Legion of Super Heroes vs. X-Men - who had the bigger roster?
Torchsong
Posts: 2,794
My project (for myself) in July is to draw a character a day (just rough sketches done over lunch) and post them up. Given that there's 31 days in July, I figured I needed a group with a deep roster and could only think of two groups that could satisfy that requirement - the Legion of Superheroes and the X-Men. I'm pretty set on doing "A Legionnaire a Day" through July, because I'd probably get tired of the X-Men uniform after a while, but it sparked a good debate with me and the wife - who had the deeper roster?
So we sat there, drinks in hand, and she had to match me - an X-Man for every Legionnaire I named.
Degree of difficulty: She had to name actual X-Men - no New Mutants, Exiles, etc. They had to be on the actual X-Men team (appearing in either Uncanny or X-Men). I couldn't use Legion of Substitute Heroes. They had to be actual Legionnaires.
I smoked her, but I wonder who actually had the deepest roster. A friend of mine says in terms of actual standing army size, the Legion wins hands down, but if you're going for number of members over the course of time, the X-Men will take them.
Note this is not "Who'd win a fight?" just "Who has had the most members?"
So we sat there, drinks in hand, and she had to match me - an X-Man for every Legionnaire I named.
Degree of difficulty: She had to name actual X-Men - no New Mutants, Exiles, etc. They had to be on the actual X-Men team (appearing in either Uncanny or X-Men). I couldn't use Legion of Substitute Heroes. They had to be actual Legionnaires.
I smoked her, but I wonder who actually had the deepest roster. A friend of mine says in terms of actual standing army size, the Legion wins hands down, but if you're going for number of members over the course of time, the X-Men will take them.
Note this is not "Who'd win a fight?" just "Who has had the most members?"
Comments
There looks to be many more on the Legion page, but many of those would be variants of previously established characters (i.e. I would count Colossal Boy and Leviathan as the same character).
Counting through the end of the 'Original' Legion continuity (including the 5 years later) run, I showed 56 members. Scrolling through the remainder of the roster, and only adding members that didn't have a previous iteration, I ended up with a count of 81.
Would love to have someone else do the math to see if my counts are close. :)
And as far as deep rosters for the main team go, you could also easily fill a month with 31 Avengers. But as far as the choices you list go, I do think there have been more X-Men than Legionnaires, even if you count the 5 year gap characters. I think there seem to be so many more Legionnaires than there are because there have been more versions of them!
Though if you do decide on the Legion, you've gotta promise me that Kinetix will be in there somewhere. I do loves me some Zoe Saugin. :x
The basic plan is, starting July 1, I do a quick sketch a day. If anything really good comes out of it, I may ink it...or not. Alternating male to female characters (another area where I think the Legion might work better...I think they have the better boy/girl ratio).
And yes, Corset Cosmic Boy will likely be in there somewhere just for kicks. To even it out, I'll have to do Funky Swimsuit Saturn Girl. Man I miss the 70s sometimes. :) The main members will all be in there, but I'm really looking forward to doing Bouncing Boy/Duo Damsel. I've been begging my wife to cosplay with me as them at a convention...she could totally pull off the outfit (and I'm the spitting image of Mr. Taine).