Week of 25 March 2009

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

SUPERMAN #686 (5/09)
"Yesterday and Tomorrow"
ROLL CALL: Chameleon Boy [Control], Mon-El, Quislet [Hovercam MTSP02]

Mon-El begins filling in for Superman as the defender of Metropolis. The Guardian takes Mon-El under his wing, and Mon (as Jonathan Kent) becomes an officer in the Science Police. Lar cuts his hair in order to look less British and more butch.

We live in a quantum universe, which means it's like old-stye comics: if you look at anything closely enough, it falls apart into a bunch of indistinct dots.

So it is with this whole "Mon-El Replaces Superman" storyline.

Lar Gand, space explorer, is fresh out of fifteen years or so in the Phantom Zone, miraculously cured of his vulnerability to lead. He doesn't know how he was cured, how long the cure will last, or what to do if his vulnerability returns. The sum total of his experience with Earth: he landed, met Clark Kent, and then in a few hours he was dying and exiled to the Phantom Zone.

I don't know about you, but I'd think that Lar would want to put Earth as far behind him as possible. Why would he agree to stick around, much less to fill in for Superman -- the guy who exposed him to lead to begin with, imprisoned him in the Zone, and then basically forgot about him for 15 years or more? Why doesn't he fly off to explore the universe for a better place to live?

And what about Supes? How heartless and selfish, to leave this poor teenager on an unfamiliar lead-filled planet, with no certainty that he'll continue to be immune to lead? To thrust upon him the responsibility for the well-being of an entire city (if not the whole world)? To force him to adopt a new (fraudulent) identity and live in an unfamiliar culture, with no guide except an old woman who lives thousands of miles away?

And what about the citizens of Metropolis? Are they supposed to accept Mon-El, with no statement from Superman or any other bona-fides? A population that is hostile toward Kryptonians, on a world that has banished all Kryptonians except Superman. (I know that Mon-El is Daxamite, not Kryptonian...is this a distinction that the average citizen of Metropolis will understand, without having it explained to them?)

The whole thing just doesn't make sense, if you think about it.

But damn, Lar is looking mighty fine!


BITS OF LEGIONNAIRE BUSINESS: A thousand years in the future, Mon-El (as a Legionnaire) will be an officially-deputized Science Police officer. Oddly, he is not the only Legionnaire to have a previous career as an S.P. In classic continuity, Gim Allon (Colossal Boy) was with the Science Police before joining the Legion. In the Earth-247 Legion, Imra Ardeen (Saturn Girl) was an S.P. before she became a founding member of the Legion.

In the Teenage Revolution Leigon, Chameleon masqueraded as an S.P. officer. And Lyle Norg (Invisible Kid) was the son of an S.P.

Does anyone remember other Science Police officers who joined the Legion, or other Legionnaires who served as S.P.'s?

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