GATES (Ti’julk Mr’asz)

-Gates is a curious little addition to the Legion mythos in the post-Zero Hour-era, a *GASP* NON-HUMANOID member of the team! Resembling more a five-foot blue pillbug, Gates was from a semi-socialist government and was the Snarker of the team, frequently making fun of the others and complaining. This would make him more loveable, but problematically, comics has always had a tendency to reject non-humanoid or ugly super-heroes (see Pantha of the Teen Titans, or Feral of X-Force), so when the “Threeboot” happened, he didn’t make the cut, along with most of the characters introduced in the ’90s. 

-Gates is, in many ways, the “Iconic” member of the Reboot Legion, largely because he used a lot of that era’s slang (“Sprock!” as a swear word), doesn’t appear in the other continuities, and has a much more distinctive look that “pretty teenager in tights”. Gates was an unwilling Legionnaire, drafted by his people into the group, which he considered militaristic and inherently fascist. Most of his people are conformists; he is among the few free thinkers. He was instrumental in a few missions, however, and made friends with Ultra Boy & Brainiac-5. He never reappeared in Threeboot, and since the “middle” Legion was eventually ignored, he hadn’t shown up anywhere expect the Legion of Three Worlds story, where he got the first line of his team (“Grife! Where the sprock are we?”). That is, until Legion Lost reintroduced him as one of the Legionnaires trapped in the 21st Century. Unfortunately, that book was an early casualty of the New 52.

“When we took over Legion, Monstress was deeply unpopular. We’d regularly get letters and posts demanding we bump her off. We actually liked her, and through ‘Legion Lost’ we did our best to make her an appealing, interesting character. When she died, tragically, at the end of ‘Lost,’ people were suddenly upset!”
-Dan Abnett (the same thing happened when Louise Simonson killed off Doug Ramsey in “The New Mutants”)

MONSTRESS (Candi Pyponte-Le Parc III)
-Monstress is another CLASSIC example of the age-old problem in comics: it tends to sexualize female characters to the point of self-parody, but whenever someone goes out on a limb and tries to CHANGE that by making an uglier female character, the fanbase ultimately turns on it and the character fails. Pantha of the Teen Titans suffered a similar fate- The problem is, men and women both want to identify with characters they’re reading, but only MEN get into the whole “ugly body but still gets the hottie” kind of thing. Women typically UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES want to identify with someone who’s hideously deformed and monstrous, no matter how nice the character is, or how handsome her boyfriend. It’s part of why every Archie Comics woman is built like a supermodel, despite being teenagers written for a primarily female audience (the other part is all the artists being perverted grown men. Men can get off with power fantasies playing The Hulk or The Thing, but girls just don’t seem to have that side, for the most part. Society values beauty in women and has for as long as we’ve been writing stuff down- it’s just kind of how it is.

-Even I kind of hated Monstress, just from looking at her. Goofy giant monster-chick with a cloying personality. She doesn’t just look ugly- she looks DUMB. But they DID go out of their way to make her seem like a sweet, good-natured “big sister” to the team, and I have no doubt that the exact same character, done as a super-hot She-Hulk giant type, would have been a HUGE success on the Legion book. It’s sexist, but that’s just the way things are. But because she was ugly, the fans HATED her (a ton of fan-based stuff except for Hero History has gone out and said she’s the most-despised member of the team sometimes), and she was casually murdered by an evil Element Lad, never to reappear, being a Legion footnote.

-Monstress was the pampered daughter of a Xanthuan industrialist, but gained powers in a Hulk-like way- a gene-altering bomb, set off by a protester disgusted by the conditions of the factory, went off near her. She joins a small group of rival heroes to the Legion, but asks to join after they team up against Mordru- she’s accepted, and is altered by Element Lad from green to orange, probably to avoid certain comparisons to certain Marvel characters. She appears in the Legion Lost book, and has a bit of a thing with Element Lad- she cares for him, but he eventually goes mad and kills her.

THUNDER III (CeCe Beck)

-Cece Beck was a short-lived addition to the Reboot-Era Legion of Super-Heroes, a champion of Shazam from the future of THE LEGION’S TIME (6,000 years, actually), and they got some life out of her before the next writers undid it and sent her on her merry way, as the Legion gets some negative sentiment from the rest of the galaxy. Too bad, too, as I felt an additional Flying Brick to the team was an interesting dynamic, as well as a neat look into the history of a DC Universe affected by someone OTHER THAN SUPERMAN for once! I mean, Supes is great and all, but COME ON- the entire team worships him, half the guys share his powers, and he’s got ancestors and crap- there’s no Billy Batson, Wonder Woman or Batman legacies that last that long? I fart on that.

-For a costume, they could’ve maybe done better than Iron Fist & Billy Batson’s female love child, but what can you do? It was the Archie Legion.