The Best Women of the Legion of Superheroes?

[Adekis]

Lar's journey from Mon-El to.Valor to M'onel is highly convoluted and really interesting to me. It's no mistake to say that a desire to understand what happened there was part of my impetus for wanting to read the entire Legion history!

Valor's an interesting case because, since he was really replacing Kal-El's role as the inspiration for the Legion, I always felt there was this weird, unspoken implication that Kal would have eventually done what Lar did - not founding the United Planets as a more recent writer would establish, but like Lar did, seed those planets with metahuman life in the first place. Interesting stuff! I also always loved the M'onel play on words. It's clever.

Bringing it back to Laurel Gand though, I think her original version might actually be my favorite stand-in for Supergirl during the entire weird long period where Kara Zor-El was forbidden. Power Girl and Linda-Mae both had highly convoluted origins involving parallel universes and magic during this period. By contrast, Laurel's origin was pretty conveniently simple: she was a Daxamite who was traumatized by the genocide of her people. She also had equal stage presence to the other Supergirls, so really I think it's mostly the Legion's massive cast and remoteness from other DC series that kept her from getting more mainstream attention, though I doubt she'd ever have been as famous as Power Girl.

All that considered, I still just can't help but wish the rebooted Andromeda had gone... differently.

[Jim Kelly]

Valor's an interesting case because, since he was really replacing Kal-El's role as the inspiration for the Legion, I always felt there was this weird, unspoken implication that Kal would have eventually done what Lar did - not founding the United Planets as a more recent writer would establish, but like Lar did, seed those planets with metahuman life in the first place. Interesting stuff! I also always loved the M'onel play on words. It's clever.

It's been a long time since I read L.E.G.I.O.N. '[fill in the year], but wasnt' something like the United Planets already established there? In Grant Morrison's THE GREEN LANTERN, the United Planets exists in present day. And I've been reading lots of Superman comics from the 1960s and there is a United Planets in Superman's time in some stories. In one story it's described as existing on the fringe of the galaxy--so maybe it only involves the advanced planets and not backwater planets like Earth.

[justinslot]

I know Dawnstar is on kind of a basic level "Mike Grell wanted to draw a hot Native American girl with wings flying through space" but...I just love her powerset, especially how it's never explained how she does the stuff she does. Flies through space unaided and unprotected--so does she need to breathe? Is she invulnerable (but still somehow vulnerable to common blasters and such)? Who knows! Tracks stuff through the cosmos and gets there extremely quickly--is she a teleporter? Faster than the Flash? Is she psychically rearranging space and time??? No idea! She just looks cool doing it.

I picked some others (Mysa, and I love it when Night Girl and Shadow Lass team up, complementary powers and all that) but the other lady Legionnaire I really love is Projectra. One of the few Legionnaires who goes on an actual honest-to-gosh journey through her time before the first reboot. Her execution of Nemesis Kid should be thought of as one of those HOLY CRAP eternal comics moments and it is sadly been lost as the Legion's status has been steadily eroded over the years. Her rebirth as Sensor Girl? Again, great stuff. I've resigned myself over the years to never getting another Legion that was connected to its past, nobody's ever going to reference Jeckie evolving from spoiled royal to responsible and then righteously angry monarch to masked Legion leader ever again...and I'm basically okay with it. Bendis or whoever can't take away my old comics.

[El_Gato]

Any more votes? My top 3 are definitely Dawnstar, Saturn Girl and Phantom Girl

[MajorHoy]

So far, with 64 people having voted, the more popular ladies are:

* Saturn Girl (Imra Ardeen) = 36 votes
* Dawnstar = 30 votes
* Dream Girl (Nura Nal) = 28 votes
* Phantom Girl (Tinya Wazzo) = 27 votes
* Lightning Lass (Ayla Ranzz) = 23 votes
* Sensor Girl (Princess Projectra) = 22 votes
* Shadow Lass (Tasmia Mallor) = 22 votes

[Sutekh]

It's neat that some of the later-arriving Legion ladies, Projectra/Sensor Girl and Dawnstar, are doing well.

There've been so many great Legion ladies, in every generation. From Phantom Girl and Triplicate Girl, the fourth and fifth Legionnaires, to the last new wave, Dragonwing, Glorith and Comet Queen, there've been tons, as well as Reboot ladies like Kid Quantum II, XS, Kinetix, Thunder, Monstress, etc., 5YL additions like Computo, and Threeboot stalwart Gazelle. I'm sure Bendis probably added some new ladies as well, even if I'm not as familiar with his 'boot.

[Uncanny X-Man]

Projectra is my number 1, I love her journey on the Legion Baxter series, the Sensor Girl saga, her mercy-killing of the Emerald Empress... such good stuff. I was really surprised Keith Giffen chose to almost completely ignore her in the 5YL Legion, he must not have been a fan of Jeckie? I must say I'm also quite fond of Mark Waid's Threeboot Jeckie, although it was basically a completely different character.

Saturn Girl is a close second, with The Universo Project's Imra being a particular highlight.

I'm also pretty keen on the Zero Hour Legion additions Kid Quantum and Monstress, loved them both in Legion Lost.

[kcekada]

Projectra is my number 1, I love her journey on the Legion Baxter series, the Sensor Girl saga, her mercy-killing of the Emerald Empress... such good stuff. I was really surprised Keith Giffen chose to almost completely ignore her in the 5YL Legion, he must not have been a fan of Jeckie? I must say I'm also quite fond of Mark Waid's Threeboot Jeckie, although it was basically a completely different character.

Despite being a well-written, gritty approach to the Legion, Giffen ignored most of my favorite members-- or changed them to the point that they were different characters (Timber Wolf, Dawnstar). After finally coming into her own at the end of the Baxter series, we reeally didn't get to see much of Jeckie again until Levtiz came back. Despite good intentions, I think Giffen is partly to blame for the mess with Legion today.

Oh, and he probably didn't like Jeckie since he hated Karate Kid.

[Timber Wolf-By-Night]

Despite being a well-written, gritty approach to the Legion, Giffen ignored most of my favorite members-- or changed them to the point that they were different characters (Timber Wolf, Dawnstar). After finally coming into her own at the end of the Baxter series, we reeally didn't get to see much of Jeckie again until Levtiz came back. Despite good intentions, I think Giffen is partly to blame for the mess with Legion today.

Oh, and he probably didn't like Jeckie since he hated Karate Kid.

Agreed. I read something a couple of years ago about how he focused on favorites of his during 5YL while getting rid of characters he didn't care for no matter how much the audience loved them. The fact that the Bierbaums were focused on the era of the Legion when they were young fans didn't help, either. Between the three of them, I really felt like one of their goals was to take a chainsaw to as much of the Levitz era as they could, because he had the audacity to move the Legion away from the status quo of the late 60's/early '70's.

[Robotman]

Gotta go with Night Girl. You can’t beat the retro beehive hairdo.

[caj]

Despite being a well-written, gritty approach to the Legion, Giffen ignored most of my favorite members-- or changed them to the point that they were different characters (Timber Wolf, Dawnstar). After finally coming into her own at the end of the Baxter series, we reeally didn't get to see much of Jeckie again until Levtiz came back. Despite good intentions, I think Giffen is partly to blame for the mess with Legion today.

Oh, and he probably didn't like Jeckie since he hated Karate Kid.

Agree. I was excited when I read issue 1 with the idea that Rokk and Cham were going to rebuild the Legion back to what it once was.

I became disillusioned with it when I realized they were only going to use it handful of the previous Legion and add numerous uninteresting new characters.

I'm a fan of a lot of Giffen's books but I'm sick of hearing him talk about how much he hates Karate Kid. The character has a huge fan base so get over it.

[SilverScarlet]

Triple the fun!

And now that Johns upgraded her to 'Duplicate Damsel' or 'Duplicate Girl,' she can create dozens of dupes, which switches things up pretty radically. (I know not everyone is for that change, and I can see their point, but I like changing things up from time to time. My nostalgic bent only goes so far. I like the classic characters, but I don't necessarily want them to be the same as they were back in the '70s...)

I’ve always thought it made perfect sense....it always seemed to me that losing a body would be a trauma most Carggites wouldn’t survive. The fact that Luornu not only survived, but flourished, says she’s something out of the ordinary.
The Duplicate Damsel persona may have always been destined for her as a sort of secondary mutation, but was delayed due to the trauma of losing a body.

[kcekada]

I’ve always thought it made perfect sense....it always seemed to me that losing a body would be a trauma most Carggites wouldn’t survive. The fact that Luornu not only survived, but flourished, says she’s something out of the ordinary.
The Duplicate Damsel persona may have always been destined for her as a sort of secondary mutation, but was delayed due to the trauma of losing a body.

Exactly!

Although Lu was mostly a fringe character in Levitz's run, it always seemed that there was more to her story. I thought giving her this ability made sense -- and was a nice way of updating a Silver Age power that was now pretty lame in comparison to characters like Madrox of the X-Men or DupliKate in Invincible.

[Sutekh]

I’ve always thought it made perfect sense....it always seemed to me that losing a body would be a trauma most Carggites wouldn’t survive. The fact that Luornu not only survived, but flourished, says she’s something out of the ordinary.
The Duplicate Damsel persona may have always been destined for her as a sort of secondary mutation, but was delayed due to the trauma of losing a body.

The only part of that I quibble with is that the idea of someone developing a unique new power in a single sentence, with no explanation or deeper thought put into it, felt kind of weak. I'd love that sort of thing to be the center of an actual arc around Lu, or at least an issue, like the one where Cham goes to Durla to regain his shapeshifting ability.

[Zero Hunter]

I hate infinite bodies. My personal favorite version of teh character is the reboot version Triad where each body had their own personality