Legionnaires #17

Legionnaires #17 (1994)
by Mark Waid & Chris Gardner
cover by Stuart Immonen

This begins a new saga that will take us to… well it’s called “End of an Era”, where do you think this is going?

The storyline as a whole is very much a “all hands on deck” situation, considering the involvement of everyone who was writing Legion-adjacent books at the time.

The first page even has a cute sight gag telling us which characters will eventually appear.

We pick up where we had left off, with a crazed Cosmic Boy attacking New Earth.
It’s hilarious that this is THE ONLY OCCASION EVER when his atrocious disguise actually WORKS.

Not that it lasts long, once SW6 Element Lad dissolves his mask.

We don’t have time for any more subplots than absolutely necessary, so Comic Boy’s madness is explained in a throwaway line about his gauntlets (the ones he’s used to get back his powers) making him insane.

The other reason why the Legionnaires don’t have time for Cosmic Boy’s latest trauma is that they have the funeral of Laurel Gand to attend.

Ah yes, how could the SW6 version of Sun Boy possibly understand the pain of watching the death of your older self?

Yeah everyone is absolutely heartbroken about this loss. That’s why Mon-El leaves to meet an old friend.

What could possibly be more important than your friend’s funeral?

Despite the grim atmosphere, at least there’s someone to liven up the mood.
The two biggest additions to the Legionnaires team, and Star Boy.

You know Legion continuity has reached the point of no return when THE CHARACTERS can’t even follow it anymore.

You know how SW6 Invisible Kid has done absolutely nothing interesting the entire time?
Well, it turns out he’s always known the SW6 Legionnaires don’t make any sense and he’s been investigating ever since.

Turns out that reality is SO messed up that SUPERBOY is back in continuity!

Maybe.

SW6 Invisible Kid and Brainiac 5 (who has analyzed history with him) give the team a crash course in the history of the Legion, and there’s a couple of interesting references.
The most visible is the post-Crisis Superboy, who has not interacted with the Legion yet but who will have a very minor role at the end of this saga.
We also have the original costumes of the founders (and a strangely brunette Saturn Girl), and in the bottom left you can see the Mordruverse versions of Rond Vidar and Ferro Lad from LSH v4 #5.

The best callbacks are of course the ones where Waid is flexing his knowledge of the Silver Age, because not only we have the Brain Globes from Adventure Comics #293, who you might remember for the best panel of the history of humankind…

…but even more obscurely, Saturn Girl shooting lightning from her eyes is straight from the SECOND Legion story ever, Adventure Comics #267.

You might think that insanity is only on the cover, but no she DID use lightning vision in the story.

So basically at this point time is fracturing both in the past AND in the future.

I don’t know what he’s so worried about, Legion history is just fine.

We are STILL arguing about who’s the original and who’s the clone, by the way: the readers have been informed that the SW6 Legionnaires are not clones, but the characters don’t know that.

To highlight even more how screwed up time is, we have a new batch of villains showing up… who are actually people we know.

The original members of the Legion of Super-Villains have made so many appearances that I don’t think I have to remind you who they are.
You might have forgotten Beauty Blaze though: she’s from an Adult Legion story, specifically Adventure Comics #355.
This is her first appearance in 27 years!

Satan Girl, the Supergirl doppelganger created by Red Kryptonite in Adventure Comics #313, has not appeared for 31 years at this point.

Those were not THAT unexpected… Beauty Blaze was a member of the Legion of Super-Villains, and Satan Girl is fairly well-known by Supergirl fans.
The dark horse is definitely Urthlo from Adventure Comics #300, making this his first appearance in 32 years.

You might remember Urhtlo from the second best panel of the history of humankind.

Inferno comes THIS close to allowing me to introduce Supergirl back into the count! Honestly, he had said her name, I would totally have counted her.

Those silly characters! They certainly can’t be scary, right?

Well, up to a point at least.
I am absolutely certain that Waid included in the script to show something with the word “hate” to fly out of Urthlo’s body as a callback to his original story.

And this entire fight was utterly pointless, because all the villains disappear…

…to allow the real villains of the saga to show up, now that they have captured Cosmic Boy.
I would much rather have Urthlo be the main villain.

Mordru, who you might not have recognized thanks to his crappy Amethyst design, argues that Cosmic Boy should not be killed yet.
Technically speaking, it’s because we will soon see Cosmic Boy is part of a time loop, so just like Valor you can’t kill him now without screwing up time even more.
HOWEVER, I prefer to think he’s just reminding Glorith how much she sucked in the Valor series.

After they disappear, however, the Legion has no way to track their position… unless Dawnstar can do something about it!

She can’t. Dawnstar is rebooted, ending Part 1.

This is the last Dawnstar appearance for the next 13 years.
She will completely skip the Reboot, where she will be kind of replaced by someone who I personally consider a vastly better character.

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Legion significance: 6/10
To the point that anything matters with all these time anomalies, Cosmic Boy’s kidnapping will have repercussions.

Depression scale: 7/10
Time is unraveling, the heroes are caught in the middle without having a clue of what is truly happening, and death matters so little at this point that Rond Vidar doesn’t even react TO THE FUNERAL OF HIS WIFE.

 Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Even Urthlo is a bit scary!!! URTHLO!!!

Does it stand the test of time? 4/10
The fact that I spent more time talking about the references and the membership count than the actual story should tell you something. In fact, this is less of a story and more of a setup for the storyline.
On one hand, I fully sympathize with Waid and the others: the situation was an unmanageable mess.
In fact, once I introduce the Reboot, I’ll talk about how realizing how much of a disaster the Legion continuity was lead the writers to decide to take advantage of Zero Hour to do a full reboot.
But on the other hand, that still leaves us with a sorry excuse for a story.
It was fun seeing old characters again, but fanservice can only go so far.

We are legion
This saga is going to be a COMPLETE mess to track, but for now it’s relatively simple: I’m just adding Superboy and Dawnstar to the deceased/rebooted members.
The reason why I’m counting Superboy as deceased but I’m not updating the count for the one-panel gag of Chameleon Boy replacing Chemical King among the dead is that Superboy WILL show up in the rest of the saga.

36 active Legionnaires. Of these, 22 are in the “Legionnaires” team
1 presumed dead (SW6 Mon-El)
3 in sick leave (Kent Shakespeare, Devlin O’Ryan, Lightning Lass)
3 reserve members
26 resigned members
23 deceased or rebooted members
92 people have been members
68 people have been rejected