Oh!

Apparently yesterday was this blog's 20th anniversary! Thanks to Paul of the Legion of Substitute Podcasters for pointing it out.

Still going strong!

Coming Up

I am preparing a post about the Legion of Super-Heroes' greatest enemy. I expect this post to push back the boundaries of suprmetrics by at least a little bit. We'll sell you the whole seat, but you'll only need the edge!

Everybody Stand Back. I've Lost My Emerald Contact Lens of Ekron

So I figured, let's try something. Pick out a Legion of Super-Heroes comic at random and see what's in it that I can write some kind of article about. So I reached into the stacks and pulled out Legionnaires #42. It's got Kinetix on the cover, in her kitty-cat look, being blasted by Mysa the Hag. Power... ...And Loss! (Written by Stern and McCraw; art by the Moys and Carani.)

Okay. Let's see what's going on in here. Title is "When Strikes the Sorceress!"

Basically, Mysa had previously sent Kinetix out to get the Emerald Eye of Ekron for her, but Kinetix failed to do that, and now Mysa wants to punish her, so Mysa brought a Legion cruiser containing Kinetix, her family, Live Wire, Triad, XS, and Invisible Kid to the Sorcerer's World. (Admirably limited dramatis personae!) There's a confrontation, and some fighting, and eventually Kinetix, her mother, and Mysa have an argument about some fantasy BS that ends with Kinetix being returned to her original form and powers, and everyone being magically sent home.

One thing I noticed about this issue, and the first part of the reboot in general, is that, there are a lot of women wielding power recklessly. In this story, Mysa, Kinetix, and Kinetix's mother Azra do eventually resolve their situation, but only after Mysa abducts seven people into considerable danger. Kinetix's own desire for power is always portrayed as a flaw. Elsewhere in this run, Saturn Girl's powers are always being policed in one way or another. Phantom Girl's mother and President Chu are both ruthless politicians. Shrinking Violet's tenure as Legion leader is compromised by her takeover by the Emerald Eye (itself a female-associated artifact). Andromeda's career as a Legionnaire is almost completely negated by her hateful ideas!

Meanwhile, there's no such negative association with male authorities like R.J. Brande or... well, actually, yes there is with Leland McCauley. So it doesn't all go one way.

The other thing about this comic is that it's got some chewy superpowered tactics to discuss. I love this stuff. Anytime you've got a team of superheroes and a problem, I want to try to work out what they can do to solve it. For instance:

- Mysa attacks the Legion with lightning, and Live Wire absorbs it harmlessly, astonishing her. "This cannot be!" Do some homework, Mysa

- Invisible Kid goes invisible immediately on their arrival, so Mysa doesn't even know he's there in the first place. He's therefore able to get Kinetix's family out of immediate danger. This is the thing about illusion powers: they work best when your opponent has no idea that they're facing illusion powers. Maybe he shouldn't call himself "Invisible Kid"!

- Mysa imprisons the Legionnaires in magical bonds, which XS tries to vibrate her way out of, but there's something else they could have done: what if Triad had reunited to a single (imprisoned) self, and then retriplicated? Would she then have two selves free? I think it was worth a shot

Things like this are important for teams like the Legion, where each individual hero is primarily a team member and not a solo hero. They need to know how to work the combinations to be effective; otherwise, you've just got a bunch of specialized hammers looking for specialized nails.

So that's what I got out of it. Good comic!

The Legionnaires: the Walk-Ons

Entropy Kid; Radius Lad; X-Ray Girl. Created by Brian Michael Bendis and Ryan Sook.

Bendis and Sook's fourboot Legion of Super-Heroes had, among its qualities, a large cast of characters that left many characters underdefined. I can't guarantee that every well-established Legionnaire actually got a line of dialogue over the course of the series.

Among the characters who were shortchanged were three who did nothing more than show up in crowd scenes. There's nothing in the text of the comics that tells us anything about them, but there they were, and some information has leaked out anyway. (I remember there was all kinds of speculation about who the skeleton was in the green containment suit! "Could be Chemical King! Or Infectious Lass!") Here they are.

It seems that Ryan Sook did reveal something about their superpowers, at least. X-Ray Girl can make things transparent at a touch. Radius Lad can receive and utter any broadcast signal in the galaxy, and this can be more or less useful depending on the nature of the signal. And Entropy Kid can control the rate of decay of matter. So there you have it.

Will we ever get to see these Legionnaires in action? At the moment you'd have to say it's not likely. I don't mind them existing, though; my philosophy in these matters is 'more is better'. Especially since they're obviously nonhuman; there's been too little of that in Legion comics.

New Book Review

 I reviewed Jean M. Twenge's Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents―and What They Mean for America's Future at my other site; please check it out if you are of a mind to.

Hey, wouldn't it be great if I wrote something about the Legion of Super-Heroes one of these days? It'll come.