So I started doing these things almost two years ago now, and I’ve gotten self-righteous emails about them at times. I’d figure I’ve gotten maybe two for every post (not sequentially, just overall). There’s the “who do you think you are” variety, of course, and the “why don’t you use all this talent to make something yourself” sort (because I talk so much about the writing I do that’s not for this or other sites, you see).
But one letter I got stuck with me, and that was a mail complaining that everything I was writing was setup. There wasn’t any payoff. Now, there are reasons for that, of course. These are essentially pitches to readers; a series of tests to see if what I like to write about is what people want to read. And, on the off chance I ever get to use them (writing Legion, or far more likely adapting what I’ve presented here for my own use in other formats and settings), I don’t want to give away the endings.
But let’s be realistic: the odds of me getting to write the book are dramatically low, even should I get the level of success necessary for DC to take a shot with me, because the Legion is a core property. (How many years did it take for DC to let Gail Simone write Wonder Woman?)
So I figured that for this – the last one of these, and this time I mean it – I’d change things up a little and give you more than just a teaser. Something fleshier. This was one of the first ideas I had when I started doing this thing two years ago – I referenced it in both reasons 6 and 29 of the original thirty – and it’s still, out of all of them, probably my favorite. So call this my 33rd birthday present from me to you. (I would’ve gotten you a card, but I’m cheap.)
I was not a big fan of the Mark Waid reboot of the Legion when it first hit stands four years ago, and even now – having developed a better appreciation for the ideas and capabilities behind the reboot – I think he botched some things. I’ve discussed these elements before and don’t feel the need to drag Waid through the shit all over again.
One thing I particularly disliked at first was his reimagining of Triplicate Girl. Removing the “triplicate culture” that previous versions of the Legion had had and replacing it with a hive mind sort of gestalt being? It was weird, and at the time I felt it was pointlessly showy. I missed the idea of “tri-jitsu.” Worst, it was kind of creepy.
But then I started thinking about it some more, and I realized – it was kind of creepy! And this wasn’t bad – it was great! Because in issue #3, Triplicate Girl’s origin story? Is told entirely by Triplicate Girl herself. This immediately offers the possibility of an unreliable narrator. Unreliable narrators are one of my favorite storytelling devices because they really let you fuck with a reader’s head in a way that the reader will not only not get irritated by, but will instead thank for you doing so (when it’s done properly).
In issue #3, Triplicate Girl explains that she has no memory of what happened before the great disaster on Carggg that left only her; that she has no memory of how she came to be or how she got her power to self-replicate or how it works; that when she split her three-selves off to join the Legion from the rest of herself, that those three grew isolated from the rest of her self-society.
Bullshit.
All of it.
This is what really happened:
The entity now calling itself “Luornu Durgo” was created in a laboratory on Carggg, a small self-reliant, self-sustaining planet outside of the usual galactic traffic, one of the long-lost remnants of the colonization protocols initiated by President Thomas Lorenzo in the late 21st century when Earth’s ecosystem was on the brink of total failure. They were looking to create a next-generation antibiotic – a living compound, something that would kill virii by absorbing their genetic material. A “virus-eater.” But what they got instead was something that reflexively absorbed genetic material.
The real Luornu Durgo was a lab technician who wasn’t careful putting the failed experiment into the matter disposal unit. The compund killed her quickly, in a matter of seconds. When it did so, however, it imprinted upon her genetic template, merging itself with her, gaining sentience at the same time, marrying intelligence to a natural drive to consume. The new entity quickly realized that if anybody realized what it – she? – had done it would be destroyed, and pretended to be Luornu for a period of weeks.
During that period it started absorbing other citizens of Carggg, always careful to do so in a manner that would not raise suspicion. Each time, it gained the ability to generate a new body – and more interestingly, every time it did so it created more personality within itself, gradually becoming the hive mind it would later in fact claim to be. It/she felt guilty about killing people, but the urge to absorb was of it/herself; there was nothing to be done.
Of course, eventually the Cargggites realized what was happening, almost too late to even do anything. By that point Luornu (for so they now thought of herselves) was almost a fifth of Carggg’s population and growing rapidly. What happened next was a short and brutal war, which ended when the last bastion of Cargggites launched bradyonic bombs in a last-ditch, suicidal effort to destroy her before she captured the planet’s only remaining spaceport. The bombs wiped out all life on Carggg…
…except for Luornu. A few of her bodies were in an underground bunker at the time, and that was how she learned that the bradyonic energy – also used in teleporter technology – had not destroyed her bodies but instead, in a sense, hyperlinked them. She could now transfer her accumulated bodymass between bodies at any range, any distance. But she couldn’t teleport off the planet or anywhere else she wasn’t already, so she was trapped – and always feeling the hunger. She rebuilt the planet more out of boredom than anything else, taught herself whatever books could teach her. She continued to feel conflicted and guilty for obeying her natural urges, and tried to use the isolation to teach herself restraint.
When the United Planets exploration crew finally arrived planetside, it took all her control to keep from immediately consuming them. She spun her story of destruction and mystery, and then separated three bodies from her packself to go with them.
The restraint didn’t last, of course. She spun more bodies off herself the moment she landed on Earth and went hunting, never letting her primary three consume anyone even as they joined the Legion. This time she had the benefit of experience; she consumed the valueless, the ones nobody would miss, the underclass and criminals which avoided the Public Service. There were hundreds of millions on them in every system in the UP, plus the entire population of Rimbor and countless fringeworlds. When the Public Service was destroyed in the wake of the Dominator War, it got even easier.
All the time she kept rationalizing. Nobody would miss these people. They were leeches, parasites, better off gone. If the Legion knew, they’d destroy her, so she couldn’t tell anybody. Saturn Girl’s telepathy didn’t pick up any of this – for much the same reason that somebody drinking water from a lake doesn’t taste the whole lake.
Nobody should have noticed; nobody should have cared. But even criminals sometimes have an influential friend, and two of them were old gang buddies of Jo Nah. When one of them disappeared and the other called for help before disappearing herself, Ultra Boy took an interest, and started investigating. Not well, because he wasn’t a natural detective by any means – but he didn’t give up. It took him a long time to piece together the chain of disappearances, longer still to see the spikes wherever the Legion had had a mission.
By that point, she was one billion strong and counting. And hating herself, none moreso than her selves in the Legion – one of whom was now in a serious relationship with Element Lad. (It helped that, even though she believed she would never consume a Legionnaire, that the auras generated by the flight rings prevented her from doing so.) That self, more than any of the others, was purely restrained, never absorbing anyone. Even the other two-thirds of Triplicate Girl did so occasionally. But that one, the one dating Jan – no. Could never do it.
And that’s where the story really starts – when Ultra Boy confronts her before the Legion, demanding an explanation he doesn’t entirely want. That’s when it’s revealed that Triplicate Girl is really the Infinite Girl, as she sprouts bodies into the room faster than anybody can imagine, flooding the Legion with duplicates of herself. They may not be superpowered, but what does that matter? They can carry weapons, and they can kill any organic lifeform not wearing a flight ring – and increase their numbers at the same time. And the Legion doesn’t want to kill them – not even those with more violent tendencies (like Timber Wolf or Shadow Lass) want to carve up someone they thought of as a friend.
The Legion is swiftly divided between those taken prisoner and those managing to escape, to help in the frontlines of an instantaneous war as Luornu attacks the United Planets on a dozen different worlds simultaneously, her fight-or-flight instinct kicking in on a genocidal level. The prisoners have to escape so Brainy can come up with a plan. Element Lad has to convince the sole remaining Luornu to help, and she has to find it within herself to do it.
And in the end, they find a way to beat her – and, yes, destroy her – within a matter of hours. But it costs them one of their own; there’s no way around it. Who do you think goes? The last sane Luornu-self, desperate for redemption? Element Lad, determined not to let his lady die entirely? Ultra Boy, convinced he has to finish what he started? Maybe it’s someone else. But not everybody gets out of this one alive.
—
And that’s that. Thanks for reading it, but now I’m done.
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I’m seeing three of four of your prior WISWLoSH reflected here. Nice linking!
Go you!
I really like the idea, and I think it’d make a great story, but…gotta change the name of those bombs, MGK. Because all I could think, for about two paragraphs, was that bradyonic energy was released when a lady particle met a fella particle, and they knew that it was much more than a hunch that the two would unite to form a powerful explosion, releasing energy in a bradyonic bunch.
Sorry, but you have to know that I’m not the only one thinking that. π
Well…great.
Don’t get me wrong, I think this idea is awesome.
I’m just disappointed that it’s the last thing I’m going to get out of MGK’s brain with regards to the LOSH. I mean it was simultaneously a “let’s hear about interesting trends in comics” which I suppose won’t go away, but it was coupled with “Here’s how you can use that knowledge to make LOSH awesome stuff”.
I’m going to miss these.
As someone who has read no Legion comics and doesn’t care about any of them:
These reasons are the most entertaining part of the blog for me. And more entertaining than most comics I’ve read.
And #50 was in no way a disappointment.
I truly hope you keep continuing this series since… well, I suppose the only reason I’d be okay with these reasons stopping is if you were WRITING the comic.
I hope we get to see more of this. You’ve been fantastic.
Hey, you originally said there was going to be 30… so I’ll rest assured that when you get the next idea, you will share it.
So THAT’S what you were alluding to with the ultra Boy concept.
Your ideas make me happy, and speaking a someone who would really like to get into the Legion after only having read old Jim Shooter issues volume 1 of Waid’s reboot, I really hope DC gives you a chance. If I ever have a close contact in editorial (I know Brian Cunningham, but not well enough to pitch someone yet) I’ll fight to the death for you.
the last one of these, and this time I mean it
And that’s a damn shame, because I don’t get tired of these. New ideas, rather than telling the same damned stories over and over and over and OVER again.
Count me among the many who don’t want these to stop. I’m not a fan of the Legion either, but every time you write one of these I think I should pick up the book. Then, sadly, I remember you’re not actually writing it.
If the hive mind takes all the personalities into it, and it’s only food source has been the wretched hives of scum and villainy on the many UP worlds, wouldn’t all those anti-social-type voices eventually overwhelm the poor girl? Or would it be like the “super-psychopath” personality that developed in the AI in the (pretty bad) movie Virtuosity? 5,000 pissed of Hannibal Lecktors teleporting into Legion HQ would make for a pretty bad day.
Oh, and I’m going to miss these too. They’ve been a lot of fun.
I’ve kinda hoped this entry would never happen, as it would mean we’d never hear the delights of…
At least it was a great way to go out.
Well done, sir.
These posts were what first drew me to your site, and I’m sorry you’re ending them. (Not that I’ll be going — there’s too much other great stuff here!) I hope we get a chance to see this sort of inventiveness from you in an actual comic soon, Legion or no.
Another highly entertaining reason you should write “Legion of Super-Heroes.”
Sad to see it’s the last one… I could read another fifty or so, over the course of another few years. On the other hand, I’d prefer to read a LoSH comic written by you–these plot ideas have been fantastic.
Is Legion that much of a core title? It seems from the last three reboots or so that no matter who is on it, it sells a certain amount, but doesn’t gain much bump from the writer. I like this one, it’s a bit more fleshed-out (and fleshy) than the Projectra subplot in the actual book.
I get this vision of the end of this storyline of the Legion versus some immense Shub-Luornu, similar to “the Hierophant” from a long-forgotten Delta Green module.
That was really good. I’m sorry to hear there won’t be any more. Even more sorry that DC hasn’t called you up to give you the reins of the Legion.
If it’s really your last one, it’s been a very entertaining trip. Thank you.
What a long strange trip it’s been. Loved them all and can’t read just one. Even if you’re not putting your ideas on here, keep writing them down!
Add me to the chorus of voices hoping for more of these. I am a Legion fan, and while I’ve been enjoying the recent series, I’d dearly love to see these in Legion. Maybe there won’t be more, but maybe there will…
Just wanted to say “thank you” for doing these. If it werent for you, I wouldnt have hunted down a copy of “The Great Darkness Saga” or started picking up the Showcase volumes.
Another neat idea.
If you really don’t want to do any more of these, then by all means don’t. But my rule of thumb for hanging out on the internet is to never say never. Always leave the door open for yourself to change your mind.
I never really liked unreliable narrators, no matter how well or poorly they were done.
I think there’s more with how you suddenly get this revelation that Triplicate Girl’s a lot like a monster that’s typically without intelligence in fiction. There’s the one Triplicate Girl to show that there’s free will, though, and that what she is doesn’t have to be who she is, but at the same time there’s a billion that show that nature’s more dominant than anything TG’s learned.
And now you’re going to give us Reasons Why I Should Write Archie, right?
I’ve loved all of these. Good times.
I’d like to request, “Why I Should Write Booster Gold” or “Why I Should Write The Brave and The Bold.” You’d kick ass at those as well.
arg never wanted this day to come π
thanks for all 50 of these man. they always reminded me why i love the Legion so much π
I really want you to write more of these, MGK, but then, that’s probably a good thing. If every comment in here was “oh thank christ he’s finally giving these a rest” but they’re the opposite, and that’s good. Always leave them wanting more.
So would this storyline have closed out your theoretical run on Legion? It seems big enough, but then a lot of these ideas have been pretty huge.
I have really enjoyed your Legion ideas as well and will miss them, although I hope if a brainstorm hits you will share them with us. The only thing I liked more than them were the Civil War re-writes. π
Damned good note to go out on. Thanks for sharing these–I wish there were more coming too. Your ideas are fun and well thought out and most of all, they make me want to read the comic you’d ostensibly be writing. Which is, after all, the point.
You’re a talented man–put it to use.
These were great. So, next is reasons you should write Rex the Wonder Dog?
To bad you won’t be doing more. Though personally, I hate unreliable narrator stories. Under ALL circumstances. So not everyone would thank you.
This was a great series. While I’m sad to see them end, everything must. So thanks again for sharing these and reminding us all to hope for better than what we’re currently getting in comics.
Let’s face it, the last law student who became a comic book writer was Marc Guggenheim. Marc “Killed Bart Allen” Guggenheim. Marc “Writes The Worst Of All Shitty Stories In Amazing Spider-Man, You Know, The Ones Featuring A Hero Who ‘Just Looked’ Exactly Like MJ Watson, Or With Yet Another Green Goblin Ripoff, Or With The Oh-So-Subtle Guy Who Becomes A Supervillain Because He Takes Drugs – That Sort Of Shit” Guggenheim
[…] The Legion treatise. Along the way, he’s come up with some really interesting ideas, but #50 is a heck of a thing, as they say, and quite […]
So, Triplicate Girl as a cuter version of The Thing from Another World?
That’s just messed up. Nifty, but messed up.
Thank God these are finished, so we can get back to the true purose of MGK.com: So You Think You Can Dance? recaps.
Okay. So you proved to everyone beyond any shadow that you deserve to write The Legion.
Care to give us a month’s worth of reasons you should write a different title? Please?
Also, only you can return The Legion to its state of pure awesome such as when I began reading it, I hope they do pick you someday.
I actually hate that idea. I really, really hate it.
Well done, sir.
I have never read anything about the Legion. Zada, nip. References all over the place, people put up their favorite Legionnaires, and I just nod politely in a haze. The continuity of the Legion is so utterly convoluted and dazzling and frankly impenetrable for a complete stranger that I am frightened at the idea of even opening up a book.
Now I’ve read your ideas and you know what? I honestly would buy the book. Now, lots of people would say that, and probably mean it, but just saying that without analysis doesn’t mean a lot. After all, crappy webcomics get loads of positive fanwankery and that’s not a guidepost we should mark by.
First, your writing on this blog has constantly impressed me. It’s insightful, reasoned, and passionate about whatever the subject is.
Second, your pitches show an obvious love of character and continuity, so I have the sense that your ideas are not there simply to blatantly grab fan-attention without the substance to back it up.
Thirdly, you understand what comics are about. I am especially fond of the “toybox” idea you have, because it is something I believe in too. If you are going to take away something from comics, you must give something better for future writers to carry on. Because there *will* be future writers.
Finally, the ideas are substantially zany and absolutely fucktastically awesome and deserve publishing in seriously the only medium that I can think of to do such ideas justice. Movies and television, the other visual medium, are always constricted by so many factors that it makes it implausible to bring odd and quirky ideas to any fruitful submission. Novels and other literary formats are limited by the written word. The word is one of the most amazing things to come out of humanity, but it is hampered by its limited capacity to convey. Weird, but it is. You can have amazing insights into the human mind and emotion, but try expositing a scene of utter beauty and destruction across a galactic scale. Most sci-fi writers fail. Some get it, but they tend to be fleeting scenes, the majesty so brilliant that the writer can only capture a glimpse. Here is where the comic book makes its mark. The comic book marries the two, the written and the artistic narrative. Rarely successfully, admittedly. But just the attempt is often worth it. I think of Grant Morrison, and his stuff with Superman Beyond and Final Crisis. Some things could never have been done elsewhere. This is something that truly belongs in comic books.
I’m sorry to here that you’re considering retiring “Why I Should Write the Legion”. This is the first thing I check on your site and I never tire of reading them.
[…] someone else once noticed, I had a distinct idea as to what happened to Maggie Lorenzo’s kid. Tell The World: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover […]
Belated note: the first part of your post is almost exactly the origin story of the villain protagonist of the videogame Prototype.
… except that he doesn’t hate himself and is just generically angry at everyone else.
Agreed though – I was reading that and thinking of Prototype as well.
The “Infinite Girl”… now THAT is a story! If they won’t let you do it for real, there’s always fanfics? π
Huh. And here I was expecting that Infinite Girl would be something to do with the Infinite Man. Nicely done- out of left field and at the same time totally believable.
What if the Legion beat Infinite Girl and ended up getting Luornu Durgo out of it? Not everyone who ever got absorbed- not even their good old pal Triplicate Girl- Luornu Durgo. Last Daughter of Cargg (I can call it Cargg with two gs because it’s not a triplicate culture here). A scientist- probably a young scientist, more like an intern- who just woke up to the news that her work killed billions, her world is dead, and she’s surrounded by a thin layer of superheroes who want to believe she’s their best friend, surrounded by a very big layer of hyper-pissed civilians who think of her as the face of omnicide.
…
Damn, that’s kind of like when Garth killed the Progenitor and became Element Lad, isn’t it.