Also, was they ever any attention given to the idea that different races might age at different rates, or did they just sort of assume that everyone sort of aged at the same rate?
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I don't know that they ever mentioned a minimum age for joining. The original maximum age was 18, which kept Supergirl from joining the first time she met the Legion due to that darn red kryptonite that adult-ified her at just the wrong moment.
But a Legionnaire was not expelled once he reached 18, as was apparent from the Adult Legion. He/she just had to join up as a teen. In Adventure #330, the Legion Constitution was amended so adults could join, and we never heard that the amendment was revoked.
There was attention paid to different races aging at different rates, at least to the point that Mon-El was allowed to join even though he was more than 1,000 years old at the time.
I'm not sure how they handled a guy from a planet where a year was equivalent to 10 Earth years, except to look at his driver's license. I imagine we weren't supposed to think about it that much, or about the fact that only bipedal humanoid-like creatures who could speak Interlac ever tried to join (at least for many decades).
Wouldn't one still be considered a teenager at 19? Or am I getting the Legion mixed up with the Teen Titans? Did the Titans have a rule that said once you turn 20, you're gone, baby, gone?
And apropos of nothing, did anybody else stutter-pronounce the lettercol to the TEEN TITANS as "T-tell it to the T-titans" since that was how it looked on the page?
The reason I asked was I was floating around in my head the notion of how old the various Legionnaires would be in relation to one another if they aged "normally".
Now, I'm making a few assumptions here, mostly for ease of me doing the math. I realize up-front that they are nonsense to anyone who actually knows diddly-squat about Silver Age Legion continuity. I also realize that I'm actually sliding a little into the Bronze Age, here. I'm going up to the period when the Legion stopped being "my" Legion, and started being the "new" Legion that they were telling stories about now.
Anyway, my assumptions:
1)The Legionnaires all joined 1000 years after they first appeared as Legionnaires. For example, Cosmic Boy was seen as a member in a 1958 comic, ergo he joined in 2958.
2)They all aged at roughly the same rate as a Terrestrial.
3)They were all approximately 16 Terrestrial years old when they joined
4)I am leaving out Superboy and Supergirl, because who knows how their time travel affected their aging.
5)I am assuming that Mon-El spent exactly 1000 years in the Phantom Zone without aging one iota.
So, how old were the various Legionnaires when Dawnstar joined in 2977?
Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl: 35
Chameleon Boy and Colossal Boy: 33
(Invisible Kid would've been 33, had he not been killed in 2974 at age 30.)
Triplicate Girl, Phantom Girl, Star Boy, Brainiac Five, Sun Boy, Shrinking Violet, and Bouncing Boy: 32
Ultra Boy and Matter-Eater Lad: 31
Element Lad, Lightning Lass and Mon-El: 30
Dream Girl: 29
Karate Kid and Princess Projectra: 27
(Ferro Lad would've been 27, had he not been killed in 2967 at age 17.)
Shadow Lass, Timber Wolf and Chemical King: 25
(I don't remember off the top of my brain whether Chemical King died before or after Dawnstar joined.)
2)They all aged at roughly the same rate as a Terrestrial.
That's an immediate problem in figuring these things. A year on Saturn is just over 10,759 Earth days (approx 29.45 Earth years). So Saturn Girl, at most, was a little over one-half year old when she joined. The rest of them probably had the same problems, given that so few would have a year approximately what it was for Earth. Determining what would qualify as a "teen-ager" (and why that would be the requirement) would be tough.
BTW Dave, one is clearly a teen-ager at 19, but the Legion wasn't the Teen Legion, they were just, I guess, young. Why they had to be a certain age to join but could then stay a member forever is something we never really had to address.
Baron, your approach locks each character into a publishing year that doesn't ultimately correspond to what passes for comics time. Tying characters to a specific year never works, as has been apparent with the JSA being around during WW II or saying Cap was thawed out during the 1960s, when the Avengers formed.
I don't know how much time passed between Cos' first adventure and Dawnstar showing up, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't 35 years old.
Oh, I know. I did say "I realize up-front that they are nonsense to anyone who actually knows diddly-squat about Silver Age Legion continuity". Which I don't, really.
Somewhere on the old board I posted the humorous (to me, at least) notion, that since there was a roughly 20 year gap between the first appearance of the JSA and the first appearance of the JLA, then if DC had maintained that 20 year gap, instead of keeping the JSA tied to the WWII era, then if we posit that the present-day JLA debuted "some seven years ago" as they used to say in the timelines in the Secret Files & Origins books, then the JSA would've debuted some 27 years ago, say around 1984. This would've made them late baby boomers, I guess, and the JLAers Gen-Xers. I would never want that to be actual "permanent" continuity, but I'd love to see an Elseworlds set in such a world.
Not to beat a dead Protean over this, but there was the "forgotten" explaination from Superboy and the Legion #235 where it was said that there was a longevity formula so people lived decades longer than normal thus they, in their 20s, could still be referred to as "Boy" or "Lad". That was never brought up again and it was written by Paul Levitz, IIRC.
And, I believe, it was mentioned that one reason Polar Boy was rejected was that he was too young to join. Since the three founders were 14 when the Legion began, that may have been the starting age.
Dawnstar was 16 in SLSH #226. Now as to how old Blok was.....
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I don't know that they ever mentioned a minimum age for joining. The original maximum age was 18, which kept Supergirl from joining the first time she met the Legion due to that darn red kryptonite that adult-ified her at just the wrong moment.
But a Legionnaire was not expelled once he reached 18, as was apparent from the Adult Legion. He/she just had to join up as a teen. In Adventure #330, the Legion Constitution was amended so adults could join, and we never heard that the amendment was revoked.
There was attention paid to different races aging at different rates, at least to the point that Mon-El was allowed to join even though he was more than 1,000 years old at the time.
I'm not sure how they handled a guy from a planet where a year was equivalent to 10 Earth years, except to look at his driver's license. I imagine we weren't supposed to think about it that much, or about the fact that only bipedal humanoid-like creatures who could speak Interlac ever tried to join (at least for many decades).
-- MSA
Cool, thanks for the info!
Wouldn't one still be considered a teenager at 19? Or am I getting the Legion mixed up with the Teen Titans? Did the Titans have a rule that said once you turn 20, you're gone, baby, gone?
And apropos of nothing, did anybody else stutter-pronounce the lettercol to the TEEN TITANS as "T-tell it to the T-titans" since that was how it looked on the page?
The reason I asked was I was floating around in my head the notion of how old the various Legionnaires would be in relation to one another if they aged "normally".
Now, I'm making a few assumptions here, mostly for ease of me doing the math. I realize up-front that they are nonsense to anyone who actually knows diddly-squat about Silver Age Legion continuity. I also realize that I'm actually sliding a little into the Bronze Age, here. I'm going up to the period when the Legion stopped being "my" Legion, and started being the "new" Legion that they were telling stories about now.
Anyway, my assumptions:
1)The Legionnaires all joined 1000 years after they first appeared as Legionnaires. For example, Cosmic Boy was seen as a member in a 1958 comic, ergo he joined in 2958.
2)They all aged at roughly the same rate as a Terrestrial.
3)They were all approximately 16 Terrestrial years old when they joined
4)I am leaving out Superboy and Supergirl, because who knows how their time travel affected their aging.
5)I am assuming that Mon-El spent exactly 1000 years in the Phantom Zone without aging one iota.
So, how old were the various Legionnaires when Dawnstar joined in 2977?
Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl: 35
Chameleon Boy and Colossal Boy: 33
(Invisible Kid would've been 33, had he not been killed in 2974 at age 30.)
Triplicate Girl, Phantom Girl, Star Boy, Brainiac Five, Sun Boy, Shrinking Violet, and Bouncing Boy: 32
Ultra Boy and Matter-Eater Lad: 31
Element Lad, Lightning Lass and Mon-El: 30
Dream Girl: 29
Karate Kid and Princess Projectra: 27
(Ferro Lad would've been 27, had he not been killed in 2967 at age 17.)
Shadow Lass, Timber Wolf and Chemical King: 25
(I don't remember off the top of my brain whether Chemical King died before or after Dawnstar joined.)
Wildfire: 19
Tyroc: 17
Dawnstar: 16
Interesting. Well, to me, anyhow.
2)They all aged at roughly the same rate as a Terrestrial.
That's an immediate problem in figuring these things. A year on Saturn is just over 10,759 Earth days (approx 29.45 Earth years). So Saturn Girl, at most, was a little over one-half year old when she joined. The rest of them probably had the same problems, given that so few would have a year approximately what it was for Earth. Determining what would qualify as a "teen-ager" (and why that would be the requirement) would be tough.
BTW Dave, one is clearly a teen-ager at 19, but the Legion wasn't the Teen Legion, they were just, I guess, young. Why they had to be a certain age to join but could then stay a member forever is something we never really had to address.
Baron, your approach locks each character into a publishing year that doesn't ultimately correspond to what passes for comics time. Tying characters to a specific year never works, as has been apparent with the JSA being around during WW II or saying Cap was thawed out during the 1960s, when the Avengers formed.
I don't know how much time passed between Cos' first adventure and Dawnstar showing up, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't 35 years old.
-- MSA
Oh, I know. I did say "I realize up-front that they are nonsense to anyone who actually knows diddly-squat about Silver Age Legion continuity". Which I don't, really.
Somewhere on the old board I posted the humorous (to me, at least) notion, that since there was a roughly 20 year gap between the first appearance of the JSA and the first appearance of the JLA, then if DC had maintained that 20 year gap, instead of keeping the JSA tied to the WWII era, then if we posit that the present-day JLA debuted "some seven years ago" as they used to say in the timelines in the Secret Files & Origins books, then the JSA would've debuted some 27 years ago, say around 1984. This would've made them late baby boomers, I guess, and the JLAers Gen-Xers. I would never want that to be actual "permanent" continuity, but I'd love to see an Elseworlds set in such a world.
Not to beat a dead Protean over this, but there was the "forgotten" explaination from Superboy and the Legion #235 where it was said that there was a longevity formula so people lived decades longer than normal thus they, in their 20s, could still be referred to as "Boy" or "Lad". That was never brought up again and it was written by Paul Levitz, IIRC.
And, I believe, it was mentioned that one reason Polar Boy was rejected was that he was too young to join. Since the three founders were 14 when the Legion began, that may have been the starting age.
Dawnstar was 16 in SLSH #226. Now as to how old Blok was.....
Actually, we had Legionnaires leave (long term) because they
But no one ever got too old for the Legion!
I won't even ask...
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