LSH 1994 Reread, part eleven

Covering Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 # 96-99 and Legionnaires# 53-55, 1997)

Major developments:

*In the 20th Century, we learn to our shock that Cos has actually been unconscious for weeks, still comatose. Imra's subconscious has been animating him. She is actually in love with Garth.
*Jo and Tinya get married.
*Crossing over with the Justice League and the New Gods to battle Darkseid, Ayla's powers are altered and she can now make things weightless.
*Brainiac 5 obtains one of the alien "Mother Box" sentient supercomputers. He had already been experimenting with Doc Magnus's "responsometer." Magnus and the Mother Box merge into a robotic intelligence called COMPUTO, attacking everyone else in fear that they will disassemble him once they've returned through time.
*In the 30th Century, Monstress is fitting in wonderfully and bringing good cheer to the once-gloomy team, although Magno, who has returned home to Braal, despairs of the loss of his powers.
*Lori Morning has found a HERO dial and is assisting police on small incidents disguised as different seen-once-only superheroes.
*The creative team is as before: Tom McCraw, Tom Peyer, and Roger Stern writing, Lee Moder and Jeffrey Moy as principal artists. Derec Aucoin assists with pencils on LSH # 99.


Oh, lord, the 20th Century stuff is just murdering me. There's SO MUCH OF IT that I didn't know was out there. There's a Supergirl Annual. There's a second line-wide crossover called Genesis. There's an issue of Secret Files & Origins. They're in Action Comics. That random other character who came back from the 30th Century with them, Inferno? She gets her own series! Good grief!!

Remember in the 1960s when Brainiac 5 built a supercomputer called Computo and it turned evil, because that's what supercomputers did in the 1960s? Well, here, Brainiac 5 takes the little "responsometer" device that powers the Metal Man Veridium, who used to be Doc Magnus, and plugs it into one of those odd "Mother Boxes" that Jack Kirby gave the New Gods, and it technoprestomagically turns Doc Magnus into C.O.M.P.U.T.O., which stands for something unimportant, and then it wants to wipe out humanity, and part three is in an issue of Action Comics which I don't own. I honestly do not care if I never read it.

Again, the 30th Century material is much better, and, as Lee Moder seems to be drawing less and less of the main book, it's more consistent because Jeff Moy never seems to take a day off. I'm enjoying it a heck of a lot and, as I've said many times before, I think it's a very underrated title that totally deserves its small but loyal fanbase. Shame about the crossovers though. They kill it stone dead.

Well, I promised eleven installments of this little project, and here's the eleventh. I'm enjoying the book a lot and have many more comics to read, but the chapters about the 1994 reread have found virtually no audience. People came to read me when I was talking about the Paul Levitz-helmed books, but either the 1994 series is much less popular than I believed, or people just aren't linking to it, or something. Each Levitz-reread chapter was getting 300 or more views, and the last few of these have barely managed a sixth of that. So that's the last of these; I'll write some more about detective fiction for the rest of the month. Thanks to all of the Legion's fans who read, commented, and emailed while I was doing this, and I hope that you keep me bookmarked for more little reviews about books and comics. LLL!

LSH 1994 reread, part ten

Covering Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 # 93-95 and Legionnaires# 49-52, 1997)

Major developments:

*In the 20th Century, Andrew Nolan's brother Douglas, incarcerated in a home for mutants that is run by a corrupt thug, dies trying to escape. The LSH offers Andrew, as Ferro, a place on their team.
*Brainiac 5 starts a fight with the Metal Men after he mistakenly assumes that they are robots and attempts to use their "responsometer" computers in his time travel experiments, but they are actually (in this continuity) human intelligences in robotic form.
*Cos and Imra announce their engagement.
*In the 30th Century, the United Planets forms a gigantic task force of superheroes to attack Mordru, who is hunting for the Emerald Eye. The Eye and Mordru battle, and the hero Atom'x of Xanthu thinks he can blast them both away and rescue Violet, but Mordru murders him and drains all of his energy. Violet and the Eye merge into one being, Veye, and proposes to become Mordru's consort.
*Mysa and Kinetix abduct the Eye and the heroes attack in force. Vi is freed from the Eye, which vanishes into space, Mordru goes dormant and is sealed away as he had been before, and Mysa is revealed to be his daughter, de-aged to her early twenties. Another of the allied heroes, Blast-Off, is killed, and the Legion's Magno loses his powers. Vi ends up with additional ones: the Eye quasi-granted one of her wishes while she was helplessly in its power, and she can now grow to giant size as Gim Allon could.
*Monstress from the planet Xanthu joins the team.
*The creative team is as before: Tom McCraw, Tom Peyer, and Roger Stern writing, Lee Moder and Jeffrey Moy as principal artists. Mike Collins pencils LSH # 93. Issue # 94 features a whole pile of substitute artists, each contributing one or two pages. Among the names that I recognize from their other work that I have enjoyed, Phil Jimenez, Walt Simonson, and Val Semekis


Let's get the worst out of the way: these Metal Men stink. In 1994, DC had upgraded and rebooted a lot of older series. Some, like Legion and the James Robinson-Tony Harris Starman, came out bright and shiny and wonderful. Then there was the Dan Jurgens Metal Men miniseries, which killed off Gold, put Doc Magnus in an armored suit, and revealed that they were amnesiac humans all along. I loved the 1970s Metal Men as a kid. They'd always show up as oddball guest stars in things like The Brave & The Bold, and those big Showcase omnibus editions show that their original 1960s-1970s appearances were incredibly fun comics. This revamp is awful, and the Legion's continued association with the 20th Century DC Universe is really, really getting old as dirt at this point.

Happily, despite the feeling of fatigue and malaise that the last seven issues prompted, this is a mostly better run of comics, thanks in part to the really remarkable battle with Mordru, which is staged brilliantly, and also the decision to slow the narrative down for two issues afterward to deal with the ramifications of what happens next. I'm not kidding about the brilliant staging of the battle in issue 50. It's a textbook example of how to build up to a big superhero fight and make it matter. The outcome is in doubt all the way through, and there's just no way to guess how it's going to finish. It is also drawn beautifully. This Jeffrey Moy - if you don't like his work on Legion, you've just got no hope in the world.

I was honestly reminded of the big, mean smackdown in issue # 50 of Levitz's big run, when four of the heroes make a suicide run against the Time Trapper. This one has consequences, and while this doesn't have its antecedent's apocalyptic shock - there are, after all, far more heroes this time out - there are fatalities and long-lasting (if not permanent) injuries and big changes to the normal run of things.

Okay, so admittedly, the fatalities are members of the C-list cast, and the most grievous injury is to somebody equally on the periphery, and the Legionnaire most injured - Magno is depowered - is one of the newest three, whose power set duplicates Cosmic Boy's, but this is a book that has clearly shown that nobody is safe, and that if even Gim Allon can die in battle, then anybody can.

Heck, they're already threatening to have Cos and Imra get married!!

LSH 1994 Reread, part nine

Covering Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 # 89-92 and Legionnaires# 46-48, 1997)

Major developments:

*In the 20th Century, Cos and Imra's relationship has really got under Ayla's skin and she tries to quit the team. Imra is really heavy-handed with her and gives her such a telepathic "scream" that it is heard miles away by the comatose and institutionalized supervillain Dr. Psycho, waking him.
*Rokk is injured and comatose after the fight. All of the Legionnaires briefly meet up in the "timestream" in another attempt to get the stranded team home. As it fails and they drift apart, Triad joins the others, hoping to meet up with Superboy again.
*The heroes don't return to 1997, but 1958, briefly and amnesiac in a short episode that pays tribute to the classic LSH artist Curt Swan, who passed away in 1996.
*In the 30th Century, Dreamer Nura Nal has a premonition of something attacking Kinetix from behind an underground artifact.
*Chameleon and Sensor form a close friendship as the team's two non-humanoids, each wanted by their home planets to come back and fulfill spiritual obligations to their respective populations.
*The sorceror Mordru, who had been released from centuries of confinement, draws attention to himself as his power grows and he murders a handful of civilians across the galaxy while hunting down his ancient artifacts. The Legion gives him a solid thumping, but he is far more powerful than they were told and he continues his quest for the Emerald Eye. Meanwhile, Mysa and her new acolyte, Dragonmage, abduct Kinetix as part of their plan to oppose him.
*The creative team is as before: Tom McCraw, Tom Peyer, and Roger Stern writing, Lee Moder and Jeffrey Moy as principal artists. Philip Moy co-pencils Legionnaires # 46 with Jeffrey.


Right in the middle of this mess - and that's exactly what LSH has careened into, a mess - there's one of the best single issues of the series. It's just a simple and quiet story with Sensor and Cham enjoying some time together. There's a minor disaster that prompts them to spring into action and help people, giving the comic a little melodrama and adventure, but otherwise it's a really perfect and beautifully drawn piece that lets everybody catch their breath.

Unfortunately, it highlights what's wrong with this 30th Century. Everything is moving incredibly fast. I'm suddenly reminded that one of the reasons that the celebrated 1980s Paul Levitz run was so successful is because he spent so much time on character moments, with the world-ending threats spaced far out between them. Here, we've had so little time to breathe that everything feels weighed down. Good grief, now we have Mordru to deal with? And Mysa is back to bore everybody? Event fatigue, man. We just needed some issues where everybody goes out on dates and catches some bank robbers.

In the 20th Century, there's almost a story like this. Ayla gets fed up with the rest of the team, and is very upset that Cos and Imra have started dating. This starts out all right, but I'm very troubled that they use their powers to try and force her back to the other heroes, especially Imra using her telepathy to jump into Ayla's head with a psychic scream. This is all very out of character and very unpleasant to read.

And the rest of the 20th Century stuff is no better. Reading the whole story requires searching countless back issue boxes for titles like Impulse and Showcase, and what we do get in LSH is rushed and unsatisfying. I'm starting to get very bored of this project, which is very odd, because DC, in the spring of 1997, was producing lots of terrific books. Grant Morrison's JLA debuted then, as did a really good take (well, for its first couple of years) on Supergirl by Peter David and Gary Frank. Garth Ennis and John McRea were scoring with Hitman. How'd this stumble so badly?

LSH 1994 Reread, part eight

Covering Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 # 86-88 and Legionnaires# 42-45, 1996-97)

Major developments:

*The sorceress Mysa abducts Kinetix, her family, and the four Legionnaires traveling with her, furious that Kinetix failed to retrieve the Emerald Eye of Ekron. After a skirmish, Mysa agrees to restore Zoe's psychokinetic powers and to stop interfering in her life. On Earth, Garth agrees to RJ Brande's suggestion that he serve as interim acting leader. A few issues later, they have a proper election and Invisible Kid takes charge.
*The team takes on three new members to help with their comrades being lost in time. Dyrk Magz of Braal (Magno), Tasmia Mallor of Talok VIII (Umbra), and Princess Jeka Wynzorr of Orando (Sensor), who is a huge snake, are selected.
*A cave-in caused by some of the rejected applicants breaks open a tomb where the sorceror Mordru had been buried.
*Rond Vidar restores Lori to her correct age, and uses the chronal energy from the extraction to very briefly contact the team that is stranded in the past and confirm they are okay...
*In the 20th Century, the stranded Legionnaires (Cos, Saturn Girl, Spark, Brainy, Gates, Ultra Boy, and Apparition, with Shvaughn and Inferno) have been assisting the soon-to-be Justice League and other superheroes from "The Final Night," a very tedious crossover in which the Sun-Eater attacks the planet and it looks like a homeless kid who can turn to iron and is called Ferro is going to sacrifice himself to save the earth, but it actually ends up being Green Lantern Hal Jordan, in one of his funnybook deaths, who dies saving the day.
*Next, most of these heroes show up in a two-part story in the anthology book Showcase '96. While they're away, Jo and Apparition have a team-up with Deadman that ends with Apparition being restored to near-solidity, allowing her to be seen by everybody at last. They also have a team-up with Impulse and Max Mercury that ends with the team being evicted from their temporary headquarters in Metropolis.
*The creative team is as before: Tom McCraw, Tom Peyer, and Roger Stern writing, Lee Moder and Jeffrey Moy as principal artists. Guests Mike Collins and Paul Pelletier each pencil one-third of LSH # 87.

My biggest problem with the stuck-in-the-20th-Century Legion is simply that a huge chunk of their story is happening off-panel. It looks like the editors decided to really incorporate the hell out of the Legion and introduce them to all of DC's readers who had written off the LSH as too convoluted and confusing. So the team starts their exile right in the middle of the big 1996 DC crossover event and from there, they go everywhere. They guest star in everybody's book: Superman, Impulse, Sovereign Seven, you name it. Done right, these crossover appearances shouldn't be important to this book, but these aren't done right. Every issue of LSH either leads into one of these supporting titles, or it references the events from those titles. The only people who could possibly enjoy reading these books are Footnote Fetishists.

Actually, there's another small problem. At the time of the "Final Night" story, all of DC's biggest names were not actually in the Justice League. This was during one of DC's occasional periods where the JLA was staffed with C-listers. But the A-team - Superman, Green Lantern, Batman, the Flash - all show up here, working together, and drawn brilliantly by Lee Moder. About eight months later, Grant Morrison began writing the relaunched JLA starring all the big names. I started following that because I followed Morrison most places then. The stories were terrific, albeit needing a little editing and clarification and less influence from lesser titles, but the art was so bad. A guy named Howard Porter drew it and I loathed it. To see Lee Moder drawing these characters, who mainly just stand around and debate the next battle plan against the Sun-Eater, is to see what could have been. A Morrison-Moder JLA would have been a thing of beauty.

What's happening in the 30th Century is much more interesting, once this subplot of Mysa is finally wrapped. I am so glad that this pointlessly grouchy old lady has left the story and will be leaving Zoe alone. Now back to her original power set and, mostly, costume, she can impact the story and characters on her own, and not via some other person's manipulation.

Other than that - heck, we're down to just three issues - everything is terrific. I like the new take on Projectra a lot, though I remember some people just couldn't stand it. Sensor Girl was amazing in her day, but her day was the mid-1980s. I also like the new take on Shadow Lass, who's incredibly tough and cool even outside of her powers. Well, three out of seven isn't really terrible, but I hope this 20th Century story ends soon...

LSH 1994 Reread, part seven

Covering Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 # 82-85 and Legionnaires# 39-41, 1996)

Major developments:

*Shrinking Violet has been elected team leader.
*After months of speculation, Tinya is confirmed to be alive. She "hid" inside of Jo's body at the point of her own body's physical death and it has taken all this time to get the strength to leave. She can only be seen by or communicate with Jo or other Bgtzlians like her mother.
*Cos and Imra seem to have started dating. Ayla's secret admirer is outed as Chameleon. She's not pleased.
*The heroes chase down Dr. Regulus, who's escaped captivity. Very weird things start happening. Triad splits into her three bodies, but they're all quite radically different: one is a seven or eight year-old girl and one is a brazen sexpot.
*The weirdness escalates. Cos believes that he is dating Imra, but XS believes that she is dating Cos. Brainy is getting room to work. Gates is thrilled that people are listening to his political rants. Leviathan's heart's desire is to die a hero. He gets his wish, breathtakingly, stopping Regulus and dying of his injuries. We learn why: Violet has discovered the Emerald Eye of Ekron, which is warping her subconscious wishes into reality, and everybody is getting what they want. But even the Eye can't revive the dead...
*The Eye has completely taken over Vi and enslaves the rest of the heroes. Imra breaks free from its control first, and there's a massive explosion as the Eye shunts half the team a thousand years into the past. It still has control over poor Salu, and retreats into space.
*Leviathan is buried with full honors on Shanghalla. Wazzo tries to enlist his parents into her cause to disband the Legion, but she is immediately put in her place by Admiral and Mrs. Allon, who remind her that their son was a soldier, and who died doing what he loved.
*Cos, Saturn Girl, Spark, Brainy, Gates, Ultra Boy, and Apparition arrive in the 20th Century above Metropolis, along with Science Police officer Shvaughn Erin and the Work Force's Inferno, who were present when the Eye was being overwhelmed. The city's Special Crimes Unit tangles with the team until Superman, who met the previous Legion on one of his recent travels in time, arrives to clear up the confusion.
*The creative team is as before: Tom McCraw, Tom Peyer, and Roger Stern writing, Lee Moder and Jeffrey Moy as principal artists. Mike Collins pencilled several pages in LSH # 83.


Argh, every time they pull the Legion out of the 20th Century, somebody pulls them back in. The previous two defied expectations, but this one is setting off all my alarm bells, and with good reason. The nine characters are going to stay in the 20th Century to first join the DC Universe in fighting the Sun-Eater during a weekly crossover called "Final Night," and they'll stay in the contemporary day for at least the next twelve months of issues.

But before that, things are very fast-paced and wild. I really love the way the creators chose to introduce the slightly altered realities from each Legionnaire's P.O.V. as apparent art errors. It looks, for all the world, like Lee Moder just plain forgot who he should be drawing in certain panels, but it all comes together as Violet loses her grip on the "real" reality. This means there's an interesting beat - a pause where we have to question whether Leviathan is really dead. This was a simply huge surprise. Nobody saw this coming.

The whole of the story, as it plays out across several issues, is really entertaining. The writers do a great job in just keeping the action moving. Yes, it's about five issues, but it's not like a five-issue fight scene. So much is going on that it feels epic, and it doesn't feel like the heroes are right to want to help Violet. In time, I believe that she'll be rescued, but for the present, it feels like she is gone, completely absorbed by the Emerald Eye. Reader sympathy is torn between the conventions of the genre - and like of the character - and what we see on the page, which does not suggest that anything of Salu Digby is left. It also leaves me wondering whether the Eye will meet up with the Empress of Venegar anytime soon.

But, sadly, things come to an end, and this story, again, leaves the team scattered. Several heroes have been transported back to the contemporary DC Universe. As it happens, I kind of like this version of DC - it's right on the cusp of Grant Morrison's very entertaining takeover of JLA - but I'm simply not looking forward to seeing what will happen with them next. I'd rather my Legion stay in the future.

LSH 1994 Reread, part six

(Covering Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 # 79-81 and Legionnaires# 35-38, 1996)

Major developments:

*The Fatal Five takes the Legion down and they take them down hard. It is an amazing beat-down.
*The eleven heroes who fell - Cos, Imra, Triad, Lyle, Gim, Cham, Brainy, Spark, Vi, Thom and Gates - get one heck of a rescue from Live Wire, XS, Valor, Ultra Boy, Jan Arrah, and - surprising everybody who thought she was dead - Andromeda. Kinetix also finally shows up, having no idea what kind of crisis is going on, having been teleported to the action by the sorceress Mysa in search of the Emerald Eye.
*The Fatal Five - who are in communication with an unseen ally directing them - teleport away to the planet Drak IV on the Braalian frontier. Some foe is orchestrating a war between Titan and Braal, as if our heroes didn't have enough to handle.
*It turns out that Cos has been handling it quite well for quite some time! Some months previously, the Titanian healer Aven had told Cos of his suspicions that the first Titan-Braal war had been manipulated by President Chu. It was her - not Wazzo - who had been behind all of the recent escalations. The Legion Espionage Squad - including Cham posing as Wazzo - trick Chu into revealing everything on camera. The other Legionnaires handle the Fatal Five, a task made easier when Mano turns on Tharok.
*RJ Brande is drafted as president of the UP. He pardons Andromeda and Brainy and abolishes the Legion draft, letting the heroes be a volunteer unit and pick their own teammates. Valor takes the name M'Onel so that he can operate without religious fervor.
*The basic creative team is Roger Stern, Tom McCraw, and Tom Peyer writing, with Lee Moder and Jeffrey Moy the principal artists. Stern, who, at this time was also among the rotating writers across the five Superman titles, steps in to replace Mark Waid and will remain part of the LSH's writing team for more than three years.


This turned out just fine in the end, with the exception that I noted last time about the incredibly convenient - while simultaneously absurd - bit of evidence planted on the magic TV of Jan Arrah's memories that suggests a Sun-Eater is out there in space somewhere. Still, only one bit of unbelievable baloney over the course of forty-something issues is really a remarkable achievement.

And I'm certainly willing to overlook it, because McCraw, Peyer and Stern pull off a simply masterful bit of misdirection. It is actually Chu, and not Wazzo, who is the real mastermind behind all this. That doesn't mean that Wazzo is any less of a completely loathsome jerk - in fact, she is shown, at the end of # 80, to be every bit as resolved to see the Legion disbanded - but she isn't the Snidely-Whiplash baddie that had been implied. It's a very classy twist, done brilliantly.

As much as I enjoyed the climax of this first long (long!) story, it's the fight with the Fatal Five that really impressed me the most. The heroes just get their rears kicked. They don't take any of the bad guys down. Sure, the kids have some superpowers and some martial arts training, but not nearly enough to make a difference against these toughs. I honestly can't remember reading any superhero team fight scene where the good guys are so mercilessly and unflinchingly given such a remarkable beatdown. When the cavalry shows up, even the most jaded and seen-it-all of critics is certain to smile.

LSH 1994 Reread, part five

(Covering Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 # 75-78 and Legionnaires# 32-34, 1995-96)

Major developments:

*The Legion battles the 20th Century villain Chronos, whose powers have recently been augmented via a big crossover event called "Underworld Unleashed." In the wake of the fight, the Science Police arrest Brainiac 5 for unlicensed experiments in time travel.
*Gates and Star Boy are the newest Legionnaires. Gates is an insectoid alien who resents being drafted by forces he sees as political oppressors, and Star Boy, sent by Xanthu to replace the late Kid Quantum, is still recovering from an injury. Both of his arms are broken.
*Kinetix finally awakens on the Sorceror's World. An aging magician named Mysa tasks her with retrieving a magical talisman called the Emerald Eye of Ekron.
*The team is attacked by a brainwashed enemy in an armored suit. Vi finally knocks him cold and they learn it is Jan Arrah, the sole survivor of the planet Trom. They learn that it was Ambassador Wazzo - Tinya's mother - who sent Jan to kill the Legion as vengeance for her daughter's death.
*While showing their evidence against the ambassador, there's an interruption: a cloud-creature called the Sun Eater that last appeared in the Milky Way a thousand years ago, has been seen again in space between Earth and Trom.
*The UP president explains "With so little data available, many worlds live in fear of this creature through their mythologies. Five of these cultures have engineered genetically-enhanced living weapons to use against it." These are the team's old foe Mano, Tharok of Zadron, Validus of Pasnic, the Persuader, and the Empress of Venegar: the Fatal Five.
*The basic creative team is Tom McCraw, and Tom Peyer writing, with Lee Moder and Jeffrey Moy the principal artists.


This is the second time that the Legion has crossed over with the mainstream, contemporary DC Universe, and the second time that the creators confounded my fears. The premise behind "Underworld Unleashed" is that a bunch of C-list costumed bad guys make a deal with a devil to get their powers amped up so they can defeat their superhero opponents. Naturally, they all get betrayed in ironic ways, because that's what happens when you make deals with devils. The bad guy in this case was a fellow named Chronos, who uses time travel powers, and who'd been around since the 1960s, but for the purposes of this adventure, he might as well be anybody - a brand new character, even. The flashbacks explaining the deal with the devil are done quickly and are unobtrusive, allowing the writers to try and tell a story that is happening in two time periods a thousand years apart at the same instance. It's tricky, but clever.

What's not clever, however, is Ambassador Wazzo. Grief-stricken over the death of her daughter, she's turned into a predictable comic book supervillain. This leads, unbelievably awkwardly, into the simply unreal and silly Sun-Eater and Fatal Five plot. Now, I'm all in favor of the Fatal Five conceptually, and this story does a great job convincing me that they really are the Legion's biggest challenge yet. What I don't buy is this "genetically enhanced living weapon" malarkey. I also have a big problem with the magic TV set that turns memories into video images, and the amazing coincidence of a Sun-Eater just happening to show up on a video screen in the background of the magic TV set's picture.

Perhaps we're not getting the whole story, but this is the first time since the reboot that I've put the book down and said "that is kind of stupid." That said, the artwork is certainly consistent and excellent, and the new Eye-less Empress reminds us that what we're reading isn't quite like what came before. This time out, there's not even a Ferro Lad to throw at the Sun-Eater. Yet.

LSH 1994 Reread, part four

(Covering Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 # 72-74, Legionnaires# 29-31, and Superboy vol.3 (?) # 21, 1995)

Major developments:

*Ohhhhhkay, so a million things to cover. In Legionnaires Annual # 2, the Daxamites of the White Triangle were soundly defeated, but at the apparent cost of both Andromeda and Apparition, believed to have died in action, and nobody knows where Kinetix is, leaving Aleph's representative to the United Planets very aggravated. Earth President Chu has sworn Cos to secrecy about Andromeda, who is alive and under arrest by Earthgov, but something of a PR nightmare. Apparition will resurface in time.
*Tensions completely explode at the memorial service. Cos is just barely keeping things together, and he doesn't stand up for his friends under pressure to disband the team before any more kids are killed.
*The president of Morgna Industries fires a scientist, Dr. Regulus, who murders two employees and steals an armored suit, swearing vengeance. Regulus doesn't come out well after his fight with the Legion, but neither does Morgna's son Dirk, who is transformed and given powers to control fire.
*Garth finally tracks down his brother Mekt, who is revealed to be an unhinged, murderous lunatic. The fight robs Mekt of his lightning powers, but he disintegrates Garth's right arm.
*A thousand years previously, a hero called Superboy helped save the life of the legendary Daxamite hero Valor, but at a cost. Lead poisoning was killing Valor, and Superboy sent him into a "stasis zone" where he has waited, alive, seeing, but unable to interact with the material world. Since Brainiac 5 created a cure for lead poisoning, Valor has used all his energy to create power surges to give him the chance to communicate with the material world and explain his plight. Brainiac 5, however, can find no way to enter this stasis zone, and so they must travel back to the 20th Century and consult Superboy.
*Sounds promising, right? Unfortunately, "Superboy" is not the teenage Kal-El, survivor of the planet Krypton. He's a loudmouthed clone of human DNA given powers that approximate the Man of Steel's. He has the specs for the stasis ray in his subconscious. He returns with the team to the 30th Century, but Brainiac 5 cannot duplicate the thousand year-old parts for the machine. A technological archive on the planet Korr should have what they need, but the parts have been stolen by an ancient enemy of Superboy called Scavenger.
*Valor had, in the 20th Century, found homes on new planets for thousands of refugees who had been experimented upon by the alien Dominators. Over a thousand years later, Valor is worshipped on many of these planets, including Luorno's home of Carggg, as "the world-seeder." Superboy's big mouth lets the word spread that the Legion is attempting to rescue Valor from stasis, resulting in a crush of religious lunatics on Earth. They free him instead on a remote planet, where, waiting with an injection of the anti-lead serum and a gun that fires red sun radiation to nullify his invunerability, they finally save his life. Valor agrees, with reluctance, to hide out in LSH headquarters until the furor dies down. Cos makes Superboy an honorary member of the team.
*The basic creative team is Tom McCraw, and Tom Peyer writing, with Lee Moder and Jeffrey Moy the principal artists. Mark Waid moved on from the book following Legionnaires Annual # 2. The Superboy issue is by its creative team, Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett.


Well! The Legion's first crossover with the contemporary DC Universe is much neater and much better than I had anticipated. Since I typically loathe crossovers, and have no real connection with the '90s Superboy, I was afraid that the three-part "Future Tense" would be a big mess.

So who the heck is this guy? Even those few readers of this blog with no particular interest in DC Comics - I seem to have a couple of dozen of you who kindly enjoy my every word for some fool reason - probably remember a big media event in 1993 when Superman was killed by a monster called Doomsday. Well, before he got better, as superheroes do, the Superman editorial office had the creative teams behind each of Supes' four books introduce and launch four new major characters.

Readers with very long memories may further recall that when the great Jack Kirby took over the Jimmy Olsen comic book in the early 1970s, he introduced a think tank full of weird super-scientists and clones and bizarre technology in a hidden city underneath Metropolis. Creators Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett reintroduced those guys, and had them build a clone with powers and abilities similar to the Man of Steel. I never had any interest in reading this character's book, which ran for almost a decade, but I understand that Kesel and Grummett built a tidy continuity around this character, Kirby's secret city, and a big supporting cast. This Superboy was very popular among the growing fangirl segment of comic fandom of the day.

To my pleasant surprise, this Superboy works really well with the Legion. I like the fresh take on a very old story. It was 1961 when the original Superboy saved the life of the original Mon-El by moving him into the Phantom Zone. If the original Legion stories are dated by everybody who wrote and drew them insisting that all the characters are best buddies and everybody reveres the Boy of Steel, these firstly have the more realistic approach that some people in the 30th Century find Superboy to be a strutting show-off with a big mouth and some find him kissable, and secondly have the really great twist of having the Mon-El character, Valor, be the one whom everybody adores. Nobody remembers Superboy after a thousand years, but Valor is a demigod.

Unfortunately, it looks like another crossover is on the immediate horizon. I just hope against hope that this one has aged half as well.

If there's a flaw in these books at all, it's that there are piles of subplots desperate for resolution. They finally got the story of Garth, Ayla, and Mekt straightened out after teasing it from the very beginning, and while it is obvious that Andromeda and Apparition are being moved off-screen for quite some time, Dirk Morgna - Sun Boy - is introduced only to be immediately sidelined, XS gets lost in time when the heroes go back to 1995, and Kinetix is only briefly mentioned in passing, with everybody certain that, wherever she is, she's just fine. The pace could honestly stand to slow down a little bit.

LSH 1994 Reread, part three

(Covering Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 # 68-71, (but not Annual # 6), and Legionnaires # 25-28 (but not Annual #2), 1995)

Major developments:

*The Legionnaires defeat Tangleweb, who has been augmenting his intelligence by absorbing his victims' minds, but Andromeda's horrible attitude and phobias are not winning her any friends, even though she comes through in the end.
*A war criminal from Durla comes to Earth to hunt down Cham. He has the power to not just shape-shift, but to copy all the Legionnaires' powers. He calls himself the Composite Man. Shutting down the villain's brain is more than Imra can take; she is transferred to a psychiatric facility, catatonic.
*Kinetix, looking to increase her power or gain more through ancient artifacts, loses her abilities when she uncovers a star-shaped object that counteracts the effects of the first one that had originally given her superpowers.
*Jo and Tinya get to know each other a little better, and Jo's team, the Work Force, breaks up a criminal gang. These are revealed to be more members of the White Triangle, who resent the Work Force's owner, McCauley, selling arms to both themselves as well as to the people of other planets whom they detest.
*The White Triangle makes its move. Mostly racist Daxamites, they start murdering interspecies couples on Earth before destroying the stargates that allow interplanetary transport, and then wiping out the population of the planet Trom in a genocidal attack from space.
*Andromeda confesses that she's an unwitting White Triangle agent and, after Brainiac 5 gives her a new serum to make her immune to lead poisoning, she goes out for revenge on the Daxamite diplomats who maneuvered her into the Legion.
*The White Triangle attacks Earth, and I'm not sure how it ends because I didn't know that I needed Legionnaires Annual # 2 to finish the story. Blast.
*The basic creative team is as before: Mark Waid, Tom McCraw, and Tom Peyer writing, with Lee Moder and Jeffrey Moy the principal artists. Guest artists include Mike Collins and Joyce Chin.


Mark Waid finished out his co-writing and development of the Legion with this run of issues. They wrap up the first major subplots, culminating in a battle with the White Triangle. That will have big repercussions, which I'll look at in the next installment.

Beyond that... well, I apologize to anybody following along who's looking for any real insight from me into these issues, but I find analyzing them a little tough. They are rock-solid, very entertaining comics. As the team wrapped up their first year developing the new Legion, they could honestly say that they did even better than anybody reading would have guessed. The letters pages of both books were absent for several months, and when they returned, the editors had the right attitude and printed quite a few letters from older fans who were aggravated that DC Comics had closed the original Legion off and started fresh.

I would love to see a good reprint program for these comics, and not in any half-assed way, either. This book is every bit as good, if not better, than the wonderful Starman from the same period, and look at how beautifully DC spruced up those collections.

Well, I say that now, but looking ahead to the next batch of issues, I see that the very silly and badly dated '90s Superboy - you remember, the one with the really bad haircut and the Lennon spectacles - shows up for a three-issue guest star part. Gulp.

Anyway, my favorite moments involve the nascent formation of the Espionage Squad, with Invisible Kid, Apparition, Triad, Vi, and Chameleon basically doing their own thing regardless of what the leader-man tells them. It leads to the big cliffhanger about halfway through the run, when Vi comes back from Andromeda's room holding a White Triangle pendant. My least favorite moments were realizing that I needed two more issues to read the whole story. I don't own either of the 1995 Annuals. LSH Annual # 6 contains the story in which Kinetix loses her powers, and the whole shebang is wrapped up in Legionnaires Annual # 2. I ran by a couple of places in the 'burbs that still sell back issues and they didn't have copies of these issues. What an aggravation. Maybe I'll find them one day.

LSH 1994 Reread, part two

(Covering Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 # 65-67 and Legionnaires# 21-24, 1995)

Major developments:

*Brande's competitor McCauley has formed a superhero team of his own. Live Wire finds a place there, along with the new characters Evolvo Lad, Inferno, Karate Kid, Spider Girl, and Ultra Boy, who we met in the previous issue and who introduced Live Wire to the others. McCauley's micromanagement in the field is undermining the group's effectiveness.
*The UP has asked the Legion to repair the power grid of a super-secure prison facility on an asteroid inside the sun of the planet Wakeet. The magnetic tunnel that allows travel to the prison and back broke down some years ago. Brainiac 5's people, the Coluans, agreed to build a new magnetic tunnel-bridge, but a criminal gang has just been waiting for the bridge to go up so that they can send cruisers in to free all the prisoners. The Legion, on site to make the repairs, and the Work Force, who had been tracking the criminals, are trapped on the surface with the prisoners.
*It's love at first sight when Jo and Tinya notice each other for the first time. Unfortunately, he's kind of dating Spider Girl.
*Three new heroes are drafted: Andromeda of the planet Daxam, Shrinking Violet of Imsk, and Kinetix of Aleph. Leviathan instantly starts crushing on Kinetix, and Brainy on Andromeda.
*Andromeda struggles to befriend the others, as, like many Daxamites, she was raised with xenophobic beliefs. She is off-duty with some of the others who witness a xeno-attack on an alien. She corners the perps, but recognizes a white triangle symbol worn by one and lets them "escape."
*This will come back to haunt her: just days later, one of Triad's three bodies is badly beaten and hospitalized by other members of this white triangle gang.
*In space, a group of Legionnaires is tracking Tangleweb (see Reread One), but the alien surprises them and captures Cos and Spark. They trail him back to what appears to be his home planet...


I am really, really liking these comics! They have aged incredibly well. Unburdened by continuity or tie-ins - so far - they just tell a really good story of adventure and melodrama in a fun, science fiction setting and they tell it really well.

Maybe this is just me trying to find a connection to hang an opinion on and make these things worth doing, but the conventional wisdom, for years, has been that Starman by James Robinson and Tony Harris had been by far the best thing, if not the only good thing, to come out of DC's 1994 Zero Hour crossover / revamp. And this isn't to knock Starman at all, because, apart from some occasionally clunky dialogue, it is a truly fantastic comic, and one that I repurchased in those amazing hardcover omnibus editions, but that comic really lives and breathes from the continuity of the comics of that time. It's a book that relishes its place in history, with the latest in a long line of heroes to use that name, and it is about family and generations and titles. For all of its triumphs, Starman is a book that probably means more to readers with a fond memory or two of all the rest of DC Comics' line of superhero books.

This Legion does not seem to care. It is off doing its own thing. I think that when it does begin interacting with DC continuity and history, it will have its first fumbles.

I really like how the creators are aware of what the original iteration of the Legion did, and how it is so confidently able to foil expectations. There's the early rumblings of a love triangle between Rokk, Garth, and Imra. (Rokk and Imra are wearing clunky "Virtual Reality" helmets, like a lot of speculative fiction written in the mid-1990s thought that we'd use in "the future." It's kind of charming.) When the team gets three new members, we're all set to see Gim Allon get a crush on Shrinking Violet, because that's what Colossal Boy did in the original iteration. But no, he looks right past her and sees the brand new character Kinetix and gets a goofy grin.

Andromeda is the really interesting character this time, though. See, a few years previously, the original iteration of the Legion had suffered from Superman's editorial office having a hissy fit about other comics using the Superman Family, and so the Legion team dealt with their tantrum by having a history-altering time-whatsit rewrite everybody's backstory and replace Supergirl, the longtime supporting player and reserve member, with a Daxamite super-blonde with the same power set. Andromeda had proven popular with the fans of the Legion between 1990-93, and while I have only faded memories of the character, I remember her as being a smiling and upbeat, friendly person, much like the old, popular Girl of Steel.

This time around, Andromeda completely confounds expectations because she's a surly bigot who's slowly learning to get used to other humanoids. She completely screws over her teammates on Earth by letting some criminals go after she recognizes the white triangle that one of them wears, and she could have ended the threat of Tangleweb immediately with a punch to its face, only she refuses to touch any other sentient, finding the concept of other races or species' skin revolting. This character has a long, long way to go. I'm forcing myself to wait in between batches of seven, and I'm really impatient to start the next ones.

(As with Reread part one, the stories are written by Mark Waid, Tom Peyer, and Tom McCraw, with terrific artwork spearheaded by Lee Moder and Jeffrey Moy. Fantastic stuff across the board.)

LSH 1994 Reread, part one

(Covering Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 issue zero and # 62-64 and Legionnaires issue zero and # 19-20, 1994)

Major developments:

*Rokk Krinn, an athlete from the planet Braal with the native power to control magnetism, Imra Ardeen, a cadet police officer from Saturn's moon of Titan with the native power of telepathy, and Garth Ranzz, a runaway from the panel Winath who has the power to generate electricity, meet on a shuttle to Earth. They save the life of RJ Brande, one of the richest men in the universe thanks to his invention of stargate technology. The nascent United Planets is a fragile alliance, and he proposes that they join forces with his backing as a Legion of Super-Heroes as symbols to unite the many squabbling planets in the systems.
*The next assassination attempt comes when Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, and Live Wire are introduced to the diplomats. Tinya Wazzo of Bgtzl and Luorno Durgo of Cargg help the new heroes and are drafted to join them as Apparition and Triad. The UP and the public loves the kids. Their ranks are swiftly increased as new members are drafted to join them: Leviathan (Gim Allon) of Earth, Kid Quantum (James Cullum) of Xanthu, XS (Jenni Ognats) of Aarok, Chameleon (Reep Daggle) of Durla, Invisible Kid (Lyle Norg) of Earth, and Brainiac 5 (Querl Dox) of Colu, who initially ignores his draft.
*The team does not work well together. Chameleon does not speak Interlac, and only Invisible Kid can converse with him. The initial five mildly resents the draftees, especially when it's learned that the UP has decided that Leviathan, a Science Police officer, will be team leader. James Cullum, who uses a device housed in a belt to generate stasis fields, strongly resents being drafted at all, or taking orders. On their first mission together, Cullum is killed by an alien calling itself Tangleweb, who escapes.
*Brande shells out for a huge new headquarters for the team, which comes with its own chef in the cafeteria, a Bismollian named Tenzil Kem.
*Leland McCauley, Brande's most ruthless competitor, asks for the Legion's help. A criminal named Mano is killing his technicians on the moonbase. Mano wants vengeance after McCauley sold one warring faction on the planet of Angtu untested chemical weapons that ended up killing everybody.
*Winath drafts Garth's twin sister Ayla to be their formal representative in the Legion, replacing Garth, a runaway, who the UP President kicks off the team. Ayla takes the code name Spark. Garth agrees, grudgingly, that he's still a minor under Winath law and represents a possible PR nightmare and willingly leaves.
*A superpowered stranger who calls himself Ultra Boy and can use one of several different powers at a time tells Garth about a new opportunity for him. McCauley, impressed by the Legion, is assembling his own team...


Several chapters back, I explained briefly how DC decided to end the troubled Legion of Super-Heroes franchise in 1994 with its most audacious change to continuity, ever. The entire universe was wiped out, closing the doors for good during a silly crossover event called Zero Hour. When things returned to normal for the comic book world of the present day, it gave the editors the chance to relaunch a few titles and create several new ones, the most celebrated of which was certainly the extremely good Starman by James Robinson and Tony Harris.

But darned if Legion of Super-Heroes didn't also emerge from the Zero Hour debacle stronger than it had been in years. The editors decided to go in for the really audacious move of just starting clean and brand-new, despite, foolishly, the holdover numbering from the previous issues. The new Legion was being told across two issues, with a new installment published every other week. Initially, it was being written by a team of three, Mark Waid, Tom McCraw, and Tom Peyer, and a host of artists. The leads were Stuart Immonen, Jeffrey Moy, and Lee Moder, with lots of fill-in work. A typical issue (take LSH # 63) credits Waid and McCraw with story, and Moder for pencils on pages 1-15, Brian Apthorp for pages 16-20, and Scott Benefiel for pages 21-25, with inking by Ron Boyd on pages 1-13 and 21-25, and Tom Simmons on 14-20. This would settle down in 1995, but it's obvious that this team hit the ground running, and breathlessly at that.

Somehow, I guess because the writers are paying such close attention to characterization and motive, giving these teen draftees a reason to trust each other and provide an image of unity, it really works. The tension between Leviathan and Cos is short-lived but natural; the founding three are happy to welcome Apparition and Triad as members, but are surprised and baffled that the United Planets are instantly in their affairs and telling them who is in charge. Leviathan, with his police background, is simply told by the government that he is the leader. This does not last long. After a disastrous first mission, he asks Cos to be in charge again. This will set up considerable, and reasonable tension between the heroes and the government.

So far, the "history" of this group has strong similarities to the Legion that readers remember. It was a bold and brazen move to just cancel things and start again, but so far, the payoff is really good. I dismissed it when I first heard about it, enjoyed it when I gave it a fair shake a few years later, and think it's just terrific today. Very fun stuff!