from Legion of Super-Heroes #9 (July 1990) by T. & M. Bierbaum, Keith Giffen, Paris Cullins & Bob Lewis

This is Laurel Gand, the Supergirl-replacement/continuity implant that popped up in the Legion’s “soft” reboot (a magical reconstruction of the universe’s history — don’t ask) that followed the previous soft reboot (the “five year gap” that 1) pushed the Legion from 1000 years in the future to 1005 years in the future, and 2) made everything darker and grittier).

That particular image was from the flashback issue explaining just who this new Laurel Gand person was. I sorta liked that costume, reflecting the color scheme and design of her ancestor/teammate Lar Gand (AKA Mon-El), as well as the costume of the no-longer-in-that-particular-continuity-for-the-time-being Supergirl. Laurel Gand’s regular costume also reflected the original Supergirl’s, sort of, in that she wore a headband…but she also had some serious butt-floss shorts, which did not reflect Supergirl (at least not until Michael Turner got his hands on her).

She also took on Supergirl’s romance with Brainiac 5:

That’s from one of the many text pages from early in the post five-year-gap issues, usually explaining what the readers missed in said five years. In this case, this “Legion Confidential” report (for in-story fans of the Legion — a nice touch of realism, I always thought) adds further continuity-plug support for this new character.

Well, I wasn’t expecting to churn out a couple paragraphs about Laurel Gand today. See what reading tons of Legion comics can do to you?

Another thing I’ve been meaning to address is the multiple reboots of the series. We know the big reboots, where Legion continuity was started from scratch (Zero Hour, the recent reboot with the Mark Waid series), and there were, as I mentioned, soft reboots …attempts at revitalizing/reworking the series without ignoring what came before (the five year gap, Legion Lost, etc.). The Legion Omnicom has a good overview of all these shenanigans. It all feels like a desperate flailing-about — repeated attempts at trying to find a take on the Legion that’ll click with a larger fan audience than the die-hard Legion fans who’ll read anything with the Legion logo on it. The Teen Titans franchise sort of went through this after the New Teen Titans series ended, but sales are reasonably strong for the new Teen Titans book(s) now.

The most recent Legion series reboot started strongly enough, but now sales seem to be back down to what pretty much every other Legion series has sold over the last ten or fifteen years. (Judging by our store’s sales, anyway…I haven’t checked actual sales figures — or what passes for ’em — but I expect they’ll at least in part reflect my observations.) DC’s been trying to build interest and curiosity (and, apparently, some measure of frustration) in the team, by having at least two or three distinct, and mutually-exclusive, versions of the Legion running around in current titles…leading into a tie-in to the imminent Final Crisis crossover. Whether that’ll revive interest in the Legion again remains to be seen…I’m thinking likely not, though there ain’t nothing wrong with publishing a George Perez-drawn Legion comic in the attempt.

Lemme ask you guys…I’ve been a die-hard Legion fan for nearly 30 years now. I’ve stuck through the reboots and continuity brouhahas all this time because I happen to like the concept of the team, and the interactions among this particular group of characters, and all the goofiness that comes with it. How many of you have been reading Legion for an extended period of time? How many of you were Legion fans, but had enough of the various tinkerings with the formula and dropped the book? How many of you came on with one of the various reboots, attracted by the fresh starts they offered? Please let me know in the comments.

And please forgive my “laser-proof breasts” joke. But, honestly, look at that panel! How else am I supposed to take that? (EDIT: And I’m apparently not the first to point out this panel for a little good-natured mockery, which surprises me not in the slightest.)

from Legion of Super-Heroes #59 (April 1989)

Me (sorting out some comics from a purchased collection): “Huh…what’s up with this turtle on the left?”

Employee Aaron: “Oh, that’s Slash. He’s like an evil Mutant Turtle.”

Me: “Oh, c’mon. His name is not ‘Slash.'”

Aaron: “I’m not joking…it really is.”

Me: “Well, let me look, then….”

Me: “Oh, well…what do you know.”

And I’m assuming Slash is not shouting his name, but rather letting the sound effect of his claws whipping through the air provide his introduction. I wonder how many people he’s done this to over the years think his name is something like “WHIIISH” — that’s not nearly as menacing.

By the way, there’s all kinds of weird-ass stuff going on in the Archie Turtles series. When the giant floating cow-head that the Turtles occasionally ride around in is one of the least bizarre things, you know you’ve got one peculiar comic. I never paid much attention to this book in the past, figuring it was just a watered-down version of the original Turtles. But, having looked through a number of them, and having some of the old plots described to me by former Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures reader Employee Aaron…well, I may need to reconsider my earlier dismissal.

images from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #24 (Sept. 1991) by Garret Ho, Jim Lawson, Brian Thomas & Rod Ollerenshaw

Here is the cover for Hex #10 (June 1986):

As you’ll note, there is a blurb advertising the Legion’s “surprise appearance” — yes, I’m aware it’s not really a surprise if it’s full-on spelled out like that:

The “surprise appearance” is as follows…the Legion shows up in their time bubble, startling Hex:

The Legion realize they’re in the wrong time period:

…And they split, leaving a puzzled Hex in their wake:

I was a little disappointed when I first read this, 22 years ago, as I was a Hex and a Legion fan, and I was looking forward to them meeting. I realize now that a crossover event was never promised…all they said was “appearance,” not “Hex, Wildfire and Polar Boy versus the dual menace of Grimbor the Chainsman and Reinhold Borsten.”

Here’s the other side of the “crossover” from Legion of Super-Heroes #23 (June 1986). What did amuse me about the Hex side of this encounter is that the heroes didn’t even acknowledge Hex’s presence…here, there’s some new dialogue revealed indicating that they’re surprised by Hex, and wonder if he’s a threat:

Also note the info-dump in Hex’s thought balloon for the Legion readers…apparently added after the fact, as the lettering in that balloon is slightly different from the rest of the book’s (which may be hard to notice in the scan).

I wonder if Hex picked up any new readers from this. Or how much of a sales bump this achieved. Not too much, probably, since the series was canceled within the year. Shame, as it was an entertaining series in a real “B” movie sort of way. Not good, not good for you…but darned if it wasn’t a fun read.

Images from Hex #10 by Michael Fleisher, Ron Wagner & Carlos Garzon; Legion of Super-Heroes #23 by Paul Levitz, Steve Lightle, Greg LaRocque & Mike DeCarlo.

Okay, I said I was going to discuss something more about Lex Luthor ever since I posted this bit of business about his Swamp Thing appearances. I don’t know…I had a bug up my butt about something, but Lord knows what it was now. Mostly, it’s just my bemusement at the character’s history from the post-’80s reboot of the Superman titles. You know, the reboot that was supposed to make Superman’s history a fresh start, so that things could be rebuilt from the ground up and kept consistent?

I realize I’m a bit unusual in regards to the Superman books, in that I’ve been buying the Super-books in an uninterrupted run longer than some of you reading this have been alive, which 1) depresses me immensely, and 2) means that I’ve been following the post-reboot continuity of the character since it started, and have thus followed all the twists, turns, and, particularly over the last few years, the increasing abandonment of maintaining a coherence to the character’s history. I’m pretty sure, for example, that the version of Krypton is current continuity is not the same Krypton presented to us in the Man of Steel mini-series.

Okay, it doesn’t really bother me, honest. If anything, I’m amazed that the Super-books maintained their internal consistency as long as they did. But after 20-something years and dozens of creative teams, things’ll get altered in deference to the story or, more likely, in deference to media adaptations. You can thank the Lois & Clark show for Married Superman, and you can thank Smallville for the return of young Luthor to Clark’s formative years. (Nothing new: you can thank the ’40s radio show for Jimmy Olsen and Kryptonite.*)

Again, none of this is any big deal. It’s obvious to me and anyone else who’ve been reading the Super-books since the ’80s reboot that inconsistencies have creeped in, but after all, it’s not as if we’re reading a novel with a planned-out plotline and an intended ending. It’s the ongoing story of a corporately-owned character that, ideally, will be published so long as there are readers, and if changes need to be made to keep things moving along, well, there you go.

But having read the current incarnation of Superman since its inception, the one element that sticks out the most is the progression of the Luthor character. The character we have now can not be the same character, with the same backstory, that was introduced in the reboot. I’ve already discussed it at length in this post from a couple of years ago, and, in light of the Mephisto “make it never was” hoohar from Spider-Man last year, my Neron explanation there sounds even more plausible.

Well, that’s a long row to hoe to basically say “did you know continuity glitches can creep into superhero books over two decades?” Reemphasizing: I’m amused, not annoyed. This sort of thing doesn’t get in the way of enjoying my funnybooks. It’s just that the reboot was such a big deal at the time that seeing elements of it shorn away over the years is…well. notable at the very least.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about Lex Luthor at the moment. Oh, and we were talking about the Silver Age Luthor’s sister, Lena Thorul, at the shop the other day…yes, we were, really, don’t look lke that. And in my Googling, there’s apparently some internet theorizing regarding Smallville‘s Chloe Sullivan and her connection to Lena. Who knew?

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In other news:

• A pal of mine is stunned, stunned, that people in his age group haven’t heard of a particular superhero. It doesn’t surprise me a lot, in that the ephemera of childhood can easily be forgotten, and unless you’re mired in it like, say, me, I can see how someone might not remember the name of a character they hadn’t seen or thought about in 30 years. This doesn’t make it any less sad, of course.

  There was a time when someone saying “Who’s Jack Benny?” would have been as unthinkable and unlikely as saying “Who’s Mickey Mouse?” or “Who’s Oprah?” Alas, I’ve come across a number of people over the years who’ve never heard of Mr. Benny. Everything has its time, I guess, even this character.

• Regarding my new members of the Avengers post: I realize that any team with Herbie on it would effectively make that team unstoppable. Indeed, he’d make the rest of the team redundant. But if the Justice League could have Superman and the Flash on the team while still giving Aquaman the occasional thing to do, then Herbie could be a team player, too.

  And you all realize I just included Scrappy Doo in the choices to be irritating, right?

• A reminder: don’t end your stories with “The Beginning….” Honestly, stop that.
• There have been some Haloscan glitches lately, affecting comment counts and, more importantly, affecting display of the comments themselves. The comment count is no big whoop…it’s just an ego blow for me, when I look at my post and see no one’s posted any comments, and I weep my blogger tears. But if the comments don’t display…just reload the comment window a time or three and they should show up. I haven’t noticed any problems in the last couple of hours, but it’s been happening for about two days, so I thought I should note it here.

  As pal Dorian likes to say, “ah…the reliability of free technologies.” Haloscan’s been pretty good, overall, so I’m not complaining too much.

* Yes, I know there were minor comic references (one unnamed, one unpublished) to these particular elements of the Superman mythos prior to the radio show.

This is a space pirate captain:

This is a member of her crew:

Here’s that member of the crew getting pasted by Ultra Boy:

Their spacesuits have skulls ‘n’ crossbones on them. Ooh, piratey:

The space pirate captain makes time with a pirated-up Ultra Boy:

In non-pirate news, Steve Ditko draws an appealing Phantom Girl:

from Legion of Super-Heroes #274 (April 1981)
by Gerry Conway, Steve Ditko & Frank Chiaramonte

CLICK TO MAKE AVENGE-IER

EDIT: Image revised…see comments. If you need to recast your vote, feel free.

A few items from the new DC solicitations:

Well, this is interesting…a trade paperback collection of Paul Kupperberg and Mike Mignola’s Phantom Stranger mini-series, rounded out by a reprinting of the multiple origin stories from Secret Origins #10. Given Mignola’s popularity (and the fact that he now has two big-budget Hollywood movies based on his Hellboy work), I’m surprised we haven’t seen more reprinting of his older material to take advantage of current interest. I think sooner or later we’ll get a Rocket Raccoon book from Marvel, since that character’s been popping up a bit more lately. Or a book of his collaborations with Bill Mantlo on Alpha Flight or Incredible Hulk.

X-Files Special #0 – Funny, I was just talking about the Topps X-Files series the other day with the employees, about how it was a “hot” comic that came out right in the midst of the collapsed comics market. Kinda curious about how we’re gonna order this new “Special” “#0” (stack the deck, why don’t you), since it’s been a while since anyone really cared about X-Files, like since about two or three seasons before the show was finally canceled*. I’m expecting this new X-Files comic to sell about on the same level as the recent Xena and Army of Darkness series — okay low-to-mid-level seller, with a small but loyal audience.

Really, honestly – God bless Rick Veitch. Army @ Love: The Art of War #1 — can’t wait.

The Un-Men #13 — The last issue, which is too bad. This ended up being a pretty good, dark-humored series, which unfortunately didn’t grab people with its less-than-strong opening. Ah, well…I don’t think this quite puts the kibosh on any future Swamp Thing related series, but I don’t expect we’ll be seeing any in the immediate future.

DC Universe Special: Ambush Bug #1 – Aside from the…unpleasantness, these old Ambush Bug stores are pretty funny. The Supergirl story is the weaker of the bunch, but does feature some nice latter-day Carmine Infantino art.

“Based on the upcoming March 6, 2009, Warner Bros. movie WATCHMEN, DC DIRECT brings both long-time and new fans of WATCHMEN what they crave: collectible action figures, intricately clothed 1:6 scale deluxe collector figures, exquisitely sculpted busts, and straight-from-the-set prop replicas! All products feature movie accurate likenesses and costume detailing!

“Get ready for a three-month WATCHMEN movie product extravaganza from DC Direct, beginning in January 2009 and continuing through the release of the WATCHMEN movie in March 2009.”

Hoo boy.

* Before any of you X-Files fans get your knickers in knots, lemme just note that I’m still watching the way past its sell-by date Smallville, so I’m not exactly taking the moral high ground here.

Sad to report that noted comics retailer Rory Root has passed away. I’ve never met him myself, but I’ve certainly been aware of his presence and influence in this industry.

His store’s website has been converted into a temporary memorial page. A new memorial site is in the works, and I’ll post the link to that one when it’s ready.

So long, Rory.