Week of 30 May 2007

(SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers. Don't read it before you've read the comics.)

ACTION #850 (7/07)
"Superman: Family"
ROLL CALL: Brainiac 5, Chameleon, Invisible Kid, Shadow Lass, Supergirl, Ultra Boy


BITS OF LEGIONNAIRE BUSINESS:

Clark Kent has a Legion flight ring, and he speaks of the "Legion gang" coming to visit him in Smallville.


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COUNTDOWN #48 (5/07)
"Death From Above"
ROLL CALL: Karate Kid, Star Boy







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JSA #6 (7/07)
"The Ligtning Saga Chapter 4: Three Worlds"

NOTE: This comic was released with two covers. The regular one has Damage on a black background; the variant cover shows Superman, Wonder Woman, Liberty Belle, Dr. Mid-Nite, Stargirl, and (most importantly) Wildfire.

ROLL CALL: Blok (cameo), Chameleon Boy (cameo), Cosmic Boy (cameo), Dawnstar, Dream Girl, Element Lad (cameo), Karate Kid, Lightning Lad (cameo), Lighting Lass (cameo), Mon-El (cameo), Saturn Girl (cameo), Sensor Girl, Star Boy/Starman, Sun Boy (cameo), Superboy/Superman, Timber Wolf, Triplicate Girl (illusion), Wildfire

Temporal confusion continues, but is partially explained by Superman's musings on time travel: "Once in a while, memories would be altered or even erased." He mentions an untold case called "The Legion of Three Worlds."

And they're not out to resurrect Lightning Lad...but I have no idea what they're up to. I guess All Will Be Revealed in the conclusion.

BITS OF LEGIONNAIRE BUSINESS:

Superman says that he last saw the Legion "after the first Crisis. They never came back. And I never understood why." Uh...because John Byrne screwed up Legion chronology, and eventually forced Superboy's heroic death? Bah!

The news that Thom is schizophrenic comes as a surprise, but the assertion that he "spent years in a hospital after his gravity powers popped up" has some basis in previous continuity. And it's a rare Legionnaire who hasn't suffered from mental illness at some time or another.

And Thom may have always called himself "the unlickiest Legionnaire" (although I don't remember him ever doing so), but traditionally the "unluckiest Legionnaire" was Lightning Lad.

The Legion (or at least Dawnstar) knows about the Multiverse -- and Starboy/Starman's presence in the KINGDOM COME series is retconned as a sojourn on Earth-22. Come to think of it, the entire KINGDOM COME universe is retconned as Earth-22. (If you haven't been following things, now there are 52 different universes in the Multiverse -- but no one is supposed to know except the Monitors.)

I suspect that the LSH we're seeing here -- the classic Legion -- is from one of the "three worlds" in the title. Obviously, there are at least two other versions of the Legion in other universes. If I had to venture a guess, I would say that the other two are the current ("Teenage Revolution") version, and the post-Zero Hour version. (Or possibly the animated version from the TV show and LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES IN THE 31st CENTURY.)

The whole Triplicate Girl/Computo thing had me fooled, how about you?

Liberty Belle tracks Jeckie's flight ring signal -- but later, Jeckie says, "All I kept thinking was I had to hide..." Surely her Sensor Girl powers would easily have concealed her flight ring signal? (I'm more willing to accept that she couldn't hide from Dawnstar...after all, tracking is Dawny's super-power.)

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