Legion of Super-Heroes v4 Annual #4 (1993)
written by Tom & Mary Bierbaum
pencils by too many people
cover by Stuart Immonen
There are no less than four pencilers in this: Stuart Immonen, Darryl Banks, Joe Phillips and Christopher Taylor. Was this 53 page story worth the effort?
Spoiler alert: NO IT WASN’T.
This is part of the “Bloodlines” event, where every single Annual had to introduce a new character.
More on that in a bit, but get ready for one of the most 90s characters ever: Jamm.
He’s prodigious, dude!
This was published between issues 47 and 48, and credit where it’s due: it’s actually set right in the middle of it, as we start with Mordru’s minions attacking the currently wingless Dawnstar.
This is the closest Cosmic Boy’s son comes to becoming a character. He’s excused since he’s just a baby of course, but this reminds me of just how little we have seen of this family.
Given the trauma of her transformation into Bounty, it’s understandable that Dawnstar still isn’t herself. The colorist being unable to decide a skin tone for her doesn’t help.
During the fight, Brainiac 5’s computer is damaged and attempts to run the retrieval programs set up to bring Timber Wolf and the SW6 Mon-El back to the 30th century.
Hey, finally something completely in-character for Brainiac 5.
That’s not a bad start! We have a lot of things we could potentially explore with a whole Annual.
For example, we could see the rest of the Galaxy react to Mordru’s attack.
Or we could focus on Dawnstar’s trauma and recovery.
Or we could focus on the attempt to recover the time-displaced Legionnaires.
Unfortunately, because of Bloodlines we HAVE to introduce a new character.
Because that’s something that the 5YL really needed, right? MORE characters to take the spotlight away from the Legion.
And so, ladies and gentlemen, let’s return to the 20th century and meet this Jamm guy.
Short for Jamm-tastic.
Well there’s your problem, ma’am, you have a corpse jamming the engine.
She’s more interested in a cop.
I theorize that it’s impossible to distinguish between a 90s parody and Jamm.
Jamm is not the only one interested in that woman; Timber Wolf is still in the 20th century.
He then runs into a very large monster (which is the girl from before) trying to eat Jamm’s brain.
Therefore saving his life… the alien’s, because I’m sure he was going to starve to death.
A necessary tangent here.
As mentioned this is a Bloodlines tie-in, but what IS Bloodlines exactly?
Very briefly, it’s about some aliens showing up on Earth to eat brains. But a few humans get their meta-gene activated by this, and they turn into super-powered “New Bloods”.
Since every single Annual HAD to introduce one, there are A LOT of those.
It wasn’t a bad concept for introducing a bunch of new characters… but the problem is that most of them sucked. I think that only three of them ended up having any sort of relevance.
In order from least relevant, Argus had a few team-ups with Flash. He’s kind of boring though, since he only has an enhanced physique.
Gunfire has a bit more relevance. He has an interesting power (he can make anything he touches fire an energy blast), got a miniseries…
…and he will most likely play a bigger role soon.
Because there’s a tiny easter egg involving him in the 2025 Superman movie: in the mural of the Hall of Justice that depicts the history of superhumans (which I honestly couldn’t spot watching the movie), Gunfire is one of the heroes. James Gunn HAS confirmed it.
And obviously there’s the only reason anybody has ever cared about Bloodlines: it’s the origin of Hitman, mostly known from his Garth Ennis series.
The same alien that gave Jamm his powers, by the way, is acknowledged to have given powers to other three completely forgettable characters: Ballistic, Edge and Prism.
I can’t believe these are not Youngblood characters.
But back to the story, because following Brainy’s program the Time Cube™ recovers Timber Wolf and brings Jamm-tastic for the ride.
The alien is too tough even for 30th century guns, but luckily we have Night Girl.
This is her first action scene of the 5YL era, by the way, since she was pregnant for most of it.
Nice to see her powerhouse status acknowledged after so long!
Unfortunately there’s a reason she wasn’t accepted into the Legion.
Jamm is the one to save the day, because the creature obeys his command to return to the past.
And that concludes the best part of the book.
Yep.
All of that WAS THE GOOD PART.
Because now Jamm becomes the protagonist.
The fact that he wants to see the future is easily the last time I get to empathize with him.
As if he couldn’t get more stereotypical, all he cares about are skateboarding and girls.
Not in that order.
When he orders Night Girl to take him to a space beach and she obeys, Jamm starts to wonder if he has psychic powers now.
His FIRST thought is to see her naked.
Fanatical waves and simpatico babes!
Also this robot lady or cyborg chick is in the same scene at the topless beach.
This isn’t enough for Jamm, who also wants the protection from the toughest guy around.
That would be Mon-El, currently busy dealing with the dead Daxamite resurrected by Mordru.
It’s incredibly jarring to move from a scene where Mon-El is crushing thousands of corpses of his own people to a scene where he meets Jamm.
Also for some reason he’s smitten with Night Girl? Not that she isn’t gorgeous, but Mon-El is typically more stoic than this and it’s not like she’s wearing anything more revealing than her 70s Legion costume.
Mon-El is already under Jamm’s spell, something that Shadow Lass doesn’t get.
Dude, you’ve had powers for five minutes, you’re hardly in a position to judge.
Jamm is easily the horniest character I’ve reviewed so far.
I could use this meme every other panel.
Both Mon-El and Shadow Lass seem to keep their minds whenever Jamm is not explicitly giving them orders, so I have a really hard time believing one of them hasn’t beaten him up yet.
Now that Jamm has the entire 30th century to explore, his first goal… is get batteries for his Walkman.
Dude, you’re embarrassing us in front of the future!
The only place that still has 20th century batteries is this museum planet populated by androids.
I feel like this is a reference to a Silver Age story, but I’m blanking on which one now that Jamm has obliterated what was left of my brain cells.
Also: either Jamm is short or the Legion girls are really tall! I was expecting Mon-El to tower over him, but Night Girl is a full head taller than Jamm and she’s not even wearing heels.
Well, either that or the artwork completely sucks here.
I would say that Jamm has a one-track mind, but even that is being generous.
My best guess that the Bierbaums were going for “lovable doofus who doesn’t think things through” with Jamm.
Either that or they thought so little of the Bloodlines mandate to create a new character that the purposefully created the most shallow and irritating one possible.
Mon-El trying to teach him anything goes as well as you’d imagine.
Surprisingly, he doesn’t take Shadow Lass away just to get her naked.
I am shocked, shocked I tell you, that Jamm completely falls for her trap.
(he calls her Tasmania because her civilian name is Tasmia. That won’t get annoying fast)
Why are you so surprised? It doesn’t look THAT different from how Shadow Lass uses her powers when she goes all-out.
Oh good, for a moment I was worried we were going to have superpowers in a superhero book. We can’t have that in the 5YL era!
Jamm then tries to party with the Legionnaires, but they have better things to do.
I cannot stress enough how utterly obnoxious Jamm is.
I’m surprised to see he doesn’t get a skateboard until page 40.
Mon-El has had just about enough of Jamm.
JOIN THE CLUB.
I would make a joke about this egotistical braindead idiot making himself President, but that would be too easy.
This is so stupid that I have to hope the Bierbaums are going for parody.
Then the ship is attacked by Daxamite zombies.
Don’t worry Jamm, if these zombies are looking for brains you’ll be perfectly fine.
While Mon-El and Andromeda deal with the zombies, Jamm is about to crash the ship into the Sun.
Which of course is the reason why Jamm ends up having to release Shadow Lass from his control.
Now, he could just tell her “you can use your powers again” instead of “never obey me again”, but that would require him having more than one brain cell.
The first time Night Girl gets to showcase what a badass she can be, and it’s IN THE JAMM STORY.
Jamm is going to be stranded on a desert planet for the rest of his life.
Or not. Dammit comic, YOU HAD ONE JOB.
Because I’m guessing the Legion hates the 20th century.
Understandable, given that Jamm is from there.
At this point, I also hate the 20th century.
Aww, this would be a sweet ending if I hadn’t lost all faith in humanity after witnessing Jamm.
Legion significance: 1/10
Timber Wolf returns to the 30th century, glad to know that HIS annual is no longer the worst of this run.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
90-ness: RADICAL!!! / 90
Depression scale: 90/10
Earth blew up a thousand years too late.
Does it stand the test of time? -2/10
I still believe the 90s do not deserve their bad reputation: it’s easy to say it was all crap, but there are tons and tons of incredible comics in the decade.
But there’s no denying there WAS a plethora of absolutely atrocious comics.
And if you take all the worst of the worst of the 90s and you put them in a blender with bad writing, bad dialogue, bad artwork, and one the most insufferable characters ever created… you get this turd.
Even giving the Bierbaums the benefit of the doubt of doing this on purpose to be a parody of 90s excesses, it still doesn’t work for how straight it plays it.
This comic is too stupid to think too much about the negative ethical implications of Jamm’s abuse of his powers, but I’m still giving this a negative score for the Legion deciding to send back to the 20th century a sex-obsessed idiot with mind manipulation powers and no restrain using them.
We are legion
Timber Wolf is back but he’s stuck in a healing tank, so I’m still counting him in sick leave.
31 active Legionnaires. Of these, 19 are in the “Legionnaires” team.
2 on sick leave (Timber Wolf and SW6 Mon-El)
3 reserve members
33 resigned members
18 deceased members
83 people have been members
65 people have been rejected
Whatever happened to Jamm?
AMAZINGLY, he has more appearances!!!
He shows up in Bloodbath #2, the finale of Bloodlines event.
He barely has three or four lines of dialogue, already making this a better story.
The only use of his powers is to wake up other heroes.
The artwork is mostly passable, but this is an incredibly forgettable event.
Still better than the annual by a mile.
On the account of having 99% less Jamm.
A year later, in December 1994, in the appropriately titled Showcase ’94 #12, we have the closest thing to a Jamm appearance: he’s shown on the cover of a magazine in a story centered on Ballistic, another of the “New Blood” created by the event.
And as far as I can tell, that’s the last anyone ever saw of Jamm.
He went from being the star of a whole Legion of Super-Heroes annual to not even be worthy of an actual appearance in a Ballistic story.
And if he’s remembered today, IF AT ALL, is to showcase just how awful 90s comics could get.
I would say this is a harsh fate for him, but then I remember it’s Jamm.
I definitely believe the Beirbaums were going for an “extreme” parody of the skater/surfer-dude trope. They made lemonade out of this lemon by using it to bring Timber Wolf back.
For the record, Argus has more than an enhanced physique, he had some sort of vision powers as well. Also, one more of the New Bloods made a little splash beyond those introductory annuals – Sparx became a member of Superboy’s team, the Ravers (which you covered somewhat during your Dial H for Hero retrospective).
Everyone from the 90s who liked Jamm owes Snapper Carr a huge apology.
Just think. If Brin hadn’t been stranded in the 20th century, the Legion wouldn’t have had any easy way to get involved with Bloodlines. Wouldn’t that have been a shame? One more reason to hate the Timber Wolf miniseries.
To clarify, the Bloodlines aliens don’t eat brains. They drink spinal fluid. Yes, they were literally designed to suck. And suck they do, although nothing can suck as hard as Jamm, the Worst Character Find of Any Century. If I’d read this annual when I was just into puberty, maybe Jamm’s habit of making Legion ladies strip would have been amusing. As an adult, I found him cringy, and time has not improved my opinion of him. I know, it could have been worse. He could have done more than merely ordering women to strip.
Jamm would have worked better over in Legionnaires, where the characters are younger and hornier. Some of them might even have welcomed him. Catspaw might have stripped without him needing to invoke his power. Then she would have used her claws, just as she did with Sun Boy. Seeing Jamm come to an end as a pile of kitty litter would have been satisfying.
The only thing I found amusing in this dreck was the fact that Mon-El was angrier about Tasmia stripping than Tasmia was. She seemed to pretty much take it in stride.
I like that Jamm is identical to that other radical 90s dude, Adam-X, except Jamm wears a doo-rag instead of a backwards ball cap. And wasn’t Adam-X also introduced in a 1993 annual as part of a company wide initiative to introduce new characters? Crazy that both DC and Marvel felt compelled to simultaneously introduce a super powered version of the singer for the Spin Doctors.
I’m leaning toward the Beirbaums being told “come up with a character that 90s teenagers will like,” and going with their best guess. You know, the way Gardner Fox came up with Snapper Carr.
The world of androids is probably a reference to the World of Dead Robots, seen briefly in Adventure Comics # 332. The world was populated by robots who rebelled against their masters and then stopped functioning when no one was left to repair them.
Fascinating concept. I revived it for a fanfic I wrote on Legion World a few years ago.
There was also the giant strongman with blue skin, Edward “Loose Cannon” Walker. Totally a parody of the Hulk, but he had roles in some good stories. And the Psyba-Rats from the Robin Annual.
IIRC some of them technically formed a team (“New Blood” or “Blood Pack”, perhaps) with Jade as their presumed mentor figure, but AFAIK they were forgotten about almost immediately.
Maybe the market’s behavior changed significantly since, but releasing over a dozen of half-baked new characters together in such a weak event seems like a lousy strategy. Even for fans of the event – such as it was – that would mean a strong dispersion of marketability from the get-go. Few readers would even try to believe that DC would put serious editorial effort at promoting and publishing most of those new characters, particularly at a time when DC was publishing perhaps well over 50 different books each month.
Perhaps Bloodlines is the nadir, but has any annual-centric event ever been good?
Evolutionary War immediately comes to mind.
Not perfect, but several good stories and it mostly finds good ways to connect to most series.
Other than that? Not a lot of good competition for company-wide Annual crossovers.
At least the Marvel ones, I’m less familiar with DC annuals.
Marvel also had a mandate to create new characters for every annual in 1993. They didn’t share an origin and most of them didn’t get past one or two appearances.
None of them were as bad as Jamm, but who is?
I liked Armageddon 2001. It didn’t stick the landing, but the stories in most if not all of the individual annuals were great.
“Maybe the market’s behavior changed significantly since, but releasing over a dozen of half-baked new characters together in such a weak event seems like a lousy strategy.”
This is the point when Image and their wannabes were releasing lots of team books filled with new characters, it fits in as DC trying to do something similar.