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It took me all five to realize you're talking about the lovely Looker. Best Alan Davis costume EVER!

Cover contest:
Tangled web #20

I thought maybe Looker after 2, was pretty sure at 3 and Goddamn certain at 5. I miss that series. And Halo.

7 members of the legion only?

I'd have to have Saturn Girl, Cosmic Boy and Lightning Lad as a prerequisite.For me those 3 need to be in the legion in the same way that Mr Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human torch and the Thing have to be the FF.
Strength and powers added by Ultra Boy.
Energy abilities from Wildfire.
Phantom Girl for espionage/stealth etc

so 1 place left, and I'd love to have Dawnstar,Timber Wolf,and the devil in me wants to say Kono but I think the team does need a scientific expert. It is reasonably hard to omit Brainiac 5 as the residential genius but he has no real powers so final place would go to Lyle Norg, Invisible Kid

Seven Legionnaires? Can't be done.

I mean, you could, but it wouldn't be a proper Legion. You need at least, at least, fifteen Legionnaires before you're really up and running.

But, okay, seven Legionnaires. It's kind of a one-buttocked Legion, but here are seven who are as good a collection as any:

Brainiac 5
Mon-El
Veilmist
Dream Boy
Magno
Infectious Lass
Catspaw

Looks like a joke, but the point I'm trying to make is that the Legion concept is more important than which members you have on the team. I did include Brainy and Mon-El in there, not only because they're great characters, but also because they provide a connection to Superman, and that's an important feature of the Legion.

Looker is a vampire? I gotta get out more.

Braniac 5
Mon-El
Timber Wolf
Shrinking Violet
Cosmic Boy
Lightning Lad
Saturn Girl

Let's see . . . 7 Legionnaires . . .

Brainiac 5
Triplicate Girl/Duo Damsel
Matter-Eater Lad
Bouncing Boy
Saturn Girl
Star Boy
That's all the Legionnaires I can remember.

It’s kind of a one-buttocked Legion...

funniest description ever.

Seven Legionnaires? Okay, I'll bite.

Cosmic Boy
Saturn Girl
Lightning Lass (yes, Lass. I always preferred Ayla to Garth)
Brainiac 5
Chameleon
Ultra Boy
Phantom Lass

Matter-Eater Lad just misses the cut.

Unless the answer to the cover game is "they all have red on them," I got nothing.

Cover Theme Game: Indians?

(Sigh) I miss Halo too... She was my first comic book crush. Imagine, ten years old and enamored by a Jim Aparo drawing! I thought those streaks in her hair were the coolest thing!

Okay seven member Legion:

Brainiac 5
Chameleon Boy
Element Lad
Mon-El
Sensor Girl
Wildfire
White Witch.

That was hard.

Does "Daily Bugle" #1 count? It is published under the Spider-Man imprint.

My Cover Game entry:

The Pulse #7

That doesn't count as a floating head, does it?

Seven member Legion?

For sheer power:
Mon-El
Wildfire

For the Espionage Squad:
Chameleon Boy
Phantom Girl

Defense:
Sensor Girl
Saturn Girl

All-around smarts:
Bouncing Boy

Ask me again in 5 minutes, and I'll replace WIldfire with Element Lad, Bouncing Boy with Lyle Norg...

It took me all five to realize you’re talking about the lovely Looker. Best Alan Davis costume EVER!

Are you sure it was designed by Davis? All the model sheets I remember seeing (at least published) at the time were by Jim Aparo.

Seven Person Legion...

Cosmic Boy
Saturn Girl
Braniac 5
Colossal Boy
Timber Wolf
Phantom Girl
Ultra Boy

Cos and Irma providing a link to the start of the Legion. Brainy providing the planning as well as the Deus Ex Machina as needed. CB as the lone Earth born member and political sub-plots ose mother was UP President. Timber Wolf for "am I man or beast" pathos. PG and Ultra Boy as "the couple" plus his powers make up for no Mon-El/Superboy/Supergirl.

Lightning Lad would've only gotten in on sentiment as if you take him out of the mix like they have in the past (Death, Marriage By-Law) it really doesn't hurt the series. When you look at the "classic" Lightning Lad stories, it just backs up the fact that outside of being involved with Saturn Girl, it sucks to be him.

If we're permitting covers that show JJJ with Peter Parker and not Spider-Man, then there's Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21, the Peter/MJ wedding issue. The variant cover, specifically, with Peter and MJ in the foreground and assorted supporting cast members in the background. I know, in the back there's that Spidey-Face-in-a-heart thing, but that's more a logo or icon than the actual Spider-Man so I say this one counts.
http://www.samruby.com/AmazingSpider-ManA/Large/AmazingSpider-ManAnnual21Alt.jpg

Of course, the greatest mind-blast comic of all must be Strange Tales v.1 #137, "When Meet the Mystic Minds," in which Steve Ditko essentially creates most of the mind-blast effects seen on your earlier covers, plus a few that no one ever seems to use any more.

Also of note among mind-blast styles that never made it big as conventional comics representations would be the trippily psychedelic renderings of Jean Grey's powers by Neal Adams and the similar use of Zip-a-tone swirls by Jim Steranko in the Yellow Claw-bot sequences from Strange Tales v.1 #164-167.

And for the Find a Cover Challenge: Web of Spider-Man #52, with 8 Jamesons, one Chameleon (technically he's all the JJJs), and not a Spidey to be seen outside the cover box!

There was an issue..maybe of Excalibur, that defined the mind blasts as psychic plasma. I remember someone poking at it, so it'd be a more comical character.

And for the Find a Cover Challenge: Web of Spider-Man #52, with 8 Jamesons, one Chameleon (technically he’s all the JJJs), and not a Spidey to be seen outside the cover box!

I was debating that myself when I posed the query, and I should have mentioned it - were ANY of them technically Jameson?

And for the Find a Cover Challenge: Web of Spider-Man #52, with 8 Jamesons, one Chameleon (technically he’s all the JJJs), and not a Spidey to be seen outside the cover box!

I was debating that myself when I posed the query, and I should have mentioned it - were ANY of them technically Jameson?

It depends on how we read the cover. If it's a sequence of nine panels' worth of Chameleon distorting his JJJ face and then revealing it, then none of them are. But if it's just a set of views of JJJ and then a shot of the Chameleon, it's not.

The story in the issue is all from Jameson's perspective; it's a lengthy flashback to his younger days and a horrible mistake he made as a cub reporter intercut with his (ultimately futile, but damn brave) effort to escape his captivity at the hands of an (absent) Chameleon.

The story suggests that we can read the cover either way; as promoting the Chameleon element of the plot, or playing with various perspectives on Jameson suggested in the story: his own guilt, his own self-aggrandizement, the Chameleon's JJJ caricature performance in the larger plotline, and the reader's own take on JJJ's multiple facets as played out in the story. He's at once physically ourgaeous and helpless, fatally arrogant and capable of guilt and humility, self-redemptive and yet making subtler versions of the same mistakes. The cover might symbolically be working to show us all of those distorting angles.

All of which is to say, it's your call, Brian.

Alright, I know nothing about the Legion of Super-Heroes, and yet I still want to write them. Unruly teenage supers vs. a utopian future... Great concept. And I had an idea a ways back about starting over (yet another reboot, yes) and having a manageable line-up. Not sure if it'd still work.

Anyway, seven people. I'd go with something like this:

Brainiac 5
Cosmic Boy
Saturn Girl
Ultra Boy
Bouncing Boy
Chameleon Boy

And then it's a toss-up between Karate Kid and Matter-Eater Lad.

Or maybe Arm-Fall-Off Boy.

Well gee, which Legion do you mean? And do you include Superboy or not? And am I just picking my favorite characters, or the characters who factored into my favorite stories, or the characters from the current roster that I think would best work in stories going forward?

If going for the favorites angle, then I think I'd pick:

• Timber Wolf
• Wildfire
• Element Lad
• Phantom Girl
• Ultra Boy
• Chameleon Boy
• Karate Kid

For the current-team-going-forward angle, I'd pick:

• Cosmic Boy
• Brainiac 5
• Ultra Boy
• Karate Kid
• Supergirl
• Lightning Lad
• Saturn Girl

For the cover challenge- is it that they are all drawn by Phillipino artists?

For the Legion game:
Brainiac 5- the brains
Ultra Boy- the brawn
Chameleon Boy- the one-man espionage team
Triplicate Girl- triple the member in one person
White Witch- for magical threats
Phantom Girl- the perfect thief
Saturn Girl- the telepath/mindreader

Soooo many others I could pick. I purposefully left off Superboy & Supergirl but I guess you could replace Ultra Boy with either one of them, or maybe Mon-El. Cosmic Boy could come in handy given how common metal is. Dawnstar would be great for her tracking abilities, and Wildfire and Sun Boy are both pretty powerful too. Heck, Tony Bedard's recent Legion issues even gave us an ass-kicking Tenzil Kem (a.k.a. Matter-Eater Lad) and that is what's great about the Legion, every member plays a role, and every member is great in their own right.

Does “Daily Bugle” #2 count (I know someone mentioned #1)? If not, I got nothing.

Wow, that Jonah thing is really hard. Ms. Marvel #1? No, there's Peter, too. Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe vol. 2? They left him off the cover. She-Hulk? Nope. You'd think they would at least have used the guy on a joke cover at some point.

Cover game: I was going to go with Ms. Marvel #1 (1977) http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=30679&zoom=4 until I remembered that floating heads don't count. So instead, how about Amazing Spider-Man #58 http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=21724&zoom=2

Okay, assuming that Henry Peter Gyrich shows up and tells the Legion that they can't have more than seven members, here's my roster. I'm assuming that with the team stripped down, they can't afford overspecialization.

Brainiac 5--Essential for team support, driving the plot forward, and occasionally creating their next enemy [*]
Kono--Well, I liked her (in the "favorite character" poll back in the v4 letter column, I'm the one who gave her the single half-vote she received). And her powers cover the Phantom Girl, Star Boy and Light Lass niches.
Saturn Girl--Founder, mentalist, doesn't always get to use her leadership potential
Shadow Lass--Versatile powers that have room to be developed further
Shrinking Violet--Espionage, plus she's a character who could use some elbow room to flourish [**]
Sun Boy--Picked out of the various energy projectors in part because he's another one whose personality could have room to develop. (Also to give the team some gender balance; I could easily have made an all-female team here...)
Ultra Boy--Superboy-level power without the problems of having a Superboy-level character around all the time

[*]Plus his tactical genius hasn't been fully tapped. One of my favorite Brainy stories is the one where he, while insane, led the Subs to victory over the League of Super-Assassins.
[**] I was always kind of disappointed that Vi's best story in the Levitz era was the one wasn't even in (the whole "I married a Durlan" plotline with Gim). There was a very interesting hard-boiled first-person narrative sequence by her in one of the later annuals that hinted that she didn't particularly like her homeworld, which coupled with the story back in the Superboy days where she had to choose between the Legion and Imsk painted an interesting picture of "Salu Digby, reluctant patriot". Levitz never did anything with it, though it did get picked up in the 5-Year Gap LSH with the Braal/Imsk War storyline.

Re: The Cover Game.

Would Amazing Spider-Man #58 count?

Sure, it's just Jonah's face on the Spider-Slayer's screen, but unlike Web of Spider-Man #52 it's "really" Jonah's mug and there's no Spidey outside of the drawing in the corner box (and the "Spider-Signal" in the bottom left corner).

You're right, mind blasts are cool.

Brainy
Lightning Lad
Saturn Girl
Ultra Boy
Timber Wolf
Phantom Girl
Princess Projectra

Actually, the basic design of Looker's costume can be credited to Outsiders writer Mike W. Barr. One of the letters pages of the deluxe Outsiders series printed Barr's rough costume sketch for Looker, which was then refined by Jim Aparo.

Keeping in mind that tomorrow I might come up with a completely different list, my 7-member Legion is as follows:

1) Cosmic Boy
2) Lightning Lad
3) Saturn Girl - Gotta have the 3 founders, plus they have a good mix of powers.
4) Brainiac 5 - Brainpower, and just an overall cool concept.
5) Chameleon Boy - Probably THE most versatile Legionaire out there.
6) Mon-El - Team strongman, another cool backstory, and a Superboy connection all in one.
7) Element Lad - I'd really like to get another girl on the team, but his power is too damn cool to pass up.

Having just 7 Legionaires makes them too much like any other superteam, though. It just doesn't feel like the Legion unless it's a mob scene.

John Trumbull said:
"Having just 7 Legionaires makes them too much like any other superteam, though. It just doesn’t feel like the Legion unless it’s a mob scene."

Ha ha. Good point. Their size is what makes them the "Legion" in the first place.

For the cover challenge- is it that they are all drawn by Phillipino artists?

Bingo!

Each cover was drawn by an artist born in the Philippines.

Amazing Spider-Man #79. No Spider-Man on cover, just Peter Parker:
http://www.comics.org/coverview.lasso?id=23163&zoom=4

Hunter (Pedro Bouça)

For the cover game:
Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21 (The Wedding "Variant)
http://www.answers.com/topic/the-wedding-spider-man

This one has Peter Parker, but not Spider-Man.

My 7 member Legion:

1. Saturn Girl
2. Brainiac 5
3. Ultra Boy
4. Timber Wolf
5. Wildfire
6. Matter-Eater Lad
7. Bouncing Boy

My Legion 7:

Cosmic Boy
Saturn Girl
Lightning Lad
Brainiac 5
Karate Kid
Timber Wolf
Matter-Eater Lad

You would have to have seven members with some kind of innate character potential that can outlast different story writers, and whom no one gets tired of. It's pleasantly surprising to discover how many people nominated Matter-Eater-Lad but really, in a small legion (as opposed to a larger one) do we want him eating things all the time? Does he? (Didn't he become president of Earth, as an adult? Maybe he should have been given a graceful exit into an honourable political career, if that's not an oxymoron.) Lightning Lad, a favourite of my childhood, flourished at a time when heroes were invariably brave and powerful -- and, interestingly, faded from the Legion's pages about the same time that his real-life equivalents were faltering in Vietnam. I agree with the commentator above who suggests Lightning Lass was more interesting: seldom featured, but when she did she had attitude, a constrained sixties girl ready for liberation. However, here's seven permanent legionnaires:

Brainiac 5
Saturn Girl
Chameleon Boy
Cosmic Boy
Invisible Kid
Ultra Boy
Princess Projectra

Not very interesting, though, is it?

s though she had read Betty Friedan and just wished others had. others would listen. Cosmic Boy had a more durable appeal). He would the Green Berets bfter 1966, when