Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Eclipso: the Darkness Within

Although I've come to loathe crossovers, this was one of the more fun summer crossovers that I can remember. I forget the exact year that these annuals came out ('93?), but I remember thinking that Eclipso had suddenly become a very intense super-villian!

My favorite parts of this whole summer annual crossover were the Superman annuals and the first and last parts. Not only did Eclipso emerge as a major player again, but the Superman annual where the entire DCU hunts for the eclipsed Superman is comic book that made me like Guy Gardner and Lobo.

Did anyone else enjoy these annuals?

I enjoyed them so much I rewrote the Great Darkness saga for a Legion based role playing game using Eclipso as the villain instead. And Mon-el was the one who became eclipsed.

I also enjoyed it.

It was 1992. 1993 was the very, very, very bad "Bloodlines" cross-over.

Aw, c'mon, Chaim!

Jamm was, like, PRODIGIOUS! And stuff!

And Scott- I love the idea of Eclipso as the villian for the GDS storyline. His powers controlling the Daxamites make a LOT more sense than anything Darkseid's been shown capable of.

But how did you rewrite the whole bit with the clones and artifacts?

I still had Eclipso stealing the artifacts to gain more power (the diamond is an artifact too right?) and by using that power he was controlling various heroes (eclipsed but disguised) from through-out time. Kinda like DnA wound up doing in their version but I did it first.

Maybe I'll hunt down the old game posts and try to make a coherent story out of them and post it here.

Hmm. Interesting. I'm running a tabletop RPG with a far future ("Legends of the Dead Earth" era) Legion. One of the characters is a kid calling himself "Eclipso", who found a crescent sliver of a gem for sale at a curios shop...
As he finds more splinters of the gem, he becomes increasingly more powerful and closer to being lost to Eclipso's control. mwah-ha-hah!
I've been rereading some of the old Eclipso cross over annuals as background. Fun reads, even after all these years!

Pov, even if I liked Jamm (which I don't, any more than anyone with taste does...I mean, a teenaged boy preferring to see Andromeda and Apparition in loose grunge clothes rather than skintight and, in Andromeda's case, semi-revealing super-hero costumes? And lest we think he doesn't have the normal teenaged male hormones, he did make Tasmia and Lydda undress first), the storyline as a whole was terrible. For one thing, it's obvious that DC had intended for the story to be entirely contained within the annuals, but when they realized that they forgot to write an ending for it, they threw together that two-part "Bloodbath" thing which came out pretty much like you'd expect it to. And then, the "Blood Pack"? Good heavens, did that thing sell a single copy?

Eclipso, though, was very good...as was Armageddon 2001 which preceded it and most of the themes which followed.

i lkied the Eclipso crossover, great art by Bart Sears, but i hated the fact that the "Will Payton" Starman (my fav Starman) was one of the casualties of the event.

The Eclipso crossover event was not at all bad, and I agree that the Superman annuals in particular were good.

One of them even had the best use of Nightwing that I'd seen in a while, where Supes asks his help on some detective work.

THE DARKNESS WITHIN was one of the better crossovers.

I was, however, completely apalled-- APALLED-- by ECLIPSO # 13, which laid waste to many 3rd-stringer DC heroes including the femme Wildcat & Dr. Midnight.

I also liked this crossover a real lot too. I agree that the Superman annuals were awesome, especially the Captain Marvel one and then the final one, which was undoubtedly the best.

I remember liking the JLA one too, probably b/c Wonder Woman showed up in.

The final was awesome, and Eclipso really became a huge DCU villian, on par with the Spectre.

#13 of his ongoing was pretty apalling. I remember being in shock that the Creeper was dead, although he's the only one who 'got better'. IIRC, the casualities were: Peacemaker, Dr. Mid-Nite II, Wildcat II, Commander Steel, Creeper (got better), and two others who I suddenly can't remember. I remember being very worried that Nemesis and Nightshade were as good as doomed too.

I was a huge INFINITY INC fan, which explains why ECLIPSO # 13 bothered me so much.

I absolutely hate that issue of Eclipso! Yolanda and Beth deserved better!

One of them was the Mark Shaw Manhunter, who was subsequently rescued by a retcon that had an impersonator die in his place. Can't recall the other. And yes, it was a lousy book.

Nemesis survived to be killed off in a particularly stupid issue of CATWOMAN.

Son of a bitch! I didn't know that about Nemesis. Aargh!

Reminds me of seeing Arisa killed off-handidly in an issue of Guy Gardner.

Sorry, man, I didn't know you didn't know.

I wish I could say it was a noble and well-written death, but.....no.

I figured it wouldn't be. They usually aren't.

At least Nightshade isn't dead. She isn't dead, is she?

She wasn't last I checked. Though I don't know if she's still looking like she did in that L.A.W. mini.

I'm glad to see that other people remember the Eclipso crossover fondly too! It was really one of the things that got me to start collecting more than just the Legion and Superman titles.

I do agree, however, with the disgust of seeing so many characters killed off in one issue of Eclipso's ongoing series. I never really enjoyed the series after the initial issues, although the final two or three (his fall) weren't bad.

HEY HEY HEY! Fellow Nemesis fans! Did anyone read the Superman Secret Files that came out a couple of weeks ago? Well I just flicked through it at the store and who doesn't seem to pop up at the end of the story but the one and only Tom Tresser, Nemesis! Now I didn't actually read the story to know if it was really him or and imposter or a flashback story or what-not but maybe someone on here did and can explain his appearance more fully. Come back Nemesis! We miss you!

Cobalt Kid : That Arisia scene still sticks in my craw too! But the sad thing is that she wasn't the only beloved GL to be dispatched so crassly and carelessly - THEY ALL WERE! Arisia, Ch'p, Sallak, Gallius Zed, Chaselon, Hollika Rahn, The Green Man... all my old fave GL's were mercilessly slaughtered with barely a backward glance. So sad. The only strange exception is Medphyll (the carrot head GL) who seemed to die and then come back and then die again about 3 times. Man, some writers must have really had it in for him.

Promising. Hope it's him in the DCU here & now.

There was some speculation that Tresser was one of the folks behind the scenes in Giffen's recent Suicide Squad, but that book got canned without the secret getting out.