Defensive powers - a summation

I think most of my blog posts about Legionnaires are starting to wind down but this topic seems to be what it all boils down to.

Now, let me classify what I consider defensive powers:  those powers and abilities that do not cause a direct change against an opponent or their environment.  Most of the Legionnaires can be categorized  in one of these two groups however, if Projectra was able to use her powers to actually upset someone's sense of balance, she could actually branch over into an offensive power.  But for the most part, those with defensive powers have to rely on evasion in some form or another.  How many times has Dawnstar had to get cruisers to chase her in order to get them to crash?



I think characters with defensive powers do help strengthen a team.  Raven in her NTT days was one of the best examples of a these characters.  But if we look at my first superteam, the X-Men, we would be surprised at how many defensive powers there were.  My first comic was Uncanny #157 (May 1982).  I think we can all agree that Storm, Cyclops and Colossus are relative powerhouses, but if you look at the powers of Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Kitty, we have self-healing, short range teleportation and phasing.  Those are all defensive powers.  Yes, I know Kitty could disrupt electronics and was highly intelligent but she was a relative novice at her powers at the time.  Wolverine's healing factor granted him heightened tracking and senses, so much so that he could tell that a corpse resembling Kitty was in fact not Kitty.  Nightcrawler's teleportation was a form of shadow teleportation which gave him the added defensive ability of camouflage in darkness.  But beyond that, his mutant physiology granted him a prehensile tail and the ability to grip to walls and surfaces. I don't think anyone could look at the team of that time and think that they were liabilities but Wolverine and Nightcrawler did had enhancements that gave them a bit more than just relying on their basic abilities.  It speaks a lot to good character design.

In fact, in no way did Storm, Cyclops or Colossus carry the team.  And I think that is one of the problems with the Legion.  Sure, we have the long range blasters like the Ranzzes or Sun Boy but there is also Wildfire who does so much more.  Colossus's closest analog is Blok who may still be slightly more powerful as Blok could originally absorb energy.  Of course, Colossus does not have flight and heat vision, etc like Mon-El or any of the Supers.  Storm is hard to classify because she creates so many different effects that for no direct analog other than Harmonia; but nevertheless, the point is made:  Having characters that are so much more powerful or having far more abilities than an average character actually makes the ones with defensive powers seem that much more inferior.  There's a huge imbalance in the Legion.

Going back to the New Teen Titans a second, because they were the first DC team built in the Marvel template, they had Cyborg, Robin, Wonder Girl, Starfire, Raven, Jericho and Changeling.  No one on that team was so overpowered as compared to the rest of the members, and Robin didn't even have powers, just a utility belt and some martial arts.

My friend Sean had just recently seen Ant-Man and the Wasp in the past month.  He told me that when he saw Wasp and Ghost first fight, he thought that was totally how a fight between Shrinking Violet and Phantom Girl could go.  Two defensive powers used properly in a fight.  We rarely see that in the Legion.

I know I've suggested some Legionnaires, like Dawnstar, receiving weapons; Threeboot Atom Girl did carry a gun.  Or,  Mon-El could leave the Legion.  (The old Levitz/Giffen trope was to show how dangerous an enemy was by having them coldcock Mon-El)  I have often wondered what the feasibility would be having defined squads of 4 or 5.  The Espionage Squad as a separate group is silly.  Having one of the Espionage Squad members each in one of those squads makes a lot more sense.  But if Tinya could use her powers with more utility, that means someone like Dream Girl or Gates could be on the squad also and not underpower it.  Whatever method chosen, it means getting creative and looking at things in a new way.   The Legion's days of fighting common crooks went out a long time ago.