Bouncing Boy / Superboy-LSH #200

From a recent Apa-LSH topic of the mailing, some thoughts on Chuck Taine, Bouncing Boy... I suppose if I could go back in a time machine and advise the early creators of the Legion, I might council against the inclusion of Bouncing Boy on the team, because perhaps my earliest memory of the Legion at about the age of 6 was learning that one of their members was Bouncing Boy and thinking how dumb that was. And I’d imagine a big part of the reason I didn’t really become a big Legion fan until brother Carl discovered the group 10 years later was the way Bouncing Boy undermined my respect for the group. That was compounded by the fact that one of the few Legion stories I got to read between about the ages of 8 and 16 came when we moved from Illinois to Washington when I was 11. A friend gave us a stack of comics to read on the way and the one Legion issue was “The Secret Origin of Bouncing Boy.” I felt a little let down that my one chance to read the Legion was this comic-relief story. So it took me a little while to come around, but by the time Carl and I got into the Legion in the early ’70s, contemporary comics were getting a little pretentiously serious and I started embracing little subversive touches of humor. When I discovered Matter-Eater Lad and decided his off-beat nature was a great addition to the Legion mix, I think that suggested in my mind an important role for Bouncing Boy, which was to provide a bit of cover for M-E Lad – as long as Bouncing Boy was around, Chuck would be the first humorous character overly serious fans would condemn before they worried about Tenzil. At the same time, Chuck was developing as a legitimate, interesting character in his own right. First off, it was nice to have a member who provided a bit of diversity in body type, even if it was originally intended as comic-relief. And Chuck gradually developed into a valuable, respected member of the team as an empathetic, supportive morale-booster, who, in particular, clicked with Duo Damsel and helped her overcome her issues and remain a vital member of the team. Our Khund Wars story was the one opportunity we got to give Chuck a substantial role, and we tried to play up those characteristics in showing him to be a superb trainer of officers for the U.P. Militia, and then to help pull out an impossible victory when the base is under assault, using his combination of empathy, respect for others and aggressive motivational skills to rally the traumatized Mysa into improvising a spell that saved the base.      During our run, we crystallized the idea of Luornu having different personalities, and at this point, there was the sort of “middle” / “normal” Lu who had a great marriage with Chuck and then “naughty” Lu whose impulses had her flirting with some of the hotter guys. We viewed the “middle” Lu as the dominant personality that had always “run the show” and was the personality of a true, accomplished Legionnaire. Since we depicted there being a stigma to multiple personalities on her native planet, it made sense that she’d have openly displayed only that “middle” personality for the most part and for the misadventures of her other personalities to be a bit scandalous on multiple levels. All of which would make the Chuck-Lu relationship a little complicated to say the least. I suspect in the early years, such a situation would rattle Chuck somewhat -- few of us would be comfortable with a spouse who had multiple personalities, one of whom seemed restless within her marriage to us. The older Chuck we depicted, I suspect, was pretty accepting of the different aspects of his wife and secure enough in his self-worth that the naughty Lu was entitled to her point of view. I feel like Chuck probably even came to value it as a way to challenge himself, to keep improving. If he ever needed a little incentive to better himself, there was always going to be that impossible standard being set by Lu #2 that he could strive to meet. And I kind of got the feeling that by the time Lu #2 had been dragged through a lot of indignities by Glorith in the #42 story Tom McCraw plotted, she was starting to see the worth in good old honorable, devoted, respectful, accepting Chuck. In a way, the shoe was on the other foot. Now naughty Lu was the one with reason to feel inadequate -- she’d been forced to betray the team and needed to be rescued and then forgiven. Meanwhile, Chuck could no longer be viewed as a pudgy, mediocre Legionnaire – he’d grown to be a revered hero of considerable accomplishment. The Lu #2 who’d previously dismissed Chuck with a sneer was now realizing here was a formidable man who was able to understand, accept and even value Lu #2, warts and all. I feel like #2 ultimately came to feel lucky to be married to a man for whom she’d previously felt contempt. APA-LSH TOPIC OF THE MAILING: SUPERBOY / LSH #200: "THE LEGIONNAIRE BRIDE OF STARFINGER" Boy, this was part of that very brief supernova of great Cockrum issues and I can remember the joy my brothers and I were experiencing as those treasured issues would arrive via mail (we were subscribing to the Superboy / LSH comic at the time). And this was a truly celebratory issue, where they commemorated Superboy’s #200 with what was at the time a truly historic event, the team’s first actual marriage. Cockrum sure had an ability to depict grandeur and make you feel like you were truly exploring the wonders of a future century, with his depiction of the Martian setting of the marriage being a great example of that skill. I didn’t like losing Chuck and Lu from the active roster, but one great aspect of the Legion is that it’s so big and crammed with interesting characters, that it’s rare that the loss of one or two has a major impact on the overall experience.