"2995" Mayfair Sourcebook: Fire Lad through Infectious Lass
Continuing with my recollections of writing our "2995" Mayfair Sourcebook, we move into a section that covers the Substitute-Heroes who joined the Legion in its final days during the Five-Year Gap. FIRE LAD : His entry begins with a “Friends of the Legion” listing in the teen fan "magazine" “The Legion Groupie” in which we learn Staq's favorite Legionnaire is, logically, Sun Boy (it’s interesting and telling that the poor Subs are treated in this fan forum not as heroes in their own right but as fellow fans of the main team). My favorite little playful touch to this profile is that one of Fire Lad’s favorite hobbies is glass-blowing. During the five-year gap there’s a news account of a run-in Fire Lad has with the corrupt Science Police Earth in which some trees get set on fire by Staq’s “involuntary nasal discharge” (police-report lingo for a “sneeze”). There’s also an evaluation of Staq during his training for the underground resistance in which he’s reported as developing greater control of his power and some leadership potential (during the Terra Mosaic, Keith showed Fire Lad emerging as somewhat of a leader among the Subs). Staq’s “Training Report” was filed by “Feliz Alana,” a tribute to Interlacker / WAPAn Joe Filice’s daughter Alana. CHLOROPHYLL KID : From his “Friends of the Legion” entry we learn that one of Ral’s hobbies is, quite logically, gardening. We thought of the early Subs as somewhat fan-boy personalities, and when Ral is asked who his favorite Legionnaire is, he gives the fan-boyish answer of “Phantom Girl (but don’t tell Ultra Boy).” From the five-year gap there’s a news account of Ral escaping from Science Poice Earth custody by growing a tree in his cell. He’d been arrested for “interfering with an SPE investigation,” purportedly “harassing” the officers “investigating” the case against Polar Boy, who’d been tossed in jail for trying to organize a protest in a pizza hall. Feliz Alana’s evaluation during Ral’s underground training discusses his anticipated value as someone who can take control of the Dominators’ plant-based technology, reflecting one of Keith’s strokes of genius in terms of how to use the Subs’ powers and elevate the team to hyper-effectiveness during the war for Earth. Feliz also makes reference to Ral’s ongoing weight loss, addressing the fact that when we last saw the Subs, Chlorophyll Kid had put on some extra weight. I think I may have partly inspired that since at some point in the mid 1980s I proposed in Interlac an updated version of the Subs that depicted them as looking somewhat more like a group of then-current comic fans. I had Fire Lad, not Chlorophyll Kid, being overweight, as well as balding, while Chlor was thin but somewhat hippie-ish-looking, with long hair and a beard, I gave Polar Boy a not particularly successful mustache and gave Stone Boy a skinny build and bigger-than-average nose. I don’t remember ever showing any of this to Keith but I’m guessing he saw enough of Interlac back then that he may have noticed my drawing and had a subconscious seed planted. Now I wasn’t myself envisioning the group as comic-relief, but rather a more contemporary version of what they’d been originally, a determined, admirable group of underdogs who didn’t measure up to the Legion but were still capable of valuable contributions. That said, I myself didn’t mind their comic-relief depiction and would have probably enjoyed writing that version regularly, while the idea of doing them as a highly skilled team in gritty combat stories wasn’t something I would have wanted to stick with over the long haul -- we were happy to do some dark "war stories" through the 5YL run but my general preference is for lighter tales more focused on entertaining action and adventure. PORCUPINE PETE : After a very straightforward “Allies & Companions” description of Pete we get a Five-Year Gap Science Police account of Pete being arrested for “interference with an officer.” A careful read will show a pattern emerging in how Earthgov tried to shut down the Legion – in this case it sounds like the SPEs were standing back letting a hijacking occur when Porcupine Pete successfully captured the perpetrator, so the SPEs creatively described events as an example of them pursuing a wise, careful strategy and Pete recklessly interfering and actually doing something to stop the crime. And the report indicates this “incident” will lead to a mountain of paperwork for the Legion. Pete’s section of the sourcebook wraps up during the Subs’ training in Jacques’ anti-Earthgov resistance, with a letter from Pete to Lydda (Night Girl) saying Lyda wouldn’t recognize the Subs the way they’ve been transformed by the training of Jacques, Tyroc and other resistance officers. We learn that Pete has mastered virtually complete control of his quills, and you can sense some growing confidence in a hero who had been suffering a fair number of insecurities in his earlier days. I like a reference to how nice Rokk and Lydda had been to Pete in those tough beginning days when he “wasn’t exactly skilled” with his powers. INFECTIOUS LASS : Her profile comes from the pretentious “TLG” phase of “The Legion Groupie” and I enjoy how it describes her power as “to create unwellness in my opponents.” Her entry from the Five-Year Gap is a news report from her home planet of Sumahtur (we called natives of that world Sumahtriots, which is I think one of the more creative and yet quite believable native designations we came up with). We once again hear how the Legion has been harassed into near inactivity by Earthgov red tape. We also get the chillingly prescient observation by Drura that “the population seems almost openly encouraged to express its xenophobia” and the timely anti-immigrant note that “she’s been threatened with deportation if she inadvertently infects a single Earth resident.” And finally there’s a letter from Jacques where he raises the question of whether or not he’s in love with Drura. It sounds like it, as he describes how their meeting the prior night had lifted Jacques out of a dark mood and once again has him thinking maybe people like he and Drura can find the goodness in the human population and bring about the overthrow of the planet’s despotic leadership.
