Legion of Super-Heroes v4 Annual #7 (1996)
plot by Tom Peyer & Tom McCraw
pencils by Mike Collins
cover by Alan Davis
This annual is part of the “Legends of the dead Earth” theme that was shared among 1996 Annuals, and as such it’s an Elseworld set in the far future.
Interestingly, it’s written by the writers of the main Legion book and introduced Wildfire much earlier than the main continuity.
By the time Wildfire is introduced in the Reboot, he will be given one of the most nonsensical origins I’ve seen in a while and it won’t be until Legion Lost that he finally FEELS like the real Wildfire. So it’s quite strange to se such a faithful version being introduced earlier.
We are now in the 75th century, and Wildfire is now appointing new members to the Legion.
Take a moment to memorize the names of the new members, they will surely all be very important to the story.
By the 75th century the United Planets have disbanded, xenophobia is rampant, and the only hope to heal the Galaxy is Wildfire being the leader of the Legion.
So the Galaxy might be doomed for good.
Wildfire, buddy, on your worst day you’re in my top five favorite Legionnaires and I miss you tremendously… but man do you suck as a leader.
I understand motivating the team is important, but 42,956 days is 117 years and 7 months! What’s the point of motivating them if they won’t make it to the fight!?
We learn that Earth has long been dead, and together with the Legion it’s apparently at the center of some religion.
After giving them a pep talk, Wildfire takes the team to fight a robot army; it doesn’t look like his speech worked AT ALL on some of the members.
While you can deduce the powers of most of the new Legionnaires, I don’t think you expected Nervosa to be Matter-Eater Lass.
Her name is Italian for “nervous” (the female adjective specifically), but given her power she’s definitely named for bulimia nervosa… the eating disorder of eating unusually large amount of food in a short time.
Who would’ve thought that a superhero with THAT name wouldn’t be the most stable.
And the mission just gets worse: Wildfire is also taken down, and the enemy army manages to fire its star-obliterating cannon.
This kills EVERYONE in the team except Wildfire and, weirdly enough, Membrain.
Most of the Legionnaires of this Annual are utterly forgettable, but I’m kind of disappointed Membrain didn’t make the jump to the main continuity.
He has a memorably weird design, a pleasant personality, and a weird power… if I understand correctly, he can absorb things into his mass and keep them trapped.
Wildfire has always been historically bad at being the team’s leader, but at least in this version he’s painfully aware of it.
He’s so close to the original version that you might suspect he’s not from the Reboot, but we have confirmation that he’s from an alternate future of the Reboot.
The reason for why the 75th century sucks is that planets are more interested in feeding the military-industrial complex than people.
It’s a good thing that this is just a silly comic book and not the actual state of things in reality, or this would be rather depressing.
Since the robot fight temporarily disabled Wildfire’s sensors, Membrain has an idea: give him sensory deprivation in the attempt to recover lost memories.
This version of Wildfire has the same exact origin of the pre-Crisis one, and the Reboot version we will eventually get… most definitely won’t.
I find it truly fascinating that this is written by the main Legion writers. Wildfire will be officially re-introduced by Tom McCraw, who is co-writing this with Tom Peyer.
So I have to wonder: would we have had a more traditional Wildfire origin if Peyer stayed on the book for more issues?
It is interesting that Wildfire is specifically thinking about XS; it’s most likely because she was the star of the OTHER Annual involved in this event, Legionnaires Annual #3.
But it does make me wonder… wouldn’t it be REALLY interesting if these two ended up together or developed a strong friendship?
Their personalities are almost complete opposites but they both have the tendency to be the first to rush into danger.
We get a glimpse of this alternate future version of the Reboot, which OF COURSE will feature a Reflecto. See, this is the ONLY way ANY continuity should use Reflecto: as a vague hint in an alternate future. Don’t go any further than that.
If you HAVE to reference this alternate future, tell us more about Galaxy!
Once more, having the main Legion writers here makes me wonder: did they ever consider this to be a potential template for the Reboot Adult Legion?
Because it seems we would’ve had Cosmic Boy as President of the United Planets and a few Legionnaires who DIDN’T make the cut for the Reboot like Quislet, Blok and Chemical King!
I wonder who the black guy at the bottom is supposed to be… Reboot Tyroc?
Also a marriage between Brainiac 5 and Andromeda!
Yeah they were absolutely more than friends.
This trip down memory lane motivates Wildfire to recruit more Legionnaires, this time in pairs.
Okay there’s one thing you’re worse at than being a leader, Wildfire… picking up codenames, because most of them REALLY suck. Not surprising when your first codename was ERG-1.
Notice one is named Triad III though, which implies the existence of an unmentioned Triad II.
One of my favorite Wildfire contradictions is that he sucks at being a leader AND he’s an excellent teacher. I like that it’s preserved.
Man did I miss Wildfire.
That’s… actually not a bad idea, why hasn’t the main Legion ever done this?
I guess it wouldn’t be Wildfire if he wasn’t interested in the mating habits of winged aliens.
The Legion is now working so well that its enemies speed up their schedule.
Wildfire is now taking advantage of his immortality to make long-term plans: influence the next generation to believe in cooperation by encouraging Legionnaires to bang each other.
So you can see why he typically leaves the thinking to Brainiac 5.
The Legionnaires initially believe some space pirates are behind the attack, but they quickly figure out the real masterminds are Durlans.
And it turns out that the two Durlans in the team, Shape and Shift, are actually traitors.
The fact that they turned out to be evil kind of undermines the point of “all races can cooperate”, because it means Chameleon was the ONLY good Durlan after all.
Wildfire destroys the space cannon (and presumably kills Shape and Shift)…
…and we have our epilogue: 75 years later, Winath (Live Wire and Spark’s planet) receives the news that the war has been won.
And that’s how we end the story: the United Planets have been established again.
Legion significance: 0/10
This is presumably the same timeline of Legionnaires Annual #3, but there is no direct reference.
I’ve seen references that it’s also the same timeline of the continuity nightmare that is a crossover between the Legion and Sovereign Seven, but I’ll talk about that when I get to it… assuming I’ll understand any of it!
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Not really.
Does it stand the test of time? 8/10
My fondness for Wildfire is definitely making me like this more than I should.
It rushes things too much (despite having a respectable 37 pages to work with), all new Legionnaires except Membrain are forgettable, and making the two Durlan members the betrayers kind of undermines the message… but it still flows well enough, it has a couple of memorable moments, and Wildfire’s characterization is REALLY solid.
He contributes a solid additional point to the score, and I’m bummed that it will take forever for the Reboot to actually deliver a solid Wildfire. It will, but there will be a rough road ahead before it happens.
We are legion
We have 38 confirmed Legionnaires.
8 active members:
-Wildfire
-Membrain
-Magno-Boy
-Lodestone
-Triad III
-Triplicate
-Argent
-Silver-Wing
6 deceased members, 75th century:
-Phase
-Nervosa
-Metrox
-Graft
-Shape
-Shift
24 deceased members, 30th century:
-Leviathan
-Chameleon
-Ultra Boy
-Kinetix
-Spark
-Cosmic Boy
-Star Boy
-Live Wire
-Saturn Girl
-Invisible Kid
-XS
-Reflecto
-Galaxy
-Quislet
-Umbra
-M’Onel
-Umbra
-Projectra (maybe?)
-Brainiac 5
-Blok
-Chemical King (maybe?)
-Karate Kid
-Tyroc (maybe?)
-Andromeda
Since this is a different continuity… how does it score on the Legion Continuity Bingo?
It inherits all the spaces of the Reboot from where they were at the time of publishing, while also adding:
Classic Legionnaire joins as cameo only: Blok for sure, potentially others
Classic Legion romance never happens: there is no Dawnstar in this continuity for Wildfire
This is one of the few Dead Earth annuals with a slightly happy ending…so that’s nice.
This made me really want a Wildfire XS romance. They’d be so much better matched than Dawnstar and him, and even the Dawnstar equiviliant (who is cool)
I hated the whole “Legends of Dead Earth” theme, I don’t think there was a single book that handled it well, except perhaps Starman, which just used it as a framing sequence for more contemporary stories. That said, using Wildfire here was a brilliant idea, since it makes sense he’d be immortal.
The misdirection about the Durlans made for a pretty decent resolution. The writers certainly set things up to not expect it.
The way “Wildfire” was shoehorned in later was beyond dumb. One of the worst instances of fan-driven plots ever. (Though the Shvaughn Erin is a man story takes the top spot for me.)
I like the idea behind “Legends of Dead Earth”… elseworlds set in the far future where Earth has been destroyed but superheroes still exist isn’t bad on its own.
Unfortunately none of the Annuals had much to say about the premise. Even the two Legion Annuals that I liked didn’t do all that much with the premise.
I would not extrapolate from Shape and Shift for the whole Durlan population, even taking for granted that they are typical and representative. Often it is the exception that counts.
This is a nice take on Wildfire, down to the ridiculous claim of “spiritual outranking”. That sort of talk is only good for making fun of. I love how dedicated he is to teaching the recruits; one of his finer traits.
I don’t _know_ for a fact that Grant Morrison read this annual, but I can’t help but find Membrain to be an intriguing idea that may have inspired both Robert “Glob” Herman and Martha Johansson (A.K.A. No-Girl and currently Cerebella).
The deliberate redundancy of powers and roles is indeed an interesting idea, even though I fear it may end up overinfluencing plots since it pretty much invites everyone to feel insecure of their roles and jealous of their own direct alternates – which is probably why the Legion often has a rule against that redundancy, inconsistently applied as it is.
Still a promising premise for a storyline or series, as an experimental pair of redundant teams struggle to find the balance between civilian and military roles while also keeping a carefully curated level of comraderie and cooperation with people that are officially meant to replace them. Lots of soap opera potential there.
In real life, some military submarine vessels operate under a paradigm of alternate crews that rotate fully and at once, typically for ninety days periods. Apparently they are named “blue” and “gold” teams, presumably being the inspiration for that time in the nineties when the X-Men attempted to use the same labels.
The title “One Shot” is a nod to the title of ERG-1/Wildfire’s first appearance, “The One-Shot Hero,” in Superboy #195.
The book’s title, “One Shot”, is a nice callback to Wildfire’s debut as ERG-1, “One-Shot Hero”.
Ironically, the Dead Earth Annual that’s most significant to the Legion is the Power of Shazam Annual. If that annual is set in the same continuity as this annual, that raises all sorts of questions.
Wildfire is exactly as he ought to be. Reflecto’s statue is more generic than his statue in original continuity. That pious pose of his is what sparked readers’ imaginations for decades. Galaxy is intriguing because of those gun turrets on her shoulders. DC does have a heroine named Galaxy now, but this does not appear to be her. The current Galaxy even has a Legion connection, as she’s become besties with Dreamer, Nura’s present-day ancestor.
Going by the letters columns from “Legion Lost”, apparently the creative team itself was not satisfied by ERG-1 and therefore attempted to retool him somewhat before calling him by the more traditional name “Wildfire”.
Can’t say I disagree. I don’t automatically disapprove of deviating from expectations, but early reboot ERG-1 just wasn’t all that convincing or interesting a character. I do approve of what appears to be a controversial reinvention coming ahead in just a few issues, but in that case the opportunities made sense and were explored on the page.