Analysis Notes
| General |
The title of this series changed each year: L.E.G.I.O.N. ’89 to L.E.G.I.O.N. ’90 to L.E.G.I.O.N. ’91, and so on. The numbering
stayed the same. |
| This series came directly out of the Invasion mini-series,
which teamed up several
Legion-era races — including Khunds, Dominators, Daxamites, Gil’Dishpan,
and Imskians, plus some Vegan races from the Teen Titans continuity — to
attack Earth, intending to put stop to the power of the metagene, the genetic
signature which causes many humans under life-threatening stresses to spontaneously
gain super powers. One part of this was to imprison undesirable aliens (potential
Earth sympathizers), and another was to detonate a “gene bomb” on
Earth which would wipe out most extant metahumans. |
| Many of the members of L.E.G.I.O.N. were related to then-current
(pre-Zero Hour) Legionnaires: Vril Dox was the ancestor of Brainiac 5,
Lyrissa Mallor was the ancestor of Shadow Lass, and Strata and the Durlan
were from the same races as Blok and Chameleon Boy. (The Durlan would
later be revealed to be R.J. Brande, following meddling by the Time Trapper,
later revised to be by Glorith.) Post-Zero Hour, much of these connections
still remain true, although Blok has not yet appeared in the Legion (and
may not, since Dryad has been destroyed), the lineage
of Brainiac 5 isn’t clear, and while the Durlan was still swapped for (one
body of) Tinya Wazzo, he is presumably not R.J. Brande. |
| In doing analyses of issues of L.E.G.I.O.N., we will presume
that all stories are still valid in the postboot continuity, but we will
make special note of things which have been invalidated and need to be
processed differently in the
revised continuity. |
| Cover |
This is a parody of the classic Uncle Sam “I Want
You” poster. Not that Vril Dox will give these folks a choice. |
| 1 |
An occasional epithet of Brainiac 5 was “Moons
of Colu”; note that
there are two moons seen here. |
| Per 11:3, Colu has a 50/50 split between water and land. (Compare to Earth, which is about 70% water.) The purple area here could
be either, but whichever it is, it is less than 50% of what is visible,
and thus there must be a reverse situation
on the planet’s other side. |
| 2:5 |
Perhaps many, many moons of Colu. |
| 3:1 |
Note the reference to an I.D. Demand. No one on the ship
refers to receiving one. Dox presumably intercepted and refused it, hiding
the request from the others. |
| The text is these sorts of panels constitutes dialogue
for the Computer Tyrants
of Colu. |
| The silhouette icons do not count as panel appearances. |
| 3:2 |
Unusual that the Tyrants would have presumed Dox to
be dead when all they did was ship him to Starlag. This implies that
the <Psions? Citadellians?> at Starlag tried to cover up for the
escape and declared that Dox and company had
been killed. |
| 3:3 |
These icons do count as panel appearances, since they
depict the individual characters rather than being purely generic. (Well,
except for Stealth, but it
counts for her, too.) |
| Note the lack of any information about Stealth, including
a body shape and a gender. This probably means that much of the details
here are coming from files transmitted from Starlag rather than direct
scanning. |
| 4:6 |
Dialogue is from Garryn Bek and Vril Dox. |
| 5:2 |
Dialogue is from Garryn. |
| 5:5 |
Dialogue is from Garryn. |
| 6:1 |
Dialogue is from Garryn. |
| 6:4 |
“Wedgehead”: Garryn Bek, referring to his
hairstyle. |
| 7:2 |
Despite Stealth’s complaints, Garryn does have
some value. (Obviously: why else would anyone have bothered putting him
on Starlag?) |
| 7:3 |
This planetary forcefield echoes both the preboot continuity
30th century
Earth’s polymer shield and Brainiac 5’s forcefield belt. And of course,
it implies that Brainy’s belt was thus not something unique to him, but
a reuse of old, even ancient technology (albeit undoubtedly improved, reduced
to a personal scale). |
| 8:2 |
Off-panel dialogue is from Dox. |
| 8:3-6 |
Dox presumably intended for Lyrissa to overhear and do
just this. |
| 8:4 |
Garryn’s comment may be a reference to an X-Men story from a few years earlier where Kitty Pryde did just that, doing
a spacewalk in the middle of a battle situation in order to repair the
ship. |
| 8:5 |
Dialogue is from Garryn and Lyrissa. |
| 8:6 |
While a shadow bubble does the trick, it’s a simple
and, per 8:5, potentially dangerous thing to do. Better might have been
to just add a shadow form — maybe
a half-bubble — to the back of the ship, changing the shape but not impairing
the ability of the most skilled pilot to do his job. |
| Dialogue is from Lyrissa. |
| 8:9 |
Dialogue is from Lyrissa. |
| 9:5 |
Where is the Durlan? |
| 10 |
There is a weird color shift on this page. Compare
the color of Dox’s
jumpsuit with pages 9 and 11. |
| 10:1 |
Strata is the speaker. Stealth is next to Strata (to the
left), and then Garryn Bek, Lyrissa Mallor (in the cape), and Vril Dox
below her. |
| 10:2 |
But Dox probably had the timing of the entire scenario
well mapped out. |
| 11:1 |
These drones count as appearances for the Computer Tyrants
of Colu. (None of them is the Durlan, though. He is currently disguised
as a rock, but since
we can’t tell which one, this is not a panel appearance for him.) |
| 11-12 |
The captions here are dialogue from Dox. |
| 12:3 |
This counts as an appearance for the Computer Tyrants,
but the floating
cameras do not. |
| 12:5 |
Big Brother is watching. |
| 12:6 |
After the defeat of the Computer Tyrants, there won’t
be any particular change to this part of Coluan society. All the way
into the 30th century, this child rearing and education method will be
used, termed SleepNet. Brainiac 5 will be of the opinion that it is a
leading cause of Coluan society’s stagnation. |
| 13:2 |
Curiosity would certain explain their keeping Stealth
alive. They may also be attempting to reconcile data differences from
what the Citadel provided to
them. |
| 13:4 |
Looking ahead to the next couple pages, there is no evidence
of the elder
Vril Dox’s treachery. The Computer Tyrants were simply afraid than
he might someday turn on him. |
| 14:3 |
Notice the lack of information about Vril Dox II’s
mother — and
the lack of concern on Vril’s part. Compare forward to the 30th century
and the relationship between Brainiac 5 and his mother. |
| 14:4 |
Born an adult, and with no fashion sense. I mean really:
pink fabric against
green skin? |
| 14:5 |
There is no clear reason for this hate. Perhaps Vril Dox
Senior arranged to have it bred into his son, in the hope of being able
to use him to some end? |
| 15:2 |
This apparent destruction, of course, dispersed Vril Dox
Senior’s intellect, which travelled to Earth and possessed carnival
mentalist Milton Fine, turning him into Brainiac. Things have gone downhill
ever since. |
| 15:6 |
The figure in blue and yellow is a Citadellian. The spider is a <Spider
Guild robot manipulator>. |
| Note that there are six Coluan prisoners being
turned over to the Alliance here, indicating that more than just Vril
and his father were deemed enemies of the state. Since we cannot be sure
any of them is Vril Dox II, this does not count as a panel appearance
for him. |
| 16:1 |
Starlag looks rather underdetailed here. Perhaps
Kitson didn’t have
a good design reference to go from? |
| “Starlag” is of course a reference to “Stalag”,
the term for German prisoner of war camps during World War II. (Does
than make L.E.G.I.O.N. a riff on Hogan’s Heroes?) |
| 16:2 |
None of these prisoners are from readily recognizable
races (although some certainly could be from races seen in issues of
Omega Men). |
| 16:2-3 |
When Brainiac 5 was imprisoned on Planet Hell, he reacted
somewhat similarly, becoming quite and withdrawn, while he was actually
put all the “tracks” of his mind to work on the escape problem. And it similarly confused those around
him. |
| 16:5 |
Like Vril, like Querl. They can’t quite see that
those around them
aren’t whining, per se, nor that they end up treating the others like children
or inferiors. |
| 17:1 |
Square borders = current images, rounded borders
= flashbacks. |
| 17:2 |
The captions on this page are all dialogue for Dox, although
that isn’t
clear until 17:5. |
| Again, the creatures in blue and yellow are Citadellians,
and the others are not from recognizable races. The redhead in the foreground
is Primus of the Omega
Men. |
| 17:3 |
Unclear where the Durlan is in this. |
| Based on previous panels, the colorist got lazy, to end
up coloring all the prisoners
pink. |
| The Thing (Ben Grimm) is in the upper right corner. Miscolored,
of course. |
| 18:2 |
From what Dox told us, the problems on Colu existed
before his father came along. The issue must be in how much Dox Senior
aided the Computer Tyrants, increasing their control of the planet and
its populace in every dimension. In all probability, Dox Senior moved
the Computer Tyrants into their “Tyrant” role, enabling them
to go from observing to controlling. (Note that this would also work
into 31st revelations about Robotica and the origins of computer sentience. Dox Senior — and
thus Colu itself — may have been responsible for a quantum leap for the
Tyrants.) |
| 18:5 |
How in the world could they have not missed the Durlan? (This is something
of an “idiot plot”. Them not realizing that the Durlan was missing
only works because we’re told it works. It doesn’t make much actual
sense.) |
| 19:1 |
“Vrrrmmm! Vrrrmmm!”? Okay, whatever. |
| Seems very odd that these computer systems, with all their
sensors and such,
wouldn’t detect that one more drone had joined the bunch. (What was that
about an “idiot plot”?) |
| 19:1-2 |
As referred to in 3:3, the Durlan has apparently
been on Colu — has
infiltrated the control center — before. Why would he have done that? Was
he working for himself, for the Durla government, or for someone else? This probably
relates to why he was imprisoned on Starlag. |
| 19:3 |
“Bingo”: now there’s a word you expect
aliens to use a
lot. |
| 19:4 |
The Durlan appears in this panel in two forms; we’ll
count it as an
appearance or the Computer Tyrant form. |
| 19:5 |
There must be extra sensors in Central Control. Despite
the Durlan shapeshifting ability, the Durlan would surely still read
as organic when disguised as a drone. |
| 20:1 |
The Tyrants are exceptionally slow on the uptake. A Durlan
was known to be among the crew of the ship. No Durlan was captured with
the others. No corpse was found in the wreckage. Ergo, a Durlan is loose. An organic lifeform suddenly appears on the sensors in a highly sensitive
area, a rare enough occurrence to trip a major alarm and bring out shoot
first/ask later weaponry. Gee, I wonder
what the lifeform could be? |
| 21:4 |
Based on the next page, it appears that the Durlan
set an explosive charge, destroying the systems rather than merely turning
them off. This of course isn’t what Dox would prefer, since he
wants to preserve Colu’s infrastructure in the process of freeing
his people. |
| 22:5
|
Stealth’s powers are (or include) the damping of
sound. The between
Lyrissa and Stealth, the group cannot be seen or heard. |
| Dialogue is from Garryn and Dox. |
