Legion of Super-Heroes v3 #55 (1988)
written by Paul Levitz & Keith Giffen
pencils by Keith Giffen, Ernie Colon, J.L. García-López, Erik Larsen
cover by Steve Lighle
That’s a lot of pencilers! At least Lighle delivers a wonderful cover suitable for a story featuring four plots with little in common.
The framing device is that we’re going to follow Legionnaires who have either left the team or who aren’t checking with headquarters.
Although maybe it’s not their fault since Polar Boy can’t even use the system after Computo updated it.
The first Legionnaire we check is White Witch, in a segment with Ernie Colon artwork.
She hasn’t formally left the team, but I’ve counted her as resigned since she completely dropped off the map going back to Sorcerers’ World.
White Witch is incredibly frustrating. I liked what Levitz was doing with her since she joined the team, showing her growth as a hero and as a person… but after issue 50 she completely regresses.
Did you like having a Legionnaire who had a slightly different worldview from the others but still helped and showed that there isn’t only one path to be a hero?
Well too bad, because she just happened to be around and didn’t really believe in the Legion.
Some big magical thing is going to involve Earth, and the Sorcerers want her to go there because she’s the most familiar with the planet.
And she’s like “nah, I’m just going to send an email”.
We COULD have her go to Earth… confronting the Legionnaires, reflecting on her decision, maybe change her mind… but no, we’re going to send this guy.
We’ve seen him a few times but I’m not even bothering remembering his name.
Instead White Witch is going to stay on Sorcerers’ World to teach magic to this Khund child.
It’s a disappointing conclusion to her character. We’re going to see her only once more within Volume 3… and I don’t like how this issue handled her, I really REALLY wish this was her last appearance overall. Her character assassination hasn’t even begun.
The next Legionnaire we check is Brainiac 5, in a segment with Giffen artwork that starts with a really interesting discussion about his planet: why ARE its inhabitants so smart?
It’s a FASCINATING discussion with little additions to the lore: we already knew they have a very long lifespan that other species have tried to replicate, but they did the same with their intelligence.
Brainiac 5 has been spending his time exactly the way you thought he would.
He doesn’t seem to miss the Legion at all.
Until the other Coluans inform him that his research on time travel is forbidden, even if it’s just theoretical.
The restrictions on doing research of time travel were a big reason why Brainy left his planet in the first place, and he does have a point: even if it turned out that Time Bubble™ didn’t really work and all the time travel was done by the Time Trapper… that STILL proved that time travel is possible!
Unfortunately, if there’s a consistent theme about the people of Colu throughout most continuities is that they’re really smart but INCREDIBLY resistant to change.
Doing this entire thing without even THINKING about asking permission is a very Brainiac 5 thing.
Spending time with the Legion has made Brainiac 5 appreciate the value of socialization.
I find it interesting that there seems to be only six people ON THE PLANET that are his age!
It does make sense that a species with a long lifespan would have a low birth rate, but the Coluans are not immortal… I doubt this rate is sustainable.
Unless there’s a lot of Coluans living off-planet, which based on previous stories is unlikely.
Next is Dream Girl, in a story that is basically the follow-up to her Annual story.
By exclusion the artist must be José Luis García-López, but it doesn’t look like his style AT ALL.
With both Star Boy and Atmos active on their home planet Xhantu, it was only a matter of time before they got into a dumb fight.
And Star Boy decides to just leave the planet. He only has ONE appearance left, at the very last issue of Volume 3… yet another disappointing end to a Legionnaire’s career.
And speaking of disappointing: this is ALSO Dream Girl’s second-to-last appearance in Volume 3.
It’s become pretty clear that Atmos is using his powers to SOMEHOW keep Dream Girl under control, seemingly even dampening her precognitive abilities.
I did tell you that you’d end up hating Atmos, didn’t I?
Out of all the Legionnaires that left abruptly, I feel bad for Dream Girl the most.
Star Boy didn’t fight for himself when his planet called him back, White Witch was whiny and selfish, Brainiac 5 was so fed up that he didn’t leave the Legion the means to replace him, Shadow Lass could have least have resigned officially instead of leaving everyone in the dark (pun intended)… but Dream Girl?
She’s manipulated by an abusive boyfriend! With her friends, her ex boyfriend and HER SISTER completely ignoring her because they’re all caught in their own personal drama.
And finally there’s Blok, with pencils by Erik Larsen. This is VERY early in his career, but he’s still recognizable.
Blok is on a quest to learn about his own people, and we see him traveling in a ship that is HALF-DRAGON.
Larsen gets really experimental for no reason on just one page, as Block speaks with the short alien that recruited him for the quest.
The fact that Blok’s body is constantly changing would work much better if EVERYONE didn’t suddenly and drastically change their looks in the past five issues.
This WOULD be an interesting plot… Blok doesn’t know anyone else from his own species and there’s drama to be explored… but it’s squeezed between so many other plots that it gets lost in the shuffle.
Blok’s simplicity sometimes makes him look like the dumb one, but he deduces pretty quickly that his benefactor has basically kidnapped him.
The little alien (who can teleport) is not the main bad guy of Blok’s plot. That would be the Inquisitor, who has THE MOST TERRIFYING DESIGN EVER.
He’s also interested in finding other people from Blok’s race, but for different reasons.
And we close the issue with Polar Boy managing to fix the mission board, only to be informed that nobody is answering his calls.
Legion significance: 1/10
Last appearance of White Witch, Star Boy and Dream Girl until #63, the ending of Volume 3.
The only thing SLIGHTLY significant is the confirmation that Dream Girl is not herself.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Not really.
Does it stand the test of time?
Let’s do something different and score all segments individually, making an average for the whole score.
Polar Boy: 0/10
YOU SUCK.
White Witch: 0/10
YOU SUCK EVEN WORSE.
Brainiac 5: 6/10
There’s some interesting concepts here. But it’s nothing new, we’ve already seen Brainiac 5 dealing with the Coluans being so cautious they don’t want to do anything. And that was just a couple of scenes way back in the first Infinite Man story, it’s not like there wasn’t the chance to explore it in much bigger detail.
Dream Girl: 2/10
This should’ve been in the Annual. Dream Girl is already denied agency by the plot, the fact that most of the story is narrated by someone else doesn’t help… and she doesn’t actually DO anything. Losing even more points by how poor Star Boy is just shoved away by the plot.
Blok: 7/10
Even if the artwork is quite bad… I don’t mind Larsen in later years but he’s very unpolished here… and if it’s just a couple of scenes. But Blok is the only Legionnaire in this issue that isn’t completely passive and tries to do something about his situation!
Average: 3/10
This really feels like the “let’s shove all the plots Giffen doesn’t care about into a single issue”. The way the book is just unceremoniously abandoning characters is just depressing.
We are legion
18 active Legionnaires
7 reserve members
6 resigned members
2 on sick leave
12 deceased members
45 people have been members
Interesting letters: the entire letters page is dedicated to the reactions to issue 50, which predictably is very divisive.
I agree with Rex Joyner. Not just because I really, REALLY liked issue 50, but because it’s incredibly obvious that Levitz is just going through the motions now and left the heavy lifting to Giffen.
“I find it interesting that there seems to be only six people ON THE PLANET that are his age!
It does make sense that a species with a long lifespan would have a low birth rate, but the Coluans are not immortal… I doubt this rate is sustainable.” Well, maybe, but he doesn’t actually say his age, he says “of his age cohort” and we really don’t know what that means. He’s (obviously and now explicitly) under a hundred in a species that lives to six times that span, but adult enough to have gone offworld on his own, and to choose to pursue research that the planetary elders haven’t and won’t. Age cohorts are complex among humans – a single year’s difference means a lot when you’re in grade school, but it doesn’t feel like much in your twenties, thirties, etc. and doesn’t matter at all as you grow steadily older. Even generational cohorts are dubious – I know many Gen X types who act like more like Boomers, and others who’ve never reached the point they stop adapting to societal changes, abandoning their own pasts without a care. How much different would a six hundred year lifespan and supergenius intelligence make things? Is age even really a defining aspect of you social peers for Coluans, or is education (and educational interests) the more important factor? Those six cohort members might represent everyone his own age down to some ridiculously precise degree – a few days, hours or even minutes – to reflect that even such short periods make for potentially significant differences in life experience. If a year or two means a lot to a grade-school human who’s just learning to read, how much more relevant are they to a species that’s potentially literate at birth through in-utero teaching, and mastering advanced math around the same time they’re perfecting walking upright? If the definition of “age cohort” is very short by human standards, then six people might still reflect a large enough planetary population to be perfectly viable. What Coluan really wants to hang around with “children” who were born a whole week later than they were and don’t even understand transdimensional integrals yet? It’s like having to play with your toddler sibling when you’re a “big boy” in first grade. 🙂
Fascinating exploration of what “age cohort” can mean to a Coluan!
I’ve dabbled in generational theory, and I’m amazed at how people born several years apart can be considered part of the same generation and are said to share characteristics. I was born in 1963, on the cusp of Boomer and Gen X. On one side, this puts me in the same generational cohort as people born in their late 1940s (who would be old enough to be my very young parents) and people born around 1980 (making me barely old enough to be their parents). Aside from a few shared interests such as comics and writing, I don’t find myself having a lot in common with the people I know from either extreme. To make matters worse, the few people I know who were born in 1960 (a mere three years earlier than I was) seem to have a certain personality characteristics even if they come from widely different geographical, family, and even cultural backgrounds!
The book “Generations” by Strauss and Howe provides a fascinating exploration of how generational patterns repeat. Their work focused only on colonial and US generations from about 1500 on. They admitted things may be very different for people from other cultures. How much different they would be for people of other words is anybody’s guess, but I like your idea that just a few seconds’ difference at birth could result in different cohorts for Coluans.
I was born in 1966 and I really get where you’re coming from. As an elderly Gen X guy I frequently get mistaken for a Boomer, which I find particularly infuriating – but I also don’t identify with most of the Gen X stereotypes either. Aside from early Gen-X tastes in music and media I generally feel more like a hippy counter-culturalist who was born a decade or two too late – or possibly even a seriously time-displaced beatnik. 🙂 My parents were so old they’re technically Silent Generation despite displaying the very worst Boomer traits, which makes me suspect we’re all better off their age-peers stayed so silent. At the end of day generational titles are just largely meaningless labels, more useful for tarring people with ugly stereotypes than having any kind of real meaning. Humans are pretty weird sometimes, and while I don’t agree with everything in Generations, Strauss & Howe aren’t entirely wrong about recurring patterns over the decades. What an alien species with much longer lifespans but faster early development and (possibly) much narrower age cohorts would be like could be a central theme for a science fiction novel series unto itself.
The biggest problem with Blok’s storyline is that his origin story showed us adults of his species. Blok’s physical changes started with the execrable Omen and the Prophet story, and since then seem to depend on artistic whim.
L.E.G.I.O.N.’s Strata will only make it more confusing. Then Green Lantern Brik will undermine the idea that Strata and Blok are the last Dryadans. Blok deserves a coherent backstory. He really doesn’t deserve what’s coming.