Thursday, May 29, 2008

LSH Gots No Standards Thursday!

From Adventure #372. Legion rejects are always interesting to me. You know that these are characters that the writers came up (a la Dial H for Hero) that didn't get editorial approval. This particular story introduced us to the Legion of Super-Villains, which was chock-full of Legion rejects.


One guy who I'm surprised made the cut was Chemical King, who saw action for the first time here. I suppose if you got the boot and Chemical King made the cut, you'd have license to be a little ticked off.

Wouldn't you hate to write stories with Chemical King in them? I mean, you'd have to know science and stuff (like the very neat science about fire and rust being the same thing - blows my mind, hepcats!). That's why all of my characters would consist of rival bloggers criticizing the works of other people while having no discernible talents of their own.

Nemesis Kid was a reject, but only because he betrayed the Legion. I think they did that because, like Superboy, he's just too dang hard to figure out a way to beat on a monthly basis. Check it out as he schools Superboy:





That rocked my world! But, to be fair, they already came up with Kryptonite to keep Superboy in mortal peril all the time, so I guess all they could do was bring Nemesis Kid back every so often whenever the writers could figure out a new way to deal with him.

And, hopefully, their solutions wouldn't be as lame as this:


Okay, I readily acknowledge that it was well-established that Nemesis Kid could only defeat one opponent at a time. But, technically, isn't Duo Damsel one opponent, even if she had split into two selves? It seems like Nemesis Kid could have also split himself into two selves and given her a sound thrashing. Heck, even without adapting to her powers, I can't help but think your average teenage boy could avoid a beatdown by two teenage girls.

Unless he was Chemical King, in which case he would be so freaked out that a girl was looking at him that he would run back to his Thursday Night Dungeons & Dragons Club meeting in fear.

I think about this kind of thing way too much.

7 comments:

Sea-of-Green said...

>>>That's why all of my characters would consist of rival bloggers criticizing the works of other people while having no discernible talents of their own.<<<

*Sea enthusiastically pounds her desktop with her fist and laughs uncontrollably.*

YES!!!!!! Oh, you SO have to do that, Adam!!!

De said...

You'd pick Bouncing Boy over Chemical King?

SallyP said...

Hey, Bouncing Boy can...Bounce! I imagine that the Legion found that FAR more useful than sissy old science.

Anonymous said...

In his few appearances before his death (which was a given since Chemical King's first appearance was as a memorial statue in the Adult Legion story), most writers ended up assuming that his powers were more like Element Lad's transmutation. Either they didn't know the difference or couldn't think of a "chemical reaction" type action for CK to make happen.

googum said...

Hmm, Michael makes a point I hadn't thought of: I always figured CK was killed off exactly because he was hard to write: "Chemical King oxidizes...no, he, um, laminates? (Crumples paper.) Chemical King DIES." But if the statue was there first, he was doomed from the get-go then, wasn't he?

See, I learned something today. Don't think you're not making a difference!

mwb said...

As awesome as Chemical King is I'm going to focus on Nemesis.

First, anyone who can be taken down by Duo Damsel needs to be mocked at every occasion.

Second, you know that old fanboy trope which I call the Transitive Property of Asswhooping: if character A can beat character B who can beat character C, then character A can beat character C.

So if Nemesis beats Superboy and Duo Damsel beats Nemesis, thus Duo Damsel can beat any villain Superboy has beaten.

Let your mind run with that for a moment.

Saturn Girl Knows Everything said...

You do think about this thing too much.

You see, Duo Damsel caught Nemesis Kid off guard. That's why she was able to beat him. He has the super-power to beat anybody in a fight--but not all super powers are infallible. You lag here and there.

He lost sight at this moment. He wasn't expecting a double whammy.

And screw you for saying that two teenage girls couldn't kick his ass if they wanted!

Princess Projectra killed that guy in LSH 1# or 2# back in 1985 or so. Whatsits. My memory's not what it used to be.