LSH 5YL #33 - 40 - Giffen's Revenge

Welcome back to a week of endings in the Legion of Super-Heroes. As we enter the fourth year of the series, we come to the end of the Terra Mosaic storyline and, more importantly for the quality of this book, Keith Giffen wraps up his Legion run with issue #39.

After Giffen passed away, I spent some time searching through different websites to see how he was being remembered and what work of his I missed over the years. I came upon a CBR.com article listing off the 15 best Giffen storylines of all time.

Terra Mosaic was 7th.

I doubt even he would have placed it that high.

More speculation here, but I'm guessing that he was starting to check out by the time he reached the end of the Terra Mosaic storyline. There were more Bierbaum-only issues, which were just puzzling breaks in the story. He had already finished up working on Justice League (we'll talk more about that later) and was transitioning to work at Image.

I know that he was having problems with the Legion editor, although I have no idea which one (or ones) it is. We've already gone through Mark Waid, Michael Eury, Dan Raspler, Michael Eury again, and now by the end of his run, Eury and KC Carlson are co-editing.

I'm also guessing that he's probably a little burnt out by now. Between Legion, L.E.G.I.O.N., Lobo, and Justice League America and Europe, along with everything else he's helping out with, he's probably dragged in all different directions. I would also imagine, since these books are so different from each other, it's a much greater drain on his talents than if he was just working on five similar books.

So I suspect that by the end of this run, he's quite ready to take a break. I somewhat doubt he had fond memories of this story.

I'm probably a little harsher in my opinion of the Terra Mosaic, and that's really for two reasons. One, the fill-in issues are atrocious. And two, they spend the entire story just making the old Legionnaires look horrible in order to build up the SW6 versions. Was it necessary? Is there anyone who wouldn't have liked to have seen both young and old Laurels demolishing the Dominion cruisers together? Or the two Element Lads working together to save as many people as they could? Couldn't both groups be heroic here?

We've also entered the period of the 5YL series when I was starting to contemplate removing the Legion from my pull list at my comic shop. Each issue was becoming more and more disappointing and I was getting closer and closer to dropping the book. When they kept dragging the old Legionnaires through the mud, metaphorically, and turning them into useless relics, I just got more and more irritated and annoyed.

Before I get into some of the individual issues, I just wanted to make a high-level comment about this whole story and the fill-in issues. For me, what's most frustrating about the story, and the series in general, is that there are moments that are stunningly good, even when they're surrounded by something horrible or disappointing. For example, issue #40 is painful to read and a misfire almost entirely, but then they have two amazingly strong moments when Vi and SW6 Violet meet and chat and when SW6 Ultra Boy and Phantom Girl meet Jo and realize how horrible it must be for him to see them.

LSH #34

I've heard that Paul Levitz, when he was writing the Legion, had a huge white board that he used to keep track of all the plot lines and which characters he was using so that he could ensure everyone got fair treatment and he didn't forget what had gone on before.

If Giffen and the Bierbaums used one, I'm guessing that it was no longer white but just every color of marker they had. I think this is why they completely lost track of some characters and the story just kinda floats along without any direction sometimes.

That also helps to explain why some characters' personalities change on a dime.

This book has also continued with minimizing the old Legion while showing the SW6 Legion to be the true heroes. While Lar refuses to get involved and fight any Dominators (and gets called out for this by Sade, the villain who's fighting to save Earth), SW6 Laurel single-handedly takes over the Dominator command ship, the Pinnacle Command, and shuts down their war machine.

Let me repeat that for the cheap seats - Lar Gand, the hero known as Valor, who has watched his entire planet of Daxam get wiped out by Glorith so you'd think he'd be willing to fight to save a world from genocide, refuses to help the Earthlings because he wants them to fight for themselves. And Sade, the assassin, tells him he's wrong and the deaths are on his head.

And she's right.

A few issues later, when Sade shoots Bounty during a fight to the death, Lar mocks her for trying to be the moral conscience of the year. Again, he mocks her for shooting someone who was trying to kill her because she wanted him to help save the Earth. I wanted to see her stare him down and simply say "How many Earthlings had to die because you're a coward?" Yep, that's where we are in this book. Lar Gand loses the moral argument with a literal killer.

Continuing with the weird choices in character, when Bounty kills a Dominator scientist, it's Circe, the traitor who had been working with the Dominators, who seduced Dirk to help her, who calls her out on it. Once again, the villains are the moral characters.

It is this issue where you realize that this whole storyline could have ended multiple issues ago if only the old Legion had actually been heroes and fought against the Dominators. But they're not anymore, are they? They're the audience, watching the real heroes: the SW6 Legion.

LSH #35

You'd never know from the cover, but in this issue the war ends.

But since they have to keep kicking Dirk when he's down, we get this cover.

You'll also notice that the book has gone bi-weekly at this point. Does anyone know why, because they only do it for two months. I kinda feel like this is because they wanted to rush to get the Legionnaires spin-off out for the start of 1993, but I'm not sure.

If you want further proof that the creative team is throwing all their support behind SW6, there are a few panels when the young heroes are out fighting the Dominion and are cheered on by the populace. One person shouts, "The Legion! The Legion are back!" and another, "God, we're gonna win this thing!" So the people of Earth needed the Legion's help and they're energized and encouraged when they see them. Good to see that Lar got it so very, very wrong. Again.

The Dominion surrender and the UP lets them head back to their home planet, Elia, to save it. The UP sets up around the Earth and begins the rescue and rebuilding operations. If only they could have done this, I don't know, weeks ago... And the old Legion still hasn't done anything. Nothing at all.

There's one subplot that they really strengthen here that was creepy when I first read it and it's just worse now: the SW6 Shrinking Violet/Devlin O'Ryan "romance". If they had just kept it as her having a crush on an older man, it would be okay. You'd have the nice moment where he reminds her that he's an adult (he's a professional writer for the Daily Planet, which is somehow still going after 1,000 years) and that would be over. Instead, he asks her to stay with him and continue this romantic relationship.

Okay, I'll just get this out of the way - there is one website that says he's 14 at the start of this Legion of Super-Heroes series, but I think that's just revisionist history to remove the creepiness of this subplot. He's an adult, she's... 15??..., and this is illegal.

So here's the challenge - if I'm completely wrong here and there are panels, lines in the 5YL Legion that prove me wrong on this, please let me know. Looking over the Giffen pencils, he looks much older but, when it's time for him to meet the SW6 Legion, they refer to him as a kid. Is this just that Giffen can't draw youth anymore (he was fine with Kono), or the writers retconned this when they started the romantic angle?

Just to defend my position here, I've borrowed a screenshot from LSH #17 from the great blog, The Legion of Super-Bloggers. You can't tell me that Devlin's 14 in any of these panels:

The only good use of an old Legionnaire is when Jacques is named the new Earth President. Not sure which council it was that elected him, or how it's even slightly democratic, or why the leader of the rebellion, who may or may not have killed innocent Earthlings, was the best choice... but they've kinda thrown all logic out the window by this point so let's just go with it.

Speaking of this subplot, as much as I like the fact that they've elevated Jacques to leader and president, I was very disappointed by they way they used Tyroc, or Troy Stewart. As one of the few Legion readers who actually liked Tyroc, liked the costume, and always wanted to see him used more, the fact that they continually placed him in the background and never let him use his powers was very disappointing. I think he was another badly written old Legionnaire in this - they say that the Dominators destroyed his home island of Marzal but there was never any reference that he would want to get even with them for that. He just happily stood behind Jacques and occasionally got a line or two of dialogue. Just another waste...

LSH #36

According to the cover copy, this issue delivers the battle you've been waiting for! Bounty vs Sade! Was anyone waiting for this? Did either of these characters actually have any fans at this point? I mean, one had been barely introduced and the other had been a mystery up to this point and neither had really done much to stand out, aside from both being tough, violent women.

So this issue is kind of a "What do you do on the day after the end of the war?" feel and there's alternately lots going on and not much going on.

The big reveal is when Sade shoots Bounty and the spirit of Bounty leaves the injured body. They rush her to the medicenter and they realize, for sure now, that it's actually Dawnstar.

The worse reveal, of course, if when old Brainiac 5 says "You see, I knew it was her from the start - from the time I had her in the infirmary... I just wish I'd had the sense to intervene somehow." So let me get this right - Brainy knew his former teammate was acting completely differently, had cut off her wings (or someone cut them off), and had become a bounty hunter. And did nothing. Geez, with teammates like these, who needs enemies. Oh, and Brainy also assumes that he's the clone, not the SW6 version. No reason why, just does...

They also spend a lot of time trying to make old Lar Gand look good. SW6 Light Lass comes up to him and tells him that they respect the fact that he didn't get involved. What? So why make SW6 Laurel get involved? Does anyone writing this book actually pay attention to anything the characters are actually doing?

And just in case you thought the book wasn't dark enough, Circe shoots old Sun Boy in the head, putting him out of his misery and then kills herself. This book loves bullets to the head. What's sad is that Circe was the only character who actually had the courage to do what needed to be done. None of the Legionnaires, none of Dirk's old friends, none of the Subs, were willing to just do the humane thing and end his suffering. Again, I think the writers just wanted him to suffer and continue to suffer.

LSH #38

The End...

Giffen said in a podcast that there was no plan to destroy the Earth when they first pitched the 5YL plot. The original plan, as I've mentioned before, was for the SW6 Legion to protect the Earth and the old Legion to head out into space.

So why destroy the planet?

He said that he was so annoyed by the editorial on the title and at DC in general, that he came up with this final middle finger. He knew he was leaving things unfixable, for lack of a better term, and breaking not only the toys but the toy box once he left.

I've spent months talking about the moment when the Legion was ruined and I honestly think this is the issue that did it. A good writer, with the planet Earth still in existence, could do something that would work for both new and returning readers. They'd have multiple Legionnaires to work with - heck, I would've really enjoyed a book where the Legion was made up of both older and younger versions of the characters. They'd have an Earth to rebuild and could, eventually, get everything back to the new version of normal.

But with the end of the Earth, and the cities connected together in their domes, all of that was gone. The toy box was broken beyond recognition. There is no way a new writer could come in and fix any of this - a reboot was now inevitable.

Contrast that with how Giffen left the Justice League books earlier that year. Everything was completely back to normal. All the changes they made, such as Blue Beetle gaining weight, had been undone. He left those two teams in pristine condition so any writer could come in and hit the ground running. Of course, he loved working with the Justice League editor, Andy Helfer, so that might have been a contributing factor.

Speaking of editors, why did the Legion editorial staff let this happen? Did anyone read over this plot synopsis and think, "This is a horrible idea that breaks everything!"?? Did Giffen have absolute story control and the editors couldn't change anything? Or were they all just so far down the rabbit hole, so numb to all the violence and depression, that this didn't even register to them?

I've made reference before to how DC editorial wouldn't creators break their most valuable properties. This is yet another example of DC not caring about the Legion in the slightest. What actually stuns me the most is that, at no point, did Paul Levitz, who's running DC at this time, step in and stop any of this.

Having said all of that, I think this is the last good 5YL issue. And it's really good. Using only text pieces and full page spreads, you really get the enormity of the story. Some of the images hit hard and, as the reader, you feel the full impact of what happens.

You gotta love the surprise "we built domes around all the big cities in the 28th Century and they're still working" way to save a lot of the population... No, it doesn't make any sense and really doesn't work, but they needed some way to get people off the Earth.

It also comes with the horrible revelation that, even after all the sacrifices that were made to save the Earth, none of that matters in this new dark Legion. There are no respites, there are no reprieves, and the universe is horrible.

On a complete aside, the one thing that stood out to me while reading this is that the destruction of the Earth should also lead to the destruction of the Milky Way. According to Cosmic Odyssey, a great mini-series by Jim Starlin, if any two of these four planets (Earth, Rann, Thanagar, and Xanshi) are destroyed, the Milky Way will collapse on itself. In that series, Xanshi is destroyed. Since this is still part of DC continuity, and definitely was when this book came out, doesn't this mean the Milky Way should've collapsed? Can anyone tell me how they got around this? Oh, and yes, I know this puts on full display my nerd knowledge of DC comics in the 90's.

Random thoughts about the other issues:

• We finally see who Kid Quantum is and to say it's underwhelming would be nice. He's the Soul of Antares, but we never really know why we would care, and he's also a Proty, who are also Antareans... It's a big mess. There's a reason the Protys were retired a long, long time ago and between this issue, and the last Annual, I've seen enough of them to last me for a long time. What's even worse is that this whole story, in issue #33, was wrapped up in issue #39 with the final Giffen pencils on the Legion.
• Speaking of his pencils, how weird was it to see the final two pages of his work that he inked himself? It's not good... not at all... He's redesigning his style again and it's even worse than the last time.
• Issue #37 sees a return to Batball with Star Boy and Dream Girl. What a shame - I really like June Brigman's work and she does her best with this, aside from making Nura again look like she's ten years older than any other former Legionnaire. They added the new Starfinger, someone else no one wanted to see, and some cheating on sports, and it's a story that is a waste of paper.
• Speaking of pencillers, Jason Pearson finishes his year on the book and it replaced by Stuart Immonen. Yes, another great penciller starts his mainstream comic career on the Legion. As much as I complained before that it would have been nice for DC to actually hire a big name artist to possibly get new readers to the book, I do love the fact that it's such a great training ground for new artists to develop on.
• I want to give Pearson some love here - I wasn't his biggest fan when he started the book, but with every reread, I find something else that I really like about his work. He was a great replacement for Giffen, he got better every issue, he handled the gigantic cast of characters as well as anyone could and made everyone distinctive and unique, and he made the book his own and made it better. Even when I didn't like the story, I enjoyed the pictures.
• As a Wildfire fan, issue #40 was a kick in the groin. A hard kick. A "should I drop this title now?" kick. I know that because history was completely rewritten, they can do whatever they want and not worry about anything making sense to longtime readers of the book. But to introduce Wildfire's brother (first rewrite), who also has the same powers (not sure how that happened because he got them through an accident), as a tease for any readers who have been waiting patiently for Wildfire to show up in the book (cause he's one of four ex-Legionnaires who were members before 5YL that haven't), is just plain antagonistic.
• Imra is kidnapped and Garth seems rather... unconcerned?? Maybe Proty is taking over.
• Nura asks a green-skinned ex-boyfriend for help finding Mysa. I honestly had no idea who that was, but spoilers, it's a horrible reveal later on down the road.

I must apologize for the negativity of this reread. I was trying my best to find something nice to say but, for the most part, the series takes a dramatic downturn and I'm just getting sick and tired of them propping up the SW6 Legion at the expense of the old Legion.

Next week will get better, I hope, as the SW6 Legionnaires spin off into their own book and this title actually gets to focus on the old (original? cloned?) Legion. Maybe they'll finally be allowed to shine in their own book again...