Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Reading the Legion: Archives Volume 26 "Five Years Later"

Tales from the Legion Outpost (the letter pages) re #1

Issue 3 was a bit too early for the first letters in response to issue 1 (although off-hand comments indicate some had started to arrive) so this included the first "What Has Gone Before" segment which quickly became a popular regular feature along with Mark Waid's welcome to the new series and introductions to all the creators.

Waid's opening has some interesting comments:


So Waid claims the issue 1 as his idea, and the whole team aiming to use the Five Years Later to separate their work from PL's, leaving his work intact. Interesting comment.

The rest of the pages is a welcome from Tom, in which he encourages readers to let them know their reaction (which he expects they will achieve that if nothing else), followed by brief bios of all the creative team with the notable exception of Giffen. Another interesting point is that Al Gordon and each of the Beirbaum's list their favourite Legion story as one of the classic Adventure series two-parters; Al picks "Mordru the Merciless", Tom the "Devil's Dozen" and Mary the "Fatal Five/Sun-Eater". Waid's bio doesn't mention a story but, after listing how he was rocketed from Krypton and lost his powers due to an encounter with Gold Kryptonite which his parents have always denied, listed his favourite legionnaires as Nightcrawler, Colossus and Psylocke and wishes we would move on to someone else.

On LSH v4 Issue 2

I think this one's a big step down from the first issue. At the very least, it's harder for me to be objective about it, being as it focuses on two of my least favorite mainstays of the FYL Era: Jo and Kono. The former hasn't gotten overly annoying yet, and if memory serves me well, it's not until his spotlight in Annual 1 where I really start to hate him, so I'll leave it at that for the moment.

Kono is a whole other matter. To this day, I still can't understand why so many people adore her. You know how much hatred Lori Morning from the Postboot Era inspires in a lot of Legion fans? Quadruple that, then multiply by one million, and you'll only just get an idea how much I hate Kono.

I do think I get what sort of archetype TMK were going for with her -- the plucky, smart-alecky, adventurous tomboy. But, ye Gods, do they oversell her to readers! My mind reels with horrible and graphically violent ways I'd like to see her die. That is not good writing.

And finally, there's the matter of the effete, overly polite assassins. While somebody among the creators has obviously heard of the old-time comedy act Alphonse & Gaston (who also inspired the Goofy Gophers from the Looney Tunes cartoons,) their closest forebears are the comedy-relief assassin duo from one of the Sean Connery James Bond movies (the title escapes me at the moment.) That Bond movie reeked of homophobia, and there is at the very least a trace of that in this comic book, at least in my view. Only two issues in, and already this era's reputation for LGBT-friendliness is being sorely tested, despite last issue's beautiful message from Salu to Ayla.

So, subjectively, I want to throw this issue to the wolves with the lowest possible rating. But in an effort to remain unbiased and fair, I'm going to chalk it up to the creators being a little too impressed with their own cleverness, and give it 5 out of 10 Taryns:

v4 Issue 2

Jo Nah’s happiness at his upcoming wedding (possibly second one to Tinya, going back to an old Adventure story) and his devastation at Tinya’s lost frame the story of where Jo finds himself really well. We’re given information about the team’s history. I find this reinforces Waid’s insistence on a history page in #1, rather than replaces it. There the listing of dead Legionnaires that also reinforces the great Ayla/Vi scene in #1 and what’s coming up in a couple of issues, The Ommnicom pages have some fun with APA Name drops (as per TM’s blog) and the impact Tinya’s loss had on the team during the 5YG. TMK are *very* quick to have Dvron tell us that there’s no body. It also says that Jo is likely to leave and a number of others have been shaken.

There’s will be more on this event in upcoming issues. But it’s worth mentioning that, again, TMK didn’t just drop their characters into a situation because. Jo’s actions follow solidly from Tinya’s loss and some older Legion adventures (notably when he was framed for moider!). Not only that, but this event will tie into a meta-arc of huge scope across this volume.

We get our first action of the volume as young Brita An’nan is chased through the flesh pits of Rimbor. I think we saw them as being pretty seedy in earlier volumes. Even when science fails, there’s only so much grime that accumulate.

The actions of the Rimborian police are interesting. They’re portrayed as very human and fallible. Not only do they feel the pressures of their boss and get distracted by the dancers, but they are willing to cover up the killing of one of their own. A killing they were responsible for.

Above their pay grade, the corporate Silverale company makes a deal with The Khunds to kill Brita, as long as they take Nah with her. With it’s Coca Cola style ad, Silverale seems like a soft drink. All the smuggling and Khundian involvement seems oddly overly sinister.

But then, Coke used to have cocaine in it. A closer look at the ad blurb shows that Silverale also gives its customer a high. A legal one at that, just as Coke reduced the cocaine to teensy amounts as that, and awareness, changed for them. Silverale claims it’s non addictive, but that’s a line our companies have trotted out until forced to see the evidence to the contrary.

With no checks or balances, Silverale is drug peddling trhough the galaxy through its drink. All legally. Corruption, corporate strangleholds and UP Worlds cosying up to their fiercest enemies. None of which is belaboured. It all just sets the scene for this story, and more generally the volume.

Their ad contains a Moopsball/Baseball player. I like to think that the coach in the background is one Thom Kallor. He’s in a very similar scene in an issue or so. We get also get the Wanderer Dartalon. He always seemed likely to break away from that group. Perhaps he’s the Wolverine the grimy Five Year Gap looked for to replace their brighter Legion heroes. He’s considered to be famous here, which he wasn’t as part of the Wanderers. I can’t place the other two.

There’s quite a bit of craft in how this one is structured. In addition to everything else that’s going on, it’s a spotlight issue for Brita (Kono). The opening 7 pages and the later fight scene are about as long as anyone gets in this volume. We get to know some of her history and an intro to her powers.

Issue one had Venado Bay, Rokk & Vi interweaving and bringing in other plotlines, each layering and reinforcing the others. Here, the villains are able to track Kono *because* of that opening scene. Her connection to Jo makes him a target. It’s not rushed, as the Khundian agents follow her. The villains don’t appear right at the start. It’s not until page 14 they have a direct confrontation with Jo. Heck, the real villains (Silverale and the Khund handler) get away scott free (it sure is morally grimier in this volume). Jo’s introduced in dialogue, but not *seen* until page 9. And that’s where he’s using the antique shaving set given to him by Rokk. When he calls it an antique, he really means it’s an artefact recovered from the 20th century during one of Rokk’s visits. Like Rokk’s trenchcoat, it’s a link to the inspirational age of the team, and to the Legion and friendship.

The cast is introduced with weight, when they move the plot, interact with other plots and establish themes. It’s good stuff.

We move onto the agents about to detonate the whole building Jo is in. That allows the idea of Jo’s shaving to fade away, before its then reinforced by Lydda and Loomis. They *could* have gone straight into the explosion page (a slash page that isn’t). But it’s there to reinforce what the Legion means to everyone involved. It’s an immediate precursor to the cost of that involvement as the block goes up in flames.

Loomis: Is it just me, or did everyone involved in this Leigon thing turn out to be a little nutso?
Lydda: People do crazy things for lots of reasons, Loomis. Principle, honor, friendship…love.


(For all the arguments over the Don Quixote lines between writer and editor, what’s annoying is that it’s in a text box rather than a speech bubble.)

We don’t get to know what happened to Tinya until later. There’s a little bit of me that thinks of those time when Jo says he couldn’t get over her. But he’s able to shack up with someone here in the meantime. Later, it would be a demon in ancient Egypt and then Spider Girl…

Poor Ginny is plot fodder. Her only job is to leave the apartment so that the agents can extract more information from her. They do this in a particularly grisly (yet mostly off panel way, her fear at deliberate odds with the agents’ comedy dialogue. Their handler has similarly odd speech patterns. Translation software was another tragic victim of the Archmage

The agents discover that both Jo and Kono have survived the blast. While Jo’s reveal about keeping a default ultra-invulnerability on is excellent, it wouldn’t explain why Brita had time to react and shift mass to escape. A bit of a fudge that one. Perhaps the explosion didn’t set everything off in one go? It does take her a few pages to recover allowing Jo to go hand to hand with the agents.

The fight scene makes good use of Giffen’s art, with both villains being blocky (not Bloky, see next issue). They are strong and tough. In a galaxy without Lar (for now) and Kal, that goes a lot further than it used to. And that’s one of the reasons Giffen was happy enough those two were gone, to focus on more vulnerable heroes. Jo’s requirement to shift powers enables villains to tag him if the plot needs it. TMK added other, more emotional, vulnerabilities to the cast too.

There is a habit in this volume, that while the heroes are at lower power levels, all the villains should be armed to the teeth with deadly weaponry. In particular Anti-Daxamite weaponry will become a feature in a way that makes them this volume’s Kryptonite equivalent.

Brita and Jo get to dispose of one agent each. The agents have some added surprise value, in that they seem to be bioorganic, and able to survive a lot of damage. I thought there was going ot be a serpent thing inside them, when Jo pulled out the innards of one (a move that definitely wouldn’t have made it in an Adventure Comics book. Having just survived a blast, Brita's taken by surprise. Yet she still ahs the wits to shift her mass and then phase (no pun intended) her opponent into the ground. Brita is cocky, bright and her youth shows through compared to Jo and later the others. But having her bailed out here, might have made her more endearing in the long run. She’s a little too good when faced with such high stakes.

I’ve always found the combat on page 18 to be a bit confusing. The Agent is levitated by Brita. The falls and land. But Jo looks up to incinerate him, and he falls into the depths. Why would Jo look up, if the agent is on the same level? The other one has already been dispatched, so it’s not that one.

Brita is an example of character redux in the Legion. She has elements of Phantom Girl, Light Lass and Star Boy in her power set. I didn’t see her as a Phantom Girl stand-in until I read an interview years and years later. I can see their point, when it comes to the phasing thing. It does seem that Brita had more tricks than that, to begin with anyway. I certainly didn’t see it as a one to one switch. Heck, it was only a bit later I considered the other powers she had. As of this issue, it probably didn’t occur to me that she’d be a new Legionnaire (despite the huge signs). She’s a far cry from a lot of her predecessors, in approach and personality. But then, I was probably just happy to sit and read it, rather than second guess it.

Jo returns to the site of the blast, as Kono learns of Ginny’s death (That’s Ginny, never to be mentioned again, certainly not by Jo). He uses penetra-vision (along with the Khundian reports, we get to see a lot of powers shown to us too)

I must have been really slow on the uptake for a lot of these early issues. Jo pulls something from the wreckage. It looks like his most cherished possession was a rock. A rock from Rokk. But what does it mean? If it’s not a mineral, perhaps a vegetable. It also looks like a mouldy carrot chunk (Perhaps something happened to Chlorophyll Kid during the 5YG.). If it’s not a vegetable, it looks
It’s *supposed* to be a shaving brush, but the blast, Giffen’s art and the colouring all get in the way.

Another confession is the LLL. It’s not something I remember being used in the Levitz stories much. It might have been in the letter columns a lot. But I always skipped the names at the bottom and any editorial farewell in case it spoiled the next issue. This volume certainly came several months before I picked up Adventure issues in bigger numbers. So I’m sure, I had to wonder what it stood for, even at this stage. Jo’s faraway look mirrors that of Rokk last issue.

Crumbs! Hadn’t even mentioned Jo’s long hair, fitting with the style in this volume, vests and Rimborian swearing. Kono tries her hand at Sklarian potty words too. TMK trying to have distinctive planetary dialogue is just yet another flourish, showing the thought that went into all this.
Elsewhere, Officer Erin disposes of some flowers sent by Mr Morgna and the readers get a cheesecake scene. Dirk loves a lady in uniform, as he had a romance with Cusimano too. She mentions her extracurricular activities, leading into the list of rebel acquaintances held by Commander Circe.

Circe might be monitoring Erin’s contacts, but Dirk is glued to his Omni-Amazon tracking, As soon as Erin has the flowers he’s on the vidphone.

Even as Circe dresses up as Erin, Dirk is trying to chat up the real thing. A little bit of me wondered if Dirk was also calling Erin *because* of her links to the resistance. Not necessarily siding with it, but keeping all channels open. It certainly didn’t pan out like that.

I recognised the names as I was supposed to on the contacts list, and knew enough about Eirn, for the lack of highlighting not to be a problem. The other names were APA names, if I remember TB’s blog correctly. Look out for some of them again in the SW6 chambers.

Yet another thing that passed me by was that Circe was dressed up as Erin (even if I did type it just a minute ago). The hair’s *different* I tell you! *I* wouldn’t have known why she’d dress up as someone else back then! Not long removed from Perez’s Wonder Woman, and general knowledge, I did wonder at the choice of name for Commander Circe. We’re just out of the Magic Wars, so its use indicated to me that there would be something a bit mystical about her. The sparkly robe might have reinforced that.

I never really got a handle on Circle. She’s a SP Commander (not sure if she’s Erin’s boss or some sort of internal affairs person), but she’s also Dirk’s handler. An intimate handler at that.

The issue ends in what I consider to be its weakest point. The plot progression here is that someone opens a door and lets some light in. I wouldn’t have recognised him as Roxxas (I might even have had his original appearance by this point). I felt his development would be an ongoing issue, considerably due to some other things we’re about to come onto next time.

Not getting a grasp on the Circe/Dirk relationship, Jo picking up a keepsake boulder, Roxxas finding a doorway, and a few confusing fight panels didn’t get in the way of me enjoying this one. Cool villains and a cool Ultra Boy fight were enough. I notice that TMK were confident enough in this approach to skip Cham and Rokk almost completely. The inscription on Jo’s Pet Rock, a “husband” mention and Cham getting named in passing are all we have. Gutsy comics writing. It reads even better when you have a few issues to go through. No repetitive exposition, for a start. Everything here is geared to move things forward (ironically as T&M loved the Adventure era best).

For some reason I've always assumed Jo's antique shaving kit was a groom's gift from Tinya.

In this issue, at least, he’s not become any smarter. He fights without planning, which is something Brita pulls him up on. With her sass, there’s still someone keeping him on his toes. I was going to say that he now has someone to look out for. But Brita’s age seems a little flexible. I thought she was quite young. But actually, she’s quite a bit older, and not just because Giffen draws everyone a little older looking, as there’s the shower panels.



Kono seemed to have more energy than a lot of the cast around her. Which is decent writing, until you realise that everyone else is just moping around a few dozen issues in. I appreciated that about her. I can’t say she was a favourite or that I disliked her. But I liked her a bit more in this reread. I’d have preferred to see her develop from capable (evading SPs) to Legion capable (nearly getting killed by the Khund agents to escaping Mordru alive) would have been a preference.



The SP looks as though it’s had five years of crushing dissent and protecting governemtn and corporate interests and assets.



I forgot to mention the other personalities. I’ll have read them all at one point, but I’m like his employers and mostly just shut them off when I’m reading.



This was something I was expecting to be built up. But…



At the end of the Levitz run, a number of Legionnaires returned to stand with the organisation that stood for so much in the galaxy, and contained their friends. Now it’s gone, we can see how much it meant to the likes of Rokk and Jo.



He's trying to speak Interlac, but something phonetic is lost in translation. Earlier on page 3 he said “you have my symphony”

What stile86 posted re:#1 surprised me - that Giffen didn't include a bio (assuming he was known to everyone already?) and the categorization of the Levitz Legion by Mark Waid. It's certainly one of my most beloved works in comics history, but time appears to have diminished its appeal. O tempora! Now I wonder what Giffen's and Waid's favourite Legion stories were at that time.



That was sort of my reaction - not to the point of violent death, but dial down the plucky tomboy a bit. Like Monstress, I appreciated her more when her character was fleshed out with some tragedy.



You know, I didn't pick up on homophobia at all, at least not as regards the assassins. Don't recall that Bond movie.



My god, I didn't fall for their advertising, did I? Of course it's addictive and of course they lie about it. I totally missed the "non-addictive" clause, which really sends the point home about how business is done on Rimbor and possibly elsewhere.



The power imbalance provides an interesting contrast, making the heroes' job harder and suggesting that the bad guys have been enjoying the upper hand since the collapse. Credible.



Funny, but the only power I remembered her having was the phasing power. She is a distinctive personality type compared to the Legionnaires. Don't recall if they explain at some point how she connected with Jo.



The resemblance to the shaving brush is a bit thin. Guess it doesn't really matter, he's just going after a Legion souvenir of great importance to him.



I had no idea either - and why would we connect it to Shvaughn? We don't know if this is how Circe looks in public; she might only show the buzzcut in private. The reason for the wig only hits later when she dresses up as other women. This series has a lot of these aha! moments that are like seeing the clues fall into place once the murder is solved - which makes it a lot of fun to reread.

Good point well taken about Kono's tragic backstory, but I don't recall her having anything resembling a full character arc by the time she was written out of the book when the Bierbaums left. Then again, I've only recently read issues 32-61, so I might be forgetting something. We shall see when we get there.

You haven't forgotten anything. The most backstory we ever saw from Kono on-panel was her Mordru-induced nightmare in issue # 6. Any other backstory was only in Who's Who and the Mayfair Games sourcebook.

Thanks, CMK. Good to know.

Legion of Super-Heroes #2 (already minus the "The" and the "New"?) reintroduces us to Jo "Ultra Boy" Nah and introduces us to new major character Kono.

Before I say much about the particulars of the issue, I just wanted to focus on Jo himself. For me, Jo is the main character that this era transformed for me in a positive way. Prior to 5YL, Jo was one of the Legion's powerhouses, albeit one with a peculiar limitation, but was otherwise very 2-dimensional for me. He was defined for me primarily by two things: 1) his overall "jock" personality that I found pretty blah, and 2) his relationship with Phantom Girl. Generally speaking, if you take those two things away, I was hard-pressed to tell you anything about Jo Nah other than his powers. Overall, a good Legionnaire to have in a fight (though often his limitation would come to bear in many fights) but not a compelling one at all.

5YL changed all of that. For my money, Jo is the male lead of this era. (My pick for the female lead, we'll get to in a few issues.) He becomes what Rokk is supposed to be--the actual heart and soul of this iteration of the Legion.

It turns out that if you take away the jock persona and the other half of a power couple, you have someone who is actually very interesting. Someone with a troubled past that he's found himself fallen back into. And with the loss of his better half, you feel his love for her more than you ever did while they were together, and you see how that loss informs his actions going forward. He becomes, in short, a three-dimensional character over the series' course, and it will be my pleasure to rediscover this Jo Nah and comment here on his development as we go forward in the re-read.

The issue opens with one of this era's trademark Omnicom trio of news snippets detailing Jo's and Tinya "Phantom Girl" Wazzo's then-upcoming nuptials during our five-year gap before switching to Rimbor, which we know to be Jo's homeworld. We see new character Kono in action and see that the SP is after her. We learn from some shady behind-the-scenes dealings between a Khund and a smarmy Rimborian corporate type that Kono's in cahoots with Jo. The Khunds send a pair of peculiar bounty hunters after them. The Khunds, curiously, are much more fired up to get Kono than they are to get Jo. What follows is a game of cat and mouse between Kono and the hunters that eventually brings Jo in and has a lot of collateral damage, including one of Jo and Kono's associates. In the aftermath, In the rubble of his hideout , Jo pulls a token from his Legion days from the wreckage. Like Rokk and Cham, Jo still carries a torch for the good old days. The closing Omnicom article gives us some insight into where Jo is now by revealing that Tinya went missing/presumed dead just prior to her and Jo tying the knot. In a way, it tells us all we need to know about the story we just read.

In between the action on Rimbor, we get:

-a Silverale commercial. One of the cultural hallmarks of the 5YL era, Silverale pops up a lot, moving forward.

-a scene of Loomis and Lydda shown to be hanging out on Lydda's world of Kathoon (nad feeling a little guilty about their comparative luxury there as opposed to life on Braal) talking about the departed Cham and Rokk, speaking of the latter two's quest that they characterize as quixotic.

-our first look at Shvaugn Erin in this series and how a shady woman named Circe, who is Dirk's lover, have an interest in getting some dirt on her.

-a first look at our mysterious black-panels character from the end of last issue. I don't know how many readers knew who this was after these two issues. I don't think seeing him was much of a clue. we'll know more next issue.

Overall, another enjoyable issue. This one had action, while the last had none. I didn't find the twin hunters all that interesting, though, and their characterization along the lines of "gentleman killers" has been done before and was tiresome. The real joy was seeing our first glimpses of the new Jo and his charming associate.

Kono, then and now at first blush, begs comparisons to the X-Men's Kitty Pryde. There's the obvious power comparison and her relative youth compared to the others as they assemble. But I feel that she distinguished herself rather well over the course of the series. I'm certainly looking forward to rediscovering how she does so.

One thing I found interesting about her that I'd forgotten is the explanation of her powers. From the get-go, she isn't just phasing but giving and borrowing her mass to create the effects. I don't know how much that is developed going forward. I think maybe they lay off and just simplify it as phasing, but I'm curious to see how they do it.

As for Jo, we just get a glimpse of the character I came to enjoy so much, but the groundwork is there. We know the tragedy that befell him. We know he didn't deal with it terribly well. But we know that he still has that heroic fire burning inside.

To misuse a catch phrase from the same decade: YO, JO!!!

I was thinking more like Jubilee, who had been introduced in the X-Men comic not long before this Legion relaunch got under way. She and Kono were both motormouthed and prone to being foolhardy.

My 2p on Jubilee: When Claremont or Lobdell wrote her, she was unbearable; Nicieza, who raised three daughters, had a more believable, less OTT way of writing her.

Hang on there are achieve editions beyond 13?

Not quite. We just started making up imaginary editions. It started with this post from Cobalt Kid:

http://legionworld.net/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=887956#Post887956

Hey, it's PolarBoy!

Long time, no see.

Welcome back Polar Boy!


Um... I'm just starting to read v4 issue 3 - Tenuous Link To Thread Lad

I've read it already, and I'm looking forward to giving it a viciously scathing review objective, well-considered critique.

I knew you loved it.

Oh, yes. Nothing I love more than a writer doing some ill-advised backpedaling at the last minute and killing off the wrong character.

The Legion of Super-Heroes #3 by Keith Giffen, Al Gordon, Tom & Mary Bierbaum, art by Keith Giffen & Al Gordon, Letters Todd Klein, colours Tom McCraw

Mordru monitors the ex-Legionnaires through the blue probes, concerned that they may regroup. Nura is High Seer, Jan's on Trom, Dawnstar is active, Brek's in custody, Thom's involved in a sports team, Querl's on Colu occupied with a child's health. Dirk's still on Earth and something is awakening at Lar's burial site on Shangalla. Mordru is Lord Emperor and is torturing Rond Vidar. The Ranzz family deals with agricultural challenges on Winath; Imra is pregnant. Salu has arrived; she and Ayla visit the statues of fallen Legionnaires which Garth purchased when Legion HQ closed. Rokk and Cham seek out Jo, who is running a Silverale smuggling ring, and convince him to join them to "go after Mysa". The crazy guy released from Labyrinth turns out to be Roxxas, hired by the Dominators to murder Blok. Roxxas sends Blok's remains/pieces to Graym Ranzz but the package is intercepted by staff and given to Garth. Shvaughn sends the holo of Blok's murder to "the net". A voice commands two others at the tomb of Lar Gand and, after an explosion, two naked humanoid forms stand.

Text pieces explain how Garth, Imra, Ayla and Mekt (now redeemed) have made a big success of the Ranzz farm, now called the Lightning Ring Plantation. Garridan, formerly Validus, carried a virulent plague bacterium which gravely affected Winath and is now isolated on Quarantine. Querl Dox worked out the source of this "Validus Plague" as well as a treatment protocol.


Comments:
After all these years, I finally made the connection between the asteroid misplaced by Brande Industries in #1 and the missing asteroid that was to receive the farm shipment in this issue. It's this level of detail which makes a 5YL re-read so enjoyable. A minor point, but this series is built on an abundance of minor points.

#3 moves the story forward quickly, with single panel updates on 7 ex-Legionnaires and more full stories about Mordru, the Ranzz family and the Roxxas-Dominator-Earthgov connection. At the same time, even more questions and mysteries are raised.

Mordru is back, powerful and vicious, ruling a planet as Lord Emperor but with no overt plans to take over the galaxy. The love bomb treatment that supposedly cured him of evil back in the Baxter issue clearly didn't last - or was he faking? His primary concern appears to be fear of a Legion regrouping. Whether he uses magic or hacking to monitor them through the blue probes is unclear, but he has eyes everywhere. Rond's fate at Mordru's hands is horrifying, but we have no idea why Rond, as a Green Lantern, went after Mordru.

The Ranzz story looks like a happy-ever-after until the text pieces reveal the devastation of the Validus Plague. The child on which Querl was working turns out to be Garridan Ranzz; I might have thought Danielle Foccart on first reading. His concentration on "a single child" emphasizes the strength of the Legionnaires' connections to one another, even after the group fell apart.

The crazy guy turns out to be Roxxas, another unexpected voice from the past. That the Dominators can tune out his other voices makes me wonder just what they are - possession, speaking at different frequencies or levels? He's another over-polite murderer; Mordru was also quite calm and reasonable in his torture of Rond, so excruciatingly formal and polite villains may be the norm in this age. (Thank heavens for the Khunds, in that case.)

Why kill Blok? I haven't checked if there's some reason given in the various blogs and interviews. I did find his extended death scene with Strata a bit long and boring, despite agreeing with Edward Abbey that rocks have rights. A box full of Brek Bannin's body parts, or Dawnstar's mangled wings would have been more bloody and horrifying; I didn't really feel the impact that this had on Garth and Shvaughn.

Something else's up with Lar Gand, very unclear, but certainly intriguing. More multiple voices and two figures arise from the grave: two people? one with a reflection? Lar or somebody else? It's a pretty creepy and ominous ending.

On LSH v4 Issue 3

Everything about this issue felt a bit off, a bit askew. Maybe it's...oh, let's not beat around the bush -- Giffen should have stuck to his original plans, and have Roxxas kill Erin instead of Blok. That he gave in to the Bierbaums' demands because of a truly boorish suggestion that Al Gordon made, "Keep her alive because she's secretly a man," says a lot about Giffen's inability to see the long-term harm that such capriciousness can have on an overarching storyline. In my opinion, naturally.

But I mean, at the most basic level, Erin should have died because she had already been reintroduced to readers in the previous issue, and we were given reasons to be concerned about her well-being. Blok, just like Pol Krinn in "Magic Wars," is simply hauled in out of nowhere -- no build-up, no foreshadowing -- to fill a plot function that's pretty lame to begin with. Namely, the villain du jour showing off what a badass he supposedly is by killing off a character. It doesn't help, either, that Roxxas and his "schizo fop" schtick have already been laid on so thick as to become tiresome. Snail-mailing Blok's body parts to Winath is not big and is not clever -- it's cheap, cheesy, and way over-the-top in the worst possible way!

(Incidentally, for all the favorable comparisons of this made-over Roxxas to Two-Face and Joker, I find him to be more like a mashup of the most annoying aspects of two of Giffen's own creations, Lobo and Ambush Bug. And if you REALLY want to trace the lineage of this stuff, Giffen created a character for Marvel back in the late 70s, Lunatik, while he was the penciler and co-plotter on Defenders; the obnoxious Lunatik was, by Giffen's own admission, the template for Lobo and Ambush Bug.)

Grade: 1 Out of 10 Taryns

v4 Issue 3

I don’t remember my reaction to the Liberace Goes Rock cover. What I do remember is my dislike of the opening page.

Everything was set up for a gradual reveal of what had been happening to our cast over the last five years. Each reveal had gone out of its way to connect the character with the Legion that they’d lost along with any number of issues that had affecting them in the intervening time. Then they thought that was a total waste of time and dumped a pile of updates on us.

I still have serious reservations about it now:-
They reveal the true villains behind the control of Earth. Why have them in shadow talking to Roxxas. None of us would have recognised ROxxas anyway, and any sense of mystery over Earthgov clearly isn’t worth anything.

Do we really need to know what Nura and Thom were up to? They aren’t going to be a central part of the book. Considering the quick changes TMK have had to make, and are about to make, why reveal anything here?

Dawnstar gets an “uncharted” location. There’s never an explanation for this, and it doesn’t fit in the slightest to where we see her next (more on that in a later issue).


The reveal for both Jan and Lar are giveaways for upcoming plots. Just an issue or two away for them both, making them needless reveals. Brainy also falls into this category.

It also hints at another problem with this volume. Everyone seems to know what everyone else is up to. Here, it’s Mordru spying on the Legion. Elsewhere the Dominion psychically know that Reep is *about* to relaunch the Legion and release Roxxas. Later we’ll see them worry about the group on Rimbor. That’s the group that are trying to keep a low profile, but might as well have neon Interlac signs saying “Legion Reunion” above their heads, for all the difference it makes to the plot.

The opening page in this issue has the feel of the opening page to the volume. The one that Mark Waid insisted should be in. Was there pressure that things were being revealed too slowly in this volume, hence this page?

There’s a nice touch as the servant of Mordru takes information on the Rimbor group across the courtyard to its master. We see the religious devotion to Mordru that will be in full bloom in issue #5.

The scene is also the Legion’s way of getting away from the Green Lantern mythos. I had thought this was a deliberate edict from DC. We’re going to see the impact of the Legion vs the Superman office next issue. Rond’s Power Ring is very deliberately destroyed here.

Levitz had tried to stay away from the DCU as much as possible (although loads of references still made it in from Thanagarian cops, JLA descendants, Doctor Fate outfits and Green Lanterns being banned from Earth. Here, it looks as though the separation is mandated *on* the Legion team from elsewhere. But a year further on from here, we’ll still have a strong Green Lantern connection and a trip to the Batcave. Odd.

From Tom’s blog, Rond was also supposed to be killed, but Mary convinced the others that he could be kept alive by being devoured numerous times. It’s certainly a gruesome fate, and the whole thing shows just what a monster Mordru truly is. He’s had human flesh more than once himself.

Having been advised that the Legion are reforming, Mordru says that “the time for these pleasant diversions is past” and then … well, doesn’t do a huge amount. Perhaps he goes off to start the dinner we’ll see in a couple of issues. He does go to tell a Giffen Shadowed guy called Vrykos. We’ll be seeing more of him, but it’s worth pointing out now that he was tipped by TMK as being a member of the team at some point.

I need to remember what the mystery of the vanishing asteroid was, in these early issues…

While Mordru has become a menace, things have gone in the opposite direction for Lightning “the storm talks to me” Lord. I liked this change. It was a genuine surprise, considering how far gone he used to be. We’ll get a touching text piece on Mekt’s recovery, and the perseverance of those around him later. It connected the two versions very well. It also showed the evolution of the villains seen so much through the Levitz era. The trick, of course, is to come up with new villains that are just as good, to replace them.

Mekt’s helping Imra and Garth run the plantation. We see that Garth has a walking stick, while Imra is pregnant. Rokk & Jo get to have faraway looks and rejoin the team. Cham gets to rebuild and join the team and Vi realises what the team meant to her and will rejoin. Imra gets to look at lots of Legion images and despite being a real powerhouse, can’t get to rejoin. I wouldn’t have noticed it at the time, but the pregnancy was a plot device to keep Imra away from shaping the book in a very different way to the boy’s club of Jo, Reep and Rokk. There have been changes to Mekt, Garth and Imra. All of which are kept in the background to the writer’s credit.

Our stopover on Winath continues with a lovely scene between Ayla and Vi. Garth has managed to get the Hall of Heroes statues from Earth.

Ayla used to dream that she’d come out there to find Vi’s statue during the Braal-Imsk war. It tells you everything you need to know about how much Vi means to her. Vi’s hesitant reaction shows just how much *she’s* reassessing her hard line approach both in v3 and in the 5YG. She was the one who pursued Ayla, and now finds that she has a lot to learn about being in a loving relationship, now that she has one. The realisation in her letter to Ayla about how much the Legion meant to her, was only the start.

The two look at a memorial of fallen Legionnaires in the final days of the group. It’s sad to think that the group crumbled to the extent that they didn’t erect statues with the others for Lar, Pol and Tinya. We’ll later learn that there should be another name on the plaque.

While the excursion continued Vi’s subplot, it was a catch-up couple of scenes. Setting the scene for Winath now, pays off in issue #10; Mekt, Imra and Garth will also all appear in that issue, with Mekt and Imra pay offs to what we see here (Mekt’s morality and mental acuity). There’s even a twist in the Hall of Heroes statues in a few issues, post Mordruverse.

The shadowed statue of Superboy is there, something that’s going to be a problem in an issue’s time.

Back on Rimbor, Cham and Rokk meet a large wolf creature. Like a few things last issue, I completely missed all the signs regarding Timberwolf. Looking back at the plot, I’m surprised that Cham, who knew where to find Rokk and Jo, wasn’t aware of Brin’s fate.

As they go to meet Jo, we get another nod to Cham’s espionage experience. Except everyone in the galaxy is seemingly able to track his every move. At the bottom of page 8, Mordru is monitoring him. At the start of page 9 The Dominators know where he is.

Having been given away on page 1 as the villains, the Dominators stroll around in an Earth building, watching the suspense plummet from the skies. They might have waited a Millennium to control the world, but we never get to know why. In a precursor to watching Bion’s trial run, the Dominion watch Roxxas kill Blok on the Puppet Planetoid (Adventure 313)

The battle is brief, with Blok badly injured before he can really come out of his meditation. Due to his stony form, he’s more prone than other characters to be shown receiving lots of damage, and TMK don’t hold back. His parting thoughts give more insight into the many physical changes he has undergone than we’ve seen in years. It’s a short, sad arc but does carry some fulfilment of his destiny in it. Roxxas shows off his “butcher” tag, aided by a handy arsenal of anti-legion weapons.

For reasons we never find out, the transmission to the Dominators on Earth also gets through to Erin. I had thought she was going to contact the Earth resistance with the information. But with the “get the transmission through” I now think it’s the Legion she’s contacting. We never find out, and in a few pages it won’t matter.

The Dominator worried about how to control Roxxas was right. The butcher sends the remains, using United Planet Parcel Service guaranteed same day delivery service to Winath.

Mordru’s surveillance dovetails nicely with the progress the team on Rimbor are making. Having met each other, and not bothered to reveal anything about Brin, Cham convinces Jo to join them. Jo suggests they take Kono along. She pops up in Jo and Cham’s shower, so I guess that settles any issues about her age, if not prompting a quick check to see if this is a code approved book.

Back on Earth, the Dominators plans have lasted an issue, as Roxxas has gone a bit off-piste. I’m sure they *meant* to ask the deranged madman what his plans were. Or even to ask him to follow their plan. But they’d reached the end of their nine allotted panels and the plot had to switch. They must have wasted 1000 years for this, because they are utter bumblers…of space! It’s issue 3 and the Dominion are already in damage limitation mode. Yet this plot will drag on for over two more years.

They have a list of Legionnaires they feel are grouping. But their list means that every time the Ranzz’s invite an old friend to Winath for dinner, they’ll release psychopaths into the galaxy. Despite their extensive monitoring, they don’t list Brin either.

In a nice nod to the previous issue, Rokk sees Jo’s demolished apartment Blok as we see his letter to Lydda telling her of his hopes and the stakes they face. There’s a nice line about Jo becoming the pirate he always imagined himself to be, harking back to those space pirate stories and his on-the-run story.

The text pages reveal the reason for Garth having a walking stick. He has been stricken by the Validus plague.

Darkseid’s curse was “the curse of darkness growing within you, destroying you from within… and that which is purest of you shall be the first to go.”

This could now be interpreted as Imra carrying Garridan, only for him to be snatched away at birth. The darkness that follows being a combination of him being Validus and the plague.

The Ranzz family have the burden of the deaths the plague caused. There’s also a nice nod to Quarantine, which we’ll be seeing in a while, and Brainy’s work in the case (again, we’re going to be seeing Brainy next issue, and he’s in the text pages, so why the need for that opening panel?

There’s a final little Easter egg in the mention of Dr Zan Orbal who was involved in the Devil’s Half Dozen plot and who gave Garth is artificial arm (now plague afflicted).

The Roxxas plague also seems to be contagious as a revived Lar Gand seems to have it on the last page, with multiple personalities vying for control. Again, with this whole page devoted to it, the opening panel seems a little heavy handed and pointless.

I enjoyed a lot of the issue, even more so at the time it came out. Cham & Rokk recruit Jo (and Kono) building on issue #2; We know they intend to face Mordru because Mysa is with him; The weaker Roxxas plot moves forward with a huge, scary jump and there are reveals about who controls Earth and more hints of resistance to it. There are lots of Easter eggs and the update on the Rannzs was welcome and followed Vi’s subplot. The scene between Ayla and Vi at the statues is one of my favourites. All that and a cliff-hanger regarding Mon-El. It’s a packed issue.

I had thought I’d be commenting on the wheels, if not coming off then, veering close to disaster with the next issue. But… in the hindsight of knowing how things pan out, there are decisions in *this* issue that make a lasting impact on the plot.

Rond was intended to die in this issue. His power ring was supposed to be destroyed too. Rond is only here so the ring can get broken. It’s not enough to just not mention Green Lanterns. DC can seemingly only be satisfied that the deed was done, if it’s in the book (annual Event retconning was still new back then, and you can supply your own link between DC and historic organised crime backers )

Instead, Rond gets a reprieve and end up with Laurel Gand. Now, that creates a very nice triangle within the team. But because of length of preplanning for some of these plots, the change in direction doesn’t ripple through to the rest of the book. Rond becomes little more than part of that triangle. He gets a big part to play in #5, but that’s really about it.

Back in the Levitz days, he wasn’t even supposed to be a Green Lantern. Levitz had another idea about how he survived his father’s attack. We see none of that. Nor do we see a confrontation with Universo, when that plot comes around. Because he wasn’t supposed to survive this issue. For all the difference it makes, Kent Shakespeare could have been the one in the pit.

I mentioned Rond first, because the same sort of thing happens with the other reprieve in the book. Erin was supposed to die instead of Blok. Blok is a stand in because, like the Element Lad Roxxas is obsessed with, Blok is also the last survivor of his race.Of course, TMK couldn’t just have Roxxas kill Jan to achieve the same plot impact. That’s because Jan was slated to be a key part of the team (or not as things turned out).

On the plus side, killing Blok allows TMK to have the Legion quickly rally towards a Shanghalla (or WInath in this case) type point where he can attack them all at one. As events unfold in DC regarding this book, this allows for some speedy plotting to bring things to a head in issues #10 & #11. It’s a bit of a lifesaver as things turned out for the creative team.

Partly, that’s because killing Erin would have surely required some more intricate plotting. Erin wasn’t going to get a statue on Shanghalla. A different structure would have been required to involve the Legion around her death. Having appeared in #2 and here (the latter only due to Giffen deliberately giving us a nod that she was supposed to be the one to go) Erin’s plot doesn’t really go anywhere. She’s part of the resistance network. But she doesn’t become a key figure in future issues that highlight that movement. She doesn’t become someone Element Lad comes out of retirement to protect, because Roxxas is on the loose. Her plot connecting her to Dirk and through him, Circe never goes anywhere. And the reason for that is that, like Rond, she was supposed to be dead and TMK couldn’t adjust the plots.

These choices, the really clunky opening page and the Big Villains of the volume being little more than a dim comedy duo take some of the shine from all the pluses in the issue.

For a change, we agree 100 percent.

And there's more where that comes from.



It must have been sheer bedlam behind the scenes, even worse than we've been "officially" told. No wonder Waid half-joked that he's amazed he didn't end up in jail for murder.



It might be a misdirection on the creators' part. Or, more likely in my opinion, the creators deliberately winding up Dawnstar fans.



Yup.



Quite likely. And I think the opening page to the volume was a hundred times more artful, and a thousand times more coherent.



Good going, Mary! [/sarcasm] As if the Erin thing wasn't bad enough!



:rolleyes:

Was that Mary and/or Tom's idea, too? Sheesh!



It's different, that's for sure. I think, like so many other things in this volume, the messy working conditions kept it from being fully explored (in favor of some truly awful tangents, but I'll leave it at that for now.)



Was that Tom and/or Mary's idea, too?



And, once again, agreed 100 percent.



Yep.



But not before Giffen's...personal issues...necessitated two consecutive fill-ins in #8 and #9.



Not a different structure, an *actual* structure, insisted on by an editor who was actually *doing his or her job!*

Dan Raspler could've done it, it he'd stepped in immediately after Waid, instead of Michael Eury. In my humble opinion.

Hmm... I definitely think Shvaughn would've worked better as a death than Blok (though it would probably earn her a place on the "women in refrigerators" list), but I'm glad they didn't kill Rond. Having two major supporting characters killed in the issue would've been especially annoying.

Pretty sure Vrykos as a Legionnaire was Giffen's idea.

With Dawnstar, I suspect they really just didn't have clear plans for her at that point. Which of course raises the question of why even bother dropping a tease, but...

Points well taken.



Exactly.

And that, in turn, brings up yet again the lack of a firm editorial guidance (not that it was any great shakes during the 70s and 80s Legion eras, but the method behind Mort Weisinger's 60s madness has continues to get clearer to me with every issue we re-read.)

Killing Shvaughn would have had a big impact, but might have directed the story to the Subs/Earth resistance (if that's who she was communicating with) and Jan, leaving the Legion with only Mysa to bring them back into action. But still, Blok?? Thanks thoth for presenting some of the thinking behind this choice. Killing Rond wouldn't have been a big deal, apart from emphasizing the deadly tone of the story; he already died once and did any of us shed tears? I wondered if he and Mysa had a thing going and that's why he went after her instead of her Legion pals.

I had a different reaction to the first page, liked to know that these characters were still in play and would likely be appearing. In retrospect, the Dawnstar scene is a curious one - I wondered if this is was key to her later development, but it was either pointless (thoth & EDE,) misdirection (Ann) or the connection was skipped/cut.



Good point, I hadn't thought about Cham being able to track down everyone and probably getting regular updates about what was happening - not to mention his chameleon sense, or however he reads the creature he shapeshifts into.

Agree with thoth & Ann that the surveillance of everybody everywhere is a bit over the top.