Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Sun Boy Triumphant

I never really understood the need to remake Sun Boy into such a tragic figure in the Five Years Later Legion.

I know that he was characterized as a womanizer in the Levitz Legion. But he was a proud Legionnaire, who once said:
"I'm getting tired of people trying to blow me up! You’d think by now they’d learn Legionnaires die hard."

The first time he made an impression on me was in #286, when he took on Dr. Regulus and defeated him (triumph one), and then even figured out how to stop the runaway reaction in R.J. Brande's Fusion Dome (triumph two) -- something it seemed only Brainy would know how to do.

Smart, powerful, loyal -- it's a shame he ended up as he did in that grimdark future. I was happy to see the SW6 version of him appear. In later years, a female incarnation named Inferno appeared, but she was clearly a different character with riffs taken from Sun Boy.

When will he return? Hopefully soon, with the rest of the Legion.