Legion of Super-Heroes v3 #18 (1986)
by Paul Levitz & Greg LaRoque
This is the last fully pre-Crisis story of the Legion. I told you that whenever Infinite Man shows up, it’s always a big deal! We haven’t seen him in almost a decade, since LSH #233.
You might remember that issue 16 was the one where Brainiac 5 reacted to the death of Supergirl, but the rest of the Legion universe seemingly ignored Crisis… despite the events of the actual miniseries clearly showing that the 30th century was affected.
This story addresses it, starting with Ron Vidar.
The artwork goes a little over the top, but it IS a chilling realization. Just imagine you just realized you were the only one who noticed the universe was ending!
Not that Brainiac 5 is taking it much better.
Well you don’t have to involve time travel shenanigans to explain why nobody remembers Kid Psycho died in Crisis #3, Rond.
Nobody ever really cared about Kid Psycho in the first place.
Nobody ever really talks about the psychological effect of being in a retcon.
Well maybe I was a bit harsh on Kid Psycho. Apparently he was a beloved member of the team despite NEVER SHOWING UP.
This is more attention given to Kid Psycho than he EVER received.
But even then…
A very, VERY minor plot point during Crisis was a massive riot in the prison planet Takron-Galtos, so the Legion goes to deal with it…
…but these Legionnaire ALSO don’t remember the Crisis.
Alright, what’s going on? Apparently, there’s SOMETHING that is actively blocking the effects of the Crisis. The Time Institute is the only place that allows you to remember it.
That “something” is the Time Beacon™, which is exactly what it sounds: a beacon to guide time travelers! We’ve seen this thing before, but it’s worth discussing since it will become crucial.
That’s a neat invention that could also explain why Superboy always arrived exactly at the time of the Legion he knew… he was just following the Time Beacon™.
Which would ALSO explain why Superman could easily visit the Legion from any other time: he later learned to better control his time travel. It doesn’t match 100% how time travel worked in Superboy stories, but it’s close.
So… yeah, Brainiac 5 invented a device that ACCIDENTALLY protected the universe from the Crisis.
Meanwhile on Takron-Galtos, Tellus is mind-controlled into releasing Validus.
Does Validus even HAVE eyes!? Most of the artwork, INCLUDING THIS ISSUE, indicates otherwise. But if so how is Sun Boy blinding him!?
And then Validus is recruited by Brainiac.
Well that accomplished nothing except adding an action scene.
Then Brainiac 5 summons the rest of the Legion to help him boost the power of the Time Beacon™.
This releases the Infinite Man from his time prison! This might have been a cool surprise if it wasn’t spoiled on the cover.
Don’t snark, Wildfire, that’s MY job.
Yeah, uhm, Infinite Man was ALREADY ridiculously overpowered… and all this Crisis shenanigans have made him even worse.
It wasn’t really the Time Beacon™ that shielded the 30th century from Crisis: it was just feeding its time energy into the Infinite Man, who was really responsible for all the time inconsistencies.
I like the idea that the Legionnaires think Infinite Man is the origin of the Crisis. Since they can’t remember the Anti-Monitor, that’s a legitimate conclusion.
As usual, Infinite Man doesn’t fight the Legion HIMSELF. Instead he summons soldiers, this time unleashing Greg LaRoque’s portfolio.
I wonder if Levitz considering eventually introducing these one-off characters, like Saturn Dominatrix here.
But while the Legion of Super-Heroes might have a lot of members, Infinite Man can summon a literally infinite amount of soldiers.
Not sure what Quislet thought he was doing here. His power is possessing inanimate objects… was he just trying to ram Infinite Man or what?
The only thing to defeat Infinite Man might just be continuity. Will Invisible Kid II’s plot about his teleportation powers FINALLY pay off?
No. No it will not.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why you need Brainiac 5 in your team.
Yep. Brainiac 5 just came up ON THE SPOT with a plan to defeat Infinite Man by using magic… and he doesn’t even know how to use magic in the first place!
This works by sending the Crisis energy that Infinite Man absorbed back into Crisis itself.
This strips the time energy away from Infinite Man, who returns to his mortal form but falls into a coma. We will see him once more before the series is over.
And so… the pre-Crisis continuity ends, because Infinite Man’s powers are no longer shielding the 30th century.
The explanation for the inconsistencies between Crisis and the Legion so far are not entirely spelled out, you kind of have to read between the lines. But the short story is that it was Infinite Man’s interference.
This WOULD have been the perfect place for a complete reboot, like what happened with nearly the entire DC Universe.
And while the rest of Volume 3 is one of my favorite Legion eras, I kind of whish that’s what happened because I would argue that the various retcons plus the 5 Years Later era was the two-punch that stopped the Legion from returning to its best-seller status.
But that’s a story for the next eras because the Legion retrospective is most definitely going to continue into the post-Crisis years.
After the LEGION AWARDS, of course!
Legion significance: 10/10
It can be argued that the rest of this volume wouldn’t even EXIST without this story.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Not really.
Does it stand the test of time? 8/10
I had better memories of this one, but it’s more disjointed than I remembered. The various Takron-Galtos scenes are kind of pointless, and more could’ve been done with the exploration of the changing history or being more explicit with Infinite Man’s involvement.
And while Braniac 5 is the absolute MVP of this story, figuring out how to use White Witch’s spell comes quite out of nowhere. Although admittedly it IS a spell we’ve seen her use before.
Strong points for the existential dread of realizing you forgot the universe is ending; kind of appropriate since the concept behind Infinite Man is a true cosmic horror if you think about it too much!
We are legion
24 active Legionnaires
7 reserve members
11 deceased members
3 resigned members
1 honorary member
46 people have been members
48 people have been rejected
The 1200th review!
Actually, I guess the 1200th post, since there were a lot of posts that weren’t reviews.
I think that’s Darkseid taking Validus, not Brainiac. I think the scenes in this issue occur after the events of Crisis # 10.
Also, I suspect Quislet thought he might be able to possess the Infinite Man (or perhaps his costume/armor), but it’s made of stuff that Quislet can’t affect.
I could be wrong, but I do think it’s Brainiac. Darkseid gets involved later, and not with the group of villains where Validus ends up.
What I’m sure is that it’s set before Crisis #11, because at that point the multiverse is no more and we have a pretty definitive list of the characters involved.
Crisis was such an amazing event. But it’s a shame it did such damage to the Legion.
Was Crisis and the subsequent revisions and reboots responsible for killing Legion’s sales? Or were sales falling anyway? I’m not an expert in such matters.
I don’t think the Legion had lower sales after Crisis, at the very least not initially since the creative team stays largely the same. I’m no expert on sales, though, so it might have dipped.
I think the real damage wasn’t done by Crisis, but by the 5 Years Later era with its two-punch of the retcons and confusing storyline that was impossible to jump into… I’ll have plenty to say about that once I reach the 5YL.
The 1994 reboot was pretty good for the sales, and I’m a big fan of that era: there really was no reason to reboot again after it (especially not three times), and I think it was just DC shooting themselves in the foot the chase the nostalgia of a small part of the fandom, as they’ve kept doing since 2000.
This story has a nice idea: using the Infinite Man as an repository of Crisis chronal energies is both thematically appropriate and a convenient explanation assorted anomalies. I don’t particularly expect that the Editors (Karen Berger and Roy Thomas) coordinated or even thought of the idea, but it would even explain why the Golden Age heroes in All-Star Squadron were somewhat warded from the Crisis consequences for about a year. Roy Thomas instead came up with a less convincing explanation later, involving the android Mekanique.
About LSH continuity and popularity…
One challenge of publishing fictional stories with an ongoing continuity through decades is that there are multiple oportunities for deciding between short term thrills and lasting coherence. It is just way too easy to harm the later in order to achieve the former.
That definitely harmed the popularity of the Legion, and it was very much a significant problem at some point after Crisis. IMO the decisive blow was the 5YL storyline and the rather depressing stories that came just before it; that period was both overambitious, overlasting and a strong tonal shift from the generally optimistic Legion. Whoever was the intended readership, it wasn’t traditional Legion fans. I wonder what Keith Giffen and others were hoping to achieve.
The later period of the reboot Legions did not help either. “End of An Era” was, frankly, an ugly, meandering, pointless mess. I could not want the 2004 Threeboot to come sooner.
But rebooting the Legion is a two-edged sword, an ever sharper one. There are lots of built-in expectations coming with calling a group the Legion of Super Heroes, but they must be balanced with accessibility needs and nostalgic longings that often run against each other. And each relaunch creates more continuity baggage and more uncertainty about what to expect.
For the Legion to regain its popularity, it would IMO need a strong editorial hand with considerable autonomy; it might in fact be ideal to farm the franchise to an entirely separate publisher such as Dynamite! or IDW. There would be decisions to be made on how it connects to the 21st Century, if at all; on which genres it aims to implement; on where it stands in the tonal scale of gritty vs optimistic; and on how nostalgic it wants to be and how it will communicate those intents to the potential readership. Without a clear statement on those matters and the editorial will to implement those answers, the LSH is doomed to flounder and fizzle.
Nice analysis. I agree with most of your points, although I liked the latter part of the reboot and I don’t personally place it among the Legion’s “problematic” eras.
But I have exactly the same thesis on the effects of the 5YL era and will discusd those at lenght once I get there.