Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Reading the Postboot Legion! (LSH 110, L*67)

The intro issue for Vi, Zoe & Laurel was well done and gave us a feel of their personalities and capabilities very quickly. Not sure how I feel about Laurel's xenophobia...it was an awesome storyline and it was really one of the first things to distance this Legion from its predecessor, but in the long run I don't know how good it was for her character as she never really made a successful comeback after the xenophobia story wrapped up.

One thing I think they definitely did get right was showing Vi as being quiet and unassuming, but still very very good at what she does. Seeing how timid she was in a lot of the old pre-Yera stories, you wonder why she was in the Legion at all sometimes! I much prefer the balance we got in the postboot Legion

I had stopped bouying the Legion a couple of issues before this one. I did buy it on the strngth of the cover. I recall it being a good issue. Clean, crisp art. Youthful freshness. Interesting new candidates. But it wasn't my Legion.

Looking back I'm not sure I thought Laurel's xenophobia would wear off. It was one of her main character traits. He problems with the [SPOILER DELETED] seem to bear that out in part. Although Laurel had only been introduced in v4, I had read the Levitz Supergirl appearances, and this was still quite a change from both.

I'd already seen Violet as the introvert for years. While her combat experience and training helped, it was a step back again. I wanted to see her with Ayla and to have developed into a strong tactical leader. Again, the subsequent [SPOILER DELETED] issues moved her away from that role too.

So, it's a good issue, making strong statements about the characters it was going to use. Ironically, in doing so, it reminded me of how far away it was from the Legion I liked. I didn't pick up too many issues beyond this one at the time.

Not only that, but why would a newscast announce his arrest before his arrest had been made? Was there a leak in the SP holding cell?

I loved the story, but there are some things that are too convenient to accept. Another example is how the Legionnaires rush to embrace XS when she announces she's going to stay. I thought only Cos knew about her panic during the Tangleweb episode and, by extension, her doubts about staying.

I loved it, though, that Triad did not remember her name earlier in the story. It established that Jenni was still on the outer fringes of the team and, likely, no one would have missed her if she had left. (Though if she had, none of the others would have been alive to miss her.)

Another unexplained coincidence: How does Triad grab hold of Apparition's cape when the latter is intangible? It's been established that Tinya can phase only parts of her body, but why would she leave her cape (and, by extension, her back end?) tangible while peering into the president's office? She was just asking for a butt kicking.

On the other hand, this story has two qualities the Tangleweb story lacked: natural pacing and character development. It's good to see the Legionnaires sitting around, waiting while Brande and Chu discuss their future. This scene, in which "nothing" much happens, affords us the opportunity to get to know the characters a little better as they interact. Lu, who was treated only as a supporting character during the first two issues is gradually coming to the fore as a competent, surprising, and unpredictable girl with three personalities.

Cos's depiction is also very fresh and credible. He continues to demonstrate leadership qualities in his nonjudgmental way of addressing XS's panic and in the speech he gives at James' funeral, playing up the latter's positive qualities (or spinning them, one might say).

The scene with Imra and Garth tells us so much about the limitations of being a telepath (or, perhaps, Imra's limitations). It also advances the plot in a surprising way.

Good riddance, Doyle. I'm glad that this subplot finally draws to a close and once again establishes that the Legionnaires can be quite effective in closing a case. One definite advantage that most of these stories have had over many which came before is that there's a more satisfying sense of closure to the subplots. Even the Tangleweb episode ended in a way that felt natural even though the villain got away.

And, of course, Jenni gets her big moment in the spotlight. I have nothing new to say about this, as it plays out as expected. I did like the slowing down effect of the stasis field and the abrupt shift into high speed on page 17. For an instant, I felt what it must feel like to have super-speed.

(But here's Concidence No. 4 or is it 5? Why would James be buried with his stasis belt? Why would such a dangerous device be allowed anywhere near a state funeral?)

Last, we have Mano's origin. I agree with Ibby and Cramey: Mano is a much more interesting villain with an element of tragedy. In the issues to come, as I recall, he exhibits a sense of decency (and here, he destroys his world because he considers the corpse-littered streets an "abomination"--giving his people a decent burial, as it were). One gets the feeling that he was a good man pushed to the brink of madness and beyond by circumstances out of his control: a tragic hero in the classic sense.

Grade: 78.4 (C+)

Although the story doesn't tell us this, I've always believed they were his wife and child. It makes his tragedy so much more personal.

And, by the way, it provides a nice contrast with the preboot Mano, who was shunned by his society.

Laurel's xenophobia was certainly a bold move, and made for a great character arc. I agree with thothkins, the way Laurel was written made it doubtful whether she would have been able to overcome it - which would make future issues pretty powerful. I'm fairly happy with the first part of Laurel's "heroic arc", but agree with raz that what they did with her after was largely unsatisfying.



I wondered also whether the UP had meant to bury him with the belt, or whether Doyle's people had snuck it into the coffin. The latter seems more likely, as it really doesn't make sense - even if the belt had been deemed safe, surely the UP could have put it to good use instead of burying it with James. Perhaps they had meant to, as the belt was shorted out when James died yet it works perfectly fine during the funeral.

Well, although it would be trivial to conceive of a computer in the background scanning all the news links for any mention of Doyle's name, I'm pretty sure "convenient" is spelt L-Y-L-E in this case [Pretty sure the "newsreader" is Imra, Lu or - most likely - Tinya in a wig & false eyebrows too!]


Well, remember that the belt was an *amplifier*, not a generator.

As for the rest, well, why would such a dangerous device as a BOMB be allowed anywhere near a state funeral?

I wondered also whether the UP had meant to bury James with the belt, or whether Doyle's people had snuck it into the coffin. The latter seems more likely, as it really doesn't make sense - even if the belt had been deemed safe, surely the UP could have put it to good use instead of burying it with James. Perhaps they had meant to, as the belt was shorted out when James died yet it works perfectly fine during the funeral.

And good point on the belt being an amplifier - Doyle's people probably not only repaired it but also boosted it quite a bit.



And this would have been done to catch him in the act? Maybe the telepathic info Imra pulled from the assassins' minds wouldn't have been admissible in court - or if it were, it wouldn't have been sufficient?

If Doyle's men had snuck it into the coffin, Jenni should not have guessed that it was there. Or perhaps she should have drawn the same conclusion herself.

As you point out, even if the belt had been shorted out, it makes no sense that James would be buried with it. Surely it contained technology that could be useful or dangerous in some other capacity.

I chalk it up to sloppy writing.

Curious interpretation, Reboot. If that was the writers' intent, they did not make it clear.




I may have missed an explanation in the earlier stories that the belt amplifies some natural ability James possesses. Perhaps that was how the belt worked in the preboot and the writers didn't bother to explain such for these stories. (And, really, they should have; since they've altered so much, they shouldn't have left it to the readers to assume anything was the same.)

In any case, I'm not sure what the difference it makes. The belt was clearly a dangerous device, and it remained so even with James dead.

I'm puzzled by your last question. Clearly no one "allowed" the bomb to be present. But someone did place the stasis belt there, and Jenni reacts as if she expected it to be there. Perhaps she should have thought, "Oh, that must be James' stasis field! Someone must have smuggled it in!" The writers leave too much guesswork to the readers.

This issue demonstrates how versatile Legion stories and writers can be. It takes us from the comical to the horrific in one issue, and the transition feels natural.

The Athramites have little to contribute to the story, but they do provide a nice spell of levity following the seriousness of the previous two issues. Yes, Garth, Lu, and Lyle overreact by running from them, but, since the Athramites aren't villains, they can't very well clobber them. (One supposes Garth was merely trying to scare them with his lightning bursts.) Metaphorically, the Athramites represent the reality that image and public opinion polls often take precedence over substance, and the Legionnaires' reactions represent how many readers (or how this reader, in any case) wanted to react: to run away screaming.

Oh, to be a Legionnaire and have a grandfatherly rich dude shower you with a brand, spanking new headquarters, state of the art technology, and even your own chef! These scenes illustrate what makes the Legion, in part, so appealing: they are the elite who get the best of the best. Who wouldn't want to belong to this most exclusive of clubs?

But, of course, there's a cost for all this luxury: the Legionnaires have to save a slimy profiteer from a horrific assassin such as Mano. I love the complexity of this storyline: McCauley is clearly the bad guy and Mano the victim, yet it is Mano's actions the Legion must stop. Mano has crossed the line, murdering employees of McCauley's in some delusional belief that he is getting back at McCauley and working his way up to him. One can feel sorry for Mano and even sympathize with him while understanding that he must be stopped.

Even though this issue is tightly plotted, it does not feel rushed. It allows for plenty of revealing character moments, such as Cos putting Gim in charge of the second team, and Gim's almost tearful reaction. The Imra scene again tells us something about being a telepath: when she probes for someone, she can be detected.

The art remains the weakest part of this LSH series: Five artists were used on this story, and there are some rough spots. (Tinya looks like she's put on a lot of weight on page 3, and Rokk looks plumb ridiculous on page 22). In other places, the settings convey an appealing sense of expansiveness. This is a roomy 30th century, even in McCauley's underground.

However, it is always easy to tell what is going on--an enviable skill many artists lack.

I believe this is my favorite issue so far--it even ends with an appropriately unexpected cliffhanger. How are the Legionnaires going to survive? How will Mano?

Grade: 90.3 (A-)

One thing about the whole Mano thing that I do find unsatisfactory is that, apparently, there was no follow up to the deaths of the people of Angtu. Although knowing McCauley, he would have made sure he violated no laws and there probably was no basis for the UP to prosecute him - most likely, legally the deaths on Angtu were caused by the people who used the weapons, and not by McCauley as he only manufactured and sold them.

Great thread. I'm re-reading them too but I'm a bit further along. By re-reading them I found I'm actually missing 3 issues! I thought I had everything! This includes LSH Annual 6. I've got to go to a comic show because I can't find them at the three stores in my area!

I know how you feel WangLung. I'm missing an issue in the Baxter run it turns out. Browsing through e-bay...

As for Mano, the blowing up a planet with his hand was always a little silly. I possibly prefer him as a creepy psycho to a tragic fallen figure. Sometimes it's nice just to have really nasty villains.

Glad you're enjoying them as well, WangLung! Please jump right in and post your thoughts

LSH Annual 6 was a gap in my collection for the longest time. I can still feel the enormous smile that crept on my face when I dug it out of a back issue bin at my local CBS. Too bad it's closed now, it had so many good back issues... Luckily I managed to buy nearly all the ones I was missing before it did close.



In general I do prefer villains to just be villains, because if you make one a tragic fallen figure you'd better do something good with it. Mano's "fallen figure" arc was developed OK in the Postboot up until the Legion's first battle with the Fatal Five, but nothing was done with it after - a wasted opportunity.

Now, blowing up a planet with his hand is silly? I think they tempered it well by making sure Mano needed to charge up his power enough (and his "used to be a good guy until everyone on his planet died" backstory at least ensures that he won't go around randomly blowing planets up just for the heck of it, unlike if he were a full-blown bad guy).

I agree that Mano is insanely powerful to be able to blow up a planet with his hand!

Something else else this issue doesn't touch on or explain very clearly is what was the source of his disintegration ability? We're told only that the population of Angtu was killed by chemical warfare, and that the chemicals turned Mano into a shadow-skinned freak, but it's not clear if they also gave him his power or not.

Alas, the creators of the reboot didn't bother to explain a lot of things, as Legionnaires # 19 shows. They almost take if for granted that readers can fill in the rest, or perhaps they thought the unexplained aspects didn't matter. (As a writer, I know it's easy to get caught up in the story you want to tell and forget that the readers do not know the back story in your head as well as you do.) In this respect, the reboot is almost 180 degrees from the Adventure era, in which everything was explained, whether it needed to be or not.

Purely from a writer's standpoint, Angtu is a narrative device--something that gets Mano into the action. It is neither necessary nor desirable to back track and figure out what went on.

You do raise an interesting question for speculation, though. Why didn't the UP investigate? I'm sure McCauley did cover his butt legally, and he even says that the Angtuans bought the chemical weapons knowing they had been untested so he could easily shift the blame to them. Also, Angtu may have been a remote planet that was not part of the UP (Durla itself had only recently joined), so perhaps it fell outside of UP jurisdiction.

Angtu being outside UP jurisdiction could explain it somewhat, but if McCauley's legal excuse is tne Angtuans knowingly bought untested weapons then the law (or appropriate regulations) needs to be revised. I'd expect chemical/biological weapons to be strictly regulated in the 31st century!

But you are right, in that it's not important to the story itself (though if I were the writer I'd probably want to touch on it next time I use Mano, for example).



That is a good point - on one hand he seems experienced enough with his powers to know he's capable of blowing up his entire planet, and to know when he'll be charged up enough to destroy the Moon. On the other hand, he had absolutely no idea has was immune to his own power (of course, I doubt he'd ever tried it on himself unless he was an infant or toddler!). Perhaps a good explanation would be that his powers emerged in his teens, and his powers interacting with the chemical weapons could have caused the changes in his physical appearance.

Has it also ever been explained, either Pre- or Postboot, what materials his glove is made of and why it is immune to his powers?

I also noticed that at least one of the dead Angtuans has an outfit similar to Mano's own. Could that be a military or police uniform on Angtu? I wouldn't be surprised if Mano had been a soldier, he seems to have the combat/survival skills for it and he also exhibits some patriotism.

The depiction of Angtu reminds me of the planet Charon in the classic Star Trek episode, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield." That race, too, was destroyed by Civil War.

Interestingly, though, the Federation apparently had never heard of Charon until Lokai and Bele showed up on the Enterprise. Space is so unimaginably vast that it was impossible to be acquainted with every race and every world. In this way, Star Trek in the 1960s reflected much of the U.S. understanding of the world, which also seemed unimaginably vast and full of unknown and mysterious people.

We've sort of lost that sense of vastness and mystery in the age of the Internet and, certainly, this trend was under way in the '90s, when these stories were published. However, the depiction of Angtu as a remote tragedy, and certain other indications of the distances between worlds in the reboot (the stargate technology being new, the UP being new and shaky) rekindle, at least for a moment, this frontier spirit of vastness and mystery.

You raise a good point, HWW. I do enjoy the Legionnaires' reactions to new cultures - Apparition and Spark having to be briefed about Imsk, or Gim and Cham being surprised on Silvan, or Durla and Daxam being new UP worlds. A later story would show Umbra's (that's the Postboot Shadow Lass for non-Postboot fans :p) reactions to her world joining the UP.

I especially like it when our Legionnaires show a sense of wonder, curiosity and respect to these other cultures. Too often in this Internet age we have individuals acting like they know everything, and making snap judgments about other people and other cultures.

Yet another reason why this iteration of the Legion has always been my favorite!

Maybe this was just in my head but wasn't it because Angtu was so damaged by chemical warfare, Mano caused a chain reaction?

I wondered the same thing, WangLung, but there's nothing in Legionnaires 19, at least, that indicates this.

I'm not sure how the Legionnaires avoided being blown into outer space when the dome was destroyed. I'm not up on my science, but wouldn't the sudden decompression of an entire city's worth of atmosphere cause people to go flying everywhere? And since the dome appears to have covered a city-sized section of McCauley Industries, the non-Legion casualties must have been staggering. (Unless the Science Police managed to evacuate everyone from the domed area first, perhaps.)

Such considerations aside, the second half of Mano's debut plays out as it should. There are few surprises, but some wonderful story telling moments, such as Cham being present as a fly in two panels on Page 17 before we realize it's him. Also, Brainy finally gets to do something by pointing out that which the Legionnaires (and the readers) should have wondered about in the first part: why didn't Mano simply destroy the moon to kill McCauley?

Once Brainy realizes that Mano needs time to recharge his power, it's a race against the clock. However, even though the Legionnaires have less than 24 minutes to act, this sequence lacks a sense of urgency. There's no doubt they'll win, and the writers use the time to give us some realistic but misplaced character moments: XS wanting to help out, Apparition helping out but failing, and finally Gim and Cos working together to pull the roof off the living quarters--wonderful moments all, but they don't convey the sense of urgency the sequence requires.

Mark Waid's name disappears from the credits (for good? I haven't checked), and perhaps that explains why this plot, while serviceable, feels like it's missing something. Waid always brought something extra, even in the rushed Tangleweb story, to convey a sense that the circumstances of the story mattered. Here the writers and the Legionnaires seem to be going through the motions.

The Moy brothers' art is certainly more consistent than the previous story's, and their characters and settings are mostly appealing. But in some cases, the manga-style elements of their art are distracting; the Legionnaires appear too childlike, such as Gim at the bottom of Page 13.

The story ends with the obligatory cliffhanger, but at least this one builds on what we've been told before and adds a twist to established Legion lore: sibling rivalry, indeed.

Grade: 86.5 (B)

Mano was planning to blow up the Moon in Legionnaires 20 and nothing indicates the Moon was damaged either. I think Mano is really just powerful enough to destroy a large celestial body if he builds up a powerful enough charge.



A McCauley grunt reveals that on page 10, no casualties were reported due to "auto-sealing systems" on the surface structure. I guess Mano and the Legionnaires were the only ones "outside".

Interesting point - Mano was able to ride the rushing air currents to lift himself up out of the dome, so why not the Legionnaires?

As to Mark Waid, he continues to be credited in LSH 64-66 for the story, but in Legionnaires 21-23 he's only credited as an "Adult Legionnaire"; Tom Peyer is credited as writer. I don't know if that means Peyer handles both script and plot, or just script while Waid (and Tom McCraw, the other adult Legionnaire) contribute to the plot as well.

Ah, thanks for catching that.

Waid's credit as "adult Legionnaire" implies some sort of oversight or consultancy role. It will be interesting, as I re-read those issues, to see if any difference in the story quality jumps out.