The Shattered Prayer

plurk.com

Over on plurk.com, I got bored and started to list my favorite Legion of Super-Heroes. After starting the list, I decided it would be better for Shattered Prayer instead. The thing is the Legion is Huge. In the interest in space, I’ve decided to focus first on the Legion Ladies! The Legion Gents will come in another post. So for those who come to Shattered Prayer to read about comics, enjoy! Here are my favorites and the reasons they interest me so. Long Live the Legion!

First, quick background. I really started reading comic books because of the Legion of Super-Heroes. When I was a wee lad of about 6, I was home sick from school and my dad went to the store to get me a comic book to pass the time. The comic that he got me was Superboy starring the Legion of Super-Heroes 210. It was fantastic! I was very lucky, in a way, to come to the Legion during this period. Mike Grell had taken over just after Dave Cockrum had changed all the Legion uniforms. Grell’s more realistic art made the Legion visually exciting. Just look at the bolts firing from Lightning Lad, and Superboy’s elongated sleek body.

The other thing that made that issue great was the super 1970s costume of Phantom Girl. All bell bottoms and peek-a-boo cut outs around her breasts. I think the Legion Cheesecake era, as some people called it, pulled more than a few fans into the Legion at a time when their fortunes, as far as readership was concerned, was very low.

So having met the Legion, I was hooked. And one of the things that I liked about the Legion was its gender equality as far as membership. The Legion was the first team book of the Silver age of comics , pre-dating not only the Justice League, but also the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and the X-Men. And unusually for the time period, there was more than one token woman in the Legion. The Justice League had Wonder Woman, the X-Men had Marvel Girl, Fantastic Four had the Invisible Girl, and the Avengers had the Wasp (and later the Scarlet Witch), but in their very first appearance you could (kind of) tell that there were at least two female Legionnaires (even though only Saturn Girl was shown from the front, or named). And later “soft-retconning” established that the first Legionnaires joined in this order — Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, and Saturn Girl all at once, then Triplicate Girl and Phantom Girl. So early on, the girls outnumbered the boys 3-2. Or if Triplicate Girl was Triplicating, 5-2.

The reason for this gender equality was Supergirl. And if I am honest, she is my favorite female Legionnaire. The LSH began as a one shot Superboy story in Adventure comics. Three super-heroes from the future came to ask Superboy to join their superteam and hang out in their superclubhouse. So Lightning Lad, Cosmic Boy, and Saturn Girl (wearing costumes they’d never wear again, ones with their names printed conveniently across their chest) got in a time bubble and asked him to join. For a while, these three were featured in almost every LSH story, but the cast quickly grew. When Supergirl was created, they did they same with her, so Saturn Girl, Triplicate Girl, and Phantom Girl came back in time to ask Supergirl to join their superclubhouse. I guess the thinking went if girls were going to join, then girls should have already joined. Supergirl’s mere presence moved the Legion gender system beyond tokenism to a sort of equality.

Unfortunately, Supergirl did not make many appearances in the LSH. It was a Superboy vehicle and remember, Supergirl was a contemporary of Superman, not Superboy, so her presence opened up all kinds of story quandaries. She stayed long enough to develop a romance with Brainiac 5, and then said, “See ya!” Her few appearances could also be explained this way, by the time Supergirl was on earth, there were tons of heroes around. Superboy was all alone when he first appeared, and thus he sought out the company of Super-heroes in the 30th (It was originally the 21st century, but then someone thought better of that. Hey! We’d have the Legionnaires existing right now!) Supergirl didn’t need to time travel; she had super-girlfriends without going through time.

Supergirl therefore has the number 1 spot, but on a technicality. I liked her outside the Legion.

Who makes up the rest of my list?

Dawnstar is number 2. She was the first Legionnaire to join the team when I started reading the comic. And I loved her! She also made history of a sort. If you exclude orange skinned Chameleon Boy, green skinned Brainiac 5 and blue skinned Shadow Lass, and if you think of Karate Kid as the white boy he originally was instead of the vaguely Asian guy her briefly became, she was the first Legionnaire of color. She was an Amerind (American Indian) who came from the planet Starhaven. She could fly unprotected through space at great speeds (even outracing spaceships!) and her power was “Super-Tracking” She could track an errant pebble through an asteroid belt. Apparently. I know, I know. A Native American whose power was super-tracking. A little stereotypical — okay, a lot stereotypical — but at 7 years old, I didn’t know from Native American stereotypes and thought that would be a cool power!

Besides, she is so visually intriguing! Look at those wings! Look at that fringe! Look at the fact that she sort of disdained the rest of the Legionnaires! And she was in love with Wildfire, and he didn’t even have a body! Just energy in a containment suit! So a doomed romance on top of it all.

LOVED HER!

Number 3 is Saturn Girl. Or to go by her given name, Imra Ardeen from Titan, moon of Saturn. Dawnstar’s name was just Dawnstar. Most of the other Legionnaires had code names and real names.

When I was a kid, Saturn Girl did not make Number 3. I happened to meet her when she was running around in thigh high boots and a modified bikini. All in pink. Hard to take her seriously. It was only later that I realized that she was not always that way. Her power was that she could read minds, and she was a bit of an ice princess. And ruthless as hell. She rigged an early Legion election so she could become Legion Leader (The first female to lead a super-hero team) and proved that she was a great leader. She sent people on missions according to their abilities, not according to their friendships, and she basically told the Legionnaires to let Element Lad join on her say-so. And they did! No questions asked. They didn’t even ask him what his powers were! This was a lady to be reckoned with. She did have a romance with Lightning Lad. And they later married even though there were some — difficulties — at the wedding. (She and LL were second pair Legionnaires to do so — and they had to resign. No married Legionnaires! A rule that later changed). But that didn’t interest me. I loved the ice princess. And for that reason, she is my number 3.

Number 4. Shrinking Violet. Salu Digby, or more usually called “Vi”. She could shrink. As could everyone on her home planet of Imsk. When she first started out, she was presented as a shy and retiring Legionnaire in a modest costume, always in the background. She also had a long distance chaste romance with Duplicate Boy, who we never really saw. Then Dave Cockrum redesigned her costume and everything changed. She became tougher, more assertive. She broke up with Duplicate Boy. And, in the Earthwar storyline, she fought with Legionnaires for thinking that her people were behind it. This was the story that made me first love her. Later she was kidnapped and virtually tortured. A duplicate replaced her in the Legion and her teammates never realized that it wasn’t the real Vi. One of her teammates even married the duplicate! Vowing never to be so humiliated again, she became an expert hand to hand fighter and put her personality to forefront! She cut her hair, looking a bit like Che Rex from the early 90s, and became a badass! No more Shrinking Violet she! She even began a lesbian romance with Lightning Lass. Talk about your character transformations! And that is why she get the number 4 spot.

And finally, for this post, Number 5. Sensor Girl. Originally, she joined as Princess Projectra from Orando. She had the power to cast illusions. And wear very ugly costumes. Even Cockrum’s changes didn’t help her out (although some of you may disagree). She married Karate Kid (hey, he had the name long before Ralph Macchio). And when he was killed, she murdered his killer. It was only then that she became interesting. She wasn’t put in prison for the murder because she was acting as the head of state for her planet in performing and “execution” (um, yay diplomati immunity?). Eventually, however, she tired of being Queen Projectra, and sought to rejoin the Legion, hiding her identity to do so. She also upped her powers and gained the ability to control all senses of an individual. And she became eventual Legion leader, the third woman to be leader. The Who is Sensor Girl storyline was classic, adding a bit of intrigue and excitment to the title. Without Sensor Girl, Projectra would not have even made the top 10. With Sensor Girl, she is outstanding.

Well that rounds out the top 5. On my next post, I’ll continue with my list of favorite Legion Ladies!

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