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I'm fairly certain that the bit for Braalians is canon, and was mentioned once. The Bismollan thing totally fits with how Tenzil seems to enjoy eating some stuff more than others. And I've always thought that Tinya must have some sort of X-Ray vision (or at least see surrounding matter as sort of ghostly, when she phases, so that she's not constantly phasing into people in the shower or whatever, unable to see where she's going, when she's be-bopping around the headquarters).

I like the idea of the lightning twins being able to sense electrical fields like a built-in stud finder, just because the notion of Ayla and Garth commiserating about how neither of them really is the target demo for a 'stud finder' amused me.

I've thought about this too! I think it's perfectly reasonable to posit that Brainy or someone, has added some functionality to flight rings (or maybe they wear contact lenses or something), so Legionnaires can see whether their more subtle teammates are using their powers

so the others can see Jacques/Lyle's outline; maybe Tinya appears to glow or appears translucent when she's phased; maybe there's a little marker showing shrunken Vi or a disguised Cham, or something like that...

Just found this on Hoopla: from Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane #50

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Even if the ring doesn't allow the wielder to see Jacques, it's got a communicator built in, and even today, we have friend-or-foe targeting identifiers, so it should be no thang for Brainy (or anyone, really) to program a ring to beep when you are pointing at (or flying at, at Mach A Lot) Invisible Jacques, so that you know not to send 40 gazillion killavolts or the heat of a 1000 exploding suns in that direction...

#16 Saturn Queen (Eve Aries of Titan) and Matter-Eater Lad (Tenzil Kem of Bismoll)

A romance begins when the hero rescues the damsel in distress.

Superman saves Lois. Popeye saves Olive Oyl. Mario saves Peach. Ron Weasley saves Hermione Granger.

This is a centuries-old trope, but it is renewed with the story of Tenzil and Eve.

While imprisoned in a pseudo-Hell Dimension on Evillo’s Tartarus, long enough that he loses his seat in the Bismollian Senate, Tenzil rescues Saturn Queen and Evillo’s other eleven wives.

Eve is actual royalty on Titan, with a claim to the throne, and in the presence of Saturn’s rings her eeevil tendencies are suppressed.

One requirement for her ultimate ascension to political power is that she must be married. Tenzil is game. As for Saturn Queen, it has been pointed out that Bismollians have the most powerful tongues and jaw muscles in the DC Universe.

It is a political alliance, and Tenzil is, among many other things, a political animal, so he becomes Saturn Queen's second husband.

One qualification is that the two are evidently expected to produce an heir.

There have been worse foundations for a relationship through history, and this sort of an arrangement benefits from low expectations. But I have a real fondness for the idea of Tenzil and Eve together.

This relationship only existed in 5YL. When the Universe resets, so do Tenzil and Eve. Saturn Queen becomes more evil; Tenzil generally becomes even more of a joke.

Their relationship was fun for a laugh (as was most of Tenzil's 5YL appearances) but I was never really emotionally invested in it. Just a fun story.

#17 Blok & White Witch (Mysa Nal / Zola Aq)

Maybe I should have saved this one for Halloween.

There have been magic stones throughout mythical history and literature. The Philosopher’s Stone. The Golem. The Black Stone of the Kaaba. The Lapsit Exillis. The Elfstones of Shannara. The Dreamstone. The Nightmare Stone. All I am saying is, Magic and Stone are not entirely incompatible.

“I… I was not aware the humans here were so… so…”

When Blok first meets Mysa, he still has his stone collar and nose, although he is slightly slenderer than in his original appearance. Mysa has been transformed by exposure to magic from a Lana Lang look-alike into a levitating, crystalline, semi-insectoid sorceress apprentice. We know that adult female Dryads are crystalline in appearance, although Strata had far more breadth and avoirdupois than Mysa; this may also be part of the basis of attraction. It is also noteworthy that Mysa wears a crimson stone at the base of her throat, right on the suprasternal notch. It does not appear to be attached to a choker; maybe it is held on with superglue.

Mysa and Blok are OK together. They get along. They are friends. They support and protect and inspire one another. “It was you, Blok, that opened my soul to that final vision. {You} are the stuff of which worlds are made, my stone-hearted friend. Thank you for our salvation,” Mysa tells Blok at the end of Magic Wars.

There is no explicit romance between the two up to this point. They do appear as very good friends, possibly members of a mutual admiration society. Then somewhere during the Five-Year-Gap, Mysa becomes wife and caretaker of the semi-reformed, semi-depowered, semi-amnesiac Mordru. Blok goes off to meditate his way through puberty on the Puppet Planetoid. Neither enterprise goes well. A highly traumatized Mysa must be rescued from Sorcerer’s World by Laurel Gand, and Blok is reduced to a pile of rubble by Roxxas.

Man made of granite.
Step lightly on the roses.

Blok and Mysa’s careers are exemplified by change. They each metamorphose over time through many physical appearances, costumes, personalities, and powers.

Blok loses his collar to Darkseid, and his nose to Omen and the Prophet. As he matures, he grows immense, and develops smoking caldera instead of acne. When we see him in 5YL, he has chimneys growing out of his shoulders. Always rugged and strong, he occasionally manifests a new power: the ability to absorb mass and energy, reflect or redirect energy, communicate telepathically with other silicon-based life-forms, resist organic telepathic attacks and mind-control. His personality varies from calm, careful, and philosophical to the raging anger of an avalanche-- although this may be a dissimulation.

We first meet Mysa as an ugly hag, who transforms into a young freckle-faced ginger named Zola Aq. We next see her in her crystalline moth-girl form, then human again in the thrall of Mordru, then the Avatar of Amethyst, then a purple-haired flirty teen-ager.

When the Original Recipe Legion returns in the Retroboot, it is Blok that rescues Mysa from Mordru on the Sorcerer’s World, and their romance becomes more explicit. Darkness infects Mysa as she becomes the Black Witch, and she passes some of that on to Blok, his appearance changing from granite to obsidian.

Despite the brief nature of the relationship, and the odd juxtaposition of their incongruous appearances and personalities, I have a fondness for Blok and Mysa together. I see in my mind’s eye a crystalline, moth-woman Mysa standing with the fully mature, smoking, smokestacky Blok, an encounter that we never actually see on the page. Perhaps during the Five-Year-Gap, when Mysa went to say one last good-bye to her friend, before she went off to her ill-fated marriage to Mordru?

These are two characters whose arcs are defined by change: I love to imagine them together, in every incarnation.

=======================================================================

That’s all I’m going to do.

Honorable mention (some already mentioned en passant):

>>Zynthia & Star Boy

>>Princess Elwinda of Nadir & Chameleon Boy

>>Janice Warren (Elwinda’s Terran doppelganger) & Chameleon Boy

>>Iresa & Bouncing Boy

>>Myla & Invisible Kid I

>>Dori Aandraison (Rainbow Girl) & Sun Boy

>>Circe & Sun Boy (5YL only, and it was just icky)

>>The love triangle of Ethyl Eyeful & Matter-Eater Lad & Tusker

>>An Ryd & Ultra Boy

>>Captain Frake & Ultra Boy

>>Zera Vultan & Drake Burroughs


TTFN

I was never that invested in Mysa-Blok, but for some reason the Mysa-Brin flirtation at the very end of the 5YL era really worked for me.

I enjoyed the friendship/deeper relationship between Mysa and Blok. The way it was not overstated (until retroboot) but always there and shown as having depths of affection was appealing to me. I don't object to the Retroboot depiction, it just shows a further development of their commitment to one another.

One other relationship I will add to your list is Brin and Marella Tao, reporter. They met during Universo's takeover in the Universo Project and continued their romance after for a while. We see her a few times, consulting with Shvaughn and Gigi about legionnaire romances, on a date with Brin a few months later during Starfinger's "ring" attack, and chatting with Brin via holophone during Brainy's trial. We get cameos of her reporting during 5YL but it would seem their relationship ended some time previously, probably by Black Dawn at the latest. The start is portrayed well but then it isn't really pursued as other plots push it out.

My pet theory about Blok is that he's somehow absorbed the spiritual essence of his people (sort of like how Threeboot Projectra did the angry souls of Orando?), and that his ability to absorb mass is going to cause him to grow and grow, eventually becoming an immobile colossus, gravitationally drawing ever more mass into himself until he literally becomes a new Dryad homeworld, from which will emerge the next generation of his race.

'Cause I like the notion that Blok's a baby planet.