[phabox]

What about Chuck Taine AKA Bouncing Boy ? he was about as usfull as an ashtray on a motorbike !!

And he was a fully fledged member of the LSH, Saturn Girl must have been off duty the day he sneaked in.

-Nigel

[OtherEric]

What about Chuck Taine AKA Bouncing Boy ? he was about as usfull as an ashtray on a motorbike !!

And he was a fully fledged member of the LSH, Saturn Girl must have been off duty the day he sneaked in.

-Nigel

You obviously haven't read the same LSH stories I have, then.  Bouncing Boy's _power_ may not have been that impressive, but he worked hard to make it as useful as possible.  He was also the Legion's self-appointed Morale Officer and he did a lot of good in that role.  (It did take him 3 tries to actually get accepted for membership, though.)

Chuck is my all-time favorite Legionnaire.  Not a great power.  But a great character and a great hero.

[phabox]

To tell the truth I DID read the story you mentioned, and not that many years after its publication and today still own the original comic not to mention the DC Archive reprint.

Like many of Robby Reed's hero identities Chuck was a fun Silver Age character and very much in the 'anything goes' sprit of that era which I look back on with great fondness.

By and large I have given up reading 'modern' comics although I am aware that even now DC still publish the adventures of the LSH.

But I'm wondering if a guy like Chuck is still part of its 21st Century line up ?

-Nigel

[OtherEric]

Not much in the regular title, sadly.  I can't even recall off the top of my head if he's shown up in the threeboot; he was powerless but a fairly regular in the Post- ZH version before DnA took over.  He was one of the MAJOR characters on the TV show; so that was his most recent spotlight.

[misappear]

It's funny, but the crappy heroes that we grew up with might not stand well to scutiny today, but as OtherEric points out, there was more to the characters than their powers. 

I remember years ago at a convention I was standing at a table looking at stuff and eavesdropping a conversation.  One guy asked another when the golden age of comics was.  The second guy responded without a moment's thought. 

8 years old.

--Dave

[narfstar]

What a great way to put it and so true. I think if you don't "catch" them by 10 you never have a true fan.

Bouncing Boy was truly super compared to so many of the GA heroes with absolutely nothing but a costume to make them "super"

[rez]

he was about as usfull as an ashtray on a motorbike !!

Ha, that was good!
Didn't BouncingBoy end up marrying ShrinkingViolet in the later issues after silverage passed?

I have the post Adventure 380 run, in Action and Superboy was it?, but have never read a lot of them in that I became offended when 12cents went to 15cents and boycotted the buying of comics after that for years. Couldn't believe they would ever raise the price of MY comics.

Lest we start picking soley on DC as being the ringleader of crappy characters let us not forget the villainous Enforcers of Marvel fame with that cowboy guy running around with the lasso and PastePotPete.(heh heh PastePotPete)


okok so it's another RobbyReed.

[phabox]

Not such a loser Bouncing Boy in fact ended up married to Duo Damsel...and just think for a moment about the bedroom possibilities such a match would offer..... .

Marvel, or should I say Stan Lee DID scrape the bottom of the barrel sometimes coming up with fresh bad guys, how about Daredevils ( the blind one ) old foe-THE STILT-MAN, a pretty dumb idea if ever there was one but by some miracle Lee managed to pull it off.

-Nigel

P.S. Was that cowboy called 'Dude' by any chance ?

P.P.S. Even Lee thought 'Paste Pot Pete' a silly name and rebranded him as 'The Trapster'

[rez]

Ya, Lee was a master. I'm thinking it would reeeeealy have to be out there for him to do a changeabout but he did when needed. Antman to GiAntman.
The Inhumans were a pretty farout group but man, what a presentation and storyline they carried.

Ok, ya got me and I had to google...MONTANA!
Along with Fancy Dan and the Ox.


If I recall correctly the Legion always had hero wannabees trying out for membership and some of those characters were pretty far out maybe even for the Substitute Legion.
Color Kid had a pretty cool costume.

Man, what a mad rush of memories. Half tempted to dig them out to read.

Not such a loser Bouncing Boy in fact ended up married to Duo Damsel...and just think for a moment about the bedroom possibilities such a match would offer..... .

Marvel, or should I say Stan Lee DID scrape the bottom of the barrel sometimes coming up with fresh bad guys, how about Daredevils ( the blind one ) old foe-THE STILT-MAN, a pretty dumb idea if ever there was one but by some miracle Lee managed to pull it off.

-Nigel

P.S. Was that cowboy called 'Dude' by any chance ?

P.P.S. Even Lee thought 'Paste Pot Pete' a silly name and rebranded him as 'The Trapster'

[narfstar]

The Vulture was an old man with the awesome, unique ability to fly. WOW.

In later Legion retros Dou Damsel remained Triplicate Girl and still married to lucky Chucky. I envied him

[phabox]

Four in a bed !

Sounds good to me !

-Nigel

[John C]

I still say that none of them really qualify as "crappy," though.  A superhero isn't fundamentally flawed because a kid has trouble figuring out how to fight crime effectively with his power.  There are characters that make WAY less sense than Bouncing Boy, who's merely outclassed and slightly silly.  Especially if they were throwaway characters or meant for humor impact.  (Heck, the Tick worked with the Man-Eating Cow!)

Again, I point to Zatanna, carrying on a legacy nobody cares about, barely gets dressed in the mornings, and has a (serious) power that messes up every story she's in.  Green Arrow's another "major player," but he was created to copy Batman in-company, except that he later became a womanizer and a whiny liberal.

Or look at, y'know, any character created in the '90s.  Azrael, the brainwashed cultist who helps Batman on his off days.  Or Anarky, a kid on stilts who wears a trenchcoat and zaps people.  Zauriel, the angel from Heaven who...uhm...look, Grant Morrison wanted a set of wings in the JLA group shots, OK?  Any number of cops (or social workers, for some reason) who stumble across a cache of weapons and start blowing up parts of the city in the name of "justice" (Gangbuster and Firebrand, I'm looking at you).

Gleason's Silver Streak, as I think I mentioned elsewhere, makes no sense from any perspective, to get back to the Golden Age and away from DC.

See, now THOSE are crappy superheroes.

[John C]

Oh, right.  I forgot a classic crappy superhero, the Son of Vulcan!  He's a clumsily-constructed Thor ripoff whose strip conceits change several times throughout the run, but the basic concept is that crippled reporter Johnny Mann questions how the Olympian gods could allow war to continue...not that he believes in those particular gods, mind you.  Anyway, they put him on trial, and decide that, if he's so big on peace, maybe he should get off his cane and do something about it.  So they give him powers.  And sometimes he can summon weapons.  And sometimes Mars hates him.  And sometimes there's a kinda-sorta love triangle with Venus, but maybe not.  And once in a while, he speaks in pseudo-Elizabethan, but far less well than even Thor.  Plus, "Son of Thunder" is a nice homeric title, but it stinks as a conversational name.

Whew!