Today, we look at the absurdity of the Legion of Super-Heroes' "No Duplicate Powers" rule, especially since they obviously don't even follow their own rule!
This is "How Can I Explain?", which is a feature spotlighting inexplicable comic book plots.
Right off the bat, don't get me wrong, I totally understand the problem here when you're dealing with a story introducing a new element to a series out of nowhere, like, 15 years into the existence of the series. It is almost NEVER going to make any real sense and any attempts to then look into it further are, pretty much inherently, going to be overly complicated and inevitably contradictory. So really, this all comes down to Cary Bates having an idea for a Legion story in 1973 that threw everything out of whack with a plot point that still doesn't make ANY sense.
The rule was introduced for the first time in 1973's Superboy #195 by Cary Bates and Dave Cockrum, when a new character, Erg-1, wants to apply to be a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes. He explains that he was transformed into an energy being, and as a result, he has found that he can achieve a wide variety of super powers, including duplicating the powers of a number of the members of the Legion...
However, that whole "duplicate the powers of other Legionnaires" catches Mon-El's attention and he lets Erg-1 know that he CANNOT be a member of the Legion, because the Legion has a rule that every Legionnaire must have a UNIQUE power and since he doesn't have one, he can't join.
By the way, right off the bat, Erg-1 flat out tells them, "Well, I don't know yet, as my powers are still experimental," and Mon-El is all, "We can't take that excuse" which is....huh? The guy just got these awesome powers and you're not even allowing him the chance to prove that his powers could be unique? What is your DEAL, dude?
Of course, the crazy thing is that the Legion has never actually needed a REASON to reject members. For instance, look at when Polar Boy tried out in Adventure Comics #306 (by Edmond Hamilton and John Forte). He's rejected because his power might disable his teammates at a critical moment?
I mean, I guess that's theoretically possible...unlike your FIRE POWERS, Sun Boy? They could NEVER disable anyone, right? What kind of nonsense is this? This dude has unique and actually pretty darn useful powers (a lot of teams seem to have an ice projector on them eventually nowadays) and you're just rejecting him for some such nonsense, so why even bother using the "No Duplicate Powers" rule? Why not just say, "Oh man, sorry, Erg-1, numbers in a Legionnaire's name could be really confusing, so you gotta go." "But what about Brainiac Five?" "Can't here you. We've already moved on to the next applicant."
In any event, the Erg-1 example later leads to Erg-1 proving that he DOES have a unique power at the end of the story by exploding, something no other Legionnaire could do. Luckily for him, though, being an energy being he was able to be brought back together and joined the Legion on the slightly more colorful superhero name of Wildfire.
As I covered in a Comic Book Legends Revealed almost exactly a DECADE ago (I have been doing this for way too long), the reason people think that the "No Duplicate Powers" rule was always a thing is because of a story in Adventure Comics #317 (by Hamilton and Forte) that introduced Dream Girl to the Legion. Now, here's something you need to remember about Silver Age comics on general and Legion stories in specific is that during this era, whenever a team member learned that a teammate was in danger (or if they had a glimpse of the future, like Dream Girl's precognitive dreams), their position was never, "Oh, hey, let me tell the other person what I'm concerned about," but instead, they had to be as duplicitous and cruel as possible in saving the other person. One of the most famous examples of this is when Superman adopted Jimmy Olsen but had a prediction that Superman's son would be destroyed, so Superman figured he had to treat Jimmy so cruelly that Jimmy would chose to NOT be adopted by him (but in the end, it was a SUN that Superman had created for a project was destroyed, not Jimmy. Whoopsies. Dream Girl saw the death of a group of Legionnaires, so she joined the Legion and quickly came up with ways to get the members whose death she foresaw kicked off of the team, like seemingly removing Lightning Lass' powers...
Lightning Lass had joined the team when her brother, Lightning Lad, was dead, but he had returned by this point, so they had two Lightning-powered characters and thus, fans remember this as being "No duplicate powers," but obviously, Lightning Lass was ON THE TEAM in the issue, so clearly there was no rule about duplicate powers. Just that you had to HAVE powers. Luckily (after learning that her premonition only saw dummy versions of the Legionnaires being "killed"), Dream Girl wasn't a TOTAL jerk, and she just gave her NEW anti-gravity powers and she became LIGHT Lass...
So, yeah, nothing about duplicate powers.
Naturally, you might think, "But wait, Superboy and Supergirl obviously have the same powers. How can they be on the team together?" Well, Jim Shooter and Mike Grell were forced to explain that in Superboy #212 and the answer makes as much sense as it possibly could, which is to say that it makes no sense...
Yes, they're just exceptions. As, of course, is Mon-El, too, as he basically has the same power set as Superboy and Supergirl. Or Star Boy, back when he had powers like Superboy (Star Boy later got new powers, but not because he HAD to, the writers likely just wanted to mix things up).
In other words, the rule just makes no sense. I mean, don't get me wrong, do you really want a team of Matter-Eater Lads? No, of course not, but that doesn't even matter because, as shown with Polar Boy, you can reject a Legion applicant for pretty much ANY reason, so why this ridiculous rule that clearly ISN'T actually applied (Lightning Lass and Lad and all of the Superboy-style powers)?
If anyone else can think of a good inexplicable comic book plot, write me at brianc@cbr.com!
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