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

Ethel has her eyes on the prize!

Klint is going for gold

I hope Meyer Qayd does not make a Mess of the game.

And let's not let Polecat stink up the place.

Khfeurb will be keeping an ear to the ground as the votes come in.

Micro Lad has a sizable lead, no small feat for a man of his stature.

Myke will be keeping a weather eye on the thread.

I think Phantom Lad will be able to slip through the competition without us noticing.

I hope Urthlo doesn't get his vote confused with someone else.

Well, we've had our vote for the most popular JLA character. But what about the people back in 1978, I hear you say? Well, worry no longer. Here's a poll from JLA# 158, cover dated September 1978.

This was when the DC Explosion was being advertised, and there was a definite push to fill the titles with characters to see which could stand on thier own feet.

Readers were asked to give their first, second and third choices on who to leave, and who they wanted to join.

Members who the readers wanted to leave:-



Batman was considered not to really fit in with the scale of the league. Aquaman wasn't considered to be powerful enough and Hawkgirl's powers overlapped Hawkman.

Batman would be the next to go when he quit to join the Outsiders and perhaps leaving Aquaman in charge for JLD was never going to be too popular.

As for the members people wanted to join:-



They had over 100 different characters voted for, including Rex the Wonder Dog, Sgt Rock, Tin with the The Metal Men, Freedom Fighters and Teen Titans as block votes.

Bob Rozakis announced that Zatanna would be joining in this issue.

Metamorpho and Black Lightning remain popular, and would join Batman in the Outsiders. The Creeper would be an early guest star of the JL relaunch and Firestorm would join after Zatanna.

Captain Comet remains popular in the letter columns, but never got to fully join.

Lots of similarities to the proposed lists for the Justice League Detroit membership. That's where the second part of the list was going to be posted, so apologies in advance for the cross posting.

Cool, thanks for sharing, thothkins. If that poll were held now, would people pick Hawkman over Hawkgirl to leave? Good thing they kept her around.

Atom's high up on the "leave" list too. Shrinking to microscopic size not powerful enough?

Superman's one of the next. Too powerful?

And then we have the non-powered Green Arrow, though he doesn't have quite as many votes as Batman.

Wow, there's some crazy obscure people on that second list!

Ultraa? The Privateer? Isis? The Creeper? Insect Queen? What a freaky team that would make!

Bearing in mind that there were a lot fewer characters milling around the JLA back then. Creeper/Ultraa/Mark Shaw- Privateer had made a couple of appearances in the title already so they were remembered fondly.

Isis - possibly a cartoon or a live show then? Insect Queen was a left field one for me. I'm not a big Superman related family reader. She'll be making an appearance in that Legion thing I heard about next

I'm a little surprised Doctor Fate appeared so low down the list. He has nearly as many appearances in vol 1 as Firestorm. The All-Star comics revival may have played a part there.

Wow, interesting that Batman was such a popular choice to go, and that Batgirl was a relatively popular choice for a recruit....especially when you see characters like Adam Strange, Captain Marvel & Dr Fate so much lower on that list!

Form what I read recently of the pre-detroit lettercols, Batgirl and Captain Comet were constant favourites.

But Batgirl would fall under the Bat-Office and Captain Comet may have had the personality of a plank. Although I've not read SSoSVs so I may be wrong there. They may have had to define his powers as he's very much like the Martian Manhunter.

It is kind of neat that fourteen of the people (Dr. Fate, Mr. Miracle, Mera, etc.) on that list went on to join the League eventually.

Perhaps they chose not to let Captain Comet join for the same reasons that they had Martian Manhunter written out

Yeah, I think they took one look at yet more Superman class characters, who can do a lot more besides, and just went "Meh!"

"If we let this guy in too, how the heck will we make sure Green Arrow and Batman get something useful to do whenever they appear?!?!"

Jumping tracks a bit, I haven't been able to start the Legion Villains list yet. I'm thinking of having 5 "buckets": Preboot, Postboot, Threeboot, Retroboot, and Animated. Of course, I'm open to other realities such as Superboy's Legion. Maybe a 6th bucket for "Other", and just specifying which story they are from. I don't intend to differentiate between Preboot eras anymore, nor between the Glorithverse and the pre-5 Year Gap era.

I'll work on the Postboot first, hopefully over the weekend. It's the only run where I have a relatively complete comics collection.

I asked Emily to help me with the Threeboot, as I know she's a big fan.

For Preboot and Retroboot, if anyone would like to volunteer please let me know Otherwise, I'll be using sources like DC Cosmic Teams or our very own CMK's Legion Help File (though the latter source will only be useful for the Preboot).

Just an update - I have slooooooooooooowly been compiling a list, starting with the Postboot era. I finally got my collection out of storage.

Two areas of difficulty:

1) Unnamed villains - some of them were quite significant, such as a few White Triangle terrorists. I can think of a few henchmen in the Preboot who would fit the bill.

2) Villains who appeared as part of a group/collective - in these cases, I might have one entry for the group, one entry for significant individual members. Example, one entry for the Progeny, one entry for the Shipmaster in Legion Lost 2; one entry for the Dark Circle, one entry for Ontiir, one for Brainiac 4...

Emily has also kindly helped me with the Threeboot. We've also been discussing criteria for inclusion. Some, like the UP Young Heroes, are more rivals than outright villains. But in the interest of making this list as complete as possible, I just might include them.

Besides, I'm sure everyone here can accept a Fruit Boy win

As far as groups made up of a finite number of named characters, I'd leave out the LSV or the Fatal Five, etc. as their own entry and just list the individual members. With large groups like the Progeny, the Dark Circle, the Khunds et. al., I'm inclined to give an entry to each group and list any significant named characters affiliated separately.

It's hard, though, to imagine groups like the latter making it into the final rounds, so it merits consideration. Especially when the final five might symbolically signify "our" Fatal Five. I mean, how goofy would it look for our Fatal Five to be, say, Emerald Empress, Time Trapper, Mordru, Validus and.....Dark Circle?!?

I think there's merit in only giving entries to more homogenous groups like the Progency or the Dark Circle (great suggestion Lardy!). I don't think it would be right to completely exclude them from the list.

For the White Triangle, I might split them into the Daxamites and the non-Daxamites (because of both power and ideological differences), and of course named members get listed separately.

Okay, it's been more than a month since my last update. Sorry everyone I've been pulling in a lot of overtime at work, and I haven't had much time to just sit down and comb through back issues and websites to populate my list. I'm trying to be as exhaustive as possible.

I'm targeting to run this game later this year, though.

If it's anything like this Idol, then it will be well worth the wait Ibby.

Go Barry!, Go Barry!, Go ...ah he seems to have been reduced to dust. Does anyone have a vacuum cleaner?

Awww thanks thothy.

And now to make sure it is just like JLIdol by bribing the same set of voters to play, and by arranging for Peebz to strongly support one candidate for the first ten rounds and suddenly switch horses in the last round.