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Post by dans on Oct 12, 2020 0:48:24 GMT
I have been adapting a Legion of Super Heroes story and I noticed a couple of interesting things I'm sure I would never have noticed as a kid reader...
Colossal Boy is on the surface of a glacier, building a massive wall from ice and snow. The villain sprays the area with thick black smoke, and suddenly everyone is concerned that the blinded Colossal Boy will fall into a chasm in the glacier. This was before the Legion had flight rings, but they had just finished flying from Metropolis to Antarctica with their flying belts. So if he's wearing a flying belt, why are they concerned that he might fall into the chasm? Can't he just... well, you know, fly?
In one panel the villain doesn't seem to know Superboy. 'That cursed blue-clad boy...' but a page later, he not only knows who Superboy is, but he has a kryptonite trap previously prepared for the Boy of Steel.
Not as many logical holes as some of the stories I've read. And if I weren't analyzing it so closely, I would never have noticed... but I would never leave holes like that in my own stories. Perhaps that's why I can't just churn out stories...
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Post by johnreiter902 on Oct 12, 2020 1:24:02 GMT
probably they were worried he wouldn't react in time to use the belt controls. I think only the rings were thought controlled.
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Post by redsycorax on Oct 12, 2020 1:32:33 GMT
Or perhaps the antigravity belts also had a size and mass limit, so Colossal Boy couldn't use them in giant form?
I'm not sure whether the villain does or desn't know Superboy's identity in the same context, either. "Blue clad boy" strikes me as descriptive, rather than indicating that he doesn't know who Superboy is. He obviously does know, given the kryptonite trap he then laid.
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Post by johnreiter902 on Oct 12, 2020 10:51:46 GMT
I can think of two explanations 1) He just chose to use the descriptive rather than the name (the writer though it was more poetic, I do this a lot in my own writing). Or 2) He knows about Superboy from history class, but can't remember the exact name
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Post by dans on Oct 12, 2020 15:14:30 GMT
There are always explanations. And it seems likely that Colossal Boy can only use his flying belt at his normal height. But I really figured that the bad buy had never seen Superboy before and it confused me when he had a kryptonite trap readily available. This is not a text story, he was not explaining to the reader that Superboy wears blue, he was watching him on a TV screen that clearly showed him in blue.
It's a VERY minor detail, but I get easily distracted by minor details these days...
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Post by redsycorax on Oct 12, 2020 23:36:50 GMT
If there was a weight and size limit to the utility of antigravity belts, it might explain why flight rings superceded them, as well as being less cumbersome.
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Post by dans on Oct 13, 2020 0:30:16 GMT
I'm pretty sure I remember reading a story in which Colossal Boy had to return to normal size to fly with the belt...
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Post by redsycorax on Oct 13, 2020 1:28:06 GMT
Which seems to indicate that the antigravity belts were inelastic and couldn't expand with their user, in Gim's case.
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Post by dans on Oct 13, 2020 1:31:52 GMT
Which seems to indicate that the antigravity belts were inelastic and couldn't expand with their user, in Gim's case.
No, he didn't have to take it off to grow, and Violet didn't lose her belt when she shrank. But apparently they couldn't pack enough power into the belts to lift Colossal Boy at giant size. The belt probably wouldn't have worked for Blok either...
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Post by redsycorax on Oct 13, 2020 2:03:08 GMT
Apparently, the flight rings have no similar limitations and they can be easily concealed, which could be quite useful for the Legion Espionage Squad.
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