boyajian@akov68.DEC (Jerry Boyajian) (07/27/84)
>> As for Phoenix, I'm sure that as long as Shooter is around, she won't >> return as Jean Grey. > > So if Jimbo gets hit by a truck, falls off a ledge, or has a safe dropped on > him (my favorite), check on what Chris Claremont was doing at the time... > > Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer But I thought that he was going have a giant crescent-moon-shaped boulder drop- ped on him by the Merely Magnificent Moon Roach. From: ea!kel > Aquaman is a heavyweight? Superman is the only incredibly > powerful member of the original JLA, and one of their great- > est weaknesses was that he couldn't be everywhere at once. > Batman has no super powers whatsoever. (1) Back in the early 60's, when the JLA was started, yes, indeed, Aquaman was a heavyweight, as was Hawkman and the Atom. Lo, how the mighty have fallen. (2) By "heavyweights", I did not mean all-powerful. I don't expect everyone in the JLA to be as powerful as Superman. By "heavyweights", I meant the really popular heroes, the ones who are the cornerstone of the DC Universe (well, Earth-1, any- way). (3) Regardless of the fact that Batman has no super-powers, he is second only to Superman in his longevity and long-term popularity and recognition fac- tor, and as such, he is an "important" hero in the DC Universe. > The purpose of the JLA was to provide a means to defeat adversaries that > could exploit the weaknesses of individual heroes, ... Are you trying to teach your grandpappy how to suck eggs? I think you have it backwards. The JLA, like the JSA twenty years earlier, was started so that the readers could see their favorites heroes working together in a team (much the same reason as the Marvel/DC crossovers). The adversaries came about because now they had to have villains who could give a good fight against the aggregate power that the JLA represented. If you look back at those early JLA issues, you will find that most of the villains fought by the group were *not* villains, or groups of villains, that were the arch-foes of the individual heroes. They were all-new villains created to fight the JLA. And to indicate that I'm not just talking out of my hat: up until a few (maybe four) years ago, when I purged my collection, I had a *complete* set of JLA. > JLA followed in the traditions of both World's Finest and the early DC comics, > in which heroes crossed titles so much that the JSA and even its predecessors > were a completely reasonable occurrence. Hunh? With few exceptions, there weren't a whole hell of a lot of cross-overs going on in the DC comics *I* read in the late 50's/early 60's. Marvel was the one known for its crossovers. [Before I get accused of saying things that I am not, I said that "with few exceptions" and "weren't a whole hell of a lot" up there. Don't start trying to refute my statement by merely telling me about Green Lantern showing up in a given issue of Flash, or whatever.] > To say that a personnel change is going to ruin the Justice League is to > completely ignore the basis on which it exists. They even let Bouncing Boy > into the Legion! On the contrary, I'm complaining about the personnel change *because* of the basis on which it exists. Conway is the one who's ignoring that by making such a drastic change. And I think I missed something somewhere. What's Bouncing Boy and the Legion got to do with anything? > How old is the esteemed Prof. X anyway? It has been a lot of years > since he rounded up Scott, Bobby, Hank, etc. to form the original > X-men, it must even have been a lot of years in the comic. > So aside from questions about leadership qualities, how does the Prof. > have the physical stamina to go running around with the team? > Harry Well, according to the revisionist view of the Marvel Universe, It hasn't really been all that long. According to this view (which I'm not necessarily defending, though I understand its purpose), which is meant to scrunch up the /\t of the Marvel Universe, the FF was formed only about 10 years ago, rather than 20, and the X-Men have been around only about 7 years (since the original team was begun --- the new team has only been around 2 years or so). So the Prof probably isn't that old, maybe 40's or so. And don't forget that a new body was cloned when the old one was metamorphosed into a sleazoid, so the body could well be that of a 25-year-old. --- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, Maynard, MA) UUCP: {decvax|ihnp4|allegra|ucbvax|...}!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-akov68!boyajian ARPA: boyajian%akov68.DEC@DECWRL.ARPA