A while ago one of my intrepid correspondents asked if I'd do an article on the Composite Superman. I said sure why not. (Blithely.) I soon ran into trouble with that: I don't have any Composite Superman stories in my possession, and for all I know I've never read any. But I'm not going to let that stop me.
Some of Superman's villains have this background of being just a normal sort of guy who randomly gets superpowers and becomes an enemy of Superman because reasons. The Composite Superman is one such. And I don't really need to address most of his deal (although he's got a pretty good look! Half Superman, half Batman, but with green skin! Why does he look like that? Shut up, that's why), but the thing that makes him on-topic for this blog is that he gets the powers of pretty much the entire Legion of Super-Heroes, and uses them to fight Superman, Batman, and Robin.
A Superman villain with the powers of the Legion is, on one level, a neat idea. (In the sense of, the Legion is very powerful as a group, and someone with all their powers would be a worthy adversary for Superman.) It's also a lazy idea. (In the sense of, instead of coming up with a new idea for a villain's abilities, we could just borrow from these characters over here!) And, my main point, it's also dismissive of the Legion.
The Legion of Super-Heroes are more than a long list of code names, real names, home planets, and superpowers. They're characters, with individual histories and personalities, who have existed in a context for a long time, and are not just ore to be mined for someone else's story. For the World's Finest writers to ignore all of that and copy the powers down into their new throwaway supervillain speaks to the role and status of the Legion in DC continuity.
For that matter, it also undercuts the Legion's theme of teamwork, since the Composite Superman has all the powers in one person. He doesn't need to act as a teammate.
And that's what I have to say about the Composite Superman.
I don't want to make too big a deal of it. It's a small deal.
Except that it's been over a decade since DC stopped publishing stories about the retroboot Legion (although there was a brief period during which Brian Michael Bendis did whatever that was he thought he was doing), and during that time DC showed that the Legion really wasn't a priority for them, so, whatever size deal it is, it's disheartening. Legion World turns its lonely eyes to Joshua Williamson.
Labels: Articles, Legion of Super-Heroes
