as their memberships didn't overlap).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_All-Star_Squadron_members

Black Canary didn't debut until after WW2, so she couldn't have been part of All-Star Squadron.

Well the results of last round certainly sucked! I think I lost most of my list. And I think I'm about to lose some of my faves again this round. That's the problem with this game - I like too many of the characters in it! haha

1. (Pre-Flashpoint) Elongated Man
2. (Pre-Flashpoint) Atom (Ray Palmer)
3. (Pre-Flashpoint) Hawkgirl/Hawkwoman (Shayera Hol, Silver Age)
4. (Pre-Flashpoint) Martian Manhunter
5. (Pre-Flashpoint) Zatanna
6. (Pre-Flashpoint) Wonder Woman (Diana)

Yeah, Liberty Belle's missing but she does speak in that spread - she's the one calling the roll! Kudos to the writers for having one of the few women be the chair. So from Set's link we have:

Liberty Belle
Wonder Woman
Hawkgirl
Phantom Lady
Firebrand

and from Wikipedia we add:

Little Miss Redhead (? who is this?)
Merry, Girl of 1000 Gimmicks
Red Tornado (Ma Hunkel)
Miss America
Tigress
Tsunami
Bulletgirl
Power Girl*
Huntress*



Yeah, I can understand Levitz feeling that. Execution-wise though... I mean, Dragonmage and Computo are cult fan favorites; Dawnstar and Invisible Jacques are also pretty popular, as are XS, Kid Quantum II, Gates and Shikari. Execution matters

Your storyline for Hawkwoman becoming a founder is inspired! And there's a clear precedent for that, as toon Hawkgirl was a founder.

I always thought the logic for choosing Hawkgirl over any other Satellite Era member was clear: they wanted a second female. Now, to choose between Hawkgirl, Black Canary and Zatanna - Hawkgirl has the most striking visual and can fly. Perfect for a dynamic medium like a cartoon.

Thanks for the correction, EDE. I always assumed that Dinah Sr. had been retconned to be contemporaneous with some of the other early JSA members.

You could probably add Wildfire (as a separate character from Firebrand), Spider Widow (who appears in 1943), and possibly Lady Luck.

She was like Duela Dent, before we even had a Duela Dent!

Also now reminds me of Gadget Girl, from The Awesomes. (A hilarious Hulu cartoon super-hero show.)



Ooh, Tigress and Tsunami are good choices, as well as Fury or Fireball, for WW2 era heroines that could be updated.

I did not remember that DC also had a WW2 era Miss America! And with a cool original power!

And there's tons of post WW2 options available, like the various mostly forgotten Teen Titans (Argent, Mirage, Prysm) or whatever. These days, there's probably no excuse to feel like you can't find a good character of race/gender X for a new lineup. (Although it's probably still true that you might have to search a bit harder, or make a new character, if you want a gay character, since moving an old, presumed-straight, character into that role can annoy people on both sides of the fence.)



Granted, quite a few of those are Reboot (although there's literally nothing preventing him from either snatching them up from the Reboot, or introducing 'classic' universe parallel versions of Dragonmage, Kid Quantum II, etc.). I think I'd rather have Reboot characters rescued from the interdimensional conga line, than meet 'earth 1' versions of reboot characters, actually. Why not use the ones that already exist, rather than repurpose the names?

He also seemed to be fighting other creators choices. For instance, had he wanted to add the Asian Myg as the new Karate Kid, Geoff had just killed him off in Lo3W. (Geoff's nostalgia unintentionally whitening things up by returning old classic white dudes from his childhood, and sidelining their often more diverse legacy characters.)



Thanks!



My choice, instead of Dinah or Mari, was simply because Shayera was not already in another book at the launch of the nu52. Vixen was appearing in JLI, Black Canary in Birds of Prey, and Zatanna in Justice League Dark. I'll give DC props for trying to get a strong showing of their female League members out there, even if the core Justice League was stuck being six dudes and one woman because 'big six required' and 'we need a minority and I brought Hal Jordan back, so no John Stewart allowed.'

It's because of that 'necessary' formula, that I found myself gravitating to Justice League International and the later Justice League of America, over the core Justice League title. Neither of the other two books were as penciled in and populated with required character slots. And there was some crazy stuff, like Booster Gold leading a Justice League branch, and Steve Trevor (a *male* Wonder Woman legacy character!!) being a prominent member of another JL team.

On the other hand, a Justice League lineup of Satellite-era members who *aren't* 'Trinity' or 'big seven' could rock.

Atom, Firestorm, one or both Hawks, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Zatanna, Red Tornado, Elongated Man. (Phantom Stranger could come and go, as is his wont.) Great classic characters who could really shine, outside of the shadows of the Trinity, Green Hal and Flash, and, generally speaking, characters that don't already have their own solo books, so there'd be more freedom to develop them and explore their own characterization and environments, without interference from Bat-editors, etc. who've staked a claim on the solo stars.

Atom and Elongated Man would get to shine as team scientist and team investigator, without Barry or Bruce to greatly overshadow them, for instance, and Reddy and Ronnie as 'team powerhouses' would be a pretty cool thing to see.

I'm pretty sure that the WW2 Miss America is also the same Miss America who appeared in the new Freedom Fighters series a while back. Apparently her transmutation powers had evolved to the point that she was virtually immortal! Wow! That easily made her one of the most powerful Squadron members!



In general I agree that a character previously established as straight should stay straight, unless the writer can handle well the character's discovery that he/she is really gay. The likes of Obsidian make sense since many hints were dropped that he had issues with women.



Yes, with the characters I listed above I think their joining was done in a way that made readers think, "hey these characters do deserve to be Legionnaires, and they aren't bumping off more deserving candidates either!" And I would be very happy if the original Kinetix, XS etc. were rescued too, like what happened with Gates. The writers don't even need to keep referring to the Reboot universe.



Ooh, two thumbs up to that. (And in our game, many of those characters you mentioned above outlasted Superman, Batman, Hal Jordan and Aquaman!)