Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes #318 (1984)
by Paul Levitz & Terry Shoemaker
After several issues which included two unrelated stories each, Levitz mixes things up by giving each issue an entire story.
We begin with a recap of the current membership following issue #5. Five active members are still missing in action: Ultra Boy, Phantom Girl, Shrinking Violet, Chameleon Boy and the current leader Element Lad. This leaves Dream Girl in charge, since she’s the deputy.
Honestly Dream Girl is being a better leader now that she’s the deputy than when she was the actual elected leader. Also you have to love Invisible Kid’s solution to the missing Legionnaires… do nothing. No wonder he’ll later get into politics.
She gets the idea of asking Brainiac 5 to augment Dawnstar’s powers, which will be a separate plot for the most part. Not sure why he doesn’t do this for ALL Legionnaires.
Cosmic Boy is once again pushing to get more members. He’s got a point: the membership has been stagnant for a while.
That’s mostly because in the old days all you had to do to join the Legion was show up and demonstrate your power, whereas now there’s a whole dedicated process.
With a beginning like that you might expect this issue to focus on new auditions, but no, it’s actually mostly about Talok VIII, the rarely-seen birthplace of Shadow Lass.
She’s not involved in this… not yet at least. It’s the first time her cousin Shadow Kid (who recently resigned from the Legion Academy) to do anything remotely interesting.
Investigating a rebellion, he discovers a woman conducting some kind of ancient ceremony…
…but then SUDDEN PERSUADER!
With Shadow Lass unable to get word from her cousin, she decides to go to Talok VIII to investigate with Mon-El.
She takes her frustration out on Dream Girl, but while I’ve been critical of her leadership before… this time I’m with Dream Girl. They just talked about the team being understaffed, and Shadow Lass takes the Legion’s strongest member on a solo mission based on only a hunch.
The fact that Talok VIII is under a full scale rebellion without the United Planets either noticing or caring is yet another of the many, many small signs that the organization is not as solid as it pretends to be.
With the Persuader around, you might expect he’s working with the Fatal Five. However, much like Emerald Empress, he’s gone solo… but unlike the Empress, he’s still following orders by allying himself with the main villain of the story, Lady Memory.
The rebellion is just about to make its first big win until Mon-El shows up to discourage them in a rather… unusual way.
Your irregular reminder that Mon-El is, in fact, freaking awesome.
Yeah this isn’t even a workout for a Daxamite.
Persuader is stuck fighting Shadow Lass, and it really goes to show how much the Fatal Five complete each other: every time they are separated, their threat level drops significantly.
Dude you went to the shadow-worshipping planet where the shadow-worshipping people have a shadow champion that controls the shadows! How did you not prepare for something like this!?!?
It’s up to Lady Memory now to fill the big bad role. And she has quite the history with the predecessors of Shadow Lass.
But still, Mon-El is right there and the dude just single-handedly stopped the rebellion. Dealing with Lady Memory won’t be THAT hard, right?
Yeah, uhm, maybe he would’ve preferred facing the Persuader.
In other plots, Brainiac 5 experiments to increase Dawnstar’s powers.
I can’t imagine why she might be worried, considering his legendary bedside manners.
Aaaand it doesn’t go anywhere… yet. This will have a point, but it’ll take a long time to get there.
Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes #319 (1985)
by Paul Levitz & Terry Shoemaker
cover by Dan Jurgens
Sometimes I forget Dan Jurgens is also an artist.
Turns out Mon-El was the worst possible person to send after Lady Memory… because she has the power to force you to re-live your memories.
Which for Mon-El include A LOT of trauma, considering he had to live in the Phantom Zone for a thousand years!!!
I just love the little touches on the worldbuilding by those captions Levitz places here and there.
So what is Lady Memory’s deal? Basically she represents all the disenfranchised tribes of Talok VIII that either don’t want to, or were been permitted to, join the interstellar community.
Dream Girl’s leadership can’t catch a break. First she’s criticized for not wanting to send Mon-El on a mission, then she’s criticized when she does.
I guess the best course of action would’ve been contacting the United Planets to get intel on Talok VIII before sparing any Legionnaire.
Also while I get there aren’t a lot of Legionnaires to choose from… her selection just sucks.
Star Boy will be very useful, and I get Colossal Boy… after Mon-El and Ultra Boy (who is currently unavailable) he’s probably the physically strongest… but what’s Timber Wolf supposed to do!?
I can excuse her for not sending White Witch and Sun Boy (easily the two Legionnaires most effective against Mon-El’s weaknesses), since she doesn’t know he’s gone nuts yet.
Star Boy is surprisingly effective! Of course this doesn’t completely lose his other powers and he’s still ridiculously strong, but that’s one step forward.
But it still calm him down enough for the Legionnaire to ask Saturn Girl to give a telepathic hand.
The fact that the team has to call her kind of proves Cosmic Boy’s point that the Legion badly needs some new blood.
Time for Shadow Lass to confront Lady Memory, but most importantly her own origins.
Well clearly that’s a conflict that can only be resolved with a knife fight.
Shadow Lass gets a chance to show how badass she can be. It’s been a while: every time she shares the scene with Mon-El he ends up overshadowing her. Pun intended.
Still, there’s the problem of dealing with an entire rebellion.
Well what do you know, we have JUST the Legionnaire for that job.
Yep, Mon-El is back to his old self, complete with messing with the villain.
I really like the idea that Mon-El has repressed the memory of most what he has experienced in the Phantom Zone. Not only it helps us believe that he’s not gone crazy, it’s useful from a storytelling perspective because otherwise Mon-El should know A LOT of the supposedly forgotten future history.
As a bonus, Superboy is the reason for Mon-El snapping out of it! Sadly, this is the last time he meets the Legion before Crisis On Infinite Earths.
In other plots, Brainiac 5 is still working on increasing Dawnstar’s powers. I guess it’s a little predictable that she’s given the “nature versus science” role, but she’s not too preachy and the scene still works.
Well, the scene works. Brainiac 5’s machine will need more time.
Dev-Em is continuing his secret mission with Shvaughn, by infiltrating the Dark Circle.
Also during all this, someone is studying the Legion from afar.
Yeah I’m sure this “Monitor” guy won’t be important later.
Legion significance: 5/10
The Brainiac 5 and Dawnstar plot is probably the most significant, since it will take some time before it gets its resolution. Unfortunately this is the last appearance of Lady Memory.
Silver Age-ness: 4/10
So is reincarnation real in this universe or not? And what exactly is the deal with Lady Memory’s powers?
Does it stand the test of time? 7/10
Solid but not exactly groundbreaking. The pacing is better than during the usual two-parters, but I would’ve expected the story to go into much further detail both in Mon-El’s memories and in Lady Memory’s backstory.
It is a nice showcase for Shadow Lass, but once again Shadow Kid contributes absolutely nothing.
And poor Persuader has a rather pathetic outing. Emerald Empress worked perfectly as a solo villain, but he’s very disappointing.
We are legion
19 active Legionnaires (5 missing in action)
9 reserve members
9 deceased members
3 resigned members
1 honorary member
41 people have been members
41 people have been rejected
I believe Superboy makes at least one more pre-Crisis Legion appearance, in issue # 12 of the Baxter series.
Perhaps the longest lasting development from this tale is the unexplained change to Talokian ears. Previously, they had round ears, but from these issues forward, even in the reboots, they have pointed ears. Just don’t ask me why.
Lady Memory does actually turn up during the 5 years later era. She’s married to Shadow Kid, who’s now the ruler of Talok, and together they fight the Khunds. Ironically, that’s if my memory serves.
Memory serves you well. Volume 4, issues 15 through 17 depict the happy couple. Grev grumbles about their marriage being one of convenience to unite their tribes, but he gives in pretty easily when Kahnya insists on doing her “wifely duty”.