Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Lost Tales of the Legion – Sensor Kid

Meet two of the students at the Legion Academy. The guy with the ponytail would later be seen on page 40 of v3 Annual 3. There, he was bulked up, but had similar facial hair and costume elements. From there, he’s generally known as Herculean Boy. Comparing the two images, he could well have control over his mass or the ability to allow others to think so.

The lady he seems to be having an argument with is from v3 #24. While the visual would suggest aquatic powers, she is later shown to have super speed.

We’ll leave the couple to sort things out for a moment in order to make another introduction.



This is Flynt Brojj. He raised the most money from a United Planet’s Charity Drive. As a result, he got to spend 24 hours with the Legion in Superboy #209. It was a day that would see him help the Legion against the Witch Wolf. Flynt, named after Legion Outpost creators Mike Flynn and Harry Broertjes would turn up to get a tour just as Brainy battled Computo in v2 #311. He would be the first to learn of the new Legion leader in v3 #12.

All three characters have a connection between them, if the couple’s identities are correct. On Legion World, the couple are identified as D. Spengler Bonita and Wray Muntz. It’s an incisive piece of linking on Future's Legion Micros thread.


The two are identified from the TMK run that left no supporting character untouched or unscathed, depending on your view. A couple with similar powers would end up captured and imprisoned in Dominator vats, pending a mind wipe. Here’s the image from Legion v4 #27. Readers would see the effects of the Dominator influence in v4 #40 when a few managed to briefly escape.



For a more complete breakdown of the identities of the others held in the vats there's a Legion World post here.


Tom Bierbaum’s excellent It's OK , I'm A Senator blog gives the background to D Spengler Bonita as being a nod to WAPAn Grace Spengler, and Wray Muntz as a nod to Michelle Muntz and an APA member with the surname of Wray.

All three panels give just one glimpse of the title’s great history and TMK’s knowledge of it. You’ll notice that joining D. and Wray in becoming Dominator pawns is Flynt Brojj.

The Dominators didn’t just capture and convert their prisoners. They gave them abilities or altered existing ones at times too. Myg, the second Karate Kid was given the power to emit sonic blasts. Squire Burroughs was presumably experimented upon to try to match his brother’s Wildfire powers. Flynt ended up with “Sensory Enhancement and Deprivation” powers.

It just so happens that the power description used here, has strong connections with an interview Keith Giffen gave to Amazing Heroes in the issue cover dated October 1989.

The Giffen/ Bierbaum run on the Legion gave information away on proposed members of the team, who never actually made it in or appeared sporadically. The creative politics of the book shifted or derailed a number of ideas. As a result, the membership of the team was much more fluid than the previous versions of elections, try outs and academies. Examples would include Ivy (who appeared in a poster insert as a member) and Vrykos (Mordru’s vampiric assistant) who was put forward as a future member, but never got close to happening.

In the Amazing Heroes article Vrykos is known as Ryko. The article provides other new members as Kono, Devlin Orion (that would be O’Ryan in the book), Kent Shakespeare, Ivy and Celeste.

Finally, and the point of this post, another member is provided in the Amazing Heroes article. The details are sketchier, in that this character has neither a name nor a code name. The description is that the character is ‘humorously called “Sensory-Deprivation Kid” (this will not be his real name), a character who can take any of a person’s senses away, thereby heightening his own. “He’s the only known sentient possessing all 23 senses in the galaxy,” quipped Giffen.’

A male character who can enhance his senses by depriving others of theirs. In the vats, Flynt gains the power of “sensory enhancement and deprivation.”

It’s such an unusual power description that it’s unlikely to be a coincidence. Could it be that, in the early planning of the volume, TMK were going to turn the Legion’s #1 fan into a Legionnaire?

Projectra, who showed the power of removing senses in her battle against the Fatal Five, was side lined in the book. Would Flynt have taken over that aspect of her powers as Sensor Kid?

It would certainly keep an aspect of Jeckie’s powers, while following v4’s theme of making things a little harder, by not having the full extent of her abilities available. It should also be noted that Devlin O’Ryan’s personality has some similarities with the sheer niceness of Flynt. Perhaps that’s one reason why the idea wasn’t implemented. Perhaps, it was an idea to be implemented following Devlin being written out. An event more likely considering one of the associations he was shown to have in the book.


Previous Lost Tales:-
Lost Tales of the Legion: Brain Globes
Lost Tales of the Legion: Questor
Lost Tales of the Legion: Null Girl
Lost Tales of the Legion: Vrykos
Lost Tales of the Legion: Energy Boy
Lost Tales of the Legion: Questor
Lost Tales of the Legion: Arm Fall Off Boy
;ost Tales of the Legion: Millennium
Lost Tales of the Legion: Blue Devil
Losat Tales of the Legion: Superboy Prime
Lost Tales of the Legion: Spoiler
Lost Tales of the Legion: Biron

Fascinating analysis, Thoth and a fine addition to Legion scholarship!

Reading the vat lists, I would have pegged Wray Muntz for Jeckie's powers (reality distortion), not having made the connection to tall, blonde and bearded.

Flynt's powers could certainly fill the gap that Projectra left. I truly would loved to have seen where TMK might have taken the Legion long-term.

Had he been converted to support the Dominators, Flynt's story could have filled an entire issue relating the sorrowful tale of the Legion's #1 fan turned against them.

Wow! I actually had no idea that all the Dominator experiments were actual characters who'd appeared before! I recognised some of the names (though tbh not all that many as I wasn't really as familiar with Legion history back then) but I just thought they threw in a couple known obscure names as easter eggs!

Thanks very much Cramer.



"It was just...it was like being pecked to death by ducks," said Giffen on the sheer amount of second/third/fourth guessing some readers were doing on the TMK run.

Considering the flak they were already taking, I can just see the reaction to having the Legion's biggest fan turned into a mind wiped Dominator pawn.

Someone overcoming that conditioning, or dealing with it, to become a hero would have provided an ending with a nice counterpoint to how things turned out for Dirk Morgna.

Although, in getting to that end, I can see parallels in both and perhaps that, along with the Brojj like enthusiasm of Devlin, was why this one didn't make it in.

It would have made for a nice "Flynt Brojj... Infiltrator" subplot too, as he's rescued from the Dominators but turns against the Legion. Actually released by the Dominators, with a staged rescue, Brojj infiltrates the resistance. As the Subs attack the chambers, they find the empty Brojj chamber, just as outside Brojj turns against the Legion or Foccart. That might have been a better realisation that the pod inhabitants had been mind wiped, than reading it on the screens in the chamber.

Then we could have seen Brojj overcome that conditioning. Handily, if his powers were like Jeckie's, his enhanced senses may have pierced the reality of his situation, much as her understanding was enhanced before she became Sensor Girl.

But to get from icky vat to Legionnaire, there would have been a lot of duck pecking along the way I guess.




I'm still a bit uncomfortable at some of Giffen's plans for the book (clones/ Omega Men etc.) But then, had I read the press before the run started, I might have had a similar feeling. Had they been left alone by powers outside of a firm editor (i.e. got out of the Superman spat etc.) I would have no doubt enjoyed the ride once I was on it. Considering the increasing frequency of reboots, things not working out really isn't much of an issue.

Nice analysis and backstory for these very minor characters thoth!

Thanks Ibby although, if it's not clear from the above, Future and EDE had already done all of the Bonita/Muntz work.

I could have just posted the Brojj part. But it was because I was looking at the Micros thread that got me looking at Brojj in the vats again. That connection between them all added to the post.

A couple of other points from the vats:-

Wildfire's brother is shown to have object animation powers. When we see him later, he's pretty much like Wildfire. Back in the Baxter run, it was Quislet who enabled Wildfire to consruct a humanoid body with his energy, rather than go around as a blob of energy outside his suit.

I wonder if the vat entry for Squire was supposed to be a combination of Wildfire and Quislet.The later scene, where the mind controlled prisoners were let loose, had additional tension because the Legion were close to a few of them. Myg would be one, but they alos seemed to know Squire.

While it's likely the Dominators captured him and experimented on him in the vats, there are a couple of other thoughts. Firstly, that the Legion knew Squire from an untold 5YG story, where he got his powers. Secondly, that the Dominators actively looked for relatives of superheroes to experiment on and then control.

As part of the SW6 plot TMK had already created links between the Unkillables, the Dark Circle, Nardo adn the Dominion relating to obtaining Legion DNA. Perhaps lookig at relatives was another strnad to that.

Oh yes, yes, I knew that. I was just checking to see if you would give them the credit. Good job thoth, very gracious of you...

*said with fingers crossed*

Could this suggest that Quislet came back from his dimension, was captured by the Dominators and dumped in a vat, to be somehow combined with Squire? While the Legion never quite figured out what Quislet was, the Dominators had a very different approach to science and may have had some insight into how to manipulate/extract Quislet's power.

That's an good thought about their science. It's biologically based, so they may find that approach easier to accessing realms of natural, sentient energy than blasting everywhere in rockets like the UP.

Considering DC's love of anti matter universes with Thunderers and sweet Aunty Monitor, more could have been done with Wildfire's links to it. Quislet's popping out of the universe in the Baxter run ended any further possibilities with Wildfire there too. Which isn't a moan. Having some things cut short adds some tension and can be a good change of pace.


Another resident of the vats was Kirt Niedrich. Imagine if there were more links between TMK and Retroboot. An opportunity to show that the poster boy for bigotry was just an alien pawn himself, placed by the Dominators to sow dissent among humanity.

Lots of possibilities in having him right in the Legion and also giving the Dominators brief access to a Green Lantern ring too.

But where would the Dominators get the powers to give to Flynt Broj. TMK provided a nice trail of how the Legion's DNA was captured for the SW6 clones. So, if the Dominator's were adding powers, it was presumably from specimens that they had captured.

Although Projectra would be able to deprive someone of their senses, her SW6/Adventure version was firmly based in projecting illusions. There's also the matter of sense enhancement.

But there was one hero, who had visited Legion HQ, with at least some of those powers. Someone that we hadn't seen for a while since that visit. Like so many others in the chamber, had the Dominators been hunting this super being to use not only as a weapon, but to steal powers from?



This is Brotlbex. He's from Keith Giffen's model sheet for the Legion. While I've not seen anything definite to suggest he was going to join the Legion, he does come with a name and powers. It's been suggested could have been that the team were looking to bring in non human members to the team, before Tellus and Quislet.

Brotlbex looked to have made an appearance in the book, during Steve Lightle's tenure. He's one of the heroes who turned up for the try outs in the Baxter series.



Brotlbex is looking a bit dejected in this picture as Blok has just told them that they would all have to wait for their turn as the Legion went through it's process for selecting new members.