Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Spaceopoly Kill This Thread X: The Sixth 24-Hour Thread

At least she's seeing some more use now.

Guys, do yourselves a favor and invest in the New Warriors Omnibus. Lots of great Firestar use there, including her sisterly bond with Namorita.

Thanks, I'll check it out. I've always thought Firestar was a great character.

I could never get into the New Warriors. The only character I liked on the team was Richard Rider.

I always liked Justice too, if only for his look and his powers.

LOL Funnily enough, Rich was the one character on the team that I hated.

Loved Justice. I thought Nicieza gave him a really good character arc, which Busiek totally ignored when he brought Justice into the Avengers.

Busiek had a nice Avengers lineup, but I don't know if he did a good job actually developing them.

He did a terrible job, in my opinion. And I think his lineup was too familiar for most of his run, mainly because Perez was particular about which characters he wanted to draw.

Choosing a team lineup based on who is easier to draw is a terrible way to go about it.

It wasn't that Perez found them easier to draw, it's that most of them were characters he had drawn during his first Avengers run in the 70s. It all felt very elitist to me, and is one of the many reasons I hate the Busiek/Perez Avengers run.

This reminds me of the Threeboot. It annoyed me that all the characters were Adventure-Era stalwarts. As if later-era characters weren't good enough to be part of this version of the team.

Yeah, sometimes I worry that the Threeboot did so much damage to the Legion that even today the shock waves are still being felt.

I don't think the threeboot had much overall impact at all. The retroboot being done so poorly had a much bigger negative effect, imo.

I was willing to give the Threeboot a shot, but after the first two years I got so disgusted I never even finished it.

The good thing about the Threeboot is, even if it was bad we can sweep it under a rug as it took place in an alternate reality.

The Retroboot, on the other hand...

This may very much be a familiarity thing with the Avengers book. But if I had to pick an Avengers team, the Busiek/Perez one wouldn't be a million miles off what I'd have gone for. There's enough coming and going within the book to switch a few back and forth. Which they did a bit of themselves.

Yes, it's a big gun elite, and it doesn't necessarily pick up on many of the nuances and heritage over the years. Yes, it's a Morrison JLA style line up of big guns. There are undoubtedly just as many reasons why it's a pain for a lot of Avengers readers as seeing the big 7 again was a pain for a lot of JLA readers.

But I bought it like a shot.

I'm not that big a fan of the Avengers, so I can't comment too much on it.

With the JLA though, there's a big reason why the Big 7 are the Big 7 - iconic, powerful, experienced.

But I like my JLA to be more than just the 7. There are so many other great characters out there in the DCU who are good enough to be JLA members.

Agreed. The Big 7 need to be there to some degree (not necessarily all at the same time), but others can be a part too. But a JL without enough classic members just isn't the same (especially with too many new characters at once. JLDetroit, I'm looking at you).

The Avengers and the JLA are very different animals in my opinion.

When the JLA was created, four of the members had been around for 20-25 years, two were legacy heroes, and only one was a recent creation. Later joiners, as much as they may have been liked better than the Big 7, were always seen as secondary members, something underscored by the founders-vs.-newbies battle in JLA #200, which may be the best JLA issue ever published. That's why I think stuff like JLDetroit and JLI never quite gelled.

When the Avengers was created, none of the members had been around for even two years! Captain America didn't come back and join the team until issue #4! Then, in a bold stroke, the lineup was revamped as early as issue #16, with no founders remaining. The team was constantly reshuffled for the next three decades, before the reactionary soft reboot. That's why I think the Avengers works best as a fluid, amorphous entity that's bigger than any particular members.

Historically the "Big 7" were a pretty arbitrary group. DC really just threw together all the super-heroes they happened to be publishing in 1960, less Green Arrow who they apparently forgot about. If history had been just a little bit different, it's easy to imagine Robotman having ended up a founding member rather than Martian Manhunter, for example.

Yeah, but all except for J'onn were icons, either because of their longevity or the legacies they were carrying on.

The only icon in the Avengers was Captain America, until recently, when the Marvel movies cemented Iron Man, Black Widow, and Thor into icons. That's part of the reason Hawkeye came off the worst in the first Avengers movie.

The Hulk has some iconic status due to the old TV show, but he'd have been a flash in the pan if not for Peter David saving his book from cancellation in the late 80s and then much later by the casting of Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk in the Avengers movie.

I wouldn't say that Aquaman had any particular iconic status. As far as I can tell, his series was pretty much kept alive because he was created by Mort Weisinger. Any iconic status he has is largely because of his inclusion in the JLA and then (as a result) the Super Friends, rather than the other way around.

Similarly, I think a case can be made that Hawkman or Atom were roughly as iconic as Green Lantern.

Good point about Aquaman.

Oddly enough, Aquaman, like the Hulk, was saved from oblivion by Peter David.

I disagree about Hawkman and Atom being roughly as iconic as Green Lantern. The Silver Age Atom's main precursor was not the Golden Age Atom, but rather Doll Man, who is best remembered for being beautifully drawn by Lou Fine, not for any particularly memorable stories. The Golden Age Hawkman was a bit too esoteric to be iconic, and the Silver Age Hawkman was a space-cop with wings; any iconography they have lies, in my opinion, in the wish-fulfillment aspect of their ability to fly. Whereas Green Lantern, in both the Golden Age and Silver Age versions, is the ultimate wish-fulfillment character, possessing a ring that can do (almost) anything, limited only by contrived and rather unimaginative weaknesses to either wood or the color yellow.

Green Lantern had certainly been more prominent in the Golden Age. Alan had his own title, which only five JSAers did, and that includes Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman.

Yeah, I definitely think it's fair to say the "Big Five" of the Golden Age were Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, and Green Lantern. And GL's golden age popularity was part of what explains why he was the second character to receive a Silver Age reboot. But I'm still not convinced that, had the JLA been put together a year earlier, he'd be thought of today as significantly more important character to the DCU than any of a number of other Golden Age characters that were rebooted for the Silver Age.