Legion of Super-Heroes Appreciation 2023

[caj]

Thanks to you both for the info.

[caj]

It appears you have a point.

Is Curt Swan the artist on this cover? That's some great art right there.

[kcekada]

I'm no expert, but it looks like Swan's work. My favorite era of Curt Swan work is when he was inked by Murphy Anderson on the Superman series of the early 1970s.

[astro@work]

It appears you have a point.

Find it amusing that the OG three in their OG appearance bear more of a resemblance to the Legion of Super Villains than the founding trio as we know them now.

Saturn Girl has Saturn Queen's hair color and costume colors.
Lightning Boy (not Lad, mind you) has a predominantly red costume like Mekt/Lightning Lord
Cosmic Boy has the bubble helmet of Cosmic King

Are we positive we know WHICH Legion Superboy joined back in the day? lol.

[Thor-Ul]

Find it amusing that the OG three in their OG appearance bear more of a resemblance to the Legion of Super Villains than the founding trio as we know them now.

Saturn Girl has Saturn Queen's hair color and costume colors.
Lightning Boy (not Lad, mind you) has a predominantly red costume like Mekt/Lightning Lord
Cosmic Boy has the bubble helmet of Cosmic King

Are we positive we know WHICH Legion Superboy joined back in the day? lol.

It was ever explained the change or it was just one of those things than simply happened without any answer from the editor?

[caj]

And yet, there are similarities to where their uniforms remained the same. From the start, Imra had the Saturn symbol, Garth had the lightning bolts, and Rokk had the orbits (or whatever those circles are).

[Primal Slayer]

I watched it and it was enjoyable. It was VERY simple writing wise which sucked a bit but I am enjoying the "Tomorrow"verse better than the New52-verse previous to it.

Some of the LoSH get some fun fight scenes but it's sad that trio arent around that often and it is very much a Supergirl/Brainy film.

[astro@work]

It was ever explained the change or it was just one of those things than simply happened without any answer from the editor?

The changes weren't really ever explained in-story. The artistic changes were made pretty quickly after their introduction, so they just moved on and apparently nobody really questioned it.

[Doctor Know]

It appears you have a point.

Is Curt Swan the artist on this cover? That's some great art right there.

I'm no expert, but it looks like Swan's work. My favorite era of Curt Swan work is when he was inked by Murphy Anderson on the Superman series of the early 1970s.

Find it amusing that the OG three in their OG appearance bear more of a resemblance to the Legion of Super Villains than the founding trio as we know them now.

Saturn Girl has Saturn Queen's hair color and costume colors.
Lightning Boy (not Lad, mind you) has a predominantly red costume like Mekt/Lightning Lord
Cosmic Boy has the bubble helmet of Cosmic King

Are we positive we know WHICH Legion Superboy joined back in the day? lol.

It is Curt Swan on the pencils. He recreated this picture in 1961 for a cover of Superman as well. Dare to compare.

As for the similarities, I chalk that up to lazy nemesis creation. Hero fights his own evil twin. Lightning Lad and Lord are brothers and got their powers in the same incident with their sister. Saturn Girl, Queen and Esper Lass are all from the same planet of telepaths. I actually prefer Esper Lass to Saturn Queen, because she’s less of a blatant clone character. As for Cosmic King, I forget his stories. His powers make him a clone foil for Element Lad but he’s versus Rokk. Whatev.

[astro@work]

It is Curt Swan on the pencils. He recreated this picture in 1961 for a cover of Superman as well. Dare to compare.

As for the similarities, I chalk that up to lazy nemesis creation. Hero fights his own evil twin. Lightning Lad and Lord are brothers and got their powers in the same incident with their sister. Saturn Girl, Queen and Esper Lass are all from the same planet of telepaths. I actually prefer Esper Lass to Saturn Queen, because she’s less of a blatant clone character. As for Cosmic King, I forget his stories. His powers make him a clone foil for Element Lad but he’s versus Rokk. Whatev.

I believe Cosmic King was NOT from Braal (where Cosmic Boy and his brother Magnetic Lad originated), so his backstory was a little less duplicitive. This is why he needed an atmosphere helmet.
Saturn Queen didn't become interesting until many many years later when she finally got a little development (but was arguably still a pretty repetitive villain).

[Sutekh]

I believe Cosmic King was NOT from Braal (where Cosmic Boy and his brother Magnetic Lad originated), so his backstory was a little less duplicitive. This is why he needed an atmosphere helmet.

From Venus, 'where transmutation is illegal,' and hence he was declared a villain for giving himself transmutation powers. An interesting story could perhaps be mined from that. Perhaps a form of chemical transmutation is part of the terraforming process on Venus, and he was a climatologist who stole from / co-opted the climate change research to give himself transmutation powers (setting back the world becoming fully habitable by decades?). Perhaps he even had good intentions at the start, to make the individual colonists able to terraform their own planet, rather than depend on machines, but the process was so difficult and expended so many resources just to enhance him that it was deemed unfeasible, and he went through with it anyway, placing his own desires above the good of everyone else on the planet.

Saturn Queen didn't become interesting until many many years later when she finally got a little development (but was arguably still a pretty repetitive villain).

I haven't managed to find copies to read yet, but there was some Action comics tale in which a time-travelling Saturn Queen raised Superman as an infant to be her super-minion, that was apparently really good.

I like the notion that not every telepath is good at every thing. Mentalla and Saturn Queen seemed to be specialists at mental influence / mind control, while Saturn Girl was more about the long-range communication and other stunts like telepathic illusions and whatnot. Some people are great public speakers, some are great singers, some can imitate other sounds and voices, but not everyone knows every single trick, and I like the idea that many telepaths from Titan could just be kind of average 'speakers' telepathically, and that we may have been somewhat jaded by seeing prodigies and specialists like Imra, Eve, Meta, etc. so much, and not 'Bob Telepath, whose range is about 100 yards and definitely cannot dig up repressed memories or seize control of your brain.'

That sort of thing would make the Legion members (and their foes) seem even more impressive if we found out that Legionnaires with racial powers like Phantom Girl, Chameleon Boy and Saturn Girl might be *exceptional* members of their race, highly-trained and at the far ends of the curve for their species, just as Karate Kid and Batman aren't exactly average-Joe humans.

[Thirteen]

I like tying his ultra-powers to the space dragon that he got his powers from. He channels the energy to the might of the space dragon (strength), the wings of the space dragon (flight), the armored scales of the space dragon (invulnerability), the eyes of the space dragon (penetra-vision) or the fiery breath of the space dragon (flash vision). But that's totally fanon.

During the brief post Bierbaum 5YL Legion on the Run/Disguise storyline, when they started calling Ultra Boy "EMERALD DRAGON", I had to scratch my head for a moment before remembering the origin of Jo's powers.

[j9ac9k]

During the brief post Bierbaum 5YL Legion on the Run/Disguise storyline, when they started calling Ultra Boy "EMERALD DRAGON", I had to scratch my head for a moment before remembering the origin of Jo's powers.

Same. It's because his story is a take on Jonah and the whale, so I always think he got his powers from a space whale, rather than dragon.

[kcekada]

Did they introduce Jo after the Moby-Dick of Outer Space story? If so, they probably decided to not user another whale in Jo's origin.

[astro@work]

Same. It's because his story is a take on Jonah and the whale, so I always think he got his powers from a space whale, rather than dragon.

The Emerald Whale really wouldn't have been as catchy as Emerald Dragon. IMO.