Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes What's your opinion on the 5YL era ?

I had not read enough to know that Sean had transitioned 'to get with Element Lad.' I thought she was just a fairly run of the mill transgendered person. Yeah, that's creepy and plays into transphobic 'trap' nonsense.

Plus the idea reminds me of Night Girl and her ill-considered 'beg my scientist dad to experiment on me so I can get super-powers and join the Legion *because I have a crush on Cosmic Boy.*'

Yikes. I do not care for this 'change yourself to land a man!' message.

It's been awhile since I've read the story, but I thought the idea was that Sean was basically a gay man who came from culture that was incredibly homophobic. So, rather than, say, pretend to be attracted to women as many gay men would to deal with homophobia in the actual world, he used profem to change himself into a woman so that he could acceptably pursue people he was attracted to. And at the end of the day it turns out that Jan helps him to see that it's okay to just be himself. So it's basically an anti-homophobia story that ends up being incredibly insensitive to trans issues.

Anyway, it was definitely an ill-conceived story line on a number of levels.

Disagreements are great and help us see beyond our limited horizons. They are not so great when they hurt people.

I freely admit to being an older straight white male from fairly conservative upbringing. That flavours how I read issues like this just as anyone else's background affects theirs. I have had several gay friends over the years, at least one of whom I treated poorly in my youth, with the best of intentions but poorly nonetheless, and I deeply regret that and have for many years. I am on good relations with the others thankfully and have learnt a bit from them. My only experience beyond that is meeting in a queue at a game-store sale a couple of people who might have been transgender, transsexual or simply crossdressers. I don't know and we didn't discuss it but we had a fun game-fan conversation anyway. (I have learnt enough to realise that I have probably met others and never realised it of course.)

So coming from my very limited background I remember reading this as an attempt at a love story/semi-tragedy and that I liked. I thought the idea of being true to yourself was very important. Even then though I felt the underlying change to gain someone else's affections (which I think was mainly in the text piece and less so in the main story) was a poor idea - and to some extent that was what the story was trying to say. If this issue had a theme song it would have been Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are" (although looking at the rest of the lyrics, other than "Don't go changing to try to please me", they don't fit that well). It was only as I read a letter a few issues later that I could see how the story if taken as a comment on transgender issues was insulting. That is much clearer to me now.

I am going to keep putting my foot in it and for that I am sorry. Probably even how I put this is poor. I hope that I can continue to learn and grow from those who are different from my limited experience, and that they will forgive my occasional (or not) faux pas as they gently let me know when I make them. I hope Ann comes back and continues her helpful and enjoyable and fun contributions. How else can I change?

As a man with similar attributes and background to stile, I've found myself struggling most with understanding transgender issues. Gay, lesbian and bisexual seem pretty cut-and-dry in and of themselves. Basically, you're attracted to the same gender or both genders sexually and are typically comfortable with the gender you were born with. That's fairly simple by itself, though there are larger issues that make it more complex.

I mean, I can understand a person not feeling they identify with the gender they were born with to a degree. But all the terminologies and permutations confuse me. The easiest oversimplication would be to assume that the trans person would want the surgery to become the gender they identify with. That's easier to understand. But I think it is now not that simple. Many (most?) trans people, I think, want to be considered the gender they choose or sometimes choose to be genderless and don't intend to have any kind of gender reassignment surgery. That's very complex and difficult for people like me to grasp. It's not that I don't want to or that I'm not trying. I'm socially very liberal, and I will support every person's right to be who and what they want to be. And I will never turn down my nose at any one of them. But I get confused thinking about it all and need more information, so my empathy may be more informed and less ignorant.

What I need is some good art, whether it be in the form of an involving books or graphic novels, movies or television shows or whatever else to educate and entertain me and others like me. Good art does that. I'm sure there must be some already out there, but I need the recommendations.

And what I'm learning (and frankly, long suspected) is that Sean/Shvaughn Erin's story is not anything close to what I and others like me (and certainly trans people looking for proper representation) need to fulfill this role that art needs to teach us. Art can, has (presumably) and needs to continue to do better.

This is pretty much how I remember reading it. Thanks EDE, your summary is far more succinct than mine would have been.

[snip]


If a character is literally the only one of their type (or ethnicity, or persuasion) in the entire history of the narrative, I'm not sure if any of us can completely avoid seeing them as a representation. We can strive not to, of course. But I can't dismiss the probability that we will still see them that way at an unconscious level. Especially if the character behaves in a fashion consistent with negative stereotypes many of us were raised with regarding supposed gender "outlaws."

So I'd argue that considering the value (or resonance) of a perfect vs. an imperfect personality isn't really that important. The main issue (to me) is that the character exists in a vacuum because they are one-of-a-kind. If they are basically all alone in the universe (so to speak), than their negative behavior has an impact which it simply would not have if they embodied (sorry, no pun intended) more traditional ideas about gender which have been more or less transferred whole cloth from our own reality into a futuristic fantasy setting.

I'm not trying to jump down your throat there. I just feel like context matters. Those of us who haven't grappled with these issue in real life, or dealt with real-life transphobia, can afford a perspective that possibly an actual trans person can't. What's just a story to us could have real-life negative consequences for them.

Maybe I?m being ignorant but on the whole isn?t Sean a positive character? He originally took profem because he came from a culture where his same sex attraction wasn?t accepted and when he could no longer take it embraced his true self? Schvaughn was essentially the pretend character many trans people have before embracing their true selves. The writers liked the character regardless of the sex but many readers didn?t. I suspect a lot of trans people can recognize that reality where friends and family want the old facade they thought they knew over the real person.

That's a peculiar sort of narrative loop-de-loop the authors were forced into, then. Sean was from a homophobic society, but at this point in our own reality mainstream comics still couldn't have two characters living in an openly same-sex romantic relationship... because our own contemporary society was (and is) homophobic.

It's really easy for me to understand why Ann (and other trans readers) might quickly lose patience with all this.

Anyway, I was trying to point out, in my own roundabout way, that whether the character's actions are justifiable in his own fictional reality isn't the only issue here. Or even the main one, necessarily.

The situation is somewhat similar to the mid-Eighties Defenders story arc, where the writer (DeMatteis ?) wanted to have the young, "turned" villain Cloud be attracted to Moondragon and come out as lesbian. But that denouement was vetoed by Editorial (and apparently Marvel received considerable hate mail from homophobic fans, too). So instead Cloud was rewritten to be one entity hosting both a male and a female self, so they could claim that the part of "her" attracted to Moondragon was male and thus straight. So everything was all right. (I think later they also had Moondragon confess that she was using some kind of mental philter to try and manipulate the men on the team into helping her with some evil plot or another, and in that process she accidentally triggered these revelations/outcomes in Cloud.) Interestingly, I think in later years Moondragon herself was written to have an (adult) female lover of her own.

Moondragon indeed had at least one adult female lover in her history

I'll admit to not being very knowledgeable on trans issues, despite being a gay man. But though I am part of the LGBT community, those whoa re trans face a related but different set of issues, and a related but different set of struggles. this thread has been quite educational for me, and I am grateful for that.

One more issue I think, with the whole Sean/Shvaughn story, is that it seems to conflate two distinct things: gender identity (whether one identifies as female, male, or other); and sexual orientation (whether one is attracted to men, women, or other). (before i continute, it has been AGES since I've read any 5YL comics so I may get some things wrong! and am happy to be corrected if so).

Real life examples: I will compare two trans (born male, identify as female) people I know.

One now identifies as a woman, and is attracted to men - therefore, also identifies as heterosexual.
The other now identifies as a woman, and is attracted to women - therefore, identifies as homosexual.

Sean (a man) being attracted to Jan (a male) = sexual orientation, homosexuality. Sean turning into a woman - one would THINK it is Sean being trans, but depending on why Sean did it... because if Sean felt that he was a woman born in a man's body (related to gender identity), that is being trans. But if Sean turned into a woman just to pursue Jan, without really identifying as a woman, then that is problematic. And then in the end, Sean reverting back to Sean willingly and staying that way... well, that shows he truly identifies as a man, yes? so he's not trans, but gay. so this whole thing is already problematic for trans people, and can become problematic for gay people as well.

And I will add - I, as a gay man, am attracted to men. But I identify as a man, and I have absolutely no intention of ever becoming a woman just out of attraction for someone.

Anyone remember Sir Tristan from Camelot 3000 ? For its time it seemed very forward-thinking.

Nowadays, a cis man yelling at the reincarnated Tristan, "You're a woman and like it or not you're going to STAY one!" would be nightmarishly bad and tone-deaf writing. Trans fans would probably roast the creatives involved alive, and rightfully so.



Nothing stays the same forever.

For which I am also grateful as people understand these issues more... well, things slowly change for the better

Yep.

The other thing I find myself thinking about: it's canonical from the early years of the Legion that Chameleon Boy can masquerade as a woman. Am I wrong, or has pretty much every incarnation of the Legion-verse (except Waid's Threeboot in which "he" was more a They) had some kind of subplot where he was using a female form as a disguise for some kind of undercover work, usually in the past?

I haven't kept up with every do-over, so correct me if I'm wrong.

It'd be interesting to unpack that, though I often get the feeling that doing so doesn't interest writers or editors. After all these years, it's still all about predictable comedy and/or shock value.

If so, we are way behind the world of SciFi at large. LeGuin's The Left Hand Of Darkness was first published in 1969, for Heaven's sake.

that is a really good point, cleome. Preboot Adventure Era, check. (in-story, justification was that he and Cos were pretending to be a married hetero couple, so somewhat justified - but not really, as they could also have been, idk, brothers or business partners or whatever).

Reboot, yes (he impersonated Winema Wazzo). For that one, a bit more justified, as they had a good reason for picking her in particular, as she had a reasonable motive for kidnapping and attacking President Chu.

I don't have enough memory of the other Boots to remember any specific instances. Definitely something that could be further explored.

No worries, cle. You raised a lot of good points. I can see how representation can be an issue when there aren't many similar characters to choose from.

Thanks, HWW. I appreciate you taking the time. I feel like it's a good discussion to have. I just wish it could have happened under better circumstances.

Oh, and thank you Ibby for parsing out the differences between sexual orientation (or attraction) and gender identification. I struggled to get my mind around this for years. Until someone simply told me that I should break the habit of using "sex" and "gender" as interchangeable terms.

"Sex," they told me, "Is what's between your legs. But Gender is more than that." So I've always tried to keep that in mind.

Thanks for making this point, because it's something I've been wanting to say. As I understand it (and I don't claim to be an authority on these matters by any means), Sean isn't really a trans character at all, any more than Tenzil is a trans character because he was Grandin gender reversed for a couple of issues of the SW6 run. The reason the story is problematic is that it reinforces an idea that being trans isn't a real thing. There's a temptation to think that all biological males who identify as female are just frustrated or self-loathing gay men or something, but, as you point out, sexual orientation and gender identity are completely distinct phenomena.

thanks cleome, glad I explained it well and yeah, gender is an identification, where sex is biological.

and thanks as well EDE. this issue is close to my heart, as in the Philippines many people still believe that all gay men secretly want to be women. My own parents couldn't wrap their heads around it at first, that I could be gay and still identify as a man...

I will add my thanks to the clarifications that Ibby, Cleome and others have added here. The difference between sexual orientation and gender identification is very helpful.

In that light I think Ibby put the Sean/Shvaughn story's problems best.

As for the Cham character discussion, that seems quite different and separate to me. Cham has always been portrayed as acting like a male character and apparently been comfortable that way (except in Threeboot but that seemed more lip service than any change in behaviour). His ability to transform into a female character seemed to me no different than putting on a disguise, not trans and not even cross-dressing really, just a practical application of his abilities. This seems similar to those stories in books and movies where a character pretends to be of the opposite gender to gain benefits that are only given to that gender. This is usually a woman pretending to be a man because of the gender bias that still exist in our society such as Barbara Streisand in "Yentl" although we had the opposite example of Dustin Hoffman in "Tootsie". Neither of these cases were about transgender but only about changing appearance for personal advantage and that's how I think of Cham's exploits.

Does that make sense? Am I missing something? Please let me know.

I think the only thing you're missing (and maybe I didn't drive it home hard enough) is that all these references and embodiments of the trope you cite are badly dated now. The thinking behind them has failed to keep up with the times. (By referencing how LeGuin approached gender in what became a very critically acclaimed and well-regarded story, I was trying to point out that the way the Legion has approached gender in these situations has lagged way behind the culture at large, especially science fiction: which it ostensibly is.)

My point is that while other attitudes and many stylistic choices have changed as the stories and aesthetics have been reset and reworked over and over again, it appears that each successive creative team (with one or two exceptions) has used that same touchstone of wow how very alien it is to don or remove the other gender like a literal costume! I just find it kind of irksome, and lazy, too. They just do it for a chuckle or a shock. There's never any effort to do more with it.

I liked what Waid attempted to do with Cham in the Threeboot, even if it wasn't the road I'd take myself with the character. It was at least an attempt to portray how someone from a culture largely unmoored from our own would regard it, and us, and our ideas about gender. (And it wouldn't surprise me if, as in some other examples I cited, he wanted to go further with it than he did, but was shut down by Editorial.)

IIRC, 5YL actually had Durlans has hermaphrodites who took on male-female gender identities in order to better fit in with other species

But on the subject of cross-dressing, how exactly do drag queens fit in to the discussion?

Yeah, that was kind of my head-canon when I was still writing fic.

But when you think of how many planets and species there are in the U.P., it'd be weird if all but one of them upheld/echoed the pronounced and strict gender dimorphism that we do, at least in most people's eyes. In reality, chromosome variations which create intersex folks (for example) are out there, and they may not be as rare as we assume. (I was reading about this a few days ago, but damned if I can find the article now.)

i think you put it perfectly, stile! nicely written. And Preboot and Reboot Cham both definitely were portrayed as male characters.

Probably the most important fact I learned: Cross-dressing is not synonymous with being trans. There are a variety of reasons one might cross-dress, and indeed some involve sexual fetishes. But the person cross-dressing may not necessarily identify as being of the opposite sex, and therefore is not trans.

"5YL" is a rather painful subject for me.

My first exposure was the late 60s. I started buying regular in the late 70s. I kept buying all the way until Mark Waid pointlessly rebooted the book FOR THE THIRD TIME. And in between, I bought a pile of mid-70s back-issues, and later, the first 11 ARCHIVE books. So I've got a long, LONG stretch of the books' history, from the very beginning.

And "5YL" was, for me, ROCK bottom. MY LEAST FAVORITE. I don't know how the hell I kept buying all that time.

Midway thru it, I joined "KLORDNY", was a member for 15 years (even when HALF the membership quit in one go in respnse to "ZERO HOUR"). I met my best friend in the group, and we've stayed in touch every week since then. So I guess something good came out of it But it had nothing to do with the comics.

I recall the endless long-winded arguing in KLORDNY every issue as to HOW WRETCHEDLY AWFUL each new comic was, or HOW ASTONISHINGLY BRILLIANT each issue was... every time a new issue came out.

The "PRO" faction kept insisting that they would re-read the entire run EACH time a new issue would come out, so by the end of the first year, they'd read the 1st issue 12 times, and each time, they';d "get more" out of it. While it's fun to "get more" out of a comic or story or movie or TV show each tme you watch... I don't think you should HAVE to re-read (or re-watch) OVER AND OVER AND OVER just for the damned thing to make sense at all in the first place. And this, to me, definitely was like that.

Okay, let me get down to particulars. (Although by now, this is getting like whenever I reminisce about AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, which jumped the shark at least as many times as LEGION did.)

To me, LEGION should be about a "utopian future". Keith Giffen (there were many culprits invcolved, but let's face it, HE was at the center of this mess), had gotten into this PERVERSE habit of turning books upside-down. He MURDERED the immortal DR. FATE, who was then replaced with a whole string of wannabes. He turned JUSTICE LEAGUE into a SITCOM. At least that one worked. He decided to turn LEGION into a bleak, dark, hopeless, dystopian future where everything was miserable, and UGLY.

If I'd been the editor, I would have just said... "NO. Try something else." And sent him on his way.

With "Five Years Later", he borrowed from "DOONSEBURY", where the guy took a year's vacation, and when he came back, TEN years had gone by in the lives of all the characters. In LEGION, there was NO break, and suddenly, 5 years had gone by, and suddenly, we had to catch up on everything that had happened, in addition to everything that was going on NOW.

The 5-panel grid was, of course, shamelessly ripped off from WATCHMEN. Dave Gibbons did it 10 TIMES BETTER.

After several years of JUSTICE LEAGUE where andy Helfer brilliantly decided to have Giffen do story & layouts-- AND NOTHING ELSE-- and had him working with a variety of "REAL" illustrators-- Giffen insisted on returning to pencilling. But it LOOKED LIKE SHIT. I've often joked that Giffen "never learned how to draw". He spent his career alternating between REALLY BAD imitations of much-better artists. Jack Kirby. Curt Swan. Phillipe Druillet. Alex Toth. Others. here he was doing Alberto Breccia. (See Brecchia's "THE TELL-TALE HEART" adaptation. There's NO DOUBT that's exactly what Giffen was doing here.)

Al Gordon was a serious step DOWN from Mike DeCarlo when he took over the inks months earlier. On "5YL", he was tracing EXACTLY what Giffen was doing. So he wasn't cleaning anything up, or improving things, he was AMPLIFYING the horrible ugliness. It was kinda like when George Roussos was inking Jack Kirby at a rate of 10 pages a day. If I wanted "ugly" future, I'd have hired Dave Gibbons. His "End of the Line" story in DOCTOR WHO was what "5YL" should have looked like, if it wasd done at all. And to me, it NEVER should have been done. AT ALL.

Not only was the future ugly, it was almost impossible to recognize any of the characters by looking at their faces. You never had that problem when Curt Swan was drawing the series.

The plotting was disjointed. This was made WORSE by the fact that someone else-- TWO someone elses-- were writing the dialogue, and reportedly, Giffen REFUSED to ever communicate with them. This was WORSE than when Marvel's 1960s "editor" was mutilating JACK KIRBY's writing for ten whole years.

Once DC spent 3 months working the bugs out of their new computer coloring system-- the COLOR was the ONE good thing on the series. It's perverse, but it's no surprise Tom McCraw became one of the writers, later on.

Matter-Eater Lad was the ONLY character whose life apparently hadn't been F****ed over by the events of "5YL". When he'd turn up, you'd have a FUN story. But that only happened twice in 3 years.

This doesn't even get into Mike Carlin somehow managing to get Mark Waid FIRED off the book, Giffen pulling a tempter tantrum and REBOOTING the entire universe twice in 2 months, making it so now ALL future history was unknown and in question, repeated several-month interruptions ("Khund War", "Quiet Darkness") making the "main story" take even longer to play out. Or the FINAL insult to the readers-- BLOWING UP THE EARTH. Was there ever a bigger "F*** YOU!" to the fans?




I know it'll never happen... but 15 years ago, I fantasized about how, if I became LEGION editor, I'd have picked up the series JUST before "CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS" hit... and carried on FROM THERE, pretending it never happened.