Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! What went wrong with Jo and Tinya, post-Zero Hour

I was just thinking about the difference between the reboot and the animated versions of Winema Wazzo, and it gave me an idea as to why Jo and Tinya's relationship in the reboot continuity was (in my opinion) such an utter failure.

From the very beginning of the reboot continuity, Tinya felt that her mother was trying to control her and prevent her from making her own choices. We see this as early as Legionnaires #0, but also, for example, in Legionnaires #23, when Winema forcibly drags Tinya home from the club. By joining the Legion-- which, as I recall, was against her mother's wishes-- Tinya was trying to express her independence (as any teenager would want to do).

But even after becoming a Legionnaire, Tinya was not free of her mother's stifling influence. I remember one story, somewhere around LSH v4 #70, where Cos, Tinya and other Legionnaires are meeting with Winema. Cos makes some sort of request which seems fairly reasonable, but Winema becomes furious and yells at him, and Tinya is reduced to tears.

So Tinya had to find some other way of escaping Winema's control. And what better way to do that than by falling in love with a boy who Winema would have utterly hated? Given Tinya's status as an upper-class quasi-princess, Jo was the last person in the world that Winema would have wanted to see her with. In Legionnaires #27, when Tinya and Jo kiss for the first time, it's right after Jo teases Tinya about letting her mommy pick her boyfriends. This suggests to me that, at least in part, Tinya initially pursued a romance with Jo as a way of getting back at her mother.

The trouble is that they hardly had time to get to know each other before Tinya "died." They were deeply in love but hadn't even had the chance to discover whether they were compatible or not. So when they were separated by death and, later, Tinya's intangibility, they developed this possibly unfounded belief that they were soulmates, star-crossed lovers, etc., even though they barely knew each other. They believed their love was so powerful as to transcend death, and that as a consequence of this, they had to get married at the first available opportunity, which they did.

When they were reunited after Legion Lost, their marriage deteriorated pretty quickly. I think this is because they rushed into it way too fast; they became spouses, and parents, before they had become truly comfortable with each other. There were a lot of causes that contributed to the decline of their relationship, such as Timber Wolf, and Tinya discovering that she was really a Carggite (stupid retcon). But I think the key factor was that they got married too quickly and for the wrong reasons.

Does this sound plausible?

...Sadly, what you're saying makes sense--and I'm a heavy post-ZH fan, in addition to a major Jo/Tinya fan.

In all honesty, though, I enjoyed their romance in that continuity. While yes, they may have pushed into it too fast and had some problems, I do think they would have done fairly well together. They were working on some issues, and actually showed promise.

Then came the Blight, which totally ****ed up Jo. Here, though, we saw another example of their love, and how its strength was able to pull Jo back from being Blighted.

And before they could work through these NEW issues, we had Legion Lost. Jo and Tinya were seperated--although the former believed, for some time, they were still together, and having her torn away from him so unexpectedly may have been part of what caused him to kiss Saturn Girl--a point that must be noted for later.

Meanwhile, Tinya was half convinced Ultra Boy was dead...and she was pregnant with his child. Alone and unable to use her powers, for the safety of their child, she was taken in by Timber Wolf, who developed an attachment to her--and, in her mourning, she may have started to develop an attachment to him, too.

When they were reunited, it seemed as if things might get back to normal. Until Jo learned that Timber Wolf was so close to Tinya, who in turn learned about the kiss between Jo and Imra.

We had finally started to get some more resolution on this topic--but not much.

And then it was cancelled.

I think that, if the series had still been given time, we might have seen a Tinya/Brin fling...but I don't think it would have lasted.

I don't really consider their relationship a failure--its just that it was an unfortunate casualty of all the events the Legion had to go through. Between the White Triangle, Emerald Violet, being tossed to the 20th century, Blight, and Legion Lost, they kept being hit by drama after drama and not being given a chance to sort out the consequences of each event.

Tinya was, what, 15 when she married Jo? I don't care what culture or century you're from, that's completely whack. I appreciated the romantic sentiment behind Jo's willingness to marry a ghost girl he couldn't touch, but I still found it distressing (though not quite as deeply disturbing as Imra and coma-puppet Cos).

But apart from Cub (who might have been okay if allowed to develop normally), the thing that bothered me most was the fact they never resolved Tinya's suspicions and jealousy about Jo and Imra, or Jo's suspicions about Tinya and Brin. It was just dropped at the conclusion of the series like a hot potato and covered up with an implausible and (to me) unsatisfying happily-ever-after ending.

Later, in the Teen Titans special, there were some hints that all was not well between them when Jo pointed out to Tinya they were no older than the Titans (like he was having second thoughts). I think it's all for the better that Waid is giving their relationship a rest now. If they do ever get together again, it will have to be after 3boot Jo falls out of love with himself, which could be a long, long time from the looks of it.

The cartoon flirtation was cute, though.

One thing that always struck me about the reboot is how few romantic relationships there were. There were:

Saturn Girl-Live Wire (and sometimes Cosmic Boy)
Apparition-Ultra Boy (once he divested himself of Spider Girl)
Kid Quantum-Cosmic Boy

And... that's it, right? I mean, there were crushes and flirtations and dates and close friendships, but no other relationships that I remember.

That's not really a surprise considering how young they were supposed to be at the start of their run.

To my mind, quite a few of the threeboot Legionnaires actually appear older now than their reboot counterparts at the end of their run.

I'm thinking Cos and Brainy and the Ranzzes in particular. Of course some of the new versions like lyle are younger.

Add Star Boy and Dreamer to the list. It was probably the least tortured post-ZH romance even after they started hinting at Thom's death.

Ayla and Cham were almost a couple. I was very annoyed that that was never really followed up on.

According to this page , Tinya and Jo were 17 and 18 when they got married. Which is not quite as bad as if they'd been 15 and 16, but still rather creepy.

I saw most of the DnA LSH in the 18-21ish bracket, having slightly aged up from their starting point of 13-14ish. Jo always seemed slightly older than the others, from the outset.

I didn't see reboot Jo/Tinya as healthy as preboot, but it did strike me as a bit more real, if less comfortably so: a young couple, hitched too early, each with more issues and baggage. I too was disappointed that the whole jealousy stories were never followed through on. If only DnA had another half-year to wrap things up...

As much as I love Tinya, I always thought the whole post-Zero Hour story would've gone much better if they'd left her dead, with the memory of her being what spurred Jo on to do better things.

As things turned out, the cumulative effect was that they've gone from one of the Legion's "have to be together" couples to one that I'd just as soon they not be together.

Interesting analysis, Sir Tim, and very plausible, indeed.

The only thing I can add is that Jo and Tinya quickly developed what seemed to be a codependent relationship. This was particularly evident in LOST, when Jo flipped out (as Saturn Girl was afraid of him doing) once he learned Tinya was not really there.

This dependent quality of Jo's may have been present all along, and may be a reason why their relationship had troubles: Jo simply wasn't the man she thought he was. Despite his rebel-without-a-clue persona, Jo was deeply troubled. He apparently never had a maternal figure that he could rely on (again, from LOST) and therefore didn't have a clue about how to have an adult relationship with a woman. (Which is doubly understandable since he wasn't an adult at the time.)

Tinya may have been the more independent of the two. After all, she spent a year -- while pregnant, no less -- hiding from her mother's very powerful resources. But she, too, was just a girl in search of herself.

I had hoped to see them both mature once Cub was born, but this didn't happen. DnA rarely touched on this plotline, and when they did, it was to portray Jo as a jerk indifferent to fatherhood, or to focus on Cub's peculiar abilities. Alas, no other plotline from that period had so much potential that was squandered.

Note also Tinya's (flashback) "flip out" in Damned (which B5.1 indicated had been a regular occurrance on the slo-journey back). "Codependent"'s probably accurate.

(Worlds #6, actually)

I'd outright disagree there - with the big Robotica fight, Jo & Tinya weren't actually reunited until the end of TL #14. Then, in #15, he's playing with Cub - or trying to, since Cub wasn't comfortable around him yet. Then, in #19, we see that Tinya's begun to cut Jo off from decisions about Cub, reiterated in #21 when he confronts her about it and makes it clear he's far from indifferent, and he rushes right in along with Tinya at the end of #23.

Then, of course, the trainwreck that was Foundations (from #26 on, #25 was alright, but the sudden cutting off of two plotlines from there still makes me think there was something editorial going on there, probably to do with "Superboy front and centre," doubly-so since it was their first TL story not launched from Worlds), and once that was done, there was the Giffen issue and their run was cut short three issues for... some reason..., and the Cub plot was the casualty of that decision.

Thanks for the correction about LEGION WORLDS # 6, Reboot.

I'll have to reread those issues to remember why I thought Jo was indifferent. It could be because the plotline was cast aside. ("Trainwreck" is an apt description for the later period.)

What happened in that flashback? I haven't read that issue. (I dropped the series somewhere around v4 #112 and didn't start reading it again until The Legion #7.)

I completely agree about the codependence. The irony is that if you believe my analysis, Tinya originally went after Jo as a means of establishing her independence. And he made her less independent than ever.

I wish that instead of staying dead, Tinya hadn't been killed in the first place. Did her death accomplish anything other than providing some momentary shock value?

Apparition...well, she was missing Jo. A lot.

Frequent "I want my Ultra Boy!" tantrums.

Which was how B5.1 put it, yup. He couldn't decide whether the general "dull slog" or Apparition's "IWMUB tantrums" were worse.

Rereading it though, it's ONLY that five issue period from #26-30 that are really trainwreckian. #31's kind of an exception whatever way you look at it, because Giffen's fingermarks are all over that issue, not just the art, and #32-33 were decent. I really want to know what happened there...

Well, it did provide an excuse to wrap up the Phase plotline from L.E.G.I.O.N.

...in a way that completely disregarded the earlier resolution they had, back in the last issues of L.E.G.I.O.N.

And they randomly assigned one of Apparation's weird gem-medallion things to Phase.

They retconned that five seconds after they did it though.

Don't know about "randomly" (and if you look, Winema was always drawn wearing one too).

Good points all around (sorry, I'm lazy with quotes, so please bear with me)

Like some have observed, Tinya WAS more independent - in Legionnaires 78, Jo was gonna tag along on the mission with her, but she told him to stay behind - "It's enough that you want to be there for me; you don't actually have to be there all the time." She also mentions that they'd been having problems, and that it was an "exercise in trust" - I guess Tinya had realized by then that they had to get used to not being joined-at-the-hip - the Blight invasion was just really bad timing.

No, I don't really think they did. It's been stated offically--both in the comics and in the lettercolumns--that the pre-ZH Legion still existed, it's just that their timeline had been torn from existence. Or something along those lines. We had Superman remembering the earlier version of the Legion, remember, back when the post-ZH Legion was trapped in the 20th century.

Take a look at the L.E.G.I.O.N. series (I read all of it recently, and was looking for the medallion specifically). I'm fairly positive Phase was never shown with the gem. In the future, Apparition and Winema were shown with it, yes--but L.E.G.I.O.N.'s Phase never was until she made an appearance in LoSH.

You miss my point - I wasn't saying that all prior 20thC LSH stuff was wiped (Valor #1-11 remained intact, for instance, while #12-23 were wiped). What seems to have happened is that they did the Enya thing in something of a panic since they couldn't keep using the Glorithverse Tinya when there would be a post-ZH Tinya, and then in the time before R.E.B.E.L.S. #0, they looked again, went "oh crap" and wiped the thing and thus kept her amnesiac instead.

LSH #97, page 8, panel 3:

Taptree: "Years ago, she materialised on Cairn with no memories. Over time, she began to sense that the talisman was important, but she'd lost it, so we traced it to Earth." Implying she lost it fairly early on.

And can I point out that she didn't necessarily have to be visibly wearing it the way Apparition did - it could have been in an inside pocket of her jumper or something. Then, first visit to Earth, it falls out her pocket.