Legion of Super-Heroes vol4 #60 (1994)
by Tom McCraw & Mark Waid
pencils and cover by Stuart Immonen
Guys, can you please wait until the series is over? We’re almost there.
Last time Glorith and Mordru kidnapped Cosmic Boy. He gets a last acknowledgment of his botched subplot about the return of his powers making him insane… and blaming Brainiac 5 for it.
Yet another reason why the 5YL Brainy sucks.
Unfortunately Cosmic Boy’s attempt to escape is doomed to fail, because this the Castle Keep Of Time Itself and, as Glorith acknowledges, time it circular.
Wait a second… she has the Time Trapper’s powers, who was the embodiment of time having a definitive ending! She SHOULDN’T believe time is a circle!!!
The incompatibility of the two ideas was the reason for the ending of volume 3 #50… and I know this comic remembers that issue, because of who shows up later.
And speaking of inconsistencies: in the last part of the storyline, Glorith was the one who wanted to kill Cosmic Boy and Mordru had to remind her that doing so would cause the same problems that killing Valor did… but now they have switched sides???
I don’t think that’s what she meant by time being circular!
Ah, well, if Glorith’s prophecy says this, then it’s obviously correct. It’s not like every single plan of hers completely failed.
The Legion is taking this kidnapping quite seriously, calling back into action everyone.
Including Colossal Boy, despite the fact that he’s no longer an active superhero these days.
While I appreciate that the Legion is FINALLY taking action, it is a bit jarring to see they call for everyone’s help to save Cosmic Boy… but didn’t do this when the Moon exploded, or when Earth exploded, or they were at war with the Dominators, or when they were at war with the Khund, and so on.
While Colossal Boy insists he’s not a hero, he’s not the only one around here without a superhero name so I’m counting him as active.
That’s not the case for Element Lad, Dream Girl, Star Boy, Kono, Matter-Eater Lad, Polar Boy and Devlin O’Ryan: everyone is back to the active role.
White Witch performs a ritual to find out what’s happened to Mordru. She’s joined by Dragonmage (who gets no lines), Projectra who returns to active duty, and even the two Dream Girls.
This means that ALL the reserve members are currently in active duty: this really is the end times!
Since the end is approaching, the Legionnaires even take time to honor their dead.
Including Dawnstar, who was JUST rebooted… man they create those statues fast! Then again, they currently have TWO Element Lads on the team.
Only two Legionnaires are currently in sick leave: Lightning Lass because she’s still a child, and Kent Shakespeare who was injured. Kent is a no-show.
We are still dealing with the changing history, and Catspaw gets rebooted.
That was her last appearance in this continuity: from what I can tell she’s NEVER brought back.
The closest thing is a 1999 cameo in the Reboot where her hologram is shown as a potential candidate for the Workforce superhero team, but she never actually appears herself.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, that issue was written by Tom McCraw.
Back to the story, we reach what we’ll later learn is the most important moment of the entire storyline.
Glorith reveals to Mordru that this is the place where they can access the Infinite Library…
…except they can’t because Cosmic Boy goes there and takes the key with him.
This strands Cosmic Boy in the Infinite Library forever, because there isn’t a second key.
We will see next time just how important this moment is, but let’s appreciate the fact that THE ENTIRE REASON Glorith and Mordru lose is basically because they allowed this.
These two all-powerful guys, one of which has time powers by the way, were completely unable to stop one guy.
Because THEY JUST SUCK.
Since that’s what everyone believes, I’m placing Cosmic Boy under the “presumed dead” category for now. Don’t feel bad for him, at least he has something to read!
Just imagine how many comic book retrospectives he could write!
Before the mission begins, we have a two-page spread that shows just how many active Legionnaires we have right now.
It has everyone I’ve discussed so far plus Duo Damsel, Bouncing Boy, Saturn Girl and Proty (still acting as Lighting Lad).
Now you might be asking yourself: why am I going through the effort of looking into the membership to this level of detail?
Well, first of all I’m clearly insane, but less importantly with such a reunion I think it’s REALLY telling who gets excluded.
Kent Shakespeare’s absence is quite telling, considering he’s the only one on sick leave who is not acknowledged. We’ve exhausted all reserves at this point, and the ones I’m counting as resigned who don’t show up have perfect excuses for not being here for the ending.
-The one only I count: Command Kid
-The one stuck in another dimension: Quislet
-The only remaining former honorary member: Rond Vidar. He doesn’t even have his Green Lantern ring anymore, but at least he IS present.
-The Substitute Commandos: Chlorophyll Kid, Color Kid, Fire Lad, Porcupine Pete, Stone Boy, Visi-Lad
-The ones who joined during the gap: Karate Kid II, Crystal Kid, Calamity King, Echo
-The surviving Khund members: Firefist and Flederweb
The only one without a real excuse is Tellus, who DID have a cameo earlier in this era but for some reason is never otherwise acknowledged. Too bad, maybe he could’ve told us WTF is Polar Boy doing with his hands.
For crying out loud, even Lightning Lord showed up and even Night Girl is joining the fight!!!
The Legion has located Glorith and Mordru. What can these two morons do against so many Legionnaires?
Kick their asses, apparently.
In fact, Glorith kills the SW6 Colossal Boy…
…which in turn causes the adult Colossal Boy to disappear.
Wait, that didn’t happen to Chameleon Boy and Projectra when their SW6 counterparts were killed… it’s probably due to time breaking down and not to Glorith’s attack.
The reason why she and Mordru are at this facility was to use one of the Time Beacons…
…to summon the Infinite Man.
As I’ve said before, whenever he shows up it’s A VERY BIG DEAL: aside from his first appearance, we only saw him during Crisis On Infinite Earths and the final confrontation with the Time Trapper. So it’s fitting to see him with Zero Hour approaching.
Glorith and Mordru actually manage to do something impressive: they steal his power!
In doing this, they accidentally restore the looks of the Legionnaires.
Except the adult Brainiac 5 because this era hates me.
But they also restore Lightning Lass to adulthood and reboot both Spider Girl and Kid Quantum.
They will both be back rather soon in the Reboot, with vastly better plots.
no pages with The Grid
21 pages without a grid
2 splash pages
1 double splash page
no text pages
Legion significance: 5/10
Like last time, nothing here will have much of an impact… except Cosmic Boy being locked into the Infinite Library. Considering its importance in the rest of the saga (no spoilers in the comments for those who don’t know), it’s incredible how it seems to be totally accidental!
Depression scale: 6/10
We’re back to certain doom, but at least the Legion is TRYING TO DO SOMETHING.
Silver Age-ness: 4/10
Glorith and Mordru are powerful and cunning enough to fight dozens of Legionnaires, even casually murdering some, and they’re able to steal the power of Infinite Man… but they’re unable to prevent Cosmic Boy from escaping from right under their noses.
Does it stand the test of time? 2/10
I realize that I barely talked about the story, but there wasn’t much of a story to discuss.
We’re basically still checking characters off a list, and the ones that disappear are not even afforded a heroic death… in fact some of them disappear without the characters acknowledging it.
Which is fine by me if we’re talking about Catspaw, but it’s disappointing for most other characters.
We are legion
Some housecleaning first: among the rebooted members there were some from the gap which I forgot to mention. Stone Boy, Fire Lad, Color Boy and Chlorophyll Kid are added to the rebooted members.
From this issue alone:
-SW6 Colossal Boy dies and his adult counterpart is rebooted.
-Element Lad and Projectra are moved from the reserves to the active members.
-Devlin O’Ryan and Lightning Lass are back from sick leave and Cosmic Boy is presumed dead.
-Dream Girl, Star Boy, Matter Eater Lad, Polar Boy, Kono, Bouncing Boy, Duo Damsel, Saturn Girl and Proty are moved from the resigned to the active members.
This is, incidentally, the highest number of active Legionnaires to date.
40 active Legionnaires. Of these, 17 are in the “Legionnaires” team
1 in sick leave (Kent Shakespeare)
1 presumed dead (Cosmic Boy)
no reserve members
12 resigned members
38 deceased or rebooted members (16 are rebooted)
92 people have been members
68 people have been rejected
It would have been nice if these classic characters could have gone out with heroic moments of awesome instead of simply blipping out of existence. I suppose that would have been too much to ask for as the timeline is unwinding like the spring from a cheap watch.
I’ll say this much for Catspaw. We got to know her better than we did Bendis’ new legionnaires.
Since the legion is no longer on the run, why is Vi still Virus and not back to being Violet? Virus makes me think of Infectious Lass.