Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes We're Getting a Freakin' Legion OMNIBUS!!!

Oh definitely - the beginnings of the relationships and early story arcs, just amazing.

Revolt of the Female Legionnaires, though.... Yeesh! That one was kind of radioactive! EDIT - Just for clarification, radioactive in a HORRIBLE sense!

Agreed, that story is horrible.

But it that one's radioactive, then a later similar one, the Thora one, is downright thermonuclear.

Oh my. I'll keep a lookout. I'm starting on the second Omni tonight.

To me, the Thora story ends up being hilarious. It's just so bad and has aged so poorly that I can't help but laugh. It feels like 17-year-old Shooter's mom told him to go clean his room, so he wrote a story where Supergirl is so horrified at the mere thought of Brainy cleaning floors she snaps out of mind control.

Well, I have to admit to laughing at the over-the top nature of the girls blowing away the boys' statues in the earlier story, but the rest of it is just soooo horrid (Femnaz? REALLY?), so I'm really curious to see what cranky Shooter has in order.

What cracks me up is how over-the-top toxically masculine the Femnazi women are.

also the planet name. Femnaz, really? Lol

Yeah that was a Jerry Siegel story... SMH

LOL

So I'm there. The Thora story is in the third Omnibus.

And yeah, its pretty horrible on a lot of levels. Lots of head shaking on my part - not only for the portrayals of the female Legionnaires, the reason why Supergirl breaks out of Thora's control but also the really bad resolution at the end. WTF, Shooter???

That being said, I was fascinated with the fact that the idea of Violet having size control powers in both directions and Luornu having the Duplication power is introduced in 1968.

Maybe its just the whole Femnaz thing from the earlier issue, but I found that one to be more problematic (which may just be due to the current political climate) but they're both really horrible stories. Third place goes to the story where the girls basically go to the Red Tent Quarantine World.

One thing I didn't mention before about the Thora story is that I think Shadow Lass came off particularly bad in it, to the point where it might have permanently damaged her status with fandom.

When she was introduced in the second Fatal Five story, she was awesome. Then, in the Mordru story, she accidentally set free the most dangerous sentient in the galaxy. And her behavior in the Thora story appears to have been the final nail in the coffin.

During the 70s and first half of the 80s, she'd be under-used to an absurd extent, culminating with (what I consider) a horrible make-over by Giffen.

In the second half of the 80s, the make-over was undone by Steve Lightle (Gods bless his soul,) and she finally showed some of the old grit towards the end of the Baxter Era, after Mon-El was fatally wounded by the Time Trapper.

But in the end, the stifling paternalism of the 5YL Era (Ayla & Vi excepted) and that horrible burned-alive scene during End of An Era gave her Preboot iteration a most disgraceful exit.

To reiterate, I blame the Thora story.

Well, I agree about the Shadow Lass intro being awesome in the Fatal Five story. Lots of good stuff there (except for the pining for Brainy).

But, yeah, she isn't written well in the next two stories for sure.

I dunno why Shooter takes this anti-female focus all of a sudden - it's just very much in your face here after having a lot of decent team stories for a year or so. It comes off bad.

Also, as I understand it, Shadow Lass was initially intended to be African American, but they changed her skin to be blue, cause that's how DC rolled in the 60s. And 70s. And.... ah nevermind.

I'd say the "created to die" problem had a much more negative impact on Shady than any single bad portrayal.

I also heard that the origin that had been intended for her was nearly identical to the one eventually given to Tyroc. Either way, I'm glad they decided to make her racially ambiguous, because that way anybody can interpret her as being coded in their own way. For instance, I'm Latinx, so I regard Shadow Lass as a coded Latinx.

And, quite honestly, I liked her pining for Brainy in her introductory appearance.



That, too. Not to mention Levitz compounding the problem during the early part of his 80s run, just because of a stupid error that a DC colorist made! It's that kind of fan-wank that makes me consider Levitz way overrated (and I was once a tremendous fan.)

So are we saying "created to die" due to the fact that she was shown (with Ferro Lad and Chemical King) as a fallen Legionnaire in the Adult Legion story?

The lack of diversity in the Legion has, to me anyway, always been its achilles heel. In a lettercol shortly before her introduction, a writer specifically calls out the lack of AA representation in the Legion and the editorial response is basically "watch what we're doing soon!" Because yeah, the original idea (as I understand it) was that Talok was going to be a planet colonized by people of African descent to explain the lack of diversity in the books (even in the crowds), and for Tyroc they just changed it to an island.

I get that it was the sixties and that DC didn't want to jeopardize its distribution network, but its a horrid look, and it wasn't addressed very well even through the 70s.

Yep. The fact that her first appearance was as a dead Adult Legionnaire heavily shaped the perception of the character. Even after the Levitz twist to save her from that fate in #300, there were still letters along the lines of "she's destined to die, so why not just kill her already?"

On diversity, there's three basic options. You either a) change the racial characteristics of existing characters; b) retcon in a bunch of additional diverse characters; or c) invent some artificial reason for the lack of diversity. All three approaches have their problems.

The "planet colonized by Africans" actually reminds me a lot of what they did with Starhaven.

They do all have their problems, yes, but I still favor "Retcon In a Bunch of Additional Diverse Characters."

Agree, I thought the same about Starhaven not long after I clicked the Post button.

And it seems like option b (I'll call this the "Kid Quantum" option) is the less horrid approach. You'd think they just would have started slipping in diverse folks in the background and a couple new characters without issue, but I'm approaching 1967 mentality with a 2021 brain.

Exactly. Pop culture from the distant past is what it is. That's why I think the Legion is best treated as an artifact from another time. I say to DC, just give us the "Classic Legion" and stop trying to make a square peg fit in a round hole.

LOL - "Distant Past" - those issues are only a year or so older than me, so that's a pretty accurate description!

I'm no spring chicken myself. But that's all right, because I wouldn't go back to being 27 or 17 or 7 for anything! (Okay, maybe 27...)

Yeah, totally 27 - with some specific knowledge to do a FEW things differently!

Yeppers.

"If I knew then what I know now...et cetera..."

So I finished the third Silver Age Omni. But as far as I can tell, there's a big gap from a collections perspective from the last story (Action 392) to the next Superboy issue in a collection which seems to be 234. There's a lot of good content from Superboy 271ish where the Legion starts in the backups, to the 230s, but as far as I can tell there is no collected edition of any of those stories.

Can anyone confirm?

EDIT - I confirmed myself. THere are the editions from the late 90s that have these, seems to be Volumes 10, 11 & 12, but Amazon doesn't make it easy to confirm. It would be great if there were cheaper options!

Yeah, the Omnibuses are basically replacing the long out-of-print DC Archives (as I recall there's 13 total), but haven't yet covered them all, and the recent Superboy and the LSH hardcovers basically pick up from where the Archives left off, so there's going to be a gap there.