Legion of Super-Heroes v3 #9 (1985)
by Paul Levitz & Steve Lightle
Nice but weird cover: is this Lightle’s Legion portfolio?
We begin with Dream Girl holding a meeting. She’s the deputy leader, and since Element Lad has been missing for some time she’s the de facto leader right now.
This is also in the middle of Tales #321-323, so both Dawnstar and Brainiac 5 are still missing.
That means the Legion currently has 7 members lost in space, leaving the team understaffed.
Although only the Legion would consider 13 members “understaffed”!
Cosmic Boy has been hammering the idea that the team absolutely needs new recruits, and the others are finally willing to listen.
Dream Girl isn’t enthusiastic of the idea, but she still assigns Wildfire to take care of holding the next auditions. Because while he constantly craps over any new addition to the team, we all know Wildfire is a big softie for the newbies.
Good thing that the missing Legionnaires show up now as opposed to five minutes ago, otherwise the Legion would’ve waited even longer for another audition.
Also, there is no mention about their adventure in DC Comics Presents #80. Presumably because that story sucked.
This story has a lot of downtime moments, including a major push for the Element Lad and Shvaugh Erin relationship.
This is mostly shown in a GORGEOUS two-page spread where Lightle goes all out.
There is SO much to talk about in those two pages above!!!
From the always adorable flirting between Blok and White Witch…
…to Lightning Lass having an argument with Dream Girl, the latter wearing her sexy party outfit…
…as Timber Wolf creepily looks over his former girlfriend…
…to hinting at a story I really wish was the focus of one of the Tales issues, as opposed to the abominable Dawnstar saga. I would’ve loved to see Mon-El meet Shadow Lass’ family!!!
Even Rond Vidar is there! It’s been a while since we’ve seen our last remaining honorary member. Plus Sun Boy is not talking about women for once!
The highlight is Shrinking Violet finally meeting Yera, after the latter impersonated her.
Honestly, Shrinking Violet has more reasons to be upset than Timber Wolf.
Your regular reminder that Blok is awesome.
Guys, I said this issue has some downtime, but it’s still Comics Code approved!
The unfortunate side effect of dating a Legionnaire is that you can get heroblocked at any moment.
The emergency in Hong Kong. Glad whenever we get the chance to see more of Earth, instead of always being stuck in Metropolis.
The Legion is here to assist the Science Police deal with a space pirate raid, and Lightning Lass gets to be more active now that she has her electric powers back.
The pirates in question are Sklarian Raiders, who we haven’t seen in AGES.
Since all Sklarians are women who don’t wear much that can be used as a disguise, this is going to involve some serious stealth.
It’s Espionage Squad time!!!
The weird thing is that the Sklarians are stealing organs, which is definitely not something they normally would do.
Shrinking Violet in this period is great, but she does have a bit of rage issues.
They manage to escape but… what do you mean you think they didn’t recognize you!?
I know you changed your looks recently, Shrinking Violet, but the Legionnaire are galactic celebrities!
Invisible Kid has been extremely unimpressive for a long time, but he does manage something good here by basically solving the case on his own.
So the Legionnaires track the ship the Sklarians were going to use to ship the stolen organs and trash their whole operation.
And we end with Element Lad getting laid. It’s not the 70s anymore, but the Legion is still one of the horniest DC books.
In other plots, R.J.Brande is making business with the Proteans…
…and the “Who shot Laurel Kent?” plot not yet going anywhere.
That weird alien with the rest of the Academy students is Tellus; you would never guess he gets important later, since he doesn’t even have a line.
And finally we have Timber Wolf being contacted by the executor of Karate Kid’s will…
…who just made him a billionaire!
Legion significance: 4/10
As it’s often the case with Levitz, on its own it’s not a particularly important issue but it serves as the starting point of several plotlines.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Not really.
Does it stand the test of time? 9/10
Yet another case where there isn’t a lot to say… classic superhero fun mixed with your usual soap opera stuff. My only minor complaint is that the Sklarian plot seems a bit rushed and perhaps even a bit incomplete.
We are legion
20 active Legionnaires
8 reserve members
9 deceased members
3 resigned members
1 honorary member
41 people have been members
41 people have been rejected
Interesting letters: the reactions to the death of Karate Kid are coming in, and it was certainly a controversial choice at the time. Heck it’s STILL controversial in Legion fandom.
Random comment, but I would love to see you reviewing the Krypton Chronicles 3-issue series from the early 1980s. Basically the history of Superman’s ancestrals and Krypton’s history! It was nice to have all of that before Crisis basically erased its canonicity.
I was under the assumption that TALES was set before the Baxter series like THE NEW TEEN TITANS.
As someone who read the books as they were released, I can confirm that unlike Titans or Outsiders, the Legion and Tales of the Legion occurred simultaneously.
The Teen Titans writers set its “Tales” before the beginning of the Baxter series (which makes enough sense, since reprints of the Baxter series followed the original stories in the Tales titles, so it made for a smooth segue – plus, newsstand-only buyers wouldn’t understand references to the direct-market-only Baxter series), but the Legion creative team decided to set their original “Tales” stories contemporaneous with the stories being published in the Baxter series.
I think that Outsiders, when they joined the club, used the Teen Titans method.
Outsiders did use the NTT method. Baxter Outsiders #1 featured Looker, a member who would be introduced in the newsstand book, published later but chronologically earlier