Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Does anyone actually like the Protys?

I mean someone must've liked him/it, or we wouldn't have Proty II.

But why?
I'll grant that "shapeshifting telepathic pet" is a cool concept, but the execution?

He/it has no characterization and the "character design" (if you can even call it that) almost literally looks like crap. His power makes Chameleon Boy redundant: you would expect the actual Legionnaire to be the main focus, instead more than one time he does nothing the entire issue and lets Proty do everything.
He does save Lightning Lad, but it comes out of nowhere... all of a sudden he's "devoted to Saturn Girl" despite having zero interaction with her before.

Not that Proty II is any better... if anything I think it's worse. He/it hogs the spotlight even more than the original Proty and all the problems of the original one are amplified.

The only Proty II appereance I actually liked is the cameo in the 80s where he's kind of resentful for how the Legion treated him/it as a pet (it's been ages since I've read it, maybe I'm not remembering it correctly).
But that just makes me despise the 60s appereances even more, in a "you wasted a great concept" kind of way.

Do you like Proty? multiple choice, up to 2 choices
	I like the original Proty
	I like Proty II
	I don't like either
	It's a "so bad it's good" situation
Votes accepted starting: 08/18/20 01:45 AM You must vote before you can view the results of this poll.

I, for one, love the whole Antarean/Lost Llorn civilization mythology!

Mixed bag for me. Some of the early appearances are cringe-worthy, but their history was unusual and I liked the Soul of Antares story, as well as the idea that they had to fight for sentient rights. I think more serious stories could have been done with them once the idea that they could impersonate people long-term i.e. Garth.

It's not hard to have more serious stories than the ones that the original Proty got :-)
But for most stories about shapeshifters impersonating people long-term, don't we already have Durlans for that? Granted, Antareans are also telepathic, but stil....

Since I'm not too familiar with the late additions to the "Proty mythology"... did the resurrected Garth actually know that he was actually Proty? Or was Garth/Proty convinced he was the real Garth until the revelation?

I only like Proty as Garth. Please don't hate me.

Good question, it looked as if he knew all along based on the 5YL story in which it was revealed - but he could have had a period of amnesia after the shock of assuming Garth's body. If so, the dawning realization might have contributed to his breakdown when he was leader. It's also not clear if Imra knew all along, but how could she not?


Well, who would you rather cuddle up with at night? A white blob or a muscular red-head hunk? Proty as Garth, definitely an improvement (unless you're another Protean perhaps).

If Proty knew it, I don't see how Saturn Girl couldn't. Granted, Proty is a telepath, but not anywhere near THAT skilled.
If Proty DIDN'T know until the revelation, I could see Saturn Girl not being able to spot the difference from the original Garth mind. After all, before his death she didn't know Garth THAT closely.



Come on, let's be 30th century tolerant, proteansexuals have the right to love who they love :-)

I think it works best if we assume that the "resurrected" Garth was a mixture of Garth and Proty. That's the way it worked with Mon-El/Eltro.

Yes, it (Proty) would have been bad if overdone, but he was only put in occasionally, for usually comic relief. Kind of like Data's cat "spot" in Star Trek TNG.

unless of course you are talking about a "super-pets" issue with Proty, but those were ridiculous anyway and no doubt only benefited form Proty.
(ignoring of course the whole issue of why it is okay to treat sentient beings as pets.)

Obviously, it gets weird per above discussions on the "Garth wasProty this whole time" storyline, but that was TMK, which is our own "pocket universe" of legion comics, and so can safely be ignored by those of us who wish to do so.

Overall, I found Proty to be a nice charming minor addition.

And really, in the spirit of applying criticisms in monotonically decreasing order of importance ... if you are going to criticize Proty, it should probably come after a LOOOOONg list of other things...

I like that Levitz took the problem of having "sentient pets" (which could easily be called slavery) and turned it into a liberation movement for a species.

Monster Boy's skin texture reminds me of Proty's so I wonder if he is inspired by them. He did call out White Witch when she told him to turn into something "less monstrous".

OMG, it would be SO cool if Monster Boy eventually transforms into Proty!
I also had forgotten (until you reminded me) that Levitz had done a storyline on Proty liberation...that WAS pretty cool (and decades ahead of the similar Dobby/elves/Harry Potter subplot)

For the original Proty I kind of disagree, since I think he hurts the story of Lightning Lad's resurrection from a thematic and characterization point of view. Not anywhere near enough to ruin it, of course, it still holds up really well if compared to other stories of the time. But it is a point against it in my opinion.


I love the ridiculousness of these stories! Proty II is inoffensive in the grand scheme of things and there are certainly worse aspects of the era, but I find him REALLY distracting whenever he shows up. The fact that he disappears after a few stories that seem to have tried really hard to "sell him" could mean that the readers weren't that interested.
Or I'm reading too much into it, this era's relationship with readers was different.


That's true. There's a reason why TMK is treated almost like a separate continuity from the rest. Which it is, but also isn't, adding to the confusion :-)
If we do include TMK... for me Garth/Proty is one of the three worst ideas of the period, perhaps THE worst. Though I do admit that the exploration of their society was intriguing.
Naturally there's nothing wrong with liking the idea... different tastes and all that.

That was a genius idea. And the Protys aren't even the only ones that could lead to this kind of problem... we read Krypto's thoughts after all, was he all THAT different from other sentient beings?

And then there's Comet, of course, who is actually a centaur in the form of a horse (and even sometimes transforms into a human).

There's deep issues even today where to draw the line between sapient and non-sapient creatures, so I can only imagine when dealing with telepathic, shapeshifting aliens like Proteans it would be extremely difficult to tell the difference between genuine sapience and simply imitation of genuinely intelligent creatures.

An even bigger issue though are artificially grown humanoids ("androids"). The Lone Wolf story makes it clear that they aren't considered human and are basically treated like slaves, despite for all appearances being as intelligent as natural born humans. It's really a shame that Karth Arn never made any further appearances, as he really has the potential to be a sympathetic character.

I never thought of that and I should have. Guess I always read that story with a "silver age mindset" or something and just accepted it but yeah I would definitely read a follow-on that dived into that question.

When I first read Proty, he was taking photos of the Legionnaires. Neither of them would grow on me as the Super Pets did. But there are plenty of Proty pluses:-

Proty could appeal to readers with pets. Proty and Cham were boy and dog... of Space!
Proty's antics were very visual, helping to add fun to various panels. Also handy to fill a couple of spare panels with Legion reaction to said antics.
Proty was versatile, which really helps a writer. He could be Blockade Boy, or an amulet, impersonate other members or be the Weirdo Legionnaire.
The Garth/ Proty story allowed TMK to differentiate between the personalities of the Adventure era Legion and their older selves. That approach would feed into the SW6 Legion and eventually into the reboot. Garth's Livewire personality was in place in later volumes.
The storyline was a solid one, adding depth to Garth/Proty, Ayla and Imra without taking anything away from the Legion's past.
Proty II's fight for sentient rights was interesting. Look at all the creatures space heroes have faced down the decades. Now take any one of those stories from the creature's point of view.
Super Pets!
The Llorn were an interesting lost civilisation.

Connected to lost civilisations; a pioneer of sentient rights a writer's very flexible friend and who ended up adding a lot of depth to the Legion's history. That a very respectable return.

Indeed, I agree, I think the Garth/Proty storyline is one of the 2 or 3 TMK storylines that motivates peopel putting that whole era on a separate shelf. Yhat story in particular was so revisionist and seemingly intended just for shock value that it was impossible to take seriously... which was all the more ironic given that one of the main things wrong with it was that it took a light-hearted character - Proty - and turned him into something way too serious, and dare I say, creepy.

In fact, I would say the key reason TMK doesn't "fit in" with the rest of Legion lore is NOT because of the un-necessary revisionism - though that was annoying also - it was that it just flat-out completely reversed the tone and style of the series to the then-popular "dark and gritty". But the Legion had always had a bright and hopeful tone, similar to (and some cynics might add "and often copying") "Star Trek"... a hopeful vision of the future, but still with possibilities of tragedies. That is what had always defined it, and is one of the things i enjoy about our newest Legion series. But TMK just made it something else (and opposite) entirely, and for that reason, it really feels i retrospect like an "elseworlds" depiction - sometimes entertaining in and of itself, but not somethign that should ever have been swapped for the original.

The trick is that we then continued to live with that baggage ever since. As Thoth says above the writers followed up on the Garth/Proty idea to suggest that the SW6 Garth was much more of a hothead and this was Garth's original personality. SW6 Imra was even given a line reflecting on how he was now acting more like he used to before ... (he died presumably). Then every iteration since has kept the hothead Garth as a base line for the character.

Not to say that there is no precedent for this now that I am thinking about it. During the later v2 run he had a few moments of losing his cool (although this was later explained as an electrical brain fever!?). Also the Reboot version showed some enormous strength and control, along with self-sacrifice. Its just that most of the iterations since seem to struggle to get past the hothead aspect.

Although not so much the current iteration admittedly.

People always talk about TMK being some massive tonal shift in the Legion, but for me it really started with v3. That whole series is basically the team falling apart, and hardly a depiction of a bright, shiny, optimistic future. You have more Legionnaire deaths in that five year period than in the entire twenty-five years of Legion history prior to it, plus however many Legionnaires quit. TMK beginning with the team having been disbanded really just built naturally off of what was going on through the second half of v3.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the darker outlook in v3 was bookended by Giffen's involvement in 1-4/5 with the LSV, and post #50 with the fallout from the conspiracy and the gradual dismantling of the team prior to the Magic Wars. The conspiracy was PL's, if only prompted by a logical progression from DC Post Crisis continuity.