Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #4 (1989)
story by Keith Giffen, Al Gordon, Tom & Mary Bierbaum
dialogue by Tom & Mary Bierbaum
pencils and cover by Keith Giffen
When I decided to group multiple issues of Volume 4 together, I always knew that I had to tackle this one on its own because there is SO MUCH influenced by this.
This is arguably the most important Legion story until 1994.
We begin on Talok VIII, where Shadow Lass has been living in seclusion mourning the death of Mon-El at the end of Volume 3.
Wearing a burqa for some reason.
Now she’s replaced in her role as the planetary champion by her uninteresting cousin, Shadow Kid.
I really think that showing her being completely broken is out of character. Yes her husband is dead, but come on: this is a woman who was planetary champion when she was 15.
Speaking of Mon-El, after his resurrection at the end of issue 3 he’s flying back to Shadow Lass… and good luck figuring out what’s going on here, because Mon-El currently has THREE voices in his head. One of these thought bubbles, the purple one, is clearly by the Time Trapper… but good luck figuring out the third.
But he’s finally back. Did they bury him naked?
And if you thought the three voices thing was confusing, we have a page that has a discussion between the voices AND a parallel dialogue between Mon-El and Shadow Lass.
The big revelation in this page is that, as you might have guessed, Time Trapper’s mind survived inside Mon-El’s body.
But the third voice is arguably just as important to the plot… which makes the fact that its identity is incomprehensible without external sources frustrating, as we’ll discuss shortly.
Mon-El insists that the only person who could possibly help him is Brainiac 5, who we learn is still on his native planet Colu. Studying the Validus Plague, something that has been mentioned only in the text appendix and NOT IN THE STORY ITSELF.
Asking for Brainiac 5 is a smart move, of course, but since this is about Time Trapper’s mind… why not also call for Saturn Girl?
I hate this depiction of Brainiac 5. And not just because he’s drawn completely off-model, but… since when does he prefer to deal with simple problems? Also, no reaction whatsoever to seeing one of his oldest friends isn’t dead!?
Okay, this is technically where we learn the identity of the third voice.
And I insist that this is UTTERLY INCOMPREHENSIBLE unless you have an encyclopedic knowledge of the Legion! Especially since there are NO FOOTNOTES to help you. Only the tiniest reference in the letters page.
In order to understand that reference, you need to remember a character that appeared ONCE in Action Comics #384.
That’s a 1970 story, which to the best of my knowledge has not been reference up to this point… NOT ONCE. So this entire thing is based on a NINETEEN YEAR OLD REFERENCE.
Unless you’re a Legion superfan, the ONLY reason you might remember it is because you recall that it’s brought up this story.
Looking back at that story, I gave it a 0/10 significance because an alternate version will show up in a flashback during #9… I completely forgot that the guy in #4 was the third voice in Mon-El’s head.
This story tells us that Eltro Gand’s soul survived inside Mon-El’s body all these years.
And according to the Time Trapper, his presence there was instrumental to his plans because… uhm, because… yeah WHAT’S THE POINT OF THIS???
All Time Trapper says is that Eltro’s presence “weakened Mon-El’s resolve”… HOW!?
He was there for ALL of Mon-El’s adventures in the 70s and 80s!!!
To add insult to injury: this is the last we hear of Eltro’s thoughts in this issue; you can interpret this dialogue as maybe Time Trapper erasing his mind?
The only oblique reference to Eltro is that Brainiac 5 identifies a third pattern, saying it’s “almost undetectable”. So maybe Time Trapper didn’t really kill him?
It’s also not clear to me why exactly this is treated like such a big deal. Sure Time Trapper having full control of Mon-El’s powers would be bad, but… surely Brainiac 5 has SOME ideas on how to restrain him, right? I know he’s supposed to be immune to lead and red sun radiation at this point, but come on, BRAINIAC FREAKING FIVE has no plans on how to deal with a Daxamite?
This makes the fact they don’t even CONSIDER bringing in Saturn Girl even dumber!
This scenario would make perfect sense if the idea was that Time Trapper having full control would also mean he would regain his time powers, which would indeed be the worst possible case, but IT’S NEVER SAID IN THE STORY.
Despite my rants, there IS good stuff in this issue.
Like an exploration on why the Time Trapper would even CARE about messing up with history, since he comes from a time where he’s already won.
I’m less convinced by the idea that a key motivation for all Time Trapper has done has been holding back Mordru. Conceptually it’s great, having the Legion’s two greatest larger-than-life foes tangled in a chess match that will decide who rules the universe…
…but to me it falls completely flat because of Mordru.
In a way their journeys have been opposite: the Time Trapper started out as a rather ridiculous villain in the Silver Age, but the 80s really did the legwork to hype him as a major threat.
Whereas all this time Mordru has coasted on just how awesome his first appearance was. And don’t get me wrong, that’s still one of the best Legion stories ever told… for crying out loud, THIS was the last we saw of Mordru in Volume 3!!!
Another thing I like is the idea that Time Trapper is responsible for giving birth to the Legion… something that was already talked about… but I think this is taking things a bit too literally!
Time Trapper still has SOME time powers, managing to take Mon-El somewhere else before Brainiac 5 can extract his mind.
And apparently he’s able to manipulate one of the Probes? Weren’t they serving Mordru last time?
This begins the second half of the story, which I rather enjoyed: the fight between Time Trapper and Mon-El.
This is one of the very, VERY few instances when the use of The Grid actually enhances the story. Because I think it’s doing the heavy lifting in showcasing that no matter what Mon-El tries, the Time Trapper relentlessly returns.
Meanwhile, Shadow Lass and Brainiac 5 are unable to work together. If only they had served together in the same team for years.
Maybe the Probe IS still following Mordru? It’s talking about “The Master” disappearing, so I thought it was the Time Trapper… but that demonic smile looks like a possible throwback to the Archmage.
Brainiac 5, famously a character who gives up at the first sign of trouble and doesn’t even try to come up to a solution to an impossible problem.
You might have noticed that I’m a huge fan of super-smart characters.
You know the one rule when one of these says stuff like “I’m not a miracle worker”?
They eventually pull out a miracle anyway instead of IMMEDIATELY GIVING UP!!!
More of the stalemate between Mon-El and Time Trapper. Which, once again, is the rare exception when The Grid actually works for me.
Once Time Trapper re-creates the form we’re familiar with, he explains the backstory of… well basically of the whole Legion.
Starting with how he first created the Pocket Universe.
What isn’t clear to me is why he even needed Mon-El, since he was the one to create Superboy anyway. They can’t actually SAY it in this period… editorial mandate prohibited mentions of Superboy… but still, why call attention to it?
Interestingly, the Great Darkness Saga also plays a role since it’s apparently the moment when Time Trapper realized that the Legion was a threat to him as well, and not just a way to make sure Mordru wouldn’t conquer the universe.
Which is a neat reference, but I don’t think makes that much sense: if the whole reason why the Legion is important to the Time Trapper is in preventing Mordru from conquering the universe… wouldn’t the fact that they stopped Mordru, REPEATEDLY, be a bigger deal than Darkseid?
Time Trapper is now so weak that Mon-El can actually kill him, but if he does he will do so RETROACTIVELY and the Time Trapper will never have existed in the first place.
However Mon-El knows that, even without the Legion, there will always be someone ready to reboot the franchise save the day.
So Mon-El PUNCHES HIM OUT OF EXISTENCE, even to the point of breaking the panels themselves!!! That’s a neat way to show it.
And we close the issue with a splash page that has the best artwork Volume 4 has seen so far.
The Grid: 21 pages out of 24
no pages without a perfect grid
1 splash pages
2 text pages
Speaking of the text pages, we have a very one-sided recount of Tales Of The Legion of Super-Heroes vol2 #318-319. Without any footnotes of course, because why would you ever want to actually read the stories we’re referencing?
Legion significance: 10/10
The rest of the 5YL era wouldn’t exist without this one.
Silver Age-ness: 3/10
There is SOME Silver Age-ness in Eltro Gand’s mind randomly still being inside Mon-El and just forgotten by the story!
Depression scale: 7/10
This is the first time in the book where it ALMOST feels like a Legion story. And at least Mon-El… UNLIKE BRAINIAC 5 (yes I’m still angry about that!) is willing to fight.
Think about it: up to this point, the least depressing story is the one opening with a widow mourning her husband and ends with universal suicide.
Does it stand the test of time? 6/10
This is one of the better 5YL stories in my opinion, but I don’t share the same enthusiastic view of it as some 5YL fans.
The main story still works, and most importantly I can understand (most of) what’s going on!!!
Mon-El’s struggle against the Time Trapper is engaging, and I must stress how it’s enhanced by The Grid. And I do appreciate how Mon-El is willing to sacrifice both his life and the Legion itself if it means getting rid of the Time Trapper once and for all.
Too bad Brainiac 5 is stuck with one of the worst uses of the character I have ever seen.
However… and it’s a big however… there are still a lot of things in this story that don’t work.
Bringing up Eltro Gand is COMPLETELY unnecessary: you could EASILY remove him from this story and absolutely nothing would change. Actually, scratch that, it would make the story BETTER because it would mean the dialogues inside Mon-El’s head would be more understandable and we wouldn’t have an unnecessary flashback that is nearly incomprehensible unless you’ve read a 19 year old story.
And while I’m both a fan of the Time Trapper in general and of his interpretation as an incarnation of entropy in particular… I still can’t take seriously the idea that he created the Legion specifically to stop Mordru. Yes the following stories would hype him to cosmic horror stories, and it kind of makes sense for THAT Mordru to be the Time Trapper’s nemesis.
But considering this entire thing was done to stop the original… sorry, not buying it.
Still, had I been a Legion regular reader at the time, this issue would have given me hope.
Only to crush those hopes afterwards, because after this point? With a few bright spots here and there… for the most part I believe the 5YL era just peaked.
Yes.
NOW.
We are legion
The Legion is still officially disbanded.
0 active Legionnaires
0 reserve members
43 resigned members
10 deceased members
52 people have been members
51 people have been rejected
Interesting letters: the summary of events, plus the ONLY reference to where Eltro Gand comes from.
The first letter is mostly positive, but the response highlights one of the major problems I have with this run: things are so confusing in the main story that the creators have to clarify things elsewhere.
Another letter (cut by me for brevity) claims that the book has already lost the “Legion Fundamentalists” that don’t want the book to change.
With the hindsight of 36 additional comic book years, it seems to me that comic book fans in general and Legion fans in particular are still like these… except now there are Silver Age Fundamentalists, Volume 3 Fundamentalists and 5YL Fundamentalists and Reboot Fundamentalists. Probably more.
As you may have guessed, I strongly disagree with all these letters. But the one that truly left me speechless was Mark’s idea that this book is moving too fast, because up to this time it’s been a slug.
I am being serious: reading this letter caused me to stare blankly at the screen for thirty seconds straight, unable to process the thought of issues 1 to 3 “moving too fast”.
I’m trying not to let the 5YL break me, but…
OK, a lot to unravel in this review, because it’s a darned dense issue. But here’s how I see some of the issues you raised:
1) I don’t know that 5YL fans were ever particularly enthusiastic about this story. It was written due to the Superman editor’s mandate, and aside from the general confusion that retcons inevitably cause, this issue and the one that follows disrupted the intended flow of the TMK’s plan for the new Legion book’s first year, and also necessitated issue # 9. It’s very possible that the (semi-)triumphant re-forming of the Legion would have made a more coherent story arc.
2) That said, the TMK team did a deep dive into Legion history in order to find an in-story way to execute the retcon, which was a pretty brilliant solution. This beats the hell out of the later 2000’s method of retconning which was, “creator wants to write XYZ, let him write it and who cares if it contradicts stuff” (I’m looking at you, Superman: Birthright, and John Byrne’s Doom Patrol resurrection.)
3) The “pregnant Time Trapper” image is just the Trapper’s own mental imagery when recalling these events, not literal.
4) The “Master” that the probe refers to is definitely the Time Trapper.
5) The Eltro stuff was necessary to explain why Mon-El was weak enough to “die” but strong enough to then return
6) The Time Trapper is not disturbed by the fact that the Legion was able to beat Mordru because he CREATED THEM TO BEAT MORDRU. So he knew (or at least hoped) that they were capable of doing so. But beating Darkseid – who, it should be mentioned, had drained Mordru’s powers (and that of the Time Trapper’s own stooge, a darned powerful Controller) – was more powerful than the Trapper wanted them to be.
7) He needed Mon-El as an “escape hatch” into the real universe in case the Pocket Universe was compromised. So he had to divert someone from the real 20th-century universe to Superboy’s world, then have him on ice for a thousand years so that he would have a real-world connection specifically to the Legion’s time.
8) The significance of this story is even more far reaching than you mention, because the notion that Eltro Gand’s mind/soul lived on after using the life-transfer machine is the logical basis for the big reveal that happened in Annual # 3.
It really was inevitable for this issue to get the longest review, wasn’t it?
I suspect we’re going to disagree a lot on future issues, but I’m enjoying the discussion 🙂
Regarding your points:
2) No argument in the superior effort in looking for a way to execute the retcon. I just don’t think the method ultimately chosen was all that great.
3) yeah I got it, but considering future Time Trapper developments it’s kind of funny to consider him literally pregnant 🙂
4) it was my first impression but I still don’t get it. How is that consistent with the Time Trapper’s powers? Isn’t that kind of corruption more Mordru’s style, especially since we have seen he already does control SOME Probes? Honestly it would have made more sense if the Probe WAS controlled by Mordru: it would have meant that Time Trapper managed to barely escape Mordru’s reach.
5) I disagree with the idea that it was necessary to involve Eltro. I feel like it raises way more questions than it answers.
6) you got me there. I missed that angle.
7) but the Time Trapper wasn’t even IN the Pocket Universe for most if his existence, right? He had his base there for one specific task. Why would he specifically need someone from the “real” 20th century anyway? He already has the rest of the Legion as a connection to the “real” 30th century.
8) honestly, if it wasn’t my policy to limit the historical significance score to 10/10… I rule I broke only for industry-defining stories… I could probably have rated this one a 15/10 at least!