The Mon-Elves Have Been Busy

Came across this in my daily trek across the hinterlands of the net. The Legion cartoon has actually been a pleasant surprise for me. I haven't managed to catch a lot of it, but given how put off I was by the initial designs, it's been solid. I'm not really a Legion fanatic, anyway, but I did manage to get my niece/cousin a DVD of the first season (I'm trying to activate her dormant nerdling gene. Her mother is a trekkie, she's already doomed, I'm just hoping I can get some good cultural foundations in there before it's too late.) and she was nice enough to treat me to a viewing selection and a detailed, authoritative overview of the various characters on the show (Like I said, doomed.).

Anyhow, the new season is coming up. I'm a little skeptical of the whole “darker”, “edgier” turn they're planning, that's not why my single-digit cousin likes the show, after all. I'd heard they were doing a Mon-El which I thought sounded cool. This Conan as a Superboy, however? Does not. I imagine the blogosphere is roiling or rioting or whatever it is they do about these sorts of things.

But, yeah, I wonder about the “complicated origin” explaination, too. Because the Mon-El origin is pretty straightforward and simplistic when you get right down to it. I suspect, as the article mentions, the real reason, not only for this Kell-El character but for the show's aging involves the protracted battle over the Superboy character itself. Having to avoid Smallville and Superboy entirely would make it difficult to retell that Mon-El origin.