Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Lightning Saga Legion in Action!

Same here amigo. Hell I think it would have made my day if frank woulda been on art duties in this one.

Really loved the latest Action issue and was likewise surprised how much Legion was in it. Even as corpses, I think this was the best respect I've seen given to Karate Kid and Una since they got here. Good moments with Thom. I liked seeing the interactions with Batman too, and the fact he remembers the three Legions.

I'm struggling with Johns' Garth. He reads like Ultra Boy to me (a postboot and threeboot one at that). I used to love the loud, hotshot SW6/pre-death personna of his but it jars me here. Probably because I just finished a good re-read of the 70s/80s stories that are supposed to precede this version and it's rather absent there. The personality, scruff, and tattoo really don't emulate a Garth Ranzz who is/was/would have been a stay at home dad who didn't miss the fight at all. Maybe I'm just being a super sensitive fanboy.

Good build-up here for Three Worlds. And although I'm not surprised by the incoming villain at all, I did still have a sense of awe and surprise at seeing him again. Hey, I even agree with him. He's been given the shaft in the past. Show us what you got.

I was happy to see Karate Kid and Una get a decent send off after the horrible treatment they got in Countdown. They deserved at least to be taken home and buried with honors. The Starman part really cemented that he was not going back tot he future anytime soon, and tied in nicely to the future version of him we saw way back in the end of the Jack Knight Starman series.

I agree with Ultra Jorge. I am going to miss seeing this version of the Legion writing by Johns. Wating for August is going to seem like such a long time now.

Amen brotha, I for one am glad he's back and ready to through down. I'm just wondering what Incarnation of " you know who" he is exactly. Either way I'm all for legion of three worlds.

I just read it. Yeah I miss Frank badly. Didn't care for the art. Except the last page. That rocked!

I also enjoyed the story very much. Batman and the Legion? I was really worried. But I was suprised. Good stuff.

Really great issue!!! I agree it would have been great to have Frank on the art one more time, but it was great to see Garth interacting with Clark and Bruce, and I was thrilled to see him connect with Thom again too!

And as a Starman fan, I absolutely loved the Danny Blaine reference! We knew from Robinson's Starman series that a Thom Kallor from the future was destined to be the next Starman, using the name Danny Blaine. The question of which Thom would fulfill that destiny has been a bit muddled, as Jack Knight met a young postboot Thom who appeared to grow up and become the Kingdom Come Starman, but it appears since the Lightning Saga story, it's the preboot Thom again.

Robinson already accounted for the discrepancy during Jack and Thom's final meeting, with Thom indicating that things may or may not happen (as there were both events in the past and future that could effect the present. Gotta love time travel in a multiverse...especially with a bad guy who likes to mess up continuity 'cause he's got a grudge. Trapper's back! Looking forward to L3W (so long as it doesn't turn into a bloodbath with Prime around). Johns story and Perez art...it's like printing money!!!!

I found it almost impossible to read due to the ametuerish art. Heads all tiny and squished in relation to their bodies, that really weird hair on LL, etc., all detracted from the overall reading experience for me. Thankfully the continuation is another book and Perez, while not my favorite artist is at least competent even though everything he draws reminds me somewhat of wedding cake decoration.

Except for not having Frank (who really won me over with his art by the end) This issue was actually better than the issue resolving the Earth-man story. Of course I think GJ is better at building up threats than resolving the stories that come from them.

But the Thom/Danny from Starman is the reboot version. I'm quite worried about him now because he's expendable isn't he. Plus near the end of "The Legion" Reboot Nura was all creeped over seeing his death or something.

So the big thing is that Batman knows all three Legions. Also the upcoming L3W will actually be the second time the 3 Legions meet. There was an unused panel from Dale Eaglesham depicting a meeting 3 very youthful teams in a barn (Kansas?) no less.

And it was finally established that Una was Duo Damsel not Triplicate Girl. I'm disappointed by this in that now there is only one powerless Lu left... hopefully when the Three Legion Worlds collide/collapse, there will be at least 2 of her still standing.

Which can get really confusing. So I took this as the Time Trapper never killed one of DD's bodies. Well maybe he did but not like the classic LSH v3. #50.

Supes did go out of his way to state the KK has now died twice.

Yeah, but Starman (Thom) implied that there are big changes in store for Lu. In the pre-Crisis Legion, we were told tht Lu should have died when her first third died. Apparently, this was true of other Carggites (I think that's where she was from).

It could be that Lu was a mutant of her race -- maybe should has the power to create more duplicates -- but just doesn't know it.

Sadly, it appears Karate Kid ain't coming back. Way to go Giffen!

This makes me wish Shooter would create a villian named Keeth Gifin aka The Hackler,and have Val kick the sh!t out of him.

Ya know I 've been wondering how/ who would catch on that when Val appeared. I was especially wondering why "Sensor Girl" wouldn't be freaking out about his death..cause...yeah that boggles the mind..Darn you Goeff and your crazy plot twists that only you know!

Yikes, this thread definitely lost some posts. There were a few comments for #860. It was a mixed bag for me. I like the idea that Superman connects with the Legion as his childhood friends, and that Batman totally just does not get it at all. I'm not too sure I like the way that Johns has Lightning Lad and the Legion call him "Kal" and Batman calls him "Clark." I'd probably prefer Clark from all parties, because I guess I always liked the old cliche that "Clark" is who he really is at heart.

I can't remember who mentioned it in one of the lost posts, but Johns' take on Garth is just so wrong. I don't feel like John's really gets some of the Levitz era characterizations, which this version should at least roughly correspond to. As was pointed out in the lost prior post, Garth was a stay at home dad and at any rate was never depicted as much of a hothead until the 5YG. That was grafted in by the Bierbaums as part of the whole ludicrous Proty retcon and his more laidback personality was played off as Proty's. And yet here in 860, we see him zapping policemen with little provocation. Ugh.

For that matter, I don't really remember Superboy ever seeming especially friendly with Garth. It seems like he was closer to his "big brother" Mon-El, and Brainiac 5.

The art in this issue is simply as amateurish and unappealing as anything I've seen in a long time. Garth looks like he's on steriods, which I guess would explain the rage. After the Gary Frank art that preceded it (especially the last couple issues when the "crazy eyes" had gone away) this was a big letdown.

I liked seeing the Time Trapper back in action again. Does Superman no longer remember meeting the post 5YG team anymore? He met them during that long story when he was bouncing around the time stream. They fought that crazified Dev-Em and then the moon was blown up. It's frustrating because I want that era to fit in somehow as well, even though I guess it's not in favor now.

Totally disagree--there is ample evidence of their friendship--Garth was the first Legionnaire to save Superboy's (as well as Krypto's) life. And Superboy was of course, willing to sacrifice his own life to revive Garth.

I agree with matlock. It was a disturbingly wrong characterization on so many levels. Not only the caveman looks and personality, but the idea LL didn't have an innate sense of right and wrong, and had to be taught the difference by Clark Kent. He doesn't "fit" with Johnsboot Saturn Girl, either.

There's a 99.99 chance I'm reading too much into the cloth bandages on LL's arm. Not the fact they're anachronistic in the medically and hygenically advanced 31st century, and would burn off the first time he used his powers. I mean he's not the only character in this issue wearing cloth bandages on his arms.

The rest was desperate backpedaling:

-- In the Lightning Saga, the JLA and JSA didn't know the Johnsboot Legion from jack. Now Batman suddenly remembers the three teams fighting Mordru together way back when. Hal, Jay, Dinah, PG and others should have remembered that battle too -- but in LSaga everyone acted like they'd never heard of the Legion before.

-- Batman remembers some of the reboot Legionnaires from Final Night, while Superman, who met the *entire* reboot Legion in the 20th century, fought at their side and parlayed with them afterwards, has conveniently forgotten all about them.

-- Johns still hasn't explained when, how and why Karate Kid was resurrected from the dead (before he got dead again) and I bet you he never does.

-- Una, until this issue, was unquestionably part of Triplicate Girl. KK called her TG, she called herself TG and even spoke of her two other selves in the future. Now, inexplicably, she's Duo Damsel. Or was.

I'm not sure what to make of Danny Blaine's, er, Starman's prediction that Luornu will multiply like WaK's Triplicate Girl. It may be a clue to the "merger" we've speculated about -- or just the rantings of a madman signifying nothing.

Johns isn't stupid -- but I think he believes Legion fans are so enthralled by his doppelgangers they'll give him carte blanche to do anything he damn well pleases and ignore the obvious fact he's making up junk as he goes along. Sad thing is, he may be right.

the only thing i really noticed that bugged me(the artwork was ok) is that time trappers skin was green looking,( that could have been the weird lighting in his bubble area.)

Wow, I can't believe I'm offering these arguments in favor of Johns's plotting, but here goes:

1) During the Lightning Saga, Batman knew about the Legion, but didn't know Karate Kid, so I'm not sure that's an inconsistency. KK wasn't in the original JLA/JSA/LSH crossover, and wasn't part of Team 20 in the 2boot, and as far as I can tell from the covers, wasn't in KK's solo title. Of course, if you were writing Batman CORRECTLY, Bats would have a full dossier on every Legionnaire gleaned from offhand comments by Supes and the statues in the Fortress of Solitude. Still, I think Johns deserves a pass on Batman.

2) I recall at the time of Team 20 and Final Night, Superman expressed puzzlement over the changes in his friends (I remember a Lightning Lad/Live Wire comment). Of course, at that time, Superman had not been Superboy and had "met" the Legion before but as far as we know wasn't a member of the Legion. It's one of the things I hold most against DC editorial, the Superman creative teams, and the whole 2Boot enterprise that they mixed up all this stuff so badly. What I'm trying to say is, I don't think you can blame Johns for this. Johns seems to have tried to deal with this by having his Superman/Legion sever ties prior to Final Night/Team 20 and his Superman thinking something is odd about the future, but unable/unwilling to pursue it. It's a weak argument, but it does the best of making lemonade from the lemons of the 1990s.

3) I tend to agree with Trom about wrapping up the KK and Una stories. I will be presently surprised if Johns addresses this satisfactorily. Lord knows I don't understand it -- as near as I can see, the KK/Una story was a way to tie KK and Kamandi into Countdown (and a nod to the last ish of KK's 1970s solo book) and a use of already dead Legionnaires (so new deaths weren't needed) and a way to get Giffen to work on Countdown (so he could rejoice in killing KK again). Boy, THAT'S a character-driven plot for you.

HOWEVER, I do think you can explain the Trom's Trip/Duo question by noting that, from Una's perspective, she has 2 selves left in the future, thus strongly indicating she is the self killed by Computo, while Superman remembers her from a later time period as Duo Damsel.

All of this makes my head hurt. Obviously, no one can be a fan of the Legion WITHOUT being concerned with time travel, paradoxes, and the like, but this is too much. Cue Reboot making a pithy and amusing snark about how this is all bollocks.

Superman having known the first Legion from his youth probably dismissed the ZH/Final Night Legion as a duplicate LSH, especially if his friend Brainy had told him that another was out there.

Its pretty clear from the deleted art from JSA that Johns has retconned an encounter between the three Legions into the Adventure era. The encounter might have occurred at the Kent farm in Kansas. So Final Night may actually now be the second encounter between modern Superman and the reboot Legion. It's not clear when this happened in the reboot Legion's continuity relative to Final Night, but its certainly before the DnA run. So Superman assumes his LSH is the 'real' one and tells Bats this.

From the Teen Titans perspective, the ZH Legion is the real Legion because Bart and Conner were attached to it and they interacted with it on several occasions. So if Robin were in this issue he'd tell Bats that the reboot was real.

From current Supergirl's perspective, the third version is the real one because she was with them for several months. So if she were in this issue she would speak for those who are joined Legion Fandom with the WaK series and tell Bats that her friend Starboy has dark skin.

Finally the way Johns wrote Batman in the issue represents the average comics fan. He doesn't know which version is real (and probably doesn't care) he's seen all three of them in the spinner rack of his career or yet another version on Kids' WB and it's just given him a headache.

This is mainly because of the missing issue of Countdown (Number 53) where Supergirl, Tim (Robin) and Cassie, and Kal-El had tea at the BatCave and they argued for 6 hours over which one was real.

As usual, Tamper is brilliant AND right -- Johns's retconning of an early Legion of 3 Worlds meeting precisely explains why Superman was so mellow about the appearance of the 2Boot Team 20.

I just have to say, though, again, that the Franks-designed "Adult Legion" looks RIDICULOUS! Garth looked scary, crazy and bizarre. I'm surprised Bats didn't automatically haul him off to Arkham. What the nass is that white cumberbun thing on Garth's abs? Is it the 31C wonder man-girdle? Is it holding in Garth's beer belly? Cause you know, based on his depiction by Johns, he's GOTTA have a beer belly. Likely PBR, too.

The thing Garth wears.... Saturn Girl got pregnant and is making Garth carry the baby this time as not to ruin her figure yet again.

Well, in LSH85, Superman's unfamiliar enough with the group that he doesn't realise they're not the same group he'd met, briefly, four times (post-Crisis Levitz-era LSH in the Pocket Universe story, and immediately-post-founding preboot-LSH, Cockrum-era preboot-LSH and 5YL LSH in Time & Time Again - which retconned the group he'd met before to include preboot Laurel Gand. This version remained nominally intact post-ZH), until they start going wha-huh at stuff like "Lightning Lad" (a mistake he repeats when he meets Garth himself in LSH100) before.

And, as you sort-of-note, his only reaction to the news that they're not is a slightly bemused "huh... future changed more than I thought in Zero Hour" thought balloon. (At this point, remember, he's met the 5YL Legion, who they're clearly younger than). Now, if people I was CLOSE friends with were, from my perspective, overwritten and thus effectively worse-than-dead, explaining why I hadn't heard from them for a while... I wouldn't be "mellow", especially in my thoughts even if I could hide it from the people in front of me.




Too tired to be pithy & amusing right now. Just passed midnight here.

«This makes no sense, unless... the timestream changed more than I thought.»
Superman, thought balloon, LSH85.

Now, if we're to assume these are all potential "Teh Futures", try and explain
1) the existance of both a Valor and a Mon-El in the contemporary DCU. And why Superman himself would have dubbed the L.E.G.I.O.N./Darkness Within Lar Gand "Valor" when he was so identical to his supposed childhood pal.
2) How Team 20 could have ended when Veridium has been retconned out. And, consequently, how come Cos, B5.1, Monstress and Apparition were distracted from Earth at just the right moment to dodge the Blight, and would consequently save Saturn Girl & XS just as they were about to get hammered in LotD (although Imra had knocked the Blighted down, XS was too weak to run because of the visions she'd had hammered into her head). And, of course, since the Blight wouldn't get stopped, that would have been the end of the whole UP. Even before you get into Xanthu, "Venge's" role in the Ra's administration, etc...

Incidentally, if you're (a) taking the deleted panel as gospel and (b) assuming this whole clusterfrak somehow fits with the original comics, it would be after Final Night and before the last story of Legion of Super-Heroes #100 for the Legion based on the presence of a pre-5.1 Brainiac 5 with Koko for the postbootalikers. Given that the whole team gets about five minutes together in that whole spell, it would either be a retconned fourth timeslip sometime after Lgs #54 (which would contradict comments made in-story), or it would get plothammered into Lgs47/LSH91. There's no spot where it could properly fit.

And for kicks and a dash of irony while we're at it:





Concerning Batman's team ups with the Legion and KK in Brave and the Bold...


I suppose it's possible the Action Legion is from before those teams up happened...but it's unlikely since the Action Legion is from right around the time of the Crisis and those two adventures in Brave and the Bold predated the GDS.


But really...it's a different Earth, different Batman, different Legion. That was the Pre Crisis Earth One...and we are now on New Earth. That has a different history...one that seems to include the best of the Pre Crisis and Post Crisis Universes.


As for why I posted the Karate Kid Kamandi Team up....I just find it ironic that Karate Kid actually gave birth to Kamdandi's world in Countdown...but once upon a time he was part of it, for at least an adventure.


Honestly...there's no way it's going to fit seamlessly together.

What people need to realize is that this is not Earth 1..it's not Earth Only...it's an entirely New Earth which incoporates elements of everything that has come before.

So you may as well look at it as if that Final Night meeting happened in an entirely different Universe...and while something similar probably happened on the current Earth, in this current Universe...it probably had some slight differences....and I mean really slight differences, like a couple of lines of dialogue and a slight differnce of recognition.


As I always said...the Post Crisis Legion could never match up with the Pre Crisis Legion, becuase the Superman was entirely different, a lot more than that, but that was the main thing. It's like matching up the Pre Crisis Superman to the Post Crisis Superman...it just doesn't work in a linear continuity.

There is no way to tie the Pre Crisis and Post Crisis continuities together into a linear time line...it's definitely going to be a patch job. In fact...you'd have to create an entirely new Earth to do it, which is what DC has done.


In this case...all the events we have seen in the Legion's history...now have happened on a different earth that bears a resemblance to both the Pre and Post Crisis DC Unis...it has elements of both(hopefully, the best elements of both, and none of the worst).

And beyond that, some of the differences, the differet Legions, instead of all happening on alternate earths as was the explanation Pre Infinie Crisis, they are now part of one earth and were the result of alternate timelines due to the Time Trappers screwing with the Legion's Past.


Now? The Superman that was never Superboy? He was a trick played on the Legion, he was the result of time Trapper Trick, not the COIE...in this New Earth continuity.

In fact...all the Legions bear the mark of the Time Trapper's manipulations....of his trying to remove Superman from their history...


As the Trapper himself said, and I heartily agree...they were always stronger together.

That's the explantion...some stuff did not happen exactly as we remembered it...close, but not exact. Whether it's because this is a different Universe, or because the Time Trapper has altered the past multiple times, or it's simply Geoff Johns changing stuff himself...it's a litte different.


So that scene in Final Night that you mentioned, that was on a different Earth than the current one, that was a different Superman, and a different Legion.

That was not the New Earth Superman, and that was not any of the Legions that will be taking part in L3W...


As well, the true Pre Crisis Legion, that was on a different Earth, that was a different Legion from any of the ones taking place in the L3W, and that was a different Superman. That's the Earth One Legion and Superman...and the ones we are currently reading about are none of those...but a combination of both.


The hope is that everything that is essential to the iconic Legion, as well as the newer additions to their cannon, the best of the Legion of 3 Worlds, can be combined in a way that that adds to the Legion, and doesn't detract from it.


In a way what Johns has done is pretty brilliant, what can't be explained by the fact that this is a new and entirely different earth, can be explained by the Time Trapper's manipulations.


And he hasn't just incorporated 3 Legions into a parallel continuity of sorts...he's incorporated all of them...including the 5YG Legion, including the Post Crisis Legion...he's even figured out how to get the Pocket Universe into the broader continuity. To the Time Trapper, they all happened...although not exactly as any of us remember them.

Too late, methinks.