posted
Hmmm... who are my least fave Legionnaires?
I'll start with a couple I used to hate but eventually came around to -
* Monstress - DnA did wonders with this character and then gave her one of the best Legion deaths ever (and there have been a lot of good Legion deaths). * Wildfire - From my least favourite Preboot member to one of my favourite Postboot members. The Retroboot one is somewhere in the middle.
Now for my least favourite Legionnaires -
* Quislet - Don't find him funny. Don't like his power. Preferred him when I thought he was a little alien piloting a ship - the energy thing doesn't do it for me. * Kono - I just found her really annoying with an unappealing visual in all the stories I read featuring her. * Inferno (Sandy) - Fine as a villain/antagonist toward the Legion, but all wrong as a Legionnaire. * Shikari - a very poor man's Dawnstar.
And my #1 Most Hated Legionnaire of All Time -
*Superman X - I disliked A LOT of the decisions the show-runners of that cartoon made, but this annoying, redundant character was the worst of the lot.
(Dis)Honourable Mentions -
*Brainiac 5 and Saturn Girl - good characters but I would like them a whole lot more if they didn't appear so damn much!
From: Australia | Registered: Dec 2003
| IP: Logged |
Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
posted
Jeepers! This newly bumped thread totally needs a mention of Earth-Man!
And Harmonia Li might be thrown in as well!
From: Liberty City | Registered: Jul 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by armsfalloffboy: Absolutely, without question, Thunder.
Runners up: Dragonmage (crappy diversity is still crappy), Catspaw.
Point One: I agree 100%. Hate Thunder, hate, hate, hate. We shall never peak of her again.
Point Two: I disagree 100%. Both SW6 and reboot Dragonmages were less-than-adept, but I was intrigued by the chance to watch them grow into their roles, a la Bart Allen or Kon-El. Besides, Jin was cute.
Point Two, latter: Cawspaw, meh. Even with an ex-boyfriend and hints of a back-story, she didn't catch fire. She just wasn't relatable. Even at his most feral, T-Wolf was brave, loyal, and tragic. April was a punchline without a set up.
quote:Originally posted by Blacula: Hmmm... who are my least fave Legionnaires?
I'll start with a couple I used to hate but eventually came around to -
* Monstress - DnA did wonders with this character and then gave her one of the best Legion deaths ever (and there have been a lot of good Legion deaths). * Wildfire - From my least favourite Preboot member to one of my favourite Postboot members. The Retroboot one is somewhere in the middle.
posted
I guess I got the joke with Lobo. He always made me laugh, although I didn't care much for his Legion cameo.
I also like Shikari much better than Dawnstar. She's more interesting and less of a cliche, imo. But, I liked Sneckie, especially as the Naga, and Gear and Zoe and Monstress.
I think my least favorite female is the Kund, whatever her name was. I hate when women are portrayed as slaves to men and delight in manipulation. Veilmist.
My least favorite male would have to be Earthman. :ick:
-------------------- 'In the twinkling of an eye' I'll be dancing in the sky!
Come, join me!
From: Salem, Oregon USA | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Least favourite male: Earth-Man. Even the Khunds had more rationalisation for their membership than him.
Least favourite female: I HATED Jeckie before she became Sensor Girl, but as Sensor Girl she quickly became one of my favourite Legionnaires. I will say least favourite is Glorith, only because I really don't think she has shown she has what it takes to flourish in high-stakes or tense situations.
-------------------- Read the alternate adventures of the Legion after Legion of Three Worlds! postlo3w
Registered: Nov 2009
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Power Boy: Harmonia Li makes me cringe ...
I just don't know her well enough for my pupils to dialate. Is she officially a Legionnaire yet? It would be nice if whomever is the Legion leader at the time would (on panel) welcome new members or assign them to orientation. That would eliminate months of guessing. For some reason I always picture Tinya giving noobs the HQ tour.
Even as a thirty-something, Mordru treats him as an equal.
He's like the Legion's Mary-Sue-Boy.
-------------------- "So different from the Original Superman of Krypton!"
Registered: May 2010
| IP: Logged |
cleome46
or you can do the confusion 'til your head falls off
posted
[snip]
quote:Originally posted by Invisible Brainiac: Threeboot Ultra Boy gets my vote. Here we have a jerkass character with an overinflated ego who had little/no character growth whatsoever. I deal with enough nassheads like that in real life, thank you very much!
I agree with this, but I think that Waid meant for him to be obnoxious and unlikeable.
-------------------- Hey, Kids! My "Cranky and Kitschy" collage art is now viewable on flickr. Drop by and tell me that I sent you.
From: Vanity, OR | Registered: Dec 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
Wasn't that more Shooter than Waid? Waid's Jo was shallow, but Shooter's version was more creepy and stupid and self loving. IIRC.
-------------------- 'In the twinkling of an eye' I'll be dancing in the sky!
Come, join me!
From: Salem, Oregon USA | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged |
Set
There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met.
posted
Shooter, IMO, wrote Jo as if he had some sort of man-crush on him. The bit with Imra suddenly falling madly in lust with him felt very out of left field, and then Jo being 'punished' for the not-really-affair by getting an issue of highlight as he rounds up and handily schools various low-level thugs who got turned away from the UP Young Heroes recruitment trials, while being explicitly 'blamed' for what didn't really happen by the Legion leader, felt like serious woobification* to me.
*Note: I have no idea what woobification is supposed to mean, but, in this case, I mean that he was pretty much not to blame for what happened (or, pretty much, *didn't* happen, since he never even got his belt undone), and Garth flipped out on him a bit unfairly, and he just shrugged and took it, rather than throw it in Garth's face that he was abusing his position as leader to give crap assignments to someone that he was pissed at. The whole set up seemed designed to make Jo look like some long-suffering martyr, dragged unfairly into some other couple's messy breakup, and plugging away and keeping his head down, rather than add to the strife by attempting to defend himself, while Imra, Garth and Lyle were different levels of jerks. (That's my least favorite aspect of woobification. Not that one character is fluffed up, but that, inevitably, one or more other characters have to be dragged into the mud in the process...)
Waid's Jo, IMO, came off as more of a simpleton with some 'issues.' (Like losing control of his powers if he lost his self-confidence, or felt the team, his 'family' or 'gang' was splitting up, or that someone was threatening his manly man status, in the case of Supergirl.)
I didn't care for either of those portrayals.
Shooter felt like he was Mary-Sueing him up. Waid felt like he was turning him into the village idiot.
There's a whole hell of a lot of fine characterization to explore between deconstructing someone to the point of them being an unlikable bouchedagge with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and fluffing them up into always-right-BatGod whose crap doesn't stink, and I'm not thrilled when writers can't seem to stay out of those extremes.
[ January 08, 2012, 05:54 AM: Message edited by: Set ]
Registered: Aug 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
Cosmic Boy had always irritated me, he's such a smug git with a stupid haircut and selection of bad outfits. Bah...
-------------------- "Tempus Fugitive" the final part of the Adventures of Dream Boy series, set in the Three-Boot Universe. Read it only in the Bits o' Legionnaire Business Forum.
From: here, more often than not | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I just skimmed through this thread and found it interesting which Legionnaires people dislike and why.
My initial reaction is to say there's no such thing as a "worst" Legionnaire since the premise of the team has always been that every member has something valuable to contribute (yes, even Chuck and Lu and Tenz).
Still, some characters were ill thought out by the writers (Sneckie, Thunder), but blossomed under later writers (Monstress's death scene, as mentioned above), while other characters were meant to annoy us or to challenge our thinking about what it means to be a Legionnaire (Magno).
Other members were added for story purposes and were never intended to be permanent Legionnaires (Veilmist, Bloodclaw, Luthor and Mxyzptlk's descendants). In mind, I have to separate these from the so-called "real" Legionnaires.
Among the "real" Legionnaires, my least favorite was Quislet. I appreciated Levitz's desire to create truly alien Legionnaires, but Quis came off more as a joke to me, a Herbie-like sidekick who spouted one liners and zipped away. He was never given a well-developed personality (but that was true of most of the Legionnaires under Levitz's writing).
-------------------- The Semi-Great Gildersleeve - writing, super-heroes, and this 'n' that
From: The Stasis Zone | Registered: Jul 2003
| IP: Logged |
Set
There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met.
posted
quote:Originally posted by He Who Wanders: Among the "real" Legionnaires, my least favorite was Quislet. I appreciated Levitz's desire to create truly alien Legionnaires, but Quis came off more as a joke to me, a Herbie-like sidekick who spouted one liners and zipped away.
Giffen seems to have a gift for making joke characters (like Ambush Bug or Lobo or pretty much his characterizations of the entire Justice League International) that appeal to a section of the fanbase.
I feel that Levitz may have been attempting to tap into that sort of well, but simply failed to bring to the table whatever Giffen brings that makes such characters work for some people.
By the time he got serious with Quislet, and started dealing with the somewhat grim situation with Teall, and with his teaching Wildfire how to make an energy body, I think it was a little too late as Quislet had already been typecast as the annoying gadfly or 'the Scrappy,' and trying to deepen / broaden the character beyond that just annoyed fans who would rather, at that point, not have seen him at all.
With a team of characters the size of the Legion, each of whom is *somebody's* favorite, each new character added has an increasingly uphill struggle, as they are both competing with twenty-some other main characters (and dozens of compelling secondary characters, like R.J. Brande or Rond Vidar or Gigi Cusimano or whomever) for attention, but also could be seen as 'stealing' page-space away from characters that the pre-existing fans bought the book to read about in the first place.
Still, it could be worse, he could be Comet Queen, who was felt to have such an uphill struggle that she was partially lobotomized in an attempt to garner her some sympathy...
Registered: Aug 2006
| IP: Logged |
Hyperpath: Email this page to someone!
Printer-friendly view of this topic | Subscribe To Topic
![[Dragonmage]](graemlins/Dragonmage.gif)
![[Timber Wolf - Animated]](graemlins/TimberWolfa.gif)
![[Disgusting]](graemlins/puke.gif)
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Power Boy]](graemlins/PowerBoy.gif)
