The Legionnaires will go to any length to bring Lightning Lad back to life.
I don’t think I have to cover the specifics of the issue here, every Legion fan worth his Kono juice knows what happens (and what future storyline about Proty in Garth’s body we ignore). I do think the act of sacrificing one person to maybe bring back another is worth discussing.
One of the first Legion-centric stories I read was The Lightning Saga. I was instantly a Legion fan when I read Superman’s synopsis of Garth’s resurrection and the terrible price they were all willing to accept to bring their friend back.
The more I think about it the more it sounds…well, for lack of a better word unhealthy. Both Saturn Girl and Lightning Lass are showing signs of depression and denial. Hell, you could probably throw in some post-traumatic stress disorder too. These girls, if not the whole Legion, should be in therapy. They should not have been humored into thinking that Garth could be brought back. After all, it was just a theory (with no real evidence) that Lightning Lad could be resurrected.
What makes Lightning Lad more deserving of living than the other Legionnaires? Putting aside the fact that the procedure was not guaranteed to bring him back, do the Legionnaires actually think Garth would want to be brought back at the expense of one of his friends? Can you imagine the survivor’s guilt Garth would have experienced if Imra had died to bring him back? Proty being the sacrifice was a bit of a cop-out since, you know, he’s just Chameleon Boy’s pet instead of a real person. It didn’t take very long to replace him, Proty II (same name too, like replacing a child’s dead goldfish and not telling him) was introduced five months later.
On my Legion Jerk © scale this issue gets a:
