Goodbye, Mister Teeny Eyeballs

Remember that alternate-universe Legion I glimpsed on my way back from the 21st Century? The one where everybody had taut, vaguely-English faces with tiny noses and tiny mouths and tiny eyeballs? Where everyone's hair was feathered (or else looked like Toni Tennille's) and nearly every female wore a belly shirt? Yeah, that one. It was horrific.

Well, a friend of mine from the Time Institute space-mailed me a snapshot of that Legion, and I have to say those poor shmoes seem to be pulling themselves together! For example, that Legion finally has an Invisible Kid whom I don't instinctively want to punch in the mouth (the better to wipe off that stoner smirk, y'see). My friend's letter quoted that Legion's new costume designer, one Mister Francis Manapul, as saying "I'm trying to simply rather than modernize. I think simplicity carries over and creates a timeless look." Amen, brother! Finally, that Legion has somebody working for them who shares my aesthetic. Not that it's a complete success, but still, it's a step in the right direction. Let's review...

• I'm pleased as punch my "off-the-shoulder" look for men is catching on, as Timberwolf is wearing... oh. Those are just orange patches on his shoulders which are blending with a crappy spray-on tan. My bad. It's still a pretty sweet costume. Love the bare toes! (Although I thought they'd be hairier.)
• No more belly shirt for Light Lass! It looks like a proper costume now! Huzzah! See what a difference it makes when you don't go for a trend... that expired eight years ago? Also, I love the longer hair on her. Very fetching.
• Alternate-universe versions of Triplicate Girl continue to be prudish frumps with Moe Howard haircuts, I see. And this one's cape still has that ridiculous cowl-neck... presumably so she can duck her head down into it like a turtle whenever the paparazzi show up. Ugh. Why is mine the only universe where Luornu is allowed to be sexy?
• Not sure why Shrinking Violet (or Atom Girl or whatever the frig they call her over there) needs hotpants. Whatever.
• Their version of Element Lad still looks like a complete tool.
• Is it just me, or does Colossal Boy (or Micro Lad or whatever) looks way better, proportionally, if you mentally erase the random-looking brown quilting on his arms, neck, and head? Also, who designed that thing? The Constrictor? He looks like he's part-armadillo now.
• Chameleon (Boy?) is dressed for Ye Olde Renaissance Faire and I have no idea why. It's not an unattractive costume; it's merely generic and blandly colored.
• Sun Boy's still in his "pants on fire" costume which does absolutely nothing for me. For someone with an allegedly "dynamic" personality he sure looks insipid and tacky.
• Brainy's tunic rawks. I heartily approve! Let's hope he doesn't still have those dumb Bedazzled cheeks anymore.
• Shadow Lass's costume? Still slutty. I don't care if you put a grandly proportioned cape on her. I've seen hookers with floor-length mink coats; it didn't stop them from looking like hookers.
• Star Boy and Karate Kid? Been there, done that. Big yawn.
• Ultra Boy's costume is an old reliable, but at least it's not boring. Not sure about the cut-outs on his forearms. Maybe his forearms need the freedom to expand in battle, like they get really huge, like Popeye's. Also, I'm sure he'll pass that kidney stone eventually.
• Interesting variant on the classic Lightning Lad costume. Simple, but it works. And I applaud the absence of white on this version. It's actually kind of refreshing. Assuming that's not a printing error. For example, the lightning crackling from his hand has been rendered totally invisible, and it's making Saturn Girl's thighs look all wrinkly. And with this much yellow, I wonder if the navy blue should have been replaced with black. Or maybe a deep red! That'd be cool.
• Saturn Girl's costume got a deep, gravelly, rollicking laugh out of me because although I like it, I couldn't help thinking that in a Grant Morrison/Frank Quitely universe all the white bits would be exposed skin.
• Princess Projectra is still in her Count Jugula get-up with the stupid collar on it. Feh.
• Phantom Girl... yikes. I'm sorry, but the sheer number and placement of those cut-outs are just sad (and desperate). Whenever a group of people is ignoring her -- which is often -- she whips out the scissors and cuts another chunk out of her leotard. She's fast approaching the point of "no return," where she'll just be walking around buck-naked clutching a few scraps of fabric to her bosom and ladycrotch.

Legion of Substitute Costumes: Storm Boy (by special guest columnist Storm Boy)

BLOCKADE BOY IS A BEAUTIFUL PERSON. Fact. I'm sorry if you don't "get" that. That's your problem. Myself? I didn't really "get" Blockade Boy either. At first. He's... how can I describe him? He's beautiful, but like a beautiful monster, a beautiful gargantuan gilded goblin gargoyle golem that could kill you with a flick of its tail. You know? And you shouldn't look at him. Not directly. Weight Wizard looked. And look what happened to him. He's like a puppy, that guy. Which? Was cute when he was seventeen but now that he's twenty-two? Is beginning to look a lot like madness. And who could blame him? No, seriously. Shut up. Yeah. You heard me. SHUT UP.

You just don't know him like I know him. At first I was unconsciously uncomprehending, muddling middling maddening uncertain of what I saw. I hated Blockade Boy. What was revolutionary in him, I found revolting. But. There's -- oh, how do I make you understand? -- I'm sure there's a food you like now that maybe you didn't like once upon a time. Maybe you even hated it like I hated Blockade Boy. Stomach-turning. Churning. Sphincter burning. And now? You can't get enough of it. And it's good for you! Like Blockade Boy!

Blockade Boy's eyes? See the world as it should be, which is beautiful. And his missionary position is to make it that way. Beautiful. I just didn't get it before. But now I do. But now enough. About Blockade Boy. And more. About. Me.

My first fatal post-natal memory is seeing my face in a mirror. I was already wearing glasses. And I was one. Month? Year? Decade? No one knows. All I know? Is a round face deformed undefined nose bulb rubberband mouth floppy ears GLASSES. And I saw it was bad. And the others, the children, the teachers, the parents, they saw it was bad also. And they left the clouded stormy boy alone. And the boy in his terrible tumult tore the spectacles from his face and he broke them. The fear came then. The boy had to fix the glasses, the glaring glazing lazing lens. Before it was too. Later, the boy quivered cowering glowering under the steely stare of the Parental Unit but! Nothing happened. Nobody noticed. It was all right with the world at large. The boy plucked the glasses from his knob-nose, carefully this time, and inspected them. They looked good as new. Better even. And a swell of Feeling bubbled in his gut. It was LOVE.

The stormy boy was handy with his hands, he could make anything he might make, even new eyes and glasses goodbyes. But? That would be treason. He didn't not make glasses, no. He made more glasses, alas. Yes. He got good. He made more. Not just glasses. Machines. Dreams. He imagined God, ordering storms, swirling whirling winds with his finger and so he knew how to do it too. He shrunk God, severed his hands, and trapped him in a box. He knocked on the rocket, yellow, distended, upended, from there to join. Or purloin. No boxes! they cried, for we are one-hundred-percent genetically gallant with talent and you? So proud? Are not allowed. Ejected, rejected, dejected and the hate came again and he drank and he ate and his fate was fat. And he met? A threat. A fabulous wide-awake all-night-long nightmare knight in purple and orange. (BLOCKADE BOY.) How he hated the purple and the orange!

Blockade Boy's tongue was sharper than a serpent's ruthless tooth but in truth beneath the teeth there was LOVE. The stormy boy didn't couldn't wouldn't see the love. He could only see a strange hairy horrible thing he could hate more than he hated himself. Blockade Boy was mysterious (lascivious) mercurial inimical (but not meaning it) and so he vanished. Feeling an emerging urge the stormy boy followed after. Months (Years? Decades?) slipped through the stormy boy's fitful fat fingers and fickle celebrity cuddled and caressed him. For the genetically blessed changed their minds and? They deigned to wear his designs. He was high on the hog, heroic, heady with hedonism and unheeding of the headaches ahead. Dame fashion, bored, flippantly flipped him the bird, slid the lever, clever, and the floor slid open and the stormy boy slipped down as it all slipped away. Job/Home. Money/Honey. The stormy boy's boy stormed out. Honey loved money, none other. Nope. No hope. Everything was broken and the stormy boy couldn't fix it.

Time to go. Too slow, the stormy boy jimmied open the jettison tube at the space-port and squeezed inside. One last ride. Straight up up up into space, no mask on his face, no suit, no use, just skin on cold black nothing at all, chilling zero filling spilling into his lungs scraping digging hollowing him out and there would be. No. More. Me. But a hairy heroic hand yanked the stormy boy out at just the last moment. And the stormy boy dared to look at the burgeoning baroque behemoth beast-man, squinting, as at an eclipse. It was Blockade Boy. And the Feeling welled up again in his inner gizzard. LOVE.

[later] What the fuck?!! Goddamn. I must've been drunker than I thought last night. Maybe I should edit this thing? Naw. Screw it; you all get the gist of it, am I right? I was doing great, then my designs went out of style and I lost it all. Including my husband, Dynamo Kid. I guess a shared love of small, electricity-generating devices isn't the best thing to base a marriage on. And I apparently had signed a pre-nup (which I don't remember doing at all) because he got everything. The impecunious little turd. ...Are you reading this, Dynamo Kid? 'Cause I've got a revelation for you, Dynamo: if you've got such a hard-on for money, maybe you should have spent the last three years giving half-hearted handjobs to Gold Boy instead of to me. Also? Drop dead!

Fuck. My head is killing me. What the hell was I talking about? What? How shitty my life got? Oh. Yeah. It got bad, man. So bad I wound up in the really run-down part of Rimbor (i.e. the Western Hemisphere) begging at space-ports and holding a tattered cardboard sign that read "Will repair spectacles for Space Wine." (Mmm, Space Wine!) Finally I tried to kill myself but Blockade Boy was there to stop me. And he asked me to join his crew. It turned out he's actually a pretty decent guy once you get past the back hair and the temper tantrums. He's like one of my best buddies now!

What's left? The costume? Oh. Yeah. I think it's the best thing I've done. Way better than my early stuff. Hey, I'll be the first to admit that my "taste level" wasn't always where it shoulda been. But you know. A guy's aesthetic sense matures if he spends enough time around other artists. Eventually. So. Here goes.

Dig my fearsome fu-manchu! It's fierce! You can look but don't touch, ladies! (Gentlemen, the line forms on the right.) This is based on a concept sketch by me, and of course I designed all the weather-controlling gizmos. Then I handed the drawing to Blockade Boy, or he yanked it out of my hand, I forget which, and he put some finishing touches on it. As in, he filed down all the sharp edges. Also, he insisted on putting those stylized angular symbolic wing doodlybobbers on the helmet. I think he'd wanted to use something like them on another costume but his client wouldn't go for it. (No surprise there! Hee!) But what the hell. He's been a great pal to me; I have no problem with indulging the crazy fucker every now and then. I still miss all the pointiness, though. Yeah, so I like pointiness! So sue me! (Just kidding. Don't sue me. Please.) So I designed a super-pointy kick-ass costume for Timberwolf one time and he lacerated his face so badly during the fitting he had to be sent to a hospital satellite for major reconstructive surgery! SO WHAT.

Sorry. God, it's hot as a crotch in here. Does anybody else here think it's too hot? Guys? Rainbow Girl? ...They're ignoring me.

So anyway. I still have a yen for pretty-but-impractical costumes, kind of like that one guy from around your era. Erté. Sometimes I think I'd be better off designing for the space-burlesque, where all the hot guys just pose with their arms stretched straight out from their bodies and they don't have to fight each other. Unless you pay them extra, heh, heh. Anyway, enjoy! Or don't! No skin off my nose. Now if you'll excuse me, it's time for a little "hair of the dog." And I don't mean that godawful marching music my good pal Blockade Boy insists on blaring at full volume at six a.m. every Wednesday morning. *fumbles for flask* What? Oh, don't look at me like that. I can quit any time I want.