Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #38 (1992)
written by Keith Giffen, Tom & Mary Bierbaum, Jason Pearson
pencils by Jason Pearson & Keith Giffen
cover by Stuart Immonen
This is an important milestone for the 5YL era. While it’s not “the end” like the cover might make you think, it’s definitely a huge watershed moment.
It’s also a bit of a challenge to review, because ALL pages are exclusively splash pages with text columns next to them.
Since I can’t post the whole pages, I’ll do my best to associate both images and text for a proper review.
The story is narrated by Devlin O’Ryan, who is writing an article about what happens in this story.
Last time we saw Earth, the Dominators had finally been defeated and the planet had been liberated.
After suffering the deaths of BILLIONS of people from multiple catastrophes… the destruction of the Moon, the destruction of dozens of major cities when the Powerspheres™ exploded, the orbital bombardment of protesters AND the explosion of the underground tunnels… you might have expected things to FINALLY get better.
But this is the 5YL era, where there’s no upper limit to how bad things can get.
Buckle up, because THIS catastrophe is going to top even the destruction of the Moon.
Turns out that the destruction of the tunnels initiated a chain reaction that is being studied by the two Brainiac 5 (the adult one and the SW6 one).
Turns out that, over the past centuries, Earth had been dumping massive amounts of unstable “proton jelly” beneath the surface and never bothered to clean them up.
And this chain reaction is going to destroy the Earth.
Please note that unlike the cataclysms I’ve listed earlier and that we’ve see on-panel… with varying degrees of focus from the story… this is coming out of nowhere.
You might have expected this stuff to be linked to the “28th century wars” that had already been linked with the Dominator weapons… but no, this goes back to the 24th century.
This is a rather obvious metaphor, if you substitute the “proton jelly” with various environmental problems plaguing the 20th and sadly the 21st century.
That’s fine, and honestly it’s not even in-your-face as it might as been… but to me this feels rushed and out of place after we’ve ALREADY seen multiple catastrophes.
So a plan is puto into motion to EVACUATE EARTH (!!!). The narration gives us a somber description of both the uplifting parts of this and of the most depressing ones.
Even with 30th century technology and with billions of people already killed by the destruction of the Moon, evacuating EVERYBODY is going to be impossible.
The only stroke of luck… if you can call it that… is that during the 28th century wars, a whopping 480 cities were given the technology to leave the planet.
Only 102 of those still work, though, after all the other catastrophes.
Well, make that 100 cities. Say goodbye to Barcelona and Tashkent.
The remaining 100 cities dock together in a single network that… nope, make that 95 cities.
Say hello to New Earth, a network of the remaining 95 cities still standing.
No, make that 94 cities: when New Earth is moved in the Phantom Zone Bgztl Buffer Zone, yet another one is lost. We’re not told which city that was.
At this point, Earth is too unstable to continue the evacuation: 2 billion people are stranded there.
Keep in mind that, according to previous issues, 5 billion people died when the Moon exploded… meaning that up to this point, AT LEAST 7 billion people have died.
We even get a look at the people left behind, just waiting for the Earth to die.
Amusingly enough, that includes this woman that decided to dress up… because at that point, what else are you going to do?
This is the way the world ends.
Not with a bang, but a double page spread.
Even Death herself cameos to get a good look.
In case you missed the environmental metaphor.
Since the story is narrated by Devlin, we’re not told much about the reaction of the Legionnaires.
And we close with Devlin’s final narration…
…until Earth dies on June 4th 2995.
no pages with The Grid
no pages without a grid
25 splash pages
no text pages
Legion significance: 10/10
For rather obvious reasons, this is essential to the rest of the era.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
It’s hard to imagine superheroes not being able to save Earth in the Silver Age.
Depression scale: ∞ / 10
Liberating Earth from oppression is immediately followed by the world being destroyed. Even if (for once) the heroes do try to help, they don’t accomplish much.
Does it stand the test of time? 7/10
Let’s get the biggest problem out of the way first: this turn of events was not earned.
There wasn’t anything to seriously suggest to the readers that there was a massive ecological disaster lurking beneath the planet. This is particularly infuriating because there were PLENTY of occasions for planting the seeds, considering the amount of time we spent in the underground tunnels and how often the 28th century wars were brought up.
Second, this completely derails any momentum from the previous storylines. Yes we have “New Earth” now, but it still feels that the whole “Terra Mosaic” arc was for nothing… all that effort to free Earth, and the planet is destroyed by an almost disconnected disaster.
Third, while I truly appreciate that the Legion is trying to do SOMETHING (contrast with their baffling absence during the Moon’s destruction… and yes I’m still fixated on that), they’re still a bit sacrificed by the absence of any dialogue or really any specific scene. It doesn’t bother me TOO much, though, because it allows the story to better sell the enormity of the catastrophe when it’s not just something that happens to a few specific characters.
Lastly, while it’s used to great effect… is it still a comic book if you have a single image and a whole prose text on the side?
Brief tangent here: I have a few gripes about what the Legionnaires don’t try to do.
Obviously most Legionnaires wouldn’t be able to do much to help, but there are two specific ones that bother me. Or rather four, considering they both have their SW6 counterpart ready.
Where the heck was Element Lad during any of this!? He would have been tremendously helpful to get rid of the “proton jelly”. Obviously you don’t HAVE to make him get rid of the problem, but at least throw some technobabble to say his powers don’t work on that stuff or that Earth is too damaged. At the very, VERY least, couldn’t he have transmuted some of the shields for the flying cities into Inertron?
The other weird case is Brainiac 5. At least for once he accomplishes SOMETHING, but once again I have to ask: where the heck is his force field!? He seems to have completely forgotten about his signature technology, to the point that I don’t think he’s used it ONCE in this era! I buy that his belt wouldn’t be enough to cover a whole city, but not something between that and nothing? Really!?
With all of the above, you might have expected me to give this issue a much lower score. But I have to admit that if you take this as a standalone story, it still delivers a powerful emotional punch.
For once in this era, without being needlessly mean and cruel about it.
The final pages in particular… the civilians staying behind waiting for the end, Devlin’s final acknowledgment that his ancestral home is no more… are still incredible.
Typically when the 5YL attempts to do something deep, I roll my eyes at its constant screw-ups that end up signifying nothing.
This is the lone case where I can see it might have reached what it was trying to do, if only it had better preparation.
We are legion
27 active Legionnaires
4 reserve members
32 resigned members
16 deceased members
79 people have been members
62 people have been rejected
This is a watershed moment for several reasons.
While the obvious one is the destruction of Earth, there’s also the fact that it’s the last issue with Keith Giffen credited as a writer. He’s going to still be on pencils next issue.
It also marks a change for this retrospective because, from this point forward, I haven’t read MOST of the Volume 4 issues remaining in this era. So I’m going to be slightly more blind than usual.
I do know that there’s going to be some tonal shift from this point forward (although don’t be too optimistic, we’re still not done with the depression).
Based on all the above, I’ve decided to follow some of the reader suggestions from back when I began this era. While I’m still lumping the entire 5YL into a single section, this first half is still distinct enough to get its own Legion Awards! Stay tuned for that soon.
And finally, because of the abrupt Giffen departure, this issue was surrounded by a couple of legends. Various versions were around: that Giffen destroyed Earth out of spite for being fired, that Giffen destroyed Earth because nobody was paying attention to the book, and that the reason for why Giffen was fired was that he wanted to decide which Legionnaires survived by drawing names out of a hat. The truth is… not all that different from the legend.
K.C. Carlson was the Legion’s editor at this time, when reportedly Giffen was debating whether to remain on the book or not.
According to a 1999 interview (source by www.cbr.com):
His plan was this: the SW6ers were the real Legionnaires, and the “adults” were clones created by the Dominators circa Adventure #348-349ish – so for the last 20 years or so, we had been reading the Legion of Cloned Super-Heroes. The adults’ secret programming would kick in and the two teams (kid SW6 and adult LSH) would have a “massive battle” to the death — with the victims chosen at random, their names literally pulled out of a hat by the writer(s). Then after it was all over, the two teams would make up, then the senior team would then leave United Planets space for the Vega System and call themselves THE OMEGA MEN in their own book. KC at this point said, basically, “No way, this is not going to happen”, and that made up Giffen’s mind to leave the series.
From the same source, however, Giffen later corrected the record.
He only planned that “some” would die, considerably less than half, perhaps 5 to 10, in the battle to free Earth from the Dominion. After that, the older Legionnaires were going to be given Earth and the defense of the UP headquarters, while the younger team were going to the edges of UP space and act as the last line of defense, in a new book to be called The Omega Men.
As readers, we often consider the editors the villains who are constantly preventing the writers from reaching greatness… but SOMETIMES, editors take the right call.
I believe this is the case. Not only we risked having a Clone Saga debacle, but turn part of the Legion into the new Omega Men? What the heck was Giffen smoking!?!?
But as for the legend regarding the destruction of Earth… it’s close to the truth.
Keith says that he bumped off Earth because no one was paying attention, and he’s right. The book was editorially transitioning again, and the Earth blowing up issue wound up being my first. However, not many people know that TPTB had noticed what Keith was doing, and as soon as I started, they asked that that issue not be published. I had to fight for its publication, because that issue was virtually complete when I walked in the door. It was suggested it be cancelled, but it was so close to publication that trashing it would have thrown the schedule completely off, and I didn’t want to start by making the book late.
KC CARLSON
It’s worth mentioning that the teaser for the story that was published in the letters page of #34 sounds suspiciously close to what was eventually published.
Blowing up the Earth to get back at the editors would be, again, the most Giffen thing imaginable.
But I do have my doubts about one detail from rest of KC Carlson’s story.
I also understood that several hoops had to be jumped through to get Neil Gaiman to sign off on the Death cameo, and I didn’t want that to go to waste, because I thought it was a good bit. Although I had nothing creatively to do with that issue, I was happy to fight for it, because I thought it was an excellent piece of work.
KC CARLSON
That’s a bit suspect. While it was common knowledge that Neil Gaiman was very reluctant to have his Sandman characters appear in the rest of the DC Universe… Death had a cameo on Ambush Bug: Nothing Special, which had been published only 3 months earlier.
I have a really hard time believing a speaking cameo on Ambush Bug was easier to get approved than a single non-speaking image for the destruction of Earth.
