Superboy v4 #21 (1995)
by Karl Kesel & Tom Grummett
This is the start of the three-parter “Future Tense”, which sees the first time the Reboot Legion interacts with the 20th century.
After a VERY rare scene with Superboy in high school… he barely attended at all…
…we see the Legion did manage to successfully reach their past.
The scene is explicitly translated from Interlac; we’ll see later why it matters.
However there’s one Legionnaire missing: XS has ditched the crossover.
Brainiac 5 is not concerned with that. AT ALL.
Brainy DOES come off as heartless here…
…but it’s only because of how his brain works.
The mission is to save Mon-El first: THAT ONE is time sensitive, but because they have a time machine they have all the time they need to find XS later.
So it doesn’t come out of nowhere, but I still think it’s overdone.
The rest of the team reluctantly agrees to continue, and they follow a lead to the device that was used to exile Mon-El.
Which is, coincidentally, in Superboy’s home.
The comic does a cool trick here: when the Legionnaires show up, they are speaking Interlac both in-universe but also on the panel, because the people around them don’t understand a word.
The letters page does include a table to translate Interlac into the English alphabet.
But since my Interlac sucks, I’m glad that I managed to find a translation on Comic Vine which does seem to track.
Cosmic Boy: Should have seen it coming! I have point! Brainiac 5: Be glad this isn’t 1950‘s, it was customary to nuke large Xenomorphs at that time. Saturn Girl: Oh, I’m sure that’ll make Cham feel a lot better!
The first interaction is not going great.
Brainiac 5: Calm down, Superboy. I’m not performing a lobotomy, and I doubt it would change you very much if I did.
I think I figured out why I’m having such a hard time reading Interlac in this comic… they’re capitalizing EVERY letter!
Yeah, in Interlac the way you capitalize is by adding a vertical line at the left of the letter.
Basically every other time I’ve seen Interlac, at most only the first letter of the sentence or a proper name is capitalized… but here EVERY letter is. No wonder, since it’s how the letters page explains it as well.
Adding to the fact that Interlac already has A LOT of letters that look like each other, it’s a mess to follow.
Superboy’s will-they-or-won’t-they love interest Roxy tries to stop Saturn Girl from interfering, with predictable results.
Saturn Girl: This is ridiculous! It must be the 20 century ‘fight-then-team-up’ syndrome I’ve read about!
Also showing up to help is the rest of the supporting cast: the telepath Dubbilex and Krypto.
Who is just a regular Earth dog in this continuity.
Thanks to Dubbilex’s telepathy, everyone is finally speaking the same language.
Weird that Saturn Girl didn’t do this the second they had trouble giving Superboy the earplugs.
Triad-Purple’s job in this mini-crossover is to be horny for Superboy, but Triad-Orange and Triad-Neutral remember why they’re in the 20th century in the first place.
Superboy is also interested in saving Mon-El, so he takes the team to S.T.A.R. labs.
Neat side gag of Chameleon being more fascinated by the vending machine than by high tech.
Well… high tech by 20th century standards.
Brainiac 5 has an idea on how to salvage enough of the Stasis Projector, once Superboy stops hitting on Triad.
The projector itself might be beyond saving, but since Superboy used his trademark tactile telekinesis (and considering his history it’s not unreasonable to assume he LITERALLY trademarked it) to hold the device together.
Brainiac 5 now has the basic blueprints of the projector, but his computer mind has a blind spot… total lack of patience.
So Brainiac 5 just activates the Time Platform™ to bring everyone into the future, where the story will continue.
Legion significance: 7/10
The first time the Reboot Legion goes to the 20th century AND the true beginning of the introduction of Mon-El. This Superboy won’t have anywhere near the same level of significance for this Legion of the original, but he will play a part regardless.
Silver Age-ness: 6/10
Heroes being obligated to fight before they can team up is more of a Marvel trope then a DC one, but it’s still very Silver Age.
Does it stand the test of time? 8/10
Not a masterpiece, and in fact it’s not as good as the baseline level of quality for the Superboy series, but I think it still holds up.
Especially on the artwork side: Tom Grummett is always a delight, and his style matches the Legion incredibly well.
Karl Kesel is obviously more of a Superboy writer than a Legion writer, and while I think it shows (most of the Legionnaires don’t have much to do here) I think the characterization works.
I don’t think he entirely nails Brainiac 5; despite his reputation, Reboot Brainy is very rarely THAT heartless for such flimsy reasons.
XS will skip this event because she gets stranded in the Flash books for a while (something I will cover separately); and while I really like how she’s used there, the fact that she’s thrown out of the book feels very forced.
There isn’t even a direct reason given for why she specifically doesn’t end up with the rest of the team (although I do have a theory that I’ll discuss much later).
IIRC this was my first contact with the Reboot Legion. Not a bad showing for the team IMO. It doesn’t even contrast too much with the follow-up in LSH #74, which I read immediately after in the very same anthology issue (in Brazilian Portuguese) back in 1997, although you can definitely feel the center of protagonism shift away from Superboy. I only wish the art meshed better – Tom Grummett raises expectations quite a bit and the art of the later two parts just can’t quite measure up.
XS’ failure to even show up on panel is disappointing, but probably also deliberate. Her 20th century plot is very separate from Mon-El’s rescue, despite this being the ostensive in-story reason for her to visit the time period. It would ill serve readers, writers or editors to have her show up and hint at a non-existent crossover wing at the Flash books.
We have really come a long way in 50 years or so. Back in the 1940s the protagonist’s perceived competence would have layers upon layers of plot armor. Not so much here in 1995; Superboy is adorably foolish at this point, and we all love him for that. He may often be out of his depth, but he tries hard to do the right thing.
There was a time, not long after standardized Interlac was introduced, that I was fluent at reading it. I haven’t been able to get that skill back since losing it. Capitalized Interlac is so much worse.
My theory for Jenni’s disappearance is that her connection to the Speed Force re-directed her to the Speed Force concentration around Wally and Bart. She had to ditch this crossover to appear instead in that crossover. Brainy’s right that time travel means she can be retrieved a millisecond after she was lost, but he certainly could express himself better.
I didn’t even try to translate the Interlac. I enjoyed the confusion it caused from Superboy’s perspective.
It’s nice to see Brainiac-5’s explanation about time travel and XS, after years of Silver Age stories where the Legion shows up and tells Superboy he has to come to the 30th century RIGHT NOW.