In the
Legion of Super Heroes comics of years past there would regularly be an issue in which super-powered teens from all over the galaxy would come to try out for membership in the Legion, demonstrating the effectiveness – or ineffectiveness – of their powers in the hopes that the Legion would see them as an asset.
Sort of like
American Idol for super heroes, and, just like
Idol, the majority of people trying out for the Legion ended up embarrassing themselves, demonstrating some of the lamest, most useless powers ever seen, such as
Arm Fall Off Boy, whose power was that he could make his left arm fall off at will, and then use it as a club.
I’m not kidding.
And there was the
Polecat, whose power was to
stink (in more ways than one).
Of course, not all rejected heroes had lame powers. Some had control issues, like
Polar Boy, who could generate extreme cold, which could be a genuinely useful power, but who lacked precision in its application.
Others had limitations, like
Night Lass, who had superhuman strength, but only at night.
Still others had abilities that were already possessed by existing Legion members. This was a problem, as one requirement for membership was that you must have a unique power that no other Legionnaire possesses.
Eventually several of these Legion rejects got together and formed their own team. Dubbing themselves The
Legion of Substitute Heroes, they made themselves available whenever the regular Legion was otherwise occupied or was somehow incapacitated.
The were also available for birthdays, graduations, and bar mitzvahs.
So yeah, if you had an emergency situation, but didn’t really need the best of the best, or the best of the second-best, or even the best of the worst, you could always put out the call for the Legion of Substitute Heroes.
What’s the point of all this silly comics nostalgia?
Well, today we had a meeting at work which outlined the new structure of job responsibilities and the new teams handling these responsibilities.
I learned that I’m on the team that pretty much equates to the Legion of Substitute Heroes.
I’m not clear on all of the details yet, but it looks as though I’ll be doing some of the same things I’ve been doing all along, though it’s entirely possible that a big chunk of job responsibility is actually missing and no longer being handled by anyone, as there seemed to be no mention of it being handled by anyone, and many of the other job responsibilities appear to be doing some of the shitty jobs that none of the other groups want to do, which is nothing new, really.
But apart from the job itself, it was more a matter of looking at the names of the other benchwarmers who are going to be on the team with me that made me feel like a Legion reject.
I think my super hero name should be something like
Shows Up For Work Boy.
Oh well. It’s a paycheck, and it’s the same shift.
I suppose I should start seriously looking for something else, but it’s hard to muster up the motivation to do that when I know it’ll mean going to a five day work week. The thought is just too horrible to consider.
