A review of the Legion Constitution by Siskoid
To embrace the Legion, one must understand the team is, first and foremost, a club, such as you might find at a college or high school. And like any student committee, it has rules. To be a Legionnaire is to wrestle with BUREAUCRACY. Never mind the Fatal Five, this stuff is a lot more terrifying!
Over the course of this series of essays, we'll be looking at Legion rules as codified in the oft-invoked Legion Constitution, as compiled by researcher Barbara Randall in Who's Who in the Legion issues two through six. And let's start with mission and membership issues:
So far so good.
That last little clause looks like trouble. "...and such authorities as they may from time to time designate." Like this time:
Looks like the exchequer's cronie isn't as free with the money as previous administrations.
Hm. How's that system working out these days then?
And wasn't the later-era Threeboot Legion disobeying its Constitution by having Bill-Gates Lad handle its finances?
But some codes, you don't break easily:
Even on Johns-Earth, where the Legion was ousted in favor of a racist, all-human Justice League, the LSH didn't leave this old mudball.
They just moved the clubhouse underground.Moving on to Article 2...
The Fantastic Four, this isn't. Hey, it's a big galaxy.
If the Legion was inspired by Superboy, they still have to pay a debt to the Justice Society/League for coming up with the whole team idea. More than that, they owe that debt to Fire & Water favorite Aquaman (much respect to the podcast network that fathered this blog; it's OUR Superboy), who based his Justice League Detroit around the idea of a live-in team of always alert heroes. The Legion even accepted a bunch of losers over the years, just like the JLD did!
Here we go. The first of several articles that give Superboy a free pass. A reminder on how he managed it:
By being a big baby about everything. Ok Superboy, you don't HAVE to spend all your time in our century.
Honorary members include Pete Ross, Jimmy "Elastic Lad" Olsen and Green Lantern Rond Vidar, all guys who don't meet membership criteria under Article 3 (as we'll see).
Reserve members include Kid Psycho and Lana "Insect Queen" Lang, though I doubt the latter is a legal choice (her powers weren't inherent). Kid Psycho was, of course, known for two things: Being called to duty as cannon fodder during the Crisis, and not being psycho at all. In reality, this is the All-Star Squadron clause, giving the Legion the possibility of drafting any hero in the 30th-31st century into its ranks. Except those filthy Heroes of Lallor.We table this meeting for now, but when we pick things up again: Admission to Membership. Who can make it in, and who cannot?
Based on material originally published in some form on Siskoid's Blog of Geekery.
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