"Connections"
ROLL CALL:
Brainiac 5, Chameleon Boy, Cosmic Boy, Invisible Kid (Lyle), Lightning Lad, Phantom Girl, Saturn Girl, Triplicate Girl, Wynn Allon, Anisa, R.J. Brande, H'Hrnath, Marla Latham, Mycroft, Pheebes, Zarl, S.P. Chief Zoltorus(?)
CUTE BOYS: Brainy, Garth, Lyle, Rokk, Wynn, Assorted U.P. soldiers
A lot going on here.
U.P. troops take Phantom Girl to Earth, where she meets with the Security Directorate and gives them a data cube containing everything Bgtzl knows about the invaders. She then joins the Legion.
Brainy, in Admiral Allon's ship above Anotrom, helps U.P. forces defeat an invader ship coming though the suddenly-larger wormhole.
Cosmic Boy, lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, and R.J. Brande flight-test the new Leigon cruiser, the fastest ship in the U.P. Imra tells Brande that she tried to read the minds of the attempted assassins, but their minds are blocked and they were acting under the control of someone else. Brande announces that the Legion has better things to do than guard him, and he's going to get a bodyguard.
Another assassination attempt on Brade is foiled by his new bodyguard: Invisible Kid.
BITS OF LEGIONNAIRE BUSINESS:
Tinya's entrance into the Security Directorate's office is reminiscent of her arrival in the new Legion HQ in the Legion's origin story way back in Superboy 147 (1968/06).
When Rokk tells Garth not to crash-test the cruiser, Garth responds "Did that once -- that was enough." He refers, of course, to the crash-landing on Korbal that led to him, Ayla, and Mekt getting their lightning powers.
Among the holo-images of potential Legionnaires is Reep Daggle, later to be Chameleon Boy. Later, Brande makes a note to "Check if Marla gets Reep's quarantine pa--" (probably "papers") -- Reep is, in reality, Brande's son -- a fact that the Legion will not learn for quite a while.
Brainy defeats the alien ship by using "an ancient technique called crossing the T...from before wars were fought in three dimensions." This, I believe, is a deliberate slap in the face to shows such as Star Trek which so often forget that their ships can move in three dimensions. You might remember a scene from Wrath of Khan where Kirk surprises Khan by bringing the Enterprise up from beneath Khan's ship -- the scene came as a surprise because it went against the usual two-dimensional tactics of the show.
Well, now we know where Kirk learned that maneuver...from Brainy himself, probably between pages in the Star Trek/LSH crossover series.
On a more serious note, Brainy's maneuver worked only because the alien ship was emerging form the plane of the wormhole's mouth...thus, in effect, reducing the battle to a two-dimensional one. To Admiral Allon and the other U.P. troops, two-dimensional battle plans were unfamiliar, because for the last few centuries battles were always fought in three dimensions.
Incidentally, this is an early example of Brainy's tactical genius -- which later figured into his rivalry with the Khund Field Marshal Lorca in "The Charge of the Doomed Legionnaires" (Superboy 217, 1976/06).
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LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES 100-PAGE SPECTACULAR 2 (2012/02)
This is a reprint volume that contains Legion stories from various scattered sources, most of them recent.
The cover is from Adventure 0 (2009/04), and is an homage to the iconic cover of Adventure 247.
First up is "The Legion of Super-Heroes" from Adventure 247, most recently reprinted in the same Adventure 0 (2009/04). By my count, this is the tenth time DC has sold me this particular story. (The other nine are listed here.)
Next up, "Long Live the Legion Part One," the backup story from Adventure 504/1 (2009/10) (I reviewed it here.)
Then comes "Long Live the Legion Part Two" (Adventure 505/2, 2009/11, reviewed here), "Long Live the Legion Part Four" (Adventure 506/3, 2009/12, reviewed here), and "Long Live the Legion Part Four" (Adventure 507/4, 2010/01, reviewed here).
Then, totally out os sequence, comes "Batman and the Legion of Super-Heroes" from Action 864 (2008/06), reviewed here. This is a particularly good story to have. It's an epilog to the Superman and the LSH series and a prolog to Legion of 3 Worlds.
Next is the four-page cute (if inaccurately-titled) story "Friday Night in the 31st Century" from Action 800 (2011/06) reviewed here.
The final story is "Who is Clark Kent's Big Brother" from Action Annual 10 (2007/03), which retold and updated Mon-El's origin for a continuity that no longer exists.
All in all, this is a nice volume to have, with some historically-important Legion stories.
By the way...what ever happened to Lightning Lad's quest for the lost twin that Mekt claimed he had? I'm just sayin'....
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