Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Choosing a different 21st century Legionnaire

Let's say you're offered the job to write the Legion. The only conditions are:
1) you HAVE to take a 21st century DC hero and have him/her move to the 31st century to join the Legion
2) it can't be any version of Superman, Superboy or Supergirl
3) the character can't permanently go back to the 21st century unless he/she leaves the Legion forever. An occasional trip for a particular storyline is allowed but only if you want to. You are effectively removing the character from any non-Legion book.
4) to avoid cheating, you can't create the character or introduce a 21st century analogue of a pre-existing Legionnaire (a.k.a. no Ferro to replace Ferro Lad this time)

It's completely unrealistic, I know, but it's a fun thought experiment.

I don't even have an answer for my pick yet, I'll have to think about it. But what about you guys?

Oooh, that's a hard one.

DEFINITELY requires some thought...

Alan Scott - Green Lantern,

Captain Comet.

What an interesting thought experiment.

Given that the Legionnaires were teenagers and that there was no super-speed character in the original boot, my first inclination is Kid Flash (Wally West). This would be interesting on several levels. Wally was from the Midwest and, according to one story, had stereotypically conservative attitudes. To wake up in the future and find much has changed would be an enormous personal challenge to him. Of course, his super-speed would add an unique power to the Legion.

Of course, this means he wouldn't grow up to be Flash III, but that's another writer's problem.

Captain Comet's powers come from his brain being 100,000 years evolved from his contemporaries. So having him jump forward just 1,000 years could put him in a place where he would fit in better than his original home.

Wouldn't the fact that he uses the ring disqualify him from membership ?

I can definitely see him! Basically XS but with a completely different personality. If you have two Legion books you could still have both Kid Flash and XS, just like we had both Superboy and Supergirl despite coming from different years.
The only problem I see with Wally is that you would take him out of the Titans.


Well at least you would prevent writers from constantly sprocking him up, so that's a plus :-)

I agree! Just imagine the interaction with Comet Queen !

Mentioning Kid Flash made me think of the other Titans...

Robin/Nightwing or Speedy/Red Arrow have no powers so they're immediately out of the question.

Aqualad could easily work! Easy excuse for a much-needed exploration of Atlantis in the 31st century. Personally I've never found him much interesting but that's no excuse.

Donna Troy wouldn't bring much to the team, but it could be a good excuse to finally stop messing up her origins. Just keep the Time Trapper as far away from her as possible!!! :-)

Starfire makes way too much sense, to the point of risking becoming relatively boring. The funny thing is that, if we still go by the rule of "you need to demonstrate one super-power not duplicated by the rest of the team", her unique power would be the ability to learn languages by kissing people :-)
(not that it's much useful when you have telepathic earplugs, but still)

Raven would be a good choice, interesting mix of powers and the Legion really lacks magic-based heroes. Would be a pity to lose her membership in the Titans, but she could "graduate" from that team to the Legion. Plus it would be an opportunity to see Trigon team up with Mordru!

Beast Boy absolutely would not work. It'd be fun in a "fish out of water" way, but come on with multiple Durlans around what would you need him for?

Cyborg is an... interesting case. Since it's comic books he would have no trouble at all to adapt to 31st century technology, and there's room enough for more than one tech-savvy hero in the Legion... but I'm pretty sure he can get his hands on enough tech to make him as human as he wants, which takes away what makes Cyborg interesting in the first place.

The Titans came up in my thought experiment as well, and I came to roughly the same conclusions, although I'm not sure how much Aquaman/Lad's powers are tied to the Earth, and with the Legion all over the galaxy, I ruled him out. But in the end, for a Titan, my ultimate choice would be Raven, although I really like the idea of Donna Troy.

Otherwise, it was tough. For a Bat-family member, I initially went with Luke Fox's Batwing, but pretty much everyone in Batman's circle doesn't have super-powers in the way that we think of them for the Legion.

So I started thinking around who would be a young character with superpowers that could adapt to a permanent relocation to the 31st/30th century. The character I came up with was....



Cyclone from the JSA!

Good choice! I didn't consider JSA characters initially, but it would be nice to have people directly related to the original super-team active in the 31st century.

Neopavlik suggested Alan Scott, but that's problematic for the ring. What about his daughter Jade, though? No problems with the powers, I can see her getting upset because people keep mistaking her for a Coluan !

I think Jade would make a great choice! Especially since her powers aren't ring-dependent, and she (I'm pretty sure) can be used in space instead of something elemental based.

It would have to be
A) someone I like,
B) who fits the criteria (young, powered, not gadget-based, not duplicated by a current Legionnaire) and
C) someone DC isn't using in their 21st century setting.

So, totally, Kole. Yanked away from the moment of her death during Crisis on Infinite Earths, by a failed attempt to snatch *Supergirl* away from her death in Crisis (oh, Brainy, get over it).

I *should* probably have picked someone more diverse, like Kaldur'ahm/Jackson Hyde, or Empress, or Striker Z or Osiris, but I just love Kole!

I'm gonna say Mary Marvel. It'd give the team a female powerhouse on par with Mon-El, but the source and nature of her powers is different enough that she's not just a carbon copy power-wise. It opens the door to introduce legacies for Black Adam and Sivana which is more novel than yet another Superman/Batman of the XXth Century, and Mary in her civilian ID could make a good relatable POV character to introduce the future to readers who are unfamiliar with the Legion.

As a happy side-effect it also means we'd probably have avoided the crap DC put her through in recent years with the constant corruptions and creepy sexualisation and so on.

Does it have to be the 21st century?

Cause if you can use the 20th century, I'd pick Wonder Boy, the Golden Age Quality Comics character who appeared in National Comics (among other titles). DC has the right to use him as much as any other Quality hero (Plastic Man, Phantom Lady, Uncle Sam, etc.) and they've pretty much wasted his potential. He's like Superboy in that he survived the destruction of his home-world Viro and was brought to Earth. There's a lot of cool ideas that could come out of his story and bring it into the Legion. I'd also think DC would be interested in keeping the name "Wonder Boy" for themselves.

Here's a write up from his first appearance in National Comics #1 (a book I own ) - Wonder Boy debuts in "The Boy From the Meteor," from National Comics #1 (July 1940). Early in 1940, a meteor sped across the skies, alert astronomers tracking its landing area to Chicago, Illinois. Its appearance in the skies worried the shamen of Mongolia and they used it as an omen to attack their neighbors. As the meteor crashed, a young man crawled from the shell. Mistaken for an orphaned youth, he was sent to an orphanage. No one believed his story of his being the lone survivor of the planet Viro. Hearing from news broadcasts that Mongolia was being readied for war, the young boy took it upon himself to stop the upcoming conflict. Jumping over the walls of the orphanage, making his way to the coast and swam to Asia. Meeting up with western officials in Hong Kong, he made his way to Mongolia and ended the conflict. Returning to the US, the newly dubbed "Wonder Boy" roamed the nation, aiding the downtrodden, usually aiding the poor and homeless against ruthless landlords and criminals.

My second choice would be Kid Eternity. The version that was related to Freddy Freeman, but also operated/originated in the Golden Age.

The fun with using him would be that he could conjure up any and all of the other 20th/21st Century heroes that you wanted to feature in a story.

Kid Eternity would be cool, he was my backup choice! We'd have to bring in George Perez for the inevitable Kid Eternity/Infinite Man army of time showdown

I've always thought it would be interesting to have alternate Legions based on Earth-S and Earth-Q inspired by the junior Marvels and Wonder Boy!

I'm not up to date on current continuity so I was thinking of the version of him where he basically is made up of the Starheart (Sentinel) and the ring is only cosmetic. Basically the Johns JSA run version.

The "Starheart" version gives enough of a delineation from Gold Lantern if I'm writing the Bendisboot version and a ~green lantern-ish type would fit in nicely with just about any other version I can think of.
The mythical starheart version also gives me the ability to just have him be a man out of time / force of nature intro.


Other ideas / options :

JLU Question / Rorshack - JLU Question was more conspiratorial than the normal question I've been told so maybe Rorshack as a somewhat nicer ending to the grim Watchman.

Billy Batson - Thunder was basically a stand in for him.


I'd probably want a series or story arc where they team up with different characters for a story arc - mining history to solve a current problem :

Mister Miracle ! Hawkman ! Adam Strange ! etc.

I'm amazingly okay with that. There was an issue of NTT (#39, if I recall correctly) in which Wally gave up being Kid Flash and his membership in NTT. At the same time, Dick gave up being Robin and became NIghtwing. The story was about growing up and moving on--a powerful and poignant story. Unfortunately, DC--being a franchise publisher--never adheres to permanent change.

But, in the scenario you suggest, whichever character goes permanently into the 31st century would have to give up everything he or she knew and adopt a totally new way of life. Can you imagine someone from the year 1021 being permanently stuck in the present day? Now imagine that person is a hero (or what was defined as a hero then). Their entire sense of identity would have to change.

One of the conceits of the Legion is that their concept of being a hero/good guy hasn't changed in a thousand years. This conceit is what makes it possible for Superboy to join them. But in 1021, your value as a "hero" is tied to whatever king or lord you serve. Imagine waking up in a future in which there are no kings or in which monarchs serve only as figureheads. Who serves as your standard for heroism now?

I like the idea of Wally going into the future not only for his power but also because he was raised with stereotypically Midwestern conservative values. If he were removed from all that, how would it challenge him? Would he accept the new ways of being in the world, or would he cling to the old ideas of what's "right"? (If he did, that might make him an interesting villain.)

Generally I love the idea of Wally, but as an XS fan I have to pipe in and say his power is not truly unique

But that's the only quibble I have with that.

This I get behind for obvious reasons, i.e. my blatant favoritism and liking for Kole she had little to return to anyway, except for her infatuation with Jericho...

Ooh, heroes from alternate Earths could be fun. From Earth 4 (the Charlton Heroes Earth), Nightshade and Captain Atom are two of the main superpowered heroes, and while both are kinda adult, either could have a legacy character that gets shunted to the future and becomes a Legionnaire.

Having Dan the Dyna-Mite (having internalized his formerly device-granted power) go from All-Star Squadron to Young All-Stars to eventual Legionnaire could be an interesting Earth 2 option. By the standards of other 'teen heroes,' he's a bit of a veteran, having been a sidekick on one team, and more of an equal partner in the second. He might end up with a smidge of a 'Polar Boy' attitude, having been more of a voice-of-experience-among-the-rookies in his last group, and be somewhat out of sorts surrounded by a larger more experienced team.

For Earth X, it would definitely be a Ray legacy, if only for the light powers, not too common among the Legionnaires (unlike, say, Doll Man or Human Bomb, both of which kind of are handled by Shrinking VIolet and Wildfire, respectively). Although some of the older heroes, like Neon the Unknown, also have potential!

Well, I was thinking about the preboot Legion.

Raven would make a fascinating Legionnaire . . . not only power-wise but personality-wise. She was reserved and formal. Some Legionnaires might think she was standoffish while others would try to get her to loosen up. Can you imagine Dirk making a play for her? Nice knowin' ya, Dirk.


A character with the same name and power was a member of the Legion's distant friends, the Heroes of Lallor. On a pure coolness level, I think it would have been interesting if that character had joined the Legion instead of turning against humanity and dying. In the context of the '60s, transforming into an animal is as cool as any other power. And as a high-profile Legionnaire, he would have found acceptance just as Cham did despite prejudice against Durlans.

As for Gar Logan, like Raven I think he would add an interesting personality to the mix. Gar was fun-loving and somewhat immature; he would really loosen things up. As for the uniqueness of his power, sure, Cham turned into animals but only in appearance. Gar specialized in becoming the animal (albeit a talking green lion or whatever) and probably had much more experience using the animal's natural skills (a lion's ferocity, a cheetah's speed, etc.) when needed.