The Legion is doing its own thing in the early Reboot, not really interacting much with the rest of the DC Universe. Actual stories involving 20th century characters will come soon, but before that we have a baffling cameo.
Guy Gardner: Warrior #29 (1995)
by Beau Smith & Phil Jimenez
It’s the grand opening of Warriors Bar, owned by Guy Gardner.
The main cover is as boring as you can get…
…why didn’t they use the alternate cover as the main one?
That one is awesome!
I’m not familiar with this series. My first impression is that the only reason to check it out is the Phil Jimenez artwork, even though most pages are SO busy they almost give me a headache.
One of the reasons why it’s so busy is that it has cameos by EVERYONE.
It also seems to be more serious than your typical Guy Gardner story, but there are fun bits here and there.
If you’re wondering how there can even be a Guy Gardner series in the period where there was only one Green Lantern ring and he wasn’t the one wearing it… in this period, he was retconned into having alien ancestry and randomly given the power to generate weapons from his body.
Yeah I still don’t get it.
And FOR SOME REASON, Brainiac 5 is accidentally transported into the 20th century.
He doesn’t talk and nobody acknowledges his presence: he’s just handed a beer by Nuklon and then disappears back in the 30th century.
This is probably the most out-of-nowhere Legion cameo I’ve ever come across.
Brainiac 5 also appears to be using Doctor Doom’s Time Platform™.
Legion significance: 0/10
Silver Age-ness: 2/10
90-ness: RADICAL!!! / 10
Does it stand the test of time? GUY/10
Yeah I can’t give a proper score without doing a ton of research into this era, since I’m quite unfamiliar with it. I know of Guy Gardner’s new powers because of his cameos in other books; they’re quite interesting, but I don’t think they fit the character in the slightest.
I really like the idea of a bar catering exclusively to superheroes, but everything else in this book is REALLY hard to follow.
New Titans Annual #11 (1995)
written by Marv Wolfman & Greg Land
I had no idea Greg Land was even drawing comics in 1995, let alone doing covers for DC.
Given its quality, I’m not surprise he became infamous for bad tracing and plagiarism.
This book might have needed 3 inkers because it’s 56 pages long, but it could also be because it needed A LOT of work to attempt fixing Land’s pencils.
Case in point: Impulse was a member at this time, and I remind you that he’s supposed to be like about 14 years old.
But why am I even talking about this book? Because believe it or not, but this has the first appearance of the Time Trapper after Zero Hour!!!
He shows up in order to release the Titans who were “under his service” during Zero Hour.
No, I have no idea what he’s talking about.
He also delivers a lengthy infodump about time travel shenanigans.
I get the distinct feeling that I would be lost even if I was following the Titans of this period.
I guess the Time Trapper is involved because no matter the continuity, his hobby to mess with the lives of teenage and young adult superheroes is the only constant.
It’s weird to learn that the Time Trapper has built from scratch ANOTHER team of young superheroes… and never bothered to make them fight the Legion.
The highest significance for the Titans is probably the revelation that the Terra that was in this lineup is not from an alternate reality.
Legion significance: 0/10
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
90-ness: IMAGE / 10
Does it stand the test of time? 0/10
Marv Wolfman is a fantastic writer, but in this period he’s borderline unreadable.
The atrocious artwork and the convoluted backstory certainly don’t help.
There are SOME character moments here and there that still work, but overall… even for absolute completionists, there aren’t a lot of reasons for checking this out.
Brainy’s side of the thousand-year beer run is coming soon in the regular Legion reviews. I’ve found that a lot of people failed to connect the Legion side to the Warrior side.
Guy’s Warrior cover makes more sense when you have the physical book in your hand. The doors on the cover open outward, revealing the crowd inside. It’s actually pretty cool. Guy as The Last Vuldarian is fairly nonsensical, but Beau’s big accomplishment is making Guy into an honorable warrior. He’s still a Macho Man, but without the low IQ, misogyny, or abrasive attitude that made him a joke. He’s a hero, and the sheer number of cameos appearing in his bar highlights how well he gets along with the rest of the super-community now.
The Team Titans was a major mess from the beginning. This attempt to salvage Mirage and Terra failed. Perez was always credited as co-writer or co-plotter on the Titans, and once he left, it was obvious how much he contributed on the writing side, because Marv floundered really badly in his absence. Mirage has been long forgotten. Terra is now categorized as “somehow, she came back”, with no explanation.
This New Titans Annual came with the same cover date month as #122, less than a year before the end of a remarkable run of about fifteen years on the Titans.
At this point, though, it was really running out of steam. The team had become something of a franchise in 1991 with the launch of “Deathstroke the Terminator” and then “Team Titans” in 1992 (where Mirage and this Terra originate), and the three titles had frequent crossover events. But “Team Titans” was never a success. Wolfman left that book with #12 and the book itself ended with #24, a Zero Hour tie-in.
“New Titans” went on for about fifteen issues more (#0 and #115-130), but going by Marv Wolfman interviews and some other clues, around this time his relationship with Editorial had degraded significantly, and the last stretch of issues (ending with #130) happened in a very tense environment. the roster was changed suddenly in #0, then Damage, Kyle Rayner and Darkstar (Donna Troy) all joined in short order, with Rose Wilson and Jarras Minion coming later. There was a “Siege of Zi Charram” event involving other three books that were not written by Wolfman and finally a half year of settling dangling plots and finishing the run for good.
The bottom line is that by this time the book was directionless, and this Annual’s purpose is clearly to establish that Mirage, Terra and Deathwing are no longer tied up to an alternate timeline – or, for that matter, to Extant, who Zero Hour #2 established as their behind-the-scenes secret creator and leader in a convoluted plot to fight Donna’s son future self, Lord Chaos.
A very obvious meta reading is that Marv Wolfman cared enough about these three characters to want them to survive and be available after Zero Hour offered the opportunity to let them go. All three will indeed turn up in the future, to significantly different degrees of frequency and relevance.
As an aside, Wolfman may have been confused by the plot, since this Annual has Time Trapper claiming that Lord Chaos was Extant’s creation while Team Titans #24 (not by Wolfman) shows that Extant created the Team Titans in order to avoid the existence of Lord Chaos. A bit more likely is that no one cared much by this point.
Honestly after “The Judas Contract” The Titans are just not worth it for the most part, save a few bright spots here and there… And yet I kept reading them. I’m almost done with the Arsenal era Titans. Really curious about the all new team that had The Atom as a teen. A Teen Titans retrospective would be nice. Specially the Groovy 60’s era…
Oh, so that’s where the meme of Brainy sipping beer and spitting it out came from. Mystery solved.
It was not worth the wait.
Brainy sipping the beer and spitting it out is coming up in the Legion side of this “crossover”.