Probably so, but now I am thinking it would be super-cool if the Super Moby Dick was a Legionnaire!
Surely impersonating a 30th century monster is a job for... Monster Boy?!
I had the same thought, but so far all his appearances have been as 20th Century movie monsters. We as yet know very little about the extent of his powers, except that they are not very much under his control.
Probably so, but now I am thinking it would be super-cool if the Super Moby Dick was a Legionnaire!
Surely impersonating a 30th century monster is a job for... Monster Boy?!
I had the same thought, but so far all his appearances have been as 20th Century movie monsters. We as yet know very little about the extent of his powers, except that they are not very much under his control.
Also, his transformations usually retain his markings and color scheme.
So it looks like, the 3 founders are gonna visit each of the other Legionnaires one by one. Hm. Neutral on that, hope they make it interesting. Otherwise I would prefer just seeing each Legionnaire solo...
Woo-hoo, this is terrific! (I wonder if it will only be as flashback, though? but then there is superboy in the background, so probably not!)
Has anyone yet figured out for sure whether or not the green skeletor-like character is going to be Chemical King?
If so, that means our new Legion (which *I* am enjoying quite a bit, but afraid to like too much becuase then it wil probably get cancelled ) is bringing back most of "the 37",,. by which I mean the 37 LSh members that we (originally) had pre-TMK, and an even great percentage of "the 33" who pre-dated the last-minute 4-member addition right before Levitz/Baxter was cancelled ahead of TMK.
The 33 are listed in the roll-call in this classic image , and we are now getting nearly all of them EXCEPT Tyroc, Supergirl, and Lyle Norg as Invisble Kid (which would have been redundant with Jacques anyway). This assuming that we get Bouncing Boy as previously pictured, and that the green Skeleton character is indeed Chemical King.
No sign, though, of any of the additional 4 characters who turned the 33 into the 37 (Polar Boy, Quislet, Tellus, and Magnetic Kid/Pol Krinn), but they can bring in the latter anytime once we visit Rokk's home planet, and Polar Boy might best be saved for a new version of the substitutes anyway!
As for post-37 characters, XS would be nice (given she was featured in the CW "Flash"), and though it doesn't bother me, I know a lot of people like Gates. I can live without the confusing cluster of other TMK and post-TMK additions, however...
ANYWAY, I am pretty excited about how UN-daunted Bendis and co. are with bringing back nearly everyone, while adding lots of great new characters/members also! My only complaints so far are: 1) the sudden anti-climactic, largely off-camera end of the trident storyline in #6, and 2) the awkward introduction of the new profanity, "Qrot". We already had "nass" and "frag", fine of course to ADD "Qrot", but to never hear it and then suddenly have"Qrot' used every other page makes no fragging sense, what the Qrot were they thinking, and also why the Qrot wouldn't people also still sometimes use nass and frag? Qrot!
Seriously, though, I for one am enjoying our new Legion more than I have since pre-TMK Levitz, in part because of the very fact of everyone from the "classic" era is being brought back. I would have enjoyed post- Zero Hour a LOT more if they didn't constantly frustrate us by teasing the return of characters they never brought back as members (Dirk Morgna!)
If so, that means our new Legion (which *I* am enjoying quite a bit, but afraid to like too much becuase then it wil probably get cancelled ) is bringing back most of "the 37",,. by which I mean the 37 LSh members that we (originally) had pre-TMK, and an even great percentage of "the 33" who pre-dated the last-minute 4-member addition right before Levitz/Baxter was cancelled ahead of TMK.
You write a good comment (you often do) and I agree with much of it. Love that image. But "last-minute 4-member addition" made me stop and think. Just how last minute was that addition?
It makes me want to put together a list by year of each legionnaires' first appearance which I might do, but in the interim I note that the most recent additions as of that image were Jaques and Mysa who were both added in 1982. The next 4 were in LSH#14 in 1985, three years later so a fair time.
However the TMK 5YL era didn't start until the second half of 1989, four years later.
I agree it often feels like they were near the end of that era and I suppose from the perspective of the first silver age appearance in 1958 they were but calling four years last-minute may be stretching it a bit. I remember a letter writer from around that period wondering if it was strange that they still thought of Wildfire as the new kid, so there is certainly that aspect where we remember the line-up as they were when we were first reading them and any changes, while sometimes we still like them, can seem much more recent.
So I did it. Here is a list of the legionnaires showing the year that they were added to the membership of the Legion. Note this is in comic publishing terms, not internal timeline. Also several characters appeared before being shown to be members but it is their membership that is listed.
1958 - Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, Superboy (as a legionnaire) 1959 1960 - Chameleon Boy, Colossal Boy, Invisible Kid I (Lyle) 1961 - Star Boy, Phantom Girl, Triplicate Girl, Brainiac 5, Supergirl (as a legionnaire), Sun Boy 1962 - Bouncing Boy (as a legionnaire), Ultra Boy, Shrinking Violet (as a legionnaire), Mon-El (as a legionnaire), Matter-Eater Lad 1963 - Element Lad, Lightning Lass 1964 1965 1966 - Ferro Lad, Karate Kid, Princess Projectra, Dream Girl (as a legionnaire) 1967 1968 - Shadow Lass, Chemical King, Timber Wolf (as a legionnaire) 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 - Wildfire (as a legionnaire) 1975 1976 - Tyroc 1977 - Dawnstar 1978 1979 1980 - Blok (as a legionnaire) 1981 1982 - Invisible Kid II (Jacques), White Witch (as a legionnaire) 1983 1984 1985 - Magnetic Kid (as a legionnaire), Polar Boy (as a legionnaire), Quislet, Tellus 1986 1987 1988 1989 - 5YL era begins
So there are several gaps of years where no new members were depicted as joining, the largest not surprisingly between Chemical King and Wildfire. The most common gap is about three years such as between the original classic and the Shooter additions, or between Dawnstar and Blok, or between the White Witch and the new 4 (or 5 depending how you count them). I have to admit that I am astonished that Magnetic Kid was a legionnaire for four years.
This was an interesting exercise. I thought of keeping going but then we get in to alternate versions etc. and it gets too complicated for me a the moment. Still appealing to do sometime in the future. I hope this was interesting for the rest of you.
Stile - Thanks for putting this together. It really gives a sense of perspective at the cycle of new members, and why Wildfire, Jacques and White Witch were considered "new" for so long. As a kid, some of these stories I only read as backissues or reprints, so I never got a sense of the time between new members.
It's such a different cycle from JLA or Avengers, who take on new formations with new creative teams.
1963 and the artist said, give me a break, no more new members! Might be interesting to compare this with the tryouts, how many new potential members were proposed, rejected or turned traitor like Command Kid and whether there were similar time gaps for the tryouts.
I was also surprised that Magnetic Kid was around for four years - plus sometime before in the Academy.
Inspired by this, I've done one for the Reboot reality. Big growth in the beginning, and sometimes more than one entry per month, because the Reboot had two comics coming out per month.
I am going by publishing date instead of cover date, where they differ.
1996 (January) - Gates, Star Boy 1996 (March) - Element Lad, M'Onel, Ultra Boy (officially join) 1996 (December) - Magno, Sensor, Umbra
1997 (April) - Ferro 1997 (September) - Monstress
1998 (May) - Karate Kid, Kid Quantum II
2000 (March, if you count LSH 125) - Wildfire 2000 (May, if you count her appearance in Legion Lost as joining, despite not becoming ""active"" active until 2001 December) - Shikari
2001 (August) - Chuck Taine (as part of the SUBS squad) 2001 (December) - Gear (membership first revealed)
2002 (October) - Timber Wolf
2003 (August) - Dreamer 2003 (December) - Superboy (officially, he was only ever honorary, but...)
Last edited by Invisible Brainiac; 08/24/2012:57 AM.
... But "last-minute 4-member addition" made me stop and think. Just how last minute was that addition?
It makes me want to put together a list by year of each legionnaires' first appearance which I might do, but in the interim I note that the most recent additions as of that image were Jaques and Mysa who were both added in 1982. The next 4 were in LSH#14 in 1985, three years later so a fair time.
However the TMK 5YL era didn't start until the second half of 1989, four years later.
I agree it often feels like they were near the end of that era and I suppose from the perspective of the first silver age appearance in 1958 they were but calling four years last-minute may be stretching it a bit...
First of all, thank you for your comment(s), and ESPECIALLY for the subseuqent list of members by year joining, that is really fun to see and look back on!
So yeah, no question, I definitely stand corrected. There is no doubt that distant memories have huge time-dilation issues. Probably here, the fact that Jacques and Mysa joined pre-Baxter added to my mis-perception, not to mention how much time I spent reading the runs (sad to say, I stopped reading for awhile then caught up later).
Given this, I guess fans of Quislet and Tellus (and I know there are many... well, at least several ) may have a legitimate gripe with their omission from the new Legion. I certainly wouldn't mind seeing them pop (literally in the case of Quislet) up myself. Let's hope they do!
Sorry, couldn't resist, and also that is extra funny for me because when I was recnetly thinking about what post-37 (post-classic) Legionnaires might be worth mentioning in my earlier post, I was trying to remember Magno's name and couldn't remember... so thank you for the immediate reminder, with bonus hilarious typo to boot !
So, speaking of "how many of the 37 are we getting back with the current Legion", we can use your list to compare that to how many we got with Zero-hour. I count 23, 25 if you count unoffical Superboy and then Andromeda as a Supergirl-analog, but that is a stretch.
But even among those 23, Chuck Taine has no powers, Sensor is a snake, and Leviathan dies fairly early, so really only 20 unambiguous returns. As opposed to our current 30 (if Chemical King and Bouncing Boy hold up, that is.) Which speaks to part of the reason I am enjoying our new legion more than I did Zero Hour.
Not to mention, as I only alluded to earlier, post-Zerohour devoting a whole issue to nearly the precise Dirk Morgna/Dr. Regulus origin storyline, only to have him not become a member, really ruined that run for me at the time, and was typical of the "slap fans in the face just to be differnt" attitude they often showed (another example being the much-anticipated re-union of Ultra Boy and Phase right before Zero hour where it turned out that no, she was NOT Tinya.)
"Suprise, it's not what you were hoping for!" is a very poor story-telling strategy, ESPECIALLY for escapist fiction, which most super-hero comics are, certainly the Legion, anyway.
Stile - Thanks for putting this together. It really gives a sense of perspective at the cycle of new members, and why Wildfire, Jacques and White Witch were considered "new" for so long. As a kid, some of these stories I only read as backissues or reprints, so I never got a sense of the time between new members.
It's such a different cycle from JLA or Avengers, who take on new formations with new creative teams.
Levitz seemed to think that way too. I remember that mission where he put Wildfire leading Jacques, Mysa and Blok and had Drake complaining about having to look after the new kids. Someone in the letters thought that was very funny since he still thought of Wildfire as a new kid. Interesting thought about how different this is to JLA or Avengers. You're right, it is quite different.
Originally Posted by Fat Cramer
1963 and the artist said, give me a break, no more new members! Might be interesting to compare this with the tryouts, how many new potential members were proposed, rejected or turned traitor like Command Kid and whether there were similar time gaps for the tryouts.
I was also surprised that Magnetic Kid was around for four years - plus sometime before in the Academy.
LOL I love the 1963 comment! When I was going through it I thought briefly of those who joined and left but decided to just concentrate on when new members joined the roster (and left out the single story traitor/villains). Tryouts! That never occurred to me. Good idea. Maybe someday.
Originally Posted by Invisible Brainiac
Inspired by this, I've done one for the Reboot reality.
Yay Ibby! So glad you did this. I thought about it but ran out of steam. 1995 was when I stopped collecting due to illness/financial reasons, just after the women became the majority of the membership. (As Gim said "Actually I'm fine with that too.") Some years later I acquired the entire run and read it over a few days/weeks so I missed the perspective of changes over the following years, so it is good to see it at last.
Originally Posted by Evolution Has Failed
First of all, thank you for your comment(s), and ESPECIALLY for the subseuqent list of members by year joining, that is really fun to see and look back on!
So yeah, no question, I definitely stand corrected. There is no doubt that distant memories have huge time-dilation issues. Probably here, the fact that Jacques and Mysa joined pre-Baxter added to my mis-perception, not to mention how much time I spent reading the runs (sad to say, I stopped reading for awhile then caught up later).
Given this, I guess fans of Quislet and Tellus (and I know there are many... well, at least several ) may have a legitimate gripe with their omission from the new Legion. I certainly wouldn't mind seeing them pop (literally in the case of Quislet) up myself. Let's hope they do!
No Thank You Evo (is that an acceptable nickname?) it was your interesting comments that inspired me to do this in the first place. The Baxter run feels like such a single whole piece in many ways that the 4/5 new members is a significant moment in it and I too was surprised that it happened so early on. As for Quislet and Tellus they were so different to the other members that I really enjoyed their presence. I do miss them but am not sure that their reappearance would be handled well. They were an integral part of the Baxter run and perhaps that is where they should stay. Not sure. Really good writers have done things I wouldn't have believed possible in the past so maybe. Nevertheless I am happy with the lineup Bendis has chosen and just wish the characterisation would hurry up a bit and be a bit more in depth, but maybe those are two contradictory desires. Still glad to see the new series and looking forward to it continuing.
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Maybe we should do a caption contest for these teases.
) is bringing back most of "the 37",,. by which I mean the 37 LSh members that we (originally) had pre-TMK, and an even great percentage of "the 33" who pre-dated the last-minute 4-member addition right before Levitz/Baxter was cancelled ahead of TMK.
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