Cosmic Boy #4 (1987)
by Paul Levitz & Keith Giffen
cover by Steve Lighle
Not a bad cover, but the “showdown at the End of Time” would’ve hit differently if the Time Trapper bothered to show up before the very last panel of issue #3.
Despite my dislike for the previous issues, I’m keeping my mind open. I love the Time Trapper and he was by far the best far of the last miniseries where he showed up.
No, seriously, how did you NOT figure out that the person who was messing with time was your old foe whose deal is messing up with time?
I can understand not thinking it from a reader’s perspective… it was right after Crisis, and the Time Trapper was perhaps too obvious… but in-universe, shouldn’t he be Cosmic Boy’s first guess?
Despite my love for the character, I could understand a reader finding the Time Trapper particularly frustrating… you never get the full picture with him.
Unfortunately Night Girl hasn’t met THIS incarnation of the Time Trapper before, so she probably thinks he’s just the goofy Silver Age version.
It’s pretty cool that, at least for now, the full scope of the Time Trapper’s power is so undefined that he COULD still be just a guy using advanced technology.
Then the Time Trapper kidnaps them with a “plork”.
You might have noticed Night Girl’s arm has healed after last issue.
We’ve seen a glimpse of the Time Trapper’s power during Legionnaires Three, but this is where he becomes unstoppable.
More importantly, this is where we learn the Time Trapper’s motivation for his actions.
He’s already the absolute ruler of the End Of Time, but he plans to take over the rest by making the end happen EARLIER.
This is why I’m fascinated by the character. He’s utterly alien, disliking the very idea of the universe itself existing…
…but contradictorily, he’s so obsessed with he Legion that he HAS to make things personal.
That contradiction makes him VERY hard to predict, and a more unique character.
He gives Cosmic Boy a deadline: he has one hour to return to the 30th century, or become his slave.
Dude, you should’ve showed up waaaay earlier because Cosmic Boy has already wasted everybody’s time for three whole issues!!! Maybe he’ll FINALLY wake up now.
The two heroes decide to infiltrate the Time Trapper’s citadel. Which might contain a trap (IT’S IN HIS NAME), but I can’t disagree with the plan… there’s literally nothing else at the End Of Time!
So is this one of the Time Trapper’s pets? One of his minions? My guess is that this used to be a regular human that he transformed into a monster; honestly I wouldn’t put it past him.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised he has a tentacle monster: the Time Trapper is retroactively a Wonder Woman villain.
Cosmic Boy is utterly defenseless against tentacles (???), but Night Girl has THE MOST BADASS SCENE SHE WILL EVER GET.
Why wasn’t THIS the attitude of the first thee issues!?
Night Girl continues to be the MVP of this miniseries, ending up fighting the Time Trapper’s army.
Meanwhile, Cosmic Boy goes bowling.
They eventually reach the Time Trapper’s throne room, where he’s keeping the Time Bubble™.
Unfortunately, the time allocated by the Time Trapper is almost over.
The Time Trapper is SO committed to the theme that he’s LITERALLY waiting for the hourglass to run out of sand.
This helps Cosmic Boy think outside the box: if he only has until the sands runs out, he just has to sabotage the hourglass.
The reaction he gets from the Time Trapper is certainly unexpected. HE LAUGHS.
For the unfeeling incarnation of entropy itself, the Time Trapper is a surprisingly good sport.
But make no mistake: he’s FULLY in control of the situation the entire time. And he’s going to keep that promise.
So he sends Cosmic Boy back home…
…with one of my favorite Time Trapper panels.
It’s a simple thing, but it really showcase just how far above everyone else’s level he truly is.
Not to mention, this isn’t even the first time when he has restricted the Legion’s access to time travel.
Hey, no spoilers!
And so we end the miniseries with the revelation that the Time Trapper has the pre-Crisis Superboy AND Krypto under his control.
Both characters that, in theory, shouldn’t exist anymore at this point.
This will be picked up by the main series, but first we’ll have to catch up with the issues that were being published together with the miniseries.
Legion significance: 8/ 
It’s quite significant: it has the Time Trapper revealing his ultimate goal AND preventing the Legion from using time travel. Plus it’s the starting point of a storyline so important I’m using it as the benchmark to split the post-Crisis Volume 3 into two distinct eras.
Silver Age-ness: 0/
The time-displaced army looks a bit silly, but that’s about it.
Does it stand the test of time? 8/
Yes, I’m biased towards the Time Trapper. But I have disliked stories featuring him, and I will in the future. But I think this is the only issue of the entire miniseries worth reading.
And that’s almost entirely thanks to the Time Trapper himself. He’s such a charismatic bastard! Almost a horror villain, maintaining an aura of inescapable dread over the entire story.
Night Girl has, once again, the coolest action scenes. It’s just baffling that she has a rather generic power, as opposed to Cosmic Boy having one of the most versatile ones… and yet HE is the one who rarely does anything interesting with it!
I do have a couple of complains, though. The first is that, while I liked Cosmic Boy’s lateral thinking… that’s not how the scene should’ve played out to make the most sense!
Had the Time Trapper said something like “You have until the last grain of sand drops”, instead of “You have one hour”, then the final twist would’ve made sense: defeat the villain by sticking to the exact words he pledged to follow! As a Doctor Doom superfan I love when that happens, and it’s a pity we missed that moment here.
Second: while the story holds up pretty well, it’s still an incredibly unsatisfying ending to the miniseries. Basically NOTHING Cosmic Boy did in the previous 3 issues has ANY impact on this story!
It’s kind of weird how when the end of time shows up in most Legion comics, it’s just this barren wasteland with the Time Trapper’s citadel. It should be nothing but a blank void and the Time Trapper’s citadel, since he talks about everything being reduced to dust, and when there’s still a random landscape, it makes that statement feel a lot weaker.
I reviewed this series a few years ago on Legion World and remember thinking it was a waste of time. As you note, Cosmic Boy doesn’t really do anything except for his last minute “twist” of defeating the Time Trapper. But I always have problems with this sort of depiction of TT. He is portrayed as someone who simply chooses to follow the rules of the game and therefore still has the upper hand. This means Cos’s victory is meaningless. Also, I’m not a fan of villains who laugh maniacally even in defeat. There’s got to be something at stake even for the Time Trapper. His defeat should mean something to him.
I think this kind of approach would work SO much better as the beginning of the saga: you show the villain is in complete control and the hero has absolutely no chance, then the hero finds out there IS a way to beat him. Same for the motivation: you start with the villain acting like he’s above it all, but in the end the hero gets under his skin and exploits it.
That’s why, for me, taken on its own or if you consider it the beginning of the next Superboy storyline, it still works for the most part.
But I totally see your point. The problem is that it’s placed at the END of the miniseries, and the whole thing falls apart.
The fact that the first three issues are not written very well doesn’t help… I expect this miniseries won’t get a very nice treatment in the next Legion Awards!