Superboy and the LSH #223 (1977)
by Jim Shooter & Mike Grell
Well look who’s finally back!
We begin in the middle of things: with the Legion having to hurry towards “the epicenter” to prevent a disaster that threatens to destroy the whole sector.
Except five Legionnaires are prevented from joining the mission by an invisible barrier.
Karate Kid is among them. Since he was living in the 20th century in his awful personal series at the time, you might expect an explanation for why he’s in the 30th century.
But no, his presence here won’t be explained.
Since the barrier is truly indestructible, Superboy gets the excellent idea of travelling to the past before the barrier was created (!!!)… and bringing the Legionnaires with him protecting them with his cape!!!
Instead of going into the past, they are transported to the future by the Time Trapper.
This is the Time Trapper’s chance to recover from the complete embarrassment that was Adventure Comics #338. And he takes the opportunity to reveal that he’s basically already won.
See, what happened in HIS past and the LEGION’s future is that the team failed to fix “a fissure in the fabric of space” which led to a universe of anti-matter.
(presumably the same one that will lead to Crisis of Infinite Earths)
Just how bad are things? “The Earth and most of the Milky Way Galaxy have been destroyed” kind of bad.
The Time Trapper is in the transition period between “super-scientist from the far future” and “living force of nature”, so for now he’s still using computers.
Although the kind of computers that are way, WAY beyond anything the Legion has ever seen.
It seems that, according to his computer, the ONLY timeline where he gets to be the supreme ruler of time is the one where these five specific Legionnaires die.
And if he doesn’t kill them, he’ll be the one to die.
Confused about the time travel shenanigans? I hope not, because now things get REALLY trippy.
Because the Time Trapper is fighting the five Legionnaires at once. But not as a group: they are all in separate moments in time, but fighting the same Time Trapper.
Still confused? The Time Trapper is like that.
Still not complicated enough? Well there’s more!
It turns out that the Time Trapper was able to escape the planet where he was imprisoned last time thanks to the actions of a new villain… the AWESOMELY NAMED Pulsar Stargrave.
He’s hanging around with his minions Holdur and Quicksand; they won’t really do anything all that interesting, but Pulsar Stargrave will be a big deal soon.
“Meanwhile” (sorry but time loses all meaning in Time Trapper stories), the Time Trapper is basically mopping the floor with the Legion. Then he decides to get serious.
And he probably WOULD end up killing Superboy here, if Saturn Girl didn’t figure out his trick of fighting in different time periods and deducing he must be using an external power source.
Superboy compares the Time Trapper’s appearance with the last time he saw him, picking up the only difference: the huge hourglass on his belt.
This is not the last time we will see a Superboy breaking time by punching.
The explosion restores the Legionnaires to their right position in time, while also throwing the Time Trapper into the portal to a red star’s core. Superboy even tries to save him, to no avail.
Also the rest of the Legionnaires are still alive, because the giant antimatter explosion hasn’t happened yet.
The Legion prevents that catastrophe off-panel (!!!) and Saturn Girl wonders: is this really the end of the Time Trapper?
He’ll be back soon enough.
Historical significance: 4/10
First appearance of Pulsar Stargrave, but it’s easily skippable for it… we don’t learn anything about him, other that he must be a big deal if he can manipulate the Time Trapper.
Speaking of the T.T… it is a useful issue to get used to his mind-tripping methods, not to mention rehabilitate him into a serious threat.
Silver Age-ness: 2/10
Nothing about the Time Trapper’s powers makes all that much sense when you get down to it, but it’s pretty contextualized.
Does it stand the test of time? 8/10
Ironic category when it comes to the Time Trapper, I know.
I can’t fault the story for the convoluted use of time travel: that’s the entire reason why you would even want to use the Time Trapper!
Since he’s my favorite Legion villain I admit I’m biased, but this is a strong story. It may not be apparent in my selection of scans, but Grell does a really good job at illustrating the fight: if you go back and forth between panels you can see the Time Trapper is in the same position when fighting two or even three enemies.
The only flaw is that the issue could’ve really used a couple more pages: a proper introduction to the space anomaly, or actually showing the Legion saving the universe at the end instead of relegating it to an off-panel scene, really could’ve improved things.
We are legion
23 active Legionnaires
6 reserve members