What Might Have Been...

[alschroeder]

(Crossposted from my own forum...)
If DC hadn't sued Fawcett about Captain Marvel, Otto Binder probably would have stayed THERE rather than go to DC and create Krypto, Supergirl, Brainiac, Bizarro...and the Legion of Super-Heroes.

Since the Fawcett crew tended to tangle with supernatural more than alien menaces, I sort of re-envisioned a Legion of Super-Natural Heroes, with a Warlock Lad, a Ghost Girl, a Boy Werewolf (and other members might be Golem Guy, Banshee Girl, Leprauchaun Lass, etc...)

So I re-imagined the first Legion cover in Adventure--where the Legion tunred a thumbs down on Superboy---to a Master Comics cover starring Captain Marvel Jr. and the aforementioned mebers. You can see it at http://www.flickr.com/photos/alschroeder/155581243/.

---Al

[MatterEaterLad]

Interesting premise and "what if?"...

Since I like to play devil's advocate, I might bring up a couple of things...

1. Its seems like the decline of the super hero in general was as much reponsible for the hurt put on the remaining Fawcett's hero line as the lawsuit, it damaged DC almost as much and put Supes in a weird decade...then, of course, SOTI put the hurt on lots of other alternative genres...

2.  So it seems that Binder may have become interested in science fiction (especially in the Cold War/Sputnik/space race era) no matter where he was...it also seems like the future was an important part of sci fi at the time, more supernatural characters don't need the future to be interesting...

Like the idea, and who knows?

[alschroeder]

Oh, no doubt. But in the Captain Marvel series, aliens tended to LOOK alien---from Mr. Mind to the tentacled horror at the World's Fair. Very few very-humanoid ones to speak of. And in the Captain Marvel series, sorcerers and wizards were plentiful---for instance, Cap's mirror image, "Niatpac Levram", was created by a would-be wizard trying to graduate from a wizard's school.

As far as being set in the future---the Legion of Supernatural Heroes might be set in the past, say, during the Dark Ages...

---Al

[MatterEaterLad]

I sometimes wonder what kids were conditioned to accept as science fiction had to do with low budget media where aliens always looked like humans, and this was transferred to comics...though its not that simple either...