Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #39-40

Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #39 (1992)
written by Tom & Mary Bierbaum
pencils by Stuart Immonen & Keith Giffen
cover by Stuart Immonen

Now that the Earth has exploded, where does the Legion go?

We begin with a memorial service for all the people who died with the destruction of Earth.

UNDERSTANDABLY, the Legionnaires are not taking this lightly.
Cosmic Boy daydreams about the dead…

…but it’s Celeste Rockfish, OF ALL PEOPLE, that has the most gut-wrenching flashback.
Because she was on one of the last ships to take refugees.

See, this is EXACTLY the kind of stuff the first part of the 5YL era was missing.
We saw billions of people blow up, MORE THAN ONCE, and it was so over-the-top and detached from any human perspective that it meant nothing.

This moment right here, where Celeste has to tell an old man to his face that nobody is coming to save him, packs a more effective emotional punch than the entire 38 previous issues COMBINED.
I’m going to be sad for weeks thinking back to this moment, and this is particularly impressive because I don’t even care about Celeste as a character, AT ALL, and it even has The Grid.
It’s the best scene in Volume 4 up to this point.
Holy crap, where have the Bierbaums been hiding this talent!?!?

While the other flashbacks don’t rise to the same level of excellence, they’re doing a WAY better job at selling the human aspect.

They even address one of my complains, showing both Element Lad and Brainiac 5 actually TRYING TO STABYLIZE THE PLANET.

Honestly, this is the first time I read these two issues. Given the previous ones, and that I know a few bits and pieces from later issues that I won’t like, I had rock bottom expectations from this second part of the 5YL era.
These few scenes have made me reconsider the possibility that the trainwreck can be repaired.

Well I guess that was too much positivity, because the Bierbaums immediately find a way to irritate me again by ruining one of the few good things of the era… Matter-Eater Lad.
His new characterization was too distinctly Giffen, walking a thin line between funny and obnoxious… and they have him cross into fully obnoxious.

It’s one thing to have a “funny guy” character that lightens up the mood… Spider-Man is among my top heroes… but even Spidey wouldn’t crack jokes when walking past a pile of corpses!!!

We now enter the last section with Keith Giffen pencils, and perhaps unsurprisingly this is when I completely lose track of what’s going on.
There’s Leland McCauley (do you even remember who he is?) pontificating about the destruction of Earth…

…and about his collection, which he has assembled thanks to having acquired the Emerald Eye and a gigantic forehead.

I already couldn’t care less about Leland, let alone his father who gets a whole page.

He manages to send a message to the Legion, who then show up to rescue Chameleon Boy.

And the final battle with Leland… is a legal one.

According to the credits published in the issue, these are the two last pages penciled by Giffen… and they are THE WORST.

Yep.
That’s how Keith Giffen leaves the series for good.
With two of the ugliest pages you’ll ever seen in your life.
Ending a subplot that barely started.

14 pages with The Grid
10 pages without a grid
no splash pages
no text pages

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Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #40 (1992)
written by Tom & Mary Bierbaum
pencils by Stuart Immonen

I like how the cover basically advertises “If you like Wildfire, don’t bother reading this issue”.
Which is generally a good suggestion… Wildfire fans should stay faaaaaar away from 5YL.

We begin with Chameleon Boy arriving at New Earth.
The narration seems to imply that it has only a population of 50 million people, but I sure hope he’s talking about a part of it!!!
The 94 surviving cities were supposed to be the metropolises (?) of the 30th century, and the idea that they had half a million citizens each strains credibility.

On a more positive note, Devlin O’Ryan officially joins the Legion.
Considering he’s BARELY used his power (once? Twice at most?) this could have been a decent opportunity to remind the readers what he can do.
I know some of my readers are seeing these issues for the first time, so honest question to those: do you even remember Devlin’s powers?
Or heck, even that he HAS powers?

Hilariously, the Substitute Heroes and even Universo get more recognition than the Legion now.

We learn that not only Invisible Kid II is President of New Earth, but Tyroc is Vice-President.
Yes, that guy on the left is supposed to be Tyroc.

One of the problems inherited by New Earth are the powered beings that were brainwashed by the Dominators.

The second Karate Kid is one of them, but it’s one of the other pawns that makes me scratch my head.
They have Wildfire’s brother, who HAS been namedropped as one of the people experimented on by the Dominators… but I have absolutely no clue how he’s supposed to have powers.

The brainwashed heroes break free, and I really must stress: HOW does Wildfire’s brother have powers!? Not literally, we know it’s because the Dominators experimented on him, but… no, really, HOW!?
Wildfire had powers BECAUSE HE BLEW UP and turned into energy! What, are we supposed to believe the Dominators used their genetic engineering prowess to clone his energy? Did they discover and replicate the gene that turns you into energy!?

The issue is quickly solved by having Element Lad around.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Dominators even gave powers to Karate Kid.
THE WHOLE POINT OF KARATE KID IS THAT HE HAS NO POWERS!!!!

Dammit Bierbaums, I was SO rooting for you with issue 39, and now you’re already back to your bad habits.

One of the pawns is “Cocheta Drisden”, who gets absolutely no introduction at all. We’ll later learn that she’s the daughter of Charma and Grimbor, but this is given ABSOLUTELY ZERO CONTEXT in this story.
I swear sometimes it feels like the Bierbaums write for telepaths, because unless you’re reading their mind all this stuff is completely random.

Like Charma, Cocheta has the power to mind-control men… but she’s not immune by Universo’s hypnotism.

Aren’t you glad we gave Wildfire’s unexplainable brother the cover?

I suppose the story wants to make me think “Man, Universo is such a magnificent bastard for manipulating events to his advantage”.
I’m still stuck at “Man, the Legion still sucks at its job”.

On the positive side, we have a Dream Girl who is not entirely awful, since she’s trying to have her sister White Witch come back to sanity.
On the negative side… the character she’s involving will not make much sense, as we’ll see next time.

We still have the dangling mystery of Saturn Girl disappearing in an orphaned subplot.

And now we’re back to a part of the story that is full of great stuff: the proper introduction of the adult Legion with the SW6 Legionnaires, and there’s plenty of things to like here.

We have Light Lass and Lightning Lass crushing on each other…

…Laurel Gand being embarrassed about her future costume, or lack thereof…

…Element Lad becoming his own mentor…

…Matter-Eater Lad being himself…

…SW6 Shrinking Violet not liking her butch adult counterpart’s hair…

…but then bonding over being less of a shrinking violet.

And it’s a Bierbaum story so OF COURSE Sun Boy is just a horndog without any sort of depth.

And we close with Ultra Boy being sad because Phantom Girl is dead.

1 page with The Grid
23 pages without a grid
no splash pages
no text pages

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Legion significance: 2/10
Issue 40 is an informal pilot for the Legionnaires series, but next issue will be an actual pilot.
Plus a few of the subplots will almost get somewhere.

Silver Age-ness: 0/10
I suppose there’s a bit of Silver Age in Leland using his boundless new powers for a private collection, but with all those deaths? Definitely not Silver Age.

Depression scale
#39: 8/10
That Celeste Rockfish flashback is just haunting, despite being the only flashback without any corpses.
#40: 2/10
Since I’m giving Chameleon Boy the benefit of the doubt, the only depression is courtesy of Ultra Boy. But if all that’s left of Earth really is just 50 million people, that would increase the score by a lot.

Does it stand the test of time?
#39: 7/10
This is SO infuriating. The first half of the story is really, REALLY good, to the point of ALMOST making up for the previous one… even with the bad M.E.L. scene, I could’ve given it a 10/10.
And then we HAD to ruin everything with a combination of atrocious artwork, impenetrable plotting, a boring villain and an unsatisfying conclusion. What a waste.
At least we have Immonen at pencils now; he’s still a bit rough, but I would take him over Pearson or 90s Giffen any day.
#40: 7/10
Same exact problem, but in reverse: the first half of the story is pretty bad (although not as bad as the last Giffen pages), throwing random characters at you with little payoff.
But then the second half kicks it up a notch, doing several bits of nice characterization. The interaction between the two Shrinking Violets is worth the whole issue, and in general the Bierbaum seem to be more interested in writing the SW6 Legionnaires than their adult counterparts.
That will come handy with the Legionnaires series which is about to start.

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We are legion

Adding Devlin to the regular members.

28 active Legionnaires
4 reserve members
32 resigned members
16 deceased members
80 people have been members
62 people have been rejected

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And that wraps up 1992, at least in terms of publication date.
We still have to get through 21 issues of the regular series, but the Legionnaires series is right around the corner and there’s still the ongoing Valor series.

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Interesting letters: I have a hard time believing Giffen’s departure was this chill, but the fact that Pearson’s contract simply expired might be all there is to it.

The deaths of the SW6 Legionnaires was divisive. The accusation of using their deaths for pure shock value is not helped by Giffen’s very public hatred for Karate Kid.

Glad to see I’m not the only one to have complained about the adult Legion being left out of their own book.

The previous letter pages asked for readers to vote their favorite Legionnaire… and I guess that didn’t catch on, because only 41 votes were cast.
That’s a depressingly low turnout! Heck even I could probably get my readers to give at least 20 votes!
(I have no clue how I would even do that. Let me know in the comments if I should look up a way to do it.)

The votes are also all over the place. First of all, how the heck did you get so many “half votes”!?
But also, the votes include both Legionnaires who have barely appeared in this era AND Legionnaires who haven’t showed up in the past 40 issues.