Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Race and the Legion...

So this has come up in various threads lately, so I thought it might be worthwhile to have a thread dedicated to it.

So, for various historical reasons, at the time the Legion was created, nearly all of the members were white. Today, that seems like a bit of a problem. So how do we handle it? It seems to me we've got three basic options, none of which is all that appealing.

1. You change the races of various Legionnaires, ala the threeboot Star Boy. But in a medium that's so heavily visual, that's kind of difficult to do, without changing part of what's appealing about particular characters. Plus, you open up a whole can of worms over whether or not a character's race should affect the character's personality traits.

2. You add in a bunch of new, non-white characters, ala the post-Zero Hour team. But the Legion is already pretty crowded with members, and adding in more than just a few token diversity members risks taking membership slots or at least panel time away from the "classic" members. Plus there's the fact that relatively few recently created Legionnaires have really gained the acceptance of the fanbase in the way earlier members did. And, unless we're talking about a rebooted continuity, if you suddenly sick a bunch of new non-white characters in the original Legion, you've still got the problem of why it was mostly white for all these years.

3. You come up with some excuse why the thirtieth century, or at least thirtieth century heroes, are mostly white. Maybe a virus wiped out most non-caucasians in the twenty-fifth century, or maybe the meta-gene occurs predominantly in white people. Or maybe all black people isolated themselves on an island or something, ala Tyroc's first appearance. But it's hard to do something like this without slipping into something borderline offensive and not in line with the optimistic future that we want the Legion to portray.

So, what do you guys think? Are there options I've missed?

Skin color logically would seem to tend towards brown. I don't see too many black parents having lighter skinned children and mixing being what it is, there's seems only one direction for this all to go anyhow. I also seem to recall SF stories that blackskin were be less susceptible to radiation, so again it would seem, white skin is the out of order here.

We should probably face it. Legion is white because of sales, not good science fiction. Lack of pigment is the anomoly.

Not too much culture has been written in voice dielect for Legion. Cultural characterization has been slim. Basically they were white skinned, written white, even the green, orange and brown ones.

I suppose if skin color is to homogenize to brown, it's just as reasonable the culture will homogenize also, much moreso in the next 1000 years than in the previous, at least on Earth. But would it be recognizable to us, the readers? Doubtful.

If they rebooted and made it very clear that this was exactly the same LSH as in ADV 300 with the exception that not one of them were "white," I wouldn't bat an eyelash. It was their behavior and ideals that made their characters, not their skin color.

I identified most with KK because he was most like me, but it wasn't his skin. It was his lack of a "super" power that made me want that character to be given special status.

As I mentioned earlier, I think Ferro Lad should be black, and it was direct bigotry(financially motivated) that lead to him being white. Plus, other than some hand shots, in the old continuity the only face we ever saw was Douglas Nolan's in SLOSH #300, and he certainly could have been black. In fact I think he was. But his hands have always been drawn white. FerroLad should be black, that's what Shooter wanted. Although he's dead in this version so........and Douglas went into an alternate timeline.


Also....I havw always been of the mind that the Legion should have a huge cast.

They are basically defending an entire galaxy(or is it a Universe)...

The Legion has always needed bases on more planets and more members.

I think that is something Waid worked on nicely.

Side Note: Where are all the Adult SuperHeroes in the 30th Century?


Other than that, while I am definitely in favor of bringing back the old Legion(especiall if it's from around the time of the great darkness saga), I have no problem with some of the characters from the newer Legions being brought in. It just so happens that most the ones that would likely be brought in, would fix some of the demographic issues...as well as fixing the problem of too many humanoids.

I mean let's start with FerroLad.
Tyroc
Jacques

Then from the Newer Legions...XS, Kid Quantum.

It's really not a problem now...

Then you bring in some of the non-humanoid forms...

Gates, Tellus, Quislet.

I don't think they should change the skin color of established characters unless there is a good reason for it(like in the case of FerroLad). Especially if it's the old Legion.


Introduce new ones rather than messing with someones favorite character.

The Legion also needs more Asians....that Demographic is way under-represented, especially in proportion to their actual population%.


It's also needs more characters with Red, Yellow and orange skin.

Just needs new stuff.

It's a conundrum that's for sure.

I'd take out option #3 straight off the bat - unless the idea is amazing then it's going to come off as either stupid or offensive.

I used to be a big proponent of option #1. I think I even wrote a letter to DC in the early reboot asking why Triad or Vi or someone hadn't been rebooted as an Asian character considering how few of them there've been on the team over the years. But after seeing white preboot Thom in JSA and black threeboot Thom in LSH I've started to rethink the idea. As EDE says, comics are a visual medium, and when you change a character's appearance that radically they start to seem more like a whole new character, rather than an alternate universe variant. And that can only be very frustrating for fans of the original character.

Maybe it's only because I became a hard-core Legion fan with the reboot (where option #2's method was used so prominently) but I think thats' the best method. XS never seemed out of place on the team to me and now I consider her a top-tier Legionnaire (one of those members where it seems 'wrong' when they're not there). Kid Quantums I and II and Dragonmage also seemed to fit quite easily onto the team to me and I liked seeing them mix it up with the other more classic characters. So that's probably the option I'd choose.

DC has so many Gorram Crises that frankly, I don't think anyone would notice if suddenly Starboy or the like were black in the "Old" Legion.

I think it was established that superheroes didn't exist until RJ Brand resurrected them (with the exception of the Heroes of Lallor).

I agree with SB about not changing the race of existing characters. That might come off as an awkward attempt to shoe-horn racial diversity into the Legion without really trying to hard. Also, you risk putting off fans who can be put off by a simple costume changes. Introduce new characters with new abilities and then make room at the table even if it means cutting back on the original casts lines (they'll survive). And more important, once they decide to add more races, they need to stick with it. I always felt Tyroc had the everything it took to be one of the GREATS if they'd had committed themselves to that end.

I disagree about Tyroc.

There's just something wrong about an angry black man 1000 years in the future.

Put me down as being against changing the race of established characters. I'd prefer to bring in new characters from varied cultures, and phase out old ones. I know some people would be upset about missing one of their favorites, but as long as the newbie was well written, and worthy, then it could be fine.

The Invisible Kid example is a tad extreme because Lyle died, but replacing him with Jacques was an excellent way of filling a void AND expanding diversity. Replacing Saturn Girl with Tellus was cool, because he was SO different from her, and she was elsewhere, fine.

I would approve of that being done with more of the classic Legionnaires. Which ones? Tough call. It'd have to make sense....

Another note... by the end of the preboot, the Legion's universe was very, very diverse. Dawnstar and Tyroc were no longer extreme stereotypes. In fact, they had very interesting new personas, like them or not.

The reboot is a whole other subject, but the core Legion looked pretty much the same as the preboot one. But it was a reboot. That's different.

Same with the threeboot.

It could become clumsy to try and explain the cast whiteness with a backstory; it becomes contemporary social commentary, which I don't think has worked that well when it's been too direct.

Changing races is okay for a limited number of characters. Currently, we have Thom as the black guy, Vi and Val as the pretty-much Asian looking characters, depending how they're drawn. One blue, one green skin. We're missing Hispanics, all the Earth aboriginal peoples and non-humanoid aliens.

It would probably be easiest to add diversity gradually, with current members splitting off (like Sun Boy), retiring or, if they have to, dying. In the meantime, the regular supporting cast could become very diverse.

Apart from it not corresponding to my sense of a positive future in which all races are equal, I don't really think about the lack of diversity within a given story - maybe because I'm a white person. What I have noticed, in comics generally, is how WASPish the names are. Even the futuristic Legion names strike me as quite anglosaxon.

I'll take #2. We've seen changing the race of heroes is unpopular for the both races involved.

Many already critcize legacy characters who are black. Here is where I think Gear succeeded. A black android!!!

I think it's possible to have a very large cast of characters. Maybe not all members mind you. Supporting cast is fine with me.

Asians. Don't they make up like half the world? You are telling me in a thousand years there are going to be just two asians on the team.

I'd throw some old minority characters into the mix. XS, Dragonmage, Gear, Tryoc, Jacques, Quantum Kid. How cool would it be to see the PC Legion have the ZH young members join?

EDE, also to comment on one of your other posts from another thread.

Robert A. Heinlein used lots of minority characters in his sci-fi stories.

I know "Starship Troopers" main character is Filipino Juan "Johnnie" Rico.

This is in 1959. Pretty impressive and outside the box IMO. Heinlein was also alluding to race in many of his books via alien races, etc. A decade before marvel did something similiar with mutants in the X-Men.

His characters were far from stereotypes also. Taken from Wiki

"In The Star Beast, a harried African bureaucrat is sympathetically portrayed as the behind-the-scenes master of the world government's foreign policy, while several other (presumably white) officials are portrayed variously as misguided, foolish, or well-meaning but parochial and prejudiced."

Damn, that quote about Star Beast reminds me of Colin Powell.

I'm partial to option 2. Add new characters.

The 'classic' Legionnaires are what they are, and, generally, for better or worse, that's white.

*Some* of them, I think are pretty easy to bend. Karate Kid becoming more Asian in features fits the character concept (since otherwise, he's just another of those 'American Ninja / Samurai / Kickboxer' movie cliches that were so painful), Cosmic Boy has always had a hispanic or even asian look to him, even with the blue eyes, Ferro Lad being black also fits the original concept.

Garth has always been Irish/Scottish in appearance, so it would be jarring for me if he changed. (And in my fanfic, I had Ranzz be a 1000 year old corruption of the 'Ryans.')

Turning Projectra into a snake was just cringe-worthy. I'm fine with snakes. Introduce a snake, just leave Jeckie the hell alone. She's been through enough!

Given that the majority of the world is brown (hispanic / middle eastern / east indian), black (african) or yellow (asian), white should be a serious minority by the 30th century. White skin has always been a minority in the past, and is only becoming more of one as time goes on. As the races mingle, I would expect the 30th century people to be uniformly darker skinned with brown eyes and black hair.

One thing I've always liked about the Legion is that even if it was a 'white boys club,' it included some of the only brunette characters in comics. A vast majority of super-heroes seem to be blondes, with the occasional redheads and black-haired heroes. Brown hair, like Colossal Boy and Triplicate Girl and Ultra Boy, was pretty rare.

I was a fan of Kid Quantum II, and wouldn't mind seeing XS show up again. The team doesn't have to have a sudden influx of 'minorities' to start moving in that direction. It doesn't have to be all at once, and there doesn't need to be some sort of 'formula' or 'quota' applied, where the writers sit down and say, 'we have 25 members, and 8 of them can be white, and the others have to be other colors...'

Heck with that noise. Artificially adding 'colored' characters according to a formula is as racist as not having any in the first place, IMO.

I'm fine with the majority of UP races being humanoid, as so many worlds seem to be descended from Earth in the first place. The problem becomes when the artists show hundreds of different aliens in the backgrounds, but none in the team. It begs the obvious question, 'Why don't the floating fish people have any heroes? Do they suck? What about the bird-lady pushing her egg? Are her people all cowards?'

With the arrival of truly alien supers in the Baxter era (the Gil'Dishpan supers, for instance), as well as Tellus, I was pretty impressed that they were 'getting there.' But them, crash, reboot, back to the 'homo sapiens only club.'

This thread got me thinking about how the Legion compares to other superteams when it comes to race/diveristy in the membership so I started a thread about that over on Gym'll's. Hope you guys pop over to Diversity on Superteams...How does the Legion stack up? and add your thoughts.

As to the topic here, I have to say that I don't care for changing an existing character in order to diversify though I have no objection to correcting the portrayal of one.

As an example I would point out that Val was half American & half Japanese from day one yet he was often drawn as fully caucasian. He really should be portrayed more accurately, not as one or the other. And someone else on this thread has already pointed out that Ferro Lad was intended to be black yet was always drawn with "white" hands.

What I would prefer is the direction that the writers took in the Legion's past. #2~Increase diversity by adding new members.

The addition of Blok, Quislet, Tellus, etc really helped make the Legion seem much more like a team composed of all types of sentinents from the universe. Other additions such as Jenni, Gates, KQ, Dragonmage, just added to that feel over the years. Just think what the Legion would have been like had Dave Cockrum's ideas for new members come to pass! Nightcrawler, Typhoon, etc would have really made this an incredibly diverse group.

Actually, Ranz/Rantz/Renz is a real-life name of Germanic origin, and Germans do indeed have their share of red-heads. Krin(ns)/Crin(ns) is Germanic as well. Ardeen/Arden is English. Except for a few obvious cases (Querl Dox, Reep Daggle), they didn't pull the names completely out of thin air.

Mother Nature is full of surprises. For example, my sister-in-law is of African, American Indian and European ancestry, but for reasons beyond her control she looks as "white" as most people who define themselves as white. For all we know, environmental conditions and natural genetic mutations may conspire to favor lighter skin in humans in the next thousand years. Maybe scientists were able to reverse global warming and solar radiation but went too far in the other direction.

I expect DC to do what they've done in other books, that is, leave the existing characters alone for the most part (without any in-continuity explanations why they're so white) and gradually introduce new ones reflecting greater diversity. In the meantime, they'll surround the main characters with a supporting cast of different races and species, as WaK have done. I'm willing to play along.

I also have a negative view of Tyroc. Why is there a character straight from 1970s urban America in the 31st century? Not only does he retain the attitude of the 'urban riot era' black youth, racial problems weren't solved in 1000 years.

In fact the solution to the black/white problem was reverse segregation and isolation. This made no sense in a larger universe of the UP that was reaching out to lots of alien worlds. Now the Tyroc background actually makes more sense in Waid's current imagining of the future.

In a way, I think Tyroc should be as offensive today the blackface caracitures of earlier times. A lot of those characters were whites paying homage to what they thought was black culture. Yeah it was pretty ignorant by modern standards and I think the 70s blaxploitation type characters in 'white media' should be judged in a similar manner.

I can only think that 20 years from now the current 'booty dis ho dat show me da bling' stuff will be in that same pile.

Diversity is a good thing but charcacters created purely for diversity tend to be constructs of the era in which they were created. The truly great diversity character should be as timeless as a great white character like Superman etc.

I would go with option #2. One problem I see with the Legion is that for a team that helps defend the galaxy (or at least the UP's section of it), there are not enough aliens on the team. Nearly everyone is humanoid (you know, the Star Trek syndrome). Yes, I do find that odd.

The classic members could be left alone, for the most part with perhaps some minor alterations (I did not know that about Ranzz and the Germanic connection. That's cool)

But some new members could help diversify the pot so to speak. Here's a perfect analogy: why can't this Legion be more like Carl Pott's Alien Legion in terms of team race makeup? That series (a classic) had some cool and unusual alien designs and I think having something of that nature would better reflect a galactic society/entity such as the United Planets.

For the only way I can think to justify the over-abundance of humanoids is to go back to the idea of Valor seeding the founding UP worlds with freed human slaves of the Dominators.

Sometimes the easy answer works the best. Rather than having a world-seeding Valor, it could simply be that the UP is comprised of planets colonized by earthlings over the millenia. It would make sense that they would be "in the same neighborhood" of the universe and that they banded together over the years because of "outside threats such as the Dominators, Khunds, etc.

Tyroc's background is sort of like the Falcon's backstory as "Snap Wilson." It's embarrassing but the irony is that the character HIMSELF isn't bad. Just his story.

If I had to give Tyroc a backstory, I'd either make Tyroc's people their own form of Wakanda with a dislike of the UP but have their issues be unrelated to race and they're just black

Or I'd honestly make Tyroc a superhero from the 1970s.

;-)

I don't see the need to invent an explanation for why the Legion consisted mostly Caucasians to begin with. The Legion is not (or was not, in the original continuity) a political entity, so it was not a consideration that they must have a representative from every culture.

In its early days, the Legion added whoever showed up and had the appropriate qualifications (original power, good character, etc.). It may have taken awhile for a teen hero group to become well known and taken seriously around the UP (or even around earth), and, by the time members of other races became interested in joining, the ranks were already pretty full.

I also never took it that the entire black population of earth sequestered itself on Marzal. I always assumed that only a small group became separatists. (After all, an island is a pretty small place to house an entire race!)

But don't you think it's at least a little weird that all of the qualified people who happened to show up in the early days were white? Excepting of course Cham, Brainy, and Shady. Especially since many of them of supposed to come from faraway planets.

I think option #2 is the only viable option. And I don't think that a new character being on the team while an older one isn't too terrible a crime that a writer could perpetrate. As long as that character isn't taking the 'slot' of one powers-wise, etc., like Shakiri did with Dawnstar.

But race is something that the Reboot actually had right above all other versions of the Legion. It was TMK's idea to have Kid Quantum retroactively a Legionnaire and I think it was a good one. XS, Kid Quantum II and others only showed how this could be done better.

Changing the race of a character is slightly offensive in my eyes, for both races. And it seems like a desperate marketing ploy or lazy writing.

I think a lot of current writers get the notion that when creating minority characters, the goal should be to make them a complicated, appealing character with staying power that doesn't adhere to the stereotypes perpetrated so often in the past (and I'm looking at you Tyroc*). So don't have an Asian character have sun powers because its been done so many times, but make them fresh and interesting. There's also the concern that the characters need to feel 'real', in that they truly exist as an actual 'character', have flaws and advance the stories, rather than being 'preachy editorial is going PC again'. In other words, I'd prefer Mr. Terrific to Judd Winnick giving me a 'very special story'.

I honestly think that at the end of the Reboot, there was no problem with diversity of race in the Legion, and I wish we could see that again. But generally the Legion has been more apt to give us diversity throughout its history, while some other comics have not.

*PS - I do think Tyroc works in the Legion, as long as that 'angry black man syndrome' is forgotten, his costume is updated and his powers are better defined.

I always did like the view that some of the Legionaires were Asian and Hispanic, we just never noticed because the drawings don't bring it out very well ;-)

OK, maybe a little weird, but not too inexplicable.

News travels in odd ways, even in the age of the Internet. Not every race on every world may have taken the Legion seriously, and even those who did may have lacked the desire to travel a great distance to join. (After all, there were other hero groups around, such as the Heroes of Lallor and the Wanderers.)

But, in point of fact:
-- Brainy encountered the Legion at the Time Institute.
-- Cham joined the Legion to win approval for his race, which was regarded with suspicion.
-- Shady came to know the Legion after her world was taken over by five of their enemies.

Without those special circumstances, perhaps Coluans, Durlans, and Talokians would have ignored the Legion, too.

It's a nice idea, but fandom would turn their race into an issue eventually.

I say just retcon the Jacques character with Tyroc's powers and be done with it.