Do you think Mon-El is a wasted character?

[caj]

The problem is he was near death when Supeboy put him in the Zone because of the lead poisoning, and Brainiac 5 had to give him the serum almost immediately after he was pulled out in their time or he would have died. In every version he was dying so its kind of hard to just keep pulling him out here and there

Someone please remind me why Mon-El was the only Daxamite that would get lead poisoning. I don't remember for some reason. Thanks in advance.

[Sutekh]

Someone please remind me why Mon-El was the only Daxamite that would get lead poisoning. I don't remember for some reason. Thanks in advance.

AFAIK, all Daxamites share that weakness. It was used against them in Invasion! and in the Great Darkness Saga. (Although in the latter case, it was not permanent, the way it was for Mon-El, for reasons that remain unclear.)

[JThree]

Don't think Mon-El has been used properly in many years. The animated series, didn't even include him. And the recent Supergirl and the Legion of Super Heroes made him the villain. He just needs to be done right.

Sutekh, what does AFAIK mean?

--jthree

[Sutekh]

Sutekh, what does AFAIK mean?

As Far As I Know.

But whatever you come up with will probably be funnier.

[Zero Hunter]

Someone please remind me why Mon-El was the only Daxamite that would get lead poisoning. I don't remember for some reason. Thanks in advance.

Lead is super toxic to all Daxamites. With lead being so common on other worlds its one if the reason the Daxamites are rarely off Daxam. Andromeda had to wear her transuit (the clear protective suits the Legion wore to survive in space) all the time outside of her quarters during the Reboot era. When her suit was breached she almost immediately started getting deathly ill from lead poisoning, and was only saved with Brainiac 5s anti lead serum that he came up with.

[Doctor Know]

Thinking about it, lead is a pretty lame weakness. At least kryptonite is radioactive and double dangerous because Kryptonian’s absorb radiation constantly. Good and bad.

B5’s lead cure serum renders the weakness a non-issue for most Legion incarnations. For Mon-El and Andromeda. Sodam Yat has to wear his GL ring forever, to not succumb to lead poisoning he sustained during his fight with Superboy Prime.


Daxamites need a new weakness.

[Jim Kelly]

Present day readers seem to be against arbitrary weaknesses in their super-heroes; yet present day readers seem to be also against over-powered super-heroes.

Kryptonite itself doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Somewhere along the way we assumed it had to be radioactive. Why does its radiation only affect Kryptonians? In a chain reaction, in SUPERMAN 233, all Kryptonite was changed to iron--actually it should have been lead. Radioactive decay turns elements to lead eventually. So there's a certain logic to it.

Maybe the Guardians of the Universe want Kryptonians to be almost powerless under a red sun and vulnerable to Kryptonite. Maybe the Guardians want the people of Daxam kept to their own solar system for fear of all the lead in the rest of the universe.

That's one way of limiting the number of super-powerful beings who could dominate the universe if left unchecked.

[caj]

AFAIK, all Daxamites share that weakness. It was used against them in Invasion! and in the Great Darkness Saga. (Although in the latter case, it was not permanent, the way it was for Mon-El, for reasons that remain unclear.)

Lead is super toxic to all Daxamites. With lead being so common on other worlds its one if the reason the Daxamites are rarely off Daxam. Andromeda had to wear her transuit (the clear protective suits the Legion wore to survive in space) all the time outside of her quarters during the Reboot era. When her suit was breached she almost immediately started getting deathly ill from lead poisoning, and was only saved with Brainiac 5s anti lead serum that he came up with.

Thanks to you both. I was confused because Darkseid had used the entire Daxam population in TGDS.

[Sutekh]

Thanks to you both. I was confused because Darkseid had used the entire Daxam population in TGDS.

Yup, and Element Lad wiped out the large group attacking Earth after the rest lured them down into the atmosphere and he single-handedly raised the atmospheric lead content a fraction of a percent, causing them to drop from the sky in agony. (Which, if their lead allergy was used consistently, means that every single one of them would be stricken *for life* with the same degenerative condition that Mon-El had, and either face a lifetime of taking Brainy's cure to survive, or have to be exiled to the Phantom Zone! Ditto Ol-Vir, whom he stopped by turning his shirt into lead, which caused him to fly screaming in pain, when it should have just given him a case of 'about to die.' You are definitely not misremembering that it's been used inconsistently, and Mon-El seems much *more* allergic than the average Daxamite, since he's the only one that has been shown to have a lifelong chronic condition from his exposure to lead, while other Daxamites have more acute (and painful!) reactions, but 'get over it' afterwards without having to be sent to the Zone or use Brainy's (temporary!) cure for the rest of their lives.)

On the other hand, I am okay with the idea of Mon-El having an unusually severe allergy, compared to the majority of his people, since I kind of like the idea that not every member of a Legion-era race is identical, and particularly that Legionnaires of powered races like Rokk and Imra and Reep might be *exceptional* members of their race and have developed skills and traits and 'stunts' that not every Braalian or Titanian or Durlan can do.

There are a few cases where that's explicitly true. Nura has foreseen that she will become the High Seer of Naltor some day, which suggests that she's one of the top tier precognitives, and Dawnstar's people don't all have wings, and she's unique in being able to track and survive in space, IIRC, making her far above even the average *winged* Starhavenite.