POLAR BOY
I've discussed Polar Boy as a member of the Legion of Substitute Heroes in a prior review, so this time I'm just going to talk about his time in the Legion proper, so as to avoid repeating myself. After years and years of trying, Brek Bannin finally became a Legionnaire at the same time as Magnetic Kid et al, whether due to the fact that he'd been doing a really good job in the Legion farm team for years and years or because they needed a few more folk around the clubhouse for tax purposes, I'm not sure. I was pretty fond of Legion Polar Boy, both because I had always liked him and because he had attained this huge goal that had coloured his whole life and it completely showed in whatever he did. When he was hanging out with the other new recruits he was full of good advice from his days in the Subs, while around the old-school Legionnaires he just tried so damn hard, to the point that he campaigned for and won leadership of the Legion. He made a good leader, too, as far as his being readable is concerned - instead of instantly becoming a giant dick (see Wildfire, Lightning Lad) or constantly doubting himself (see Lightning Lad). I mean, he did doubt himself, but for good reasons, as he was constantly struggling with the fact that he was now the leader of a big, complicated organization like the Legion instead of something small and simple like the Substitute Legion.
What I didn't like about this iteration of PB was the costume. I mean, he always had a lousy costume, what with the lavender and the fur trim and all. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the more fashion-conscious Legionnaires (Uh... I'm sure that there have been some. Saturn Girl? No no, the pink thing. Well, maybe Brainiac 5 was testing a fashionist-o-matic or Blockade Boy was visiting or something) voted against him because of that thing. This new costume is... close. If only it were, say, light blue instead of lavender. Also, I hate the weird shoulder hoops. I understand that Polar Boy is a small guy and he needs to compensate to some extent, but sheesh. take those things off, though, maybe slap the old costume's logo on the back and this could be an okay costume. The skullcap alone, as a replacement for the toque-cowl, was a giant step in the right direction.
As for the 'demonstration of powers' portion of this picture... well, it's somewhat lacking. Blasting out a snowman is a very 1960s Iceman stunt, really. Polar Boy was usually more about volume of ice produced rather than being concerned with what form it took, but as I recall, his sculptures were always a bit nicer than this. I don't know - seeing as how he's adopting essentially the same pose as Element Lad did, wouldn't it make more sense for him to have produced a snowflake-ized version of that stupid big atom?
Ayup, Polar Boy is:
JOHN APPROVED
(EDIT: Note the shift in spacing toward the end. You may have noticed this in earlier posts - this is a symptom of me having written a review on another computer and taken it home one way or another to cut and paste. Blogger does not like this - perhaps it views the writing of posts in another program as some sort of cyber-infidelity. In any case, until I find a quick and efficient way to fix this sort of thing and/or I stop writing reviews in inappropriate settings, we all get to suffer through inconsistent formatting)
(PS: These Legion reviews are kind of serious compared to my regular stuff, huh? I don't know if anybody cares, but if you do, rest assured that there'll be all kinds of Superhuman Detritus, Future Zoo-ing, High-Tech Tomorrows and Detective Comics Firsts, soon soon soon. Heck, I might even finally get the Henchman Fashion File off the ground. In the meantime, scroll down - Paul posted!)
