Smile Like You Mean It (Dyrk Magz, DC's Legion of Superheroes)
Title: Smile Like You Mean It
Fandom: Legion of Superheroes, DC Comics
Character: Dyrk Magz, aka Magno
Author: joiedecombat
E-Mail: abbykat @ hotmail . com
Spoilers: Post-Zero Hour Legion of Superheroes through Legion Worlds
This is all evilbeej's fault.
As part of her ongoing effort to interest me in DC's Legion of Superheroes, evilbeej - well acquainted with my taste in characters - approached me with, "I know who you'd like," and proceeded to explain, in brief, the history of Dyrk Magz.
I was promptly intrigued. After obtaining a list of his appearances, I managed to get my hands on a copy of Legionnaires #53. The issue contains, among other content, the story "Down and Out on Planet Braal" - a story about a young man returning home after briefly touching, and being scorched by, greatness.
I was hooked.
Like a good enabler, evilbeej got me scanned copies of nearly the entire post-Zero Hour run of the Legion's various series; I skipped promptly to Magno's first appearance and read from there more or less to the end of the run. In reading, I got sucked into the Legion as a whole and found plenty of other things to like about it... but when I reached the end, I was stuck with the knowledge that my very favorite character in the Legion was a character who was a Legionnaire for only a few weeks, and who appears in no other previous or subsequent incarnation of the Legion.
There wasn't even any fanfic about him. I looked.
And yet, in spite of the relative scarcity of his canon appearances, he still manages to be a fantastic character; I'm told that he was originally created with the intention of killing him off in the very next story arc, but when the time came, the writers couldn't bring themselves to go through with it. He is that cute. Instead, they gave him a genuinely compelling character arc of his own, one that is all the more poignant for never quite being complete.
Magno deserves fandom love. Thus, this essay.
The Legion of Superheroes
It started with the Legion, so that's where we'll start.
In the thirtieth century, three teenagers from very different worlds join forces to save the life of a total stranger. That stranger happens to be billionaire industrialist R. J. Brande, who is inspired to make the three an offer: a chance to create a team of people like themselves to protect the United Planets, and to serve as a symbol of hope and unity for their often conflicted and conflicting worlds. A team inspired by heroes of the past such as Superman - a legion of superheroes.
The idea catches fire, and the Legion grows in number and in fame; its members hail from all over the universe. They defend the Earth and the United Planets, and more, against threats like the Fatal Five and the genocidal White Triangle. They are sometimes loved and sometimes hated by the inhabitants of the planets they protect, a symbol of hope and unity and a scapegoat when things go wrong.
After half the Legion's roster is accidentally left trapped in the twentieth century, the remaining members of the Legion have no choice but to hold tryouts in order to find new members to fill the gaps. Literally hundreds of hopefuls turn out for the tryouts, thronging to Legion headquarters for a chance at membership.
The first to distinguish himself is Dyrk Magz.
Shiny!
I am on my way
I can go the distance
I don't care how far
Somehow I'll be strong
I know every mile
Will be worth my while
I would go most anywhere
To feel like I belong
-- Roger Bart, "Go the Distance"
Dyrk immediately establishes two things about himself in his first appearance. The first is that he's a handy guy to have around in an emergency, quick to act while the people around him - even experienced Legionnaires - are still only reacting. The second is that he is just about as clean-cut, fresh-faced, aw-shucks shiny as is humanly possible for any one person to be. If he were any more adorable, he would be downright sickening - and as it is he cuts it pretty close in his first few issues.
Not much is ever really indicated about Dyrk's background, at least not directly. But - like founding Legionnaire Cosmic Boy - he hails from the planet Braal, a world rich in metals and mineral deposits and poor in everything else. All native Braalians have at least some innate control over the forces of magnetism; most, struggling in the recession that weighs on their planet's economy, work in mining. It's sheer optimism and idealism that brings him to the tryouts; unlike Cosmic Boy, who was famous as an athlete before the Legion was even conceived, Dyrk is a blue-collar boy of no particular distinction. He has two things going for him: the considerable strength of his powers of magnetism, and that talent of his for acting quickly in a crisis.
He has at least one thing going against him, too, because Cosmic Boy is one of the missing Legionnaires, and the Legion's acting leader, Live Wire, is reluctant to recruit a replacement for his best friend.
This is something that will keep coming up, and not just with Garth. But in spite of Live Wire's misgivings, Dyrk is among the five selected out of hundreds of applicants for final consideration. His performance during the final test - a "surprise attack" staged by the Legionnaires to see how the finalists react under fire - illustrates another of his most notable traits... his casual disregard for his own safety in the face of danger. With the Legionnaires "knocked out" and several other finalists coming apart, Dyrk is once again the first to act, and although he could stand back and rely on his powers of magnetism to do the job, instead he charges directly at the attacker, dodging the bolts from his weapon, to get involved up close and personal.
It's not insignificant that of the three finalists ultimately chosen to join the Legion, while the issue emphasizes the powers of the other two, Dyrk's powers of magnetism are comparatively overlooked. He puts them to good use, certainly - but it's his attitude far more than his powers, his quick and level-headed action in the face of danger, that wins him his place as Magno of the Legion of Superheroes.
In his first few issues, throughout the Legion tryouts and the relatively simple first mission that follows, Dyrk is all sparkling enthusiasm: cheerful, innocent, and generally a bit of a dork. He stands right on the line of being a little too shiny, the sort of character who can easily end up being annoying instead of endearing, and though even in his first appearances he shows signs of depth underneath all the cuteness, in the long term it might not have been enough to save him as a character.
Fortunately - or perhaps unfortunately, for Dyrk - the shininess doesn't last all that long.
Mordru
During their very first mission, Magno and the two other new recruits, Sensor and Umbra, stumble across an empty tomb on a remote mining asteroid, and in it a piece of stone bearing the fragmentary inscription MORD. The warning, as warnings often do, goes unrecognized for what it really is, while the Legion deals instead with a renegade Vyrgan and a failed attempt at rescuing their time-lost teammates from the twentieth century. By the time the Legion becomes properly aware of the threat, the sorceror-tyrant Mordru is already well on his way to amassing power - and a body count.
Magno is with the Legion team that first confronts Mordru, a fight that starts out well for the Legion but quickly goes wrong. It's only Dyrk's quick reactions that save Live Wire from getting his head splattered over the scenery when the heroes lose the element of surprise - and nothing can save the planet Sklar when Mordru destroys it as a demonstration of his power, teleporting the Legion team back to their cruiser to tell the galaxy about him and what he can do.
Instead, they rally, quickly assembling a task force of Legionnaires and allies to stop him, and as they do we see another of Dyrk's key traits: a somewhat overdeveloped drive to help, already indicated to some extent by his actions during the Legion tryouts, and now clearly illustrated as he tries his best to reassure Live Wire that their defeat and Sklar's destruction were not his fault.
The Legion and their allies go into battle with Mordru again soon after, and this time they know exactly how tough it's going to be - especially after Mordru casually kills one of the members of the task force, draining the young man's energy for his own use. This fight is even harder and more grueling than the first one, but once again Magno seems to have no regard for his own safety at all. He seems, in fact, to be completely unaware of any danger of himself, in spite of the fact that there is no possible way he could not be aware, after watching Mordru destroy an entire planet and kill the young hero Atom'X, how dangerous the sorceror is. Even Live Wire, whose resentment of Dyrk has been evident in previous issues, can't help but admire the fearless tenacity with which he attacks.
It almost gets him killed.
For all Magno's well-established ability to react quickly in a crisis, it's Garth, not Dyrk, who reacts when Mordru goes critical, pulling Dyrk away from a lethal blast just in time to save his life. And although he's clearly been knocked for a loop, in the last critical moments of the fight Magno still tries to rally enough to help his teammates.
He's woozy, but upbeat, when Garth and fellow Legionnaire XS help him off the battleground in the aftermath of the fight, and he optimistically promises Legion leader Invisible Kid that he'll be back on active duty soon.
It's only later on that his teammates realize he's faking it.
Depowered
No fight left or so it seems
I am a man whose dreams have all deserted
I've changed my face, I've changed my name
But no one wants you when you lose
(Don't give up, 'cause you have friends
Don't give up, you're not beaten yet
Don't give up
I know you can make it good)
--Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush, "Don't Give Up"
In the aftermath of the battle with Mordru, Dyrk's powers of magnetism are completely gone. Not only has he lost the use of an ability as natural to his race, and as often taken for granted, as hearing or vision - the Legion's bylaws require all Legionnaires to have an innate metahuman power. Without his magnetism, Dyrk can't be a Legionnaire.
And in spite of this, he greets his teammates with smiles, quick to swear he'll be fine in no time and turn the topic of conversation away from himself, quick to ask how he can help with the emergency breaking out down the hall... hiding fear and uncertainty behind outward optimism and cheer.
Only when Live Wire demands "the truth - not that happy nass" does Dyrk admit how scared he is. And although Garth gives his word that Dyrk will always have a place with the Legion, in Legionnaires #52 - not ten issues after his first appearance and his induction into the Legion - Dyrk leaves Legion HQ for his home planet of Braal, hoping that specialists there will be able to figure out what's gone wrong with his powers, and feeling like too much of an outsider to stay.
He'd been a member of the Legion for only a few weeks.
Going home is visibly difficult for Dyrk. The very first panel of his story in Legionnaires #53, "Down and Out on Planet Braal," makes it clear what it will be like for him without his powers of magnetism on a planet that takes those powers for granted - as soon as he disembarks on Braal, he's confronted by casual uses of magnetic powers at every turn. Even the elevators operate by magnetism; without his powers, he's forced to use the tourist's lift in his own family's apartment building. His family is supportive - mostly - but the sense of failure is unavoidable. For a few weeks, Dyrk was a member of the Legion at the height of its glory, allowed into a team of the greatest and most celebrated heroes of his time... and now not only does he not belong with the Legion, he's a handicapped outsider on his own homeworld.
And still he keeps up that brave face, even with his sister Trin, the member of his family he is clearly the closest to - talking about the endless procession of doctors and specialists with as much humor as frustration, and then dismissing it as whining. The guy who was the brightest, most upbeat, most enthusiastic and all-around shiniest Legionnaire ever has been utterly crushed, and he seems determined to face it alone - not dealing with it, just holding it in, unwilling to burden anyone else with the full scope of his despair.
Quite a turnaround.
Live Wire keeps in touch, either out of newfound respect for Dyrk or out of guilt for resenting him, encouraging Dyrk to come back to the Legion... but Dyrk resists, even though no one on Braal has been able to restore his powers or even figure out why he lost them, even though his older brother Omar seems bent on making his life miserable.
All of this - Dyrk's carelessness with his own safety, his drive to help, his persistent efforts to act nonchalant about his own problems, his reluctance to come back to the Legion without his powers even with one of the team's founding members coaxing him to return - serves to illustrate just how much Dyrk's sense of self-worth was based in his powers and in what he felt he could accomplish. Given that, it's no wonder losing his powers crushed him so completely, and it's not hard to understand why he doesn't feel able to take Garth's invitation to come back; he wasn't a member of the Legion for long enough to feel that he's a part of it, and how can he stay among the Legion feeling as though he can't contribute anything?
Eventually, though, Garth hits on a solution in the Legion's new auxiliary headquarters, the space station they christen Outpost Allon; he convinces Dyrk to pay a visit for its dedication, offering it as a sort of neutral ground. By chance, the completion of the Outpost and Dyrk's arrival there coincide with the return of the lost Legionnaires from the twentieth century, and when all the hue and cry has settled, Dyrk comes to a decision, offering to stay on with the Outpost's support staff and assist the Legion with administration and monitor duty.
Dyrk Magz, Legion Receptionist
Chin up, chin up
You don't really have a problem
Chin up, chin up
In your hour of despair
And smile when you're down and out
(Find something inside you)
Smile when you're down and out
(Find something inside you)
--The Jayhawks, "Smile"
Following his decision to stay on with the Legion on Outpost Allon, Dyrk becomes largely a background character, seen only occasionally throughout the team's adventures and never really given the spotlight for himself. He lives on the Outpost, a permanent fixture on a space station that the Legionnaires rotate through in shifts, spending every day monitoring the communications that come in to the Outpost in order to be able to alert the team to situations that need their intervention.
He's not quite the upbeat character he was during his few weeks of active Legion membership... and it's not hard to understand why he's not entirely satisfied, for all that he chose this compromise himself. He can send the Legion out to handle crisis situations but he can't do much to help them, aside from the mostly thankless and unsatisfying job of keeping things running smoothly behind the scenes. He lives in the midst of the team's camaraderie, but isn't ever quite included in it.
There's an after-school special lesson to be had here about not needing super powers to make a difference, and about how necessary but unglamorous jobs are just as important as heroism - but the series never makes it, and the characters, Dyrk included, certainly never learn it. Dyrk does his work with the memory of what he could have been, what he almost was, constantly just over his shoulder. How frustrating must it be, for a man who judges his own worth by what he can accomplish, to be such a small and replaceable part of something so great?
And the Legion mostly takes him for granted. Even Live Wire, arguably his best friend, at one point calls him the Legion's receptionist to his face; he makes the comment in a fit of frustration, granted, but it clearly sticks with Dyrk all the same and he brings it up again during the period in which a lab accident temporarily turns everyone on the Outpost into inverted Bizarro versions of themselves.
Mostly, though, he grins and bears it. And his crush on Legion speedster XS - even if it takes her a while to look past her crush on Cosmic Boy to see it - is pretty much the cutest thing ever.
It's not all bad, after all; he gets to go along when the Legion collectively takes a vacation to the resort planet called Summerworld, and indulge XS's yen to ride the carousel - I did mention that the two of them are the cutest thing ever, didn't I? And when, returning from that vacation in LSH #111, the Legion learns that the Fatal Five have attacked and taken control of Outpost Allon, it's Dyrk's help that is critical to Brainiac 5's strategy for defeating Tharok and reclaiming the Outpost, both because of Dyrk's familiarity with the Outpost's systems and because his lack of powers causes Tharok to overlook his presence.
Something to Believe In
I wish I was someone else
I'm confused, I'm afraid, I hate the loneliness
And there's nowhere to run to
Nothing makes any sense, but I still try my hardest
Take my hand
Won't you help me, man
'Cause I'm looking for
Something to believe in
And I don't know where to start
And I don't know where to begin, to begin
--The Ramones, "Something to Believe In"
LSH #111 is about the last time that things go right for Dyrk. Soon after comes the Blight, an interstellar parasite that invades the United Planets, overrunning the Earth and Outpost Allon, taking control of many Legionnaires and holding others, including Dyrk, captive inside its massive stem, assumed dead by their teammates until they are freed by the Blight's destruction. Dyrk doesn't actually appear in the issues that make up the Blight storyline, but we do learn afterward, via Live Wire, what became of him: rather than being Blighted and controlled like most of the Legion, including powerhouses like Ultra Boy and Karate Kid, Dyrk was captured using chokeweed, the Blight's last resort for neutralizing resistance too persistent and effective to risk Blighting. We aren't told what he did to make himself enough of a pain in the Blight's collective rear end to earn the chokeweed, but it must have been pretty impressive; other Legionnaires named as receiving the chokeweed are spymaster Invisible Kid, mentalist and illusionist Sensor, and Live Wire himself.
In the aftermath of the Blight's defeat, the Legion is disbanded by the badly shaken United Planets... and half its members, including Live Wire, are lost in the explosion of Outpost Allon during an attempt to put down yet another crisis.
The remaining Legionnaires, and Dyrk, are left to grieve and scatter, in ones and twos, and find ways to get on with their lives. Dyrk, still clearly driven to be useful, chooses to join the UP's official police force, the Science Police. Upon completing his training, he is transferred back to Braal, his home planet, a place still unwelcoming to anyone without magnetic powers and struggling under the weight of the UP's current problems.
He arrives in Legion Worlds #3, just in time to learn of the return of the lost Legionnaires, and still clearly regretting everything that he no longer is. We're given every indication that, although new at the job, he is an excellent cop who passed his training with flying colors, even those parts of it - like the use of firearms - that his experience with the Legion didn't teach him. And yet he still all too clearly misses the Legion, even though there is no Legion any more, even though the United Planets have made vigilantism illegal. For all that he admits that he's missed Braal, and for all that he gets along easily with his new partner Vin Kolkin, for Dyrk it is clearly not enough. He still wants what he had in those few weeks of his Legion membership, and probably would rather be even a second-string Legion associate than a first-class Sci-Cop.
In spite of that, though, he gives the Science Police the same wholehearted effort he gave the Legion. He is still just as observant and as collected in an emergency as ever, and maybe a little more cautious about rushing into a situation headlong... but when the drug deal he and Kolkin are preparing to bust gets crashed by vigilantes, Dyrk steps in rather than turning a blind eye. Even when the one vigilante he manages to apprehend turns out to be Cosmic Boy.
Important as the Legion all too clearly still is to Dyrk, he sticks to the law and to his responsibilities as a Sci-Cop rather than let Cos go. He gets out his old Legion flight ring, though, just in case; he goes to talk to Rokk, as much for the sake of those old loyalties as in the hope of getting any information about Rokk's fellow vigilantes. Rokk seems all out of hope, and Dyrk has precious little of his own to offer... but he tries.
And when the ship meant to transport Cosmic Boy off Braal for trial comes under attack, its engines damaged - when the ship launches with Rokk still on board and seems on the verge of explosion - Dyrk goes after him, not as a cop pursuing an escaping prisoner, but as a friend and former teammate hoping to keep Rokk from getting himself killed.
Which is how he finds out that the whole thing was staged by the Legion's Subterfuge Squad, a ploy to gain the Legion the use of a faster-than-light ship and allow them mobility throughout the stars. The Legion is re-forming, in secret, wary of who they can trust. Dyrk wasn't meant to know - hadn't been part of the plan at all - but his willingness to leap into things has placed him in the position to make their cover complete, or to break it utterly. He can't be a Legionnaire, but he can help them, or he can expose them.
How hard a choice must that have been?
Dyrk agrees to cover for the Legion, on the condition that he be let in on everything when circumstances allow. Cosmic Boy promises to come back, to explain it all... but as far as we can see in the comics, that never happens. Aside from a flashback story in Legion Worlds #6, this is the last we see of Dyrk, and we can only assume he remains on Braal, serving in the Science Police, throughout the remaining forty-odd issues of the Legion of Superheroes comics before the title underwent a reboot which began a completely new continuity.
Why Magno?
Simple though love is
How it confused me
Why I'm not loved
The way I should be
Now I've lived with heartaches
And I've roomed with fear
I've dealt with despair
And I've wrestled with tears
I can't stand up for falling down
I can't stand up for falling down
--Elvis Costello, "Can't Stand Up For Falling Down"
Dyrk was, in retrospect, probably doomed from the start. He was introduced in the '90s to a series that had been running since the '50s, with powers that duplicated those of one of the team's first and founding members - basically superfluous to start with, and if he had died in battle with Mordru, it would have had the same impact as kicking a puppy, but he would have been quickly forgotten in the aftermath.
In spite that, though, and in spite of the fact that some of his earliest appearances are kind of caricatured, I can't help but see in Dyrk a depth that's unexpected in what amounts to a secondary throwaway character. Losing his powers allowed him an opportunity for something that he wouldn't have gotten if he'd been simply killed off: development. A chance for the pieces of characterization layered under all that shiny to build up, bit by bit, into a clear picture of a realistic person, and a kind of character I can't really recall having seen before in superhero comics - or at least, not in quite this way. Not a guy who had his chance to be a hero ended before it had more than begun, and must settle for less from then on, always around but never really involved, never really getting over it but just sort of struggling on. He's never really given resolution; he's given just enough page time, after that initial arc, to allow readers to see things from his side instead of just seeing him as a prop character.
And every time things seem to be looking up for him, they always seem to fall apart. He is Can't-Win-For-Losing Lad, and I can't help but wish that somewhere before the end, they'd let him win.
Fandom: Legion of Superheroes, DC Comics
Character: Dyrk Magz, aka Magno
Author: joiedecombat
E-Mail: abbykat @ hotmail . com
Spoilers: Post-Zero Hour Legion of Superheroes through Legion Worlds
This is all evilbeej's fault.
As part of her ongoing effort to interest me in DC's Legion of Superheroes, evilbeej - well acquainted with my taste in characters - approached me with, "I know who you'd like," and proceeded to explain, in brief, the history of Dyrk Magz.
I was promptly intrigued. After obtaining a list of his appearances, I managed to get my hands on a copy of Legionnaires #53. The issue contains, among other content, the story "Down and Out on Planet Braal" - a story about a young man returning home after briefly touching, and being scorched by, greatness.
I was hooked.
Like a good enabler, evilbeej got me scanned copies of nearly the entire post-Zero Hour run of the Legion's various series; I skipped promptly to Magno's first appearance and read from there more or less to the end of the run. In reading, I got sucked into the Legion as a whole and found plenty of other things to like about it... but when I reached the end, I was stuck with the knowledge that my very favorite character in the Legion was a character who was a Legionnaire for only a few weeks, and who appears in no other previous or subsequent incarnation of the Legion.
There wasn't even any fanfic about him. I looked.
And yet, in spite of the relative scarcity of his canon appearances, he still manages to be a fantastic character; I'm told that he was originally created with the intention of killing him off in the very next story arc, but when the time came, the writers couldn't bring themselves to go through with it. He is that cute. Instead, they gave him a genuinely compelling character arc of his own, one that is all the more poignant for never quite being complete.
Magno deserves fandom love. Thus, this essay.
The Legion of Superheroes
It started with the Legion, so that's where we'll start.
In the thirtieth century, three teenagers from very different worlds join forces to save the life of a total stranger. That stranger happens to be billionaire industrialist R. J. Brande, who is inspired to make the three an offer: a chance to create a team of people like themselves to protect the United Planets, and to serve as a symbol of hope and unity for their often conflicted and conflicting worlds. A team inspired by heroes of the past such as Superman - a legion of superheroes.
The idea catches fire, and the Legion grows in number and in fame; its members hail from all over the universe. They defend the Earth and the United Planets, and more, against threats like the Fatal Five and the genocidal White Triangle. They are sometimes loved and sometimes hated by the inhabitants of the planets they protect, a symbol of hope and unity and a scapegoat when things go wrong.
After half the Legion's roster is accidentally left trapped in the twentieth century, the remaining members of the Legion have no choice but to hold tryouts in order to find new members to fill the gaps. Literally hundreds of hopefuls turn out for the tryouts, thronging to Legion headquarters for a chance at membership.
The first to distinguish himself is Dyrk Magz.
Shiny!
I am on my way
I can go the distance
I don't care how far
Somehow I'll be strong
I know every mile
Will be worth my while
I would go most anywhere
To feel like I belong
-- Roger Bart, "Go the Distance"
Dyrk immediately establishes two things about himself in his first appearance. The first is that he's a handy guy to have around in an emergency, quick to act while the people around him - even experienced Legionnaires - are still only reacting. The second is that he is just about as clean-cut, fresh-faced, aw-shucks shiny as is humanly possible for any one person to be. If he were any more adorable, he would be downright sickening - and as it is he cuts it pretty close in his first few issues.
Not much is ever really indicated about Dyrk's background, at least not directly. But - like founding Legionnaire Cosmic Boy - he hails from the planet Braal, a world rich in metals and mineral deposits and poor in everything else. All native Braalians have at least some innate control over the forces of magnetism; most, struggling in the recession that weighs on their planet's economy, work in mining. It's sheer optimism and idealism that brings him to the tryouts; unlike Cosmic Boy, who was famous as an athlete before the Legion was even conceived, Dyrk is a blue-collar boy of no particular distinction. He has two things going for him: the considerable strength of his powers of magnetism, and that talent of his for acting quickly in a crisis.
He has at least one thing going against him, too, because Cosmic Boy is one of the missing Legionnaires, and the Legion's acting leader, Live Wire, is reluctant to recruit a replacement for his best friend.
This is something that will keep coming up, and not just with Garth. But in spite of Live Wire's misgivings, Dyrk is among the five selected out of hundreds of applicants for final consideration. His performance during the final test - a "surprise attack" staged by the Legionnaires to see how the finalists react under fire - illustrates another of his most notable traits... his casual disregard for his own safety in the face of danger. With the Legionnaires "knocked out" and several other finalists coming apart, Dyrk is once again the first to act, and although he could stand back and rely on his powers of magnetism to do the job, instead he charges directly at the attacker, dodging the bolts from his weapon, to get involved up close and personal.
It's not insignificant that of the three finalists ultimately chosen to join the Legion, while the issue emphasizes the powers of the other two, Dyrk's powers of magnetism are comparatively overlooked. He puts them to good use, certainly - but it's his attitude far more than his powers, his quick and level-headed action in the face of danger, that wins him his place as Magno of the Legion of Superheroes.
In his first few issues, throughout the Legion tryouts and the relatively simple first mission that follows, Dyrk is all sparkling enthusiasm: cheerful, innocent, and generally a bit of a dork. He stands right on the line of being a little too shiny, the sort of character who can easily end up being annoying instead of endearing, and though even in his first appearances he shows signs of depth underneath all the cuteness, in the long term it might not have been enough to save him as a character.
Fortunately - or perhaps unfortunately, for Dyrk - the shininess doesn't last all that long.
Mordru
During their very first mission, Magno and the two other new recruits, Sensor and Umbra, stumble across an empty tomb on a remote mining asteroid, and in it a piece of stone bearing the fragmentary inscription MORD. The warning, as warnings often do, goes unrecognized for what it really is, while the Legion deals instead with a renegade Vyrgan and a failed attempt at rescuing their time-lost teammates from the twentieth century. By the time the Legion becomes properly aware of the threat, the sorceror-tyrant Mordru is already well on his way to amassing power - and a body count.
Magno is with the Legion team that first confronts Mordru, a fight that starts out well for the Legion but quickly goes wrong. It's only Dyrk's quick reactions that save Live Wire from getting his head splattered over the scenery when the heroes lose the element of surprise - and nothing can save the planet Sklar when Mordru destroys it as a demonstration of his power, teleporting the Legion team back to their cruiser to tell the galaxy about him and what he can do.
Instead, they rally, quickly assembling a task force of Legionnaires and allies to stop him, and as they do we see another of Dyrk's key traits: a somewhat overdeveloped drive to help, already indicated to some extent by his actions during the Legion tryouts, and now clearly illustrated as he tries his best to reassure Live Wire that their defeat and Sklar's destruction were not his fault.
The Legion and their allies go into battle with Mordru again soon after, and this time they know exactly how tough it's going to be - especially after Mordru casually kills one of the members of the task force, draining the young man's energy for his own use. This fight is even harder and more grueling than the first one, but once again Magno seems to have no regard for his own safety at all. He seems, in fact, to be completely unaware of any danger of himself, in spite of the fact that there is no possible way he could not be aware, after watching Mordru destroy an entire planet and kill the young hero Atom'X, how dangerous the sorceror is. Even Live Wire, whose resentment of Dyrk has been evident in previous issues, can't help but admire the fearless tenacity with which he attacks.
It almost gets him killed.
For all Magno's well-established ability to react quickly in a crisis, it's Garth, not Dyrk, who reacts when Mordru goes critical, pulling Dyrk away from a lethal blast just in time to save his life. And although he's clearly been knocked for a loop, in the last critical moments of the fight Magno still tries to rally enough to help his teammates.
He's woozy, but upbeat, when Garth and fellow Legionnaire XS help him off the battleground in the aftermath of the fight, and he optimistically promises Legion leader Invisible Kid that he'll be back on active duty soon.
It's only later on that his teammates realize he's faking it.
Depowered
No fight left or so it seems
I am a man whose dreams have all deserted
I've changed my face, I've changed my name
But no one wants you when you lose
(Don't give up, 'cause you have friends
Don't give up, you're not beaten yet
Don't give up
I know you can make it good)
--Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush, "Don't Give Up"
In the aftermath of the battle with Mordru, Dyrk's powers of magnetism are completely gone. Not only has he lost the use of an ability as natural to his race, and as often taken for granted, as hearing or vision - the Legion's bylaws require all Legionnaires to have an innate metahuman power. Without his magnetism, Dyrk can't be a Legionnaire.
And in spite of this, he greets his teammates with smiles, quick to swear he'll be fine in no time and turn the topic of conversation away from himself, quick to ask how he can help with the emergency breaking out down the hall... hiding fear and uncertainty behind outward optimism and cheer.
Only when Live Wire demands "the truth - not that happy nass" does Dyrk admit how scared he is. And although Garth gives his word that Dyrk will always have a place with the Legion, in Legionnaires #52 - not ten issues after his first appearance and his induction into the Legion - Dyrk leaves Legion HQ for his home planet of Braal, hoping that specialists there will be able to figure out what's gone wrong with his powers, and feeling like too much of an outsider to stay.
He'd been a member of the Legion for only a few weeks.
Going home is visibly difficult for Dyrk. The very first panel of his story in Legionnaires #53, "Down and Out on Planet Braal," makes it clear what it will be like for him without his powers of magnetism on a planet that takes those powers for granted - as soon as he disembarks on Braal, he's confronted by casual uses of magnetic powers at every turn. Even the elevators operate by magnetism; without his powers, he's forced to use the tourist's lift in his own family's apartment building. His family is supportive - mostly - but the sense of failure is unavoidable. For a few weeks, Dyrk was a member of the Legion at the height of its glory, allowed into a team of the greatest and most celebrated heroes of his time... and now not only does he not belong with the Legion, he's a handicapped outsider on his own homeworld.
And still he keeps up that brave face, even with his sister Trin, the member of his family he is clearly the closest to - talking about the endless procession of doctors and specialists with as much humor as frustration, and then dismissing it as whining. The guy who was the brightest, most upbeat, most enthusiastic and all-around shiniest Legionnaire ever has been utterly crushed, and he seems determined to face it alone - not dealing with it, just holding it in, unwilling to burden anyone else with the full scope of his despair.
Quite a turnaround.
Live Wire keeps in touch, either out of newfound respect for Dyrk or out of guilt for resenting him, encouraging Dyrk to come back to the Legion... but Dyrk resists, even though no one on Braal has been able to restore his powers or even figure out why he lost them, even though his older brother Omar seems bent on making his life miserable.
All of this - Dyrk's carelessness with his own safety, his drive to help, his persistent efforts to act nonchalant about his own problems, his reluctance to come back to the Legion without his powers even with one of the team's founding members coaxing him to return - serves to illustrate just how much Dyrk's sense of self-worth was based in his powers and in what he felt he could accomplish. Given that, it's no wonder losing his powers crushed him so completely, and it's not hard to understand why he doesn't feel able to take Garth's invitation to come back; he wasn't a member of the Legion for long enough to feel that he's a part of it, and how can he stay among the Legion feeling as though he can't contribute anything?
Eventually, though, Garth hits on a solution in the Legion's new auxiliary headquarters, the space station they christen Outpost Allon; he convinces Dyrk to pay a visit for its dedication, offering it as a sort of neutral ground. By chance, the completion of the Outpost and Dyrk's arrival there coincide with the return of the lost Legionnaires from the twentieth century, and when all the hue and cry has settled, Dyrk comes to a decision, offering to stay on with the Outpost's support staff and assist the Legion with administration and monitor duty.
Dyrk Magz, Legion Receptionist
Chin up, chin up
You don't really have a problem
Chin up, chin up
In your hour of despair
And smile when you're down and out
(Find something inside you)
Smile when you're down and out
(Find something inside you)
--The Jayhawks, "Smile"
Following his decision to stay on with the Legion on Outpost Allon, Dyrk becomes largely a background character, seen only occasionally throughout the team's adventures and never really given the spotlight for himself. He lives on the Outpost, a permanent fixture on a space station that the Legionnaires rotate through in shifts, spending every day monitoring the communications that come in to the Outpost in order to be able to alert the team to situations that need their intervention.
He's not quite the upbeat character he was during his few weeks of active Legion membership... and it's not hard to understand why he's not entirely satisfied, for all that he chose this compromise himself. He can send the Legion out to handle crisis situations but he can't do much to help them, aside from the mostly thankless and unsatisfying job of keeping things running smoothly behind the scenes. He lives in the midst of the team's camaraderie, but isn't ever quite included in it.
There's an after-school special lesson to be had here about not needing super powers to make a difference, and about how necessary but unglamorous jobs are just as important as heroism - but the series never makes it, and the characters, Dyrk included, certainly never learn it. Dyrk does his work with the memory of what he could have been, what he almost was, constantly just over his shoulder. How frustrating must it be, for a man who judges his own worth by what he can accomplish, to be such a small and replaceable part of something so great?
And the Legion mostly takes him for granted. Even Live Wire, arguably his best friend, at one point calls him the Legion's receptionist to his face; he makes the comment in a fit of frustration, granted, but it clearly sticks with Dyrk all the same and he brings it up again during the period in which a lab accident temporarily turns everyone on the Outpost into inverted Bizarro versions of themselves.
Mostly, though, he grins and bears it. And his crush on Legion speedster XS - even if it takes her a while to look past her crush on Cosmic Boy to see it - is pretty much the cutest thing ever.
It's not all bad, after all; he gets to go along when the Legion collectively takes a vacation to the resort planet called Summerworld, and indulge XS's yen to ride the carousel - I did mention that the two of them are the cutest thing ever, didn't I? And when, returning from that vacation in LSH #111, the Legion learns that the Fatal Five have attacked and taken control of Outpost Allon, it's Dyrk's help that is critical to Brainiac 5's strategy for defeating Tharok and reclaiming the Outpost, both because of Dyrk's familiarity with the Outpost's systems and because his lack of powers causes Tharok to overlook his presence.
Something to Believe In
I wish I was someone else
I'm confused, I'm afraid, I hate the loneliness
And there's nowhere to run to
Nothing makes any sense, but I still try my hardest
Take my hand
Won't you help me, man
'Cause I'm looking for
Something to believe in
And I don't know where to start
And I don't know where to begin, to begin
--The Ramones, "Something to Believe In"
LSH #111 is about the last time that things go right for Dyrk. Soon after comes the Blight, an interstellar parasite that invades the United Planets, overrunning the Earth and Outpost Allon, taking control of many Legionnaires and holding others, including Dyrk, captive inside its massive stem, assumed dead by their teammates until they are freed by the Blight's destruction. Dyrk doesn't actually appear in the issues that make up the Blight storyline, but we do learn afterward, via Live Wire, what became of him: rather than being Blighted and controlled like most of the Legion, including powerhouses like Ultra Boy and Karate Kid, Dyrk was captured using chokeweed, the Blight's last resort for neutralizing resistance too persistent and effective to risk Blighting. We aren't told what he did to make himself enough of a pain in the Blight's collective rear end to earn the chokeweed, but it must have been pretty impressive; other Legionnaires named as receiving the chokeweed are spymaster Invisible Kid, mentalist and illusionist Sensor, and Live Wire himself.
In the aftermath of the Blight's defeat, the Legion is disbanded by the badly shaken United Planets... and half its members, including Live Wire, are lost in the explosion of Outpost Allon during an attempt to put down yet another crisis.
The remaining Legionnaires, and Dyrk, are left to grieve and scatter, in ones and twos, and find ways to get on with their lives. Dyrk, still clearly driven to be useful, chooses to join the UP's official police force, the Science Police. Upon completing his training, he is transferred back to Braal, his home planet, a place still unwelcoming to anyone without magnetic powers and struggling under the weight of the UP's current problems.
He arrives in Legion Worlds #3, just in time to learn of the return of the lost Legionnaires, and still clearly regretting everything that he no longer is. We're given every indication that, although new at the job, he is an excellent cop who passed his training with flying colors, even those parts of it - like the use of firearms - that his experience with the Legion didn't teach him. And yet he still all too clearly misses the Legion, even though there is no Legion any more, even though the United Planets have made vigilantism illegal. For all that he admits that he's missed Braal, and for all that he gets along easily with his new partner Vin Kolkin, for Dyrk it is clearly not enough. He still wants what he had in those few weeks of his Legion membership, and probably would rather be even a second-string Legion associate than a first-class Sci-Cop.
In spite of that, though, he gives the Science Police the same wholehearted effort he gave the Legion. He is still just as observant and as collected in an emergency as ever, and maybe a little more cautious about rushing into a situation headlong... but when the drug deal he and Kolkin are preparing to bust gets crashed by vigilantes, Dyrk steps in rather than turning a blind eye. Even when the one vigilante he manages to apprehend turns out to be Cosmic Boy.
Important as the Legion all too clearly still is to Dyrk, he sticks to the law and to his responsibilities as a Sci-Cop rather than let Cos go. He gets out his old Legion flight ring, though, just in case; he goes to talk to Rokk, as much for the sake of those old loyalties as in the hope of getting any information about Rokk's fellow vigilantes. Rokk seems all out of hope, and Dyrk has precious little of his own to offer... but he tries.
And when the ship meant to transport Cosmic Boy off Braal for trial comes under attack, its engines damaged - when the ship launches with Rokk still on board and seems on the verge of explosion - Dyrk goes after him, not as a cop pursuing an escaping prisoner, but as a friend and former teammate hoping to keep Rokk from getting himself killed.
Which is how he finds out that the whole thing was staged by the Legion's Subterfuge Squad, a ploy to gain the Legion the use of a faster-than-light ship and allow them mobility throughout the stars. The Legion is re-forming, in secret, wary of who they can trust. Dyrk wasn't meant to know - hadn't been part of the plan at all - but his willingness to leap into things has placed him in the position to make their cover complete, or to break it utterly. He can't be a Legionnaire, but he can help them, or he can expose them.
How hard a choice must that have been?
Dyrk agrees to cover for the Legion, on the condition that he be let in on everything when circumstances allow. Cosmic Boy promises to come back, to explain it all... but as far as we can see in the comics, that never happens. Aside from a flashback story in Legion Worlds #6, this is the last we see of Dyrk, and we can only assume he remains on Braal, serving in the Science Police, throughout the remaining forty-odd issues of the Legion of Superheroes comics before the title underwent a reboot which began a completely new continuity.
Why Magno?
Simple though love is
How it confused me
Why I'm not loved
The way I should be
Now I've lived with heartaches
And I've roomed with fear
I've dealt with despair
And I've wrestled with tears
I can't stand up for falling down
I can't stand up for falling down
--Elvis Costello, "Can't Stand Up For Falling Down"
Dyrk was, in retrospect, probably doomed from the start. He was introduced in the '90s to a series that had been running since the '50s, with powers that duplicated those of one of the team's first and founding members - basically superfluous to start with, and if he had died in battle with Mordru, it would have had the same impact as kicking a puppy, but he would have been quickly forgotten in the aftermath.
In spite that, though, and in spite of the fact that some of his earliest appearances are kind of caricatured, I can't help but see in Dyrk a depth that's unexpected in what amounts to a secondary throwaway character. Losing his powers allowed him an opportunity for something that he wouldn't have gotten if he'd been simply killed off: development. A chance for the pieces of characterization layered under all that shiny to build up, bit by bit, into a clear picture of a realistic person, and a kind of character I can't really recall having seen before in superhero comics - or at least, not in quite this way. Not a guy who had his chance to be a hero ended before it had more than begun, and must settle for less from then on, always around but never really involved, never really getting over it but just sort of struggling on. He's never really given resolution; he's given just enough page time, after that initial arc, to allow readers to see things from his side instead of just seeing him as a prop character.
And every time things seem to be looking up for him, they always seem to fall apart. He is Can't-Win-For-Losing Lad, and I can't help but wish that somewhere before the end, they'd let him win.