LaRocque gave the LOSH a nice futuristic visual punch and really had a sleek and bright (appropriate for the future) design element to the cast and costumes. Personally I feel LaRocque is a very underappreciated artist. He started out a bit rough and bland but he developed quickly a fun comic book look I enjoyed seeing. Really liked his Wally West Flash run as well.

From what I remember Karate Kid's solo series was unremarkable. I believe he went into the past chasing a villain and ended up proving his worthiness to Projectra's family to be her husband. I also think his adventures in the past happened "in between" the Superboy & the LoSH issues.

I thought his series was so-so.  Frankly, my main problem was with the art.  The main penciller, Ric Estrada, seems to have done his homework regarding the martial arts, but I just didn't like the illustations - too cartoonish for me.  The art did get better towards the end with a new art team, though. Having a few different writers didn't help, either.  Some of the villains were pretty lame. In fact, most of them were.  I guess they put him in the 20th century to make the comic appeal to non-Legion fans.  Whether that was a good choice or a bad choice, I can't really tell.  They did seem to waffle on whether to make it a martial arts comic or a superhero comic.

Technically, Val was gone for an extended period, not "in-between" Legion issues, but honestly, I don't remember his absence being mention much in the Legion comic until later in the Karate Kid series, and in fact I think he even appeared in some Legion issue earlier on during the Karate Kid series, implying that they didn't take place at the same time. I suspect that the KK series happened a little after the concurrent Legion issue.

I agree with you on the Broderick/Patterson art team. I thought they did an excellent job.

Thank you for sending some kudos to Greg LaRocque. I LOVE his Legion art!  I just finished #25 of the Baxter series, where Sensor Girl's identity is revealed on the last page. Though I knew who she was because I remember it from the last time I read these stories about 10 years ago, I agree with you that the mystery hold up well, and the Levitz did a good job of laying out subtle clue. It's funny reading the letter columns how many people thought it was Supergirl!

As far as weak nicknames, I don't think it's just true of the Legion. I remember when professional athletes used to have really cool nicknames like the Galloping Ghost, the Sultan of Swat, The Iron Horse, etc.  Nowadays, they simply go with initials or some lame shortening of the players name (I don't even consider these to be nicknames) such as LT, A-Rod, etc.

Huh, I've never heard that before, but there would be a certain elegance if 20th century Martians were 30th century Durlans. Living 1000 years though?

Well, he was at the marriage of Chuck and Luornu! 

But yeah, I dislike those unnecessary connections; they always make our fictional universes look smaller, and therefore less real. Having Brande turn out to be a Durlan wasn't much to my taste the first time around, but after the Glorith soft reboot from the 5YL period I thought it worked better (since the concept had been there from the start).

Absolutely! And Yoda knowing Chewie, plus Han having kickstarted the rebellion, made it even worse. It sounds like self-indulgent fanfic.

I much preferred the Star Wars universe described in the pages of the original novelization: Palpatine was just a disconnected ruler, and Darth Vader was nothing more than an imperial enforcer (even lower in the pecking order than Moff Tarkin).

One connection that I absolutely loved in the Legion was how Mon-El/Valor was retroactively made responsible for sending so many superpowered humanoids across the galaxy, and particularly to planets where their powers were so useful (Polar Boy coming from a very hot planet, for example). That they were all the result of mutagenesis performed on Earthlings by the Dominators explained why they were human to begin with and explained why they had powers; that Valor had been the one to take them to a new home explained why he was widely seen as a messianic figure, and the suitability of everyone’s powers to their environment makes more sense if people were moved to a certain place where they could thrive than if they spontaneously developed the ability to project cold because it’s hot outside.