Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Could Life Lass Reanimate the Dead?

I'd bring another point to the discussion: what about Blok?
Does his stone body count as "already animated" and Life Lass can't control it?
What about after Blok dies and basically becomes like any other rock?

For reference on the above discussion, here's the image from Tales #317 where she makes the car blink:
(shameless plug: I recently reviewed that story!)
https://comicsarcheology.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/image015-LSH317-2.jpg

How Blok works is probably a topic worthy of a thread in itself, but isn't there this scene in the Magic Wars where he talks to the planet Xerox? I can't remember if that's because of something special about Xerox (it is a magical planet after all) or if he is shown elsewhere with the ability to communicate with what we would ordinarily consider to be "inanimate" rocks, but if it's the latter, then that would suggest the aninimate/inanimate distinction in the Legionverse might be kind of blurry.

If some sort of animism or panpsychism is true, then how does that affect Life Lass?

Great question about Blok.

EDE you are right about the Magic Wars. As the White Witch is preparing to give all to stop the Archmage from destroying Sorceror's World, Imra and Tellus say they can hear a voice telling them to stop, but it is Blok's words that convince her to stop and listen and hear the voice, the spirit of the world, implied to be Amethyst.
"As my being is carved of stone, I hear it too ... it is Zerox that speaks. The World. The Gemworld."
After the battle Mysa speaks to Brainiac 5 of faith and turns to Blok to say:
Mysa: "And it was you, Blok, that opened my soul to that final vision."
Blok: "Me? but your sister -- Saturn Girl -- Tellus --"
Mysa: "are all not the stuff of which worlds are made, my stone-hearted friend. Thank you for our salvation."

Since Zerox was a magical world with an actual "person" representation I think it is a special case. I cannot remember another occasion where Blok "spoke" to stone or worlds but maybe someone else can.

It has long been theorised that our organic life may not be the only model. From the perspective of Chemistry organic literally means made of carbon. All life on Earth that we know is based on long chains of Carbon atoms linked together with other elements attached. Carbon can bond to 4 other atoms so it is ideal for forming long chains -C-C-C-C- with the other two bonds of each Carbon atom linking to other elements on the sides of the chain like Hydrogen and Oxygen etc.

Silicon Makes up 90% of the Earth's crust and appears immediately below Carbon in the Periodic Table because it also can link to 4 atoms. It is mostly found as Silicon Dioxide but it can be found in long chains alternating with Oxygen (which bonds to two atoms) -Si-O-Si-O-Si- with other atoms being linked to the Silicon atoms other two bonds. This has been a common postulate in hard science fiction as the basis for some other form of life. Basically it would be made of rock. I have always thought this would be the case for Blok.

As to Life Lass she appears to be able to affect both organic and non-organic materials, such as an apparently wooden table and chair and a metal car/vehicle, so the deciding factor is not what it is made of but whether or not it is "alive", the definition of which has confounded scientists for centuries. Blok to me is definitely alive, just using a different set of building blocks, so I would lean towards no, she cannot animate Blok - as long as he is alive. Dead however is probably possible in the same camp as organic humans and aliens.

There are parts of the human body which are not alive: hair and fingernails beyond the bare roots, and the inert calcium phosphate deposits in bones.
It would be disconcerting if it were possible for Life Lass take control of your hair or skeleton.

Imagine if her power was to animate fingernails.
"Next candidate! What can you tell us about your powers, Miss Manicure?"

Dream Girl: "I'm afraid we must reject you, Miss Manicure! You might lose control of your powers at a crucial moment in battle and cause me to break a nail!"

Miss Manicure then became the secret member of the Legion of Super-Villains: she was the real reason why Dream Girl was always breaking her nails.

Bringing it back to slightly on-topic... would Evolvo Lad qualify for the Legion? I feel like any use of his powers that we've seen is a duplication of another membr. Would he bring anything new to the table?
Weirdly enough, Duplicate Lad would definitely qualify because no other Legionnaire can duplicate the powers of any villain they come across.

The Morrison years on X-Men had a mutant student named Dave Finn / Keratin, who could cause his fingernails to grow into claws, or even keratin to grow up his body to serve as a weak form of body armor (enough to protect against punches, if not bullets). So fingernail-based powers are certainly possible!


I wonder if he can go further than what we've seen, in either direction? If he could evolve past 'big headed smart telepath' to 'psychic entity that has abandoned a corporeal body and exists as a being of pure thought' that could be neat, and if he could devolve past 'tough ape man' to protoplasmic blob or some kind of prehistoric mammalian life, that could be interesting (to borrow an idea from the very similar Marvel character Manikin, who can summon future and past selves).

In Edmond Hamilton's "The Man Who Evolved", the titular character eventually evolves past the big-headed future man form into a pure brain that feed on nothing but energy, and past that into a protoplasmic state, suggesting that the evolutionary path he's following on is ultimately circular.

I remember one particular scene where Blok said he wanted to find out if there were any rock people in the area before the Legion did something, and he had the Aquaman-talking-to-fish telepathy rings coming out of his head, so I think the assumption might be that he does have some form of rock telepathy but there is a distinct difference between living and unliving rocks. Of course, later on down the track when he started going through puberty or whatever and mutating, he was all angsty that he had no idea what his body's normal processes are so I dunno if that's just one of those throwaway ideas that Levitz never followed up on...

re Evolvo Lad, I always thought it would be cool if he could pursue different evolutionary tracks as best helps a situation - eg become a fish guy for underwater stuff, a bird man for flying about etc - I guess it'd make him a poor man's Vixen but it'd give him some more things to do anyway!

I love this idea!

I don't recall if I've read that one, but I picked up a collection of his short fiction based entirely on his having written for the Legion, back in the before-times. Fun stuff.


Ooh, I also like that! Need sonar, bam, he's a bat-dude. Need underwater action, nah-nah-nah-nah, he's a shark-dude. Need both, it's man-dolphin, to the rescue!

In a Mutants & Masterminds game I had a character who had a half-dozen different animal-hybrid forms, with silly names for each of them. A quick injection of cheetah DNA, and she was Faster Pussycat. Some rhino DNA and she was RhinocerLass. A dash of bird of prey, and she's the Savage She-Hawk. And a splash of bee DNA (with maybe a smidge of murder hornet...) and she's Killer B (or Honey B, when she's not feeling as murder-hornet-y)!

So yeah, I love the idea of Evolvo Lad heading in this direction.

Thinking about it further, Captain Comet is supposed to be a mutant who represents a possible future development of the human race. So Evolvo Lad could evolve into that...

Ooh, good one! (And much more useful than 'evolving' into Kamandi...)

Sadly Lallorian future development is into the people from Wall-E.

Can Evolvo Lad devolve back beyond his Big Red Ape form? I'm thinking a lemur or loris, some sort of fish, back to pre-cambrian spiked worms...

He may be limited to hominid forms, based on whay we've seen.

There may also be a concern that if he devolves too far, he would lose the intelligence to evolve forward again?

Or evolves so far that he refuses to 'come back down' to mere mortal levels of intelligence!

Braniac 5: "Normal for you guys, perhaps. I'm still smarter than him anyway."

Brainy's so modest.

I always remember that exchange in the Reboot on Planet Hell between Evolvo Lad And Brainiac 5.

EL: "Brainiac 5? As I was saying, feel free to interrupt my analysis of the force-field. I'm afraid I tend to talk over people's heads. Bad habit but difficult to control. I DO possess a tenth-level intelligence."

B5: "Twelfth."

EL: "No. Tenth."

B5: "I meant MY mind is twelfth-level."

EL: (in very tiny letters) "oh."

one of my favorite scenes

This is why we really needed Grax to make an appearance in the Legion's time. Let's see how Brainy reacts to somenone with a 20th-level intelligence!