| Posted: 22 December 2020 at 8:32am | IP Logged | 5
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Andrew, Gladiator is the backbone and big gun for the I.G. Kal-El seems similarly the anchor man of both the Justice League and the Legion of Super-Heroes. When I first saw Gladiator, I thought he was more a cognate to Mon-El - but be that as that may, as Mon-El never quite seemed to get an individual identity in the LSH save for the alternate Superboy whose weakness was much easier to find.
And I feel that the Legion and the JLA fell into the same trap as the Imperial Guard could... "Oh great scott! How can we defeat this foe?" "Hey, here comes Superboy/Mon-El/Gladiator. Okay, where was I? Oh yes... three clubs."
A team-ette from one of the big teams ideally SHOULD have been able to handle smaller threats. But badly written stories started leaning towards the Kryptonian level opponents, to make an actual threat. And that required Kal-El/Thor/Gladiator to come to the rescue.
But the LSH, JLA, IG, Avengers, etc. should NEVER need someone to come to the rescue. That's why they're the best there am!
In fact, these stories might have actually been hurt by having those big guys on the team. But those books were both promotional devices as well as comics of their own.
Look at Mr. Byrne's X-Men stories. No one hero can take the lead against, say, Ultron or the Living Pharaoh or Blastaar. Oh, possibly Phoenix, but she really didn't participate in all that many X-Men adventures. She got defeated oh-so-briefly by Magneto and by Proteus - but that was the extent of it. Everyone had to work together or they'd have crapped out.
But more importantly, no one was ever pitted against an unbeatable foe. That's a lot of what I love about Elsewhen.
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