Legion 80s cameos

If the Legion has only a couple of cameos in the 70s, the 80s are full of them.
I’m leaving behind the stuff linked to Invasion and L.E.G.I.O.N, since I will give a separate overview of the Legion connections later, and a Subs story I will review separately (Secret Origins #37).

Once again credit to the Legion Wiki for all the references.

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Superman Family #216 (1982)
by Martin Pasko & Win Mortimer

Let’s start with something simple: a rare mention of Rond Vidar in a Supergirl story.
When she learns that a guy from the 5020^th century (!!!) has discovered a Time-Viewer™ that still works. Rond builds stuff to last!

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Green Lantern v2 #183 (1984)
by Len Wein & Dave Gibbons

Something even more rare: a reference to Karate Kid’s awful series, when Major Disaster is talking about his career.

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DC Sampler #2 (1984)

This is REALLY obscure, I think.
This series is actually a free giveaway comic given to readers to get a brief look at what was happening in various DC titles.
Let me know in the comments if anyone has one of these!

I couldn’t find official credits, but the penciler is very obviously Keith Giffen so I am assuming the writer is Levitz given the period. Not that there’s much to write, it’s just two pages introducing the general concepts of the series.

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DC Sampler #3 (1984)
by Dan Jurgens

This isn’t even a story, but there’s a gorgeous two-page spread showing the Legion spending some time with the Teen Titans. I am genuinely upset there isn’t an actual story based on this concept.

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DC Comics Presents #81 (1985)
by Robert Loren Fleming & Keith Giffen

This is an Ambush Bug story where he swaps minds with Superman.

Ambush Bug is kind of a precursor to Deadpool thanks to his fourth wall breaks (they’re also both insane), so at one point he’s on the phone with Paul Levitz to discuss Legion plots.

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Action Comics #568 (1985)
by Craig Boldman & Howard Bender

The premise is that a weapon from the 30th century ends up in Jimmy Olsen’s hands.

Then several characters suddenly meet the love of their life.

Note that Lois is the only one who doesn’t fall in love with a gender-swapped version of herself.

But it turns out all of these new love interests are not real people, as revealed by a time-traveling Shvaughn Erin of all people.

Is this the only time we ever see the Science Police operate the Time Bubble™ without the Legion? I think it might be.

I can’t believe this is a 1985 story. It might as well be straight from the Silver Age if it wasn’t for Lois’s outfit.

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Ambush Bug Stocking Stuffer #1 (1986)
by Robert Loren Fleming & Keith Giffen

Just how random can Ambush Bug be? Random enough to include a scene where Jonni DC… a character based on the mascot Johnny DC, whose body is the DC Comics logo… visits a cemetery of the recently deceased heroes.
Which includes Kid Psycho’s tombstone. Which IS pretty random, until you remember that he DID operate in the 20th century in his first story.

It also features a montage of ALL the headquarters of ALL heroes receiving a distress signal, including two separate Legion headquarters (the latter being the Subs base at the moment).

I generally like Ambush Bug, but there is such a thing as TOO MUCH fourth wall breaking.

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Son of Ambush Bug #5 (1986)
by Robert Loren Fleming & Keith Giffen

There sure were a lot of Ambush Bug comics in the 80s.

In this one he’s on trial, and Proty of all sentients gets a cameo being interviewed.

Like I said I generally like Ambush Bug, but this one is a bit of a mess.
The only jokes that I found genuinely funny is that Two-Face is both his attorney and the prosecution and that Ambush Bug is literally accused of being a parody.

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Super Powers #1 to #4 (1984)
by Paul Kupperberg & Carmine Infantino

This requires a bit of an explanation.
This is the tie-in book to the action figures based on the Super Friends cartoon, specifically the “Galactic Guardians” series where Darkseid was the main bad guy.

Tyr was NOT present in the cartoon, but since he had an action figure he shows up in the comic book.

The only explanation I have for why such an obscure villain was selected for an action figure is that, when you think about it, he looks like he’s straight out of the Masters Of The Universe toyline.

Tyr appears in all four issues. The only interesting thing about him is that he’s the only villain follow Darkseid just because he pays well.

Also in the last two issues he randomly stops being red-skinned and he’s just a black guy.

This is also the same series that features Darkseid losing his powers and being mugged by petty criminals.

Yep. This happened.
This series is not set in the main DC continuity, sure, but since DC eventually decides that ALL versions of Darkseid are actually just aspects of the real deal… in a sense, this DID happen to Darkseid.

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DC Challenge #12 (1986)
by way too many people
(seriously, 6 writers and 7 pencilers)

This series was being published during Crisis and has a rotating number of writers and pencilers.
It’s an absolutely bonkers story, which at some point includes the Joker taking the place of the Guardians Of The Universe.

The Legion connection is HALF of a Wildfire cameo in the upper right corner of one panel.
Which goes to show there is no Legion connection too small for me to mention.
This series features a lot of EXTREMELY obscure characters… it’s kind of the selling point. Does anyone have a clue about who the guy with a sword is?

And that takes care of the pre-Crisis cameos, so let’s move to the cameos set DURING Crisis.
There isn’t much to say about them anyway, so I’ll just show them.

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Green Lantern v2 #194 (1985)
by Steve Englehart & Joe Staton

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Infinity Inc #22 (1986)
by Roy Thomas, Dann Thomas & Mike Clark

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All-Star Squadron #53 (1986)
by Roy Thomas, Dann Thomas, Mike Clark & Arvell Jones

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Hex #10 (1986)
by Michael Fleisher & Ron Wagner

Technically this one isn’t a Crisis cameo: it happens between pages of Legion of Super-Heroes vol3 #23.

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Hex #15 (1986)
by Michael Fleisher & Keith Giffen

The bad guy of this issue comes from the far future, and at some point he checks the records of “champions of antiquity”.

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History of the DC Universe #2 (1986)
by Marv Wolfman & George Pérez

And finally, let’s close with what is considered one of the epilogues of Crisis on Infinite Earths.
The framing device is Harbinger narrating the history of the universe that was created by Crisis, with gorgeous Perez artwork.

In the Dial H retrospective, I forgot to mention that Robby gets a cameo here!

There’s a rare mention of the ancestor of Shadow Lass, with what is possibly the only direct reference ever made to Secret Origins #8.

The last part of the book naturally talks about the future, giving us a beautiful two-page spread that ALSO includes the Legion symbols!

Even the Heroes of Lallor and the Wanderers get a mention, but without telling us that one day the Wanderers will save a planet by having sex with dinousaurs.
And no, I will never miss an opportunity to mention that story.

Darkseid will always be too popular to disappear, no matter how much overexposed he gets.

Appropriately, the Time Trapper closes this section with the End Of Time.

I really like this book, which I read immediately after Crisis having bought them together.
A lot of the information is now obsolete (some of it was obsolete even before the 80s were over), and some of the text is hard to read: whose idea was it to have white text with no background?
But it kind of tells a story of its own, it’s a snapshot of the era, and of course it’s filled to the brim with George Pérez awesomeness.

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EDIT: I did miss a couple of Legion cameos from this era.