They Elected This Guy Mayor of Star City?

Ollie, did ya borrow that from Eros or
do you always carry golden arrows around?

Dorian at (postmodernbarney.com) was picking on Green Arrow earlier this week. So in my effort to prove I have absolutely no original contributions to the blogosphere and can only steal ideas from blogs far superior to my own, I thought I'd post these panels and take a shot at GA too!

In truth, after finishing my just-purchased Seven Soldiers trades, I wanted to re-read JLA #100-102, the first mention of the Nebula Man (albeit in flashback). When I happened upon these panels, I remembered Dorian's post and thought, "Why the hell not?" Hey folks, at least I'm stealing ideas from only the best blogs on the web!!

I understand these panels were needed to explain why nobody could deliver the Nebula Rod to The Hand That Holds The Earth without risk of death (and to set-up Red Tornado for the beginning of his never-ending death/resurrection cycle).

Fate's comment that Superman is venerable to magic holds water since the Nebula Man was at least partly magical in nature.

However, Green Arrow's point?

Take a look at the hand.

Do YOU see any damn golden wooden arrows poking out of that thing??

And I ask again, "Where the hell did GA get that arrow?"

Judge & Jury: SLSH #23

I was one of the unfortunate souls who faced the decision, "Do I pay $10 for the variant cover issue or do I wait until the one non-mentally impaired chimp who works for Diamond comes back from vacation and gets the regular issue shipped?" There was little debate: A month is long enough to wait for a new issue; a month and a week, simply intolerable! Plus the Adam Hughes cover is very nice!

The story:
The main story features Brainy, Cos, Saturn Girl and Light Lass taking Supergirl to Rokyn (home of now-enlarged Kandor) to disabuse her of the notion "it's all just a dream". Whilst there, Brainy has a pre-cog moment, and they encounter members of the re-imagined Legion of Super-Villains. The bad guys include Jeyra Entinn ("Saturn Queen", first seen in SLSH #19), a male who may be "Crystal Kid", a female who could be "Lamprey" (or perhaps a powered-up "Calorie Queen") and a male who I think is "Lazon", first seen in the League of Super-Assassins storyline. And we get a final splash-page appearance of Mon-El!

Cutaway moments include Element Lad and Triplicate Girl(s) doing a "robot rebellion" recon in the lower Metropolis. These scenes feature two Luornus finding Chlorophyll Kid, who's being set-up as a Legion "plant" by a mysterious shadowed figure (Tarik, the not-so Mute?) and one Luornu sharing a tender embrace with Element Lad. (I'm shamelessly stealing the Chlorophyll Kid "plant" thing from Matthew's review at Legion Abstract!)

The other side story shows Shadow Lass and Atom Girl on Talok VIII, with Shady and her now brother, Grev, slugging it out, a glimpse of Talokian culture & Shady's role as planetary protector and Vi suggesting Shady run for Legion leader.

My thoughts:

• Although I was pleased with Adam DeKraker's fill-ins, it was a real treat to have Barry Kitson back (love that man's art).



• The introduction of Rokyn puts yet another nail in the coffin of Byrne's 1986 Superman reboot. All we need now is Beppo, the Super-Monkey! Seriously, I'm glad Rokyn's been established as highly isolationist; it's not a great idea to have too many super-powered Kryptonians running around.



• Briany states explicitly, "Even in this day and age, we haven't yet perfected temporal travel." I guess that means we won't see time-hopping Legion tales any time soon, which suits me just fine. But it definitely implies folks in the 31^st century are working on it.



• The whole "we've gotta shanghai Kara to Krypton so she won't hurt anybody" thing left me grimacing a little. Sure she might go a little wonky if & when she gets over this "it's a dream" fantasy, but "Hello?", Brainy's got a big honking Green K chunk potent enough to put her on her *ss after a few seconds. Seems like enough to take care of a freaked out Supergirl if necessary.



• There are two instances where Brainy anticipates future events: one is arguably pre-cog, the other, unequivocally. What this means in terms of a future for Dream Girl, I don't know. (Matthew has an interesting take on this.)



• The Element Lad/Triplicate Girl embrace was cute, and maybe if Luornu's got a boyfriend, she'll have less time to be Cos's narc. (Though as we saw in #3, she could still snoop around for Cos and get jiggy with Jan all at the same time!) Let's just hope years from now in an effort to force a square peg into a round hole, Luornu's "secret origin" isn't updated to reveal she's really a guy who's so internally homophobic that he took a drug to turn into a girl so she could have sex with boys!



• The thought of Shady being leader is interesting given her head-strong, "punch first", hedonistic nature. Shady was never leader in the classic Legion, and I don't think she was in the post-Zero Hero one either.



• Please let it be "Mon-El"! Not "Lar Gand", not "Valor", but Mon-frakking El! Come on this is New Earth; while we're retconning things, is it too much to ask to have a young Clark Kent encounter Mon, think he's his brother and put him in the Zone!?! The cover of ACTION COMICS ANNUAL #10 has really got me hoping this wish is going to come true.

Overall:

• Another solid issue from WnK. The story should please both the "not enough action" crowd and "let's wrap-up the Supergirl arc" folks. I can't wait for the next issue!

Gimme a "N" orNura! Nura! Nura! Nura!

I told you not to f*ck with Dreamy!

The Legion of Superheroes #288, "The Legionnaire's Made For Burning"

Since I started the "Gimme a" series with Dreamy flirting, it seems only fitting I should end it with Nura really showing off her stuff. These panels from LSH #288 mark the beginning of Levitz's evolution of Dream Girl that would continue through his 80s run.

Dream Girl, Shadow Lass, Mon-el and Ultra Boy have gone to Orando, Princess Projectra's home world, to save Jeckie and Karate Kid from being executed by Jeckie's grandmother, Hagga, in her play for Orando's throne. (Gee, I thought my family had issues!)

With two of the most powerful Legionnaires on hand, who saves the day? Nura, of course!!

I love this scene because in addition to being a fantastic Dream Girl moment, it illustrates why the Legion works so well as a team book: It truly is all about the teamwork. Nura frees herself, using her willpower alone and pretends she's a witch who can block out the sun. Shady uses her power to further the ruse. Nura whacks the bejesus out of Hagga, causing her spells to dissipate, and the freed Legionnaire's kick some bad guy *ss! Great Legion teamwork!

With that, the "Gimme a" series ends. (I wasn't going for "Legion of Super-Heroes"; that would take almost a month of posts to do!) There will be a "bonus" installment tomorrow, but the series proper is over.

I hope longtime Legion fans have enjoyed this and people who've never read the Legion are tempted to try out the current series. It's well worth the read!

Apology and Question:What to kill first? Blogger Beta or IE !?!

I sincerely apologize to everyone using Internet Explorer who has visited TPCM since Sunday, October 22^th.

It turns out of a couple my posts this week had ending "span" statements that were NOT terminated properly. Blogger Beta gave no warning and readily accepted my publishing the posts.

In Firefox 1.5 (my default browser), these unclosed statements didn't cause any problems; however, in Internet Explorer 6.0, they caused style changes in preceding posts and in my sidebar!! The style changes basically rendered everything unreadable.

I discovered this problem in IE a few minutes ago, and I think I've fixed everything.

If you have encountered this problem, I am very sorry and I implore you, please don't give up on TPCM!!

I will do my best to try and avoid such problems in the future (or at least try to make sure I don't let 5 days pass before I realize them)!

Thanks.

QL (who is so incredibly vexed right now!!!)

TPCM NOTE: Edited to change "who" to "what" in post title. Vexation makes QL's grammar suffer!

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall...

Earlier this week, I had NPR's All Things Considered playing in the background. I was focused on my work, not really listening to the radio.

Until... I think I hear the words "reflecto porn".

It's amazing how rapidly the human brain can respond. Immediately my blogging-addled, randomly-firing neurons generated this:

Reflecto Porn
Noun
The explicit depiction of sexual subject matter, involving Superboy's body, inhabited by the amnesic consciousness of Ultra Boy and disguised as a red-headed third entity. May or may not include simulated snuff imagery.
Usage: Luornu was disturbed, yet somewhat aroused, after she inadvertently found Chuck's large collection of Reflecto porn.

The Legion of Superheroes #282 & #279, respectively

After "googling" the term, I discovered the truth of reflectoporn is far more horrifying than even my twisted mind could have envisioned!

Editor's Note: Turns out the NPR piece was an interview with Paul Dikson, the author of Slang: The Topical Dictionary of Americanisms.

Gimme an "O" orRock on, Garth!

"Qui sème le vent récolte la tempête."

Superboy & The Legion of Superheroes #244, "A Madman Shall Lead Them"

This comes from the "League of Super-Assassins" storyline, which introduces Blok, a member of the league. Blok would eventually aid the Legion (SLSH #270) and become a Legionnaire. However, here's he's having his *ss served to him by Polar Boy from the Subs.

The two-part story itself was not outstanding and had an obvious plot hole so large Anna Nicole Smith could stumble through it. But I liked these panels because they're classic Blok: introspective and not given to rashness. A great Blok scene, even if he was technically a bad guy at the time and the dialogue is a slightly altered version of an old proverb.

Since I've panned the overall story today and bad-mouthed its author, Gerry Conway, earlier in the week, I am obligated to say this: "During his tenure, Conway made a significant contribution to the Legion mythos when he created Blok."

There, I said something nice about Conway's run on the Legion. Make a note. Tell your children. Have them tell their children. Pass this moment down through the ages. It may never happen again!

Gimme an "I" orI Want You To Want Me

"Feelin' all alone without a friend,
you know you feel like dyin'.
Oh, didn't I, didn't I, didn't I see you cryin'?"

Adventure Comics #369, "Mordru The Merciless"

These panels come from the classic story featuring the debut of Mordru. I first read the story in an oversized tabloid reprint. I think it was the 2^nd or 3^rd Legion story I ever read, and I loved it.

The tabloid edition had some extras including the 2-page Bouncing Boy/Duo Dasmel wedding shot (with a diagram explaining who everyone was), a layout of the Legion headquarters and some panel shots from various stories feature different rooms in the headquarters. All that for $1.00. Those were the days!!

I liked the story for many reasons, not the least of which was this quiet scene with Luornu, upset she can't get Superboy to notice her . My heart just broke for her!!

While Jim Shooter may not have always handled females characters as well as he should have (see Silver Sexist Gold), he was right on the money with this one.

Yeah, I'm a sucker for hopeless crushes. Always have been, always will be.

Silver Sexist Gold

Scipio's announced The Absorbascon Balloon Awards contest, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to enter some Silver Age Legion panels with a recurring theme.

The first entry is by Ed Hamilton; the 2^nd two, Jim Shooter. In addition to the text entries as submitted, I'm posting the source panels as well.

Adventure Comics #319, "The Legion’s Suicide Squad", 1964
Spoken By: Brainiac 5
Spoken To: Saturn Girl
Situation: Using The Planetary Chance Machine, the Legion has just chosen members for a dangerous mission on the planet Throon. Brainiac 5 announces the selections.
Word Balloon: “Saturn Girl, Bouncing Boy Superboy, Lightning Lad, Chameleon Boy and Invisible Kid! But... It’s too dangerous for a girl! I must eliminate you, Saturn Girl!”
Virtues: Silver Age sexism means never having to say you’re sorry. (Plus the preceding panel has The Planetary Chance Machine. And not just any panel, but the very panel featured in the TPCM logo!)


Action Comics #378, "The Forbidden Fruit", 1969
Spoken By: Light Lass
Spoken To: Timber Wolf
Situation: Timber Wolf has become addicted to the Lotus Fruit, needs more and has met his dealer in an alley. After Light Lass floats away the basket of Forbidden Fruit, Timber Wolf asks, “What are you doing?”
Word Balloon: “Trying to help you, love!... Watch me! I’m wiring this basket... If one fruit so much as wiggles, the blast grenade strapped to my belt explodes! Touch that fruit and I die!”
Virtues: It provides an important lesson to all girlfriends in every time period: if you really loved your drug-crazed boyfriend, you’d be willing to let him kill you for a fix. F*ck rehab! (And Light Lass used that same tactic and those EXACT words AGAIN, after catching T-Wolf and Queer Legion in the boys dorm. I told T-Wolf he should lock the door. And let me tell you, you don't ever want Light Lass to wire your basket!)


Adventure Comics #368, The Mutiny of the Super-Heroines", 1968
Spoken By: Supergirl
Spoken To: Light Lass (on panel), Saturn Girl and Princess Projectra (off panel)
Situation: While the female Legion members “add feminine touches to their new dorm section” (Shooter’s exact words), they discuss the ambassador of Taltar, a planer ruled by women, where they, not men, are the dominant sex. Light Lass comments that Supergirl’s just as strong as Mon-El or Superboy.
Word Balloon: “Not really! Though our strength has never been accurately measured, theoretically, Superboy is stronger than I, just as a normal boy is stronger than a normal girl!”
Virtues: The only thing better than Silver Age sexism from the guys, is having the girls put themselves in their place!

Gimme a "G" orThe Boy of Steel

No snark. Just a thing of beauty.

Superboy and The Legion of Super-Heroes #231, "A Day In The Death Of A World!"

There are those occurrences in comics when words and pictures come together to create something special. This is one of those pages.

I liked having Superboy in the Legion. Hell, he was probably why I picked up my first issue. I had no idea who the Legion was.

But after I got over the "Who's Who" of the Legion, I rarely got excited about Superboy. His character moments weren't that great; he was just a "little Superman" or our 20^th century POV man most of the time. With a few exceptions.

You could glance at this panel and think, "Oh, there's Superboy getting ready to punch something again." You could, but you'd be missing a shining example of where he was actually Superboy: trying his damnedest not to let a planet die at the hands of the Fatal Five and not all sure that he can succeed. Look at Sherman's close-up in the 3^rd panel. That's not the face of man who knows he's going to win; that's the face of a boy who knows he's going to try.

TPCM Investigates:"Of (Super) Human Bondage"

"I don't need the key.
Me likey the handcuffs! Isn't that right, Batman?"

Justice League of America #168, "The Last Great Switcheroo"

After observing Superman's less than "Big Blue Boy Scout" behavior in JLA #144, the crack investigative team here at TPCM decided dig further into Superman's sordid sexual past.

And not since MSNBC's "To Catch A Predator"^* have we seen such depravity! Superman's into B&D!!

Tsk tsk, Kal-EL. What would Ma Kent think?

^*Editor's Note: If you haven't seen this MSNBC series, you should check it out. It's a great example of how video journalism has slipped from the low rung of "info-tainment" to the cesspool of "reality TV" all in the name of the public good. Don't get me wrong, I'm not "pro-predator", but come on, this is really bad!!

And an unedited panel, I swear. Thank you, Gerry Conway!!

Gimme an "E" or Dreamy's not the only one who can flirt

He ain't heavy, he's my Ultra-Boy

Legion of Super-Heroes #262, "The Planet That Captured The Legion"

At first I was just going to post the bottom half of the 1^st page & the top three panels of the 2^nd, but after reading them again, I had to post the full monty (plus it shows off more of Jim Sherman's art).

These pages really stick out in mind as fun. The Legion had recently been through some rough sh*t: The Earth War; Crazy Brainy trying to frame Ultra Boy and then destroying the Legion headquarters (which is what they are rebuilding in this scene); and the discovery their benefactor's, R.J. Brande, fortune had been stolen by the Earth Gov president. These panels just said, "No matter how bad it gets, this is the Legion."

Which was a good mantra to remember in the coming years since this issue occurred during the beginning of Gerry Conway's run on the Legion!!

Don't get me wrong, Conway has written plenty of stuff that I've liked (hell, he wrote those two pages and the rest of the issue was pretty good). But overall, his Legion stories just never "clicked" with me. Sorry Gerry!

Gimme a "L" or Plus ça change...

Come on Brainy, you know you wanna shake
that green booty with Dream Girl!

Legion of Super-Heroes #28, "The Lost Hero"

Legion of Super-Heroes #34, "The Universo Project, Chapter 3: Forgotten Foe"

I’m posting a bit late on Monday. For anybody who checked TPCM earlier for new stuff, here it is now.

Since I had fun participating in Beefcake/Cheesecake Appreciation Week, I thought, “Why not try another theme week?”

This week’s series features some of my favorite Legion of Super-Heroes “character” moments. These panels will not necessarily be of the “earth-shattering”, “jaw-dropping” or “in-our-next-issue” variety.

For example, today’s panel sets feature a couple of great Brainy & Nura scenes. I dug these up because I was flipping through the current Legion run this weekend and realized how much I was going to miss Dream Girl teasing Brainiac 5. (By the way Waid, thanks for killing Dreamy!!)

I like the first set of panels from LSH #28 for two big reasons: 1) it shows the Brainy/Nura interactions seen in the current run are not without precedent and 2) it’s an object lesson to today’s comic writers that you don’t need a 20-issue arc for good character development. Even if a reader picked up LSH #28 as her first issue, she’d easily be able to figure out from those seven panels Brainiac 5’s a no-nonsense kind of guy and Dream Girl’s a coquettish bombshell who’s much smarter than she might appear.

I like the second panel set just because it’s such a great Dream Girl line.

Say what you will about Paul Levitz, but there’s no dispute the man’s a damn good writer!! Maybe when Waid hands down the creative reins, Levitz will come back for a run. (You hear that Paul? I know you read TPCM, so think about it!)

B/CAW Part VII or And The Coin Toss Winner Is...

When planning for the final day of Beefcake/Cheesecake Appreciation Week, I was torn.

The previous 6 days had featured 3 cheese and 4 beef cakes; 4 Legion and 3 Lantern pics.

In a sense of universal balance, should have a female Lantern-related pic? On the other hand, since this is TPCM and I love the beefcake, should I have a male Legion-related pic?

So there was the coin toss.^*

And the winner is....
Phantom Lad

What Phantom Lad would have asked if Rokk hadn't interrupted him:
"We challenge you to
tell us why the hell I'm wearing this ridiculous costume!!"

Superboy (staring The Legion of Super-Heroes) #212, "Last Fight For A Legionnaire"

What's up with that costume? There's not enough of it to even be a wrestling singlet; it's more like a Speedo with straps! Still you can't complain, Grell knew how to drawn a man's body.

And because it's the final day of Beefcake/Cheesecake Appreciation Week, not only do you get a Legion reject beekcake panel, but a TPCM-enhanced one to boot!!

Here ladies and gentleman, we have the secret origin of Cosmic Boy's Grell-era costume! He was so taken with the way Phantom Lad's costume looked, he decided that he must too have a costume that exposed as much skin as possible.

You think I jest: pull out Issue #215, a mere three issues later, and what do we have? The debut of Cosmic Boy's new costume!!

Tell your friends, you saw it here first on TPCM!

Finally, my special thanks to Kalinara & Ragnell for sponsoring Beefcake/Cheesecake Appreciation Week!! I had lots 'o fun with it!

^*Editor's Note: Do you really think there was actually a coin toss?
And I'm not posting the unaltered panel because there were no other changes than the addition of Cos' thought balloon.
TPCM NOTE: Edited to include a shot of Cos's new costume from #215.