Daxam, Valor, Laurel Gand

Hey folks, my first entry in a long time, sorry about that, but here's another "topic-of-the-mailing discussion from the pages of Legion apas, this time covering Daxam and its heroes Mon-El / Valor and Laurel Gand... I guess my overall feeling about Daxam was that it became almost more of an inconvenience than a positive for the Legion’s universe, with its entire planetful of potential Supermen. At least Krypton had been destroyed and its potential to overwhelm the galaxy had disappeared in the past. So there was a need to “write out” that over-abundance of god-like powers, and in our Glorith timeline, we had her simply destroy the planet and its population. And prior to that, I guess the weakness to lead was pretty useful, allowing us to establish that in very rare cases, such as in the Gand family, there was a predisposition to a cure to that lead weakness, so in very isolated cases you could introduce Daxamites when they helped the story along. I liked Mon-El as part of the Legion mix, though preferred that his powers not be taken to their logical conclusion and he be allowed to start over-shadowing the team. I was also not really fond of the storyline showing him somewhat mentally unstable after his 1,000 years in the Phantom Zone. Honestly, I never quite got why the Phantom Zone was so awful. To me, it’s kind of a super version of sitting in front of a TV watching whatever you wanted to watch. Yeah, kind of a drag being alone or having to deal with the nasty villains imprisoned there with you, but again, kind of like being marooned on an island with nothing but villains, but the island is infinitely big so there’s lots of opportunity to avoid the villains and you have this ability to view the entire universe as your entertainment. (And I'd add that exile to the zone probably shouldn't be depicted as all that traumatic if that's what an advanced race like the Kryptonians did with the worst of its convicted criminals. In fact, one would hope Krypton would be using this technique because of its rehabiitative potential. Sooner or later these lawbreakers would get out of the Zone one way or another and it would be greatly compounding Krypton's problems if their system was consistently traumatizing the criminals who were already among the most dangerous citizens of their world.) And now that I’m thinking about it, what cool stories you could tell about Mon-El interacting with and ultimately helping and reforming some of the Kryptonian villains who were his fellow inmates, turning them into allies and partners in making the best of their exile in the zone. My preference for a truly heroic and triumphant Mon-El played into the way the Garth-Proty storyline that Keith Giffen and we came up with included establishing that Eltro Gand’s weaker personality had taken over Mon-El’s body back when Eltro mistakenly thought Mon-El had died and Eltro tried to sacrifice himself to bring Mon-El back. I liked the legendary hero that Mon-El became with the creation of the Valor version of Lar Gand, and his strength of character that went far beyond just his enormous physical powers. He’d absorbed a thousand years of wisdom and was wise enough to use his powers not to impose solutions but to truly advance the universe toward sustainable peace and prosperity. I’m really pleased with the elements we came up with that established Valor’s 20th century legend, beating back the Dominator invasion and especially creation of the “Sentinel Worlds” or “Gandian Worlds” that to me do a decent job of explaining all those planets full of human-like races sharing the same power. An example of what I really enjoyed doing where appropriate – take different threads of the Legion universe and tie them together in ways that made sense, elevated each individual strand and told a cool story in the process that was exciting and accessible to people who weren’t aware of the pre-existing strands and how they were being tied together. I’m also really pleased with our creation of Laurel Gand, and she remains a favorite character -- at once really principled and really an ass-kicker, full of passions and contradictions that make her three-dimensional and unique within the Kryptonian / Daxamite families. She always had a good handle on and balance between her passions and her duty. An interesting contrast to my vision of Brainy, who struggles and resists the pulls of his emotions and tends to view his passions and duties as being in conflict, which itself may be the ultimate source of conflict between him and Laurel. If I had the chance to tell a completed arc of their relationship, I’d enjoy showing Laurel eventually able to help Brainy find that balance between what makes him happy and what makes him feel like he’s meeting his obligations (which was kind of a balance we were implying young Brainy was figuring out at the end of Legionnaires #8). In terms of all the worlds filled with people with the same super-power, we were gradually moving in the direction of showing that most of the Legionnaires from such worlds had really advanced those powers beyond what was normal on their worlds. Virtually all humans have the power to play basketball but LeBron James is the one who would get into the Legion based on his basketball abilities. Thus, it’s not a coincidence that Rokk was a Magno-Ball champ, not just a random citizen of Braal.