Golden Boy
2975 - Klint Stewirt is born on Earth
2983 - 8-year-old Klint Stewirt discovers an old non-functioning book of spells and becomes obsessed with a ‘midas touch’ spell
2990 - 15-year-old Klint Stewirt finally unlocks the ritual to cast his 'midas touch' spell, granting himself extremely mild gold touch powers.
2991 - 16-year-old Klint Stewirt tries out in the first Legion of Super-Heroes membership drive. He is rejected from the Legion when Imra Ardeen detects his intense greed, although he is told it is because his powers are too weak.
2996 - 21-year-old Klint Stewirt's growing powers become too much to suppress. He has to go into seclusion as his body slowly turns to gold.
3005 - 30-year-old Klint Stewirt is approached by Kirt Neidrigh to join the Justice League of Earth.
3007 - 32-year-old Klint Stewirt and Justice League of Earth go public and stage a coup to control Earth's population. They fight Legion of Super-Heroes.
Golden Boy's Comic HistoryGolden Boy is another character that had only one appearance before the invention of the Justice League of Earth reimagined him. It's an interesting issue; in Adventure Comics #331 in 1965, Dynamo Boy (who is secretly a bad guy) has basically taken over the Legion, kicked out the classic members, and is auditioning new ones. There are several characters introduced that are clearly meant to be deliberately bad choices, like fellow future JLE member Tusker, but I actually really like the reason Golden Boy is rejected... because making everything gold would devalue gold. The Legion can be hilarious sometimes.
When he came back decades later as a member of the JLE, he was now gold-skinned, as apparently his powers evolved quite a bit. He would eventually be accidentally MELTED. Wild. |
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Our Golden Boy StoryGolden Boy is not one of the more complicated characters that were added to the JLE. He doesn't have an incredibly complex story to tell, I think he's more likely included just because he's such a clever deep cut into Legion lore. There really isn't a lot for us to do to get Golden Boy right... he basically just has to be in place, be rejected by the Legion, and then later be available to be recruited for the Justice League of Earth.
One thing we did want to do, something we wind up needing to do with MOST Legion-era characters, is come up with a better origin for his powers. Not only because we don't want to create whole planets of superpowers people, but also because, for what should be pretty obvious reasons, all the members of the JLE should actually be from Earth. In this case, we decided that his powers should be a literal Midas touch derived from a book of spells. This can absolutely start to evolve dangerously, making him a hazard to both himself and everything around him. Even on a team that includes a perpetually irradiated monster, this should make him incredibly dangerous on a scale you really on;y see going up against the Legion. |