Favourite Members of the Legion of Super-Heroes - Part 1

[DrNewGod]

LOVE me some Ultra Boy. Able to pull Kryptonian feats when needed, but limited enough to legitimately threaten in a story. Plus he's got a bit of sketch to him that generally gets reserved for the martial-acrobat types.

[Confuzzled]

It's great that even DC has realized that Phantom Girl is one of the LoSH members with the most potential. Needs to be cemented in the front and center.

[Sutekh]

It's great that even DC has realized that Phantom Girl is one of the LoSH members with the most potential. Needs to be cemented in the front and center.

And she's practically exhibit one on the subject of Legionnaires who have story potential baked in. She's able to see into / interact with other dimensions like the Phantom Zone, but we really know bupkiss about the true state of Bgtzl.

Is it a shadow copy of Earth, just kind of same-same, maybe some minor tweakage, like reversed colors or whatever?

A much smaller dimensional realm like Marzal or Azarath?

There was a notion ages ago that it wasn't 'phasing' she did, art to the contrary, but that she was a 4th-dimensional being, which would mean she wasn't passing *through* matter, but stepping around it in the 4th dimension (which would look *very* different to us, like she's sliding around it, or shrinking under it, rather than passing through things). 4th dimensional could also mean that she could be super-humanly strong, since a three dimensional object, even one as big as a spaceship or a mountain, would be as flimsy (and light!) as a thin piece of paper to her! (Clearly that's not the case, canonically, but could make for a fun alternate Bgtzl!)

Are Bgtzlns even *humanoid* in their original universe, or merely adapted into this humanoid flesh-and-blood form for our convenience and comfort? And would Jo know that Tinya's form is not what she really looks like, in her home universe?

Is it an entire alternate *universe,* with suns and planets and it's own Legion of Super-Phantoms that Tinya just didn't bother to tell us about? That could be wild, if Tinya rubs the ring finger of her other hand, and a completely *different* Flight Ring appears, summoning a dozen 'Phantom Legionnaires' to come to her aid!

Is it secretly *the actual afterlife,* and the 'Bgtzlns' undergo some basic name-changing and / or cosmetic tweaking so that none of their living descendants recognize these *ghosts* coming to visit the world of the living, because it's not just our world of flesh and blood that has gone through 1000 years of development, the *afterlife* now also has many scientists, some able to develop advanced tech to cross the veil between the spirit world and the 'mortal' world? (That would be a doozy! "Oh yeah, it's kind of a state secret. We've been coming across for centuries, in mostly uncontrolled experiments and freak accidents, but now we've figured out how to do it with control and ease, only we knew the living weren't ready to know the *truth* about the afterlife, so we pretend to be from an alternate dimensional phase...")

[Timber Wolf-By-Night]

And she's practically exhibit one on the subject of Legionnaires who have story potential baked in. She's able to see into / interact with other dimensions like the Phantom Zone, but we really know bupkiss about the true state of Bgtzl.

Is it a shadow copy of Earth, just kind of same-same, maybe some minor tweakage, like reversed colors or whatever?

A much smaller dimensional realm like Marzal or Azarath?

There was a notion ages ago that it wasn't 'phasing' she did, art to the contrary, but that she was a 4th-dimensional being, which would mean she wasn't passing *through* matter, but stepping around it in the 4th dimension (which would look *very* different to us, like she's sliding around it, or shrinking under it, rather than passing through things). 4th dimensional could also mean that she could be super-humanly strong, since a three dimensional object, even one as big as a spaceship or a mountain, would be as flimsy (and light!) as a thin piece of paper to her! (Clearly that's not the case, canonically, but could make for a fun alternate Bgtzl!)

Are Bgtzlns even *humanoid* in their original universe, or merely adapted into this humanoid flesh-and-blood form for our convenience and comfort? And would Jo know that Tinya's form is not what she really looks like, in her home universe?

Is it an entire alternate *universe,* with suns and planets and it's own Legion of Super-Phantoms that Tinya just didn't bother to tell us about? That could be wild, if Tinya rubs the ring finger of her other hand, and a completely *different* Flight Ring appears, summoning a dozen 'Phantom Legionnaires' to come to her aid!

Is it secretly *the actual afterlife,* and the 'Bgtzlns' undergo some basic name-changing and / or cosmetic tweaking so that none of their living descendants recognize these *ghosts* coming to visit the world of the living, because it's not just our world of flesh and blood that has gone through 1000 years of development, the *afterlife* now also has many scientists, some able to develop advanced tech to cross the veil between the spirit world and the 'mortal' world? (That would be a doozy! "Oh yeah, it's kind of a state secret. We've been coming across for centuries, in mostly uncontrolled experiments and freak accidents, but now we've figured out how to do it with control and ease, only we knew the living weren't ready to know the *truth* about the afterlife, so we pretend to be from an alternate dimensional phase...")

I guarantee you that that is ten times more thought put into Bgztl than anybody at DC has ever put into it, although some of that is, IMO, unnecessary (there's a reason "Keep it simple, silly" is a saying). We really don't need a J'onn Jonzz-esque "true" form for PG when in Bgztl to be retconned into her background after nearly 60 years, again IMO.

The only real look into Bgztl I can remember (pre-Crisis, of course) was at the end of the Ultra Boy/Superboy/Reflecto story (almost right before Levitz took over in the early 80's) by Roy Thomas. PG had phased herself, Superboy, and Dawnstar from 20th-century Smallville to Bgztl to escape some explosion or something, and Bgztl was presented essentially as an alternate version of Earth complete with its own very lame supervillain, the Dirigible Dictator (Roy must have been holding on to that one since he was six).