This is how KK came back. And how he can come back again, providing they haven't run out of his cell samples and Jeckie does not object.

Let's face it, we're cloning sheep now. Surely we're cloning Legionnaires 1000 years from now.

So, you're worried this will take away suspense or whatever?

Not so. Like now, people in the future will feel many different ways about cloning.

Some would want it done, some wouldn't. In some cases, families could attempt to block it... plus donated cell samples are finite (and must come from the original source, not a clone).

There's hundreds of scenarios to make it intersting.

So send in the clones.

Maybe the Carggites had something to do with pushing the technology along.

Cloning people is relatively easy. Cloning people and instilling the clones with the same memories/personality/skills as the original would be extremely difficult. Though of course there's precedent in the Legion, only the clones weren't stable.

One interesting issue is whether the clones would actually be the people cloned, or just a duplicate of them. Since it's confirmed that in the DCU that people have souls that survive their death, to really bring a person back you would need to bring their soul into the new body.

I would imagine that would be a lot of people's objection toward cloning in the future. Are these things soulless, is it just a copy, etc.

I think it would make interesting reading.

What happens when we go all Dark Circle and make fifty Karate Kids?

Send in Giffen to whittle 'em down?

A 50 issue series...one KK per issue. Keith would ne in his glory, andit'd be his longest series in a while.

Agreed. We could, if we cared to, clone human beings today, but those clones would just be photocopies of the bodies of the 'donors,' and wouldn't necessarily have any of the personality or life-experience or memories of the original.

Without some means of migrating the mind to the newly grown body, cloning someone to replace them is little different than buying another dog that looks just like the old dog and giving it the same name. It's a mockery, and, if anything, kind of disrespectful to the original.

Karate Kid, in particular, would be pointless to clone. He's a guy, who spent a lifetime developing awesome skills. His DNA doesn't carry that.

Ferro Lad and Chemical King, both declared 'mutants,' would be clonable, but they would be new and different individuals, and I think it would be disrespectful to them to treat them as disposable not-people to be cloned and recycled whenever they die, valued only for their power-sets.

Even with the technology to transmigrate the personality and memories of someone from a failing body to a younger clone, the physical structures of the brain itself change as we grow and develop, and that wouldn't happen in a clone that was force-grown to adulthood. The brain wouldn't perform the tasks that represent the mind in the same manner, and the 'person' would end up being different, possibly taking years before their shiny new brain had adapted to the way they got used to 'doing things' in their old comfortable 'broken-in' brain.

The body would not only have to be cloned, which, frankly, is 20th century tech that should be as relevant to 30th century life-extension / medicine as the abacus is to computer programming, but actually duplicated, down to each cell and axon (which would be simplicity itself, using molecular fabrication technology, which we could have in a century, let alone 10 of them), causing the duplicate body to have a brain precisely 'adapted' to one's own configuration, every freckle and scar in the same places, etc. Then the mind could be transmitted into the new body, and would probably not even notice the momentary 'interruption in service' as it settles into it's new home, and the old body is disconnected from the network and allowed to go into brain-death.

It should be relatively easy, by 30th century scientific standards, if the writers wanted to go that route.

And, even if science can't do that (say, the person died 10 minutes ago and their brain was dead, and the 'data' unrecoverable), Mysa could possibly waggle her fingers and capture the soul, and shephard it into a newly grown body using magic, which scoffs at technological limitations.

I would imagine, even among magic-wielders that the issue would be very controversial. Just because something "can" be done doesn't mean that it "should" be. It doesn't mean that it "shouldn't" be either, but I could see where it might become a huge point of contention.

I don't like this simply from the Star Trek/Wars perspective. It would be far too easy for a government to clone themselves an army.

Though this raises some interesting possibilities for future Legion enemies. I wonder if Earthgov would clone Earth-Man if he were to turn a new leaf.

See??? Already so many interesting issues being raised...!

The Dark Man was a clone. Do we know who was responsible for his creation?

I always assumed that the Dark Man was cloned by Tharok himself.

I would love to see Tharok regain alpha-threat status by doing something silly like sending off dozens of clones to engage in different plots. Just one clone of Tharok, for instance, created the League of Super-Assassins. Who knows what the others could be up to? Cloning an army of Daxamite-powered operatives (outfitted with lead-suicide-implants that he can remotely detonate if they break their programming)? Replicating the procedures that created Wildfire, causing one of the Dark Men to become 'Dark Wildfire?' Tons of potential for shenanigans, all spawned from Tharok's mad genius, able to go in many directions at once, through his clones independent lines of research.

The most successful stories about clone tech I've seen tended to use it in morally ambiguous ways. Not sure how well that would work here --in what's essentially a utopia-- but it's intriguing.

Anyway, after the awful "Superman X" in the cartoon, I suppose it's hard to go anywhere but up. Really, that made me want to track down the Marketing geniuses responsible and pummel them soundly with a big fish.

I could see it generally only happening in two instances;

1) the deceased is the beloved of a powerful magic-user who is willing to break the rules to bring back the departed.

2) the soul was already stolen prematurely through magical means, and the magic-user could see it simply as restoring what was already broken, with magical divinations perhaps even backing up that decision.

So, Mordru (or someone else) might rip someone's life out and entrap their soul as a power-source, and Mysa (or whomever) could declare that this was a desecration of what magic is meant to do, and that the unnatural death of the invidual by these means makes it okay, in this specific instance, to restore the stolen soul drained back from Mordru to the healed body of the prematurely deceased.

But in cases such as the deaths of Ferro Lad, Chemical King or Karate Kid, these deaths weren't magical 'cheats.'

Kinetix death at the hands of Mordru, on the other hand, could indeed by such an event, as her soul / life-force appears to still be intact, contained now within Mysa (and leaves lingering the possibilty that a later writer could have Mysa release that energy, porportedly containing the magical essence of that entire lost universe, to recreate that universe entirely, and not just resurrect Kinetix).

From the Legion of Super-Heroes Sourcebook volume 1, page 53, written by Paul Levitz and Steve Crow.

The technology of cloning has been perfected by the Dark Circle to a degree otherwise unknown to the 30th century.

Golgoth is the apparent leader of the Dark Circle and a mysterious master of cloning.
Nothing is known about Golgoth or his origins other than he might have had ties in the past with Zerox, the Sorcerers' World.

Also there is Clonus the Controller from The Wanderers series.

Transferring the original being's mind into a clone is easy! Just blow yourself up and have your blood ooze into a waiting clone, like Ra's Al Ghul did!


Stupidest story I ever read.

Another problem is that cloning on a practical level would be made redundant by the widespread use of technology/robots. Fertility and 20th century dieseases would be largely eliminated unless pollution is major problem.

Though I like your idea of Tharok using clone armies. If it was coupled with Computo army (Computoids?) it would be an excellant exploration of science-fiction themes.

I do think if Levitz could spin the Karate Kid who went back in time to die in Countdown into a Dark Circle story in the 31st Century, it would be a pretty awesome way to tidy up that loose end and give us a great story.

Lash, I demand you co-write this story with Paul! Eryk can be editor.

Please inform Paul on FB that this will be happening ASAP!

Why is so hard cloned heroes in the 31st century, when Stealth clonend Vril Dox so easily in the 21st century....

Who knew that this thread would result in Nighty cloning all of us in 2017 as can be seen in the Who's online section?

Okay, but all my clones are pacifists and don't participate in any Clone Wars.

(To quote Brain Guy from MST3K, we only kill out of personal spite.)

I think Clone Huffs would have been a much better movie.

Kill the Jedi
We would if we could see out of these helmets. If you knew exactly how we'd turn out, why couldn't the tailor get it right?
Right. Like the gruel we have to eat at mess time. Sure, it's cheaper showing that in CGI than giving us a menu to pick from. But did anyone ask us?
Will you kill the Jedi?!
Kev clone gets salads, you know.
He never does! Well he was always the emperor's favourite.
Darth Pet we call him
But why can't we get cushy assignments like guarding the Death Star?
Yeah, like you're ever going to have to do anything there.
The Jedi are here you idiots!
Well I never. If you're going to be like that about it...Clones march off in huff.
Gaaaah!

Although, Anakin had many more huffs than most clones ever did.

His tantrum comment of "I'm going to hold your breath until your face goes blue" should have been a bit of a warning.

Thankfully, Kylo Ren is there to continue that tradition.

I suppose one thing that would be more disappointing than that feeble villain would be clones of him.

Ooh, that guy. I just want him to mysteriously go away and never be mentioned again, like that kid on Married with Children who was so unpopular with the fans that the writers had him sent upstairs to his room one episode and then he was never seen or mentioned again, for the rest of the series...

Rogue One was awesome, at least!

Back to the roots of movies George Lucas lifted from So better than the Force Awakens that for parts couldn't see past other Star Wars movies.