Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Legion of Super-Heroes: Millennium

I mean, she has lived in the USA long enough to gain residency and citizenship... heavens knows the existing real world process takes forever, but that isn't a big problem for Kara...

So, I've read Legion of Super-Heroes: Millennium #1. And... I don't know. Still keeping an open mind but I'm hoping I like it a lot more once it actually reaches the Legion's time.

I definitely got a bit of a chuckle out of this panel, though:

I'm not too keen on making Supergirlwoman President of the US. My problem is that it feels out of sequence to the Batman Beyond story. In the other Beyond stories, Superman (and Batman) appear and they both seem younger than Supergirl is depicted in Millennium. She shouldn't look this old.

Other than that, I'm with EDE in wanting to see the Legion already. I think this would have been better suited as a done-in-one special than a two-parter.

Yeah, the sequencing is striking me as really weird. I would think Kamandi would be later than Tommy Tomorrow (which is usually set about 100 years in the future) as well, and apparently we've still got OMAC to come, which is completely overturns the idea of OMAC being Kamandi's grandfather.

Of course, what's also annoying is that you could re-sequence these events, and it wouldn't make much difference to the overall story. Despite all the hype about establishing a definitive future history, it feels like we're just getting random, unconnected scenes from Rose/Thorn's life, and I'm not really getting any sense of how any of this is building up towards the Legion.

Yay! A Legion of Superheroes book out on the racks I can review...and they're not actually in it.*

Like EDE there didn't seem to be a driving plot going through the spine of the book. The never aging protagonist runs into key characters across a number of eras. We see her as a returning recluse, a vigilante, a survivor of the Great Disaster and as a prospective Planeteer. There's no real sense of what's driving her in these actions. She's certainly staying close to the super-community or their parallels as she goes.

But there's no appearance of a backstory to her immortality or any particular threat she's looking to oppose/ support across the centuries. And as powerful as some of that might have been, it can be really overdone. Before you know it you're knee deep in Warren Ellis' Century babies or endless credulity stretching rehashes of the status quo across the years.

Bendis provides quite a light look at some eras and a some darkness when required. Batman Beyond is a mix of the two. The protagonist's actions indicate that, despite the random-like encounters, there *might* well be a thread that ties all of this together. Why does she need to leave the Earth? why did she want Superman's costume? I think that there may well be that driving plot going through the book after all, and we're getting glimpses of something larger. At least something moving the protagonist to act.

That has advantages over dragging the protagonist through one era per issue, connecting all the dots as we go. It means everyone can see their favourite era, if they have one, without waiting until a certain uissue. Bendis is a very established writer, so I'm giving him some credit for his craft there.

But even without all that, I put the book down quite happy with the lighter touches, and the tone of the story.

I wasn't really looking too closely at how the eras joined up. When I first read comics about those eras, they had all just started to change due to the Crisis.

Originally Tommy Tomorrow was going to be around 1990, the Knights of the Galaxy in the 30th century and I'm not sure if Kirby specified exactly when the Great Disaster was. Somewhere in the 21st century? Tommy Tomorrow was changed at one point to be later in the 21st century. It could well have been set after Kamandi (even though the jump from one setting to the other would have been quite considerable). The Atomic Knights were also set in the mid '80s at one point.

So it all seems to have always been pretty flexible. I think the OMAC as Kamandi's grandfather might have been after Kirby left the book, and might not have ben in the original timeline? As Kamandi was "AD- After Disaster", OMAC was "The World That's Coming" without setting a date. Emphasis on "I think" there ,as I'm going on memory cell.


*Well, they're in the insert pages.

The very first Tommy Tomorrow features him attending Rocket College in the far off year of 1954, and being the first man on Mars in 1960!

Crumbs! Even earlier in the far future, if that makes sense Considering how often they've been shuffled around, with little regard for coherency, it seems fair enough if Bendis has his take on it. Personally, I didn't mind them not being connected in the slightest.

But I've no issue bringing them together if it's a decent enough story. Chaykin's first Twilight issue does the same sort of thing and is an excellent read for anyone who hasn't tried it.

Actually, now that I think of it, wasn't the Great Disaster supposed to happen in 1986 or something? I don't know.

And, of course, Crisis has Tommy Tomorrow and Kamandi literally being the same person.

I thought it was Atomic Knights for '86, although some would no doubt consider Post-Crisis continuity to be The Great Disaster of '86.

I have been spoiled by Jonathan Hickman's work on the X-Men relaunch, so I have to ask, is there anything in this book that is useful to the fandom? Is there any charts or maps?

No. There aren't even dates for the events it shows, beyond "...and sometime later, this happens..."

Bendis’s writing and characters are thoroughly charming, but, damn, I never can really figure out what is going on. I agree that the vignettes seem almost to be in random order, if it weren’t for the pharma discussion in the initial Supergirl vignette.

(Aside: even Supergirl can’t defeat Big Pharma?!?!)

Any clue what is the big glowy thingie in the Kamandi segment? I despair that Bendis will never explain how you get from Kamandi to Tommy Tomorrow. And that I’ll read about it on Wikipedia a year later.

So, I'm not 100% certain, but this substory is heavily based on Kamandi #29 (where they meet the gorillas with Superman's costume), and #30 opens with Kamandi and Ben having entered what they thought was a bunker, but turns out to be a UFO. I think this might be them entering that bunker/UFO.

I love that the new Legion series is being given a mini event lead in. Hopefully that's a sign that DC is committed to the series. I haven't read any new comics in over a year, so just a bit out the loop with the current DC universe. I'm not sure where Rose and Thorn fit in the larger picture. Her/their use here gives the issue a unique feel and I'm all for creative approaches in what feels like an overly crowded marketplace. There was some fun dialogue and the artists all did a nice job. I'm interested to see where it all goes and looking forward to the new series.

Quote:

So, I'm not 100% certain, but this substory is heavily based on Kamandi #29 (where they meet the gorillas with Superman's costume), and #30 opens with Kamandi and Ben having entered what they thought was a bunker, but turns out to be a UFO. I think this might be them entering that bunker/UFO.

Wow! Thanks. That’s interesting. Are the aliens part of the hidden history, how you can walk from Kamandi to Tommy Tomorrow? If they be aliens, they don’t take Rose/Thorn off earth, as she seems stuck here good and proper with the rest of us?

Just want to say that, for all the attention To my Tomorrow, Space Rangers, Space Cabby get at these times, I don’t think I’ve evef read a story with them outside of these continuity paste-ups. It was a clever nod to those old histories to do Kamandi & Tommy T back to back, like two sides of the same coin.

I wish DC would do some good reprints of their classic sci fi characters.

The UFO in question turns out to be owned by a disembodied energy being who becomes the embodied energy being known as Pyra. I'm not that familiar with the later issues of Kamandi, though, so I don't know much about her. I could be completely off on what that scene is supposed to be as well. I was trying to figure out if there's some significance to the symbol they focus on, but I'm drawing a blank on it.

And speaking of weird symbols, what's up with this space kitty and whatever it is he/she is sitting on:

The kitty looks to be the seeing eye kitty for the Homer narrator of Chaykin's Twilight series. It's sitting on something with the emblems of DCs sci fi groups.The Planeteers and the Knights of the Galaxy are in there for example.

The Homer being referred to is the one from the Star Rovers. Their logo might be there and it's another link to DC Scifi.

Nice to seeTwilight get a nod. I think the grouping of the emblems was also in there. I was going to use it for my Bits Legion where the Knights and Planeteers were still operational and would encounter the Legion.

It all seemed fairly disjointed to me.

Maybe that's a good thing. Since this is just a brief passing through history, nailing down exactly how one era changed into another would probably be a bad idea in terms of limiting future tales. As it is the little exposure here might be enough to interest new readers in what some writer may create in the future.It will be interesting to see if issue 2 improves on this and ties it more together.

As for Rose/Thorn I thought her tale was reasonably good. Her frustrations and motivations make some sense. We don't see all that happens to her (or even a fraction of it) but we do see her struggle with never-ending life, the isolation of everyone she knows always dying, the frustration of seeing the world get better and worse and better and worse. Bendis does a reasonable job of asking these sort of questions that mostly we never think about. (For another view on a similar vein see the Doctor Who stories "The Girl who Died" and "The Woman who Lived" from Series 9 2015.)

I was confused about one thing though. In the first story Thorn is portrayed as physically fighting Superman amongst other strong characters. Does she have powers as Thorn? Admittedly most of my knowledge of her comes from Bronze Age and Post-Crisis but I though she was simply a very athletic (and partly psychotic) normal human. In recent Action issues Luthor offered her more power as part of DC's Year of the Villain but she declined. Did she end up powered anyway?

Has this book come out already? I thought it was due out next week.

The cat seems to resemble a cat owned/used by Homer Glint of the Space Rangers in the awful "Twilight" mini-series which did a "grim 'n' gritty" re-imagining of the classic DC sci-fi heroes, which I believe is classified as an Elseworlds story. IIRC, Glint also had a trophy case with items like the once in the showcase the cat is sitting on in your image.

I collected the actual back issues with original stories of Star Hawkins, the Star Rovers and Space Cabby. They're fun as period pieces, but I doubt that a collected edition of them would get any great reactions from modern audiences. DC put out two anthology TPBs of old sci-fi stories each containing one story (or at most, two) featuring the various sci-fi characters.

I see that between when I started writing my post (last night) and when I finished and posted it, thoth lad posted the same idea.

Except that I'm not at all happy to see any reference to "Twilight." The more forgotten the story is, the better. Although I will admit to having used a story point from it in my own Star Hawkins fan fiction way back when.

That explains it. I've never read Twilight, but it sounded pretty terrible from everything I've heard about it.

I think I reread Twilight not long after I joined here (hence the emblems being part of my Bits notes. I think Mwindaji becomes Manhunter 3070 as a nod to this one too.) I recall the first issue of it as being bloomin' good stuff, with the other two losing out as the scope of the story stretched across too far a timespan. It is as Chaim says. It was grim n' Gritty. It was also not terribly kind to most, if not all of the cast. Since it has Chaykin writing it, it also has some of those foibles too.

From what I recall, it showed history as written by, if not the winners, then those who are in a position to affect the narrative from the court. Basic familiarity with pulp and golden age sci-fi adds to the conceit. We know the themes and structures of the tales. Often, the male leads were a bit wooden. But what were they really like and what was really going on as Earth reached out across the stars?

There's a fair amount of cynicism in the writing that comes with some satire. Acts of barbarity become heroic stands against hated enemies. People with feet of clay become heroes and then gods. Those with populist ideals can lead near-crusades despite their egotistic narcissism. While those with more human cares of right and wrong are haunted by their own hang-ups to the point of self destruction. A lot of that rings bells now as then.

It also had Garcia-Lopez art! Which was gorgeous. I'll need to dig it out again.

It is a pity that this is not at least a six issue mini-series. There may not be enough space to explain everything. I know some people in other places are complaining that this issue has nothing to do with the Legion, but DC is in dire need of world building. There have been so many sci-fi series published in parallel.