Strangers Who Are Like Friends

Over on Facebook there’s a Legion of Super-Heroes fan page called Legion World.
Quite some time ago my Ladies of the Legion posts caught the attention of the admin of Legion World who stopped by to compliment me on my work and began posting the images to the Legion World page.
This – understandably, I think – pleased me.
After a while the images were all collected into an album on Legion World.  An album dedicated solely to my artwork.  An album entitled “Artwork of Jon Maki AKA Heimdall.”  The description of the album refers to my artwork as being “stunning.”
This also pleased me. A lot.
After all, though you’d never know it from this blog – or really, any other part of my life – this meant that I actually have fans.
Granted, they may not count as *ahem* a legion of fans, but even so, it feels good to be acknowledged and appreciated.
(I always suspected that it would, but had never been certain until it actually happened.)
All of which is a bit of a preamble to the actual post here, which, I think, requires some additional introductory text.  Not just because I’m prone to self-indulgent walls of text, but because I need to make my intentions clear.
Some of the little self-deprecating shots I took at myself above – like the one about only suspecting that it would feel good to be acknowledged an appreciated – may come across as me fishing for compliments.  That’s not what I was doing – I was, legitimately, engaging in self-deprecating humor.  I mean, I do that.  When it comes to the jokes I make, I myself am, by a wide margin, the most frequent butt of them.
It’s how I am.  There may be some deep-seated psychological issues at the core of the personality trait, but mostly I make fun of myself because I know I can take it.  And besides, I’m just a jerk, so why should I care what I think?  Make fun of me all you want, me; I’ll just shrug it off and chalk it up to my jerkiness.
Anyway, where was I?
Right.  Legion World.
Every so often in my FB feed I’ll see a Legion World post with a reference to me, usually featuring another Legion-related image that I drew at some point, with a caption like, “Legion World Needs More Jon Maki!”  (My favorite was when there was a post of a picture I did of Scarlett Johansson that was captioned, “Now I'm not saying Jon Maki intended this image to be a take on Night Girl, but I am saying I needed a valid reason to post a Jon Maki image.”)
Most recently, I saw the image from this post pop up.
Looking at the post on Legion World I noticed that 34 people “liked” it and 11 people “shared” it on their own timelines.*
This leads me, finally, to the point of this post.
Unless it’s completely NSFW, any drawing that I post here I also post on Facebook.  Even when it is NSFW, I usually post a link (with a warning) to the blog post containing it.
Most of my artwork posts on Facebook go unnoticed except by a handful of my friends.  Said handful consists of a few people who can be counted on to regularly like or comment on most pictures, though there are a few “drive-by likes” from people who normally don’t hit the like button.
(Of course, even the drive-by likers tend to be a pretty consistent subset of my friends.)
In any case, I’ve never posted anything on Facebook that has gotten as many likes as that image on Legion World did.
Granted, Legion World has greater “reach” than I do, but the thing is, I don’t actually know any of the people who visit Legion World.
So I can’t help but wonder why it is that I can count on people I don’t know to like my arwork, but most of the people I do know completely ignore it.  Again, at the risk of sounding like I’m protesting too much, the point of this isn’t to try to lake a guilt trip on people in order to extort some praise and validation out of them.  Do I wish that more of my friends would like and/or comment on my picture posts?  Of course, but this isn’t an attempt to get them to do that.
Really I’m just thinking out loud – or at least thinking in a blog post – about something that I sometimes wonder about.
This isn’t something I lose sleep over, or spend a lot of time obsessing about, but it does come to mind at times, particularly when I see something like that post on Legion World.
I’m really just legitimately curious – why don’t more of my friends “like” my artwork?
I suppose that the most obvious explanation is exactly that:  they don’t like it, for whatever reason.  Maybe they find it offensive, or too objectifying, or they just plain don’t think it’s any good or just aren’t interested.
That’s certainly possible, and understandable – I do obviously tend to focus on pin-up/cheesecake-style images, and people have different, equally valid tastes when it comes to art.
I don’t discount this, but in my real-world encounters with people – many of them numbering among my Facebook friends – the response to my artwork is overwhelmingly positive.**
So I wonder.
And honestly, all I can really do is wonder, even here.  Because let’s face it, no one is going to bother leaving a comment here (which is something I've done plenty of whining about already), and I’m not actually going to put this on Facebook because despite – or perhaps because of – my claims to the contrary it will look like I’m saying, “Pls liek mah picz!  I can has validayshun?”
Anyway, while not discounting the “Your art is bad and you should feel bad” explanation, these are some of the other possible explanations I’ve come up with:

High Signal to Noise Ratio:  Unlike me, most people have a lot of friends on Facebook.  Far too many to actually even notice, let alone interact with.  Also, while I keep my newsfeed pretty readable by hiding a lot of irrelevant stuff like updates about game activities and whatnot, it’s possible that many of my friends don’t hide anything, and so they’re inundated with too much stuff to notice my pictures.

Unplugged:  Maybe most of my friends don’t actually spend a lot of time on Facebook.

Unsubscribed:  Maybe people want to maintain a connection with me, but they don’t want my frequent posts of pictures and random thoughts cluttering up their newsfeeds, so they’ve hidden all updates from me.  Which means that I’m considered noise rather than signal, and honestly, that’s just as hurtful as “Your art is bad and you should feel bad,” but still, it’s possible.

For Games Only:  Maybe all they do on Facebook is play games.  Given how many game update stories I’ve had to hide and game requests I’ve ignored, this one seems likely, especially given that once I finally hid all of those updates the amount of activity I saw on my newsfeed dropped exponentially, so clearly if they’re doing anything on Facebook at all most of my friends aren’t doing anything that shows up in my newsfeed, which leaves games as the most likely suspect.  (Though this could also be a result of their privacy settings and the utilization of lists.)

What Is This I Don’t Even:  Back when I had a display for Heroic Portraits during the craft show at work a lot of the people who stopped by my table – even the ones who were previously aware of my artistic endeavors – didn’t understand that I actually drew the Portraits.  I’m not sure what it was that they thought I did, but it was clear that there was, until I explained the process to them, no understanding of the fact that these images were hand-drawn by me.  I suppose that it’s equally possible that when I post a picture to Facebook – even when I actually use the words “drawing,” “draw,” and “drew,” – that they aren’t putting the pieces together and figuring out that this is artwork done by me.  Maybe they think they’re just some random pictures I found and posted – I don’t know.  But I have seen that there are people who can look at my artwork and not actually grok the fact that it’s my artwork.

So those are my theories.  Now I’ll set them aside and go back to not thinking about it except on those occasions when I post something that I’m really proud of and pleased with and find that it doesn’t even seem to warrant crickets chirping…and then on those occasions I’ll just remind myself that I have an album dedicated to my artwork at Legion World and I’ll find myself liking total strangers more than I like my own friends.

*Admittedly, this probably had more to do with the text in the image, which is very funny if you’re any sort of fan of the Legion, and not the quality of the quickly-dashed off art.  Trust me; it actually is really funny.  It’s the kind of thing that people who find that kind of thing funny will find funny.

**If sometimes kind of nitpicky.  “Why is her arm like that?”  “What’s wrong with her nose?”  “That doesn’t look like her.”

Ladies Of The Legion - The Models

For the curious among you, here is a listing of the models I used for reference for my Ladies of the Legion pictures.  Be advised that doing a Google search on many of them would bring back some decidedly NSFW results...
I will update this list if/when I add any new pictures.

Shadow Lass – Katia Corriveau

Triplicate Girl – Unknown model (body); my brain (face)

Dream Girl – Eve Angel

Princes Projectra and Emerald Empress – Louise Glover

Lightning Lass – Katherine Heigl

Shrinking Violet – Kelly Monaco

Phantom Girl – Bianca Gascoigne

Saturn Girl – Hayden Panettiere

Supergirl and Satan Girl – Marisa Miller

White Witch – Kylie Minogue

Dawnstar – Kitana Baker

Insect Queen – Unknown model

Night Girl – Katy Perry

Infectious Lass – Unknown model

Saturn Queen – Bianca Beauchamp

Spider Girl – Kim Kardashian

Glorith – Straight from my brain

Charma – Rosa Blasi

Laurel Kent – Sabriane Brandao

Ladies Of The Legion - The Academy

A descendant of Superman, whose Kryptonian bloodline was diluted by that of her human ancestors, Laurel Kent...

When you've got it - and are invulnerable - flaunt it.

...only inherited invulnerability from her famous forebear.
Not a bad inheritance, all things considered, but given that several members of the Legion numbered invulnerability amongst their many other powers and abilities, it was no wonder that she never graduated to full-fledged membership from the Legion Academy. (Unlike her former roommate Dawnstar, who got called up to join the ranks of the Legion.)
After the history-altering events of Crisis on Infinite Earths, Laurel's origin was retconned to something something Manhunter something something Elna something something, and eventually she was removed from continuity entirely.
If I recall correctly, when Laurel was first introduced she was found in a state of distress and rescued* by Superboy who was, as he often did, visiting the 30th Century, and who, upon seeing her, kind of...uhh...had the hots for her.
To be fair to the Boy of Steel, he had no idea she was one of his descendants, and while I don't think it was ever officially revealed who the Eve to Clark Kent's Adam was, the odds are it was Lois, and Laurel did look a lot like her great-great-great-great-great-grandmother.
Okay, yeah, it's still creepy.
The creepier part, though, was that Laurel, knowing fully-well that he was her ancestor, kind of had the hots for Superboy.
Anyway, that's Laurel Kent.

*He didn't know she was invulnerable and therefore not in any danger.  I think - and I could be wrong; it's been a while - that she actually deliberately placed herself in "danger" so that he would rescue her and she could meet him.

Ladies of the Legion: The Villains

Satan Girl, seen below, appeared at a time when all of the female members of the Legion had become ill with a "Crimson Virus" and had to be sent off to Quarantime Planet for treatment.
She offered her services to the Legion as a replacement for the missing members, stating that her powers made her as valuable as all of the lady Legionnaires combined.
Of course, the boys were having none of it, as they were convinced that their absent members would be cured and would return to active duty soon.
Angry at being rejected, Satan Girl insisted that the girls would never recover, and she would know: she was the one who had infected them with the virus.
Satan Girl then headed off to Quarantine Planet to finish of the ladies. Fortunately, Supergirl, who was not affected by the virus, swooped in to fend her off. However, she wasn't able to defeat Satan Girl, whose powers were a match for her own.
It turned out that Satan Girl was actually an evil duplicate of Supergirl, the result of the Maid of Might being exposed to Red Kryptonite, a substance which has unpredictable effects on Kryptonians. However, the effects of exposure only last for 48 hours. Knowing this, Satan Girl realized that her time was short and, wanting to live her own life separate from Supergirl, found a way to extend her existence by transferring the Red Kryptonite radiation in her body into the ladies of the Legion.
(Part of the effect of the exposure to Red K had resulted in Supergirl losing all memory of the exposure.)
Unfortunately for her, the intervention - *sigh* - Legion of Super-Pets prevented Satan Girl from fully realizing her scheme (animals were not affected by the Red K radiation that she emitted to cause the "Crimson Virus"), and as her time ran out she was absorbed back into Supergirl and ceased to exist as a separate being.
I don't think it's really fair to call her an "evil" duplicate of Supergirl. Sure, she lacked Supergirl's self-sacrificing and heroic nature, but can you really blame her for just wanting to live?

Ladies Of The Legion: The Villains

Charma, pictured below, was a very minor character who, in what I read, clashed with the Legion, but, given that she was drawn by Mike Grell and, consequently, wore a very skimpy outfit - fans of The Warlord (And I ask again: why hasn't anyone made a Warlord movie?) would recognize her outfit as being very similar to that worn by Mariah - she managed to stand out in my memory.



Charma was a mutant with a hypnotic ability that allowed her to bend men to her will, making any man she encountered her adoring slave, an ability that allowed her to exert control over even the most powerful membors of the Legion.
The most powerful male Legionnaires, at any rate.
She partnered with a man named Grimbor the Chainsman, an expert in creating inescapable traps and shackles, and, exerting her control over the boys in the Legion, the two of them were able to subdue and imprison the distaff members of the team.
This was important, as Charma's hypnotic power had a flip side. Whereas any man she encountered would fall instantly and hopelessly in love with her, her power had rather the opposite effect on women. Any woman exposed to Charma hated her with the same level of passion with which men loved her, and they would express that hatred violently and mercilessly.
Though all of the members of the Legion were in chains - either literally, in the case of the girls, or figuratively in the case of the boys - one Legionnaire had managed to escape detection: Shrinking Violet. Violet beat the tar out of Charma. Once they were free from Charma's hold on them, the boys soundly defeated Grimbor (nearly killing Violet in the process as they rushed to stop her from pounding the hell out of the obect of their affection).
The question of how to go about restraining Charma was resolved by her partner, Grimbor, who loved her desperately - and selfishly - and had used his expertise to create shackles that nullified her power with an eye toward eventually imprisoning her and keeping her all to himself. The Legion found the shackles and sent Charma off to prison. A women's prison, where she was eventually beaten to death by the other inmates.
She apparently resurfaced in the post-Zero Hour continuity, but I haven't read those stories.
For the curious among you, once again I did the line work freehand in Manga Studio, then brought it into Photoshop to retouch and color it.

Ladies Of The Legion: The Villains

Yes, after all these months, it's a new Ladies of the Legion picture:



Meet Glorith of Baaldur.
...
I don't have much more to say about her, as when I read Legion in my youth, I was completely unaware of her existence. I only recently learned of her existence in reading the Showcase Presents volumes, which collect the earliest adventurs of the LoSH.
In those stories she was the non-powered henchwoman of the Time Trapper, one of the Legion's deadliest enemies, but honestly, she didn't do much.
In later stories - after I'd stopped reading the Legion's series - she became much more prominent, apparently.
Lacking any particularly interesting insights into the character, in approaching the picture I though about her connection to time and also about the notion of an "hourglass figure," and decided to try to add a bit of a visual punch to the image with the dress made up of flowing sand, and the cartoonishly "womanly" figure. As is so often the case, the concept was better than the execution...
There are some things that are significant about this image though. For one, I drew the basic image - without any sort of reference - completely by hand in Manga Studio before bringing it into Photoshop to do the coloring, touch-ups, and effects.
I'm still trying to get the hang of Manga Studio, but I find it so much easier to default back to the more familiar Photoshop.
I've run into various stumbling blocks in trying to get past the Manga Studio learning curve. I'm beginning to suspect that the biggest stumbling block is that I'm really not that good, which is something that, to a certain extent, I'm able to adjust for in Photoshop.
I don't know. Anyway, it's a picture.

Ladies Of The Legion: The Collage

So I've been messing around on the tablet PC a lot, and found the "Windows Touch Experience Pack," which has several little toys for playing around with touch, such as a 3D map program, some games, a screensaver that lets you scare fish in a pond by creating ripples in the water with your fingers, and Microsoft Surface Collage, a photo viewer based on the Microsoft Surface technology that lets sift through, stack, and shuffle your pictures as if they were on a table in front of you. You can rotate and resize them, and save the results as a collage, as I did with these pictures of the lovely ladies of the Legion of Super-Heroes:
f

Ladies Of The Legion: The Villains

Not every every rejected Legion applicant goes on to join the Substitute Legion. Some, consumed by bitterness, turn to villainy. Such was the case with Sussa Paka, also known as Spider Girl:



After failing to gain entry to the Legion of Super-Heroes, Spider Girl went on to join the Legion of Super-Villains.
And that's pretty much the extent of what I knew about her. She was never a particularly major character, though apparently she got a little more focus during the Five Years Later period of the Legion, which I've never read. According to Wikipedia, she dyed her hair - which is super-strong and prehensile - blue and changed her name to Wave.
I imagine that the name-change was a nod to DC's Marvelous Competitor.
Speaking of Marvel, being a redhead with super-strong prehensile hair makes her largely indistinguishable from the Marvel character Medusa, of The Inhumans.
Honestly, if I took the spider web out of the background - is it clear that the web is composed of her hair? - I could just as easily say this is a picture of Medusa.
In any case, apart from (probably) reading the story of her failed application to the Legion in a reprint (and then, more recently, in one of the volumes of Showcase Presents: The Legion of Super-Heroes, and seeing her listed in the LSV's entry in Who's Who in the DC Universe, there's only one story in which I'd ever seen her appear. That particular story is actually one of my all-time favorites, though that really has nothing to do with Spider Girl...

Ladies Of The Legion: The Villains

If you're going to form a team of villains that acts in direct opposition to the Legion of Super-Heroes, the most obvious thing to do is call yourself the Legion of Super-Villains.
Eve Aries of Titan joined a team that did exactly that, operating under the nom-de-crime of Saturn Queen:



Like all members of her race - such as Saturn Girl - Saturn Queen possesses super-human mental abilities. In her case, it's the power of "super-hypnotism."

Ladies Of The Legion: The Villains

When you go around fighting crime all over the galaxy the way the Legion does, you're bound to make some enemies. And given that you're, well a legion, the odds are that some of those enemies are going to form teams of their own.
Sarya of Venegar is a member of the Fatal Five, a group of some of the Legion's deadliest enemies, as the Emerald Empress:



The Empress controls the Emerald Eye of Ekron, a mysterious artifact of immense power that responds to her mental commands.
One of my favroite things about the Empress is the fact that, at one point - because he saved her life - she had the hots for Superboy. She even did the whole, "Let's run off together and with our combined power we can rule the universe!" thing.
Silly Sarya; don't you know that green is his least favorite color?
(Also, there's the whole thing about her being a vicious, power-mad sociopath. Then again, that never stopped him from being interested in Lana Lang...)

Ladies Of The Legion: The Subs

Drura Sehpt of Somahtur applied for membership in the Legion as Infectious Lass...



...but was rejected because her inability to control her power - the power to make people sick - presented a danger to the other members of the Legion.
Still, she was good enough for the Legion of Substitute Heroes, who were never known for being too particular about who they accepted for membership...

Ladies Of The Legion: The Subs

Lydda Jath of Kathoon is like one of those rich kids who wants to be a singer, so her parents buy her a record deal and bribe radio stations to get them to play her songs, only in her case, she wanted to be a member of the Legion, and got her scientist father to give her powers, thus becoming Night Girl:



Unfortunately for her, while her father doted on her enough to give in to her wishes, and succeeded in giving her super-strength, her powers only worked at night or in deep shadows.
Which was fine on Kathoon, a world that exists in perpetual darkness, but presents a problem when attempting to engage in super-heroics in any well-lit areas.
Naturally, given this drawback, the Legion rejected her application.
However, she and several other Legion rejects went on to form the Legion of Substitute Heroes. It's kind of like if all of the losers from American Idol went on to form a band.
If the Legion was otherwise unavailable, the Subs would step in and do their best to fill in for them. Sadly, their best really wasn't all that great.
Still, it wasn't all bad news for Lydda, who was actually one of the more competent Subs. After all, the whole reason she wanted to join the Legion in the first place was because she had a crush on Cosmic Boy, and while she never managed to become a full-fledged Legionnaire, she did at least manage to catch Cosmic Boy's eye - and with that beehive hairdo, how could she not stand out? - and managed to get into his...er...corset.
Seriously; in the 70s, Cosmic Boy wore a corset. In fact, for the purposes of this picture, I decided to draw her actually wearing his corset costume. Honestly, remove the jacket, and that's Cosmic Boy's costume.
I like to imagine that as a surprise for her boyfriend, Lydda ordered something trashy from Fredrick's of Talok VIII, and when Cos stopped by the Subs' clubhouse to visit and she walked out wearing it and said, "Look what I bought for you!" he totally misunderstood her intentions...

Ladies Of The Legion - Addendum: Lois Got Hosed

So if you're Lana Lang of Earth, seen here as the Insect Queen...



...and one day as you're walking through your hometown of Smallville you stumble upon a strange, insect-like alien trapped under a tree, and after you rescue him, he gives you a ring that gives you the power to take on the characteristics and abilities of any insect or arachnid, do you:

A. Use your powers in the service of mankind as a super-hero?
B. Go a more selfish route, but still provide a valuable service, by hiring yourself out to do things like create massive quanities of super-spider silk for use in manufacturing?
C. Use your powers in the service of mankind as a super-hero, but also use them to try to prove that Superboy is Clark Kent?

If you answered anything other than C, you're clearly not a hateful bitch Lana Lang.
Lana gave the hero thing a whirl, for a while, while also trying (and failing) to prove that Clark and Superboy were one and the same, but when she found that she could only take on the aspect of any particular insect once a day, and realized that she lacked the ability to keep a catlog of useful insects in mind, she put away her costume and ring.
However, eventually, while the Legion was on a visit to 20th Century Smallville, she decided to try out for membership. Unfortunately for her, she didn't qualify for full membership because she's a hateful bitch her powers came fron an external source, and Legion bylaws stated that every Legionnaire must have a power that is, in some fashion, inherent (even if it was initially gained through artificial means).
However, she was awarded the status of "Reserve Member."
Similarly, Jimmy Olsen, who had access to a serum that gave him elastic powers and allowed him to become Elasti-Lad, didn't qualify for full membership, but managed to become an "Honorary Member."
Finally, Superboy's best friend Pete Ross, who had no powers, artificial or otherwise, also gained "Honorary Member" status in the Legion in recognition of the fact that while he knew Superboy's secret identity, he kept the secret to himself. Even Clark was unaware that Pete knew the truth. This was despite the fact that Pete, having learned to recognize the "This is a job for Superboy...but I can't get away without revealing my identity!" look on Clark's face, would always engage in some sort of distraction that would allow Clark to slip away without arousing suspicion.
Clark, being not terribly bright, despite his "super-intellect," always assumed that it was just a lucky break whenever Pete would conveniently twist his ankle, or have an epileptic seizure, or shoot some random person in the face, or whatever the hell he had to do to cover for his pal.
So three of Superboy/man's closest friends got to have some sort of status as members of the Legion.
Lois Lane, meanwhile, got the shaft.

Ladies Of The Legion Part 11

Like Princess Projectra, our final Lady of the Legion, Dawnstar, doesn't actually have a Legion codename, simply going by her given name:



Dawny is a native of the planet Starhaven, a world that's the home to a tribe of Native Americans who were abducted by aliens in the 13th Century and experimented on. Said experiments resulted in the development of wings.
Beyond simply being able to fly with her wings in an atmosphere, Dawnstar is able to generate a force field that allows her to survive unaided for extended periods of time in deep space, and, when in space, is able to travel at faster than light speeds. Additionally, she is able to track people and objects over vast distances.
She became a member of the Legion after completing training in the Legion Academy.
As with the White Witch, who, as mentioned, was in something of a mismatched relationship with another Legionnaire, Dawnstar is linked to fellow Legionnaire Drake Burroughs of Earth, also known as Wildfire.
Their relationship is complicated by the fact that an accident transformed Wildfire into a being of pure "anti-energy." No longer having a physical form, Wildfire occupies a special containment suit that allows him to assume some semblance of humanity.

****

And that brings us to the end of the Ladies of the Legion series. At least, as far as the actual members of the Legion.
Up next will be the distaff members of the Legion of Substitute Heroes, followed by some of the villainous vixens who have squared off against the Legion over the years.
However, I think that's going to happen only after I've taken a bit of a break from the Legion, especially since I have to complete a Heroic Portrait.
I hope there's been someone out there (other than Scott) who's enjoyed my depiction of these future femmes.

Ladies Of The Legion Part 10

Mysa Nal of Naltor, sister of Dream Girl, is the Lady Legionnaire known as the White Witch:



Unlike her fellow Naltorians, such as her sister, Mysa was not born with the ability to see the future. To compensate, she studied magic on the Sorceror's World, and eventually joined up with the Legion in the aftermath of The Great Darkness Saga.
While she was a powerful sorceress, she was rather limited in that she couldn't spontaneously perfrom much in the way of magic, needing to memorize spells in advance, and only being able to keep a limited number of spells memorized at a time.
Like many other Legionnaires, she was one half of a rather mismatched pairing, having a rather deep romance which was, by necessity, chaste, with fellow Legionnaire Blok. A native of the planet Dryad, Blok was a silicon-based life form, possessing a massive, dense, stony body (hence the necessity for the romance to remain chaste).
Blok was so massive that while most Legionnaires could fly to soaring heights at great speeds with their Legion Flight Rings, he required several rings just to get off the ground, and generally could not keep up with the others.

Ladies Of The Legion Part 9

Our latest Lady of the Legion is Kara Zor-El of Krypton - or at least of a big chunk of what remained of Krypton after it exploded - more commonly known as Supergirl:



Kara's father, Zor-El - it was a Kryptonian custom for females to be identified by their first name and their father's full name - was the brother of Jor-El. Unlike the rest of the populace, when Jor-El predicted Krypton's destruction, Zor-El believed him, and undertook an effort to enclose his hometown of Argo City in an indestructible dome, which allowed Argo to survive the explosion of Krypton.
Adrift in space, the bedrock upon which Argo rested underwent the chain reaction that created Kryptonite, and so for the people of Argo it was out of the frying pan and into the fire, as they'd survived the destruction of their homeworld only to have the remnant on which they were living begin slowly killing them.
Much like his brother had managed to rocket his son, Kal-El - better known as Superman - to Earth, Zor-El and his wife Alura decided to save the life of their daughter, Kara, by sending her away to live with her cousin.
For years, Supergirl served as Superman's "secret weapon," keeping her existence hidden from the world.
(And, as I've mentioned before, making Kara incredibly neurotic in the process. He even made her live in an orphanage, and required that she sabotage any efforts by loving parents to adopt her, for fear that any adoptive parents might find out her secret. Yeah.)
During that period of secrecy, the Legion traveled back in time to give Supergirl the opportunity to try out for membership.
Kara passed with flying colors, and was on the fast track to membership, but in the course of her tryout she'd been exposed to Red Kryptonite, a variety of the irradiated remains of Krypton that has unpredictable - but temporary - affects on Kryptonians. In this case, it caused Supergirl to age several years, becoming a Superwoman.
Because the Legion bylaws stated that no member could be older than 19 Earth years old, and also because, as Chris Sims will tell you, the Legionnaires are often a bunch of dicks, she was rejected for membership.
Eventually, she did get into the Legion, serving with distinction.
In the 1981 mini-series Secrets of the Legion of Super-Heroes, which I just recently reacquired, it was "revealed" (read: retconned) that the Legion had actually approached Supergirl to offer her membership before they had recruited Superboy.
The reason? They were too intimidated by Superboy's legendary reputation, and wanted to make a practice run with his also-ran cousin.
Like I said, a bunch of dicks.
Still, it wasn't all bad. While in the Legion, Kara had something of a romance with one Querl Dox of Colu, a super-genius who went by the name Brainiac 5. The "descendant" of Brainiac, one of history's greatest villains and one of Superman's deadliest enemies, Brainiac 5 devoted his life in the Legion to trying to rehabilitate the name "Brainiac."
Given that he created a computer that ended up turning Triplicate Girl into Duo Damsel by killing one of her duplicates, and just generally having more brains than sense, I'd say he didn't do the greatest job of it...

Ladies Of The Legion Part 8

This picture of Imra Ardeen-Ranz, one of the founding members of the Legion, doesn't have anything special going for it in terms of a gimmick, but I'm still pleased with how it turned out:



Hailing from Titan, one of the moons of Saturn, Imra was imaginatively code-named Saturn Girl.
(That actually reminds me of how, when I lived in Minnesota, my friends and I would assign nicknames to women we saw around whose names we didn't know, giving them "clever" appellations based on certain physical characteristics. Thus, "Tall Chick," and "Ass Chick," and, thanks to a vanity license plate she had, on her car, "GWAR Chick.")
Like all of her people - as is often the case with the members of the Legion - Imra is a powerful telepath, though - again, as is often the case with Legionnaires who are members of races with special abilities - she was an especially gifted telepath, being one of the most powerful in Titan's history.
Imra actually served as the catalyst for the founding of the Legion. Despite her youth, she was considered an adult on Titan - another common theme in the Legion - and was heading to Earth to put her powers to use as a member of the Science Police. Along the way, she met two boys also bound for Earth to make their fortunes: Garth Ranzz of Winath, and Rokk Krin of Braal.
The galaxy's richest man , industrialist R.J. Brande, was also on the Earth express, and upon arrival at their destination, Imra picked up a stray thought from someone who was planning to kill Brande. She alerted Garth and Rokk, who, having unique abilities of their own - the ability to generate ligntning and super magnetism respecitvely - intervened and saved Brande's life.
Impressed by this act of heroism, Brande made an offer to the super-powered teens: he would provide them the funding if they would form a team - some sort of legion - of super-heroes. Inspired by the legendary exploits of Superboy in the 20th Century, who, despite his tender years, had gone on to become history's greatest hero, the three youths accepted the proposal.
And thus the Legion was born.
I couldn't really think of a "hook" for a Saturn Girl picture - I mean, I had Shrinking Violet shrunken to a tiny size, and even Lightning Lass was at least generating some electricity - and it's not even really much in the way of a "pin-up" pose. But honestly, what can you do to show telepathy?
And as for a pin-up pose...well, I didn't even feel the need to have her in a state of undress, because, seriously, do you see that costume?
(To be fair, she is somewhat out of costume: she's not wearing her opera-length gloves.)
This costume is, as far as I reccall, another Dave Cockrum design, and I can tell you that the fact that this was how Saturn Girl dressed in the 70s and into the early 80s says a lot about why young Jon liked comics so much in the first place...
There were quite a few designs for new costumes for existing Legionnaires and even for new characters that Cockrum came up with that never got put to use, several of which he brought over to Marvel and used in his work on the All-New, All-Different X-Men.
However, Cockrum clearly really liked this design, as even though it did get used for Saturn Girl, he essentially reused it in the design for Storm.
Though now that I think of it, he may have originally designed Storm as a new character for the Legion, and found that DC decided to pass on introducing black character, but decided to use a modified version of the costume design.
In any case, in the early 80s, Imra switched to a more modest costume that was based on her original outfit, and has mostly - and sadly - been depicted in some variation of that ever since.
She also went on to marry Garth Ranzz, also known as Lightning Lad, who is the twin brother of Ayla (Lightning Lass).

Ladies Of The Legion Part 7

Our latest Lady of the Legion is Tinya Wazzo of Bgztl, or as she's known in costume - or even mostly out of costume - Phantom Girl:



Phantom Girl is from a planet in another dimension, and her ability to phase between her dimension and our own allows her to become intangible.
In most versions of Legion continuity, PG has been romantically linked with Jo Nah of Rimbor, also known as Ultra Boy. Ultra Boy became a hero after being infused with "Ultra Energy" when - and I'm not kidding - his space cruiser was swallowed by a giant space fish.
Yeah. "Jo Nah" swallowed by a giant fish.
In any case, there's not really a lot that distinguishes PG, apart from the costume she wore in the 70s and 80s. Designed by Dave Cockrum - who redesigned most of the Legion's outfits - PG's costume consisted of a white jumpsuit with flared bell bottoms and various cutouts that were a hallmark of Cockrum's design sense.
Of course, anything was better than her original costume, which was just a set of white tights, a white cape, and the letter P on her chest.
If I'd been thinking about it, I might have used Phantom Girl to do a riff on the unrelated character of Phantom Lady, a Golden Age heroine who, in her earliest adventures, was mostly known for wearing a skimpy costume and being depicted in what were essentially bondage scenes on the covers of her series (and in her more modern adventures is known for wearing an even skimpier outfit and having ridiculously large boobs even by comic book standards). Maybe something showing how pointless it is to try to tie up someone who can just slip right through the ropes. Ah well.

Ladies Of The Legion Part Six

I knew when I started on this that disappointment would be the norm, but even so...
In any case, here we see Salu Digby of Imsk, also known as Shrinking Violet:



This particular Lady of the Legion, like everyone on her home planet, has the ability to shrink to a miniscule size, though Violet has the distinction of being able to shrink to a smaller size than anyone else of her race.
Here we see her hanging out in her Legion Flight Ring.
For much of her time in the Legion, she was the object of affection for Colossal Boy - Gim Allon of Earth - who, after being exposed to a strange meteriote, could grow to, well, colossal size.
In the minds of Silver Age writers, someone who can get really small was an obvious match for someone who could get really big, but for the most part, Vi wasn't having it.
However, somewhere along the line she stopped giving Colossal Boy the cold shoulder, and the two went on to become romantically involved.
Or did they?
In fact, they did not. It turned out that Vi had been kidnapped at one point while visiting her homeworld and was being held in stasis while a shape-shifting actress - unaware that there was anything nefarious going on - secretly took Vi's place in the Legion, and while Vi had never really been terribly interested in Colossal Boy, her replacement was very interested.
Upon being freed, the formerly meek Shrinking Violet became much, much more aggressive as a result of her captivity.
During the period known as "Five Years Later" in Legion history, Vi went on to become romantically involved with Lightning Lass.
It was my original intention to include Vi in the picture with LL, but, as mentioned, that didn't work out.

Ladies Of The Legion Part 5

It was my intention to pair Ayla Ranzz of Winath, also known as Light Lass, but seen here as Lightning Lass...



...with another Lady of the Legion, but I wasn't able to get the effect I wanted, and so I decided to just have her appear solo.
The reason I wanted to pair her with another Lady of the Legion is that in later years, the two of them ended up becoming romantically involved.
However, I've been sticking with a pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Legion roster - mostly because I didn't read many Legion stories after that - and it was pointed out to me that if it was "splitting hairs" to borrow concepts from later Legion stories if I wasn't also going to draw some of the Ladies from that period.
Now, I could argue that I'm the one drawing the goddamn pictures, so I'll draw whatever I goddamn please, but that seems unnecessarily hostile.
So anyway, this is my latest entry in the Ladies of the Legion series.
Lightning Lass is the twin sister of founding member Lightning Lad, who gained his identical electrical powers in the same accident that granted those powers to Lightning Lass (and to their older brother, who went on to become a villain and enemy to his siblings and the Legion).
At some point early in the Legion's history, Lightning Lad was killed in the line of duty. He died in such a way that the rest of the Legion held out hope that there might be a way to restore him to life, or that he might, somehow, miraculously return on his own.
Then, seemingly, the latter appeared to actually happen, and Lightning Lad returned.
It was soon revealed, however, that it was actually Lightning Lass in disguise. Why she couldn't just show up and say, "Hey, I'm Lightning Lad's sister. Mind if I become his replacement in the Legion in honor of his memory?" is a question that can only be found in the byzantine "logic" of the Silver Age.
But what's worth noting, though, is that, while later retellings of that particular story showed Ayla as having taken greater measures to make herself appear male, in the orginal story she was, apparently, masculine enough to pull it off without much effort (or, conversely, her brother was feminine enough).
Of course, in the Golden and Silver Age of comics, anyone could pretend to be anyone else successfully with minimal effort. That's why it's unfair to accuse Lois Lane and other friends of Superman for being dumb for not being able to figure out that Superman was Clark Kent. I mean, he wore glasses, and every guy with black hair looked exactly like every other guy with black hair.
In any case, after her ruse was discovered, Lightning Lass was welcomed into the Legion, but some time later Dream Girl had a vision that foretold the deaths of several Legionnaires if they went on a particular mission, so rather than, oh, I don't know, just saying, "Hey, guys, remember how I'm psychic and can see the future in my dreams? Well, do I ever have a dream to tell you about..." she engaged in some Three's Companyesque charade that prevented the Legionnaires in question from going on said mission (cf. my earlier comment about Silver Age "logic").
In the case of Lightning Lass, Dream Girl arranged for her to be injured in an explosion.
Yeah.
"Hmm...do I tell her she's going to die if she goes on this mission, or just blow shit up in her face so she can't go?"
As a result of the explosion, Lightning Lass found that her powers had changed. She could no longer generate electricity, but now found that she could nullify gravity. Thus she became Light Lass.
Which was just as well, as Lightning Lad was eventually brought back to life, and the Legion bylaws stated (a lot of these rules were made up as the series went along; again, Silver Age) that each Legionnaire must have at least one unique power not possessed by any other Legionnaire.
In later years, a battle with her older, evil brother restored her lightning powers, and she went back to being Lightning Lass.