Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Dawnstar and Wildfire

Is anyone else as sick as I am of these two? Not only do the writers think they have to always be shown together, they are not attractive characters individually. Dawnstar has always been aloof and critical, and I can't think of an instance when she has tried to be friends with any of the other Legionnaires. I remember she was particularly dismissive of the White Witch early on, and was also arrogant in her dealings with Phantom Girl. Wildfire is a product of the 1970s when brash, rebellious superheroes were the rage. Enough. I would not shed a single tear if these two were to go off together and leave room for far more interesting characters. If they have to stay, can't they at least interact with some other characters and can't we be spared the sad sack love angle. ugh.

Amen, Brother. I wish it was them who broke up instead of Shady and Mon. Send her back to her lesbian lover on Thanagar and blow him up once and for all. I'm so bored with seeing his suit explode too.

That just bugs me. He opens his suit a micro-fraction, and creates overwhelmingly ridonkulous anti-matter explosions.

He flips open his face-plate, and he blows up the HQ in an attempt to stop Omega from reaching the Miracle Machine.

And then the suit gets blown wide open, and *all of his energy is released* and a fat stack of jack happens. Even the very much non-invulnerable Saturn Queen doesn't have so much as her hair mussed by an event that should have made the destruction of Titan look like an opening act.

Wildfire is ridiculously powerful. He should be portrayed that way, or not at all, if the writer can't deal with him. Have him go spend some time on Teall, or go teach at the Academy, or explore Qward and found the Legion of Anti-Matter Heroes.

I like Drake, but not when he's around Dawnstar, moping about their sexless relationship. Wah.

Pre-boot, Wildfire was my least-favourite Legionnaire of all time. Re-reading old issues I still have to skip over most scenes to do with him. Something else else about the way he used to be written is just so annoying to me.

I loved his re-invention in the re-boot though and that affection has mostly carried over to this retro-boot version too.

I've always liked Dawnstar. Mainly for her beautiful visual.

I cannot stand these two together though. Their whole dynamic as a couple (if they ever were one? she has never seemed the slightest bit interested in him as anything more than a friend IMO which makes his endless spewings of love and affection for her, and constant following her around, all the more creepy and pathetic) is stale. S.T.A.L.E. I get absolutely nothing out of scenes I read featuring these two. I think I'm at the point now where Paul could do literally anything with these two characters and as long as it didn't involve them acting in this weird, loveless, co-dependant manner I would find it an improvement.

Total ditto with Jim about wishing these were the two who went their separate ways rather than Shady and Mon.

I'm re-reading the Baxter stuff now, and it's a realistic and well-done split that Paul tried to develop between them (though honestly who doesn't like the issues where he followed her to Starhaven). The relationship worked better when it was strained and tragic and heading for a messy end.

Johns wrecked that by having them as a stable couple. So in the intervening years they were able to patch it up and make it work some how. Sure, that's a feel good story (albeit one we didn't see), but now they are drained of almost all their dramatic potential. Saying this as someone who loves Wildfire, she needs to leave him and get them both out of this stale status quo.

There was an earlier thread about this subject. I don't mind them as friends but would still prefer some enhancement in the personalities of both characters. Dawnstar in particular deserves better than to be treated as essentially a faux-New Age burlesque dancer all the time. Give her a decent costume, upgraded powers and/or fighting skills, and SOMETHING to care about other than Wildfire. (Who is, in his traditional persona, a pain in the ass.)

I have to say I was a fan (past tense) of these two in the pre-boot era but, honestly, this new Legion version is not the same.... the dynamic has changed too much in my opinion.

I like Dawny and Wildfire seperately but as a couple ... uh, uh, I'm not buying it this time around. It just feels strained, forced, awkward, whatever you want to call it.
I think the best these two together could ever hope for now is best friends, and hey there is nothing wrong with that.

I certainly agree with the idea of Dawnstar & Drake breaking up, rather than Tasmia & Lar.
sigh
Too late for that now, I guess.

And honestly, most of Levitz's current relationships in the Legion, feel forced and unnatural.
ugh

Get Dawnstar into a decent costume, like cleome said, and get her with Brin, I say.
They'd make a great couple in every cliched way I can think of.

Drake needs to get with Celeste, two energy beings who were once people. They could make lots of little green and yellow balls of enery that could roll around.
Settle a new planet, a gaseous one, and start a new species and live for a million years.

Their is no Celeste in this incarnation.

No, but it wouldn't take much to reintroduce her (or Kent or Kono, etc.) into continuity if a creator was so inclined.

If they bring her back, she should stay a detective, though. Cham needs a drinking buddy.

Can anyone illuminate the history of Dawny/Drake? I've been reading my GDS hardcover, and the relationship felt like it was in its nascience in those stories, mostly with Drake showing an overly protective streak with her there that felt one-sided. I'm extremely unfamilar with era between Cockrum and LSH 284, so it made me wonder if Levitz originated this between them in his GDS era. But someone in the GDS thread said Drake's crush on Dawny started with her introduction. Can anyone share some specifics?

Personally, Wildfire was the first Legionnaire to become my favorite (that has evolved over time), so I really appreciated his tragic romance with Dawny. I'd agree that it's run its course, however, unless Paul can give us new insight and illuminate us about what has occurred between his runs that has enabled them to persevere. I'm always up for a good story, so if Paul can captivate me again with the pairing, I'd be willing to see more.

Well, for starters, Drake trained her when she was in the Academy, and he vouched for her to join the team. That goes a long way towards explaining their connection.

Don't get me wrong: I like their friendship, but I'd like to see them both mature as characters. The romance-that-could-never-be shouldn't be such a defining characteristic.

I'd also like to see Drake either able to make a more human-appearing energy construct (as he was shown to do briefly later in Levitz' first run) or to make some kind of real peace with the fact that he's just not human anymore. I argued in an earlier thread on this topic that it's been a fair amount of time since his transformation. He could become acclimated to what he is now, and not spend so much time obsessing about what he used to be.

^Maybe he'd "acclimate" better if Dawny didn't have that boob window constantly reminding him of what he's missing out on!

Dude, I seriously hate that thing with the passion of a million burning suns. It's one of the things that makes it so tough to get other women to check out superhero comics.

Me: But it's really a great story! There's all this action and mythos and friendship and romance and--

Her: WTF? Why are her damn boobs hanging out everywhere every ten seconds? The Hooters girls look like nuns compared to her! Bleah! How can you read this crap?

Really. We've all stood in the checkout line and seen Cosmo. We all get that you guys dig boobs. Now give the nice superhero lady something practical to wear and let's all proceed with the story, okay?

The early relationship is really kind of creepy in retrospect. Wildfire was her teacher at that dumb Academy and foisted her on the Legion when he was Legion Leader. A great Mike Grell marked her debut. She has been arrogant and dismissive of the other members since the very beginning. Given the teacher/student dynamic, it's pretty gross to think of his obsession with her and his stalkish behavior towards her. I like the interaction among the characters and am bored to tears by couples who constantly go on missions together. In my perfect world, Dawnstar would be retired and Duplicate Damsel would be a full time, regular member.

Honestly, Dawny's not a character I want to see wearing, like, a pants suit or something. As a character visualised by Grell, there's always been a sexy element to her character. I think a character with wings connotes a kind of freedom that would translate to not being uptight about what she wears. Plus, her ability to survive in the extremes of space means she doesn't need clothes for warmth.

That said, I don't care for her current costume. I much prefer her original, classic version. It showed a lot but never seemed as exploitive, probably because that's how we met her.

Dawny's original costume was a classic, I really don't think it would have taken much to update it while still keeping the gist of the original design.

Her new costume (like a lot of the new costumes) is just distasteful. The bit of cleavage she showed before was nowhere near as in-your-face as the tightly bound basketballs that are being shoved through a hole that we get now. I really think it's an ugly ugly look.

I also would like to see her powers expanded on a bit - I don't see why she shouldn't be able to do Flash-level power stunts when she's got the room for it. It would be cool to have a scene for example where she's facing a Khund vessel in outer space and before they've even had a chance to finish commanding an attack, she's disabled all their firing weapons. With her wingspan, it's easy to place restrictions on her needing the space to do stuff like that, but it makes her more than just a tracker (and let's face it, this version of the Legion's women aren't exactly a crew of combat powerhouses).

I do really like Wildfire's new outfit quite a lot, but it is annoying how whenever his casing is ruptured there's no sense of danger to it. Didn't he level the entire headquarters once using his whole power against Omega? Wildfire getting his suit busted seems to be the Legion's equivalent of Red Tornado getting torn apart (I suppose I can see where Meltzer got the idea to make them the same person in that case, lol)

I would particularly like to see Dawnstar more with other Legionnaires. I kind of get a sense that Wildfire is more developed as an individual, but it would be nice to see how Dawny interacts with the other Legionnaires - do Dawnstar and Shadow Lass have any kind of common ground over their strong cultural ties? What sort of relationship does she have with Mon-El when she's one of the few people on the team who can understand what it's like being out there alone in space? We've never really seen any of this stuff explored to the best of my knowledge and she's been around for decades now...

Anything I would have to say was probably just said by razsolo just now.

Dawnstar could be an interesting character, if we ever got to see anything other than the Dawny and Drake show. The two of them have been smothered by their non-relationship. (And, it appears that Blok and Mysa have similarly been paired off, and written out. It's like the Legion Moonlighting curse. People hook up, and promptly drop off the face of the earth...)

I'm still not all the way through the Baxter run, but the point I've gotten to, Dawny's experiences on the Exile world have driven a wedge between her and Wildfire because of her attraction to Jhodan. This is only exacerbated when he changes forms. Does it change significantly from this before the end of Levitz's run?

Set nailed it---the trend towards coupling Legion members up and then dropping them, or having them only appear together. Blok and White Witch, Duplicate Damsel and Bouncing Boy, Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad, Wildfire and Dawnstar, (previously) Mon-el and Shadow Lass. I find that tedious and consider a major flaw in Paul Levitz's writing.

So many of the guys who write comics and TV, don't know what to do with relationships.

I think, if it wasn't for the hit, 'Lois and Clark', showing that Supes COULD have a real relationship, he'd still be single in the comic world.

The problem with Dawny's old look was that they took it too far with the slit all the way down and open to the point of ridiculousness.

The exaggeration, on her and others, is what's terrible.
The artists who draw them have gotten to the point of no respect for the characters.
This last couple of issues showed lots of crotch and butt shots, some without the rest of the body or faces.
I hate the whole attitude of comics toward women.

What abot all this silly stuff about sexy costume in women?
In all the histoy the women always have wanted to be sexy for the men. Its' physical, It´s natural.
Now we are in a culture that also values the sexy thing for the men.
If they do not like the suits of this legion, since that there make a supernun legion mutants of the space who defend the morality and the good customs.
It would sell very much this title...
I Like Shady, Dawny, Jeckie (without the mask) costumes.
It's time to Saturn Girl back to her pink bikini!

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I would particularly like to see Dawnstar more with other Legionnaires. I kind of get a sense that Wildfire is more developed as an individual, but it would be nice to see how Dawny interacts with the other Legionnaires - do Dawnstar and Shadow Lass have any kind of common ground over their strong cultural ties?

We don't really know much about Starhaven's culture, do we? Have they ever even set a story on her homeworld? Does she often see other citizens of her world in other places, or do they practice a more benign version of the isolationism that Cham's homeworld is known for?

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What sort of relationship does she have with Mon-El when she's one of the few people on the team who can understand what it's like being out there alone in space? We've never really seen any of this stuff explored to the best of my knowledge and she's been around for decades now...

I've seen Dawnstar/Mon-El in a couple of fanfics, but that's it. They would be a natural as friends, though.