Legion of Super-Heroes vol4 #70 (1995)
plot by Tom Peyer & Tom McCraw
dialogue by Mark Waid
pencils by Jason Armstrong
cover by Alan Davis
Time for Andromeda’s much-needed character development.
Turns out that she’s been poisoned with lead, one of the two weaknesses of Daxamites.
The other is xenophobia, which makes Brainiac 5 being her doctor even worse.
Despite evidence to the contrary, Brainy is not the narrator.
Brainy has to use red sun radiation both to get tissue samples and to avoid being beaten into a pulp.
In the original continuity we had SOME reference to Coluans living longer than humans; it still applies to the Reboot.
Brainy is in a good mood today. Which normally means people around him aren’t.
Which could be easily blamed on Brainy’s, uhm… “Brainiac 5-ness”… but considering he’s trying to save the life of someone constantly insulting his race, can you really blame him?
Andromeda recaps the events of Legionnaires #23 and how they lead to Triad being assaulted.
Despite his attitude, Brainiac 5 picks up that she was upset at an alien being hurt.
She reveals that the White Triangle is funded by a Daxamite faction set on destroying the United Planets.
And those White Triangle operatives are the ones who poisoned her.
Andromeda has convinced herself that her own xenophobia is not racist.
You could consider Brainy’s remark a bit racist as well, but it’s hard to sympathize with her.
Brainiac 5 has an advantage in finding a cure for lead poisoning: his ancestor Vril Dox II already found one in the 20th century!
That of course happened in the pages of L.E.G.I.O.N., whose relationship with the Reboot Legion is, uhm complicated.
We’ll revisit that once the Reboot version of Mon-El is introduced… which (surprise!) will be complicated by needing to avoid the absolute nightmare of his 5YL continuity.
Mon-El is ALSO an ancestor Andromeda. Which implies one of these three possibilities:
1) Mon-El had children before being sent to the 30th century
2) Andromeda means “distant relative” instead of “direct ancestor”, and like in the previous continuity she’s actually descended from Mon-El’s brother
3) Brainiac 5 is right and it’s just a family myth
The fact that you’re constantly insulting the intelligence of the guy working to save your life kind of proves his point, Andromeda.
Even with the old serum to work with, Brainiac 5 still has to tailor it to her genes.
Which might be one explanation for why the serum was not mass produced in the 20th century.
Also, while it’s hard to say whether it’s applicable in this continuity… the original serum eventually proved to be just temporary.
Okay, I’ve been quite hard on Andromeda so far because I think she deserved it.
But it’s not entirely her fault that she was raised to be racist.
We already knew Daxam is isolationist (kind of necessary considering most planets are poison to them), but she specifically comes from a society that takes that to an extreme level.
Kind of an unfortunate implication to depict the racist society with, let’s be honest about it, visual parallels to Middle Eastern peoples. I’m not reading too much into it… after all Andromeda is a blue-eyed blonde… and it’s definitely more the result of the need to show them to be isolated from the rest of Daxam (to explain why Mon-El is not racist). But it’s noticeable.
Despite his protestations, Brainiac 5 still creates the cure.
He knows fully well that Andromeda is not willing to admit that Coluans are superior…
…but that’s not what he actually wants.
He just proved to her that she can’t say he’s inferior because of his race.
Check.
And.
Mate.
In other plots, Saturn Girl is still very much NOT fine.
Triad might be back to active duty, but the Legion is still going through a rough time.
I’m sure Apparition’s mother will make things easier for the team.
Meanwhile Kinetix leaves to her own quest to regain her powers. I would normally consider her leaving the team, but Cosmic Boy made it such a point that she was still a member that I’m still counting her.
Hoping to apologize for accusing Andromeda of being a White Triangle sympathizer, Violet sneaks into her room with a gift… a pot of violets, of course.
And finally, once everyone is informed that Andromeda will make a full recovery…
…Violet exposes her connection to the White Triangle, thanks to the pendant she found in her room.
Legion significance: 10/10
This kicks off Andromeda’s character development and is essential to her evolution in the rest of the series.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Not really.
Does it stand the test of time? 10/10
This is my Brainiac 5 bias showing, because his final scene with Andromeda is one of my absolute favorite Reboot Brainy moments.
Seriously, not only he’s not claiming that his race is superior, but he puts her in a corner by forcing her to admit she can’t say it’s inferior… now THAT is how you write a super-smart character.
The story is sympathetic towards Andromeda only up to a point; the moment Brainy realizes she’s not as much as a true believer as she thinks, he tries to make her reason.
With just a touch of insufferable smugness, with the bonus of proving a racist wrong.
Scenes like these are why, while I still love the original Brainy, the Reboot is my absolute favorite version of the character. The original version would have been kind and understanding all the way through, and I honestly find the new approach far more interesting.
Also of note is the fact that Brainiac 5 decides to keep quiet about her relationship with the White Triangle; either because he doesn’t think it’s his place to expose her, or because he thinks she’ll come clean herself, or maybe a combination of both.
And of course, if anyone had to reveal the truth, it could be none other than Violet.
Without that fantastic final moment with Brainiac 5, the score would have been a bit lower… Armstrong is a better fit than Lee Moder but he’s not amazing… but the chemistry between Brainy and Andromeda is strong enough to even things out.
Who did it better?
Nothing comes to mind.
We are legion
- 12 active Legionnaires (3 volunteers, 9 drafted)
- 1 sick leave (Saturn Girl)
- 1 resigned member
- 1 deceased member
- 15 people have been members
- 2 Legion leaders (Leviathan, Cosmic Boy)
- 2 members have been rejected
Interesting letters: readers complain about the lack of non-humanoid members, as well as the fact that most humans are white.
Both are interesting points: out of the 15 historical members, only two (Chameleon Boy and Brainiac 5) don’t look human, and out of the human-looking ones only two (Kid Quantum and XS) are not white… and one of those is dead!
For the record, the next visibly alien member will join in 6 issues… but the first new human-looking member who is not white won’t join until an additional 27 issues later.
That’s a big ass testube.
I love the interaction between Brainiac 5 and Andromeda. Both are smug and self-righteous in their own ways. Brainy has fun with her xenophobia and finally gets her to admit that his race is not inferior. This is a huge step for Andromeda, and a shining moment for Brainy.
As for who did it better . . . since Andromeda is an analogue for Supergirl, one could compare their preboot relationship to this version. Admittedly, it’s a stretch since Andromeda is essentially a new character who happens to have the same power set as Supergirl. If such a comparison were made, however, the reboot version wins hands down. Brainy’s evolving relationship with Andromeda is much more interesting than the infrequent “will they/won’t they” of the preboot.
While the invocation of Middle Eastern imagery for evil people in comics is usually just a product of racism, I think it’s more likely in this case that the creative team didn’t want a 1:1 analog for all of the anti-federal government white supremacist settlements and right-wing terrorism that were absolutely everywhere in America during the 90’s. I would be shocked if the Oklahoma City bombing didn’t inspire a particular incident coming up later on. It’s a pretty inspired choice for this team to take such an actively pro-diversity and pro-federalism stance when it did. I don’t think any other version of this team ever gets this explicitly political aside of the Threeboot, and that comes with a long list of caveats.
Honestly, I think it’s more that a group thar self-isolates would be very likely to do so to desert location, and thte idea of dressing them like Arabs just flowed from there. (Which would make sense in-story, because the Arabian headddress is mainly meant for protection against sun and sand. Though I doubt the creators thought that deeply.)
Now this is Legion writing at its finest, and one of Brainy’s finest moments.
And this is still in the build-up phase.
The fact that they paced the build-up phase so well is what made this work so well. The later rushing to expand the Legion and introduce the Fatal Five and then to do the Team 20/Team 30 split caused a decline in quality.
Yeah. I wish they’d given the other Fatal Four as much build-up as they gave Mano. I enjoyed much of the 20/30 split, but they did seem to be running out steam before DnA came in.