Retro Review: Legion Of Super-Heroes (Vol. 4) #0, 62-80 & Legionnaires #0, 19-36 by McCraw Peyer, Moder, Moy & Others For DC Comics (The Reboot)

Columns, Top Story

The Legion of Super-Heroes (Vol. 4) #0, 62-80, Legionnaires #0, 19-36, Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #6, Legionnaires Annual #2 (October 1994 to May 1996)

Written by Mark Waid (LSH #0, 62-67, 71, LSH Annual #6, LNR Annual #2), Tom McCraw (LSH #0, 62-67, 71, 76, 78-79, LNR #0, 26, LSH Annual #6, LNR Annual #2), Tom Peyer (LNR #20-34, LSH #67, 71-80, LSH Annual #6, LNR Annual #2), Roger Stern (LNR #35-36)

Plotted by Mark Waid (LNR #0, 19), Tom McCraw (LNR #19, 24-25, 27-36, LSH #68-70, 72-75, 77, 80), Tom Peyer (LSH #68-70)

Scripted by Tom Peyer (LNR #19), Mark Waid (LSH #68-70)

Pencilled by Stuart Immonen (LSH #0, LSH Annual #6), Lee Moder (LSH #62-66, 68-69, 71-80), Jeffrey Moy (LNR #0, 19-24, 26, 29-36, LNR Annual #2), Brian Apthorp (LSH #63), Scott Benefiel (LSH #63), Yancey Labat (LSH #64), Chris Renaud (LSH #67), Mike Collins (LNR #25, 27, LSH Annual #6), Jason Armstrong (LSH #70), Joyce Chin (LNR #28), Jim Hall (LSH Annual #6), Alan Davis (LSH Annual #6)

Inked by Ron Boyd (LSH #0, 62-80, LNR #0, 19, LSH Annual #6), Tom Simmons (LSH #63, LNR #22, 24, LSH Annual #6), Philip Moy (LNR #20), WC Carani (LNR #21, 23-24, 26-36, LNR Annual #2), Mark Farmer (LNR #25, LSH Annual #6), Bob Wiacek (LSH Annual #6), Jose Marzan Jr. (LSH Annual #6)

Colour by Tom McCraw (LSH #0, 62-80, LNR #0, 19-36, LSH Annual #6, LNR Annual #2)

Spoilers (from twenty-four to twenty-six years ago)

Okay, from the start, I was not happy to see that my beloved Legion was being rebooted.  I hated that years of continuity and characters were wiped away, and that the team was being given, more or less, a fresh slate.

More than that, I hated that nostalgia became a driving force behind this comic, as classic stories got retooled and retold from this 90s perspective.  It always seemed unnecessary to me.  At the same time, there were things that I remember liking about this, from Lee Moder’s artwork to some of the new characters, like XS and Gates.  I remember that the stories grew on me for a while, and then after that, they really didn’t work, until Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning came along and saved the whole thing by breaking just about all of it.  Most of the stuff that was happening before that was forgettable, and so I’m coming to this stack of comics with very few memories of what they include, and unfortunately, a sense of dread.

Am I right to feel that way?  I guess we’re going to find out.

One piece of housekeeping first.  Starting with the two zero issues, Legion of Super-Heroes flowed into the next issue of Legionnaires, and so on.  Basically, they were one comic, kind of like how the four Superman titles read as one weekly story in the same era.  Eventually, they even put little boxes with numbers in them to help keep track of how the story flowed.  Because of that, I’m going to write about both titles in one column, and will use the abbreviations LSH and LNR to denote which title I’m talking about.

Let’s track who turned up in the title:

The Legion of Super-Heroes

  • Live Wire (Garth Ranzz; LSH #0, 62-64, 72, LNR #0, 19-20, LNR Annual #2)
  • Cosmic Boy (Rokk Krinn; LSH #0, 62-76, 78-80, LNR #0, 19-23, 25-36, LNR Annual #2)
  • Saturn Girl (Imra Ardeen; LSH #0, 62-70, 72-76, 78-80, LNR #0, 19-27, 29-36, LNR Annual #2)
  • Triad (Luornu Durgo; LNR #0, 19-24, 26-36, LSH #62-68, 70-76, 78-80, LNR Annual #2)
  • Apparition (Tinya Wazzo; LNR #0, 19-23, 25-28, LSH #62-71, LNR Annual #2)
  • Leviathan (Gim Allon; LNR #0, 19-23, 25, 28-36, LSH #62-70, 72, 74-76, 78-80, LSH Annual #6, LNR Annual #2)
  • Kid Quantum (James Cullin; LNR #0, LSH #62)
  • XS (Jenni Ognats; LNR #0, 19-27, 29-30, 35-36, LSH #62-67, 69-70, 72, 75, 80, LSH Annual #6, LNR Annual #2)
  • Chameleon (Reep Daggle; LNR #0, 19-23, 25-26, 28, 30-36, LSH #62-72, 74-76, 78-80, LNR Annual #2)
  • Invisible Kid (Lyle Norg; LNR #0, 19-23, 25-26, 28, 31-36, LSH #62-72, 74-76, 78-80, LNR Annual #2)
  • Brainiac 5 (Querl Dox; LNR #19-25, 28-33, 36, LSH #63-67, 69-70, 72, 74-75, 77-80, LNR Annual #2)
  • Spark (Ayla Ranzz; LNR #20-23, 25-30, 33-36, LSH #64-70, 72-74, 76, 78-80, LNR Annual #2)
  • Andromeda (Laurel Gand; LSH #66-70, 80, LNR #23, 25-28, 36, LNR Annual #2)
  • Shrinking Violet (Salu Digby; LSH #66-67, 69-72, 74-76, 78-80, LNR #23-25, 28, 31-36, LSH Annual #6, LNR Annual #2)
  • Kinetix (Zoe Saugin; LSH #66-71, 76, 80, LNR #23, 25-26, 32-34, 36, LSH Annual #6)
  • Gates (LSH #76, 78-80, LNR #33-36)
  • Star Boy (Thom Kallor; LSH #76, 78-80, LNR #33-36)

Villains

  • Mr. Cuspin (LSH #0)
  • Roderick Doyle (LSH #0, LNR #0, 19)
  • Tangleweb (LSH #62, 67-68)
  • Mano (Fatal Five; LNR #19-20, 35-, LSH #63, 78-80)
  • Leland McCauley (LSH #63-65, 72, 78, LNR #20-21, 23, 26)
  • White Triangle (LSH #63, 67, 70-72, LNR #23-24, 26-28, LNR Annual #2)
  • Suggin (White Triangle; LSH #63, 71, LNR #27-28, LNR Annual #2)
  • Arns (White Triangle; LSH #63, 71, LNR #27-28, LNR Annual #2)
  • Fethro Jorn (White Triangle; LSH #63, 71, LNR #27-28, LNR Annual #2)
  • Other Daxamite White Triangle (White Triangle; LSH #63, 71, LNR #27-28, LNR Annual #2)
  • Bur Rac (LNR #21-22, LSH #65)
  • Bandarkat (LSH #65)
  • Caress (LSH #65)
  • Titanor (LSH #65)
  • Micro (LSH #66)
  • The Composite Man (LNR #25, LSH #69)
  • Roxxas (Daxamite Ambassador; LNR #27-28, LNR Annual #2)
  • Doctor Regulus (LSH #72, LNR #29)
  • Lightning Lord (Mekt Ranzz; LSH #73, LNR #30)
  • Scavenger (LSH #74, LNR #31)
  • Chronos (LSH #75, LNR #32)
  • Unnamed Villain (Disintegrate, Melt, etc.; actually Jan Arrah; LNR #32-34, LSH #76)
  • Nara Minsork (LSH #77)
  • The Gatherers (LNR #34)
  • Ambassador Winema Wazzo (LNR #34, 36, LSH #78)
  • Tharok (Fatal Five; LNR #34-36, LSH #78-80)
  • Validus (Fatal Five; LSH #78-80, LNR #35-36)
  • The Empress (Fatal Five; LSH #78-80, LNR #35-36)
  • Persuader (Fatal Five; LSH #78-80, LNR #35-36)
  • Proteans (LNR #35)
  • President Chu (LSH #80)
  • Dominators (LSH Annual #6)

Guest Stars

  • Ayla Ranzz (LSH #0)
  • Luornu Durgo (Brande’s assistant; LSH #0)
  • Atmos (LNR #0)
  • Star Boy (Thom Kallor; LNR #0)
  • Querl Dox (LNR #0)
  • Ultra Boy (Jo Nah, Workforce; LSH #64-65, 72, 74, 76, 80, LNR #21-22, 26-27, 29, 31, 36, LNR Annual #2)
  • Inferno (Workforce; LSH #64-65, 72, LNR #21-22, 26, LNR Annual #2)
  • Evolvo (Sev Tcheru, Workforce; LSH #64-65, 72, 78, LNR #21-22, 26, LNR Annual #2)
  • Spider-Girl (Sussa Paka, Workforce, LSH #64-65, 72, LNR #21-22, 26, LNR Annual #2)
  • Karate Kid (Val Armorr, Workforce; LSH #64-65, 72, LNR #21-22, 26, LNR Annual #2)
  • Live Wire (Garth Ranzz, Workforce; LNR #21-23, 26-30, 36, LSH #65, 73-74, 80)
  • Lume (LSH #66)
  • Gates (LSH #66)
  • Jan Arrah (Tromite; LSH #71-72, 80, LNR Annual #2, LNR #29, 34, 36)
  • Dirk Morgna (LNR #29)
  • Valor (Lar Gand; LNR #29-32, 34, 36, LSH #73, 76, 80)
  • Superboy (Kon-El; LSH #74, LNR #31)
  • Mysa (Sorcerers’ World; LSH #76, LNR #33-34)

Supporting Characters

  • Mekt Ranzz (LSH #0)
  • RJ Brande (LSH #0, 63-64, 71-72, 77, 80, LNR #0, 19-20, 24, 27-28, 31-33, LNR Annual #2)
  • President Chu (UP President; LSH #0, 63-64, 66, 71-72, 74, 76, 78, LNR #0, 19-20, 26-27, 29, 31-34, 36, LNR Annual #2)
  • Shvaughn Erin (Liaison to Science Police; LSH #0, 72-73, LNR #25, 32, 35, LSH Annual #6)
  • Marla Latham (LNR #0, 19, 24, 27, 35, LSH #66, 72, 76, 80)
  • Ambassador Winema Wazzo (LNR #0, 23, 26, 28, LSH #64, 70, 72, 76, 80)
  • Gigi Cusimano (Science Police; LNR #0, LSH Annual #6, LSH #72)
  • Rond Vidar (LNR #0, 32-33, 35, LSH #75-77)
  • Athramites (LSH #63, 66, LNR Annual #2, LNR #32, 35)
  • Tenzil Kem (chef, Legion headquarters; LSH #63, 67, 76, LNR #25, 35)
  • Aven (Imra’s former teacher; LNR #26, 36, LSH #80)
  • Buck Bond (Science Ranger; LNR #28)
  • Murl (Tinya’s father; LNR #28)
  • Derek Morgna (Dirk’s father; LNR #29)
  • Lori Morning (aka Future Girl; LSH #75-76, LNR #32-35)
  • Chuck Taine (LSH #76, LNR #33-35)
  • Warden Kreyton (Takron-Galtos; LNR #33, LSH #77)
  • Warden Wafil (Takron-Galtos; LSH #78-79)
  • Officer Dvron (LSH Annual #6)

Let’s take a look at what happened in these books, with some commentary as we go:

  • LSH 0 – At the end of Zero Hour, most DC comics had a “0” issue, showcasing the early days of the character or team featured in that book.  This provided Mark Waid and Tom McCraw (I’d forgotten that the writing team didn’t change on this book, which is really kind of weird to me now) the perfect chance to start over from scratch.  The issue opens on the Ranzz siblings – Garth, Mekt, and Ayla – enjoying a joyride in a borrowed cruiser until their ship loses its charge, and they are stuck landing on Korbal.  Mekt can’t get the vessel working again, but Ayla suggests that they could get a local lightning beast (think rhinos that channel electricity) to charge it.  Garth wakes up screaming in a cheap motel room.  It turns out that he was dreaming about something that happened three years ago, and now he’s snuck away from his family, and is waiting for his shuttle to come.  On Braal, Rokk Krinn, a magnoball champion with the nickname “Cosmic Boy” speaks to the press before boarding his shuttle.  When a journalist suggests that his manager, Mr. Cuspin, has a lot of debt, Rokk is confused and hustled onto the shuttle, which is eventually going to Metropolis, after stopping at Winath and Titan (it’s odd how Metropolis is a city while these other places are entire planets or moons).  It’s mentioned that there has been conflict between Braal and Titan, but that, with the emergence of the new United Planets, things have improved.  On Titan, a Science Police cadet named Imra Ardeen demonstrates her telepathic prowess by discovering that a woman reporting a jewel theft is herself the culprit.  Imra helps take the woman down, and her superior makes reference to the fact that she’s going to Earth.  Garth boards the shuttle, and ends up sitting with Rokk.  They notice that RJ Brande, the third richest sentient in the cosmos also boards the shuttle, which is able to travel very quickly due to Brande’s stargate technology.  Imra boards the shuttle on Titan, and is not impressed to pick up Garth’s lewd thoughts about her.  When the shuttle arrives on Earth, Imra notices that some workers are planning on shooting Brande.  She calls out a warning, and Rokk and Garth both use their powers to stop the assassins.  Imra yells at them to catch the ones getting away, which they do quite easily, before the SP arrive.  Brande’s assistants, Doyle and Luornu Durgo rush to him, and its clear that he has an idea growing in his mind.  Later, Brande meets with UP President Chu to discuss an idea he has, to fund a symbol that the new UP could unify around.  Imra finds that things aren’t as positive as she’d expected at Science Police Earth, since her commander is prejudiced against telepaths.  We meet Officer Shvaughn Erin (who is a woman again in the new LSH mythos).  Luornu comes to get Imra, telling her she brings a message from Brande.  Rokk trains, and his manager is gruff with him.  Luornu arrives there too, and gives him the same message.  Garth, who has been looking for his brother Mekt, has managed to get himself arrested, making it easy for Luornu to find him, although not before he nearly loses a brawl in the holding cells.  The three teens are brought together at Brande’s offices, where Cuspin tells Rokk that he’ll do all the talking when they meet with the rich man.  Imra exposes that Cuspin has been using Rokk’s money to pay off his gambling debts, and when he goes to hit Imra, the others act in her defense.  Rokk fires the man, and the teens enter Brande’s office, where they find holograms of the heroes of the 20th century, Superman, Batman, the Flash, and Wonder Woman.  Brande, with Luornu at his side, tells them about how he wants to bring back an era of heroes.  He wants the three to be the beginning of a team that will act as a symbol of heroism, a Legion of Super-Heroes.  He admits he doesn’t know if this plan will work, but has them agree to give him three months to try.  They all agree.  Elsewhere, Doyle, Brande’s supposed partner, is revealed to have been behind the assassination attempt, although we also learn that he is working for some “masters”, who are likely to kill the man he sends to update them.  He tells his new lieutenant that he will have another shot at Brande at the upcoming UP summit.
  • LNR 0 – RJ Brande shows a video to his first three Legionnaires of them in their costumes, and they all react differently. We learn that Rokk and Imra are fifteen, and Garth is fourteen (which means he was eleven when he got his powers, despite looking much older than that last issue).  We also learn that they are keeping the newer Live Wire name for Garth, that the team is attending a UP conference, and that they’ve asked for new costumes.  Doyle is concerned that the United Planets are coalescing too quickly, although he has a plan to kill Brande and the Legion.  He sends two assassins.  Tinya Wazzo rushes towards the UP conference.  She’s late and worried that her mother will be upset with her.  While rushing across the conference chamber, she phases through the large UP symbol globe in the centre of the room, and notices something strange about it, but her mother doesn’t give her a chance to explain.  The President introduces the Legion, but some of the delegates are not impressed and question if they’re needed.  Imra notices that people are locked in the chamber, and scans the crowd, picking up Tinya’s concerns about the globe.  Imra realizes it’s a bomb, but yells that out so people start panicking.  Garth blasts a hole in the roof.  Luornu saves Brande and the President from falling debris by splitting into three, while Rokk lifts the globe out of the chamber just before it explodes.  In the aftermath, Imra identifies Doyle’s two assassins, and they chase after them.  Tinya’s mother can’t find her.  The Legion chases the two assassins into a crummy neighbourhood.  Rokk traps one in bits of metal, while Garth and Imra search for the other.  She is about to shoot Imra, but Tinya phases out of a wall, frightening her.  Garth zaps the woman, and Rokk joins them.  Garth suggests that Tinya join the team, and Rokk says he has ideas about adding someone else.  Shortly after that, the Legion, now with Apparition (Tinya) and Triad (Luornu) on the squad, present themselves to a cheering crowd.  Brande is sad to see Luornu leave his office (how old is she, anyway?), and gets upset when he learns that the President wants to send the team on a mission for media purposes.  The President calls her assistant, to get him to call the Science Police.  Later, at a gathering of SPs, Lt. Gim Allon (how old is he?), who is being lauded for his ability to change his height, receives an datapad with news he finds interesting.  On Xanthu, two officials are forced to choose one of their prospective planetary champions (Star Boy, Atmos, and Kid Quantum are the options) to do something for the United Planets.  They choose Kid Quantum, handing him a datapad that makes him upset.  In a lab somewhere, SPs come to collect the speedster Jenni Ognats.  Some Durlans talk in their language, and hand a datapad to one of them.  SP Officer Gigi Cusimano goes to the home of Lyle Norg, but after his door is opened, she can’t find anyone.  A young kid appears behind her, and introduces himself as Lyle.  Querl Dox works in a lab with Rond Vidar, and is so engrossed in his work that he ignores a pad handed to him by an SP.  We finally get to read one of these things; it informs Querl that he’s been chosen to join the Legion, and that if he doesn’t go, his planet will be in violation of its treaty with the UP.
  • LSH 62 – Rokk and Garth are trying out the new virtual reality training equipment that RJ Brande has provided the Legion, while Imra, Tinya, and Luornu play some jokes on them.  Rokk reminds them that they have to get to UP headquarters, and it appears that Luornu may have a crush on Rokk.  They attract some attention along the way, and when they arrive, they are surprised to see others wearing the generic Legion costume standing around outside.  They hang back to watch as Gim, aka Leviathan, introduces himself to James, aka Kid Quantum.  Jenni, aka XS, rushes up to them, warning that a Durlan is approaching.  Gim grows in size, telling the others to capture “it”.  The Durlan changes shape, and Rokk orders the actual team to intervene.  Garth shocks Gim so he’ll let the Durlan go, and Rokk questions why they are all there.  The Durlan returns to his normal shape, and Imra’s scan reveals that he’s calm.  Lyle, aka Invisible Kid, reveals that the Durlan is wearing a Legion outfit too, doesn’t speak Interlac, and is code-named Chameleon.  They all introduce themselves, and Rokk is still surprised to learn that there are more members of the team.  He’s even more surprised when Gim announces that he’s been appointed team leader (the first five Legionnaires voted and gave that role to Rokk).  Gim runs a briefing; they are to go searching for some missing freighters, and explains how transuits (30th century spacesuits) work, making a point of telling Kid Quantum to wear his belt, which gives him his powers, on the outside of his suit.  James complains about the generic outfits, and when the team departs on their cruiser, we see that they are all already wearing new outfits, which are basically the Chris Sprouse designs from Legionnaires.  They find a damaged freighter and start to explore it, splitting into teams.  Imra feels some “horrible thoughts” and runs into a wall of sticky stuff; she and Garth saw something run into the shadows.  Rokk tries to gather the team, but Gim has them rush in.  Lyle and Chameleon find some dead bodies cocooned in the same sticky stuff, and are then attacked by a giant spider-like alien.  They escape, and Garth and James save them.  James almost gets hit by some webbing, but Tinya saves him.  The rest of the team gathers, just as the alien launches what look like little laser shooting drones from his antennae.  Jenni freaks out and runs away, but then runs back.  Cos saves Gim, who wants them to pursue the alien.  Lyle insists on looking for survivors instead.  Kid Quantum goes after the alien, who calls himself Tangleweb, and uses his stasis belt to hold him in place.  As the others approach, James’s belt shorts out, and the alien grabs him, breaking his neck.  XS, Cham, and Triad save the survivors while Gim and the others stand over James’s body.  Gim wants to pursue the alien out onto the hull, and Rokk insists on going with him.  They are too late, and Tangleweb escapes.  Gim is hard on himself, but Rokk calms him down.  Gim resigns as leader, giving the job to Rokk.  He wants to resign from the Legion as well, but Rokk gives him a speech about the Legion’s destiny, and convinces him to stay.
  • LNR 19 – XS watches as people prepare Kid Quantum’s coffin for his funeral.  She worries that she is too afraid to stay in the Legion.  RJ Brande is furious that President Chu drafted new members into the Legion; as they argue, they don’t know that Apparition is eavesdropping.  Triad pulls her back, and then hacks into the camera in the President’s office (she has the codes from when she was Brande’s assistant).  Brande insists that the Legion be more independent, and makes reference to the nine of them, which confuses the President, as she counts ten, not including Kid Quantum.  The kids listening in are confused by this too.  Saturn Girl tries to telepathically interrogate the assassins that tried to kill Brande, but they’ve been prepared to block her scans, which is disturbing for her.  Live Wire gets angry and fires his lightning at them in their cell, which allows Imra that chance to get past their blocks.  Jenni begins packing, thinking that she’s going to sneak away from the Legion.  Just then, Cosmic Boy comes to her room, wanting to discuss how she panicked during the mission.  He encourages her to face her fears.  Brande calls Querl Dox, asking him why he hasn’t come to the Legion yet; Dox hasn’t read his messages.  Brande encourages him to hurry up and join them, which startles Marla.  Apparently Dox works for Brande (which makes it even stranger that he didn’t know he was being drafted), and has caused a lot of damage in wrecked labs.  Doyle is working in his office when he sees a news broadcast identifying him as being behind the murder attempt on Brande.  He panics and calls his aide Jando to help him flee.  Invisible Kid appears in front of him, and Jando turns out to be Chameleon in disguise.  They easily arrest Doyle (and we learn that Chameleon’s name is Reep).  The Legion gathers for Kid Quantum’s funeral, where Rokk gives a speech about James’s confidence.  XS notices that everyone is frozen – it seems that James’s quantum belt (which had previously shorted out and wasn’t working) was activated, and that the coffin is exploding.  Jenni pulls most of the team, Brande, and the President, out of the way, but is not sure she can make it to Rokk before he’s engulfed in the slow motion explosion.  She runs away, but only to use the Legion flagpole as a slingshot, giving her the speed to push through the stasis field and grab Rokk, who then saves her from some debris.  She announces that she’d like to stay on the team, and no one discusses why the coffin might have exploded (or that Brande’s closest assistant tried to kill him).  On the planet Angtu, it seems that everyone is dead because one side of a civil war bought chemical weapons from Leland McCauley that killed everyone on the planet except for Mano, who considers using his explosive hand to kill himself.  Instead, he uses it to blow up the entire planet, which he somehow survives, floating in space.
  • LSH 63 – Some maintenance men in a sewer in a complex owned by Leland McCauley discover Mano, who kills one of them.  Apparition tries to teach Chameleon to speak Interlac, but finds it difficult.  She hears some noise, and sees Triad, Invisible Kid, and Live Wire running from some little aliens that apparently want to accessorize their uniforms.  The rest of the team is going through the same thing.  RJ Brande enters, and explains that the Athramites are there to consult on their image.  He takes the team in three flying cars to show them their new headquarters, a beautiful new building shaped like a giant L.  The President wants to show them around, but the kids rush past her.  They notice how big the meeting table is, suggesting that more people will be joining the team, and admire the VR facilities, the size of the personal quarters, and the gym.  Tinya, Luornu, and Imra meet Tenzil Kem, who is their personal chef, and a bit of a goof.  Brande takes Lyle and Rokk to the lab, and introduces them to Brainiac 5, who at first Lyle assumes is a lab tech.  Brande explains that he’s a Legionnaire, which surprises them.  They hear an alarm, and everyone convenes in the monitor room (I guess the President left) to learn that McCauley is asking for help in his Moondome (in the snarkiest way possible).  The kids head to their cruiser.  Somewhere else, four men dressed in black with white triangles on their breasts look down on an unidentified planet and disapprove of the diversity they see; it seems they are Daxamites, and somehow connected to Doyle, whose first name is apparently Roderick.  The team approaches the moon, and enter the Moondome, where things are a little chaotic.  An SP grudgingly helps them, letting them know that someone is killing McCauley’s workers and wrecking his equipment.  They meet with McCauley, who shows them a video of Mano ranting about McCauley’s chemical weapons.  In the sewers, Mano kills the SPs that went after him.  Rokk splits the team into two squads to search, putting Gim in charge of the second team.  Rokk’s team isn’t having much luck, when Imra picks up Mano’s thoughts just before he attacks.  He moves to kill Imra, but Lyle manages to call in the other team, and XS runs right into Mano, slamming him into a wall.  Rokk tries to hold him, but can’t.  Gim punches him, sending him flying and breaking his helmet.  Mano yells about being mutated by McCauley’s gas.  He now stands against the side of the Moondome, and moves his hand towards it.  Garth calls his bluff, and we see the side of the dome explode.
  • LNR 20 – We back up a bit, and see Mano destroy the dome Leland McCauley has built on the moon.  The Legionnaires all collapse as the atmosphere escapes.  XS watches as Rokk pulls a corridor from beneath the surface up to their level.  Jenni tries to get everyone inside it, but collapses.  Instead, it’s Chameleon who turns into a big blob, picks them all up, and gets them into an airlock.  Everyone recovers very quickly, and get back to trying to find Mano.  Rokk gets a call from Brande, who tells them that Mano is so powerful that he blew up his entire planet, Angtu.  Brande wants the team to leave, but they insist on finishing their job.  Invisible Kid suggests that they call Brainiac 5 for some help; he is annoyed at being interrupted.  McCauley is freaking out about everything that is happening. When Brande calls him, he’s rude to him.  One of McCauley’s workers returns to his quarters after his shift, to find that Mano is in his apartment.  Mano kills the guy and lies down to rest; Imra senses the murder.  Brainy explains that Mano needs to recharge his powers if he’s to destroy the moon, and calculates that the team has less than twenty-five minutes to find him.  The team heads to the living quarters, based on Imra’s knowledge.  They send Apparition to search through all the apartments, but as that’s taking too long, Rokk and Gim work together to rip the roofs off all the units, revealing Mano.  Mano uses a blaster to cut a hole through the floor and carve himself a tunnel.  He busts into another part of the facility, where he finds McCauley.  McCauley doesn’t say anything as Mano threatens him, because it’s really Chameleon.  Invisible Kid grabs Mano’s arm, and Cham punches him out.  Later, McCauley has Mano trussed up, and is gloating.  He suggests that the Legion come work for him, offering to pay more than Brande.  The team leaves (leaving Mano in his custody, which is weird).  In the elevator, Rokk tells Garth that the President wants to see him.  Later, Garth meets with the President (whose name still hasn’t been revealed).  She tells him that his planet, Winath, has sent someone else to be their representative on the Legion; his sister Ayla.  The President makes it clear that she’s there to replace him.
  • LSH 64 – A young man dressed in a colourful costume (we know he’s Ultra Boy, in his original look, but with a single earring and stubble) enters a bar and ends up winning a brief brawl.  He asks for directions to Legion Plaza, and flies off.  In the headquarters, Ayla shows off her powers to the team, and takes the codename Spark.  While some of the kids are happy to see her, it’s awkward that Garth is so unhappy.  Ayla explains how she got her powers from the lightning beasts, and how they put her and her siblings in comas.  When she came to, Mekt was already gone.  She explains that her planet chose her to be their representative in the Legion.  Brande joins Rokk and Garth, who are talking about how the President told Garth that Ayla is his replacement.  Brande claims to have argued on his behalf, but was unsuccessful.  Garth gets into an argument with Ayla, blaming her for this situation and, when she calls him irresponsible, claiming he hates her.  Imra gathers Rokk and Garth and takes them to the President.  She reveals that Garth hasn’t been honest with them, revealing that he’s a runaway.  Apparently fourteen is the age of majority in the UP, but not on Winath, so that’s a problem.  The President then reveals that Mekt, the brother Garth is searching for, is wanted.  The President tells Rokk that he can decide to keep Garth or Ayla, but that he has to choose properly to keep her respect.  At the headquarters, Brainiac 5 works on an experiment, and we see that there is some rivalry between him and Invisible Kid with regards to the values of theoretical over practical sciences.  We see what’s happening throughout the headquarters, with a strange visual effect and the narration making it clear that someone is watching.  We see that Tinya’s mother is angry with her for joining the Legion, rejecting her as her daughter.  Gim is trying to teach Cham how to speak Interlac, Luornu trains, and Jenni tries to console Tinya, who is attractive to the watcher.  Imra confronts Ultra Boy outside the building; that’s who’s been spying on people.  As they talk, Ayla attacks, and Ultra Boy starts to fight back.  Garth sees that Ultra Boy has grabbed Ayla, and he attacks in a rage.  They fight for a couple of pages, wrecking the area around the headquarters.  Leviathan finally breaks them apart, and shows Garth how much damage he’s caused.  Ultra Boy immediately stands down, and Rokk tells off both him and Garth.  Garth realizes how badly he screwed up, and quits the team.  Ultra Boy apologizes to him, and makes reference to the “other lightning guy”, which Garth assumes must be Mekt.  They fly off together, and Garth suggests that Ultra Boy should join the Legion.  He says he’s already on a team, and we see Leland McCauley sitting in a room, surrounded by four costumed characters, two of whom are easily recognized as Karate Kid and Evolvo-Lad.
  • LNR 21 – Garth narrates, talking about Asteroid 42464-ST, where the Science Police store hazardous weapons.  Some thieves have broken in, and are “tagging” crates, when Garth’s lightning alerts them to his presence.  They assume that it’s the Legion who have come to get them, but it’s actually Workforce, Leland McCauley’s team, made up of Live Wire, Ultra Boy, Evolvo, Inferno, and Spider-Girl.  McCauley commands them over a video link, and he forbids Garth from using his powers, as he doesn’t know if they will set off any of the weapons.  Instead, he orders Spider-Girl to stop them with her hair, which isn’t effective.  Inferno (this is a blond girl, not Dirk Morgna) burns one of the thieves to death, and then Ultra Boy makes his move.  The fact that he can only use one of his powers at a time leaves him vulnerable to attack from behind.  McCauley orders Evolvo (he’s an odder-looking version of the old Evolvo Lad from the Heroes of Lallor) to turn into his ape form, and he goes wild, hurting Karate Kid.  Meanwhile, as the Workforce is falling all over each other, the thieves use their tractor beam to load the crates they are stealing onto their ship.  McCauley sends Ultra Boy after them, but one of the thieves shoots him while he’s flying (since he can’t be invulnerable and fly), and he falls back into the asteroid facility.  McCauley is furious, and orders them back to their ship; Garth thinks about the Legion.  We see that the Legion is in a briefing being run by Brainiac 5.  Lyle asks about his name, which angers Brainy.  He talks about an alien race called the Wakeets, who are known for taking on distasteful jobs.  He explains that they built a prison called Planet Hell that was designed to be inescapable (by Coluans), accessible only by an electro-magnetic tunnel.  The tunnel broke, an everyone has been trapped in there for a while, with only sporadic and confusing communication.  Since the Wakeets sold the prison to the UP, the Coluans have built a new tunnel, and the UP wants Brainiac 5 to fix the tunnel equipment on Planet Hell, while the rest of the Legion are to assess the sanity of the inmates and guards.  Planet Hell, we learn, is inside the sun.  The team’s cruiser makes it through to the prison, and a guy that seems a little crazy comes to great them.  Everyone is wearing fitted goggles, to block the sun’s light.  The guy identifies himself as the Warden, and says he doesn’t remember where the power grid is.  Brainy, Rokk, Tinya, Cham, and Ayla head off (the whole team is wearing jet packs) to find the power grid using Brainy’s schematics, leaving the rest to talk to the warden.  The warden shows them around, and we see that the inmates are all still in their cells, but learn that the rest of the guards tried to fly away and burned up in the sun.  Tinya finds the power grid by phasing through some rocks, and Ayla excavates a tunnel to access it.  The Legionnaires fly through the tunnel system, but are approached by Coluan security systems.  Some flying disks attach themselves to Chameleon, and appear to kill him, while the ones that attach to Brainy (who hates being called Brainy) recognize that he’s Coluan and shut off.  Cham turns out to be okay; he changed shape to resemble one of the disks.  The warden seems a little squirrely.  Another craft flies over the prison, and fires a green beam into the hole that Ayla dug, filling it with green flame.  The warden explains to XS that with the security grid now destroyed, all the prisoners’ cell doors are about to open in ten seconds.
  • LSH 65 – A number of vessels begin to dock on Planet Hell, while the warden, who is named Bur Rac, runs to greet them.  We see dozens of diverse prisoners rushing towards some of the Legionnaires.  They fly off with their jetpacks, and Lyle sends Jenni to check on the squad that was in the power grid when it got torpedoed.  She finds them; Rokk covered them in metal before the blast hit.  Rokk, who is really powerful in this reboot, decides the jetpacks are too slow, and instead flies everyone on scraps of metal.  Imra determines that the ships were sent to pick up the prisoners, and we realize that the lead ship is commanded by the people who were stealing weapons in LNR 21.  Gim starts wrecking all the ships so no one can leave, including the Legion’s.  Bur Rac calls his “masters”, who remain unidentified.  We learn that he’s not the warden, but that he overthrew him five years prior (I still don’t see how he would have been able to feed all the prisoners for that long in the middle of the sun, without any supplies being sent).  His communication is cut off, and he hears the sounds of the fighting outside.  Gim is effective in fighting the prisoners, as is Lyle, who takes off their goggles, blinding them.  Imra puts Bandarkat, who is about to kill Lyle, to sleep, but is herself almost attacked.  A new ship flies in, and starts shooting at the prisoners.  The Workforce emerges from the ship (they followed the weapons thieves), and loses communication with McCauley as they do.  The Workforce doesn’t have goggles, so they need to get them from the prisoners.  Gim smashes their ship too, while Imra lets everyone know they are there to fight on their side.  Cos’s group joins in, and Ayla saves Imra from some beings that look a bit like Gil’dishpan, which angers Garth.  Inferno almost kills Cham when she burns a prisoner, while Triad saves her.  Rokk doesn’t understand why Brainy is just standing around looking at the sun.  Tinya saves him, and when Jo locks eyes with her, they are both clearly smitten.  Titanor, a crook from Titan, gets control of Spider-Girl, but Lyle takes him out.  The weapons thieves start handing out their weapons, and Bur Rac notices that the electro-magnetic tunnel is collapsing.  Rokk notices that it’s getting hotter, and Brainy explains that with the power grid down, the force shields that were protecting the prison from the sun’s heat are failing.  Rokk wants to know if he can fix it, but he points out that they are surrounded by armed prisoners, so it probably doesn’t matter.
  • LNR 22 – The Legion and the Workforce are surrounded, but Brainiac 5 appeals to reason, claiming he can fix the Coluan power grid.  Bur Rac seems to have control of the prisoners, who allow Brainy to go, so long as the rest of the heroes remain as hostages.  Brainy wants Evolvo and Saturn Girl to help him.  Invisible Kid insists that he could be helpful, and answers a weird science question to prove it.  When Brainy’s squad reaches the power grid, Lyle seems nervous about going in the hole, and Brainy puts him down, and then intelligence-level shames Evolvo.  Brainy explains that he wants Imra to monitor the prisoners and their friends.  We see that Ayla and Garth are in a cell together, which gives them another chance to argue.  Garth also shares that he’s afraid that the lightning makes him more angry and violent.  XS and Karate Kid talk, and he shares his opinion of Leland McCauley, while probing the cell’s forceshiel for weaknesses.  Leviathan is frustrated to not be able to communicate with Chameleon.  Cosmic Boy suggests that Apparition use her powers to stay cool, as the prison gets hotter and hotter.  She slips into the cell next door, and finds Ultra Boy and Spider-Girl making out, which rattles both her and Jo.  The prisoners start to argue with each other, and one kills three.  Brainy admits that he doesn’t think he can fix the power grid, not knowing that Bur Rac has joined him.  He’s about to shoot Brainy when Lyle comes up with an idea.  Triad and Inferno don’t get along well in their cell.  The escaped prisoners fight with one another.  Evolvo points out that the field protecting them is getting weaker.  Neither Evolvo nor Brainy think that Lyle’s plan could work, but Bur Rac points a gun at Brainy and insists he try it.  Karate Kid breaks him and XS out of their cell.  Imra sees that things are getting dangerous, and tries to get Bur Rac to broadcast his thoughts to all the prisoners, to calm them.  He ends up sharing his racist opinions of them, so all the prisoners decide to come and kill him.  While Lyle works, Evolvo changes into his ape form, so that Imra can guide him to protect them.  He puts together a barrier that the prisoners bang on.  Lyle has finished his plan, reversing the polarity of the forceshield around the prison asteroid, so that it is spit out of the star it resides in (now it’s clear that it’s not our sun).  The prisoners break through, and are about to shoot Imra, but Lyle sets up another field in the room, protecting them.  The rioting prisoners realize that they are out of the star, and stop fighting.  Later, we see that Lyle has put another field around the heroes, as they wait for the SP to come and fix things and take them home.  When Rokk tries to talk to Garth, he mistakenly thinks that Rokk is going to invite him back to the Legion.  When it’s clear he isn’t, he heads over to stand with the Workforce.
  • LSH 66 – The Legion is expanding again, and the newest recruit, Laurel Gand, codenamed Andromeda, displays her vast Daxamite powers to Cosmic Boy and Saturn Girl, while the President explains that her people rarely leave their planet.  The Daxamites’ weakness to lead necessitates that Laurel wear a transsuit.  When Rokk tries to be friendly with her, Laurel storms off after saying that she isn’t there to “intermingle.”  Imra questions how they can have a xenophobe on the team.  The President mentions that Xanthu is about to send a replacement for Kid Quantum, but that he’s been in a space-cruiser accident and needs to recover.  On the Planet Silvan, Leviathan and Chameleon meet Lume, a light-based creature who wants to try out for the Legion, but also doesn’t want to travel in space.  Triad, XS, and Invisible Kid watch this on a monitor, and discuss bringing some of the Workforce, specifically Karate Kid, into the Legion.  Apparition and Spark are on Winath, where three candidates – Ion, Micro, and Shrinking Violet – are to show off their abilities.  They fight a battle-drone in a small stadium, but when Ion shrinks very small, she collapses in pain.  A medic is called, but Ion is dead.  On the planet Aleph, a young woman named Zoe tries to use her powers to locate archeological objects, while her brother rushes her to get ready for her Legion tryout.  Gim and Cham are on Vyrga, where they look for someone named Gates.  They meet him (he looks like an insect), but Gates refuses to leave with them, calling the Legion a “commando unit” and a “teenage death squad”.  He teleports away, but Gim almost catches him.  Gates teleports Gim away, and he almost falls off a cliff.  Cham saves him.  Back in the HQ, Luornu, Lyle, Jenni, and Imra watch this.  When Marla Latham joins them, they let him know about the murder on Imsk.  There, Shrinking Violet explains to Tinya, Ayla, and some SPs that Ion was killed by an auraflux blade, basically, a knife that was implanted into her, that could not shrink when she did.  Micro tries to make it sound like Violet did this deed.  On Aleph, Zoe picks out an outfit for her try-out.  On Imsk, Violet finds video evidence showing that Micro implanted the blade on Ion.  When he tries to get away, Violet catches him and gives him a good beating.  Ayla and Tinya offer her a spot on the team, but she gets all shy until they review the footage of her fighting Micro, and make her feel that she’s earned her place.  On Aleph, Zoe introduces herself as Kinetix, and shows that she has the ability to animate objects and control them.  Both Cham and especially Gim appear a bit smitten, and offer her a place on the team.  Later, the Legion is assembled, and we see the three new members in their uniforms.  Rokk wants to help Laurel with her lead problem, and Brainy appears very distracted by her presence.
  • LNR 23 – Andromeda storms out of some room, claiming yet again that she doesn’t want anything to do with her teammates.  She storms past Brainiac 5, who is again rendered speechless by her.  Invisible Kid takes him to the lounge, where he has a gift for everyone on the team.  He’s crafted rings for them all that contain tracking beacons and communicators, but that also allow them to fly.  While the rest enjoy their flying, Lyle explains to Brainy that he used the floating substance that Brainy created by accident to make the rings, which now make him very popular.  Laurel is in her room, talking to a Daxamite, Obin Der, on the video screen.  She shows yet again that she’s xenophobic, and is thankful that she’s wearing a transsuit (which somehow lets her loincloth and hair hang freely, but is also clearly over her clothes) so she doesn’t have to touch them.  Obin Der reminds her that she was chosen for this mission but if she hates it that much, she could return to Daxam and lose her powers; he suggests instead that she try to make friends.  Cosmic Boy suggests that, now that they have communicators, the team can take some time off.  Apparition wants to go out dancing, which excites Triad.  Leviathan, Rokk, and Chameleon decide to play in VR instead, and Saturn Girl decides to join them.  Laurel asks if she can come with the other girls.  Live Wire wakes up from another dream about his brother, and gets a call from Rokk, who wants to tell him about the flight rings.  When Garth tries to brag about how well Leland McCauley treats him, McCauley interrupts the call to yell at Garth for being lazy.  The girls get ready to go out, and Kinetix changes Shrinking Violet’s dress into something very frilly and purple.  They fly off, gossiping about the boys.  The club they want to go to, Club Stargate, is designed around the movie Stargate, which seems kind of weird.  The bouncer, dressed in Ancient Egyptian clothes, won’t let them skip the line.  Some tough looking guys complain about Luornu being a Carggite.  Tinya’s mother spots her, and drags her away.  One of Luornu’s selves almost says something about her own childhood, but another stops her.  Rokk and Imra come to the end of their VR game, and almost kiss, but their helmets get in the way.  They both seem shook by this development.  As the girls wait to get in the club, and as Zoe keeps changing Vi’s dress (including in the mix one of original Vi’s older Legion costumes), the tough guys start to assault an amphibious sentient.  Laurel goes after them, but when she hears their racist rhetoric and sees that they are wearing white triangles on their necklaces, she lets them go.  Zoe fixes the alien’s helmet, and then unwittingly (I don’t understand that part) changes Vi’s dress into something revealing and sexy.  The bouncer tells Vi that she can come in the club now, and she shrinks out of sight.
  • LSH 67 – A random spaceship (that has a bit of an Alien Legion vibe going on) is attacked by Tangleweb, who encases the crew in his webbing and talks about eating their brains.  Leviathan is brooding in the Legion’s memorial hall when Cosmic Boy comes to get him for a meeting.  Not everyone on the team is okay with Rokk’s decision to only take some Legionnaires to hunt down Tangleweb.  His reasoning is that they will likely be fighting in cramped quarters, and not every team member is suited to this threat.  Triad is the most upset, and then Invisible Kid.  Gim mocks Saturn Girl for wanting to go, but that’s more of an outlet for his personal guilt surrounding Kid Quantum’s death.  Kinetix asks for a recap of what happened, and then Luornu storms off.  Rokk drags her back magnetically, making it clear again what his reasoning is.  Luornu still leaves the meeting, and in the hallway, she splits into her three selves, who argue and then go their separate ways.  As the squad (Spark, Chameleon, Andromeda, Kinetix, Apparition, Rokk, and Gim) are about to leave, they discover that Lyle has snuck aboard, and Rokk boots him off the ship.  Later, Tinya reconnoiters a vessel that Tangleweb has left adrift.  There’s a device on it that was designed to track Tangleweb’s ship (convenient, that is).  On Earth, Lyle goes to see someone named Dobe, and gets him to lend him an Earthgov ship called the Shadowstalker so he can go after his friends; Lyle predicts he’s not going to survive this mission.  Rokk’s cruiser catches up with Tangleweb’s ship, and the team is surprised when he attacks them, breaching their hull and coming after them.  He takes out Rokk and Ayla quickly, and manages to evade the others.  Laurel refuses to touch the creature, and has to be told to use her laser vision, which hurts the creature, and he retreats, taking Rokk and Ayla with him.  Laurel seals the hull while Zoe helps Gem out of the webbing he got stuck in.  Gim gets Laurel to push their damaged ship, following Tangleweb’s trajectory.  They land on a planet where they are immediately attacked by dozens of spider aliens.  On Earth, one of Luornu (the one that stays in her regular costume when she splits) gets attacked by three White Triangle guys, who give her a beating that her other two selves feel.  She’s left bleeding on a sidewalk with a white triangle painted on her and the ground, and a sign reading “aliens go home” lying next to her.
  • LNR 24 – This issue opens with a recap of the last issue of LSH, but in explaining what happened with Triad, it refers to her three selves as Triad-Purple, Triad-Neutral, and Triad-Orange, referring to the colouring of their uniforms when the split, and in panels that are detailed enough, their eye colours.  Triad-Purple, along with Saturn Girl, Shrinking Violet, and XS, searches for the missing Triad-Neutral, who is the one that got the beatdown.  They find the headquarters of the White Triangle, an empty space strewn with hate-filled graffiti and paper leaflets.  Imra makes the connection with the thoughts that she read in Bur Rac’s head, and they wonder if something is going on to lead to a rise in xenophobia.  Triad-Purple notices that Violet seems shook, and Vi feels suspicious about what happened when Andromeda went after some White Triangle thugs on the girls’ club night.  We see that Triad-Neutral is in the hospital, unconscious, with Marla and Triad-Orange standing over her.  Brande and Brainy are also there.  Brande makes some vague reference to the fact that the Carggite people won’t help being his fault, while Brainy tries to figure out what to do (because apparently the 30th century equivalent of the internet has no info on Carggite physiology).  Brainy points out that Luornu isn’t typical, and Orange ends up explaining that unlike other Carggites, her three selves have always had distinct personalities.  These differences drove their father away.  When they were discovered to be different, and their school wanted to expel them, their mother agreed, but it was their grandmother who stood up for them.  As their mother descended into drink and despair, their grandmother raised them to be distinct, even allowing them to dress individually.  On her deathbed, their grandmother revealed that she too had distinct personalities, and that she believed that was normal, but that their society was against it.  It’s hard to imagine Brainy paying any attention to this talk.  The others arrive, and Brainy tells the two conscious Luornus that he thinks they are going to die.  He suspects that if they reintegrate everything will be fine, but he doesn’t know.  Purple tries it on her own, and that is a bad idea.  A little later, Imra sits with the two Luornus, and Purple starts to open up about being in the hospital before.  Orange forbids her from continuing (which is interesting, given that she was the one opening up before), but Imra calms her down and encourages her to talk.  After their grandmother died, the Luornus were put in a mental institute, where doctors tried to integrate their personalities.  They escaped, and hid out at the spaceport.  They tried to break into a spaceship, which turned out to be RJ Brande’s.  He took them in, and gave them a job in his office.  Later, he discovered that they were runaway mental patients, and got angry.  At this point, Brande interrupts the story to get the Luornus, leaving Imra suspicious of him.  Brainy has figured out that for the Luornus to integrate successfully, they must all be conscious.  He is going to wake up Neutral to make this happen.  Imra asks Brande about what happened when he learned Luornu’s past, and he explains that he got custody of her; Imra hugs him.  Brainy prepares, and when Orange gets cold feet, she and Purple merge (which, we previously were told, didn’t work).  Brainy wakes up Neutral, who starts screaming, and we see them all merge, but don’t really see the result.  Brande and Marla sit with Imra, Jenni, and Vi, and Brainy happens to wander past, lost in thought.  He tells them that Luornu should be fine.  Brande wants to find the people responsible, while Vi looks at us with uncertainty on her face.
  • LSH 68 – The Legionnaires on Tangleweb’s planet (Andromeda, Apparition, Leviathan, Chameleon, and Kinetix) are surrounded by spider aliens.  They begin to fight, and Laurel again balks at the idea of touching any of the spiders.  Gim yells at her, but when a spider cuts Laurel’s transsuit, she passes out.  The rest of the team gets caught pretty quickly.  Invisible Kid arrives on his stealthcraft, and finds an old abandoned spacecraft that has been gutted of its tech.  He hears a noise and gets scared.  Back on Earth, Saturn Girl probes Triad’s mind to try to figure out who it was that attacked her; Imra is angry that they’d been left behind by Cosmic Boy, figuring that Triad wouldn’t have been hurt had she gone on the mission.  Laurel recovers from her panic attack and breaks out of the spider web cocoon she finds herself in.  She frees the others, but they realize that Cham is missing.  Tinya scouts around, and discovers Cham talking to one of the spider aliens.  When she swoops in, he tells her to stop.  On Durla, some Durlans raise three crystals from a lava pit.  It looks like the crystals contain some angry pink energy beings.  When one of the crystals hits the side of the pit, it cracks, and pink energy attacks the Durlans.  As Lyle explores a cave, he discovers a device that is making the creepy noise he heard.  Continuing to explore, he comes across Cosmic Boy, Spark, and a guy from the last vessel that Tangleweb attacked.  That guy has a gun, so Lyle grabs it, just as Tangleweb approaches him.  Lyle starts to free Rokk and tries to wake him up.  The others gather around Cham as he continues to talk to one of the aliens.  He still can’t translate what they’re talking about to his friends, but he uses his shapeshifting powers to display the story of how Tangleweb found a crashed alien ship, stole its technology, and used it to try to subjugate the rest of his people.  They realize that these aliens are on their side.  Gim gets a ring signal, and hears from Rokk.  Rokk, Ayla, and Lyle are trying to hold Tangleweb back so they can escape.  Rokk surrounds him in metal, slowing him down, while Ayla zaps him.  The others join them, and Cham explains to Lyle that Tangleweb is using the stolen RNA he gets from eating alien brains to help create more Tanglewebs, who just happen to show up right then.  Laurel freaks out when she gets covered in more webbing, and Gim grabs her, yells at her, and also gives her a pep talk while calling her a coward.  She flies off, leaving the rest of the team to fight, but then we learn that she’s really gone to take a different approach to the problem.  She lifts the rocks the Tanglewebs are on into space, where the cold will keep them immobile until they can be imprisoned.  As the team prepares to leave, Rokk makes it clear to Lyle that he’s not in trouble for disobeying orders, but will be next time.  Rokk also talks to Gim about how he helped save the day, and how he’s avenged Kid Quantum.
  • LNR #25 – Saturn Girl is in a strange environment, where she comes across images of her friends and some other people and creatures.  She tries to flee, and then finds an image of herself and freaks out.  It turns out she’s in Chameleon’s head, which she did in an attempt to teach him Interlac.  Invisible Kid translates and explains that Cham keeps templates of forms in his mind so he can shapeshift more quickly.  Imra is annoyed that she is expected to help Cham, and storms off, telling him to, basically, go back where he came from.  On Durla, a trio of SP officers arrive to deal with a reported massacre.  As they start to look around, one finds a dying Durlan, and then is attacked from behind and killed.  The Durlan that killed him takes on his form, kills the other two officers, and then enters their ship, asking it (in Interlac) to locate Reep Daggle.  At Legion HQ, Spark is happy that she’s received a note from a secret admirer, while Apparition complains to XS about the problems with guys.  She receives a gift from Ultra Boy – a cactus – and gives it to Tenzil to eat.  Shrinking Violet surprises Andromeda, who is lifting weights, and asks her about the White Triangle guys from the club night.  Vi reveals that she knows the guys weren’t arrested.  Laurel gets angry and storms off.  Imra watches a rare storm (weather control is off-line, apparently) and thinks about how the team is rudderless, and how her feelings for Cosmic Boy are affecting her.  Rokk is talking to Leviathan over viewscreen.  Gim has finished booking Tangleweb, but is still at the SP station filling out reports.  Shvaughn Erin is not happy that Gim is using her computer, and they argue.  Imra interrupts Rokk in an awkward scene, and then Rokk notices something strange about one of the SPs on the screen.  He calls Gim and Shvaughn’s attention to him, just as he attacks, hitting Shvaughn with a fleshy orange protuberance.  Gim gets big and realizes the guy is a Durlan.  Rokk calls on the team, while the Durlan turns into an insect and bites Gim, knocking him out.  The SP search for the Durlan, but when one opens fire, he only hits a mouse.  Gim recovers just as the Legion arrives.  Cham recognizes the SP with the mouse as a Durlan, and the Durlan attacks him.  When Cham turns into a lightning beast, he does the same.  When Spark fires at him, the Durlan turns into her, and uses her powers, which is something Durlans can’t do.  The Durlan talks about how he was genetically bred for war, and then makes reference to Cham’s religion making him into a living sin.  Rokk sends Laurel away so the Durlan can’t copy her powers, and then moves some vehicles to block the SP from coming out into the rain to assist the Legion.  The Durlan copies Rokk’s powers, and then Tinya’s.  Kinetix tries to trap him in moving concrete, but he shrinks, and then turns into Brainiac 5 for some reason.  Using Brainy’s copied intellect, he lands on the idea of turning into a composite of all of the Legion, and the next issue box calls him The Composite Man.
  • LSH 69 – The team retreats from the Composite Man, and Invisible Kid figures out that the villain absorbed Brainiac 5’s genius, giving him a lot more strategy to use against them.  Andromeda remains far above the battle, afraid to get involved so that Composite Man can’t duplicate her powers as well.  She tosses an SP cruiser out of the area to protect them.  C-Man fights Chameleon, and tells him that he killed his father.  Cosmic Boy and Kinetix combine their powers to force C-Man deep underground.  Rokk wants Saturn Girl to monitor their foe telepathically, but Imra doesn’t want to, and Rokk is rude to her about it.  Imra tells Laurel to stay away.  Lyle catches everyone up on what Cham tells him, including the fact that Cham’s father is dead (this is a major break from previous Legion continuity, where Cham’s father was RJ Brande).  Lyle and Brainy want to recreate the chemicals that block C-Man’s powers, and Rokk wants XS to lure C-Man away from them.  Cham finishes telling Lyle and Brainy what to make just as Composite Man digs out from under the ground and comes at Cham again.  He jumps on to Jenni’s back, and she runs off, with C-Man following.  Brainy gets some dismissive SPs to take him to their science lab.  Rokk asks Imra to monitor Jenni and Cham, and is rude to her again.  Jenni does her best to keep ahead of C-Man, resorting to using her flight ring to stay out of his way.  Lyle and Brainy work to complete the formula they need, despite some SP push back.  Jenni is about to sacrifice herself to save Cham when Imra calls them back to the SP complex.  As Jenni leads him in, Rokk coves him with the formula, which causes him pain and to lose coherence.  Their respite doesn’t last for long, as Composite Man springs back (Lyle forgot that Durlans use base nine math), and Imra realizes that she is the only one who can stop the Composite Man.  She enters his mind, despite her fear and misgivings, and starts mentally blasting away at the templates of various shapes he stores there.  By the time she shuts him down, she is practically catatonic.  Later, Rokk confirms that the Composite Man is being sent back to Durla.  Lyle and Cham come to tell him that they are going to Durla too to bury Cham’s father.  Rokk feels bad that he was so rude to Imra, and we see that she is being transferred to a psychiatric hospital.
  • LSH Annual 6 – In 1995, DC had all their Annuals share the “Year One” theme, which works for this book, as this is still year one for the Legion.  Shvaughn Erin of the Science Police is not happy to learn that she has been given a desk job, and is now the SP’s liaison to the Legion of Super-Heroes.  She’s not really a fan of the team, and especially of Leviathan, but decides to start going through her Omnicom’s files on the team.  This becomes an excuse to see some pinups of team members with minimal biographical data, until she opens the file on XS’s origin (by McCraw and Immonen).  Young Jenni Ognats was a prisoner in a Dominion lab.  We learn that she was the granddaughter of Barry Allen, and the daughter of Dawn Allen, of the Tornado Twins.  Unlike her cousin Bart, she never gained any speed powers.  Her mother and uncle were killed fighting the Dominators, so Jenni’s father took her to his planet, Aarok.  They were captured by Dominators, and when Jenni saw that her father was going to be tortured, her powers kicked in and she freed him.  Shvaughn skips over Leviathan’s origin, and instead looks at pinups of a few more Legionnaires, before opening Kinetix’s file (by Peyer and Alan Davis).  Zoe dreamed of solving planets’ problems while on an archeology trip with Shrinking Violet.  She told Vi how she and her brother used to follow their mother around on her archeological digs.  On one dig, her mother exposed herself to a gas that looked to kill her, until Zoe researched an artifact that her mom had found, the Moon of Koll, and used it to save her mom.  Later, on a dig on Titan, Zoe was exposed to a pool of energy that gave her her powers, which she learned to use to help with more archeology.  Zoe and Vi discovered an artifact called the Star of Akkos, but it somehow negated her powers as the ancient temple they were in started to crumble.  They narrowly escaped, and Zoe later explained to Vi how she’s not greedy, but wanted to find more ways to help people.  After a couple more pin-ups, and looking at files on Brande, Marla, Tenzil, and the Athramites, as well as a map of Legion HQ and the tools the team has, Shvaughn finally opens Leviathan’s file (by Waid and Collins).  We see that Gim was not happy at first to be drafted to the Legion, and that he and his abilities were being used for attention and acclaim by his commander, Chief Wilson.  We get a recap of Gim’s origin, when he got his powers from some meteoroid.  Some terrorists took over a colonization office, and Wilson mismanaged the SP’s response, refusing to let Gim use his powers to solve the problem.  After some SPs got shot, Gim took action anyway, and saved the day.  Later, he told Wilson that he quit, choosing to join the Legion.  He and Gigi Cusimano talked about his choices.  Shvaughn continues to read about the Legion’s few exploits to date, and changes her mind about the team.  When another officer calls her Liaison Lass (which doesn’t work as a joke with the new Legion, really), she leans into it and says she’d be proud to be part of the Legion.
  • LNR 26 – A red-robed figure arrives in the Metropolis Spaceport and Jedi mind tricks his way through customs.  Spark is on monitor duty, which helps us to understand that Andromeda has gone missing.  XS brings her another gift from her secret admirer, a silver lightning bolt.  Ambassador Wazzo storms in, looking for Apparition, and Ayla tells her off.  Tinya, it turns out, is in Washington waiting for Ultra Boy, who is very late.  He apologizes, and is in the midst of explaining that there’s nothing between him and Spider-Girl when Leland McCauley calls and orders Jo to join the Workforce for a mission.  He invites Tinya to come, and she accepts.  At the Earthgov Medicenter, we see that Triad and Saturn Girl are sharing a room.  Luornu tries to talk to Imra who is catatonic.  The red-robed guy comes in and dismisses Luornu, putting his hand on Imra’s head.  Luornu turns her signal ring and then tries to stop the guy, who touches her head and puts her in a trance before returning to Imra.  On Durla, Chameleon and Invisible Kid watch as Reep’s father’s body is lowered into lava.  Reep tells Lyle something, which Lyle suggests he keep to himself back on Earth.  Jo and Tinya meet up with the rest of the Workforce outside a warehouse.  Spider-Girl is not happy to see Tinya, although Live Wire is.  McCauley explains that thieves are stealing things from him, and the team goes in.  The thieves look a lot like Booster Gold in his awful 90s armor, and Inferno quickly sets fire to some bins of toxic materials.  The lead thief grabs a ball of green toxic waste, and says that he’ll use the material to kill everyone unless they let them do their thing.  It turns out McCauley and these guys were business partners.  As the red-robe guy keeps holding Imra, and trying to take control of her mind, Cosmic Boy shows up and hits him with a metal egg off his suit.  The guy is annoyed, as he was doing critical work, and claims that he’s fixed Imra’s catatonia; she says hello to Cosmic Boy.  The guy identifies himself as Aven, Imra’s instructor from Titan, and he claims to have fixed her, although he doesn’t explain why he had to be so mysterious and confrontational.  Imra doesn’t seem better – she just keeps saying hi to Rokk.  The thieves, who it turns out are part of the White Triangle, explain that they were buying weapons from McCauley, but were angry that he also sold them to other races.  They all start fighting again, and passing the ball of toxic stuff around like a football.  The waste almost hits the floor, but Jo manages to catch it, burning his hands briefly in the process.  The thieves surrender when Inferno starts to burn one of them, and Tinya is not happy about this whole situation.  Garth agrees and starts to yell at McCauley, claiming that all they do is protect him.  Garth mentions that he only joined the team for help in finding his brother, and he quits.  Tinya asks the others if they also want to quit the Workforce, but no one takes her up on it. She flies away, and Jo watches her leave.  At Legion HQ, Rokk and Kinetix are talking to President Chu (this is the first that she’s actually named).  Since Zoe lost her powers, Rokk thinks she should leave the team, but the President refuses, for political reasons.  She tells Rokk to keep Zoe safe, but to keep her on the team.  There is a large crash, and Rokk protects Zoe magnetically as debris falls around them.  They see that Andromeda, who appears unconscious, is the one that wrecked the place.
  • LSH 70 – Andromeda is in Brainiac 5’s lab, writhing in pain.  Brainy is hoping to figure out how to save her from the lead poisoning that is killing her.  He employs a red light lamp to neutralize her abilities so he can get a blood sample, but she realizes that her transuit is off, and kicks him away from her.  Brainy is mocking in his tone as he points out that she has to get over her xenophobia if she wants to live.  Triad is being released from the hospital, and comes across Saturn Girl, who has mentally regressed to the level of a small child, and is upset that she is leaving.  Zoe, who has lost her powers, is leaving the team to go on an archeological dig.  Some of the kids say goodbye to her, but mostly Spark and XS show off Ayla’s latest gift.  Shrinking Violet confides in Zoe that she is worried about Andromeda.  Cosmic Boy, Apparition, and Leviathan are at a meeting with their new UP supervisor, Ambassador Wazzo, who basically hates them.  When Rokk suggests that her issues with her daughter shouldn’t interfere with the team, she loses it and ends the meeting.  As Brainy works to save Laurel, he talks about all the ways that Coluans are superior.  Laurel explains how she let the White Triangle guys go on their club night, because they promised not to hurt anyone, but then they beat up Triad.  Laurel was more upset that they defied her than that they hurt Luornu, so she went looking for them.  She explains that on Daxam, the White Triangle is all about purity.  When she found the thugs, one of them used a weapon to wreck her transuit (before there were two s’s in its spelling), and she immediately got sick.  She tells Brainy that one of them called her a traitor to her race; he asks if she believes that.  Her argument is not that she hates other races so much as she loves her own; she gets angry when Brainy calls that typical Daxamite thinking.  Violet goes into Laurel’s quarters, thinking of leaving her a gift, and then decides to clean it up a bit.  She finds something disturbing on a shelf.  Brainy discovers that his ancestor, Vril Dox, developed an anti-lead serum for Valor a thousand years before.  Laurel claims Valor as her ancestor, but even still, that is not enough for the serum to work on her, as it has to be keyed to her unique genetic makeup.  She explains that she’s taught that all Daxamites are genetically similar.  She grew up in a remote White Triangle village where she was taught the “truth” about other races.  She was surprised to be picked to join the Legion.  Brainy continues to mock her beliefs, while also finding the cure.  He wants her to say that he’s superior before he gives it to her.  She refuses, so next he wants her to look him in the eye and declare him inferior.  She can’t do this, so he hands her the serum and walks out.  She apologizes, but he’s already gone.  Invisible Kid, Chameleon, and Triad return and everyone chats for a bit.  Lyle gives everyone an update from Brainy that Laurel is fine.  Violet shows up shows everyone that Laurel has a White Triangle necklace.
  • LNR #27 – A freighter approaches a stargate, but as they enter it, the four Daxamite White Triangle guys (Suggin and Arn are the only ones with names yet) destroy it, ripping their ship in half.  They decide to go after another stargate.  On Earth, Brande learns of the stargate problem, but not the cause, and decides to shut down the whole network.  He wants a cruiser to go check things out on his own.  On his way out, he almost misses that Garth, who has quit the Workforce, is waiting for him, wanting a ship so he can look for his brother.  Brande refuses, and tells him he should go check on Imra in the hospital.  The White Triangle folk on Earth pilot a drone around Metropolis, and when they see a mixed-species couple making out, they kill them with it.  At Legion HQ, Cosmic Boy confronts Andromeda with his discovery that she’s White Triangle.  She looks conflicted, but refuses Cos’s help.  She loses her temper when he confines her to her quarters, and then calls her mentor, Obin Der.  She says she’s worried she’s going to be kicked out of the Legion.  He says he wishes he’d known of her Triangle allegiance (I thought she came from a village of them).  Roxxas is there, but in this reboot, he’s apparently a Daxamite, and one of great political influence.  He wants Laurel to return, and is angry with her for being a failure.  She doesn’t want to go back, so she offers up the lead poisoning serum that Brainiac 5 developed.  Apparition, Spark, and XS are visiting Imra in the hospital, but Imra ignores them to play a video game.  When the girls leave, Garth enters her room, but doesn’t reveal himself when he watches her throw a temper tantrum when she loses her game.  The three girls window shop, and are joined by Ultra Boy.  Tinya ignores him, and flies away, angered by how casually Jo is treating her.  He follows, and makes a comment about how she’s letting her mother pick her boyfriends for her.  This drives Tinya into his arms, just as the White Triangle drone approaches.  It fires on them, and Jo blasts it.  The White Triangle are angry about this, so they suit up.  Jo, Tinya, Ayla, and Jenni talk with an SP in the sky, when the White Triangles show up in their Booster Gold-ish suits.  They start fighting, and when one almost gets the drop on Ayla, Garth joins in from down below.  Rokk and Marla approach the UP complex, talking about getting rid of Laurel.  Marla tries to calm Rokk down, but instead Rokk bursts into the President’s office, where Chu, standing with Ambassador Roxxas, makes it clear that Laurel is staying on the team.
  • LSH 71 – A large number of Daxamite members of the White Triangle have gathered on Nullport, a satellite that they’ve taken over, having killed everyone on it.  The four Daxamites that we’ve seen before (Suggin, Arns, Jorn, and unnamed) are told that merely destroying stargates is not enough for the cause, and that a planet is looking to join the UP which has inhabitants more powerful than the Daxamites.  They all depart.  Zoe is flying through space, between stargates, on the quest for magical objects that might restore her missing powers.  Her ship’s computer informs her that the next stargate in her trip has been destroyed.  With no options, she decides to gradually slow her vessel, in the hopes that it will return her to regular space safely; the computer does not agree with that assessment.  RJ Brande is on the planet Trom, meeting with his friend Tarn Arrah.  He wants his help in rebuilding the destroyed stargates, as Tarn, like all Trommites, can transmute matter into other elements.  Tarn explains that he needs to represent his people in their negotiation with the United Planets.  They visit a worship house, where Tarn joins his wife Garra and son Jan.  Jan tells Brande that he can make Tarnium, the element needed for the stargates, and his father is not happy about that.  At Legion HQ, Invisible Kid is meeting with Apparition, Shrinking Violet, Chameleon, and Triad to discuss the White Triangle.  Cham tells them that someone is coming, and everyone hides so that when Cosmic Boy enters the room, it looks like Triad is just talking with herselves.  After Rokk leaves, Lyle explains that this group of “weaker” Legionnaires he’s assembled should investigate the White Triangle on their own.  Zoe drops back into regular space, and learns that her ship is fine, except that its life support is not working.  She scans for a place to land.  As Brande leaves Trom, his ship is buzzed by the Daxamites flying towards it.  On Trom, Tarn is talking to President Chu and other UP representatives on a conference call (30th century Zoom, basically) when he and his wife are instantly incinerated.  The Daxamites are in orbit, using their laser vision to burn the entire planet.  None of the Trommites appear able to protect themselves, and the whole planet is wrecked.  The Daxamites fly off.  Brande returns in his ship, and is devastated to see what became of the beautiful and peaceful planet he just visited.
  • LNR 28 – This issue features very 90s art by Joyce Chin, who appears to be a big fan of Jim Lee via Travis Charest.  Some aliens are touring around the Alamo in Texas, and the inclusion of a number of Durlans in the crowd draws out the Earth chapter of the White Triangle, who attack.  The Durlans begin to fight back, confusing the WT goons with their apparent powers, which appear to include intangibility, and the ability to shrink and to triplicate.  A Science Ranger named Buck Bond shows up and chases some of the White Triangle goons, but they get away from him.  He circles back to check on the Durlans, and they are gone too.  Really, they are the Legion’s new Espionage Squad (Invisible Kid, Apparition, Chameleon, Shrinking Violet, and Triad), who have captured four White Triangle guys.  Cosmic Boy is talking to RJ Brande over video about the genocide on Trom.  Brande tells Rokk that he is grounding all space flights, and wants the Legion to prepare for whatever is going on.  Spark finds Live Wire in the Legion HQ.  He’s trying to book a flight to go search for their brother Mekt, and Ayla calls him out on the fact that he only ever talks about searching for him, but never actually does it.  Lyle and the others arrive with their prisoners, which makes both Rokk and Leviathan angry, since the Legion is not authorized to keep prisoners.  They tell Lyle to hand them over to the SP, and it’s clear that there is more tension growing between Rokk and Lyle.  As everyone leaves, Tinya gets a call from her mother which quickly turns into an argument.  After Tinya ends the call, Ambassador Wazzo feels slighted.  She is joined by Murl, her ex-husband, and gives him money to pay off his gambling debts.  The four White Triangle prisoners find themselves surrounded by aliens; instead, Lyle has them in the VR room.  The Triads argue whether or not this is moral, while Lyle pushes for information.  It seems that these guys don’t even know who is in charge of their group.  Later, the “Espionage Squad” discusses what they’ve learned, and Vi’s assertion that there is a Daxamite connection goes ignored.  Brainiac 5 goes to see Andromeda, and she throws something at him to get him to leave.  Laurel feels guilty about what she’s done.  Roxxas is at the UP complex, and is talking to the four-Daxamite cadre we’ve been seeing for ages.  Roxxas brags about how he’s manipulated “half-breeds” and other aliens into doing his bidding.  He’s confronted by Flint, who I guess was one of the guys working with Doyle when the relaunch started.  This scene is here mostly to make it clear that Roxxas has been pulling the strings all along, and then Roxxas kills him.  The four Daxamites, who are back on Nullport.  They have the serum that Andromeda gave them the formula for.  They drink it, and Roxxas gives credit to “that little fool Andromeda.”  Laurel is using her super-hearing to listen in on this conversation, and she busts through the wall of the Legion HQ to go deal with it, seen only by Vi.  Rokk and Gim are at an Earthgov post in Antarctica, trying to figure out what’s going on with the stargates when they learn that their weather-control array is falling apart.  Rokk has Gim call in the rest of the Legion, and send word to Workforce, as the four Daxamites attack the post they’re in.
  • LNR Annual 2 – The Legionnaires Annual technically meets the Year One criteria, as in wrapping up the White Triangle storyline, it also wraps up the Legion’s first year.  We see that one of the Daxamites has given Evolvo and Spider-Girl a good meeting.  He goes to meet the rest of his cadre, as they admire their work in wrecking bits of the Earth, before getting back to it.  Cosmic Boy visits Saturn Girl, but she only wants to see Live Wire.  One of the Daxamites attacks the hospital, and Rokk works to save lives.  Another Daxamite keeps working on dismantling the weather control infrastructure.  Ultra Boy and Apparition confront him, and they start to fight.  The Daxamite sends Jo falling towards the Earth.  Leviathan and Inferno fight another Daxamite in a volcano.  Gim is burned, and the Daxamite gets away while Inferno tries to help him.  She calls on Triad and Spark, and arranges a plan, but since he has superhearing, the Daxamite doesn’t fall for it, and instead makes the volcano erupt.  RJ Brande calls in to Brainiac 5, telling him what happened on Trom, while Brainy works to prepare something.  Rokk comes in and hangs up on Brande, concerned that the Daxamites can hear their conversation.  Live Wire busts into Brainy’s lab, and we see that there’s a riot happening outside the headquarters.  Rokk gives Garth a Legion ring and tells him he has a job for him.  Roxxas speaks to the United Planets, playing the role of injured party, when Andromeda bursts into his office.  Roxxas destroys the monitors so their conversation is private, and we learn that Laurel did give Roxxas the anti-lead serum, which Roxxas himself has taken.  Invisible Kid and Chameleon try to stop one of the Daxamites, who is wrecking a church, by scaring him with a mythical creature, but it doesn’t work.  Lyle relays to Rokk that the Daxamites aren’t wearing their transuits.  Rokk calls Brainy to ask how Laurel’s serum would affect the Daxamites; Brainy claims that it will drive them insane.  Garth gets to Imra, and she agrees to help.  Karate Kid is standing guard at a spaceport when one of the Daxamites arrives.  They fight, and Val gets some shrapnel in his leg, but manages to drive the Daxamite off.  As Garth and Imra approach Legion HQ, they save an Athramite from the riot.  Imra agrees to help Rokk.  Laurel’s fight with Roxxas moves into the UP chambers, where we learn that the whole thing is built over a fission array for some reason.  The fight ends up going underground, where Roxxas appears to lose control over his body.  XS rushes to save people from a tidal wave one of the Daxamites has created, but he distracts her and many drown.  Brande’s ship approaches Earth, and is almost hit by the Eiffel Tower, which has been thrown at it.  Brande’s unidentified passenger makes the Tower disappear, and the Daxamite runs.  Jo and Tinya keep fighting, and Jo manages to knock the Daxamite out.  Jo declares his love for Tinya, and just as she begins to confirm that she feels the same, the Daxamite blasts them both with his laser vision, frying Tinya to a crisp in Jo’s arms.  Garth and Rokk try to keep the rioters away from their headquarters, and Rokk asks Imra to have the Legionnaires draw the Daxamites there.  She can’t reach anyone, so instead, he wants her to call out to the Daxamites themselves.  We see that Vi was in Roxxas’s head (literally), which is what caused him to be so erratic.  This gives Laurel the chance to attack again, but their fight causes the fission array to rupture, and Vi just barely escapes the green flame.  The three founding Legionnaires stand together, preparing for the Daxamites to come.  Brainy brings some equipment into the plaza, and just as the Daxamites arrive, so does Brande.  Jan Arrah is with him, and he turns some of Brainy’s device into tarnium, creating a stargate that the Daxamites fly into.  Imra looks inside the stargate, against Rokk’s orders, and when Brainy turns it off, the Daxamites are gone (although, really, there were like a dozen more in the attack on Trom).  Later, everyone is gathered together, getting their wounds treated and checking in on one another.  We see that Imra is back to herself, although she saw something inside the stargate.  Brande introduces Jan to Rokk, and Brainy explains that he sent the Daxamites to an uninhabited red sun planet.  Jo arrives with Tinya’s body, and when Gim asks if that’s all they lost, Vi starts to cry.  We see a splash page showing three statues in the memorial hall – Kid Quantum’s statue has been joined by ones depicting Laurel and Tinya.  Later, President Chu tells Rokk that Laurel is incarcerated on the prison planet from before; she’s the only prisoner there, and her continued existence has to remain a secret, since she betrayed the Legion.
  • LSH 72 – Three SPs, including Gigi Cusimano, capture one of the remaining White Triangle operatives on Earth; we learn from this that the organization has been taken down across the galaxy.  The Legion, Workforce, and various UP and SP dignitaries have gathered at Legion HQ for a memorial to Apparition and Andromeda.  After Brande gives a speech, Cosmic Boy tells the team to stick around, as many of their guests want to offer their condolences.  Rokk blows off a reporter asking stupid questions to make his way across the room to Ultra Boy, who is grieving openly.  Rokk blows off Shvaughn Erin to speak with Jo, who tells him that he’s going to quit the Workforce.  This angers his boss, Leland McCauley, who brings up his contract, but Rokk offers Jo a place in the Legion.  The ambassador from Aleph demands to know where Kinetix is, and informs Rokk that she never arrived at her destination.  Ambassador Wazzo wants this, and the rest of the Legion investigated, and ends up yelling at Rokk, blaming him for Tinya getting killed.  As Wazzo is led away, Brande and Jan Arrah talk about loss, and Jan explains that his people don’t see death the same way; he says he wants to return to Trom.  Shrinking Violet shares with Triad that she doesn’t think anyone is going to miss Andromeda.  Brainiac 5 was not at the memorial, but is instead smashing screens in his lab.  A Durlan approaches Chameleon and starts bowing to him.  Brande interrupts, and introduces himself to Reep, giving him sympathy for the recent loss of his father.  Rokk and Saturn Girl talk for a bit, and we learn that her illness has improved her tolerance to picking up the thoughts of others.  The President wants Rokk and Imra to meet representatives from their worlds, and the fact that they are all talking together is a big deal, as Braal and Titan were at war not that long ago.  They pose for pictures, and think that Rokk and Imra are together.  The two friends speak telepathically, and Imra shares that she’s worried that some of the Legionnaires are depressed, and are questioning the point of their team.  This angers Rokk, who calls for an immediate team meeting, angering the President.  Rokk begins by making sure that the team knows what a good job they’ve done, and sharing that he’s invited Jo and Jan to join them.  The President interrupts the meeting, angry that Rokk made her look bad by leaving.  She tells them that she’s putting the team on a tight leash, and insists that Live Wire leave again.  Rokk doesn’t stand up for Garth, which shocks everyone.  At Morgna Industries, on the west coast, two scientists discover Dr. Regulus, who was recently fired, gathering equipment from a lab.  He gets angry that the scientists try to stop him, and putting on a gauntlet, kills them both.  Rokk is in his office, having just sent Invisible Kid away, when Brainy calls him, asking for time off.  Rokk feels guilty, knowing that Brainy is mourning for Laurel, but he knows that he can’t tell him she’s still alive; instead, he denies his request.  Imra and Garth come to talk to him, and Rokk loses his temper when he thinks that Imra has tried to read his mind.  He pushes her away magnetically, and then Garth loses his temper and fires his lightning at the ceiling.  Rokk fights back, and as some of the other Legionnaires gather in the doorway, Garth storms off, and Rokk yells at all of them, pushing them away.
  • LNR 29 – The Science Police have responded to the emergency at Morgna Industries, and Derek Morgna, the owner of the company, figures out that it’s Doctor Regulus who has attacked his company.  A group of SPs enter the facility, not knowing that Regulus is watching them on a monitor.  While he rants to himself about his reputation, he opens the lab door and blasts them with his armor.  He then calls the officer in charge and lets him know that he has Morgna’s son, Dirk, as a hostage.  At Legion HQ, Cosmic Boy enters the lounge where Triad is hanging out with Ultra Boy.  He tells him he can’t be there, as he’s not a Legionnaire, and reminds Triad that rules are rules.  Rokk takes a call from the President, who wants him to send the Legion to Morgna Industries.  Spark is with Garth, who is finally leaving to look for their brother Mekt.  He wants Ayla to come with him, but she gets called to go to Morgna Industries.  Rokk goes looking for Brainiac 5, breaking down the door to the Time Lab, but he’s not there.  After Rokk storms out, Brainy appears, with a stein of beer in his hand.  On Trom, Jan Arrah begins the task of turning the still-smoldering corpses of his people into crystal markers.  As he walks away, it appears he is not alone.  Regulus rants at Dirk, and injects him with radioactive gold in the forehead.  We learn that Regulus blames Dirk for distracting him during an experiment, which led to the explosion that cost Regulus his job.  As Regulus rants some more, Leviathan punches his giant fist into the room.  Regulus burns his hand, and then Spark, XS, and Saturn Girl enter.  Imra takes charge of the situation, communicating her plan telepathically.  As everyone gets ready, they learn that Dirk is there (I don’t know why no one would have told them that), and change the plans to try to save him.  They cover Regulus in frozen liquid nitrogen, and then run a current into him, which breaks his armor.  He blasts a coolant conduit, so it will hit Dirk, and keep the Legionnaires from reaching him.  There is an explosion, and in it, Imra thinks she sees Valor, as Jenni drags her away.  Imra tries to reach Dirk as his father arrives.  They all assume Dirk must be dead.  A bright light and a voice come from the room, but so does Regulus, whose armor has melted all over him.  A figure mostly made of light comes up behind Regulus and blinds him.  We learn that Dirk is now a figure made of flame, shining with great brilliance, as he freaks out.
  • LSH 73 – Garth is on the planet Bisbe, where he’s had his last credits stolen from him, but is no closer to finding his brother Mekt.  He ends up in a bit of a bar fight, and zaps a big guy who is about to shoot him.  The other people in the bar mistake him for “that maniac with the lightning” and take off, just as the police (this planet is in the UP, so they aren’t SPs) show up and arrest him, identifying him as Mekt Ranzz.  As they book him, they show him proof of Mekt’s crimes, including photos of a dead family, and mock the Lightning Lord name that Mekt has taken for himself.  As he’s put in his cell, one of the cops appears suspicious.  At Legion HQ, Cosmic Boy and Saturn Girl talk about the fact that Dirk Morgna’s powers are still out of control.  Rokk wants to ask Triad why she, Chameleon, and Invisible Kid didn’t respond when called on the Morgna mission; her explanation is interrupted by a power outage, caused by Brainiac 5.  It’s followed by a power surge, during which Valor appears again, and it looks like he’s asking for help.  They decide to go looking for Brainy to see if they can get him to figure out what’s going on.  The cop approaches Garth in his cell, making it clear that he knows he isn’t Mekt.  He promises to help him, but then Mekt shows up, killing the cop and taking Garth with him in his flying vessel.  They are pursued, but Mekt kills those cops too, and when Garth protests, he blasts him.  Shvaughn Erin calls Spark to tell her that Garth was arrested and is wanted.  Ayla runs off, and blows off Rokk when he calls to her (which Imra blames him for).  Garth wakes up in Mekt’s ship.  He has snacks that we see he stole from a vessel now floating in space surrounded by dead bodies.  Mekt seems nuts, and is annoyed when Garth tries to talk reason into him.  They land on Korbal, the planet where they gained their powers.  Mekt starts shooting at the lightning beasts, claiming he wants to be the only person with lightning powers.  Garth worries that more power will make Mekt crazier, and learns that Mekt intends to kill him and Ayla.  Just then, the Science Police arrive in multiple cruisers, and tell Garth that he is under arrest.
  • LNR 30 – As the Science Police approach them, Lightning Lord starts shooting at the lightning beasts so their energy will release in the direction of the cruisers, which causes them to pull back.  Garth tries again to get through to his brother.  Cosmic Boy, Triad, and Saturn Girl enter Brainiac 5’s lab, and Rokk gets angry when he won’t help them.  They need a power surge to try to see Valor again, so Rokk smashes a green generator thing, and Valor appears again.  Brainy feeds more power into this, so that Valor is able to talk to them, to Luornu’s utter joy.  He explains that Superboy put him into a stasis zone in the 20th century to keep him from dying from lead poisoning.  Rokk tells him that Brainy cured lead poisoning (which is interesting, because that is based on the fact that Vril Dox cured Valor in the 20th century, but I don’t now what the status of that Valor is now).  Brainy explains that they don’t know how to extract Valor, just as they lose power and Valor disappears.  Garth tries to reach Mekt, and Mekt explains how difficult it was to be a single birth on Winath, where everyone has a twin.  He makes it clear that he likes being unique, which is why he still intends to kill all the lightning beasts, and then kill Garth and Ayla.  Garth starts to fight back, and they are both surprised when Ayla turns up and joins the fight.  Mekt makes fun of Garth’s notion that the lightning is making him angry.  The twins fire their lightning at him at the same time, and he fires a burst at Garth so extreme that he blows the boy’s arm right off.  With Garth in shock, Ayla swoops in and gets Mekt’s gun, threatening to shoot him.  She goes to her twin, and when Mekt is about to blast her, she shoots him in the leg.  Ayla goes to Garth, and sees that his wound cauterized itself.  She comforts him, and explains that the lightning hasn’t corrupted anyone, that Mekt was always sociopathic.  Mekt tries to attack again, and this time, Garth and Ayla join hands, combining their lightning, and using it to knock him out (to the extent that his hair turns white).  A little later, the SPs take Mekt into custody, and give Garth medical attention.  The twins are both happy that they are getting along better than they ever have before.  At Legion HQ, Brainiac 5 explains to the others, who have been joined by Chameleon, XS, and Leviathan, that he can’t find any way to open the stasis zone.  Instead, he recommends going back to the 20th century on his new time platform, to ask Superboy himself.  The team is excited to go, but Rokk tells Gim he has to stay behind to keep an eye on things.  As they climb on the platform, they all disappear, and we see the falling through the timestream (notably, the platform has not gone with them).
  • Between LNR 30 and LSH 74, the Legion showed up in Superboy #20 for the first part of the Future Tense storyline.  Somewhere along the time journey, XS went missing, but Brainiac 5 figured that she was fine so no one worried.  When they contacted Superboy (remember, this is the annoying 90s referencing bad haircut Lennon glasses leather coat Superboy) of course they fought, then worked things out.  They figured out a way to communicate with him both telepathically and with telepathic earplugs (none of which, I guess, work for Chameleon, who still struggles to speak Interlac).  Saturn Girl was able to pull the schematics for the portal device that sent Valor into stasis from Superboy’s mind, but since Brainy couldn’t get much done with the equipment of the 1990s, he brought the team back to the future, with Superboy with them, without warning.
  • LSH 74 – As the Legion returns through the timestream, Superboy makes a lot of noise.  They make it back to their headquarters, where Leviathan is waiting.  He asks about XS, and they are surprised to learn that Jenni has not returned.  Superboy is not happy that he was brought to the future without his consent, and begins to argue with Brainiac 5.  Cosmic Boy calms the situation down.  Rokk asks Triad and Chameleon to show Superboy around, to get him away from Brainy, but this causes Triad to split into three, as part of her doesn’t want to miss the return of Valor, while another part of her is interested in Superboy (which he overhears).  Rokk realizes that if Valor’s return is going to spark off religious fanaticism, it needs to be kept secret.  Luornu and Reep show Superboy the monitor room, where he scares Shrinking Violet, and blabs about Valor’s rescue.  He’s overheard by a being on the monitor board.  Brainy is having trouble reverse engineering the portal, and decides that he needs some old tech from an archive on Korr (it’s surprising that he doesn’t just fire up the time platform again).  We see that the being from the monitor room is selling his news tip.  Gim prepares a cruiser, and is joined by Superboy, Reep, Vi, Luornu, and Invisible Kid.  As their ship departs, they hear someone land on it.  Superboy goes to check what’s going on, and ends up in a fight with Ultra Boy, who wants to come with them.  Lyle calms things down, and they learn that their mission is not a secret at all.  President Chu is not happy that Rokk didn’t think through the political consequences of bringing Valor back.  Spark and Live Wire are at home with their parents on Winath, and it looks like Ayla wants to stay there for a while.  On Korr, the team learns that someone stole the parts they are looking for, and the archivist sends them to the perpetrator, who has a collection they are hoping to acquire for their archives, which is why they didn’t have him arrested.  The Legion breaks into this guy’s place, and discover a massive storehouse of superhero artifacts from the 20th century (this is a conceit I absolutely hate in comics, like the thousand years between those times don’t matter).  Superboy finds his jacket and wallet, and discovers that the packrat who has collected all this stuff is his old villain, the Scavenger.  They fight, and the Scavenger does pretty well using thousand year old villain stuff.  When it looks like Superboy might defeat him, the Scavenger grabs the Philosopher’s Stone and turns him into inertron.  He uses it on the other Legionnaires and Jo as well, and then stands around boasting.
  • LNR 31 – The end of the Future Tense Superboy crossover begins with Cosmic Boy showing Valor to Brande and President Chu.  Chu talks about how many worlds view Valor as a religious figure or demigod.  On Korr, the team still struggles, having been transformed into various elements by Scavenger and the Philosopher’s Stone.  Chameleon breaks out of the crystal he was trapped in, and changing shape, manages to knock the stone out of Scavenger’s hand.  Luornu grabs the stone while Cham keeps fighting, and manages to transmute the gas that was poisoning Shrinking Violet.  Cham has turned into some terrible 90s armored being, and when he gets the upper hand, Scavenger grabs The Atom’s belt from a pile and shrinks away.  Violet has also shrunk down (I guess in the exact same place, or she’d be very far away from him) and kicks him in the head, knocking him out.  A little later, everyone is okay again, and Ultra Boy finds the part they’d come looking for.  When the squad returns to their headquarters, they are surprised to see a huge crowd outside, holding pictures of Valor.  Superboy realizes that he must have leaked the secret of Valor’s return (despite the fact that Ultra Boy joined them because he knew about it already, and this was discussed already).  Saturn Girl greets them as Ultra Boy slips away.  One of Triad’s selves appears to proposition Superboy, which scandalizes the others.  Imra gives Superboy a bit of a pep talk.  Superboy takes the part to Brainiac 5, who has now built himself a forceshield belt, in case Superboy attacks him again.  Superboy asks Brainy to figure out a way to fix his mistake of revealing that Valor is coming back.  Cosmic Boy has Brainy set up outside, which he is not happy about, while Luornu shows how much devotion she holds for Valor (which is interesting, given that she’s rejected the rest of the dominant ideology of her homeworld).  Some dignitaries are on hand as they set up the portal they need.  Imra and Rokk talk nicely to each other for a bit, until Rokk’s allegiance to the President becomes a problem again.  The plan is for Superboy to hold the portal together with his “tactile telekinesis” (I’d like to understand how that’s different from regular telekinesis).  When Brainy turns on the portal, it collapses, angering the crowd.  A little later, in a remote desert, Brainy and Superboy do their work again, this time with a handheld device, and Valor emerges from stasis (which is curious, given that this suggests that all points of reality merge with the stasis zone, or that they told Valor to travel to Qurac off-panel).  Valor emerges, and while Superboy holds a red sun lamp on him, Brainy injects him with the anti-lead serum he developed, based on the anti-lead serum that Vril Dox used to cure Valor a thousand years before (that clearly didn’t work as he got sick and needed to go into the stasis zone – it seems that in their attempt to have a perfectly clean Legion history, the writers and editors have already made it complicated).  Valor is happy to see Superboy.  Later, Valor is uncomfortable with Triad’s attention, and when Rokk comes to talk to him about lying low and not drawing any attention to himself, he blames it on “people like” Luornu.  He also thinks that his historic tasks have been exaggerated, and we are left a little confused by what he did or didn’t do, as I still am under the impression that the classic old Legion stories still happened, and that should include the stories that made up Valor’s series.  Flipping through issues of Superboy, I see that it featured Babbage and Valor’s spaceship, which suggests that the events of that series still happened.  This makes me wonder just who Valor is – the Lar Gand that died because of Glorith, or the SW6 Valor who came back in time and replaced him.  The 1990s aspect of the DCU didn’t change after Zero Hour, did it?  This is confusing.  Anyway, Luornu is hurt by Valor’s words, and she and Rokk leave him.  Brainy is preparing to leave, to take Superboy home, and to retrieve SX.  Everyone comes out to say goodbye.  Superboy tries to comfort Luornu, saying that Valor was cold with him too, and Luornu kisses him.  Brainy wants to get going, but something doesn’t work.  Superboy worries that he’s stuck in the future, and Rokk takes the opportunity to give him a flight ring and offer him honorary membership on the team (which, I guess he wasn’t going to do had they left the first time).  Brainy fixes things, and the two of them blink away.
  • LSH 75 – We move from the Superboy crossover straight into the Underworld Unleashed event.  XS is floating lost in the timestream, but seeing a bubble in the distance, uses her flight ring to approach it.  Inside that is the villain Chronos, rocking a new look, and a young girl.  Chronos sees potential in XS’s ability to help him, so he draws her into the bubble, and introduces the girl as Lori Morning.  Of course, they aren’t able to communicate, so Chronos takes her back to his base in California, in 1995.  There, Chronos tries to learn about the technology that Jenni needed to enter the timestream, something he needs to end a “curse” on him.  Lori’s father, Ronald, enters the room, and gets angry to see that something has been “done” to Lori.  Chronos has Lori leave with Jenni, and the two men argue.  We learn that Ronald is a “servant” of Chronos’s, and that Chronos entered into a bargain with Neron that increased his powerset, but now when he uses his powers, he gets older.  He’s learned to transfer  his aging to others, which is why he takes Lori with him to the timestream.  Ronald attacks him.  In the rest of the house, Lori learns that Jenni has speed powers.  In a way that is very unclear, they learn that there are five old men bricked into a wall; all of these are kids from Lori’s school that Chronos has aged.  In the timestream, Brainiac 5 is tracking Jenni’s speed-force trail, but is surprised to see that it has disappeared.  Rond Vidar, at the Time Institute, has detected timestream disturbances, and calls on Cosmic Boy to give him a heads up.  Rokk denies that anything is going on, but then an alarm goes off, marking a time disturbance (just how would that alarm work?).  The team rushes into the lab, and at this point, the rest of the issue gets a little unclear with a time paradox parallel structure thing happening.  The Legion enter a room and find Chronos in a bubble with Lori, who is saying that Chronos killed her father.  At the same time, Jenni busts into Chronos’s lab, and finds him killing Ronald.  He envelopes Jenni in his bubble and she begins to age, while in the 30th century, he begins to fight the Legion.  Lori, who doesn’t speak Interalc, tries to tell Shrinking Violet to get Chronos’s glove, because that’s where his “aging-power is”.  Jenni is told the same thing by Lori.  Saturn Girl figures out that they are speaking English and learns with her telepathy about the glove.  Invisible Kid grabs it, while in the 20th century, Jenni grabs it.  Chronos, in both eras, complains that the glove harnesses his time energy, and in both eras, the building he’s in starts to crumble with age.  Rokk tries to protect his team, while Jenni pulls Lori away.  Jenni gets the glove, and using her speed, takes it apart and puts it back together.  Lori tells her to use it to restore her proper age, but instead she runs to the old men, fixing them before she fixes herself.  Jenni hugs her, but then Chronos shows up again and grabs Jenni after seeing his own corpse on the floor, and then disappears with her.  Later, Jenni is standing around when the cops talk to the kids Jenni saved, and when they talk about her speed, she understands the name Wally West.
  • LNR 32 – The second Underworld Unleashed branded issue opens on Valor standing around in his room when he hears a crash and rushes out to help.  He manages to save some Athramites, and Shvaughn Erin, from falling debris, and finds the Legion entangled in Brainy’s collapsed lab.  He helps as they all check in and prove they are fine, except for Chronos, who is crushed and dead.  Valor finds Lori Morning, but she’s now grown into early adulthood.  Valor can speak with her, which makes Triad jealous.  Leviathan realizes that Brainiac 5’s time platform has been destroyed, trapping Brainy in the timestream.  Lyle connects something, and we get a momentary flash of Brainy, before Cosmic Boy insists that he not touch anything.  Outside, a news reporter talks about all of the failures of the Legion.  Brande checks in with the team, as does the President, who wants to speak with Rokk.  We see that Zoe is still lying in her spaceship, which no longer has life support.  A white light flashes, and the ship disappears.  Rokk and Saturn Girl take Lori to the Time Institute, where they meet with Rond Vidar.  Rokk says something about having brought the schematic for Brainy’s time machine, and Rond shushes him quickly, warning that they can’t discuss this in public; we see that an SP is listening.  In Rond’s lab, Imra tries to get Lori to explain what’s happened, but she’s really flakey.  Rokk doesn’t like the Imra promises her that she can stay in their time, and then Lori does recap what happened with Chronos, her father, and XS, but her explanation of the doubled-up events of the last issue don’t make a lot of sense.  An SP (who is coloured differently from the one that we saw at the Time Institute) interrupts the President at a reception, to tell her that the Legion is experimenting with time travel; she wants the team shut down.  Gim tries to get Lyle to stop messing around with Brainy’s equipment, but as usual he doesn’t listen, and manages to make Brainy appear, just as Shvaughn and two officers enter to seal the room.  When a cop pulls the plug, Brainy disappears again.  Somehow Rond is able to make him appear in his lab, and Brainy explains what he needs to do to help him out of the timestream.  The SPs enter that lab, and fire on the equipment, causing chronal energies to go all over the place.  They hit the canister that Chronos’s remains are stored in (why would Rokk bring that?), and Chronos emerges fully restored.  He starts inspecting the technology, and when Rokk attacks him, he ages the floor, dropping Rokk, Imra, and the SP’s through it.  Lori explains that Chronos’s time controls are in his costume, and telepathically, Brainy communicates with Imra and the others.  Lori kicks Chronos, and Rokk manages to knock him into the energy field where Brainy is.  They appear to merge, and Brainy is able to use his glove to restore himself to reality, while Chronos disappears.  The SPs want to arrest Brainy, and when Rokk learns that they have orders from the President, he allows it.
  • LSH 76 – It’s the beginning of 1996, and the Legion titles adopted the practice used in the Superman books at the time, of giving a 1996 number of the cover, making it easier to determine reading order across the two titles.  Marla is outside the damaged headquarters with architectural student Chuck Taine, who has been tasked with helping coordinate the repairs to the building.  A piece of the building falls off, almost crushing Chuck and Marla, but Valor shows up just in time to save them.  Marla reminds Valor why he needs to stay in hiding, and as Chuck figures out who he’s looking at and starts freaking out, Valor concedes the point and flies off.  Just then, Leviathan and Cosmic Boy, who are fighting, come tumbling out of the building.  Gim is about to crush Marla and Chuck, but this time it’s Gates, the insectoid teleporter who has apparently joined the team, who saves them, while throwing shade on the Legion.  The others – Chameleon, Triad, Invisible Kid, and Star Boy, who has also just joined the team – join them and the fighting stops.  Gim is upset that Rokk let Star Boy (who has casts on his arms) and Gates join the team because President Chu told him to, and that Rokk allowed Brainiac 5 to be arrested.  As things defuse, Rokk blows off Marla’s attempt to introduce Chuck, although Star Boy wants to meet him.  Star Boy suggests that more than the building is broken.  Somewhere, a robot uses its fingers to melt, burn, disintegrate, and dissolve statues of Legionnaires; we don’t see the woman who is commanding it.  Spark returns to the headquarters, hoping to get in without being seen by Rokk, but he finds her and puts her on double shifts in the monitor room as punishment for running out on the team.  Lyle, Reep, Luornu, and Shrinking Violet try to have a secret meeting in their trophy room, but have to wait for Chuck to leave.  Violet takes off, saying she’s waiting for a lead on Kinetix.  Lyle tells the others that he wants the Espionage Squad to do something about Rokk’s leadership.  The others don’t like the idea, but Lyle tells them that it’s already in action.  We see Ultra Boy approaching the UP building, where he runs into Ambassador Wazzo.  He confesses his love for Tinya, and she sees that his grief is real.  She wants him to go destroy the rest of Legion headquarters, but their discussion is interrupted by a televised announcement from President Chu that she wants the Time Institute shut down and its research confiscated.  Saturn Girl is at the Time Institute with Lori and Rond.  Rond has determined that Lori is really only ten years old, although she doesn’t like being told that and acts like a child.  Rond learns that the SPs are coming, and Lori tries to make that about her, and storms off when she thinks Imra is treating her like a child.  Ayla comes to the monitor room to see Violet, and gets her to go for a walk with her.  When they get to Ayla’s room, they see that there are a lot of flowers from her secret admirer waiting for her.  Chuck tries to enter one room, but Rokk tells him its off-limits.  Inside, Luornu is talking to Valor, who is packing.  He’s decided to leave, and this makes Luornu very sad.  Gim works out with Vi, who explains that she’s been pulling extra monitor room shifts because she’s looking for Kinetix.  Gim thinks that Zoe had a thing for him, and Vi makes fun of his 90s headgear and then shrinks away.  Zoe wakes up in a medieval looking bed, with an old woman named Mysa standing over her.  It turns out she’s on Sorcerers’ World, and her ears perk up when she hears about the power there.  Vi is upset with herself for being so shy and lacking confidence.  Most of the team is eating in the cafeteria.  Chuck is there too, and his attempts to cheer Gim up go nowhere.  Chuck realizes that everyone is miserable, and when pushed by Luornu and Gim, he reveals that his parents were killed by the Daxamites, yet he is thankful that the Legion saved the world.  He tells them he’s proud to serve there, but wonders if he’s the only one who feels that way.  As the SPs enter the Time Institute, Imra looks for Lori.  Just then the robot from earlier melts through the wall, repeating how it is going to kill people.
  • LNR #33 – Saturn Girl continues to fight the unnamed assailant.  Rond Vidar, who is rushing to transfer and delete his Time Institute files, ends up in the same conflict.  Imra is not able to get into the assailant’s mind, as he’s using a thought-scrambler (I’d thought he was a robot up to now, given his vocabulary and square speech balloons).  He’s about to kill Saturn Girl, but then hesitates, allowing her to trip him.  He takes off.  At Legion HQ, Spark talks to her mom and learns that Garth has left home again without telling anyone where he’s going.  She also sees that she has another gift from her secret admirer, which she did not see anyone deliver.  Leviathan is trying to train Star Boy, but gets annoyed when he uses his weight powers to cause some damage to the gym (it turns out that the robot he was sparring with is really Chameleon).  Star Boy is upset that Gim is giving him grief, when suddenly energy comes out of his eyes, hitting Cham.  He’s unable to control this energy, but Gates teleports him into the pool, which fixes things.  Cosmic Boy is talking with Chuck about how to improve the headquarters when Imra arrives with Rond to tell him that Lori is missing.  Rokk gets grumpy with Imra, and they argue, until Shrinking Violet reminds them that they are friends.  Rokk gets a call from President Chu, who wants the team to go to a non-UP world called Guron, where Imra’s assailant from earlier is rampaging.  The team loads into a cruiser, and we learn that Gates sees this as an act of invasion, and Ayla keeps telling Vi about her gift.  Lori wanders around Metropolis, and mistakes a sentient for a pet, leading to a shopkeeper calling the SPs.  On Takron-Galtos, the prison planet, we learn that Brainiac 5 is not telling the warden anything during his interrogation.  On Sorcerers World, Kinetix and Mysa talk, and we learn that Mysa wants Zoe’s help to destroy the Emerald Eye of Ekron, which she claims stole her youth; she’s not happy to see that Zoe is enamored of the Eye.  As the team arrives on Guron, their cruiser begins to dissolve, dumping them all into the sky.  Invisible Kid’s ring is destroyed, but Gim saves him.  A chunk of building drops on Gim, knocking him out, while the assailant dissolves the air around the rest of the Legionnaires, knocking them all out except for Violet.  We see her flying towards the enemy’s head, promising to take him down.
  • LSH 77 – A woman named Nara Minsork arrives on Takron-Galtos, where she has a meeting with Warden Kretyon arranged.  She’s from Titan, and the prison planet’s computers immediately identify her as wanted on many warrants.  The Warden has given her an arrest override though, allowing her to enter freely.  She is there to get information out of Brainiac 5’s brain, but the Warden has also alerted Titan to her presence, so she doesn’t have much time to finish the job before they come to get her.  Minsork tries to explain how difficult it is to read the mind of a Coluan, and her first attempt does not go well.  On her second attempt, she finds a memory of Brainy as a child, and she learns that he was raised by robots.  Investigating further, she discovers that his ancestor is the villain Brainiac, who had a 12th level intellect that was passed to his son Vril Dox, founder of LEGION, and to his grandson, Lyrl Dox, who took control of LEGION from him, all in the 1990s.  She learns that there was some sort of scandal on Colu involving Brainiac 4, and all records of that Brainiac were wiped (including, presumably, how it took a thousand years to go from Brainiac 3 to Brainiac 5).  Minsork learns that young Brainy (who is not called by his name, Querl, once in this issue) was bored by things that other Coluans found interesting.  She almost discovers a key focus of his thoughts, but is tossed out of his head again.  When the Warden yells at her, she forces him out of the cell telepathically, so she can use a mind-grabber, a very illegal piece of technology, to enhance her telepathy.  This time, she’s better able to navigate Brainy’s mind, and finds a memory of him as a child conducting unapproved energy experiments that, due to the intervention of some adults, lead to an explosion.  The leaders of Colu decide to get rid of Brainy, and this is how he came to work at Brande Industries, where he quickly blew up three labs.  Brande sent him to intern at the Time Institute, but that got interrupted when he joined the Legion.  Minsork discovers Brainy’s grief at Andromeda’s death, and suspects this is why he wanted to travel through time (which doesn’t make sense, given that he was working at the Time Institute before she died).  Minsork looks for Brainy’s happiest memory, his only happy memory in fact, and discovers that it was when he was born.  We see that his mother, Brainiac 4 (is she 900 years old?) passed him over to other Coluans and left.  Minsork realizes that Brainy wants to use time travel to meet his mother.  At this point, Brainy starts to interact with Minsork, insisting that she can’t leave with knowledge of his memory, and threatening to trap her in his mind.  She gives up, and we see her being dragged away by the prison guards.  Brainy is annoyed that even in prison, he can’t think without being interrupted.
  • LNR 34 – Shrinking Violet flies at the “Melt, Disintegrate, etc.” guy, using her rapid size changing to stay out of his way.  He burns part of her uniform, and she decks him, cracking his helmet, and revealing that he is really Jan Arrah.  Violet feels sorry for hurting him.  On a planet called Drak IV, Valor is getting stomped out by the Gatherers, a nomadic tribe of arms smugglers (one of them looks like Kono, from the last Legion incarnation).  Valor takes them all down easily, wrecks their weapons, and leaves before the SPs arrive, since he has to remain hidden.  On Sorcerers’ World, Mysa puts a sigil on Kinetix’s face, turning her vaguely whiteish, and then sends her away to look for the Emerald Eye (I guess it wasn’t in the garden with them last issue); Mysa seems kind of evil now.  At Legion HQ, Saturn Girl, Leviathan, and Cosmic Boy hook the unconscious (and eyepatched) Jan to their VR system, so they can see what happened to him.  They see him turning the dead of Trom into crystal memorials, when Ambassador Wazzo confronts him, and shoots him.  Later, we see him in his villain garb, flying to Earth.  Rokk wants to take the file straight to the President.  Imra gets a call from the SP about Lori, and leaves to deal with that.  Chuck wants into a room to check its specs, but no one will answer.  When he opens the door anyway, he finds Violet changing.  Chuck runs off, while Triad comments that Vi took it well.  She explains that she’s realized that her shyness was making her miserable, and that she’s ready to be more bold.  She’s modified her uniform to remove the shoulders.  Imra picks Lori up from the SPs, and Lori seems more apologetic than before.  Rokk, Gim, and Invisible Kid interrupt the UP’s session to show President Chu the proof that Wazzo was behind the attack on the Time Institute and that planet.  Winema (apparently that’s her name) just sits there, but Chu notices in the footage, on the screen beside Jan as he flew to Earth, what looks like the Sun-Eater (this is such an awkward transition).  She adjourns the council (I guess no one does anything about Wazzo), and takes the Legionnaires to a secret bunker, where she shows them footage of the Sun-Eater (which is a self-explanatory thing, right?).  She explains that five worlds have genetically engineered people to fight the Sun-Eater should it ever return.  They are Mano, Tharok, Validus, the Persuader, and the Empress of Venegar, who are known as the Fatal Five (none of this makes sense – you have a sun-sized creature, and your plan to stop it involves a guy with an axe?).  The President wants the Legion to assemble these psychos.  Later, at headquarters, Rokk explains this to the team, who, aside from Gates, all think they should follow the President’s plan.  On planet Gohan, Tharok receives a call from someone he doesn’t know (I’m guessing Wazzo), who claims to have been behind the plan to assemble the Fatal Five; she wants the Five to kill the Legion.
  • LSH 78 – The Inner Council of the UP have gathered on a roof to look for the Sun-Eater.  President Chu announces to the media that she’s sent the Legion to address the Sun-Eater problem, which sets off Ambassador Wazzo, who has somehow not been arrested yet.  The President promises to make sure that all UP worlds are safe from the Sun-Eater, which creates an instant panic among non-UP worlds.  We see that the Legion has split into five teams to go retrieve the Fatal Five.  Cosmic Boy and Shrinking Violet are in one shuttle, while Spark and Saturn Girl go after Validus in the cruiser, Chameleon and Leviathan go to get the Empress, Invisible Kid and Gates are headed for Tharok, and Star Boy and Triad are tasked with retrieving The Persuader.  Rokk and Vi land on the moon, where Leland McCauley wants Evolvo to stop them from getting Mano.  Vi scares Evolvo’s ape-self, and Rokk shows McCauley an executive order.  He’s been keeping Mano in a terrible cell, and has even imported sewer rats to make things worse.  Given the chance to help the Legion in return for a pardon, Mano agrees to come with Rokk.  On Pasnic, Validus is already rampaging when Ayla and Imra arrive.  Imra is able to frighten Validus with a mental projection, and they capture him.  Gim and Reep find that the asteroid built to imprison the Empress is empty; they find that she’s killed all the guards.  She attacks them, but Gim is able to stop her, and explain why they’re there.  Lyle explains to Gates that he knows about Tharok from his days working for Earthgov, and shares the cyborg’s origin with him.  Tharok, who has the Persuader’s axe, surrenders immediately.  Thom and Luornu escort the Persuader, accompanied by the new warden, who is not happy with the whole situation.  Luornu sees Brainy, but he ignores her.  The Legion gathers on Takron-Galtos with the Fatal Five.  Rokk starts to explain how things will work, with the Five expected to stop the Sun-Eater with the Legion’s help, but Tharok immediately switches things up, giving the Persuader his axe, freeing Validus, and handing the Empress a knife he had hidden in his metal arm.  It doesn’t look good for the Legion.
  • LNR 35 – Roger Stern takes over the co-plotting and scripting for Legionnaires with this issue, while Tom Peyer starts working only on the LSH book, and Tom McCraw continues to co-plot both titles.  Rond Vidar is now working out of the Legion headquarters, which Chuck is still working to repair.  They are both surprised to see a holographic projection of Lori Morning, dressed in a terrible ensemble of Legionesque clothes, and calling herself Future Girl.  Marla is not happy that she’s just announce to all of Metropolis that the Legion are not in residence, for the very reason that some shadowy figure decides that it’s time to strike at the HQ.  Rond is examining Lori, under the watchful eye of Shvaughn Erin, when they learn that there are intruders in the building.  The intruders are blocking signals from the outside, and are scrambling the building’s security systems.  Marla puts Shvaughn in charge.  Chuck is playing pool with Tenzil Kem when three intruders, guys in camo carrying rifles, enter the room.  Chuck turns off the lights with a pool ball.  At least five of these guys are in the main generator room, and the Athramites are not able to hold them off.  Shvaughn, Rond, and Lori arrive, and when Shvaughn shoots at one of the intruders, he splits into many smaller versions of himself.  They see that they have a caustic bomb, which could destroy much of Metropolis that close to the power core.  One of the intruders in the games room strikes Chuck from very far away, and when Tenzil tries to eat his gun (remember, in the previous Legion incarnation, Tenzil was Matter-Eater Lad), but realizes that the gun is organic.  When Marla enters the room, they deduce that the intruders are shape changers.  They take on Chuck and Tenzil’s likenesses.  On Takron-Galtos, we join the Legion, who are surrounded by the Fatal Five.  While the team stands in a circle, Shrinking Violet telepathically tells Saturn Girl to keep Validus calm, while she flies towards Tharok, the leader.  Athramites discover a device attached to Legion HQ.  One of the intruders gets too close to some sort of energy field in the generator room, and immediately liquifies into proto-plasm.  Lori jumps into danger, and manages to knock the bomb out of one of the intruder’s hands. The problem is, the liquid within it causes the walkway she’s on to collapse.  Some of the intruders fall into the exposed power core, but Lori hangs on to one of them.  Marla, Tenzil, and Chuck keep fighting their foes, who never talk.  They run off, and turn into birds, flying away.  As Shvaughn tries to reach Lori, she tries to convince the intruder she’s holding to hang on.  It talks, saying that it doesn’t deserve to live, but Lori gets through to it.  It turns into a familiar shape – that of a Protean, and Shvaughn saves them both.  Later, the Protean is in a round ball form, while the others all talk about how things went.  In Australia, XS returns to her proper time, and starts to run towards Metropolis.
  • LSH 79 – The Warden puts Takron-Galtos into lockdown, and the scene where the Legion confront the Fatal Five is repeated from LNR 35.  Vi’s plan to damage Tharok by flying into his metal ear fails when small missiles are launched at her.  Imra is not able to get into Validus’s mind, and feedback knocks her down.  Rokk gets the teams to stop fighting momentarily, long enough for Tharok to make it clear that the Sun-Eater isn’t real, and that the team has been set up (by the President?).  Tharok orders his team to attack again, and they all start fighting.  Gim and Thom try to take down Validus, and Thom’s powers send the other two crashing through the floor.  Thom follows, as does Mano.  Tharok manages to take limited control of the T-G security in that room, and has some drones take down Rokk and Ayla.  Violet flees.  While Thom tends to Gim, who was hurt by Validus’s mental lightning, he manages to see through a massive engine.  He also manages to sense Mano, who is behind him.  He punches him so hard that his casts shatter, and Mano is knocked out.  The new Warden, Wafil, rushes through the facility towards the command centre.  Violet finds Brainiac 5’s cell, and pulls him out of his deep thoughts.  She wants to borrow his force-field belt, but he decides he should help.  He opens his cell.  In the command centre, the Warden orders the section the Legion are in separated from the rest of the prison, and fired into space.  The powering up of the engines bothers Validus, and he blasts Thom.  Everyone is shaken when the part of the prison they are in lifts off.  Gates teleports to help Gim, just as Brainy and Violet arrive.  Brainy breaks the Empress’s knife, but gets hit hard by the Persuader.  The Persuader has trouble keeping Luornu’s three selves off him, while the Empress snatches Vi out of the air.  Thom is losing consciousness, just as Validus starts to wreck the engine (this team is always facing people trying to destroy power-generators and stuff like that).  Gates manages to revive him so that he can make the engine so heavy it falls through the station’s hull, leaving Validus’s large body to plug the hole it makes.  Above, Tharok, the Empress, and the Persuader have every Legionnaire unconscious, and they talk about killing them, mentioning that it’s required by their benefactor.  Gates teleports into this scene, and is about to be killed when the ceiling blows up.
  • LNR 36 – XS runs across the ocean, pursued by a flying robed being firing eyebeams at her.  Another person in a robe emerges from the water, knocking her off her feet.  She’s caught by the first person, as the second removes her hood, shocking Jenni.  From a news broadcast, we see that Titan and Braal have returned to a war footing.  We also see that Ambassador Wazzo is still railing against the Legion, and is not happy that they have been sent to deal with the Sun-Eater problem.  We see that Wazzo is under house arrest, where technology is keeping her from phasing out of her apartment.  On the separated part of Takron-Galtos, Gates is the only Legionnaire still standing, with the Fatal Five (other than Validus and Mano), circling him.  Just then, the hull opens, and the Legion Rescue Squad – Live Wire, Valor, Ultra Boy, Andromeda, and Jan Arrah – come flying in and attack the Five.  Valor and Laurel exit to keep their part of the station from spinning out of control.  They aim it towards a large asteroid that has some atmosphere.  Jenni rushes to revive the Legionnaires.  Garth explains to Rokk that they picked up Jenni’s signal as they were leaving Earth, and brought her with them.  Mano recovers, and as Jo is about to hit him, he hears a voice telling him to be tough.  He switches his powers to invulnerability just as the Persuader brings his axe down on him.  Jan provides some cover, while Garth has Imra read his mind to get up to speed on what’s going on.  This gives us the chance to see that Rokk had arranged for Garth to put together a squad in secret, around the time that Chronos first attacked.  Garth recruited Jo, then they went with Jan to Planet Hell to get Laurel, who needed to hear that Jan forgave her for her part in the genocide on Trom.  They met up with Valor, who found Laurel’s obsequiousness embarrassing.  Valor had information for Garth.  Imra figures out that Rokk had arranged for Valor to leave.  The part of Takron-Galtos lands on the asteroid, but Validus starts rampaging.  Tharok hears from his boss, who insists that the Five not get captured.  Just as the Empress is going to kill Violet, Kinetix appears out of nowhere, demanding that she get the Emerald Eye.  Zoe didn’t expect to find her teammates there, but joins in the fight.  The Five gather around Tharok, who teleports them away.  The Legion stands around, and Brainy learns that Laurel is still alive.  A little later, they learn that the Five stole their cruiser.  Everyone gets reacquainted, Zoe learns that she has a tail now, and Lyle insists that there is no sign of a Sun-Eater in UP space, and that someone on Earth was commanding the Fatal Five.  The Five take the stolen cruiser to a weapons cache somewhere remote, and get their hands on a missile.  The Legion knows where they went, Drak IV, where Valor was recently.  Imra gets a call from Titan, recalling her to join the military, as war with Braal is imminent.  Rokk divides the team and its guests into three squads.  Gim, Jan, Valor, Zoe, Jenni, and Laurel are to go after the Fatal Five, while Imra, Gates, the Ranzzes, Jo, and Thom are to go stop the war.  Rokk, Lyle, Reep, Vi, and Luornu are heading to Earth to figure out what Ambassador Wazzo is up to (wasn’t Jo working for her at one point?).  Rokk wants Brainy to come with him to speak to the President, and Reep tells Brainy a secret.  On Titan, Doctor Aven, Imra’s old mentor, tries to convince his leaders that Braal does not want a war, but news that a missile has been fired at Titan ends his chances to reach anyone.  Lyle, Reep, Luornu, and Vi insist on speaking to Wazzo at her home, and after the SPs let them in, they hear a commotion.  Vi is knocked out, Luornu collapses, and it looks like Reep and Lyle are dead.  Wazzo has escaped.  Brainy speaks to President Chu, offering her his force-field belt, and explaining that the Sun-Eater is a scam.  When Chu gets word that Wazzo has escaped, we see Wazzo rise through the floor.  She grabs a guard’s gun, and shoots the two guards, Brainy, and President Chu, claiming that there are more surprises to come.
  • LSH 80 – RJ Brande forces his way into the monitor room, where Rokk is working to keep track of all that’s going on, including rioting on Earth, the disappearance of Lyle and his squad, the Titanian ships flying towards Braal, and Gim’s squad preparing to take on the Fatal Five.  Rokk gets ignored by the SP when he tries to explain that there is no Sun-Eater, and then sees that Lyle, Reep, and Luornu are dead.  Rokk starts to cry, telling Brande he knows who is behind all of this.  Ambassador Wazzo has Brainiac 5 and President Chu held at gunpoint by her associate Gullo (looking very Star Wars bounty hunter).  Wazzo says that if they bring Tinya back to life, she won’t kill them; she knows about Brainy’s time travel device, and wants him to use it.  Thom, Ayla, Garth, and Jo fly around the Titanian ships, keeping them busy.  Jo experiences some momentary pain, which has been happening to him lately.  Gates teleports Imra onto the lead Titanian ship, where they are immediately surrounded by men with guns.  On Drak IV, Valor, Laurel, Zoe, Jan, Jenni, and Gim have missiles fired at them, which they destroy or deflect, and go after the Fatal Five.  Laurel tosses the Empress into a wall, but Validus takes down the Daxamites.  Mano goes to warn Tharok that the Legion are there, and learns that Tharok has fired a megabomb at Titan’s largest city.  Brainy refuses Wazzo’s request, which leads to her confessing, in front of a camera, that she is behind the Fatal Five’s attack on the Legion, and that she created the fake Sun-Eater footage.  She also claims that she started the war between Braal and Titan years ago, as a reason for the UP to exist.  Rokk works desperately to get a fix on their location, while Wazzo wants Gullo to kill the President.  When she refuses, Wazzo shoots Gullo, and turns her gun on the President herself, giving Brainy the count of three to agree to what she wants.  Brainy’s shackles fall off, and he jumps on Wazzo, who shoots him through the chest.  Rokk, shocked by all of this, finally has a fix on them, and he and Brande prepare to go there.  Imra tries to get through to the Titanians, but they aren’t prepared to listen until Aven shows up and mentally shuts them down.  He expresses his confidence that Rokk will fix the war problem.  Two large missiles launch on Drak IV (I don’t know why there was reference to a single megabomb before).  Jenni takes down Validus, whole Jan transmutes the Persuader’s axe into cheese spread.  Valor and Laurel, who keeps showing him too much deference, go after Tharok, and find that Mano has hurt him badly, because Mano is not down for genocide.  Laurel refuses to follow Lar in stopping the missiles, believing she can save Tharok’s life.  Lar goes on his own and manages to destroy the missiles.  President Chu grabs Gullo’s gun, and shoots the camera.  She calls Wazzo crazy for confessing on camera, and then goes on to admit that she was behind all the things that Wazzo took credit for – the Braal-Titan war, brainwashing Jan, and bringing the Fatal Five together.  What Chu doesn’t know is that there is another camera in the room, and her confession is being broadcast.  Rokk and Brande enter and tell her this.  That’s when we learn that Wazzo is actually Chameleon, and that Lyle was in the room the whole time.  Gullo was actually Violet, and Brainy was never hurt, as “Wazzo’s” gun wasn’t real.  Lyle explains that Luornu is standing guard over the real Wazzo.  Brande doesn’t understand how Reep could have impersonated Wazzo so well when he can’t speak Interlac, but it turns out he’s learned it very well, and has been pretending for some time.  Later, the team gathers outside UP HQ, and Rokk explains that back when Aven came to help Imra, he shared his suspicions about Chu with Rokk telepathically.  Later, when she seemed to be increasingly demanding on Rokk, he played along, distancing himself from his closest friends so as to allay suspicion.  He also encouraged Lyle to put together his espionage squad to gather evidence.  Rokk figured out that Jan’s memories of Wazzo brainwashing him were false.  When the time platform’s existence was revealed, it made Chu nervous, so she decided to do away with the Legion, which is what led to Rokk making his move, getting Garth to put together the rescue squad.  The UP session lets out, and when Luornu tries to apologize to Wazzo for having to detain her, the Ambassador is as rude as ever.  Brande walks by, looking furious.  Marla tells the kids that Brande has been chosen as the new President, and that he’s pardoned Laurel and Brainy, and abolished the Legion draft, making the team independent and free to choose its own members.  A Legion flag is raised, and everyone stands around looking happy.  (This leaves me with a few questions though – why was Rokk so upset and unable to find Brainy and the President, unless he wasn’t sure he could trust Brande as well?  And why did Wazzo try to recruit Jo to work against the Legion prior to all of this?)

This column has gotten huge, and I don’t even think I’m halfway through this run, so this feels like a good place to pause and look at this first massive storyline.

I’m surprised to say that I am finding myself enjoying this run more than I expected.  I remain frustrated that the Legion I love was erased for this rebooted version, but I appreciate the ways in which the writers have taken a new approach to some of the classic ideas, and find that some of the characters are more fleshed out than they were in the classic runs.  It’s not all positive, but generally, I want to keep reading this stuff, and that’s a pretty big endorsement.

I’d like to look at some of the characters in depth.

Cosmic Boy – I think that the writers did a fine job of building Rokk as a true leader with vision, although I’m not sure why the notion of him having a relationship with Imra was dangled and then just disappeared (unless he found her weird mental reversion to childhood the least sexy thing ever).  Rokk carries the burden of leadership well here, and is pretty likeable.

Saturn Girl – I’ve not always been a huge Imra fan, and found the mental regression storyline very irritating.  In the early issues, the team put her down a lot, and she didn’t seem to have a large role to play for being a founding member, and I still find she retreats into the background a fair amount.

Live Wire – It’s interesting that the character who is off the team more than he’s on it has undergone the most character development, and gotten more spotlight than most.  Garth is pretty likeable, and I like that he built a more positive relationship with…

Spark – Ayla doesn’t do a whole lot in this series, and I’m still very curious to learn who her secret admirer is (I have no memory of ever learning this).  It could be Vi, which would make sense given their relationship during the 5YL Legion run, but we see her flirting with Tenzil a lot too.  This storyline fell by the wayside, so I hope it gets picked up again.  

Colossal Boy – I like the way Gim is shown as having more going on than his earlier counterpart.  His loyalty is apparent, and I like the way he’s grown from his disastrous first mission.  Getting rid of the dumb headgear was a good idea as well.  I wonder how he had advanced so quickly in the SP while still being a teenager.

Triad – Luornu got some of the most detailed character development, and confirming that her three selves have different personality traits made her a lot more interesting.  What doesn’t work with her is that she’s often shown as being a little immature, yet she was RJ Brande’s trusted assistant?

Invisible Kid – I think that Lyle shows some of the most potential of any of these characters.  He was long dead before I started reading the classic Legion, and so I never knew much about him before the SW6 Lyle was shown to be an effective leader.  Here, I like that he has some shady connections to Earthgov, and I liked the early tension between him and Rokk.

Chameleon – There’s long been a bit of a diversity problem in the Legion, and with Reep being the first clearly not human character, there is some story potential.  I think it has already been mined out though, and whatever his family connection to Durlan religion is, it seems to be getting ignored for now.

Shrinking Violet – It’s cool how the writers have worked on building Vi up.  Her earliest appearances show her as so shy, yet she’s already left that behind and become a little more forceful and capable, although she’s nowhere near the badass we saw in the 5YL Legion.

Andromeda – Laurel Gand was one of the best additions of the previous Legion series, but this is not the same Laurel at all.  I like the way that she was used in the White Triangle storyline, and shown to be a xenophobe and racist, but not beyond redemption.  At the same time, I miss the bold and confident Laurel of Giffen’s run.

Brainiac 5 – Brainy is often an annoying character, and I feel like the writers fell back on the easiest way to portray him.  At the same time, he’s really more of a plot device than a character.  The most interesting thing about him is that they are showing his interest in Laurel again.

XS – It’s cool that the writers decided to create some new characters for this series, and it’s true that the Legion never had a speedster before, but Jenni hasn’t had enough screen time to become interesting yet.

Kinetix – On the other hand, we’ve seen about as much of Zoe as we have Jenni, and it’s way too much.  I find this character exceptionally annoying, as they try to recast the White Witch as a character who derives her powers from finding magical items.  She’s not likeable, even before she got a tail.

Star Boy – Thom hasn’t been around much, so there’s not much to say about him, other than that his new powers are a little interesting.

Gates – This is a great new character, maybe the best one added to the Legion over this time.  I like that Gates is so politically opposed to the Legion, and such a difficult sentient to be around.  It’s also cool that the most non-humanoid character in the book would have the most radically different opinions. 

Ultra Boy – It’s crazy that the Legion wouldn’t be doing everything they can to bring Jo on the team, especially in the post-Andromeda, pre-Valor window, when he’d easily be the most powerful person there.  I like that Jo is so broken up over Tinya’s death, even though their relationship wasn’t given the proper amount of time to be believable.  I’m glad he’s finally going to stay with the team.

Jan Arrah – Jan has long been a favourite Legionnaire of mine from the classic run, so I was happy to see him return in this run.  The roots of the character are there – we see his philosophical differences from the other Legionnaires, and hope we get to explore that more later on.

Valor – Including Valor as they did was probably a big mistake.  There are huge continuity issues with him again, as his appearance here, after being put in stasis by Superboy in the 20th century, does not fit with his final appearances at the end of the old Legion series, which we’ve been told actually did still happen in the post-Zero Hour world.  This Valor still managed to seed the worlds that became the UP, and his interactions with Superboy show that he is the same Lar Gand that Glorith killed towards the end of the Valor series.  Is this going to get explained, or is everyone just pretending that he’s a different incarnation?  Including Valor makes things so confusing…

Reading these comics right after having read so many issues of the classic Legion stories (I’ve been reading one issue a day since August), it’s hard to ignore how much depth of character and world-building was lost in the decision to reboot the property.  I feel like the writers made good use of some legacy ideas (like having the Sun-Eater factor into the President Chu storyline, or making Roxxas a Daxamite who is still responsible for the genocide on Trom), but were also left without a deep well of supporting characters or established worlds.  I did think it’s cool that they took two characters that don’t work well in the modern era, Matter-Eater Lad and Bouncing Boy, and found roles for them at Legion headquarters.  

Still, it’s weird reading about a Legion universe without Khunds, the Dark Circle, or even the Dominion (except for their involvement in XS’s origin).  I miss characters like Doctor Gym’ll, and feel that some of the usual supporting characters we have seen, like Shvaughn Erin and Gigi Cusimano, have been given too small a role to play.  It’s also strange that they are significantly older than the Legionnaires.

Rond Vidar is being used well in this incarnation, but it looks like he’s going to be increasingly connected to Lori Morning, who I absolutely hate.

I think Lori is emblematic of one of my biggest problems with this series.  I don’t know who DC was aiming it towards.  The loyal Legion reader at this point was not the target audience, but at a time when most mainstream comics were getting “extreme” and not that interested in character development or story, this book was providing both of those things.  I doubt it was targeted at a young audience, with its complicated publishing schedule, either.  So a character like Lori, who seems to be reaching out to a younger audience, just ends up annoying twenty-year old me at the time, and more than twenty year old me now even more.

This further opens up other issues I have with the reboot.  I don’t feel like McCraw, Peyer, (briefly) Waid, or Stern have anything new to say about the concept of the Legion here.  Sure, they may have added another non-humanoid character, and both Kid Quantum and XS are black (and barely around), but beyond this very surface nod to diversity, this is really just a reimagining of the original concept.  Brian Michael Bendis’s new Legion reboot, while still pretty untested at the time that I’m writing this, does look like its a fresh take on the classic concept on many levels, as was Waid’s “threeboot” Legion (despite the fact that I hated the costumes and the weird insistence on youth rebellion).  This Legion is basically the original, if it was started in the 90s.

Does it need to have more than that?  Like I said, these stories are enjoyable, and the lack of continuity doesn’t actually hinder things that much.  Sure, I feel nostalgic for what was lost, but I quickly found myself liking some of these characters, and being interested in their growth as a team.

There are some problems with the short lived continuity we did have, and some things are left unanswered (maybe they’ll get to it).  At the beginning, when the team was dealing with the White Triangle, we learned that Doyle, RJ Brande’s close associate, was behind trying to have him assassinated.  Why was there not more on that later?  That seems like a big deal to me.  Also, why was Marla Latham never properly introduced?  He just seems to be around a lot.  And if he’s Brande’s close friend, who was Doyle?  Sure, we know that in the classic Legion, Doyle was a Durlan who helped guide Brande upon his arrival in the 30th century, but there is little to no evidence that Brande is a Durlan in this incarnation.

The other nagging question I’m left with is what happened to all the other Daxamites that participated in the genocide on Trom?  We saw a lot more than the four who eventually got punished for it, but they were never heard from again.

I am impressed with how tight the writing is in this series, as the writing team maintained perfect continuity across the two titles.  I was surprised to see Roger Stern join, as I didn’t remember that he’d been involved.

Art-wise, these two books stood out in the era of terrible 90s art.  Lee Moder’s art is absolutely fantastic, and his characters are so expressive and feel believable as young teens.  I don’t understand why Moder never became a big name artist, or why we don’t see more of his work today.  He brought some real humanity to these characters, and I love how he draws Cosmic Boy.  On the Legionnaires title, Jeffrey Moy is also impressive, although his characters are much softer and younger looking.  His kids are all pretty cute, and his art reminds me a lot of Chris Sprouse’s.  

So, while I enjoyed these comics more than I remembered, I suspect that it’s because the rest of this run, before Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning took over, got tired and old.  I kept with the title, which says a lot, as this was the era where my comics purchasing was the smallest it ever was (the 90s were a rough time), aside from this quarantine era, but I’m not sure how much of that was out of loyalty to the former incarnation of these characters.  I guess we’ll find out, because I’m going to dive back into the rest of the McCraw/Peyer/Stern/Moder/Moy era in my next column.  I do apologize for how long this one got…

If you’d like to see the archives of all of my retro review columns, click here.

If you’d like to read any of the stories I talk about here, you can follow these links for trade paperbacks that encompass some of these issues.
Legionnaires: Book One (Legionnaires (1993-2000))
Legionnaires Book Two

Get in touch and share your thoughts on what I've written: jfulton@insidepulse.com