Let’s begin a six-issue miniseries that will see the Legion of Super-Heroes in an unlikely team-up with the crew of the original Star Trek.
This doesn’t exactly come out of nowhere, but at the same time it does.
Despite being the older franchise between the two, Legion has borrowed A LOT of the Star Trek lore. The United Planets are basically the Federation, the Khunds are basically the Klingon, multiple versions of the Legion cruiser are basically the Enterprise, and the Reboot era took a lot of inspiration from the look of The Next Generation.
But at the same time… it’s a crossover between a TV series from the 60s with characters created in the 50s, but they’re using the 80s incarnation, and it’s published in the 2000s.
Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes #1 (2011)
by Chris Roberson & Jeff Moy
cover by Phil Jimenez
At least they got the likeness of the original cast; that’s not always a given with these kind of adaptation.
And things already start to be complicated. Because the story begins in the Mirror Universe, the “evil alternate reality” of Star Trek…
…that just launched an invasion of Durla, in its post-Crisis look.
Also: the original Star Trek series is set in the 23rd century, meaning this is the Legion’s past.
And one of the recruits of the bad guys is an ancestor of Shadow Lass for some reason.
The captain of the ship is an evil alternate version of Tommy Tomorrow, a DC adventurer from 40s and 50s sci-fi serials.
Legit question, but are there actual Tommy Tomorrow fans? I keep seeing alternate versions of him in various retcons… most famously Crisis retconned him as being an alternate reality Kamandi… and yet I never see anyone talk about his actual stories.
We then move to the Legion universe, where some Legionnaires are returning from a mission.
Weirdly, this book does NOT use the entire Legion but just six Legionnaires.
I will talk later about the choice of which ones are being used, but the other unusual thing is that we’re taking them from right after the Great Darkness Saga.
Which I understand at SOME level: that’s arguably the most famous incarnation of the Legion. But I’m disappointing that we’re not taking the opportunity to have the 60s Legion meet with the 60s Enterprise cruise!
Also, our first Legion mistake: Shadow Lass doesn’t have a brother. Shadow Kid is her cousin.
Then time travel shenanigans ensue.
We then move to the Enterprise, which is headed back to Earth.
Being the only ship in range, no doubt.
That’s because Captain Kirk is supposed to give a speech at Starfleet Academy. Even though he’s not big on public speaking.
So the crew teleports to Earth, leaving Mr. Scott in charge of the Enterprise.
This whole thing SOMEHOW results in both the Enterprise Crew and the Legionnaires being stuck in the Mirror Universe’s Earth.
Brainiac 5 still deduces this is the 23rd century. Both the Legion and Star Trek have a global nuclear war in the 21st century as part of their backstory lore. 
This Earth is extremely xenophobic towards shapeshifters.
They namedrop the Dominion, the shapeshifting big bad guys of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine… which is set a century later, so they definitely shouldn’t know what that is.
But this is an alternate version of the Mirror Universe timeline so I’m giving them a pass.
Also that’s not the only problem with past knowledge of shapeshifters.
If this is the Legion from the GDS, then I agree that Earth has had very limited contact with Durlans… in the early 80s, Durlans had VERY few 20th century appearances.
If this was the post-Crisis continuity, then it’d be a whole different story since Durlans were VERY VISIBLY part of an invasion of Earth.
It’s kind of weird that Cosmic Boy picked up the fact that this 23rd century is different from what he knows about history, and yet neither him or Brainiac 5 have yet deduced this is a different universe.
The Enterprise Crew, however, SHOULD recognize this as the Mirror Universe since they have been there.
A Mirror Universe that has the Science Police, sure, but they also have the symbol of the Terran Empire (Earth with the swords, it’s on the left).
Not to diminish the greatness of the Enterprise crew, but… the Science Police comes from a universe full of people with superpowers, you’d think they wouldn’t have problems arresting them!
But finally, Spock and Brainiac 5 arrive to the same conclusion.
Well that was an unnecessarily long setup.
Star Trek/Legion of Super-Heroes #2 (2011)
by Chris Roberson & Jeff Moy
cover by Phil Jimenez
The official cover of the second issue is not bad at all…
…but I would’ve gone with the alternate cover that shows the whole Legion and that is by Steve Lighle.
We begin in the Mirror Universe again, with the Terran Emperor narrating the successes of his campaigns.
And it’s a mixture of alien races from both universes.
Both the Controllers and the Organians are all-powerful pacifists…
…and the Khunds and the Klingons are warrior races.
Notably, the Khunds are shown in their alien look from the 80s, but the Klingons are shown in their human look from the 60s instead of the alien look from the 80s.
Also the Borg are from Tyrraz for some reason?
You know, I’m beginning to suspect the Emperor is evil. He has a goatee.
The Legion is still holding back the angry mob, waiting for Brainiac 5 to do SOMETHING.
Those shadows are strangely bright.
Under the cover of darkness, the Legionnaires are just able to fly away. Couldn’t they do this earlier? At least they gave Saturn Girl the excuse that the crowd is already mind-controlled so she couldn’t use her telepathy to calm them, but still, the Legion shouldn’t have struggled AT ALL.
Meanwhile, Spock provides an escape route for his crew.
Much like the original series sometimes did, this series seems to be struggling with giving all of its characters something to do.
Good thing that the Science Police sucks at its job in all universes.
Not that the Legion is much better, leaving behind the Time Bubble™. Yes it’s damaged, but come on!!!
When they asked Chris Robertson to write this series they just made him read the Great Darkness Saga, isn’t it?
The Enterprise crew is hiding, and while Dr. McCoy treats Checkov’s wounds (weird that HE is the first one to get shirtless and not Kirk!) they naturally wonder about the Mirror Universe.
But this isn’t technically the same Mirror Universe.
Because apparently all Earth needed to become an interstellar genocidal superpower was keeping Ancient Rome alive.
And we close the issue with the Legionnaires and the Enterprise crew about to meet.
Well considering the next issue will reach the halfway point of the miniseries, it’s about time!!!
Does any of this show up in any regular continuity?
Neither franchise has a lack of evil versions of its characters, so nope.
SHOULD any of this have happened in regular continuity?
Nothing happens!!!!
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Not really.
Does it stand the test of time? 3/10
Seriously, the story is moving at a snail’s pace. As both a Star Trek fan and a Legion fan… it’s incredibly clear that his is first and foremost a Star Trek story with juuuuust enough Legion connections to justify them being in the title.
But at least up to this point, the story doesn’t seem to have anything to say about either franchise!
Having Jeff Moy at the pencils gives this SOME Legion feeling, since he’ll be a very important artist in the Reboot era, but most of the time they seem to be an afterthought.
My question is… why these Legionnaires specifically?
After all, even given my assumption that the Great Darkness Saga era was chosen because it’s the most popular, it’s not like those six Legionnaires were the only ones there.
The Legion has a HUGE cast, so I can understand focusing on just a few since Star Trek doesn’t have the same amount of people (although if they did a crossover with Deep Space Nine, things might have been different).
I believe the train of thought was as follows:
1) since we’re using the original Enterprise crew, we need the original Legionnaires so the three founders are essential. Plus Saturn Girl’s telepathy is likely going to be useful for the plot.
2) we must have Brainiac 5 not just because we need time travel, but the other side gets Spock so the Legion needs its own super-genius to balance things.
3) four Legionnaires sound too few, we need a couple more. We can’t have people who are too powerful and wouldn’t let the Star Trek characters have anything to do. That excludes the powerhouses like Mon-El or Wildfire.
4) we need to show the faces of the characters since we have the rights to the likeness of the actors, so that excludes Colossal Boy and Shrinking Violet since they could force the actors out of the panels.
5) we want to be taken seriously so no Legionnaires who have powers that are too silly like Bouncing Boy, but we want superhero readers so nobody as grounded as Karate Kid
6) let’s go with Chameleon Boy. Flashy power, useful for the plot
7) we need Kirk to hit on some girl, and Saturn Girl is married so he’d look like a jackass. Do we have any hot green-skinned alien girls in the Legion? Well we have a hot blue-skinned girl who is not too powerful or too weak, that’s good enough.
I never did get this comic book, which is pretty unusual for me. Not sure why/how I missed it. Still, I imagine that if shape-shifters are a major issue for people on the Earth where this takes place, the Legion roster would need to include Chameleon Boy.
The green-skinned man referred to as “Kajz” certainly seems like good attention to Legion continuity, as that’s the father or grandfather of Brainiac 5, per the “Secrets of the Legion” mini-series. I don’t know if this will turn out to be the elder Dox himself or just a random Coluan, but it’s at least a known Coluan personal name.
I doubt that there are any real Tommy Tomorrow fans out there nowadays, but his feature in Action and World’s Finest Comics ran for fifteen years, so he must have had some degree of popularity in his day. I collected mid-century DC sci-fi comics (Star Hawkins, Star Rovers, Space Cabby) but while I get Tommy Tomorrow’s Showcase run, I never did get around to trying to collect those issues. I think that they were in the juvenile fiction genre, and the Showcase run was an attempt to test a retooled version of the character for the somewhat more sophisticated readers of the Silver Age, but it didn’t go over well enough for him to get his own title. I suspect that the post-Crisis retcon of Kamandi to Tommy Tomorrow was not so much because anyone was particularly enthusiastic about the character, but merely intended to establish that there was no Great Disaster in the new DCU’s future, but instead that humanity would expand to the stars and keep the space-fiction characters in continuity.
A couple of Tommy Tomorrow stories were reprinted in the Legion reprint series (vol. 1) of 1973. Even at the time, I thought they were boring and bland–the most generic space adventures ever. The art was imaginative, though.
Even if we leave aside the Legion’s habit of borrowing ship designs and alien race concepts from Trek, the Legion and Trek have one major connection: they’re both rooted in 50’s optimism about the future. They both predict a brighter tomorrow, where humanity is united.
Which is why DS9 and 5YL are kind of jarring. They’re much darker than their predecessors.