… Some characters are just kind of a GIFT to artists, ya know?

DREAM GIRL (Nura Nal, aka Miss Terious, Dreamer)

-Dream Girl’s another one of those curious “really? You want in with THAT power?” types that show up all over the Pre-Crisis DC Universe, so of course she has to save the whole team dozens of times. The rest of the time, she’s a Deanna Troi-type character only there to move things along or state the obvious (“I forsee this thing happening over here!” and then the thing she forsaw happens once the Legion gets there). Her main point of interest seems to be her ridiculously sexy shiny swimsuit and its effect on the Legion’s men (particuarly Star Boy, giving us one of the most recurring Legionnaire hook-ups), and the temporary hatred of the Legion women (it’s almost like the writer is saying that when an attractive, flirty woman shows up, other women WON’T LIKE HER. But that seems far-fetched…).

Dream Girl hails from Naltor, where almost everyone possesses precognitive abilities- after forseeing the deaths of several Legionnaires, she crafts an elaborate scheme that involves changing Ayla Ranzz from Lightning Lass to Light Lass and putting herself on the team… only to discover that the “Legionnaires” who “died” were robot duplicates. Disgraced, she left the Legion for the SUBSTITUTE Heroes, where she hooked up with Star Boy, who had been booted from the main team for killing a man (one of Nura’s former lovers) in self-defense. We would also later meet her sister, The White Witch, who would also join the Legion.

Nura of all people was elected Legion leader (humorously, one character comments to another “Just think… do you think she would have put herself in the running if she didn’t think she was going to win?” “… Aw no, I didn’t think of that!”) for The Great Darkness Saga, where her planning and foresight led the team in battle against DARKSEID and his legions. And it WORKS! Though oddly, the book establishes her as being fairly unpopular (being famously pushy & bossy as Deputy Leader) before being elected leader, so I wonder how she actually managed to get any votes!

Nura is thus a strange combination of tropes, and I think really works as a character in retrospect- her “useless” battlefield powers (She doesn’t even throw out “hints” in combat like Destiny used to do in X-Men books, though she later works on some martial arts) contrast her behind-the-scenes importance, where she often makes these minor adjustments here and there that end up helping save the day, leading the team, or using her scientific skills (second only to Brainiac-5) to help out. But despite being one of the “Team Brains” and a schemer, she’s also a smug “Miss Fanservice” AND “Know-It-All” who irritates the men and creates rivalries amongst the women. Kind of a disruptive, annoying person, which makes her a great character on an ensemble cast. That she was paired up with Star Boy almost the entire time helped “center” her, and avoided a “She sleeps around” situation, which can often spring up with characters like this.

In the end, Dream Girl kind of represents what young boys hate about girls, and what a lot of grown men LIKE about girls- flirty, bossy and pushy.

Reboot & Threeboot Eras:
-Reboot Nura took the “pampered rich girl” persona of the first, and turned her into an imbecilic Valley Girl who was only briefly on the team (joining near the end of the continuity as “Dreamer”). However, her relationship with Star Boy was still intact. The “Threeboot” instead used her as one of the first members to die in action, though Brainiac did a bunch of stuff like having her be alive through a projection device that animated her spirit. He eventually transplanted her mind into a cloned body, and the two were married- paying off a relationship that started with him hating how she just seemed to “know” everything ahead of time, without having to study. During her death, she was replaced by Rol Purtha, “Dream Boy”.

No super-hero in comics has ever swerved this far between “HOLY CHRIST WHAT AN ATROCITY!” and “GOD DAMN THAT IS A COOL COSTUME!” so much.

STAR BOY (Thom Kallor, aka Starman VIII, Danny Blaine)

Silver Age Star Boy:
-Star Boy’s always been an odd fit on the Legion, sorta like Sun Boy. He’s a generic name with a simplistic concept and powers, yet it’s absolutely necessary on a team as big as the Legion to have guys like that, to offset the Super-Heavyweights and low-powered Team Assist guys. So he’s always been rather generic, hooking up with Dream Girl and doing little else other than going through costume changes (including the AWESOME Starfield Design!) and maybe changing his race in a new continuity or something, and that’s about it. Well that and being generally unlucky and having stuff happen TO him in various issues.

He actually debuted in a Superboy story (the Legion only appearing FIVE TIMES beforehand), getting involved in one of Lana Lang’s schemes to reveal Superboy’s secret I.D., as at this point he was sporting Superboy-level powers. He eventually lost all of them, keeping only the ability to make some objects heavier than normal, and eventually ended up on the Legion. He falls for Dream Girl, but kills her ex-boyfriend in self-defense and is expelled from the team, joining the Legion of Substitute Heroes instead. At this point, he’s basically “Dream Girl’s Boyfriend”, doing fairly little other than having a cool suit.

Reboot:
-Star Boy is on the Reboot team, replacing Kid Quantum as Xanthu’s representative, after Quantum died in battle. Team Leader Leviathan took issue with Star Boy, largely stemming from the fact that Star Boy reminded him of his “failure” as leader, in getting Quantum killed. This version of Star Boy gained some fire-breathing powers after a starship accident. The “Threeboot” version was a black guy in a REALLY cool-looking suit, but there’s not much about him, aside from his loyalty to Cosmic Boy.

JSA’s Starman:
-He was also chosen to be in JSA, mainly because Alex Ross had drawn him in Kingdom Come and made him look HELLA-AWESOME with that bitching black star-field uniform. Unfortunately, Johns chose to make him the “Team Crazy Guy”, saying random stupid things and making him nutty as a loon. This was just AWFUL to read- there’s nothing that I find more tiresome than listening to “Crazy Guy” dialogue from writers- both Johns & Hickman do this in their mega-runs, and it’s completely interminable both times. “Crazy Guy” dialogue is neither funny, nor clever, yet even otherwise-decent writers feel the need to be giant hacks and do it to prove how “funny” they are, when actual comedic writers know that “guys who say random stuff” are the easiest types of things to write, and require no talent.

This version of Thom Kallor- a much older, bearded hero, was crazy because his schizophrenia was untreatable in the 21st Century, while some pills kept it in check in the 30th. It turns out that his costume is a map of the rebooted universe, and was designed by three Brainiac-5s- its purpose is to transport beings through time and space, which in this case means resurrecting the Connor Kent/Superboy in the future, so that he can fight against Superboy-Prime in The Legion of Three Worlds story. In the rebooted Legion stories, he appears as a paraplegic for some reason.

A friend put the characterization of Star Boy in JSA thusly:

As someone who used to be support staff for people with MH/MR issues in my late twenties/very early thirties, and has a mentally challenged cousin, the portrayal of the schizophrenic Star Boy was also inaccurate and borderline semi-offensive. It consisted mostly of Thom Kallor being confused and forgetful, along with inserting gibberish phrases in his speaking. Actual sufferers of the disorder experience disorienting and often frightening visual/auditory hallucinations, have difficulty separating their inner thoughts from outside reality, cannot easily stay on task or engage in normal problem solving behaviors, and so on; “word salad” is among the least of their difficulties. Current medications come with a bevvy of potential side-affects, from the socially embarrassing to the health-adverse, which is why many people with the disorder go off their pills once they begin feeling “better”.

Note: This isn’t me saying “mental illness should never be used for comic effect!”-its just me noting that the Star Man bit in JSA and a lot of similar stuff in pop culture really tends to be both annoying (“look how zany this guy/gal is!”) or demeaning (nearly every mainstream movie portrayal of people with mental retardation, which usually consists of actors slurring their words, wearing badly fitting clothes, and scrunching up their faces). Of course, I also object to the whole “people with those conditions are just the same as everyone else!” philosophy that seemed to pervade some of my former co-workers; I was like…well, no,they’re human beings who have civil rights and deserve to be treated with dignity, but they really shouldn’t be making some of these decisions for themselves.

Another said:
It’s also galling because they had a far better and more accurate depiction of a mentally-ill character at the same time with Cyclone and her more manic-depressive tendencies.