Legion World Forums LEGION OUTPOST Bits o' Legionnaire Business Legion of Substitutes Ideas

I used the search engine and was pleasantly surprised that nobody created this thread already. I love the Legion of Substitutes because they often have personality flaws that the main cast does not. Please post any ideas for characters that would not make the Legion cut and why. For the purpose of this thread, I am also considering Legion Rejects such as Arms Fall-Off Boy and Fruit Boy in this thread. I decided to name the title Substitutes to keep it short.

]Name: Morrel
Home World:Somahtu
Powers: Increase Metabolic activity (healing), up to nerve damage
Origin: Morrel is present on a "trading vessal" during an infestation of parasitic mushrooms. He is fortunate to survive the encounter due to his physiology, but it permanently changes it as well. His body incorporates the mushroom into itself, and in turn the mushroom destroys most of the other bacteria that Somahtuates carry. It also gives him the abilitity to "heal" others. He was rejected by the Legion because of concerns that he is still a host. He begs and pleads with the Substitutes for a position, and is allowed in on the vouching of Chyrophyll Kid.

I have entirely too much love for the Subs / Rejects.

I would be happy to buy a monthly book "The Legion of Substitute Heroes" in which the Subs, as in '60's Marvel Comics, just sit around complaining about their angsty lives, or fighting one another. "The Pirates Super-Heroes Who Don't Do Anything".

Rather than posting any of the myriads of ideas swarming in my head here, I will just share a few rabbit holes:

http://www.legionworld.net/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=879743#Post879743

http://legionworld.net/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=813621#Post813621

http://legionworld.net/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=813764#Post813764

http://www.legionworld.net/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=856049#Post856049

and, of course, this:

http://www.legionworld.net/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=818730

As Invisible Kid said, "Let me be perfectly clear."

I love the Subs.

When did each Substitute first appear?
What what the reason they were rejected?
Do we know which Legionnaire issued the rejection notice?
Having recently made the acquaintance of a collector, I’ve been doing little research.

The Substitutes

Adventure 306
Polar Boy:
“Your power is unusual, but it might freeze and disable us at a critical moment” - Sun Boy
(Lack of control)
(Unmentioned: Short)

Night Girl:
“My strength only functions when there is no sunlight… which we don’t have on my world.” - Night Girl
(Too limited)
(Unmentioned: Bad hairdo. Possibly dangerous stalker)

Chlorophyll Kid:
“I can make any plant grow super-fast… but the heroes didn’t think that would help them on their missions.” - Chlorophyll Kid
(Ineffectual)

Fire Lad:
“My power was too dangerous, and might cause accidental holocausts” - Fire Lad
hol·o·caust (noun) 1. destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war. synonyms: cataclysm, disaster, catastrophe
(Lack of control)

Stone Boy:
“Our powers weren’t good enough to get us into the Legion. My power was too static and would accomplish nothing positive.” - Stone Boy
(Ineffectual)

“And that deep doubt of their own abilities still haunts them…” - Editorial comment

The Auxiliary

Adventure 305
Antennae Boy: “Eliminated! Next, please.” - Cosmic Boy
Now that was just rude.
(Lack of control / Ineffectual)

Adventure 323
Double-Header:
“Rejected! Not only would your uniqueness be worthless to the Legion, but your constant arguing would drive us daffy!”
Harsh.
(Ineffectual)

Adventure 342
Color Kid - “That’s an unusual power, but not great enough for the Legion” - Brainiac 5
Displays Brainiac 5’s natural arrogance. Your power is thinking, buddy.
(Ineffectual)

Superboy 201
Porcupine Pete:
“Your power is obviously more of a hindrance than a help. Rejected!” - Superboy Himself
(Lack of control)

Infectious Lass:
“We can’t accept a power that suddenly could put all of us on the sick list! Rejected!” - Superboy Again.
(Lack of control)

But what if each Substitute learned to control his or her powers, and exercised and magnified them so that they were actually useful?

Well, then, they wouldn’t be the The Legion of Substitute Heroes, would they?

My favorite version, from a visual design point of view.

I have my own theories about Urk.

Ha! (And really, Color Kid's power seems less likely to cause him to flip out and use the Miracle Machine to try and destroy the universe...)



My own fanon;

While Urk has been called a 'disruptive student' on-panel, and shown up for group shots, my fanon is that he's not a student at all, but a genetically engineered creature intended to eat up redundant or obsolete technology, because in the UP future, Metropolis is built over 1000+ years worth of old stuff, and new technology (much of it wireless, cable-less, etc. less and not requiring all those conduits and feeds and gizmos lying around, degrading and becoming potential health hazards underfoot) is constantly replacing it. Metropolis is swarming with 'urks,' which mostly stay out of sight, or operate by night, and are 'programmed' to only devour tech that is obsolete or not in use. The Urk at the Academy is unusually bold, and will sit there loudly (and 'disruptively') eating cables and conduits right in front of the students and even photobomb group pictures, or wander around events where it is generally regarded as a mascot or pet (or nuisance...).

As for Subs, here are my own 'Subs,' for a game setting that had it's own Legion of Super-Heroes analogue set in it's far-future, the Freedom's Legion.

Freedom's Rejects

Papercut, the Folding Girl Like Ron-Karr, but competent
Kid Silicon Crystal skinned humanoid that secretes slippery oils
Stopwatch Time-manipulator
Leech Healer / life-force vampire
Effigy, the Burning Man Wax-bodied humanoid
Water Witch Water manipulator
Deflecto! Short-ranged teleporter able to redirect attacks
Starshine Light manipulator
Ricochet Bouncing not-boy
Pharmacopoeia Rat-man able to synthesize all sorts of chemicals

These versions were written up for the game setting, and I've got versions for a Legion setting somewhere, but can't find them at the moment. (Some are on these forums, I'm sure, as I remember vaguely doing a Legion Tryouts for Papercut that ended with the words, 'Ron-Karr, you suck...' and one for Deflecto! as well.)

I liked coming up with characters whose powers were often specifically non-lethal. Kid Silicon made people slip and fall. Stopwatch froze people in time for sixty seconds and quickly disarmed them or tied them up, while they were frozen. Water Witch threw people around with high-pressure jets of water. Starshine blinded and dazzled people. Pharmacopoeia was more likely to use adhesives and stuff than poisons.

EDIT: Ooh, I found my Legion Tryouts versions of Water Witch, Deflecto! and Papercut! (With both a short 'rejection' tryout and a later successful one, for Papercut, at least.)

Oh I like Effigy the Flaming Shapeshiter and Jaq, The Changing Man Knife-Spiky Armadilloid.

Thanks! Jaq would totally have been described as looking like an anthropomorphic pangolin, if I'd known how cool pangolins look (compared to armadillos) back in the day!

Effigy kind of bores me. Which is sad to admit, since he's my own creation. I like the idea of someone being not just the 'last' of their species, but the only one, period, having evolved independently from the ground up, and not as part of a species of similar critters. But he's kind of bleh, which, narratively, is important, since not *everybody* on a team can be the high-maintenance drama fiend. For every Wolverine, there's got to be a Colossus. For every Timber Wolf or Wildfire or other high-drama character, there needs to be some calmer Colossal Boy and Star Boy sorts, to even things out and keep it from turning into a reality show about seven narcissistic attention-seekers stuck on an island, each trying to out-drama the others...

So dish already, what's *your* theory about Urk? And does it end with an Urkzilla stomping through Metropolis?

Perhaps Effigy is a Wax Elemental?

My Urk is pretty much like yours. He is a Gremling from Maricéleste.

Urk.

Gravity Knight: This character has a sad story. I created him for the Nal Bros RPG that never got off the ground. He comes from a planet where everyone has a weak control over gravity due to genetic manipulation. He tries to gain greater powers in order to advance his military career (kind of like Radiation Roy), but he ends up addicted to drugs. His friend Dream Knight (Dream Girl's son) vouches for him; and he is reluctantly allowed on the team on the condition that he stays clean.

Yay! I also am surprised this thread has never been done, it is an awesome idea! I love the Subs

This is actually from a comment someone made in my fanfic series, I thought it would make cute idea for a loveable loser type character:

Name: Exposition Lad
Homeworld: Earth
Origin: Roi Tommas's mother was a research scientist working at the Time Institute when she became pregnant with him. She went into labor much earlier than expected, and was forced to give birth to Roi at the Time Institute itself. It's believed that exposure to the weird energies of the Time Beacon at such a formative time in his development gave Roi his weird power, and when he turned 13 he tried out for a role in the Legion of Superheroes. Unfortunately his power wasn't really developed to a point where it could be useful in the fast-paced missions the Legion found themselves in, and the would-be Exposition Lad was turned down.
Powers: Exposition Lad has a very unique form of cosmic awareness; he can instantly learn all there is to know about any one subject, but he has to verbalise the knowledge to gain access to it and once he's started he has trouble stopping. His tryout was deemed unsuccessful after he spent two and a half minutes helplessly rattling off every minute piece of trivia there was to know about the particular model of droid the Legion were using to test him, just before it finally tasered him into unconsciousness.

It's a power that can come in handy in particular circumstances; for example he can advise strengths, vulnerabilities and motivations of new enemies, but only after he gets through explaining how they got their powers from a radioactive urk and turned to villainy after the 9 years of abusive childhood they suffered at the hands of their lotus fruit-addicted father and the seventeen bullies they knew for various periods of time throughout their school days...

Gravity Knight: Not convinced his is a tragic story. Gains enhanced powers, overcomes his addiction, right? Now if he didn't gain advanced gravity powers, but became hopelessly addicted to drugs anyway... well, he could find a place in the latest version of the DCU.

raz, you wicked person. Exposition Lad is me.

Ooh, this is my new favorite character (subject to change tomorrow, because I am fickle!).

Cosmic awareness seems to be a power we haven't seen in the Legion before, and indeed, is more of a Marvel thing than a DC thing (although I vaguely remember a psychic 'multi-cog' back in the Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans days who was similar), but it's a cool power, and you've given it a cool limitation to keep it from being a little too overpowered. In a way, it's kind of like psychometry (used infrequently to learn about the past of items or people or locations by characters like Marvel's Snowbird or Longshot), which fits his ties to the Time Beacon (and also suggests other possible uses / downsides, like being able to spot people out of time, like Superboy, instantly, or being effectively paralyzed for hours or even days when faced with immortal beings like Darkseid or R'as al-Ghul or Vandal Savage, or unable to 'read' at all people who can mess with time, like the Time Trapper).

But anywho, I love him just for the name. Kudos!

I love how silly-funny and situationally useful this is!



Your characters are quite formidable, Set! I love how Water Witch for example took a level in badass after 1.5 years with the Subs.

I think Exposition Lad is all of us My non-comic reading friends have to set aside half an hour whenever they ask me who any of the characters in the Avengers movies are hahaha

I really like Water Witch as well! It's a power we haven't really seen before in the Legion and I liked the description and how she was shown to have improved

====================================================================

How can I keep away from a thread with the word “ideas” in the title?

So here are a few “Alternate Substitutes”
http://www.legionworld.net/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=601860

And a few more:

Color Kid (Wick Uri of Ruffle)
Wick is the very first creature anywhere on his homeworld to develop color vision.

Fire Lad (Norm Zhou of Zkyvol)
Norm, an accomplished Zkyvol Scout, is expert in building campfires. Flint & steel, two sticks, whatever.

Night Girl (Gnotha Ribbon of Chotham)
Gnotha is a brilliant astronomy student, able to identify any star or constellation in the night sky, in either hemisphere.
(He power is ineffective beyond Planet Chotham.)

Polar Boy (Dohme Dice of Thiol)
Dohme can see polarized light, just as many terrestrial birds can. He is not unique among his race.

Chlorophyll Kid: A tall potted plant which stands on the left side of the Substitute Clubhouse entrance.

Stone Boy: A life-sized marble statue, in the Greek style, which stands on the right side of the Substitute Clubhouse entrance.

====================================================================

Wow, I was just going over stuff I'd forgotten and your Gremling/Urk idea is awesome, Klar! I love how creepy their homeworld must seem to visitors, a 'ghost planet' where automation keeps everything shiny and well-maintained, as if everyone just stepped out for a second, even though they've all been dead for centuries...

Other joke Subs, playing off of their names;

Brek's little-known brother, Bipolar Boy, who has mood swings and, when he's manic, radiates the heat he's absorbed in his depressive phase. He might also like both genders, but he's arguably not bisexual, so much as 'desperate' and 'in no position to be choosy.'

Uu's cousin, Colorful Kid, who can alter *her own* color at will, generally useful for blending into backgrounds, serving as living advertising or entertaining small children with low standards for a short period of time. The layer of colorful pigments secreted by her skin tends to smear, and she can use her fingers like crayons.

Lydda's not-really-friend, Night-Night Girl, whose exposure to sedatives during a robot-cruelty protest caused her to constantly exhale and sweat riot-busting sedatives, so that she can blow in someone's face or place her sweaty hand over their mouth to send them into dreamland.

A worker at the plant that created the plant growth formula that gave Chlorophyll Kid his powers attempted to replicate the accident, but instead became Chlorophyll Kid 2, with green skin and hair that can metabolize sunlight and provides all his nutritional requirements, provided that he doesn't do anything more energy-intensive than standing very still (in direct sunlight) all day and wears very little clothing.

Staq's no-good cousin, Fired Lad, has the uncanny ability to screw up any opportunity given him, and has been fired from thirty-seven jobs at last count. No, scratch that. Thirty-eight. He's surprisingly good at relationships, which is a plus, since *someone's* always got to support this sponge...

Cristal Kid has an endorsement from a company that sells champagne, and a costume that is so dripping with tiny crystals that it might as well be a chandelier. She claims that her various throwing crystals and the like have special properties, but they don't. Ironically, champagne makes her nauseous, and her must successful combat tactic thus far has been writing someone a check to convince them to go away.

Porcupine Paul has a porcupine as his 'spirit animal,' and can summon one at any time. This is a psychic construct, but shares all the properties of a real living porcupine unless 'killed,' at which point it dissipates into clear slime (ectoplasm, apparently). Over the years, he has expanded this power to occasionally create two, or even three porcupines at once! These porcupines are not any more intelligent than a porcupine would normally be, nor are they under any sort of mental control, doing generally whatever a real live porcupine would do in the circumstance to which they have been summoned...

By which you mean, waddling.

Waddling is for ducks, sir. I'll have you know that porcupines trundle.

In a stately fashion, as befits their gravitas.

Harumph!

Xaxan of Murra could probably accelerate one of those porcupines up to 50 meters per second.

The Time Bubble came back with this list of potential applicants in it

Miss Etiquette is a cultural chameleon, and intuitively knows how to behave in any circumstance for a proper first impression. Sadly, the super-power to always know which fork is the correct one turned out to not be helpful when the Persuader showed up at the Tryouts and her attempt to shame him with a withering critique of his fashion sense did nothing but enrage him.

Still, she made a better impression than her hapless brother, Faux Pas Phil, who had the opposite 'power' to always say the exact *wrong* thing. He won't be missed.

And then there was Hourman's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson Minuteman, who has inherited the ability to internally generate a 'miraclo' drug that boosts his strength, speed and toughness for a short time. As his family have slowly grown resistant to the drug, his generation has super-powers for exactly 1 minute of the day...

Miss Etiquette would have made a decent diplomat. Until she started berating her colleagues for not drinking kono juice with their ring fingers out.

A few near-miss Legionnaires:

Saturnine Girl
“We can’t all, and some of us don’t. That’s all there is to it. Not that I’m complaining, but There It Is.”

Enlightening Lad
“Make me one with everything,” he told the hot dog vendor.

Comics Boy
Best. Hero. Ever.

Amnesiac-5
“Who were the other four?”
“I forget.”

Simoleon Boy
His dad is the richest man in the Galaxy.

Duplicate Boy (Ord Quelu of the Heroes of Lallor) is not exactly a Substitute, but he might as well be. Infinite Cosmic Power, itty-bitty living space (between his ears).

I was somewhat surprised to realize that Duplicate Boy is not at all unique: his super-power is to have all the super-powers. But there have been others before, and subsequent to him.

(note: Ord is actually unable to replicate magical abilities, so not quite all the super-powers.)

(1) Nemesis Kid (Hart Druiter of Myar): With the ill-defined ability to defeat any single opponent, Nemesis Kid at least potentially has access to every possible super-power. It is all academic now, as he is long-dead.

(2) Clayface: Both Matt Hagen and Sondra Fuller had the ability to (temporarily) gain the powers and abilities of those whose forms they took. (ref. World’s Finest 140 LINK) Sondra even demonstrated the ability to replicate psionic powers. How does shape-shifting manage that?

(3) The Martian Manhunter: While he has always been portrayed inconsistently, there was a time in the early Silver Age when J'Onn J'Onzz was able, like Clayface, to assume the powers and abilites of anyone (or, I assume, anything) he duplicated in shape and form. One incident I particularly remember is his replicating Superman, and his invulnerability to fire. (The Martian Manhunter lost the ability to assume Kryptonian form when exposed to Gold Kryptonite.) Why he did not gain a human being's invulnerability to proximity to fire when he shape-shifted into an Earthling is an unanswered question.

(4) The Nyorpans: In Action Comics #285, we are introduced to the planet Nyorp, where “everyone has duplication powers (and) every living creature has transformed itself into a duplicate Supergirl… Fortunately, their duplication powers endure for only a few minutes.”

(5) Captain Everything of Levram: Friend and protector of Normalman, in the Cerberus / Aardvark-Vanaheim limited series in the 1980’s. He had every super-power except super-intelligence. If there are younger folks who have not read this spoof, I recommend it, for what that’s worth. (Also includes appearances by the Legion Of Superfluous Heroes)

(6) Finally, there is Burp the Twerp, associate and competitor of Plastic Man. LINK

I’m sure there are others. Répondez s'il vous plaît.

Whoever is holding the Hero Dial currently theoretically has all the super-powers as well, although not all at the same time. Their powers usually seem to have at least some application to the current crisis or situation, even if it's not under the control of the 'dialer.'