by Pete Goodrich

For a long time, the ‘Standard of LSH Excellence’ for me has been the long-ago Legion of Super-Heroes Volume 4. Following the ‘Baxter’ series (I believe known as such due to the better stock of paper used to print) started in 1989 and ran up until 1994; when Zero Hour hit and revamped the Legion from top to bottom. But all I’m going to cover are the first 38 issues of this series. For these are amongst the best revisionist super-hero/sci comics I have known, and so few people remember them now. I've never seen anything like it since.

Sure, the Legion of Super-Heroes has always been somewhat scorned in the past. Maybe it was the names? I’m willing to bet that had something to do with it. All the ‘Lad’s’ and ‘Lasses’ do sound kind of cheese, if you know what I mean. So I’m sure that when people think ‘Legion’ the first thing they think of is “Dipshit Lad versus the Space Dragons!” and then write it off as silver age garbage and never look back. But LSH v4 (as I will refer to the run for the rest of this article) is solid, space drama. They don’t run from their admittedly cheesy past, but they use it. And they use it well.

I’m a big continuity fan in comics. I like it- no, I love it when a title reaches back and uses what was done in the past to craft something new and different. And v4 does not shy away from what was done in the past instead they use it to make something that was quite contemporary for the time, and holds up even today. Well, holds up if you’re a tremendous geek for continuity, character development, and the 9 panel grid. I loved the 9 panel grid.

The majority of the issues were done by Keith Giffen, Tom and Mary Bierbaum, and Al Gordon. Brandon Peterson, Paris Cullins, Coleen Doran, and Jason Pearson all worked on the series as well; my favorite of the bunch being Jason Pearson's work on the title. I think it's some of Keith Giffen’s best work, before he ate that page of acid that led him to the style he used on Image’s Trencher. Don't get me wrong, I really like Giffen's more abstract style as well. But I really appreciate the dirty future he gives us in v4, it truly suits the darker 30th century that these issues takes place in. And as Giffen did the art chores on the earlier LSH series (written by current DC overlord Paul Levitz) it's really fitting to have him draw the broken down future of his own series.

Warning: While the majority of what is to follow will be a straight forward explanation of what happens and what works in a given issue, I may refer to some concepts that are in fact perfectly natural for a LSH fan, but not so for others. I’ll try to address all of them in the body here, but if I miss something feel free to bring it up in our forums.

Legion of Super-Heroes V4, #1:
5 Years Later

Not unlike the current wave of “One Year Later” DCU titles (could they have gotten the idea for that from here?...after all Keith Giffen is deeply involved in 52) this starts off in 2994, Five Years after the conclusion of the previous series. I only recently found those issues in a quarter bin a year ago. The close of that series wasn't all that special. This is a setup issue, giving us the background of what has happened to Earth and to the United Planets (like the space UN) since that five years has passed. Basically, everything is screwed. The UP has collapsed into bankruptcy, Earth has broken away from the UP (as have other worlds) entirely, and the Legion of Super-Heroes has been disbanded.

We don't get a full picture of how dark the universe has become since the Legion and UP fell apart, but we do get little slices. Rokk "Cosmic Boy" Krinn is on his home planet of Braal, left in ruins after a failed war with neighboring planet Imsk. We get a little Rambo moment from Rokk as he flashes back to something known as Venado Bay; where the former team leader had lost his powers. He is then recruited by teamate Reep "Chameleon Kid" Daggle to restart the Legion, in an effort to well; be super-heroes. We don't get to see how fully messed up the universe is at this point, but it's coming.

We get to see bits of other former members, like Dirk "Sun Boy" Morgna; who is a government shill for Earthgov. Earthgov being the ruling body of our planet. We learn as the series goes on that theres a lot of shady business going on behind the scenes at Earthgov. We also get a moment with Salu "Shrinking Violet" Digby, as she is dishonorably discharged from the Imskian army; where she too has the hard-bitten war veteran thing going on. She leaves the army prison, and heads out to join up with Ayla "Light Lass" Ranzz elsewhere. We also get a scene in the dark with someone sketchy, who'd just been released from prison to attend to some nefarious details.

This was some serious comic book to me. I knew these guys as the heroes with the silly code names and the doofy costumes, and here they are and everything is so grim, and...well gritty. I don't like coining thisphrase; as is gotten something of a bad rap to it. But face it: the grim and gritty approach to superheroics can be awesome if it's handled right. And here; it was.

The backup text features lend more insight into what happened to the universe since we last saw the Legion. An Omnicom (think futuristic Blackberry) entry details how the United Planets had suffered a massive economic collapse and fell apart, a pair of documents detailing the hostility between Earthgov and the LSH, and finally an advertisement for condos situated in the former LSH headquarters, staffed by Validus-styled robots. Would you want a Roomba made to look like an interplanetary destroyer? …me too.

SIGN OF THE TIMES: The back cover features an ad for ‘Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” on VHS. I'd forgotten about all the 'funny' fake reviews from Socrates and such they used for that ad campaign. I guess a bad joke from Genghis Khan is still better than Roger Ebert calling it a turdburger. And inside the back cover, we have an old DC checklist, and also ‘news with Johnny DC.’ In this issue we see an announcement that David Lloyd and Grant Morrison will be doing a little fill-in on Hellblazer issues #26-27. And they did, and those were awesome.

Legion of Super-Heroes V4, #2:
…no title. I’m as susprised as you.

Now again: there's going to be some silly names for these people. Bear in mind a lot of these characters were supposed to be from the future, not from Earth, and were created in the Silver Age. So we're going to get some goofy stuff here. Roll with it. It's no worse than Knightsabre, Bloodwraith, or Killgore. In fact, I'll argue that "Matter-Eater Lad" is a lot less lame than "Warstrike."

Former "Ultra Boy" Jo Nah is back on his home world of Rimbor, and is smuggling ersatz ‘Silverale,’ Silverale being not unlike the Red Bull of the 30th century. The Khunds (evil alien empire, they showed up in the Rann-Thanagar war, IIRC) send in a pair of android assassins in to take him out, but mainly to get his sidekick Kono, she being a traitor of some sort to the Khund race. So we get some fight scene, and after the fight scene we get a little slice of what had happened with Jo and his longtime love Tinya "Phantom Girl" Wazzo. It did not end well. We also get a moment with Shvaughn Erin (old school Legion ally) being spied upon by Circe, director of the Earthgov secret police. It’s sketchy. This is only scratching the surface as to how sketchyEarthgov really was.

Oh, and at the end of the issue we get to see who the shadowy character was from the end of issue 1: it’s Roxxas the space pirate. He's on the move, and ready to cause some problems. Before you write this off as cheesy bullshit, he’s not the kind of space pirate who’d make you walk the ‘space plank’ (I don’t think…) but the kind of space pirate who committed genocide on the planet Trom, home of LSH member Element Lad. And like I said, get over the names.

The 9-panel grid (Giffens layout of choice back then, likely inspired from the same layout being used so prominently in Watchmen) really impresses on one particular page. An explosion of a city block, broken up into nine separate but connected panels. Good stuff.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES: News with Johnny DC mentions 'star in the making' Chris Bachalo, there’s a free poster for the horror movie “Shocker” (saw it, there's a cameo from John Tesh in the middle of it but aside from that there's no redeeming value to this film) in the middle of the book, and the back cover as an ad for “Speed Zone,” starring ‘big stars like’ Melody Anderson, Peter Boyle, Donna Dixon, and John Candy. Yeah, 'big stars.' Not classy enough to earn the rights to be a Cannonball Run sequel.

Legion of Super-Heroes V4, #3:
Still Untitled.

In this issue we see Blok (my favorite Legionairre) die. I dug this character a lot; he was prominently featured in one of the very first LSH comics I'd ever read, aside from his own natural perks (made of stone, super-strong, Swamp Thingy speech patterns) and this issue bummed me out a lot. When I was 14 and reading this, I think I consoled myself by convincing myself that they killed him off because he was just too much cooler than the rest of the LSH put together, and more powerful to boot. And today I realize that I was so very right.

Roxxas the Butcher (who if I remember correctly in his earliest appearances did not wear lipstick or dress like Austin Powers) takes him down on behalf of the Dominators, the banana-headed aliens behind the long past DCU mega event “Invasion.” In this issue we see that the Dominators are pulling the strings behind Earthgov, and so we can also surmise that they were the ones behind the smear campaign and government harassment that eventually led to the LSH dissolving. Roxxas was loosed into the wld from Labyrinth (space prison linked to a tiny red star by a bolt of electricity- shit Morrison, do something with THAT idea) to try and put a stop to the Legion reforming, hence him blowing Blok up ino a pile of rubble.
We also learn that Science Police (it sounds better than Secret Police. Also, they're not a secret.) officer Shvaughn Erin is working behind the scenes on behalf of a resistance group, presumably to bring down Earthgov. More on that in subsequent issues.

On Winath we see that a number of former Legionairres are all living together in an interstellar, clothing optional farming community, the former Saturn Girl (Imra Ardeen), Lightning Lad (Garth Ranzz), Lightning Lass (Ayla Ranzz), Lightning Lord (Mekt Ranzz, a reformed villain), and the newly-released-from-an-Imskian prison Shrinking Violet (henceforth to be referred to as 'Vi.') are all together, so Roxxas mails the broken pieces of Blok to them for a funny. The bastard. And here they plant the seeds for what was at the time a controversial character development for a pair of characters...the seeds of a love thang, were born.

Lesbians? In a comic book? In 1989?
Shocking! And more on this later. A lot more.

We also get a glimpse of Mordru, the Dark Lord who some readers only know from the pages of JSA. Well he started in the pages of the LSH, tho admittedly when he started out he was just some old wizard archetype in a Thor helmet. Now he’s ruling his own world, and using a series of mystically-modified Probes to spy on a number of former Legionairres. The Probes are a very interesting population in this series, and one that doesn’t ever really get explained as much as I would have liked. Blue and eyeless, they seem to be used as some sort of weird android administrative assistants in every corner of the galaxy. It's like if the Blue Man Group and our office copier had babies. Oh yeah, Mordru also has a Green Lantern in captivity (former LSH supporting guy Rond Vidar) and is torturing him for giggles. Eeeeevil.

Also the text pages give some more background info on the Winathian contingent of ex-Legionairres, and some detail on the Validus Plague, which will lead us to the reintroduction of Brainiac 5; one of my favorite characters from this new series. The letters pages (remember letters pages?!) has bios on the creators behind this title, and an ad for a subscription to the comic book adaptation of the TV syncated Superboy series from long ago. Smallville 1.0!

SIGNS OF THE TIMES: The “News With Johnny DC” and the back cover of the comic both pimp the hell out of the upcoming VHS edition of “Batman,” for only $24.95. Added bonus within that VHS scial release: that Diet Coke ad that Michael Gough did way back when. They also have an ad for the very first (and arguably the very best) Elseworlds, “Gotham By Gaslight.”

We’ll stop here for now, as the next few issues take us into some heavily-convoluted territory. Okay, it’s sort of convoluted here as well but the next few issues are a bit of a continuity nightmare that stemmed from the Superman relaunch, so We might as well start fresh with those. Stick with it, once we get past these “hey, we need to retcon a bunch of shit” issue we start getting into some high quality space opera.

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