Analysis Notes
| Cover |
Note that the black plate is dropped out for Impulse but not the Legionnaires, to indicate how fast he is moving. |
| General |
This was Craig Rousseau’s first full pencilling job. |
| There was a time in the DC Universe where time travel to a time where you already existed would cause the time travelling self to go into a phantom state, among other possible results. That is apparently no longer the case, and may not have been since the post-Crisis issue of Hex where Jonah Hex encountered his stuffed corpse. |
| 1-2 |
These pages are a riff on the introduction of the Legionnaires in Adventure Comics #247. This dialogue is very close, but not quite right on; mostly, it has just been updated to modern sensibilities. In the panel corresponding to 1:4, Clark’s dialogue was “You... er… think I’m Superboy? That is a good one! Ha, ha!” Impulse has no dialogue in 2:2, while Superboy thought “Omigosh! Another boy seems to know my secret! I-I’ll pretend to ignore him as if he’s wrong!” And in the original version of 2:4, Superboy’s dialogue was “Great guns! A girl, too! Does everybody know the truth now?”, while Saturn Girl originally said “when you return home” rather than “when you get home.” The settings, especially for Cosmic Boy and Saturn Girl, are also reasonably true to the original. |
| 4:1 |
Brainy’s statistic is wrong. Only about 30% of human heat loss is through the head and neck. (But it is possible that Coluans differ in this matter, with more active brains producing more heat.) |
| 4:7 |
It isn’t clear when Gates’ sweatshirt got ripped. Bad storytelling. |
| 5:1 |
Art error: the wooden slat in the middle of the window is partially missing behind Brainy. |
| 6:4 |
Untold story alert! This would seem to indicate either an untold time-travel adventure in the Legion’s part (perhaps the unrevealed story mentioned in the timeline in Legion: Secret Files #1), or else one of Max Mercury’s future time jumps will take him to the 30th century. (Some fans had tongue-in-cheek posited that Max might go by the name “Marla Latham” in the 30th century, due in large part to the white hair.) |
| 6:5 |
“Jenni” is Jenni Ognats, Bart’s cousin, aka Legionnaire XS. She was stranded in the 20th century, leaving for home in The Flash #112. |
| 7:2 |
“Control the electricity.” Heh. |
| 7:5 |
It probably wasn’t Brainy’s idea. This does presage the closer relationship between Brainy and Ayla seen in Supergirl Annual v3 #2, however. |
| 8:1 |
Recall that Bart was wowed by Jenni’s ability to fly, and he was probably more than a bit jealous when Jenni loaned her flight ring to Jesse Quick in the battle against Savitar. |
| 8:2 |
This would be Step Two of Rokk and Imra’s relationship, following the kiss seen in Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #< >. |
| 8:3 |
The man’s shirt reads “OASIS”; perhaps the name of a club or a band? (Only Rousseau knows for sure.) |
| 9:1 |
The statues are of Wally West and Barry Allen. |
| 9:2 |
“Gotta fly”: Bart wants to spend more time flying. |
| 9:3-5 |
See page 18:1-3. The slightly future Bart is trying to warn the Legionnaires off in order to fulfill Gates’ wish from 17:2. |
| 10:2 |
The statue next to Gates is Jay Garrick. |
| Although Bart says there is no Impulse Room at the museum, one was mentioned in Impulse #9, and by the 30th century, there will be an entire Impulse Wing of the museum. What Bart probably means is that he notices that the room still isn’t finished or otherwise open to then public. |
| 10:4 |
Note that not only is the Flash Museum deserted, but the lights must be off in this room for the Legionnaires not to be able to see Gates. This must be occurring during off hours for the museum. (Max probably directed Bart and the Legionnaires to only go there after hours, in fact.) |
| 10:4-5 |
This is Gates from 15:7-16:2. The vibrations set up by time travel — and maybe a queasy stomach? — must affect Gates’ voice sufficiently that the Legionnaires do not recognize it. |
| 11:3-4 |
This is Brainy and Bart, from 12:5. |
| 11:7 |
This image is statted and reused in 12:5, although the lower part of Brainy’s leg is oddly missing. |
| 12 |
Notice the vibrating word balloons. The Cosmic Treadmill works by setting up a specific vibratory pattern in the speedster(s) operating it. By stilling those vibrations later, the speedster will automatically snap back to the original time period. |
| 12:2-3 |
Presumably the speedsters’ internal vibrations and the Speed Force protect them. |
| 12:5 |
No idea what the thing behind Brainy’s leg is. Perhaps something on the original stat (see 11:7); note the ink line below Bart’s foot which is probably also a stat remnant. |
| 13:5 |
Hmm. How long do the effects of “Too… much… Bart…” last? Could this have impacted her psyche long enough to give Dr. Psycho the opening he needed. Sure, there was no direct indication of that, but who knows what Imra was covering up. Just the slightest perturbation is all that would have been required. |
| 13:6 |
Imra is thinking in Bart’s thought icons, even using Bart’s own thoughts. |
| 13:7 |
That is, Bart’s attention span is such that he can’t maintain the internal vibrations for very long. |
| 14:2 |
Where are you? You’re in the next issue, Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #88. This is the animal lab at S.T.A.R. Labs. |
| 14:4 |
Don’t even think about where Brainy’s mouth is. |
| In the preboot, the original Brainiac had a pet white space monkey named Koko. |
| As will eventually be seen, Koko has an advanced intelligence, well beyond that of monkeys and perhaps even a few humans. Given other genetics research, perhaps Koko was an experiment where the human meta-gene had been spliced into his code, and the intelligence was the effect of activating the meta-gene. |
| 14:6 |
This would indicate that one or more of the Legionnaires saw their future counterparts. |
| 15:1 |
<Does the Phantom Zone Projector exist in the current continuity?> Brainy probably means a Stasis Zone Projector, since he has already created one of those to free Valor. |
| 15:2 |
Koko’s tail just flipped the Treadmill to travel backwards through time rather than forward. |
| 15:6 |
While it appears that Gates is pulling out wires and otherwise trashing the Treadmill, that must be wrong. First, he is a scientist himself (he created his teleportation powers), and since the Treadmill worked for the rest of the issue, Gates must not have damaged it here, before the other uses. (Unless the vibration glitches weren’t truly Bart’s fault.) |
| 19:1 |
Imra says: “Puuuuuppy!” |
| 19:2 |
These velociraptors aren’t purple! |
| 19:4 |
Brainy might be concerned if the raptors started eating Bart. Maybe. |
| 20:3 |
Saturn Girl appears to have regained her senses now. |
| 20:6 |
Bart is quoting from the end trailer to The Jetsons, where George gets stuck on the dog-walking treadmill. |
| 21:2 |
Does anyone have faith that the velociraptors actually ended up where they started and not in, say, the Old West or Renaissance Italy or Atlantis? This is Bart we’re talking about, after all. |
| 21:3-4 |
Note that the images here are very similar, but not identical. Apparently Rousseau did a stat of his pencils, and Faucher inked them individually, producing the minor changes. This has the effect of indicating slight changes over time without being dead out identical, which was one of the complaints about Keith Giffen’s stat work in the preboot issues he did. (Jeff Smith apparently also uses this stat-and-ink technique in Bone.) |
| 21:5 |
By taking the handles in 20:4-5, Bart must have taken the Treadmill with him into the past. Then in 21:1, he jumped off it in the present, but it took a subjective split-second for it to slow back down to where it would appear again in 22:6. |
| 22:4 |
Note the faint “2” near the second dialogue balloon. Inspection of the original art reveals that this is left over from a blue pencil indication of where the second word balloon was to go. |
