Legionnaires #32 (1995)
written by Tom Peyer & Tom McCraw
pencils by Jeff Moy
cover by Alan Davis
I wonder if anyone picked up this issue because of the Underworld Unleashed crossover and left utterly confused since the plot has barely anything to do with Underworld Unleashed.
Then again, most of Underworld Unleashed had nothing to do with its own plot.
Mon-El still isn’t sure what to do with his new freedom, since he can’t even reveal he’s the real Valor.
He still helps out to help the team deal with the destruction caused by Chronos in LSH #75.
Not only all Legionnaires survived, but Lori Morning is also stranded in the 30th century.
And because of Chronos’s technology, she’s all grown up.
Much to Triad’s displeasure.
Because of Chronos, the Time Platform™ is beyond repair and Brainiac 5 is stuck somewhere between time.
Not the easiest order when the expert is the guy you’re trying to rescue, Cosmic Boy.
Things are bad for the Legion’s reputation right now: on top of dead members and the very public failure to rescue Valor (or at least that’s the official story), they have wasted all the goodwill gathered by saving the planet from the White Triangle.
The Legion has a long tradition of its headquarters being demolished, but in this incarnation its ties to the government are MUCH stronger than usual. So of course the repercussions are worse.
Good thing that Rond Vidar shows up, because without Brainiac 5 the Legion is COMPLETELY lost when it comes to time travel.
In this continuity, Rond basically has only two purposes that will influence ALL his plots:
1) he can help with time travel stuff
2) he’s the crush of Lori Morning. Who I remind you is TEN.
Like I said last time, Lori can be… A LOT. But here she has a good balance of being awe-stuck by the 30th century and still being a kid afraid of being punished.
And OF COURSE the Legion’s mom is the only one who manages to get her to behave!
I think they’re trying to make her sound like she’s talking like a 90s kid.
Something that I don’t think really works with Lori is her COMPLETE lack of any angst.
Which is something you would hardly ever say for a 90s character!
But she gives absolutely NO indication that she’s affected in the slightest by the fac that her father was just MURDERED IN FRONT OF HER. Plus I don’t recall her ever mention her mother… so she’s an orphan that has just been separated from everyone she has ever known.
I get being excited about being in the future and an adult, but COME ON!!!
I still don’t fully get what Chronos actually did.
And I’m not alone in that!!!
As if things couldn’t get worse for the Legion: the news about them using a time machine gets to the President. And remember that time travel is currently illegal.
I’m fully convinced that the main reason why Rond Vidar plays a much smaller part in the Reboot is that his role as Brainiac 5’s best friend is entirely replaced by Invisible Kid.
Or at least it WILL be replaced; they’re not on best terms right now.
Invisible Kid does manage to get the machinery barely working; all he gets is a message from Brainiac 5 talking backwards… just for the Science Police to show up.
Once they interfere, Brainiac 5 somehow switches to talking directly to Rond in his lab.
He’s not talking backwards anymore… I’d like to believe Brainy figured out the others were hearing him backwards and now HE’s talking backwards to be understood.
The Science Police, bad at their job since 2962.
Especially since their interference resurrects Chronos.
Even CHRONOS can’t figure out this time plot anymore.
With YOUR history, Chronos, you REALLY don’t want to talk about costumes.
I like the detail that while Chronos doesn’t speak Interlac, he knows superheroes enough to immediately understand what’s going on.
Unfortunately for him, so has Brainiac 5.
Chronos… she’s physically in her 20s right now, but you were just defeated by a 10 year old.
Brainiac 5’s plan was to be merged with Chronos, thus making time travel rules so complicated that the plot just gives up and fixes everything.
You and me both, Rond.
All is well and good…
…except Brainiac 5 is arrested.
In other plots, Kinetix has been laying unconscious (probably since the Trom explosion!) but FINALLY someone rescues her.
About time she gets to do SOMETHING!!!
Legion significance: 4/10
Brainiac 5 going to prison is going to matter (and lead to one of my favorite Reboot issues), but the details behind aren’t really important.
Silver Age-ness: 1/10
Those are some of the worst explained time travel rules I’ve seen… which surprisingly makes this story LESS Silver Age-y, since of all things time travel was well-defined back then.
However we still have the 10 year old defeating the villain. Spoiler alert: this won’t be the only time Lori defeats a time-traveling mastermind.
Does it stand the test of time? 8/10
I’m still baffled by the logistics of the whole Chronos thing, but they don’t really play THAT much of a role in the story to impact it too much. Although Chronos is anything but memorable here; if anything he was more threatening in his previous appearance.
While I like Lori and her role in the story, I really could have done without her crush on Rond. Or at the very least I would have told Jeff Moy to tone it down, for once!
“Don’t call me Brainy”: 5
Who did it better?
The first time the Legion headquarters are thrashed is FAR more impactful in the original.
But on the other hand, the fact that in the Reboot there are serious political repercussions is unique.
I can’t fault the original since the government connection wasn’t there, and the Legion was still close to its original “superhero club” vibe… so overall I’d call this a tie.
We are legion
- 11 active Legionnaires (3 volunteers, 8 drafted)
- 1 expelled member (Live Wire)
- 1 resigned member (Andromeda)
- 1 honorary member (Superboy)
- 2 deceased members (Kid Quantum, Apparition
- 16 people have been members
- 2 Legion leaders (Leviathan, Cosmic Boy)
- 2 members have been rejected
Interesting letters: Volker has a point. Live Wire and Spark have the same costume now… you can literally differentiate them only from their gender. And that’s hard to do when they’re in a group shot. Weird that they didn’t give her longer hair, that’s usually the way they do it with twins in fiction. Obviously they couldn’t give her a skimpier outfit considering she’s 14 right now!
Considering what happened in some other Underworld Unleashed tie-ins and the general tone of this sort of story, I assume that Neron purposefully fulfilled the letter of his promise without regard to the practicality of the results for the other part.
As Chronos himself points out, he likely has Neron to thank for how confusing and exotic the results of this tech’s use are. Much like, say, Hawkman’s bargain ended up earning him nothing. Then again, Chronos has an unfortunate tendency to be stranded or displaced in time even without Neron’s assistance. That is probably why he wanted a costume with time displacement protections in the first place. Neron could probably have made it a bit more predictable or easier to use, but hey, Neron is an evil villain demon seek to promote evil and suffering.
For the plot that is a convenient way of giving Brainiac 5 an escape without sufficient wiggle room for him to take the time for making a plan to avoid prison time.
I, too, like that Chronos is savvy enough to understand that these people around him are more likely than not to recognize him as a villain to be stopped and attempt to do just that. He does not come across as too competent in these two stories, but he has met his share of superheroes.
The main story was not as interesting as the side stories. That’s typical of crossovers. The Legion had a problem, and they solved it. Meanwhile, Lar struggles with “What now?” The panels on the first page reproduced capture his loneliness and isolation. But once disaster happens, it’s back to business.
The panel of Invisible Kid reacting as Cosmic Boy tells him not to touch anything conveys his umbrage and growing independence from the team leader. Lyle will indeed replace Rond Vidar as Brainy’s science buddy, and while Rond becomes less important in this reboot, it’s for the best. I do like this version of Rond. He stands up to Cos and asserts his authority; however, he admits when something is over his head.
I read these issues a few years after they were published, so Lori Morning was already an established character. I didn’t hate her like a lot of fans did. However, this issue suggests that the creators weren’t sure what to do with her. She’s a time-displaced orphan, which could open a lot of story possibilities. But she’s also aged ten or so years (what?!), and that introduces a very different dynamic. The original Captain Marvel was a successful take on the “child in an adult body” trope by simply not dealing with the emotional and physical changes. It worked in the slightly off-the-wall Captain Marvel universe. But the Legion’s universe was grounded in reality despite the cartoon-like artwork and fantastic setting. This Legion dealt with serious issues and suffered personal tragedies. If the creators wanted Lori to be a 10-year-old in a 20-year-old body with a crush on Rond Vidar, something more than comic relief should have been done with it.
I did think it was funny that Lori defeats two time-travel villains. She’s a kid, but she’s smart.
It’s a common trope in comics for people to treat a character as whatever age their body happens to be, even when they know the character isn’t really that age. Supergirl was rejected for Legion membership because her body was temporarily aged by red kryptonite. Mon-El’s thousand years in the Phantom Zone didn’t count, because he didn’t age. No one objected to Hal Jordan dating severely underage Arisia after her ring aged her body up (may [name redacted] burn in Hell).
If Lori was always intended to be G-Lori-th, I wonder if there was a clear road map for getting her to that point. If there was, it was clearly intended to be a very lengthy journey.
Personally, I don’t think I would ever mistake Garth for Ayla, or vice versa, no matter what they were wearing.