Legionnaires #29 (1995)
written by Tom Peyer & Tom McCraw
pencils and cover by Jeff Moy
The Legionnaires are re-enacting MY reaction to the fate of the 5YL Sun Boy.
We begin with Doctor Regulus taking the entire power plant hostage.
He goes straight to the point. This is definitely not a slow burn (pun intended).
After the Science Police failed to arrest him (shocking, I know), we also learn the power plant is not the only hostage.
Who he later injects with radioactive gold.
He’s doing this in order to test if his procedure to gain powers really works: instead of using it on himself, Regulus is using the hostage as a test subject!!!
Which simultaneously means that Regulus is smarter than 99% of Golden Age superheroes who tested all sorts of chemicals on themselves AND dumber than his original version since he’s WILLINGLY giving powers to his future nemesis.
Meanwhile, Cosmic Boy has fully embraced his new attitude.
Live Wire leaves the team again, but this time it’s amicable.
Well, towards everyone except Cosmic Boy of course.
Also ignoring Cosmic Boy is Brainiac 5, who has closed himself in the lab.
Brainiac 5 is actually testing his time machine!!!
Specifically he uses it to go back to Guy Gardner: Warrior #29, which was published five or six months earlier!
That’s a WEIRD jump for a gag… was there some kind of scheduling conflict?
There is also no footnote to say where Brainy got that beer, so that must’ve been confusing if you hadn’t read Guy Gardner… and it’s not like the two franchises have much in common.
Cute and memorably gag, though.
Cosmic Boy has to send the rest of the team after Regulus.
Saturn Girl immediately takes charge. Contrast this assertive attitude with her previous disagreements with Cosmic Boy, when she criticized him but let him to his thing.
Also notice that XS is still the galaxy’s greatest Cosmic Boy fan.
I’m glad we have at least SOME excuse for why Saturn Girl doesn’t immediately take down any villain at the first chance. This is always a problem with powerful telepaths.
She’s pretty great at this leadership thing, although having a Flash around is always helpful.
This is a great use of everyone’s powers, because they all contribute: Leviathan recovered the cables, XS used her speed to tie them around Regulus, and Spark fries his armor.
Unfortunately, mixing high tech and electricity is not good for the power plant.
Just like in the finale of the White Triangle fight, Saturn Girl has a vision of Mon-El.
Too bad they forgot about the hostage…
…because HE is the one to ultimately defeat (and blind!) Doctor Regulus.
Dude, don’t worry, things absolutely cannot get worse for you than during the 5YL era.
Meanwhile, Element Lad (who is not a member yet) has gone back to Trom to honor the memory of his people.
Legion significance: 7/10
You would expect this would lead to Sun Boy joining the team, or at the very least the supporting cast like Ultra Boy and Element Lad: but nope! He disappears from the book for a year, and even then he won’t be a huge part of the Reboot.
I’m pretty sure it’s because he was STILL tainted by what the 5YL era did to him.
We also have Brainiac 5’s first use of a time machine, something that will influence the series a lot very rapidly.
Silver Age-ness: 2/10
Time travel shenanigans are always at least a tiny bit Silver Age.
Does it stand the test of time? 8/10
This issue goes by VERY quickly, but I’m not holding it against it since it also comes with a fair amount of subplots and characterization.
It’s also not as aggressive with Cosmic Boy’s attitude at last time.
Who did it better?
Sun Boy’s origin is pretty much the same as Adventure Comics #348, with one key difference.
In the original, him developing powers was entirely accidental; in the Reboot, Regulus actually WANTED him to get powers.
The villain giving powers to the hero as a test run, with the intention of killing him if it succeeds, is such a rare sight (in fact I can’t think of another example) that I’m giving this to the Reboot.
Also, in this version Sun Boy’s father is a regular human and not the absolute monster of the 5YL version.
On a lighter note (WHICH IS SAYING SOMETHING considering the subject matter), Element Lad using his powers to turn the corpses of his people into crystals is taken from Volume 3.
I’m giving this one to the original simply because by this point we already knew Element Lad very well, while in the Reboot we haven’t spent enough time with him to have the scene resonate the same way.
We are legion
- 11 active Legionnaires (3 volunteers, 8 drafted)
- 1 expelled member (Live Wire)
- 1 resigned member (Andromeda)
- 2 deceased members (Kid Quantum, Apparition
- 15 people have been members
- 2 Legion leaders (Leviathan, Cosmic Boy)
- 2 members have been rejected
Interesting letters: the reactions to Legionnaires #24 are here, and the praise seems to be unanimous.
Mark’s comment makes me shiver at the thought of the 5YL writers tackling Triad’s metaphor for conversion therapy.
“That’s a WEIRD jump for a gag… was there some kind of scheduling conflict?”
Maybe the appearance in Guy Gardner was thrown in just to extend the net of ‘cameos from all over’, and then the Legion writers on seeing it decided to show the other side of the moment? That seems like it’d fit the long lead time.
It is a harmless enough cameo, and it works both ways.
It (alongside the myriad other cameos) establishes Warriors as a place that people know of and frequent, which is important to legitimize Guy Gardner’s book as well as the character himself.
Meanwhile, it also establishes that this Reboot Legion has access to time travel and perhaps a bit more casual an attitude towards using it – enough so that it may happen accidentally and with no real consequence.
That the publishing dates do not match only furthers the perception of harmless chaos.
I loved this issue. As with the first Mano story, it acted as a fulfillment of the post-boot Legion’s mandate, to tell the story of the Legion from the beginning in a way that it grows organically. Introducing Dirk and Regulus in this way and presumably having Dirk eventually grow into a Legionnaire felt right.
Then the writers decided they really, really wanted to write the Fatal Five. And introduce other personal favorites (ooh, let’s re-do the Bizarro Legion!) or satisfy fan theories (post-boot Wildfire?) and things went off the rails. Not that what followed were necessarily bad stories, but they kind of abandoned the road map and the whole tone felt different from that point on. The abandonment of the development of Sun Boy is a perfect example of this.
I re-read these stories a few years ago, but I can’t remember why Cosmic Boy is acting the the way he is (this is good–I love surprises). Still, it seems odd that he invited Ultra Boy to join last issue and now asks him to leave even if Jo hasn’t been sworn in yet.
Your argument about who did it better is persuasive. I’d call it an even draw just because the original Sun Boy origin was iconic and the focus of the issue was on him while Dirk here gets lost in a jumble of other events. I found it interesting that this Dirk never joined the Legion. It’s one of a few examples where the reboot creators played with fan expectations and successfully did something different. It works much better than, say, a snake.
Dirk’s new incandescent look is certainly an improvement over the look he was sporting at the end of 5YL…
Dirk appearing at all in this continuity was unexpected once we met Inferno. It would have been ironic if the womanizing Dirk had been incarnated in this continuity as a woman, but Dirk’s appearance here ended any speculation in that direction. Dirk’s 5YL character assassination probably did hurt his chances to be a major player in the reboot. It seems a shame, considering he’s a rare example of a legionnaire with a personal nemesis. Blinding Dr. Regulus does seem to limit his usefulness as a recurring character, though.
It’s funny today to go into a Legion Facebook group and post panels from Guy Gardener: Warrior with panels from this issue and have long-time fans suddenly put beer and beer together and get crossover. The two halves never clicked together for many people who own both books.
Given his current conditions, it would be cool if Sun Boy reappeared as the new Wildfire.
Also, this issues makes it clear tha the Legion sorely needs an officially delegated vice leader. You can’t go into a mission, like “Hey, where’s the boss?”
*Saturn Girl points at self*