The Legionnaires: Gear

Man, Blogger's being a real crankosaurus these days. It's taking me forever to load these images.

Here's a Legionnaire whose greatness can be summed up quite concisely.

Gear, a.k.a. I.Z.O.R. of Linsner, created by Tom Peyer, Tom McCraw and Scott Kolins

Gear was a member of the reboot Legion in the DnA era. Linsnarians are living-machine kinds of people, with humanoid-looking skin wrapped around a technological interior. (In fact, I read something about the creators of the Legion animated series using Gear as a model for how Brainiac 5's appearance and powers would work on the show.) It was in this capacity that he was useful to the Legion: he tended to act as support staff more often than as an actual superhero. He was, nevertheless, a full-fledged Legionnaire.

We saw what a cool character Gear could be in the Robotica storyline. The robots had conquered Earth, and the Legion figured the only solution was to attack Earth with Warworld, a planet-sized weapon sitting out in Pluto's orbit. So a bunch of Legionnaires went out there to fire it up, including Gear. They found, though, that the people who put it there, the Justice League, had left a security system behind to prevent just that: a set of virtual simulacra of Justice Leaguers who promptly attacked the Legion. Here's Gear's reaction:



Are you loving it? It’s the only time I remember seeing a superhero try to fast-talk his way out of a fight. Usually superheroes are Type A personalities who can’t stand not to win every confrontation they have, but Gear doesn’t waste his time with false pride. Specifically, I like the tack he takes: “You want me to fight you? Sorry, pal, not my department. I'm a noncombatant. The union would be all over me.”