Cosmic Boy #1 (1986)
written by Paul Levitz
pencils by Keith Giffen, Arnie Colon and Bob Smith
cover by Steve Lighle
Cosmic Boy gets his own 4-issue miniseries, which surprisingly is called a spin-off of Legends and not of the Legion of Super-Heroes.
It’s a very weird way to start a miniseries: the first page follows Legends where Cosmic Boy was defeated. Not the best introduction for your protagonist for new readers!
It’s important to note that, because of the events of Legends, the general public currently hates all superheroes.
So he has to be rescued by Night Girl, who is also vacationing in the 20th century with him.
She’s a badass and a good character, but… again, not the best way to introduce your hero.
He’s never going to hear the last of this, isn’t it? They’ll be on vacation when they’re both in their 90s and she’ll still complain about THIS vacation. And she’d be right!
She then narrates a brief flashback to her origins, which begin with her being a Cosmic Boy superfan.
I can see why we didn’t get deep into Night Girl’s origin earlier… it’s not that deep.
So she decides to ask her scientist father to give her super-powers…
…which makes me wonder: was it REALLY an accident that he gave her powers that would be useless under sunlight? Or perhaps he hoped his daughter would reconsider being a hero?
I really, REALLY like the costume Night Girl has in this period… but couldn’t Giffen draw her with her original goofy beehive? That’s a bummer.
Don’t feel bad, Night Girl, everyone living in the 20th century thought it was an insane time.
Spoiler alert: things ain’t much better in the 21st.
Now we get a flashback narrating why the couple is here: at PAGE SEVEN. I assume anyone picking up this miniseries (out of curiosity after Legends) would’ve been TOTALLY lost without already being a Legion reader.
MOST importantly, however, Cosmic Boy thinks back at another moment (which we didn’t see during Legends): his meeting with Superman, where he doesn’t recognize the Legionnaire.
This is HUGE because, while it was very clear from anyone reading Superman’s books, this is the FIRST official acknowledgement that post-Crisis Superman has never met, and does not remember, the Legion.
Which is because, as I’ve pointed out multiple times, the Legion in this period is basically still following the pre-Crisis continuity.
One of the major points of the miniseries is Cosmic Boy realizing history has been drastically changed from what he knows.
That’s kind of unfair, Cosmic Boy, don’t ALL centuries have the same problem?
The idea is that Cosmic Boy is from the future… as it was imagined in the 50s and 60s, so he gets the stark realization that things didn’t go as planned.
Okay now it’s getting depressing.
It’s pretty weird that Cosmic Boy immediately jumps to the idea that history has been changed and doesn’t even consider the possibility he ended up in the wrong timeline or universe.
Shouldn’t he still be operating under pre-Crisis time travel rules and believe changing history is impossible? The Legion never really did work with the multiverse, but shouldn’t he still think there’s a multiverse out there?
A surprising amount of panels is spent on TV news, including the plot point about a space shuttle carrying nukes into space.
So despite the Legends craziness, people still do rebel against dumb ideas.
Is this the first reference to Cosmic Boy’s planet being settled by humans from Earth? I don’t think it’s come up before, but it will be a HUGE point from Volume 4 forwards.
The nuke-carrying Space Shuttle gets Cosmic Boy’s attention, so it’s a good thing he’s around when it blows up.
The fact that he avoided the payload from exploding is not appreciated.
So Cosmic Boy goes back to his hotel having accomplished very little besides preventing a nuclear disaster. Wait, what?
Legion significance: 8/10
Clarifying that the Legion is still running on a different continuity from the rest of DC, plus establishing a future plot point about the various 30th century planets being Earth colonies.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
If anything it really goes out its way to avoid it.
Does it stand the test of time? 4/10
A wasted opportunity: this would have been incomprehensible to anyone not already reading the Legion. Which was still doing well with its sales, but a little boost from THE crossover of the year wouldn’t have hurt!
On its own, it’s a bad start. This comic doesn’t tell you much about its protagonist other that he loves history. He’s not shown to be either complex or impressive, plus a lot of pages are lost to flashbacks and establishing scenes.
There IS a good concept here… the culture shock of a guy coming from a future idealized in the 50s when confronted with a more pedestrian reality… but it’s not explored much.
The artwork is also meh. Both Keith Giffen and Ernie Colon are credited, but aside from a couple of panels that are definitely Giffen (basically any time Cosmic Boy is in the shadows), the vast majority looks like it’s by Colon. Who has done some decent stuff, but again: meh.
