Thursday, May 22, 2008

Know Your Local Legionnaire Thursday!

By the time Adventure Comics #365 rolled around, the Legion was getting pretty large, so the powers that be decided it would be easier to fill those blank pages with illustrative pictures (as opposed to stories with plots, dialogue and characterization). Here are some highlights:


If you work in construction and a beam is about to fall on you, Lightning Lad will apparently electrify the beam first to make sure you are good and dead so you don't have to worry about the high cost of medical treatment.



One of Cosmic Boy's lesser-known powers seems to be the ability to generate tumbleweeds, which he likes to launch into busy intersections.



Um.... I don't care how light the tree is, unless something is affirmatively pulling it in the opposite direction, those roots are gonna keep it in the ground. See "How a Balloon String Works" by any Child Above the Age of Three.


Few people know that the ability to make objects heavier also constitutes an immunity to fire. Because it doesn't. Check your local comic shop for the Star Boy Visits the Local Burn Ward mini-series.


You may recall Element Lad's origin story. He is the last survivor of a race of people who could change one element to another. They were wiped out because they refused to convert common elements to precious ones. Here we see Element Lad converting common elements to precious ones. I guess the principles don't apply when you are making yourself rich.

7 comments:

james said...

I first spotted your blog yesterday and enjoy your sense of humor, especially about the early Legion. I've added this site to my bloglist at defefendersfan.blogspot.com

Comixbear said...

Actually, Lightning Lad is using his lightning to melt that beam so that a pile of molten slag buries that guy. So rather than the sudden pain of a blunt object, you have the swift burning to death. (See Star-Boy)

http://comixbearbarecomix.blogspot.com/

SallyP said...

Cosmic Boy is Up To No Good. That boy bears watching.

D.B. Echo said...

No, no. You have it wrong. Element Lad is turning gold into lead, not the other way around. This is at the request of a group of commodity traders.

Chance said...

Comics nerds are always bloviating about why The Legion never caught on big and is always being revamped and retconned, but I think the dark secret they don't want to admit is that (as these panels show) the Legion was completely and utterly stupid and zero thought whatever went into its execution in its infancy and it never recovered.

Anonymous said...

The Star Boy in flames picture was from the original version of this feature when he had multiple powers like those of Superboy or Mon-El, including invulnerability. Now, as to why they didn't come up with a different picture when it was reprinted when his powers changed, I can't say. A one panel visualization of making something super massive might have been hard, resulting in something like that Light Lass panel.

Anton Sherwood said...

Element Lad is shown here sucking the yellow out of the bricks so that they won't excessively endanger Green Lantern should they happen to fall on him.