Supplement to the Addendum to the Review of the Legion of Super-Heroes, Part One, By Johnathan

Ahaha! Time to review alla the Legionnaires that I haven't yet gotten around to! Uh, pre-Five Year Gap, of course. We'll leave that can of worms for a later date.

BLOK

I like Blok. I'm kind of sad to learn that he has no name, though. Silly me, thinking that it was Blok, all this time.

Blok was from the planet Dryad, which had at some point exploded. The Legion was on hand to evacuate, and for some reason a group of Dryadan youngsters assumed that since the Legion was there that they were the ones who blew the place up and so they swore eternal vengeance, got powers from a jerk named the Dark Man and started calling themselves the League of Super Assassins (and just to be on the safe side, they also swore vengeance against grass, because the whole damn planet was covered in it, as well as the sun, for just floating there and watching the place blow up). As so frequently happens, they almost killed the entire Legion on their first try but afterward never quite managed to pull it together again.

The only Super-Assassin to go anywhere other than a seat next to Ronn Karr at the Legion of Super-Villains annual benefit dinner was Blok, who had never been that struck on killing people anyway. He ended up with a light jail term because he'd helped to capture the rest of his team and tried out for Legion membership once he got out of the clink (and he completely schooled Lamprey, Nightwind and Crystal Kid while doing it, which makes me happy). Blok made a really neat Legionnaire and a great requisite Big Strong Team Member. He started out fairly clueless about how human society worked (oh yeah: he's not a human made of rock, he's an alien. Made of rock) and unlike a lot of similar characters never quite lost that trait, which was charming. He spent a lot of time watching the Legion mission logs and palling around with the White Witch and being philosophical and introspective - not quite as unusual today for a Big Strong Tough Guy but definitely a refreshing variation on the type.

As you can see, Blok liked to wear his pants hiked up real high, which I would hate except for the fact that it's so distinctive that I like it for its uniqueness. I just wish he'd wear some sort of solid colour instead of horrible stripes alla the time. Ah, well. at least this picture showcases big shoulder pads in their optimal environment - on someone with big shoulders - rather than in a less-than-suitable one, such as everywhere else that big shoulder pads have been used as a costume element, ever.

This is also a decent shape for Blok. By which I mean that he looks a lot less hideous than he frequently did back then. See, back in the old days, Blok kept getting redesigned - first he was kind of tall with a horrible neck-frill kind of thing, then he was squat with no nose, then he had these kind of erupting craters on his shoulders... I think that they eventually said that it was some sort of mutation based on environmental conditions or something but I'm thinking it was just a series of artists who hated drawing him the old way, or felt like messing with the rock guy, or whatever. The only good redesign wasn't really one, it was just this one time that Blok got all shot up and the scars and craters stayed with him for literally years. It was very very cool, in that a character's physical state is usually pretty resistant to change. Even though Batman or whoever has a broken leg and comic book time passes at about the rate of a month a year, he'll be fully recovered by next issue.

Evidently, I like Blok enough that I don't have anything particularly funny to say about him (the picture doesn't help - he should be standing there holding a train over his head or something. All this picture says is "I'm large and I like to accessorize with yellow"). I was sad when he eventually fell victim to the great purge of post-1975 (or so) characters that eventually swept through Legion comics. Booo! bring back Blok, because he is:

JOHN APPROVED

Review of the Super-Human Detritus of the Thirtieth Century, Part 8, By Johnathan

I've had the pictures ready for this one for like a week now but just couldn't bring myself to write it. "Why?" you ask, in tiny, review-starved voices. I'll tell you why: it's because today I'm reviewing three of the most boring-ass characters in the occasionally spotty history of the Legion of Super-Heroes. I'll let Sun Boy introduce them:

You might notice a lack of thirtieth-Century zazz to their names. Not a Querl Dox or Reep Daggle in the lot. This is because they were created by fans of the Legion, whose names were warped into futurespeak. I'm sure that Bob Cohen was thrilled, but Bobb Kohan just doesn't do it for me, hero-name-wise.

One of my biggest problems with these characters is the way that they're drawn - they just bore the hell out of me. Look at Nightwind and Lamprey: identical comic book bimbos with different dye jobs. This was a pretty lousy period in terms of Legion art - nobody even bothered to think up a kicky little eel logo for Lamprey. They didn't even make Crystel Kid's hair look all faceted. Lame.

Is Nightwind hitting on Blok?

As you might have guessed, these three placemats applied for Legion membership at the same time as Blok and failed mightily. First, though, they listened to him tell his origin story. After a while, an emergency call comes in and the applicants are taken along due to the fact that not enough Legionnaires are on hand. Gah! I'm boring myself! I hate these three so much!

They fly to the emergency, sporting all of the colours of the rainbow.

And get squashed like bugs in about four seconds. Hey, weird - I've been looking at these three's lame costumes a lot more than I'd like (you know, so I can complain about them) and I just noticed that Lamprey's breasts change size in, like, every panel. It's kind of eerie - maybe it's one of her powers?

When I finished this comic I was under the impression that this was the last I'd seen of these lame-ass characters. They'd shown up and tried their best and been dismal failures. I wasn't even curious about their powers. Then, just eleven issues later (LSH No. 283, if you really want to subject yourself to it) they show up again. It was like Reverse Christmas.

This time, we get to see their fantastic powers:

Crystal Kid fires gooey-looking beams that turn things into crystal, yawn. I mean... yawn.

One second.

Took a little nap there. There is nothing exciting about turning things to crystal, especially in the Legion. Plus Element Lad can already do that, so this kid shouldn't have gotten within five hundred metres of the place. Plus:
He's super over-confident. And:
His power only works as long as he's concentrating on it, which seems like adding insult to injury. "Sure you've got a lousy power, kid, but at least it doesn't work very well, right?"

Wildfire takes a dip in the surprisingly deep Legion fountain, where he encounters Lamprey, who has all of the standard "underwater hero" powers (that's superstrength, plus the ability to swim) and electricity-shooting:

I'm not sure if she's ever seen a lamprey eel - my guess is no, as they're almost indescribably hideous. In any case, her powers are somewhat better than poor Bobb's. There is one drawback, though:

It's not just a case of artistic license - she really is firing rings of electricity. Moreover, those rings are big enough that Wildfire can step right through them (Though not very well. By my reckoning he's about to get ringed in the knee, thigh and crotch). Plus it's implied that she's not too good at maneuvers out of the water, which puts the kibosh on roughly 98 percent of Legion missions.

Nightwind flies and fires wind out of her feet. She gets some credit for not wearing clothing that is the same colour as her skin but that's about all I'm willing to grant her.

So anyway, Wildfire trashes the three of them. Then this happens:

The girls try to kiss Wildfire and he goes nuts! Personally, I think that it's because he saw that wink thing. Nightwind's wink is terrifying! That one staring white eye? Gives me the heebie jeebies. He says it's because of his Tragic Past, but I don't buy it.

Anyway, what with the terrible costumes, the lame powers, the stupid names and the fact that they mostly get their asses kicked and listen to exposition (Wildfire tells them a story too), these three jokers are:

NOT APPROVED

But finally getting them out of the way? That's JOHN APPROVED from here to Tuesday. So... for two days.