Addendum to the Review of the Legion of Super-Heroes, Part Five, By Johnathan

Well, it's been a little while, huh? One reason for this is that I'm having a bit of a hard time thinking up anything interesting to say about the last four old Legionnaires that I have to cover before moving on to the exciting, new, awesome Legionnaires. So I'm going to plow through them all at once. Yee haw!

SUN BOY

Good basic picture of Sun Boy. I've always been fond of that costume, though the fact that it's never really changed in any significant way makes it hard to think up any new snarky things to say about it. Same goes for his hairdo, which really hasn't changed since he first grew it out in the 2970s. Mrs. Morgna's boy knows a good thing when he sees it, I guess. Oh, what I wouldn't give for him to have had a momentary lapse and started wearing a big spiky sun mask, like something Electro would wear if he was Solaro Energo instead. I coulda gone on for days!

The pose is great, though. This is almost certainly the exact posture and facial expression that Sun Boy adopts when his girlfriend of three months catches him sleeping with her sister. "Sorry baby," it says, "Dirk Morgna just can't be tied down to one woman."

JOHN APPROVED

TIMBER WOLF

Again: very hard to say anything new about this costume, as it's basically the same as the one he started out in (barring some minor redesign. The same bits are all there, just in different places). The ol' orange-and-brown-or-black-maybe costume isn't anything to write home about, but it's not terrible either. See? Not much to say.

Evidently, this picture hails from one of those periods in which Timber Wolf was having rage issues on the side. I have to admit, I always think that that sort of thing is bullshit, at least in Mr. Londo's case. I mean, he was given super-powers by a ray that his father developed out of a rare mineral, right? And then he called himself Lone Wolf because he was under the impression that he was an android and had some asinine belief that a self-aware android wasn't fit to interact with humans and so vowed to live apart, right? And then he changed his name to Timber Wolf when he joined the Legion because Lone Wolf doesn't work as well when you hang out with twenty other guys all the time, right? So... where does the 'bestial temper' thing come from? I don't recall any in-continuity explanation other than the assumption that wolf = bad temper. Could the origin of Timber Wolf's rage and interesting teeth be that Wolverine was/is a very popular character and the Legion was filled with very polite folks with no anger-management issues? Nah.

I like the mean-looking drawing in the background, though. Check it out: it looks like a drawing of a vampire from a 1970s black-and-white horror comic - Creepy or Eerie or something. Neat!

NOT APPROVED

ULTRA BOY

Favourite Legion costume, with no changes, check. Flying around looking like a loveable lunkhead, check. Nice sideburns, check.

JOHN APPROVED

WILDFIRE

Again with the unchanged costume that I like. Bah!

The only thing that I can really think of to comment on is the fact that Wildfire seems to be venting an awful lot of his anti-energy in this picture. Perhaps, says the juvenile portion of my mind, he has just experienced the energy-being equivalent of letting a large fart? I know, I know. Far too obvious. Consider this, though: could this be what Dawnstar looks so surprised about, over in her picture?

JOHN APPROVED

Okay! Next up: new folks!

Addendum to the Review of the Legion of Super Heroes: Part 1, By Johnathan

A while back I did a great big review of the whole durned Legion of Super-Heroes, circa the "Origins and Powers of the Legion" pages that ran way back when. Well, not long after I published that post I found another of those crazy things, in Legion of Super-Heroes v3 No. 17, and since that one included all of the pre-Five-Year Gap Legionnaires that I hadn't already covered I figured that I should probably do some sort of follow-up post. Kind of leery of long posts, though, so I've broken this one in two. First up: Legionnaires that I've already reviewed! Because what's obsessive completeness without, uh, completion?

BRAINIAC 5

You know, it's really hard to think up new things to say about Brainiac 5 when he's just standing there. That's what comes of a guy not having a costume change for 20+ years, I guess. The boots are nice and it looks like he's been working out, so that's two things. I suppose I can mention that I like the 'no black lines, just colour' style of forcefield more than the sheet of glass-lookin' ones that tend to show up in forcefield-centric comic books. I don't like this one, though. Purple forcefields aren't as good as green ones.

NOT APPROVED

CHAMELEON BOY

Probably my least favourite Chameleon Boy pic, both because of the costume and the 'how do his powers work' bit. Okay, I guess the costume's not too bad but it's definitely super-horrible with regards to palette. It's like, um... it's like Color Kid involuntarily used his powers whilst a sneeze/belch/hiccough combo was ravaging his cranial cavities - it's super-ugly, yo. Similarly, this "Let's slap CB's head on a little monkey-thing! It shows that they're the same guy!" approach to the whole issue of how to demonstrate his powers in a single panel seems even more ham-fisted than that one panel from the Sixties featuring him as an exposition-spouting garbage can. Bah!

NOT APPROVED

COLOSSAL BOY

See, Chameleon Boy? Speed lines help! They show us that Colossal Boy's getting bigger and they could've showed us how you were getting all transformative! Though in Colossal Boy's case, a wee little Gim Allon standing between his feet would've been nice. A new reader could potentially draw the conclusion that they were about to read a tale about someone who had the fantastic ability to emit gusts of wind from their fists, armpits and groin. And the only place that you're going to find that kind of action is in John and Paul Present: The Adventures of the Mighty Turbine! I like that they didn't alter his costume just for the sake of doing so - it's definitely better than the current incarnation - but I think that I might be pining for his old singing cowboy-style gloves for the rest of my life.

JOHN APPROVED

DAWNSTAR

Decent picture of Dawny in space, no real alterations to her costume (though they may have added some more fringe, I'm not sure). Not too much to talk about here, really. I mean, her wings look like they're made of papiér maché, that's one thing., but it's not really what I'd call a conversation-starter. I'd really like to know what she's looking at, though. I mean, she flies around in the depths of space fighting super-villains, 9-5: what's really going to shock her that much? My guess? A left-over missile from the Great Darkness Saga, shaped like a giant, nude, anatomically-correct Darkseid and spewing laser fire from horrible, horrible places. That, my friends, would be a hell of a sight.

JOHN APPROVED

DREAM GIRL

You know, until I took a close look at this picture just now I had thought it a pretty standard Dream Girl image. But now? Now I see that it's terrible. That's probably the worst rendition of the Dream Girl shiny one-piece that I've ever seen. It looks like it would require a whole roll of that special supermodel-brand double-sided tape to hold in place. Plus, I think she's wearing a cup. Bleh, I say. And while I'm bitching: whatever happened to that blue thing that she used to wear in her hair? That thing was great! It looked like a wireless cell phone headset, like she was constantly networking or prepared to network. Super-proactive! This all-glam look just doesn't have the same kind of synergy. Dream Girl is unlikely to land that big new client, and that's a shame.

NOT APPROVED

ELEMENT LAD

Despite the fact that I'm no big fan of Interlac, I appreciate the thought behind changing the 'e' on Element Lad's chest to it's fakey future language equivalent. I was about to say that I wouldn't run around with the Cyrillic letter j on the front of my shirt, but that's a complete lie, unless Cyrillic is one of those alphabets that don't acknowledge the majesty of the j or, you know, admit to the existence of the sound. In any case, Element Lad manages to rock the pink costume far more thoroughly than Cosmic Boy ever did. I, uh, I don't really know what he's doing in this picture, though. I can only guess that he's turned an oxygen atom into one of Element 476, Gigantium (discovered c. 2674 CE), an atom notable mainly for being almost ridiculously huge.

NOT APPROVED

LIGHTNING LASS

So at some point Light Lass got her original powers back and became Lightning Lass again. This worked well because Lightning Lad had just retired, so the Legion was still able to say that it had lightning-slinging capabilities. And I guess that the ol' Light Lass powers weren't as useful as they could be. Trouble is, lightning is kind of a boring power to have - that's why Lightning Lad had the cape! It added flair! Lightning Lass' costume needs flair. Or zazz. Or possibly some moxie.

NOT APPROVED

MON-EL

Mon-El’s another one of those cats who hasn’t changed his uniform in… ever. Admittedly, it is a pretty snappy bit of cloth – Daxam surely must have the best-dressed astronauts around. Plus, you’re bound to get attached to a tunic after wearing it for a thousand years whilst being verbally abused by ghostly assholes. I’m sure that both of those big gold buttons had its own name and complicated backstory by now and that for a while the cape was a serious competitor for Shadow Lass’ affections. I’m also sure that the ‘underwear over tights’ look doesn’t go well with this costume – so sure that I sort of blank the fact that Mon-El indulges in this abominable practice from my mind and have had more than one nerd-argument over the question of whether Mr. Gand wears ‘em inside the pants or not. Looking over my records, the answer turns out to be: both, on occasion. I believe that I have a comic shop employee to apologise to.

This is a perfectly nice picture of Mon-El, by the way. Except... Ol' Lar here has always been a character that manages to look cool despite the fact that he has a really bad haircut. This is, however, no reason to make that haircut the focal point of the image. It's like there's a hair-helmet coming to crush us, on its way to woo the Bouffant. Aiee!

JOHN APPROVED

Grr. My life has become too busy for long posts. I'm gonna break this up a bit (not like the last time, I promise - this time I'll finish). Tune in soon for Phantom Girl!

Review of the Super-Human Detritus of the Thirtieth Century, Part 8, By Johnathan

I've had the pictures ready for this one for like a week now but just couldn't bring myself to write it. "Why?" you ask, in tiny, review-starved voices. I'll tell you why: it's because today I'm reviewing three of the most boring-ass characters in the occasionally spotty history of the Legion of Super-Heroes. I'll let Sun Boy introduce them:

You might notice a lack of thirtieth-Century zazz to their names. Not a Querl Dox or Reep Daggle in the lot. This is because they were created by fans of the Legion, whose names were warped into futurespeak. I'm sure that Bob Cohen was thrilled, but Bobb Kohan just doesn't do it for me, hero-name-wise.

One of my biggest problems with these characters is the way that they're drawn - they just bore the hell out of me. Look at Nightwind and Lamprey: identical comic book bimbos with different dye jobs. This was a pretty lousy period in terms of Legion art - nobody even bothered to think up a kicky little eel logo for Lamprey. They didn't even make Crystel Kid's hair look all faceted. Lame.

Is Nightwind hitting on Blok?

As you might have guessed, these three placemats applied for Legion membership at the same time as Blok and failed mightily. First, though, they listened to him tell his origin story. After a while, an emergency call comes in and the applicants are taken along due to the fact that not enough Legionnaires are on hand. Gah! I'm boring myself! I hate these three so much!

They fly to the emergency, sporting all of the colours of the rainbow.

And get squashed like bugs in about four seconds. Hey, weird - I've been looking at these three's lame costumes a lot more than I'd like (you know, so I can complain about them) and I just noticed that Lamprey's breasts change size in, like, every panel. It's kind of eerie - maybe it's one of her powers?

When I finished this comic I was under the impression that this was the last I'd seen of these lame-ass characters. They'd shown up and tried their best and been dismal failures. I wasn't even curious about their powers. Then, just eleven issues later (LSH No. 283, if you really want to subject yourself to it) they show up again. It was like Reverse Christmas.

This time, we get to see their fantastic powers:

Crystal Kid fires gooey-looking beams that turn things into crystal, yawn. I mean... yawn.

One second.

Took a little nap there. There is nothing exciting about turning things to crystal, especially in the Legion. Plus Element Lad can already do that, so this kid shouldn't have gotten within five hundred metres of the place. Plus:
He's super over-confident. And:
His power only works as long as he's concentrating on it, which seems like adding insult to injury. "Sure you've got a lousy power, kid, but at least it doesn't work very well, right?"

Wildfire takes a dip in the surprisingly deep Legion fountain, where he encounters Lamprey, who has all of the standard "underwater hero" powers (that's superstrength, plus the ability to swim) and electricity-shooting:

I'm not sure if she's ever seen a lamprey eel - my guess is no, as they're almost indescribably hideous. In any case, her powers are somewhat better than poor Bobb's. There is one drawback, though:

It's not just a case of artistic license - she really is firing rings of electricity. Moreover, those rings are big enough that Wildfire can step right through them (Though not very well. By my reckoning he's about to get ringed in the knee, thigh and crotch). Plus it's implied that she's not too good at maneuvers out of the water, which puts the kibosh on roughly 98 percent of Legion missions.

Nightwind flies and fires wind out of her feet. She gets some credit for not wearing clothing that is the same colour as her skin but that's about all I'm willing to grant her.

So anyway, Wildfire trashes the three of them. Then this happens:

The girls try to kiss Wildfire and he goes nuts! Personally, I think that it's because he saw that wink thing. Nightwind's wink is terrifying! That one staring white eye? Gives me the heebie jeebies. He says it's because of his Tragic Past, but I don't buy it.

Anyway, what with the terrible costumes, the lame powers, the stupid names and the fact that they mostly get their asses kicked and listen to exposition (Wildfire tells them a story too), these three jokers are:

NOT APPROVED

But finally getting them out of the way? That's JOHN APPROVED from here to Tuesday. So... for two days.