Year Two: The return of some familiar faces - We look at Legion #72-74, Legionnaires #29-31, and just for the continuity experts, Superboy #21

So let's all remember where we left off. The Legion of Super-Heroes fought off the genocidal Daxamite threat, battling them across the Earth as they tried to destroy the United Planets. They lost two of their own, Apparition and Andromeda, during the battle but, with the help of a young Trommite, Jan Arrah, they were able to fabricate a stargate and send the Daxamites to a red-sun planet, where they would no longer be a threat.

The entire universe knows, now, that the Daxamite ambassador to the U.P., Roxxas, was secretly a White Triangle leader and was trying to destroy everything from the inside. He's assumed dead but, of course, no body was found.

So logically, we can expect a few things for the beginning of the second year:

• The Legion will be highly respected by everyone (U.P., Science Police, etc.) and be able to be in control of their team
• The Daxamites will face serious reprisals and probably be kicked out of the U.P. and quarantined on their own planet
• Kinetix is most likely dead, trapped aboard a ship with no life support... I guess we're getting 4 statues soon

Before we get into this week's issues, I wanted to talk about the four concepts that I think most Legion writers struggle with:

• Time Travel
• Future Technology
• Super Strength
• How Big Space Is

We'll get more into the time travel part of this later in the column and I've talked about the lack of technology before, so let's focus on the lasst two right now.

I was scanning over Legionnaires Annual #2 again to confirm that we didn't see Kinetix anywhere and one thing really stood out to me that I didn't mention last week: one of the evil Daxamites punching Invisible Kid in the jaw. I did mention them beating Evolvo and Spider Girl and assumed they were both dead.

But all three are fine, the Workforce members are injured but Lyle showed no effects. I get that 30th Century medicine is far superior to what we have right now, but you can't tell me that getting punched by a Daxamite wouldn't immediately kill anyone who isn't invulnerable. All three of them, and many others, should be dead. In fact, they show, later on in the book, a Daxamite quickly murdering someone in front of XS. Why wouldn't the same thing have happened to the heroes?

I get that this is a time-honored comic book trope where Superman pulls his punches, knowing that he could kill anyone with a single punch. But these are homicidal, insane Daxamites. And yes, I also admit that I could just as easily go back to The Great Darkness Saga and make the same complaint when Darkseid controls every Daxamite. But this is just something that I wish writers would contemplate.

Just for the record, space is insanely big. Like... incomprehensibly big. So having ships fly around, catching up with people in moments, or teammates arriving just in time to save the day, makes no logical sense. I know it's a comic and we have to forget physics. But could the writers not try a little?

Rant over.

This column is essentially about three stories that see the returns of three important characters, so I'm going to focus on them instead of breaking it down by issue. I'll still post the covers because... they're nice to look at. No other reason.

But before we get into those, let's talk about the funerals.

LSH #72

Most of Legion #72 is political and just sets up a lot of future storylines and problems for the team. Let's recap quickly:

• The Science Police, led by GiGi Cusimano (who I believe is the same age as Leviathan, but the SPs are fine taking orders from her and have no problem with her age), are finally cleaning up the White Triangle cells on Earth. Glad they're finally getting around to doing their jobs. It's not like the White Triangle was attacking and killing people...
• The two deceased Legionnaires are getting a funeral fit for important leaders, and the entire U.P. leadership is there. R.J. Brande gives the eulogy and Winema Wazzo lets everyone know that she's going to get the Legion shut down because they're the reason her daughter's dead. You know, I can't really argue with her logic. Of course, by the same logic, the SPs get shut down. As does the U.P. But it's sound...
• Cosmic Boy is turning full heel and I have no idea why. He's snubbing dignitaries, treating his teammates like garbage, and generally being a jerk. It would've been nice to see some motivation for this change, or some even slightly logical reason for this, but no... completely out of nowhere... (yes, I know where this is going, but I'm reacting to this as I'm reading them, not to where the story is going) It is kinda sad that his teammates and supposed friends don't seem to care why he's doing this, or what might be wrong with him - they're just angry at him.
• Also, Rokk actually uses his powers on Saturn Girl, demanding she doesn't read his mind. He and Garth have a massive fight. Why doesn't she follow when Live Wire walks away? Or, more importantly, why not, at the very least, scan Cosmic Boy's mind to make sure he's not suffering a nervous breakdown? She's going to do a lot worse in the future...
• Kinetix is still missing and the Alephian representative is worried. No one else is. No one's going to try to find her. Nope.
• We get our first moment of Jan Arrah, cosmic hippie, as he talks about how he's jealous of the other Trommites for transmuting to the next state. Okay, this isn't the way I would've written him, but at least they're giving him some depth and characterization. Can't complain about it.
• Because of Cosmic Boy's snubbing of the U.P. leadership, the U.P. President interrupts the team meeting and demands Live Wire off the team... again... This would be an excellent moment for one of the team members, even Brande, to point out that Live Wire was fighting off the Daxamites and the Legion doesn't have to listen to the U.P. anymore. Instead, Cos just tells Garth to leave.
• Brainy's upset because Andromeda died... and he's the only one... as I said last week, it would've been nice to have something, anything in these issues to show why he would care even the slightest about someone who was so rude and cruel to him. Is the fact that she's tall and blonde enough? Is he a masochist?

This might also be Lee Moder's best issue yet. Fingers crossed this continues...

Legionnaires #29

Story One: The Return of Dirk Morgna

...please don't make him a scumbag...please don't make him a scumbag...

We get a taste of the Dirk Morgna story last issue but it really heats up (pun completely intended) here. Sadly, we get the same dumb Dr. Zaxton Regulus story that we got before. He was fired from Morgna Industries and, to get revenge, has taken Dirk hostage and is demanding gold bullion for his release.

But it's all a lie, of course, as he injects the newly-irradiated gold into Dirk's bloodstream to see if his theories are correct. Regulus says that this injection will either give Dirk the power of a sun or kill him.

Okay, that's better than just being exposed to radiation.

Regulus monologues with the best of them, chattering away, as the Legion team sent to stop him, Saturn Girl (who's acting as leader), Leviathan, Spark, and XS burst into the facility to save the day. And they work amazingly well together, with Imra proving herself a great leader. This might be the best teamwork we've seen in this book in a while, as they all work together and defeat the bad guy. This sequence was very well done.

Once Regulus is defeated, we get a drastic shift from the original version - Dirk is now a living sun, glowing so brightly that he blinds his kidnapper, and is basically just a white star. So no Sun Boy? I know that he doesn't have many fans after the way he was destroyed in the previous Legion, but is this how anyone wanted Sun Boy to come back?

A couple of points from this issue that I wanted to comment on:

• Page 6 features a great storytelling technique that works amazingly well. At first glance, it's just six identical panels - the U.P. President is talking to Cosmic Boy and everything in the foreground stays exactly the same. But in the background, we see that things are moving around as if guided by someone invisible??
• We finally get, after years and years, someone telling Garth that for someone who seems to want to find his older brother, he never actually does it. Gotta love Ayla calling him out like that.
• Jan has gone back to Trom to build crystal markers for each dead body he finds. As much as I like this tribute, has anyone ever thought about just how long this would take? If we start with the idea of Trom having 1,000,000 people, which would very low for a entire planet, and it takes Jan one minute to make each marker, this task would take him 694 days if he never takes a break. Anyone know how many people lived on Trom?

LSH #73

Legionnaires #30

Story 2: The Return of Lightning Lord

I have mentioned this before and I will continue to do it until Legion writers stop re-telling the story of how Mekt, Garth, and Ayla got their powers. It's not exciting, it's been done to death, and they keep writing and re-writing it again and again. Why? Of all the Legionnaires, why does this one get revisited?

Also, of all the changes they made to the Legion, couldn't they have found a better origin for these three? Here's a better one that DC can use for free:

The three siblings are helping on the farm during a thunderstorm. As they're all riding in a high-tech threshing machine, it's struck by lighting and they awake with lightning powers. Once the Winathian government figures out they can be planetary heroes, they're essentially drafted into service, working with the SPs. Mekt finally has enough, wanting to actually get paid for his work, and flees the planet. Garth races off to Earth to figure out where he's gone. And finally, when the Legion is formed, Ayla is sent to the team by the Winathian government. We get enough interpersonal conflict, no more lightning beasts, they all have years of experience with their powers, and we keep the basics. How hard was that?

In these two comics, however, we learn that Mekt is a murdering psychopath who's been traveling the galaxy, killing everyone in his way. Garth is arrested by the police and then Mekt breaks him out, killing a police officer trying to help.

They, of course, fly back to Korbal and Mekt starts shooting the lightning beasts because... and I think I have this right... every time one of the beings with lightning powers dies, he gets more powerful. His plan is to kill all the beasts and then kill Garth and Ayla so he'll be the only person in the universe with lightning powers.

For some insane reason, even after watching his brother murder people in front of him, Garth has decided that it's not his brother who's dangerous, but it's the powers making him this way. This calls back to earlier issues where Garth was talking about how the powers almost seem to be in control of him. He tries to talk to him, reason with him, and just stands idly by while Mekt starts slaughtering the animals.

I know that it was a different time, but this really makes Garth look bad. Why can't he do something?

On an aside, this is another moment where they've really done nothing to explain why finding Mekt is such a big deal. Why does this drive Garth to action? What happened in the past that made this so important, aside from the sibling relationship? I get wanting to find your older brother... kinda... but he's so obsessed that there needs to be more. It would've made more sense if Garth was older, and had spent his life protecting his younger brother who was bullied for not being a twin, so he's still trying to protect him now.

And continuing on that aside, did Garth not spend even a moment when he was a Legionnaire scanning SP files on his brother? How did he not do this at least once? They did comment before that he was always talking about finding Mekt but never did anything, but you would think he would've spent at least an hour or so scanning SP records.

As this is happening, the SPs arrive and want to arrest Garth for the murder of the police officer. Even though he didn't do anything... which one camera would have shown... again, even the most backward planets would have some basic tech, don't you think?

Luckily, Ayla found out from Shvaughn Erin that her twin was arrested and wanted for murder after escaping, so she rushed out of the Legion HQ to find him. But, instead of going directly to the planet where he was arrested, or to their home planet of Winath, she goes directly to Korbal. Because this is where they go whenever they face each other, I guess. Even though this has never happened before and she'd have no reason to head there. But we needed a showdown between the three of them so she has to be there. And all the writers needed to do was either show that Ayla was part of SP communication or have Garth get her a message. That's it. As I mentioned before, the universe is a vast place. Her just luckily being there is almost impossible.

Another weird thing that really stood out here is Ayla's attitude when she first approaches Garth and Mekt. She's joking, smiling, and confident that Mekt isn't a threat to anyone. Did she not see Mekt killing the animals? Did she not see the massive number of SP ships around the planet? Is she just so confident in her abilities that she's unconcerned?

I did like that Ayla knows exactly who Mekt is and has no illusions. So why was Garth so blind to this? What happened in the past that made him worship his brother blindly?

They start fighting and Mekt ends up blasting Garth's right arm completely off, cauterizing the wound. We can't have any blood, can we? Dismemberment, that's ok. Genocide, fine. But blood... never! I wonder if this whole scene made any sense to new readers who didn't know that that Garth lost his arm in the old continuity. Because lightning doesn't work this way. The amount of time, or power, it would take to completely obliterate someone's arm would be a lot more than what they showed. Also, I'm fairly certain that if someone was hit with enough electricity to incinerate their arm, they'd be dead. Or unconscious. Or in shock. But not ready to fight.

But Ayla and Garth join their powers together and blast Mekt, knocking him into a stupor. The SPs finally land, help everyone, and immediately let Garth know that they're sure he didn't kill the police officer and he's okay to go free. Well, after he goes to the hospital.

Just, all in all, a pretty weak story that was ruined by two things: the writers don't care too much about Garth to give him any sort of strength without Ayla and the constant desire to keep this continuity tied to the old one.

This two-part story also really showed the vast divide between the two art teams. With Lee Moder drawing, Mekt looked like he was in his 30's, with a receding hairline and more wrinkles than he usually puts on his characters. With Jeff Moy drawing, Mekt looked like someone in his early 20's, with a full head of hair.

I want to defend Moder a bit here - he's a good storyteller and I like his layouts. He knows how to compose a page. But this is definitely not the book for his talents and you can tell he's struggling with both deadlines and the massive number of characters. And having to draw teenagers. He should be on a Vertigo book, not this one. It's even more confusing when you know that Paul Pelletier already worked on a Legion Annual a year earlier and they could've handed him the job. The art styles would've meshed and these books would've been stronger for it.

Superboy #21

LSH #74

Legionnaires #31

Story 3: The Return of Valor

My memories of this Superboy run and character are very vague, so I basically scanned over a few Superboy comics for the Legion material (Superboy #18, 19, and 21), ignored all the subplots, and remembered how much I loved Tom Grummett's artwork. Doug Hazlewood is the inker and he brings out the best in the pencils.

Valor shows up with no memory, is fighting under the name Champion, and faces off against Superboy. They fight, he remembers he's Valor, and then the lead poisoning takes over. Superboy helps STAR Labs send Valor to the Stasis Zone to save his life but the machine they use breaks and they lose contact with the sick hero.

In the 30th Century, Valor starts appearing to the Legionnaires (first seen in Annual #2) whenever there's a power surge. So Cosmic Boy gets Brainiac 5 to artificially create power surges so they can talk to him. He even goes so far as to destroy a piece of equipment when Brainy won't do what he's asked. Yep, Cosmic Boy is really embracing his evil side.

Since they realize they need a piece of technology that only exists in the 20th Century, Brainy has a great suggestion - they should go back into time. And, luckily for the story, he's built a working time platform that he's already tested and they're ready to go. Without giving anyone any warning, he presses a button and himself, Cos, Saturn Girl, Triad, XS, and Chameleon and suddenly floating through the time stream.

This is one of my problems with time travel, especially when handled like it's just a walk in the park. There's no way someone as smart as Brainy would just send himself and five others back into the past without taking a ton of precautions and educating them on what and what not to do.

Also, no time bubble?? What?? How can you not bring those back?

In Superboy #21, only five Legionnaires appear in 1995. XS has disappeared. Brainy doesn't care, wanting to continue the mission, but Cosmic Boy, enjoying a personality shift, suddenly become ultra-focused on protecting the team (and not injuring them himself) and wants to go look for her. But Brainy explains his reasoning: since they're dealing with time, and they can go anywhere they want in time, they don't need to rush off to save XS - she's already been saved when they go rescue her later on.

Congrats to the writer, Karl Kesel, for understanding time travel! I loved this bit!

Unfortunately, he then reuses that horrible trope of superheroes needing to fight each other the first time they meet. Since the Legion only speaks Interlac (and for some reason they write the Interlac out in a horribly bad way to read, rather than translating it during the battle scenes), and since Superboy doesn't understand them, they have to punch each other out. Finally, Saturn Girl speaks to Superboy telepathically and they stop fighting.

They go to STAR Labs, Brainy finds the information he needs, determines that they need to bring Superboy back to the 30th Century, and kidnaps him. They all disappear, leaving the STAR technicians confused.

In the 30th Century, the Legionnaires and Superboy arrive just moments after they left for the past. They talk about why they needed to pull Valor out of the time line here and Brainy explains that, to prevent a paradox, this needs to happen in the 30th Century.

The rest of Legion #74 is, to be honest, a pretty flimsy story that makes absolutely no sense. Superboy wanders around, annoying everyone by being... a teenager... not sure why everyone seems to hate him for his exuberant personality. Everyone except Triad, who has one personality that really likes him.

During the tour of Legion HQ, when they enter the Monitor Room, Superboy says that they're bringing Valor back. What he doesn't realize, and why would he, is that one of the monitors is broadcasting and the alien on the other side hears what he said. So that alien sells the info to a news site and the entire galaxy knows they're bringing back a hero worshiped on many planets, such as Cargg.

The Legionnaires are pissed that Superboy said this, and the news got out, but why? How is that Superboy's fault at all? It was Violet in the Monitor Room, who was broadcasting herself... and, thinking about it, I have no idea why should would have done that. Why would Superboy have a clue that this video screen would share what he said? Why is Violet letting some random alien hear what she's saying? What kind of security do they have?

For the rest of Superboy's time in the Legion books, he acts like he's a screw up and he's ruined everything. But nothing was his fault. The Legionnaires were just being jerks.

The second part of this weak story is the quest for the missing piece of tech that Brainy needs to rebuild the machine to get Valor back. Instead of building it himself, Brainy says that he needs the Legion to go find the piece on another planet where someone has a collection of ancient devices. So the Legion, plus Superboy, fly off to Korr. They meet up with some character named Scavenger, who is apparently a Superboy villain from the 20th Century and immediately blasts them with a variety of ancient weapons. They defeat him pretty easily and then Ultra Boy basically reaches into a pile of crap and pulls out the right device... wow, they just really needed to end that story, didn't they?

Okay, let's ignore that there's no way Scavenger lives 1,000 years, or that he's a hoarder with a room full of prized possessions but immediately starts blasting everything to prevent the Legion from getting one thing (whereas if he had just handed it over, he could've lived in peace and kept everything else), or that it makes no logical sense that Brainy couldn't have rebuilt this ancient device with modern technology, or that Ultra Boy apparently has magic searching powers. This entire section just feels like the writers wanted to use a Superboy villain and needed some fight scenes. It's completely worthless.

The third part is the actual saving of Valor. I have to commend the writers on how they handled this massive event and the way so many of the beings would view this as a god returning to Earth. Heck, even the U.P. President is unsure what to do and glad she doesn't have to make any decisions here. The Legionnaires realize that this has gotten too big and they need to hide what they're doing. So they trick everyone into believing they failed and then, in one page, just pull Valor out of the Stasis Zone in the middle of a desert in Qurac. I guess in the future there are no satellites watching over the Earth. Oh wait, there are... we saw them when the Daxamites were attacking.

Did the writers ever, for just a moment, think about whether anything they did make sense, or were they just rushing to get Valor back onto the Legion and didn't care about logic? I mean, why didn't Brainy just pull Valor out of the Stasis Zone in his lab? It would've made just as much sense and, at the least, they could argue that his lab is hidden from all cameras and satellites.

Cosmic Boy talks to Valor, telling him that he needs to stay hidden. He can't go out and explore the galaxy because of all the attention he'll get. This, not surprisingly, doesn't sit well with Valor, who's angry at the situation because of people who worship him, like Triad, who he considers pathetic. He storms off to his room, leaving a sobbing Triad behind.

As nasty as that comment is, I actually think Valor could've been much worse. I mean, imagine how you'd feel after being trapped in a Stasis Zone for 1,000 years, unable to have any contact with anyone. How is he not completely insane?

The Legion sends Superboy back to his own time, but not after Cosmic Boy presents him his own flight ring and making him an honorary Legionnaire. So sending futuristic technology back 1,000 years is okay now? Only Cham seems sad he's gone - the rest of the Legion seems happy to not have to deal with him anymore. I mean, I'm not Superboy's biggest fan, but he deserved way better than this.

All in all, this was a really hit-and-miss story. Some things really worked but most of it was just filler.

Some random thoughts on this story:

• With each issue I read, I'm starting to really feel like the writers are dialoguing these books after they get the pencils and each artist is affecting how they write. Lee Moder's issues are more serious and Jeff Moy's have more playful and fun dialogue.
• I'm also starting to think that the writers are plotting this out separately. One of them comes up with one idea, writes the plot, and then the other takes over and changes everything. It's the only way to explain the Valor story.
• Triad was all over the place in this story, going from tearful worship of Valor, to open flirting with Superboy and promising to do thing to him to make him feel welcome, to tearful heartbreak when Valor lays into her, to kissing Superboy just because he was nice to her. The multiple personalities were on full display and I actually kinda liked it, even if it made her feel like she was out-of-control, emotionally.
• Violet had the best line when they recovered the Sorcerer's Stone, a powerful magical weapon, from Scavenger: "Just don't tell Kinetix."

Speaking of Kinetix, they couldn't get her one page over six issues just to show that she had crash-landed somewhere and was still alive?

And nothing about the Daxamites? No repercussions? Nothing during the funerals, even, where it's mentioned that they're going on trial?

And nothing about the repairs to Earth? Everything's just back to being fine... It's like they completely forgot everything they did before Annual #2.

Now let's continue with a look at the different Legionnaires:

Sorry, but I had to include this, even though it's not a great drawing of Rokk. It's both one of the worst costumes in Legion history and one of the best examples of 70's comic style. And it's Mike Grell...

Anyone know who the artist is on this? I want to guess very early Dave Gibbons but I'm probably wrong.

What do you think about Cosmic Boy? Here are my thoughts:

• He's the soul of the Legion. Without him, the Legion loses what makes it great. I think the biggest mistake Paul Levitz made was having him leave the team during volume 3. I think he tried to replace this with Element Lad, but it just wasn't the same.
• He's the history buff who understands exactly why the Legion is needed, from a historical perspective, and respects those who came before him. I've always felt he's the bridge between the Legion and current DC continuity.
• With the history aspect, I actually think it made perfect sense that he became the Time Trapper in a futile attempt to save the universe.
• Two weeks ago, when talking about Lightning Lad, a few readers compared him to Scott Summers. The more I think about it, the more I think Scott is the Cosmic Boy of the Legion. Bad writers think he's boring, he's almost never anyone's favorite, but the Legion just isn't the Legion without him. And he's the best leader of the team.
• I've never understood why he was never, ever written like a successful athlete. It's always been part of his back story but no writer has ever properly addressed or used it. He should be the one pushing for practice and preparation, for team work and using his teammates' powers in the best possible ways. I think, especially as he gets older, he should be the Lebron James of the 30th Century, knowing what his opponents are going to do before they do it.
• Having said that, I prefer it when he's not the perfect leader. I actually really hated when they pulled him out of the 30th Century to live further into the future because he was considered the greatest leader ever... or something like that... Rokk would never have gone and left the team and would have given credit to his team instead of himself. He would be the first to admit that he needed to do more and be better. He will make mistakes and learn from them.
• The 70's were not kind to him (bad costume, bad stories) and, if Keith Giffen hadn't pushed for him to be turned into one of the most important Legionnaires, I doubt most readers would even care about him.
• Every time a writer tries to take him out of who he is (such as making him act evil or nasty), they show that they just genuinely don't understand the character. His sole goal is to ensure the Legion succeeds and anything that takes away from that is a mistake.
• Since I mentioned it with Saturn Girl, why was his name ever changed or updated? Cosmic Man? I mean, Polestar was horrible, but at least they tried. Does DC just hate "Lad"?
• There's a part of me that thinks he should always be with Night Girl, but I also find myself liking it when he's with other romantic partners. There could've been a lot of interesting stories with Cos and XS, Triad, or Kid Quantum.

Thanks so much for reading and please leave your comments below. I really enjoy hearing from you and getting different perspectives on this team! Until next week...