Monday, July 07, 2008

Trivia Quiz #25

It's the first Monday of the month, which usually means it's trivia time! This week's theme: Marvel Comics (no, really).

The Legion has been around for 50 years, and they were the first costumed super-powered group of the Silver Age. They predate the X-Men, Avengers, and Fantastic Four (and even the JLA), though of course the Legion was never as big (sales-wise) as any of them. But from time to time, the Marvel Universe has snuck in to Legion stories, and that's what we'll cover today. Answers by the end of the week.

1. The Imperial Guardsmen were Legion-analogs in the Marvel Universe. When did the Legion meet Marvel-analogs in the DC universe?

2. More than once, when the Legion met a DC-Earth analog of the X-Men (in the above examples), one of the "X-Men" joined the Legion. Which Legionnaires, and which X-Men did they correspond to?

3. Which Legionnaire alias name, from a story by Jim Shooter, was later used in the Korvac storyline in Avengers, also written by Jim Shooter?

4. It’s common knowledge that the character we know as Nightcrawler was originally created by Dave Cockrum for the Legion before he left DC for Marvel, where the character became a member of the All-New X-Men. What would this character’s name and backstory have been had he stayed with the Legion?

5. In one Silver Age Legion story, a character broke the “fourth wall” of the comic and addressed the reader in the middle of a story. Who was this character, which Marvel character did he/she refer to, and what was the context?

6. Which Marvel character(s) “snuck” into the group photo as seen in LSH v2 #300?

7. How did the Legionnaires aid the X-Men in the “Days of Future Past” storyline?

Bonus question: can you think of any Legion-related covers that resemble Marvel covers? Here are some starters, I'll spot you the easy ones:





9 comments:

Anonymous said...

5. Chameleon Boy told off Spider-Man, though I can't recall which issue of Adventure that was.

As far as the rest go... good questions!

Anonymous said...

2. Well, the League of Assasins was supposed to be a Marvel analogue, wasn't it? Which leads me to...

3. Blok, of course!

4. Annoyingly, I was just reading about this a few weeks ago, but I can't remember. As I recall, the character who became Nightcrawler went through about three different backstories pre-X-Men.

5. Someone got it before me. Ah well.

As for the bonus, I don't have an answer, but it's worth noting that both the X-Men and the Crisis covers are homages to the "Robin Dies at Dawn" cover from a Batman comic back in the...'60s? I think?

Meerkatdon said...

5. Chameleon Boy, referring to Spider-Man. After turning into a spider and entangling a baddie in a web, Cham winked at the audience and said something like, "In case a certain character thinks I'm stealing his thunder, remember that I was turning into spiders before he was a gleam in Stan Lee's eye" (except I don't think he said the Stan Lee part.) Could this have been at the Interstellar Bank while fighting the Devil's Dozen? I believe so.

6. Spider-Man, half-hidden and possibly hanging upside down.

All other questions: I do not have a clue.

But this is a good place to ask: what (if anything) is the relationship between the Legion and Marvel's Galactic Guardians? And how do the Imperial Guard fit in?

Michael said...

Don - there's no relationship between the Legion and the Guardians of the Galaxy other than the fact that they're both teams in the future of each company's respective present.

The Imperial Guard was created after Dave Cockrum moved to Marvel and started working on the X-Men, with the members deliberately reminiscent of certain Legionnaires. Check out this Guardsmen page and see if you can figure out who's who (it's pretty easy if you know your Legionnaires).

Jim Drew said...

1. The Fatal Five are said to be a variant of the Masters of Evil (Enchantress, Executioner, Melter, Power Man and Baron Zemo; the first three are quite obvious parallels).
* In the postboot, Dr. 30 (that would be Dr. X-X-X) had a team of X mutants, including Ferro's twin brother in the Colossue role.
* The League of Super-Assassins is presumably an X-Men varant: Lazon = Cyclops, Neutrax = Professor X, Silver Slasher = Wolverine, Blok = Colossus, Mist Master = Storm.
* The Wanderers (or at least the retrofitted ones from late v3) are also X-Men clones: Dartalon=Wolverine, Elvar=Nightcrawler, Quantum Queen=Phoenix, etc.
* The Khund Legionnaires were also X-Men analogues, I think.

2. Blok joined the Legion. Quantum Queen may have joined the Adult Legion. The Khund Legionnaires joined.

3. Looks like it may be Marie Elkins; Curtis Elkins worked at the Vault, as a Guardsman

4. Wasn't Nightcrawler going to be part of the new Wanderers instead of the Legion?

5. & 6. were answered already

7. Brainy created the power damper than hid them from the Sentinels. For all the details, see:
http://lsh.freeservers.com/Frunt/1997Q4/Unlimited-Access-1.html
http://lsh.freeservers.com/Frunt/1998Q1/Unlimited-Access-2.html

Michael said...

1. There's at least one more that you haven't touched on yet.

3. There's another character whose first and last name was used, that's the one I was thinking about.

Jim Drew said...

Oh, yeah: XS met Avengers analogues while time travelling in the Dead Earth Annual.

My first thought on the Korvac thing was Bob Cobb, but I couldn't Google up any pages with Cobb and Korvac on them. (Is that cheating?)

Anonymous said...

Weren't Xanthu's "Uncanny Amazers" (from post-boot--the first one) also X-Men analogues? In that case, add Kid Quantum II to the list of those who joined the Legion.

Jim Drew said...

The Uncanny Amazers would be a Marvel analogue in name only. The members were Atmos, Atom'X, Insect Queen, Kid Quantum, Konk, Monstress, Phrenologax Lad, and Star Boy. Other than "Monstress = She-Hulk", there aren't many good analogues there.

The WorkForce was another possible name analogue, for "proactive West Coast Avengers" team Force Works.