Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes The Complete Continuity Match-Up Checklist: from Baxter to Levitz Relaunch (revised)

I wonder what Talokians have to cut off to get a divorce...?

Actually, Superboy-Prime doesn't have powers on Earth-Prime. He only got powers in Crisis, when he left, and he lost them when he came back (Legion of Three Worlds). So you don't need to worry about why he doesn't stop disasters.

One thing that is a factor, however, is comic book time. All mainstream comic book stories happened in a relatively short time frame. They couldn't have happened when they were published because the characters would be far too old. And as time passes, the dates when they happened get pushed forwards.

And part of L3W and Adventure #5 depend on the comic books being published after Prime does the things depicted in them. Because of comic book time, the events are pushed forwards, so the comics were now published *before* the events. This ruins the stories or at least raises questions like, why didn't he read them first.

Oh, and I did add Paul's comment about the divorce to the list.

This must be a very daunting task. It seems the more you slic n dice away the continuity the more and more you have to slice away for ANYTHING to still work

Even if you take out "Conspiracy" you still leave in Mon-el's alleged death, but it wasn't shown that he died until the 5 year gap. Nothing on panel supports a PRE gap death.

Yet the Time Trapper references the Pocket Universe in Action Comics and Conpiracy is visually referenced in LO3W but that isn't considered a continuity faux paux ?

Methinks that maybe we still aren't sure what is and what isn't a "mistake"

The material on-panel supports his heart stopping with everyone reacting to it as though he is dead. We may not have seen a death certificate, but this pretty soundly establishes that he is as dead as anyone can be in comics.

Paul said that not all of Legion of Three Worlds is canon. He seems to be treating some of it as if it is anyway, but there have been things such as the appearance of the original Emerald Empress and Validus which he is not.

It's also plausible that the Time Trapper can reference retconned-away events.

Point being that is subjective. Without any 5 Year Gap knowledge we are kept with dangling plot line. A cliff hanger. Drama over a flatline. But not solid death. It would seem inaccurate to call it dead, Jim. Especially Since Next we see Mon-El is alive. Not criticism at all, just for conversations sake it wouldn't be accurate to utilize 5 Year Gap revelations to disavow current continuity.
Paul said that not all of Legion of Three Worlds is canon. He seems to be treating some of it as if it is anyway, but there have been things such as the appearance of the original Emerald Empress and Validus which he is not.

It's also plausible that the Time Trapper can reference retconned-away events. [/
Yet again all readers have to go buy is printed word. And in the case of the Pocket Universe and Time Trapper's machinations to remove Superboy from history there is published reference substantiating it's existence. A footnote from interviews and artist intent doesn't add relevance one way or the other. Especially since Paul was talking about LO3W and not Action Comics 864.
Seems you may be on a quest to dismiss Pocket Universe from existence and in this huge compilation of info you are ignoring or dismissing modern reference to it.

"It's also plausible that the Time Trapper can reference retconned-away events."

It seems that would be the nature of his power. Yet by mere mention of it creates knowledge of his power and the events that took place. How or if they have any effect on present Legion time is something that hasnt been revealed to us. However in this case there is more reference to it actually taking place then of any retcon.
I think the same sort of thinking here applies to the notion that Anti-Lad helped Superboy join the Legion in the first place.

Could he have been an unknown pawn of the Time Trapper?

One of my favorite super-villains of all time, Per Degaton, is also a time-traveler. He is aware of events that happened Pre-Crisis of Infinite Earths. I have read it explained nicely that all futures of Per Degaton are like petals on a flower, whereas the normal timeline is a stem. It might even be safe to say that the future is predetermined, based on the Einsteinian principle that time is simultaneous (you can learn more than philosophy from reading Watchmen). In the DCU this is compounded by the fact that amateur time-travelers like the Legion of Super-Heroes don't routinely mess up the timeline.

You have set your standards so high that it becomes impossible to call anything in comics a death. I can come up with a scenario for any death where the character isn't really dead and the event that seems to kill the character really doesn't.

If his heart stops and everyone acts as though that means he's dead, he's dead. The death can later be retconned away, but the mere possibility that it will be doesn't mean it isn't a death.

Thanks to quantum uncertainty gobbledigook and the observer effect, I'm coming to appreciate the idea that 'time' is a series of bubbles of perceived reality, more or less floating in the same bathtub. If somebody over there in the 21st century bubble changes something, that's gonna affect their bubble, maybe, for awhile, but have no bearing at all on my 31st century bubble, where I still remember the 'original' past just fine.

Superboy existed. Then he didn't exist and was mandated to have never existed, and the Legion went to hell for awhile. Now he exists again, and was a Legionnaire, to boot.

If the Time Trapper is the excuse for why 21st century 'events' (that are gonna be retconned out of existence 1d10 years from now anyway) aren't even remotely relevant to the 31st century Legion, then I'm good with that.

Go, Time Trapper!

Really, the basic 'rule' of time travel is that if a time traveller *can* change the past, and time travel could ever actually occur, then, logically, at some point in the future, it *is* going to occur, and the past has already been messed up an infinite amount of times anyway by time travellers from the future, so, relax, the mere possibility that it *could* be broken, means that it already *has* been broken, more times than you can conceive of.

It's horribly circular and incestuous and pretty much irrelevancies itself in a puff of logic.

There's really no middle ground. Either time travel can't happen, or it can happen, but nothing can be changed, or the universe has already been changed a zillion times by time travellers from the far, far, future, and any attempt at unravelling the damage and figuring out what 'really happened' or what was 'supposed' to happen is pretty much a Sisyphean task.

not trying to set high standards, actually im trying to simplify things to work through many years of belief based on what Giffen set up in the 5YG.
All we saw was a flat line and Shady crying. No response from any other member, nothing..
Based on that alone and the picking up after Magic Wars there was no way of knowing if Mon-El truly had died.

There's no way of knowing whether *any* character, *ever* in comics has truly died.

If your standard for death is that it's not death if there's no way to know, then you're being unreasonable, because there's never a way to know.

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Hold on, here. Let's stop and think about this a minute.

The whole "death of Mon-El" thing was a result of the Conspiracy.

The Conspiracy was a reaction to the death of Superboy, a character the Legionnaires shared literally hundreds of adventures with.

Now here's where current continuity comes in:

Superboy didn't die. He's now called Superman.

Thus, the Conspiracy never happened.

Thus, Mon-El didn't die.

How else can you possibly interpret it??

IAm Legion: That TV show's theories are rooted in physics. According the Newton's axioms (I just attended a lecture on Newton's Principia) matter is continuously in motion. That means everything in the universe moves; Einstein debunked Newton's concept of real space where nothing is moving. Einstein developed quantum mechanics, which is where we get theories such as parallel universes.

http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/files/2009/12/advc_5_dylux-6-copy.jpg

Superboy-Prime gets his powers back in Adventure Comics #4, and attacks DC Comics on Earth-Prime.

However, the writers have promised to leave him alone.

Sure , generally speaking. But specifically in the case of Mon-El, his death in the pages of Legion of Super Heroes was not shown on panel nor was any reaction of that death shown by any other character in the book.
His death, or the cliffhanger moment of his flatline that was caused by a power failure, was continued in the NOW out of continuity 5 Year Later series.
*If* one chooses to cherry pick that little bit of "non" continuity as continuity then surely you can not ignore the fact that the Time Trapper was hiding out inside Mon-El's body ...which , by those standards Mon-El could very well still be.
But his death was shown in the 5 Year Gap. Which is not in continuity.
Let's not confuse facts with emotional attatchment especially in the daunting task of cataloging continuity errors.
Nothing printed ever has diminished the existence of the Pocket Universe. If so please...anyone point me to an issue number.

Current Superman met Superboy from the Pocket Universe
Current Superman after Infinte Crisis remembered that he too knew the Legion as a teen and shared adventures with them. Were these the same adventures? Did the parralell exisitence of both Superboy and Superman merge as those slices of time possibly merged after Infinite Crisis?
I'm sure these are the many anomalies and paradoxes Brainy contemplates as he looks back in time from the Time Institute . But one thing that won't change for us readers is that the deeper he looks in the more the REAL story will present itself from a 31st century perspective.
A perspective that exists where Time Travel and time machines are "common" place.
A place where cousins who don't know eachother in their own time can battle side by side with the Legion.
Seems the Rocky Horror Picture Show was right, "Time is fleeting Madness" indeed.

By that reasoning, no death is "shown on panel". It's true that the flatline could be something other than a death. It's also true that any of the other things which are normally taken to mean death could be something other than a death. A flatline is no different from being decapitated or disintegrated or anything else--<i>any</i> of them look like death but could be explained by something else.

Come on Ken, you really are gonna old school cut n paste out of context and reply to a general term that has nothing to do with the specifics that were presented? I feel like im trying to buy a used car.
And you are the self appointed chronicler of continuity?
All u have to do is read the book.
Unless all you are saying is that there are huge holes in the notion that *Mon-El* died pre 5YG, so much so that one has to go all abstract in their thinking to determine if he is dead or not.
Guess the truth might lie in the context....

I think what's ultimately important here is the personal timeline of a character, in this case Mon-El. It's pretty obvious that the guy who is now Legion leader and Green Lantern did not die (I would think he would remember a thing like that).

Thus, as far as the characters we are currently reading the adventures of are concerned, the Conspiracy, death of Superboy and the Cosmic Boy miniseries (in which he met a Superman that treated him like a new kid in town) never happened.

Any other way of looking at it seems to me to be nothing more than an intellectual exercise with no bearing on current continuity.

Excellent way of putting it and isn't that precisely what is happening here? None of this has a true bearing on continuity and arent we are all just "mentally exercising"?

But I was referring to the Superman/Superboy/Legion story that happened just before the Pocket Universe...even though the Cosmic Boy mini is just another good example of efforts made at that time to create a "context" within to make these concerns valid in their context....or continuity.
Where is the point of reference for the context of continuity...modern continuity being made?
Is there some popular mindset that determines wha tis "important", one that I didn't get the letter on for certain.
I know for example that the Magic Wars at the time of publication was a slow and agonizing read....and absolutely recall what a shame it was that Mon-El's death was downplayed so much. It was obvious that it was set up for the next series based on that and low and behold on rereading the series it all makes sense. Somehow me, the reader sees the bigger picture being painted over the smaller strokes a month at a time.
Fast forward 20 plus years and its hard to conceive the book will read as a direct continuation from Legion 63, but given the context of modern continuity and using published reference as a guide , that would be the only way to accept things now.
The mental exercise comes in on where to disconnect what I thought I knew, like Garth is really Proty( which is true in the same continuity as Mon-el dying) , over what I will know all over again due to the fact that these stories trump the 5year gap adventures.
Knowing that why would I cherry pick with CERTAINTY what did happen or what didn't?
It isn't an " error" if Mon-el isn't dead nor is it if Conspiracy still happened because nothing published changes those stories.
You can guess that they no longer happened but what makes you certain?

There are plenty of things which are true both during 5YL and prior to it. Proty/Garth isn't one. Mon-El dying is. You are taking a scene which is obviously supposed to mean that Mon-El is dead and reading it as him not being dead, on very flimsy grounds that if taken seriously would negate pretty much any death whatsoever.

If you can say "we didn't see a death, we just saw a flatline", someone else can say "we didn't see a death, we just saw someone being disintegrated" or "we didn't see a death, we just saw a bullet through their head followed by a funeral". If Mon-El's death isn't a death because we just saw a flatline, then there are no deaths.

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