Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #19 (1991)
written by Keith Giffen, Tom & Mary Bierbaum
pencils & cover by Keith Giffen
Last time we blew up the Moon. Now things get worse.
The story begins with the destruction of the Moon. If you were reading only the Legion book and not the Superman crossover, this would have been completely out of nowhere: there isn’t even a caption in the story telling you where this happened.
It was also out of nowhere in the Superman story, sure, but a caption would have been nice!!!
As if destroying the Moon wasn’t enough, this also results in the destruction of Medicus One, the space station where we recently saw Dr. Gym’ll. So he’s probably also dead.
We get pages and pages of destruction porn.
It’s well-penciled, and it even manages to break The Grid for a while, but I feel like this isn’t really selling the fact that THE MOON WAS BLOWN UP… I have a reeeally hard time believing Earth survives AT ALL.
There’s some good news in the middle of this tragedy: a Dominator warship was also destroyed, and also… no, that’s about it.
Well okay, I suppose the fact that this makes Circe angry at the Dominators would count as a positive development. If I had any idea of what kind of character she is.
“A Dominator dies with honor”? Since when have we seen a Dominator LIVE with honor?
And speaking of death, this is the last stand of Circadia Senus.
Although he makes an appearance way later in this era, so SOMEHOW he survives.
I should point out that none of this was planned by the Dominators, since Dev-Em initiated the “Triple Strike Program” without their consent.
Had the event actually happened in the Legion book and it was the culmination of a proper subplot, it COULD have worked to show the sad irony that even supposed master planners like the Dominators could not foresee everything.
As it stands, it’s utter chaos to me.
The last part of the Triple Strike involves the detonation of the Power Spheres, the source of power of Earth’s cities.
Which means even more destruction porn.
Including a list of at least 120 cities, some of which are not fully legible.
If you are wondering HOW THE HELL IS ANYONE STILL ALIVE ON THE PLANET AT THIS POINT… keep wondering!
Because the rest of the issue is the ending of the Ultra Boy storyline, which is COMPLETELY DISCONNECTED FROM ANYTHING ELSE.
I did not care about the Ultra Boy plot in the previous issues. This COULD have been potentially interesting, but having Nabu show up… that’s the guy behind the Doctor Fate helmet… just can’t compete with the fact we were just shown the greatest cataclysm in history and now THE STORY BASICALLY CHANGED THE CHANNEL!!!
But don’t think for a second that we can avoid depression.
And then… I have no idea of what is happening anymore.
This random woman finds Ultra Boy…
…and works through Ultra Boy’s trauma.
I never do this. But I’m going to just post the two full pages that follow the relationship between Ultra Boy and this woman, so that you can fully appreciate how both overwritten and underwritten this feels.
Across these TWO PAGES we speed through Ultra Boy falling in love with her and even having a baby. Without even seeing them.
Until Nabu puts up his helmet and confronts the woman, who turns out isn’t a woman at all but one of the Chaos Lords who wants to use Ultra Boy to reach the future.
Then Nabu kills her, after she briefly shapeshifts into Phantom Girl.
Ultra Boy is both utterly oblivious to her nature and completely useless against Nabu.
EXACTLY MY THOUGHTS ON THIS SUBPLOT, NABU.
In fact this whole thing ends with Nabu just sending Ultra Boy where he started.
And so we end the issue, which I remind you STARTED WITH THE MOON BLOWING UP and continued with OVER A HUNDRED CITIES EXPLODING, with Ultra Boy finally moving past his grief for the death of Phantom Girl.
Good for him.
BILLIONS OF PEOPLE ARE DEAD BY THE WAY, CAN WE ADDRESS THAT?????
And I don’t mean in a text page where the Science Police opens an investigation!!!
The Grid: 16 pages out of 24
5 pages with an Imperfect Grid
no pages without a grid
2 splash pages
1 text page
Legion significance: 10/10
Yeah you might have guessed that BLOWING UP THE MOON is important. But it’s also the start of a long chain of events that, believe it or not, will cause an even greater catastrophe.
Oh who am I kidding, this is the 5YL era, you already know everything always gets worse.
Silver Age-ness: 1/10
The sheer destruction should logically bring it to a zero, but the fact that the population has even the SLIGHTEST chance of surviving has a bit of Silver Age-ness to it.
Depression scale: ∞/10
The Moon blew up. Billions of people are dead. The heroes are literally nowhere to be seen.
Except one guy stuck in the past who doesn’t do anything and contributes nothing.
Does it stand the test of time? 0/10
The scenes of destruction are well-drawn and quite spectacular, but I’m just numbed by relentless destruction and darkness and depression.
What more can I say at this point. This is when I lost all faith in this era.
From this point onward, I have not read the majority of issues before this retrospective.
And the ones I have already read, I have done so ONCE and never felt any desire to go back.
The only exception is the very last storyline that intersects Zero Hour.
And we are just about a third of the way for the main book.
Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #20 (1991)
written by Keith Giffen, Tom & Mary Bierbaum, Al Gordon
pencils & cover by Keith Giffen
Remember how the first issue made a big deal of the war between Cosmic Boy’s and Shrinking Violet’s planets going to war during the Five Year Gap
This is finally going to show it. Just in case you needed some war to distract you from all the cataclysms.
We begin with a text page, something unusual for the series, that emphasizes how the Dominators are going to deny they were behind the Moon’s destruction.
Despite this, a Dominator fleet is moving back to Earth just in case. Notice that not every Dominator is sold on the fixation on this planet.
We ALSO begin the humiliation conga that will absolutely wreck Sun Boy.
He was so close to one of exploding Power Spheres that only his powers prevented him from dying… but he WISHES he died.
Remember that Earth is NOT part of the United Planets anymore… so the United Planets are not going to be of any help.
The Dominator ships are basically coming to Earth to take it over. And nobody really believes Superman was even involved.
So if you’re keeping track:
A) The Moon blew up
B) Billions of people are dead
C) Earth has no allies
D) The Dominators have invaded the planet
Man it sure sucks that THERE ARE NO SUPERHEROES THAT COULD BE DOING ANYTHING TO HELP, doesn’t it?
But at least Devlin O’Ryan, a guy who up to this point HASN’T DONE ANYTHING, is still alive.
Believe it or not, but the most significant part of these two issues isn’t the destruction of the Moon, or even the invasion of Earth.
It’s the revelation that the Dominators have stacked something in the “SW6 batch” and that is now loose. That’s going to be a dominant (pun intended) factor of the rest of the era.
With the exception of Ultra Boy’s adventures in the past, we haven’t seen ANY Legionnaire since the Moon blew up.
They must be up to something important, right?
Well, the first thing we see (in a frankly confusing sequence) is that Laurel Gand is disguising herself as Celeste Rockfish because… I don’t know man, I have no idea where this is going.
But I do know:
1) that they’ve made it a point to highlight that Laurel is a towering amazon, so she really should stand out more
2) Celeste Rockfish STILL HASN’T DONE ANYTHING, why should I care about her?
3) THE FREAKING MOON EXPLODED, CAN ANYONE PLEASE DEAL WITH THAT FIRST????
I hate to obnoxiously stress on this point, and I’m typically all for breaking up the tension with some comedy… but BILLIONS OF PEOPLE ARE DEAD, can we PLEASE deal with that FIRST and THEN move to laugh at Kono taking pictures of Kent Shakespeare while he’s in the shower!?
Or the fact that White Witch is contacted in her sleep by… I believe the spirit of Amethyst?
The closest thing to dealing with the destruction of the Moon is Chameleon Boy wondering if Superman was responsible, only for the series to be ashamed to even mention Supes.
Shrinking Violet WAS RIGHT THERE when Dev-Em and Linear Man detonated the Moon!
Do we learn how she feels about not having been able to stop them in time?
Do we discover how the heck she survived despite being at ground zero?
No, we learn that she had her mechanical leg replaced with a blue one from a Probe.
This gets as close as spelling out that she’s in a relationship with Lighting Lass as 1991 would allow. That’s all well and good, but…
Shrinking Violet was at ground zero at the explosion.
Billions are dead.
Earth is basically in a state of war.
And her first priority was to change her leg for a new one? This is the same Shrinking Violet who didn’t want to wait to replace it with an organic one because it would have taken her out of action for too long???
Night Lass hears the bad news about Sun Boy…
…but at least Saturn Girl gave birth to her second set of twins.
And then once again the issue basically flips the channel, moving to having the Punisher Cosmic Boy narrate what happened to him during the war.
But it wasn’t just people from his planet in this war, because the human Kent Shakespeare was also there for some reason.
I could get involved in this part of the story if I hadn’t already been desensitized to the amount of destruction and depression of this series and if anybody was recognizable.
Speaking of things I no longer care about, Cosmic Boy is revealed to have been the one to scar Shrinking Violet’s eye.
Also Ivy, the kid friend of Kent Shakespeare, has some kind of plant-based power.
If I remember correctly there were plans to reveal that she’s some kind of plant elemental, but this never goes nowhere.
You know how badly the Legion has decided to stop caring about the various disasters?
THE FORMER SUBSTITUTE HEROES are the first one to actually comment on the effects on Earth of the Moon’s destruction!!!
Obligatory complain about the missing codenames: Infectious Lass is talking to Color Kid here.
Not to Stone Boy, who is in the same panel she is, while Color Kid is not.
You COULD recognize Color Kid from the previous scene, given his unusual eyes and the rainbow on the face, even if you don’t remember his name is Ulu Vakk.
And good luck figuring out the other one is Stone Boy, since he doesn’t have any recognizable features and doesn’t demonstrate his powers!
The bad news is that Shvaughn Erin reports the Science Police has found the Dominator chambers beneath Metropolis.
Matter-Eater Lad has joined Invisible Kid II’s resistance.
And we close with Circe rebelling against the Dominators…
…which makes Bounty, yet another character who hasn’t done anything so far, question her intentions to kill Circe.
The last page is a splash page depicting… uhm… a little help here?
The text page brings us even more details and background on the battle that took the spotlight from the destruction of the Moon.
The Grid: 21 pages out of 24
no pages without a grid
1 splash page
2 text pages
Legion significance: 6/10
Despite all the talk, is the battle of Venado Bay REALLY that important?
There’s the revelation of the SW6 batch, but since we don’t know yet what it is it’s surprisingly lower than expected.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Nope!
Depression scale: 10/10
Billions are dead. The United Planets won’t help, the Legion won’t help, Superman won’t help and his involvement is swept under the rug, and Sun Boy suffers a fate worse than death.
Does it stand the test of time? 0/10
Same problems of the previous issue. I can’t get invested in the individual shenanigans of the Legionnaires, or even in a tragic battle of their past, if they continuously ignore the apocalyptic events surrounding them.
We are legion
10 active Legionnaires
0 reserve members
35 resigned members
11 deceased members
56 people have been members
58 people have been rejected