Legion of Super-Heroes v3 #2 (1984)
by Paul Levitz & Keith Giffen
Judging from the cover, I think the Legion of Super-Villains is not a fan of the new way Giffen draws faces.
This new version of the Legion of Super-Villains (LSV for the rest of the review, since it’s a mouthful) is quite numerous, fittingly for this book.
There’s a weird panel showing them re-enacting the Last Supper, though I don’t really see Lightning Lord having anything to do with Jesus.
That’s quite a few familiar faces, but we haven’t seen most of them for quite a while so it’s better to do a quick recap.
Lightning Lord and Cosmic King are, of course from the original LSV incarnation ; Saturn Queen is the only one from that team that doesn’t show up, for whatever reason.
Ol-Vir is the Daxamite kid from the Great Darkness Saga.
Spider Girl (remember there’s no hypen!) is from Adventure Comics #323.
Terrus is a new character showing up just now.
Radiation Roy is from Adventure Comics #320 and he hasn’t found a decent codename yet.
Esper Lass is from Superboy #212 and he hasn’t found clothes to wear yet.
Chameleon Chief and Sun Emperor are from an issue of Jimmy Olsen so boring I didn’t even review it, but we’ve seen Chameleon Chief in Superboy #208.
Silver Slasher, Neutrax and Mist Master are from the League of Super-Assassins from Superboy #253. Their teammates Titania and Lazon are also in this new LSV.
And finally Ron-Karr is from Adventure Comics #314
Last issue, Lightning Lord captured his sister Light Lass. He’s been remarkably boring throughout his entire publishing history so far, but in this storyline he gets a massive upgrade.
He’s a psychotic sadist, but at least he DID give her some clothes in order to beat her up.
He’s always been nuts, but now he’s turned the crazy up to eleven. It really helps making him extra creepy and super-dangerous, especially since his sister’s powers have been blocked by the telepath Esper Lass.
The next phase of the LSV’s plan is to lure some Legionnaires into a trap, which is done by stealing some Fusion Powerspheres™.
Magno Lad is shown as one of the members; he’s also from Superboy #212.
Wildfire and Dawnstar are the Legionnaires showing up. Weird how she mentions there’s no black market for a Fusion Powersphere™; since we’ve seen before those things can power like half a planet, you’d think SOMEONE would want one.
One of the reasons why the LSV is extremely dangerous as a team is that, while they’re definitely not friends, they’re able to coordinate their powers and actions much like heroes do.
For example, Dawnstar has no troble keeping up with Lazon even though he can turn into light, because she can fly MUCH faster than light…
…but Magno-Lad attacking Wildfire causes enough of a distraction to take her by surprise anyway.
Titania being able to tackle both Ultra Boy and Mon-El with a single stroke is a bit of a stretch, though. Yeah she’s strong, but she doesn’t have super-speed!
Another major advantage of the new LSV is an extremely efficient teleportation system.
I wonder if we were meant to suspect Darkseid was behind this? It’s not impossible to mistake these for Boom Tubes™.
Speaking of secrets, the identity of the LSV’s leader is being kept as a surprise. It’s not really that hard to figure out if you know about the history of the team, plus the LSV already includes like 80% of all Legion villains.
Notice how, despite Lightning Lord basically calling the shots until now, nobody considers him the leader. Which fits considering how bats##t crazy he is.
Ah, the miracles of 30th century medicine. A shot ot “Anti-rad serum” and a “field-set” are all you need to avoid radiation poisoning and manage broken ribs!
Also miracolous: 30th century fashion, considering how that costume manages to still function.
Star Boy and Dream Girl are returning from their vacation (together with Shrinking Violet) to join the rest of the team. Poor Star Boy just can’t catch a break!
Your regular reminder that Saturn Girl is awesome: she’s THIS close to joining the fight despite being EXTREMELY pregnant!
Still, she’s not crazy enough to fight supervillains in this state… yet.
It’s just a matter of time before she returns to active duty.
The LSV is gloating about their victory, and we get to see they’re quite disfunctional.
So far the LSV has been keeping things low, but things REALLY escalate now when they remove Earth’s protective shield!
This is courtesy of Zymyr, their new ally from the Gil’Dishpan alien species.
Tyr from Superboy #197 is also here; he has just THE best reaction to Radiation Roy’s name.
One of the many reasons why this LSV is memorable is that they don’t miss any opportunity to make things personal, like kidnapping and beating up Gigi Cusimano as well.
Told you it was just a matter of time!!!
As much as I freaking love Saturn Girl… Tyr is not entirely wrong in finding this crazy.
I mean the only reason he doesn’t kill her is that Zymyr chooses this moment to teleport them away!
Even her baby is like “Nope, I’m outta here!”
Sooo… we can all agree never to speak again of the United Planets having aliens that hang around the maternity ward to eat babies, right?
Element Lad being more nervous than Lightning Lad is kind of funny.
Wildfire, Dawnstar, is this REALLY the time for your old routine?
I mentioned earlier this is the first appearance of Terrus: basically he’s an earth-bender we don’t know anything about.
And finally we have Projectra and Karate Kid returning to Orando after their honeymoon.
Also I guess from a cosplayer convention, because WTF is she wearing!?
Their ship gets taken down by the LSV, and it was all so that they could steal one of the Flight Rings.
That’s the second Hunter from Superboy #199, bringing the number of LSV villains to 18, against a total of 20 currently active Legionnaires, but remember we still haven’t met ALL the LSV members.
One of which is the leader, who reveals he was a Legionnaire once… geez, I wonder who could that possibly be?
Legion significance: 7/10
Lots of setup like last issue, but there’s more meat to it this time.
Silver Age-ness: 2/10
As a consequence of having a few silly Silver Age villains like Radiation Roy.
Does it stand the test of time? 8/10
Another solid part of the storyline, more cohesive than the first one since there’s basically no subplots: everything comes back to the LSV one way or the other.
Speaking of the LSV, while individually few members stick out, as a whole they’re a fascinating team that really works as a threat, not just physically but emotionally as well.
We are legion
20 active Legionnaires
8 reserve members
1 honorary member (Rond Vidar)
41 people have been members
Interesting letters: the Omen storyline is getting destroyed in the letters, and I can’t exactly blame the readers!
Including from one of MY readers, Greg!
(this is just an excerpt, he also gives an in-depth examination of Giffen’s latest shifts in his style)
There’s also an extremely long letter (this is also just an excerpt) that eviscerates all the potential storylines that can come from resurrecting the original Invisible Kid.
Sadly, I think he gave this more thought than Levitz.
While I enjoyed Lightning Lord’s slow decline into insanity, and several members of the LSV such as the Assassins were rotten from the get-go, I still find it hard to believe that characters like Ron-Karr and Spider Girl went from “unsuccessful Legion applicants” straight to “homicidal maniacs” like they did.
I mean there were the Subs, there was the Science Police, there were openings in the field of children’s entertainment… but no, apparently, straight to murderous villainy.
IIRC, Spider Girl, Radiation Roy and Ron-Karr were all shown as students of Tarik’s super-villain academy, so there was probably some attitude adjustment there. Magno Lad’s and Esper Lass’s turn to murderousness, on the other hand, is a bit harder to explain. (Micro Lad applied to the Legion to support his politics in the first place, so he was never the pure-hearted wannabe hero that other applicants could have been assumed to be.)
Oh this reminded me of one of my pet peeves from this era… Everytime a computer or a robot speaks there has to be a “breep” at the beginning and end of what they say… that would get anoying really fast… and it does anoys me while reading it… just a silly thing I guess…
Thanks for reprinting an excerpt of my letter. Man, I didn’t pull any punches. Neither did anyone else, it seems.
“Chameleon Chief and Sun Emperor are from an issue of Jimmy Olsen so boring I didn’t even review it, but we’ve seen Chameleon Chief in Superboy #208.”
Sun Emperor was also in Superboy 208. He was the LSV’s leader in that issue.
The LSV War was intended to be the next great Levitz-Giffen opus after the Great Darkness Saga, but for me it was a bit of a mess. It was ambitious to include so many also-ran villains in the mix, but that made the book crowded. The story rushed through scenes whereas, even in the GDS, time was spent on developing individual scenes and character bits. From Sun Emperor’s casual murder of the servant girl Thora on though the big finale, much time was spent establishing the LSV as nasty for the sake of being nasty. There was no nuance in them or in the story as a whole, for that matter. GDS deepened and broadened the Legion’s universe. The LSV War just darkened it for no real purpose.