Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Spaceopoly Kill This Thread XLIII - Uninspired Sequel to an Uninspired Event

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Kill This Thread XLIII

The following rules were established by Kent Shakespeare at the start of the first 24-hour version, adapted from the original rules by EDE:

The rules:

1. The Basic Idea: Post to this thread, if no one posts after you for 24 hours, you win!

2. Posts that are not direct responses to one of the five preceding posts are ineligible to win. The topic can drift, but no complete non-sequitors. Posts that are responses to non-sequitors are also ineligible to win. Posts that are responses to responses to non-sequitors, and response nses to those posts, etc., become eligible, however.

3. In the event that this thread is locked, there shall be no winner unless a new thread is started for the contest. Furthermore, any post that results in the banning of the poster shall also be ineligible to win.

4. So, more precisely, one wins if one makes a post, and then no one makes another post that's eligible to win for 24 hours.


Here's a history of our various felons, along with a few missed opportunities.....

I - walkwithcrowds (7-day version)
II - none
III - none
IV - Quislet, Esq
V - Rockhopper Lad (the first 24-hour version)
VI - Rockhopper Lad
VII - cleome
VIII - Rockhopper Lad
IX - Rockhopper Lad
X - none
XI - none
XII - none
XIII - Invisible Brainiac
XIV - Invisible Brainiac
XV - Invisible Brainiac
XVI - Invisible Brainiac
XVII - Invisible Brainiac
XVIII - cleome
XIX - cleome
XX - cleome
XXI - Jfposey
XXII - Invisible Brainiac
XXIII - jfposey
XIV - Invisible Brainiac
XV - PALADIN (eff YEAH!!!)
XVI- Quislet, Esq.
XVII - Invisible Brainiac
XVIII - none
XIX - none
XX - Quislet, Esq.
XXI - thoth lad
XXII - Ann Hebistand
XXIII - Quislet, Esq.
XXIV - Invisible Brainiac
XXV - Invisible Brainiac
XXVI - Quislet, Esq.
XXVII - thoth lad
XXVIII - Quislet, Esq.
XXIX - Eryk Davis Ester
XXX - Invisible Brainiac
XXXI - Invisible Brainiac
XXXII - Ann Hebistand
XXXIII - Invisible Brainiac
XXXIV - Invisible Brainiac
XXXV - none
XXXVI - thoth lad
XXXVII - Ann Hebistand
XXXVIII - Invisible Brainiac
XXXIX - thoth Lad
XL - Invisible Brainiac
XLI - thoth lad
XLII - Ann Hebistand

Uninspired? Maybe the lads from the group Chicago can help!

"You're the Inspiration:"

https://youtu.be/CRfy1yorkec

Or something a little more recent (and a little less cringy - sorry Chicago fans)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_wabd4wEb8

I like it. Thanks, Thoth.

My maternal grandfather was from a rural town outside of Chicago.

Mine was from Xiamen

My family history is shrouded in mystery. Have I received an inheritance, super powers or the keys to an underground crime fighting cave? I have not.

At least that means you'll never be Grant Morrison's Gary Stu.

I was found in a rocketship by my kindly adoptive parents. After waiting years for my powers to kick in, it turned out I'm from one of those planets that are inhabited by human beings that are basically identical to Earth people.

Brrr. The very thought of having your life appropriated because you passed by Morrison once, or were in the same pub or at the same gig. I hear that people this happens to never get those parts of their lives back. Their work, talent or look simply vanishes from their life, and they take different directions. Ah, the memories of old comic conventions where you would hear the sound of jetpacks, gliders, experimental teleporters and Alan Moore's pogoing beard, all desperately taking any creative thoughts from the building, upon the warning Morrison was arriving.

Morrison's an enigma.

Sometimes I like them, sometimes I loathe them.

The above statement applies to both their writing and their public persona.

Enigma was a series written by Peter Milligan



Milligan was a frequent collaborator with Brendan McCarthy. Their series Paradax, in Strange Days, was lifted by Morrison to form the central conceit for Zenith, a strip that McCarthy also provide character designs for to reinforce that background. Morrison would also lift the idea for Danny the Street, and use his superpower to absorb ideas guilt-free around plenty of others.

And so you get lots of good ideas in stories that, at least in the bits those ideas come from are pretty decent reads. Because other people have already used them in comics, books, films and fashion mags. It falls down a bit when he has to do the heavy lifting on plots. But there's no mistaking he knows the mechanics of it, although if again trying to mimic someone else, it can be less than successful.

For example, I really enjoy Zenith. At first that was definitely for Morrison's writing. As the strip progressed, Steve Yeowell's art develops in leaps and bounds, with lovely use of shadows and facial expressions. That still stands out now, partly because teh art is still excellent, and partly because as you get older, you trip across the books and comics Morrison was pilfering from. And while Morrison does a fine job, early on, distilling them in his world, the originals have many strengths of their own.

So, there's lots' to like in the work, and lots to not, partly because of the origins of the ideas and how they are used.

I think Zenith is one of Morrison's absolute worst!

For one thing, the ending with Prime Minister Peter St. John possessed by the Lloliogor. That's outright nihilism.

And the scene with one of the superheroines turning out to be trans. That's a load of hateful shit from a creator who's rarely been better than ambivalent about the T part of LGBT+.

Yeah, the artwork is nice. It can't redeem the story.

Spoilers ahoy! For anyone who was thinking of reading Zenith


Peter St John wasn’t possessed by the Lloigor. That was the rest of the Cloud 9 survivors.

St John (Michael Heseltine in comics) chose not to side with them. Having the equivalent of the Elder Gods as just being posthumans could have been a bit of a big let down. But it does keep that internal logic of the Zenith universe intact (no teleporting squids here to his credit) and explains their motivations (and why one of them isn't that bright). It also makes it plausible that St John outright beat them. He was the strongest of them, when they were all human, and has developed his powers while they were all away making their plans. That he wasn’t a Lloigor doesn’t mean that he didn’t have plans of his own, but they were to be with humanity.

I did have to get half way through boiling the kettle, thinking through the scope of the series and the main cast, before I recalled Meta Maid.

There’s a bit to unpack there. At face value it’s there as a twist that Meta Maid is trans, and not what Morrison was probably expecting the reader to think. Was the audience supposed to be shocked and a little outraged at such a development? Sort of, but bear with me to the end, as I don’t think it turns out that way, although this is despite Morrison.

Meta Maid is the most proactively sexual character in the book. Having any character expressing their sexuality at all was very unusual. This was a comic originally aimed at kids. Although, like Marvel before them, the audience had grown with the book. Unlike Marvel, a lot of political and social values had been seeded all the way through, to flower nicely at the ages when at least some of the audience could learn from them.

Meta Maid was a pioneer of the pre and post cosmic mission quickie, not seen until Morrison’s protégé Millar (who also wrote a text piece for Zenith) would give the traits to Tony Stark and Natasha Romanov in The Ultimates.

So, you’ve got a character that from the above is defined as a plot twist and whose activity is sexualised. Not good at all.

It isn’t just thrown in there though. Morrison’s theme in that part of the book is to change the reader’s expectations. Meta Maid is trans, and not the expected girl next door heroine from decades of previous comics; Zenith is not the hero, saving absolutely no one while others sacrificed their lives; The heroes’ plan is incorrect, and they nearly destroy everything before pulling it back, with most of them dead. It’s a pyrrhic victory as one of them notes. Meta Maid is not thrown in there, in isolation.

But there being craft in there, isn’t some defence. Morrison’s introduction of Meta Maid to change the romantic expectations of the book’s protagonists didn’t give a whit about trans people. It was focused on the impact and the reaction. It was definitely thoughtless and could be absolutely horrible.

And it does get worse. One character, Miracle Man, is “ashamed” at being with Meta Maid. The second, Zenith, ditches the quickie, but gets someone else to go in his place, in a way that the third character, TNT Tom, is supposed to be in some way unknowingly duped by the encounter. I doubt Morrison gave it any more thought than that. It’s a pretty bleak transphobic picture.

However, good things can come out of the worst painted pictures, despite the writer in this case.

The first character, Miracle Man, was one of the horribly repressed ones from an earlier era of British comics. The second, Zenith, is a complete tool. It’s his defining trait in the book. He’s got a superhuman mind, but will easily wallow in self-interest. His own sexuality lurks in the background of the book, the longer it goes on. His earlier reported dalliances with page 3 models are mainly for image. He is interested enough to be a father in Book 2. Later, he asks St John why he never married, and St John notes that Zenith never married either. I think both know full well that they aren’t human at this point.

At the time of Meta Maid though, Zenith is just a conceited, shallow idiot and as likely to have led that third character off to Meta Maid if he didn’t fancy her, regardless of her history. The third character, TNT Tom, really enjoyed the encounter, and I like to think he and Meta Maid exchange romantic messages across Einstein Rosen bridges between universes.

But the massive plus here is exactly because Morrison was thinking of the impact of the reveal, and was clumsy and thoughtless. With a revela in mind, we get to see a lot of her in the story.

Meta Maid is easily one of the stand out characters in the book. She’s confident in herself, selfless, has upper tier super powers, saves her colleagues from eldritch super-horrors, a pioneer in human relationships in comic books, deals with situations where whole worlds have been lost, and is one of a small group to have saved a whole orrery (a word not used enough) of worlds from an even worse fate. Despite the lack of thought (at best) we’ve ended up with an important character who happens to be trans and is one of the more awesome in the book.

So yeah, thoughtless at best and a transphobic gag at worst, in an attempt to switch reader expectations with no thought for the consequences. But out of that, we’ve a trans character who saves universes, which is how I, and I know others, think of Meta Maid. I know who is towards the top of my call list the next time there’s a Secret Infinite Final Crisis going on.

“Hello, is that Meta Maid?... Hi, it’s thoth Lad from Alternative 247 here…”

And yeah, I agree it's the art that's the stand out now. Alan Moore had already done most of the plot in Captain Britain, while Marv Wolfman had done Crisis and a few decades of sc-fi authors and writers on chaos magic filled in the gaps. Nice to have them all in one place, though, as a primer.

That's quite a bit to ruminate on, Thoth. But I do appreciate it.

I'll sleep on it, and hopefully I'll have a clearer and more detailed answer by tomorrow.

Too bad I can't cross-reference, though, because I already sold all my Zenith trades in disgust. LOL.

Looking forward to your thoughts, although considering the nature of the thread, feel free to take a day or so.

Is it the next day already?

Not yet

Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

Everywhere you go, there you are.

Don't make me turn this car around...

That takes some strength to do.

And coordination! and spatial awareness!

There's a lot more to heroic feats, than people think.

Emotional self-control, planning skills...

Positioning yourself to get the best publicity pics.