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

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

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

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

Hunter (Pedro Bouça)

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.

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

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.

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).

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?