Legionnaires Annual #1 (1994)
written by Mark Waid & Ty Templeton
pencils by Paul Pelletier & Jeff Moy
cover by Paul Pelletier
Last of the 1994 Annuals that were Legion Elseworlds. And this one completely blows LSH v4 Annual #5 completely out of the water.
This is a space fantasy universe, and the story begins with Saturn Girl marrying Cosmic Boy through a ceremony by R.J.Brande.
Other than the marriage and the setting, another variation is that this Saturn Girl is the last survivor of Titan. Nothing will be made from this.
This universe also includes the best Ferro design ever.
Lightning Lad is against the wedding. What a shock (pun intended).
That’s because his brother Lightning Lord is out to kill the others, of course.
This requires an explanation. Not his intervention, but the reason why Storm from the X-Men was attending the wedding!
Seriously, who is the white-haired girl supposed to be?
Lightning Lad provides the backstory to this reality.
The Legionnaires are the defenders of Avalon, a paradise built by R.J.Brande with the help of Cosmic Boy.
Lightning Lad grew up wanting to become a member of the team, but had to abandon his dream to fight his evil brother. But now he’s ready.
Saturn Girl vouches for him with a mental scan…
…but becoming a member of the Legion of Avalon is going to be a tough journey.
The traitor who allowed Lightning Lord to slip by is Nemesis Kid, although to figure that out you’d have to either recognize his costume or remember his name is “Hart Druiter”.
Triad and Element Lad are re-imagined as clergy here. It strangely fits.
The execution of Nemesis Kid looks quite brutal! If I’m not mistaken, Element Lad is transmuting him while he’s conscious!
Despite Nemesis Kid mentioning the Miracle Machine, Cosmic Boy is quite insistent on the fact there is no such thing.
This one-page montage is making the Legionnaires more credible heroes than 16 issues of their regular series.
And THIS panel sells me Cosmic Boy as the core foundation of the Legion than the entire 5YL era.
In his defense though, the 5YL Cosmic Boy was a FAR better husband.
Although he does have reasons to complain, considering Saturn Girl is cheating on him in virtual reality!!!
I feel like maybe I should censor this.
Meanwhile a separate team is killed when their ship inexplicably malfunctions.
Things are so bleak that the Legionnaires insist on finding the Miracle Machine.
Whoa, bit of a jump there!
Is… is Dragonmage suddenly an actual character!?
His suggestion is just to ask Princess Projectra, but still, that’s already WAY more than the actual Dragonmage has done so far!!!
Dream Girl is mentioned, but her vision duties are taken over by Projectra.
So basically what already happened in Volume 3.
The way to finding the Miracle Machine requires a séance, which IS something that Projectra did back in the Silver Age too.
I wonder if those magic words are just random gibberish or if they contain some inside joke.
Unfortunately, Mordru has the Miracle Machine right now.
This is kind of my reaction whenever Mordru shows up for yet another disappointing saga.
Meanwhile, Lighting Lord shows up to convince his brother to join the Dark Circle.
When that doesn’t work, he leaves himself open to Saturn Girl shooting him…
…but Lightning Lad saves him.
He’s ALSO caught having an affair with Saturn Girl.
Yeah this is definitely helping you not look guilty.
Saturn Girl lets herself be captured, because apparently there was no way three superheroes (two of which have powers that work at distance) could stop both.
Sounds legit.
This results in Saturn Girl being accused of both treason (she let Lightning Lord escape) and infidelity.
I feel like having the betrayed husband be the judge isn’t the best idea.
And yet… Cosmic Boy is right here, isn’t he?
It’s not clear to me if Saturn Girl is on trial for both treason and infidelity, but either way, isn’t there enough evidence for both?
This results in the Legion being split in half, which is exactly what Lighting Lord was after.
I hope his appearance here is metaphorical, because if he’s managed to sneak past security FOR A THIRD TIME, you guys suck at this job!
Half of the team manages to find Mordru.
Seriously, IS the girl with white hair supposed to be someone we know?
I wondered if she was a black version of Dream Girl, but if that was the case she would’ve been in Projectra’s scene. The only other two black Legion girls in this period are Computo, who is clearly the one dressed in red, and Catspaw who looks nothing like her.
I am definitely reading too much into this and Pelletier&Moy just wanted to draw a hot woman, isn’t it?
Lightning Lad shows up from saving Saturn Girl from execution…
…to Cosmic Boy’s relief.
Okay so Lighting Lord managed to sneak past Avalon’s defenses AT LEAST twice, to the point of threating its… I’m going to say queen? That’s basically Saturn Girl’s role, right?
And now he has an army right next to its capital! Are we sure he really needed all this trickery to take over the place?
The rest of the team doesn’t have better luck, because Mordru has destroyed the Miracle Machine.
Now I’m wondering why he never did this in the main continuity… I feel like Mordru SHOULD know the Miracle Machine exists, right?
Well when you put it like THAT, you make it sound like it was always a stupid plan!
This Lightning Lord is ALMOST as brutal as the original, taking Cosmic Boy’s finger along with his Flight Ring!!!
And this is why you should never, in any reality, underestimate Saturn Girl.
The entire Legion returns to Avalon to defend it…
…thanks to Mordru being useful for the first time since probably 1968.
How is a single page without dialogue a better war between the Legion and the forces of darkness than the latest two Mordru plots?
Cosmic Boy dies after giving his blessing to the guy who was having cybersex with his wife.
And so we close with what looks suspiciously like the ending of a pilot episode of a series that won’t ever exist.
Does any of this show up in any regular continuity?
This is not the first time a romance between Saturn Girl and Cosmic Boy is introduced (we already saw that in the Legionnaires series proper), and it won’t be the last.
SHOULD any of this have happened in regular continuity?
As mentioned, I’m shocked that we never had a plot about Mordru wanting to take the Miracle Machine out of the equation.
Plus I firmly believe Ferro has never and will never look better than this.
Silver Age-ness: 2/10
Even the Legion in the 70s had better security than Avalon, and people were breaking into Legion HQ every other issue!!!
Does it stand the test of time? 8/10
The story isn’t anything groundbreaking, at times it can be rushed or a bit hard to follow, and the vast majority of characters do nothing but stay in the background.
But holy crap was this a breath of fresh air after so much drudgery. How is it possible than Elseworld where the Legion is mostly incompetent and where Saturn Girl marries Cosmic Boy only to cheat on him… STILL feels more like the Legion than anything we’ve had since 1989!?
While the characters are a bit flat, the worldbuilding is solid enough that I wouldn’t mind revisiting this reality.
The fact that this is the best-looking Legion since Giffen completely changed his style at the beginning of Volume 3 certainly helps.
This is also the first time in the entire 5YL era where revisiting a story I had already read significantly improved my opinion of it.
I used to think rather poorly of this (other than the artwork), but after having seen what the rest of this era had to offer…
We are legion
It’s a bit hard to be entirely sure of who is a member of this team and who is just a cameo.
Lightning Lass, Computo, Shadow Lass and Invisible Kid II are spotted in the background, but they are not acknowledged so they don’t count.
Element Lad and Triad at least are shown flying around with the team, so they ARE counted.
I’m also considering Princess Projectra, Karate Kid and Dream Girl not to be members, otherwise the Legionnaires would have interacted differently with them.
12 active members
-Saturn Girl
-Lightning Lad
-Ferro
-Leviathan
-Matter-Eater Lad
-Dragonmage
-Inferno
-Ultra Boy
-Chameleon Boy
-Shrinking Violet
-Element Lad
-Triad
5 deceased members
Nemesis Kid
Brainiac 5
Invisible Kid
Polar Boy
Cosmic Boy
17 people have been members
