Analysis Notes
| 1 |
Technically, the apostrophe in the title should go the
other direction. |
| You must be dreaming, since Garth doesn’t have a
mechanical arm |
| Roll call images doe not count as panel appearances. |
| 1-2 |
These captions count as dialogue for Spark. |
| 2 |
The desired effect here is probably akin to the eroding
rock pedestal in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” from Fantasia. |
| 3:1 |
Ayla’s nightshirt is the chest logo for Superman
in his “electric blue” persona. Superheroes in the DC
Universe probably have marketing agents — Mindy Mayer from Wonder
Woman comes to mind — who deal with legal presentations of their
logos; in fact, the Justice League members probably assign such rights
as part of their membership. (There are undoubtedly knockoffs aplenty,
of course, but we’ll assume Ayla has an authorized logo shirt here.) In
Superman’s case, he would have the profits from his logo licensing
donated to charity. |
| 3:2 |
Comics readers are so used to seeing telepathic projections
that we think of them as transparent. They are actually mental
illusions, it would seem, with Ayla thinking she actually sees Saturn
Girl. |
| 3:3 |
The fear of being unable to screen out others’ thoughts
has always been big for Imra. With her increased powers, it may
well be even more of a problem. Further, she may have a closer
link with Ayla than with other Legionnaires due to her feelings for Garth. |
| 3:5 |
Ayla may subconsciously project some of Garth’s relationship
with Imra onto herself — what Garth likes, so does Garth’s
twin. In the preboot continuity, Ayla eventually came out as a
lesbian; this could be seen as an indicator of such an eventual orientation. |
| 4:2 |
Further, Inferno doesn’t want to be a Legionnaire. (Or
so she would say. Odds are, though, that she really does want
to belong and to associate with a peer group; hence her later appearances
in Teen Titans #17 and Superboy v3 #65.) |
| “Fantasyland”: one of the themed regions of
Disneyland. Its main entrance is Sleeping Beauty’s Castle,
and it includes the dreaded “It’s a Small World” ride. |
| 4:3 |
Inferno has a point here, and Brainiac 5 would undoubtedly
agree with her. |
| 4:4 |
Cosmic Boy isn’t answering his ring summons because
Saturn Girl isn’t keeping him active at the moment. |
| Triad: ever the organizer. She will make a good
choice for Legion leader at some point. |
| 5:6 |
<Is this the first indication that
Inferno can fly unaided? (Why are all “fire” characters
able to fly?)> |
| Good thing Ultra Boy was able to catch the ring. The
last thing we need is yet another Legion flight ring mucking up the temporal
works. |
| This counts as an appearance for Inferno. |
| 6 |
Veridium’s body and image count as panel appearances;
his responsometer does not. |
| 6:1 |
This is clearly the beginnings of C.O.M.P.U.T.O. on Brainy’s
desk (although it will eventually require the addition of a Mother Box). No
retro “gas pump” look, alas. |
| 6:3 |
Actually, Veridium took himself apart; he mailed his responsometer
to Brainiac 5. Iron and Platinum only brought along the robot body
later. |
| 6:4 |
What the Metal men actually “feel” is questionable
anyway. |
| 7:1 |
We can tell what Brainiac 5’s expression is from
Koko’s. |
| 7:2 |
Brainy’s “Free Zone” comment echoes back
to Legionnaires #0 (among others), where the research facility
where XS was being tested was supposed to be off limits to the Science
Police. There is definitely a story to be told here. |
| 7:5 |
Included in that set of Omnicom’s is Shvaughn’s,
from which C.O.M.P.U.T.O. will garner information about the Legionnaires
(except for items which occur after this story, such as Spark’s
power change). Although she was using a 20th century computer to
enter the information in Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #94, there
was presumably a subsequent transfer to the Omnicom’s more efficient
memory systems. |
| 7:6 |
Sliding doors don’t slam. |
| 8:2 |
“Gee, Rocky. Guess I don’t know my own
strength!” (Subtlety, thy name is Jo Nah.) |
| Note the sparseness of Tinya’s quarters. A
ghost doesn’t need much in the way of physical equipment. (At
least we’ll assume this is Tinya’s quarters. It could
be just an empty closet where someone left a lit lamp on the floor.) |
| The position and style of the lamp are reminiscent of
Pixar’s computer-animated short film “Luxo, Jr.” |
| 8:4 |
A look at what has occurred for Team 20 and the rest of
the Legionnaires (an d the rest of the DC Universe) indicates that it
has probably been at least a year since Tinya “died,” and maybe
six months since she came back and Team 20 got sent to the 20th century. So
Tinya’s comments certainly do have some weight, in that it hasn’t
been merely a few days that she has been a ghost. |
| 8:5 |
Rushing into a teen wedding would seem to be a quick fix,
not a real solution. |
| 9:1 |
These are the lyrics to “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” and
the following line (sung by Saturn Girl in 9:2) alludes to Rokk being
still comatose, animated by Saturn Girl’s will. |
| While we see a similar bank of screens to what Cosmic
Boy stands in front of in 9:5, these are probably mostly intended for
receiving external media broadcasts and video conferencing calls, rather
than local camera views. |
| 9:2 |
Saturn Girl came through the ventilation shaft? In
that dress? |
| 9:3 |
Terran tradition, actually. But Braal was, by most
accounts, settled by Terran colonists, probably with the help of Valor,
so many Terran traditions would become Braalian. |
| An interesting tradition for Titan to have. It presumably
stems from the idea that physical contact and confirmation via all the
senses is required in a society where so much can be done purely mentally. |
| 9:5 |
We can see the silhouettes of three of the wedding guests
on the screen next to Gates. The screens above and to the lower-right
of him are presumably views of Happy Harbor. |
| The top-right screen shows the same view as 11:3 (but
a little earlier). |
| 10:1 |
The blue machine here is the Team 20
Legion airship which Jo and Shvaughn were working on in Legion of
Super-Heroes v4 #<93>. According to the creators, it
was created from one of the Blue Beetle’s discarded Bugs. |
| 11:1 |
This ship belongs to Captain Comet. It
was loaned to Phases in Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #<94>. |
| 11:2 |
“I’m a seasoned L.E.G.I.O.N. operative. I’ve
encountered Brainiac and been physically mutilated by Vril Dox himself!” |
| How the heck they are going to find her touchstone is
unknown. Perhaps Bgztlian’s have a mental connection to their
individual touchstones? |
| 11:3 |
The white man in the tuxedo and the
black woman are presumably from the set of de-aged elderly people the
minister mentions. (Note that there were seven patients used by
Brainiac 5 in Legionnaires #< >, but only three were seen
again in Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #< >; these are the same
three.) |
| Coloring error: as seen in 12:6, the bookmark on the minister’s
book should be red. |
| 12:5 |
Tinya apparently didn’t feel any effect during the
power discharge. |
| 12:6 |
Based on her robes, she is probably an Episcopalian priest. This
does not necessarily indicate any particular religious leanings on the
part of Rokk and Imra (or just Imra, since Rokk is really still comatose). Rather,
the de-aged elderly people undoubtedly said “If there’s anything
we can ever do to thank you…,” and Imra called in a favor. |
| 13 |
Shvaughn may have set the seeds which allowed Imra to
break out of her situation on this page. At the same time, though,
it is likely that Imra psychically shut her up in 13:5. |
| 13:3 |
This is a flashback to Legion of Super-Heroes v4
#90. |
| 14:1 |
Note that they even got Brainiac 5 into a tuxedo, and
to smile! |
| Coloring error: Brainy’s tux shirt should be pink,
matching Jo, Rokk, and Andrew’s. |
| Platinum and Iron are not present at the wedding ceremony. We
should expect at least the emotional Platinum to want to be present,
but maybe they feel out of place, associating with humans when they are
human no longer. |
| Also notably absent from the wedding is Superman, who
played an important role in the Legionnaires’ early days in the
20th century. Perhaps Saturn Girl subconsciously did not invite
those whom she would have difficulty “persuading” that the
wedding was a good thing to do? |
| The woman standing in the maid-of-honor position is Dr.
Kitty Faulkner, head of S.T.A.R. Labs in Metropolis. She had allowed
the Legionnaires to stay at S.T.A.R. Labs prior to their moving into
the old JLA headquarters in Happy Harbor, and Saturn Girl helped her
convince some congressmen to continue S.T.A.R. Labs financing. |
| The white-haired man (best man?) is Dr. Welles Midwich,
who treated Rokk while he was comatose. |
| Human mating rituals according to Gates: “Not just
decadent, but downright nonsensical.” |
| 14:2 |
Based on the bookmark (and further verified in 24:4),
the minister is reading out of the same book she had in 12:6. Unfortunately,
that was a Bible, but the marriage ceremony comes from a book of liturgy
completely separate from the Bible. Oops! |
| 14:5 |
Kitty Faulkner was standing next to Imra in 14:2, but
Ayla is there in this panel. Imra may have mentally nudged her
to move to the front of the room while she changed Rokk’s appearance. |
| 15:1 |
Saturn Girl is fully controlling Rokk’s actions. This
indicates that all of Rokk’s actions for the past several issues
were probably fully her approximation of Rokk, rather than just her nudging
and guiding him along. |
| The silhouettes are Brainiac 5 and Koko, Kitty Faulkner,
and the de-aged male guest. |
| 15:5 |
If we didn’t know better, we might be prone to attribute
this event to the machinations of the Time Trapper or Glorith or some
similar entity. As posited in 18:2, the event could be another “timeslip” story. (This
does lead to the serious consideration that Team 20’s trip back
in time was guided by the Time Trapper.) |
| The silhouettes are Kitty Faulkner and the minister. |
| 16:1 |
The minister doesn’t know, of course, but she’s
trained to say things like that. |
| Coloring error: Jo’s tuxedo shirt should be pink. |
| The only identifiable silhouette is Ferro, to the far
left. |
| 16:2-3 |
Is Ultra Boy somehow able to sense Rokk/Garth’s magnetic
power signature? Maybe he is just seeing the collapse and able
to react quicker than Triad, especially if he has his ultra-speed turned
on. |
| 16:4 |
Ultra Boy’s comment here predicts his (false) power
change in Genesis #1. |
| Apparently Ferro’s rented tuxedo is rubble-proof,
if not fireproof. |
| 17:2 |
As other stories probing Imra’s past and Titan society
have shown, telepaths (and especially ones as powerful as Imra) go through
a lot of training to instill control in order to simply survive in a
non-telepathic society. This sort of heavily structured training
and the Legion were the only things Imra had in her background, so she
tried to create a familiar framework for her unconscious to train itself
in. |
| 17:4 |
Recall that when Imra and Shvaughn first encountered each
other, it was in the Metropolis Science Police. Despite her reluctance
to being assigned as Legion liaison, Shvaughn probably always felt a
certain amount of pride in Saturn Girl’s achievements as a fellow
SP; Imra’s achievements would be in part due to her Science Police
training. Shvaughn presumably felt similarly toward Leviathan (perhaps
even more so, since Imra had been merely a cadet, but Gim had been an
experience peer of Shvaughn’s). |
| 17:5-6 |
Unspoken here is that, confronted with the chance to actually
return to the 30th century and her real structures, it is uncertain what
Imra might have done. Such a return would have brought forward
the very real possibility of her subconscious manipulations being revealed
and her structures forcibly brought down. |
| 17:6 |
Note that “Garth” is dragging Spark along magnetically,
rather than her flying with him via her flight ring (which she was seen
to be wearing in 16:1). |
| 18:2 |
This is the first indication that the Legionnaires recall
their timeslip adventures. The fact that they remember them outside
the timeslip “pocket universe” is what leads to Brainiac 5’s
hypothesis in Legionnaires #54 that they are being tested by some
external entity. |
| If she believes that this is Garth, Ayla isn’t thinking
clearly, since Garth wasn’t part of that timeslip. |
| 18:4 |
Ayla is vaporizing the radio tower before it can fall
to the street below. |
| 18:5 |
In the preboot continuity, an unconscious Legionnaire
would float via his/her flight ring rather than falling like this. If
that facility is present in the current rings, then in consciously breaking
her hold on Rokk, Imra must have completely shut his mind off from external
contact, including the ring. Alternately, the flight ring might
only maintain elevation if it was in active use when the user lost consciousness,
and the power signature in 17:6 indicates that Rokk’s flight was
done via his magnetic powers instead of his flight ring. |
| 19:1 |
Shvaughn is at the top of the panel, holding Rokk’s
shirt. |
| 19:2-3 |
While Brainiac 5, Triad, and Shvaughn probably all have
some degree of training, even to paramedic level, they are not medically
trained. Thus, it can be assumed that the procedures displayed
here are essentially high-level first aid, the 30th century equivalent
of CPR. |
| 19:4 |
Dialogue balloons are from Dr. Midwich, Brainy, and Triad. |
| 19:5 |
Dialogue balloons are from Brainy, Triad, and Shvaughn. |
| 20:1 |
Ferro is crying again. This willingness to express
his emotions is one of many items pointing to him as possibly being gay. (It
may also point to him as rust-proof.) |
| 20:2 |
Triad joined Team 20 at the end of Legion of Super-Heroes v4
#91. Cosmic Boy’s lack of memory of her presence indicates
that Imra was controlling him even during the timeslip story in Legion
of Super-Heroes v4 #92. |
| 21:1 |
The shadows — Brainiac 5, Koko, and Shvaughn — count
as panel appearances. |
| Given that Ultra Boy is not in the immediate vicinity
and Brainiac 5’s shadow can be seen on the wall, the feet belong
to Ferro. |
| 21:3 |
“MST3K” is shorthand for “Mystery Science
Theatre 3000,” a television show where a human and two robots watch
bad science fiction and fantasy films and make snide comments about/to
the film, a lá The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It
also makes for an in-joke, since the Legionnaires are from near the year
3000. |
| 22:1 |
Thus proving one again Cosmic Boy’s position as the
heart and soul of the Legion. |
| 22:4 |
It is unclear what the Space Needle-like tower in the
background view of Happy Harbor is, but it was also seen in Supergirl
Annual v3 #2. For lack of a better name, we’ll call it
the Time Needle, since that fits as both an East Coast counterpart to
the Space Needle and as a focus for Brainiac 5’s temporal research. |
| In the preboot continuity, Ultra Boy and Phantom Girl
faked a marriage in Adventure Comics #337, and were later seen
married in the Adult Legion story in Adventure Comics #354-55,
but they never actually got married in the main continuity: Tinya’s
shuttle exploded on its way to their wedding, sending Jo into a years-long
depression (and either Tinya or her identical cousin Enya was sent back
in time to L.E.G.I.O.N. ’87 #9; the current postboot status
of Phase is that she is a split-off half-Carggite body of Tinya’s). Letting
them get married in the postboot continuity, and in fact making theirs
the first Legion marriage, seems to be a means of righting the cosmic
balance of unfairness that the couple suffered in their previous existence. |
| LOC #1 |
“Psycho-Warrior” was the villain who made Superboy
resign in Legion of Super-Heroes v2 #259. |
| Regarding the response to the Ahlquist letter, Imra’s
adventure may not be forgotten, but it has been retconned into never
having happened. Same difference. |
| LOC #5 |
The reply to Baugher’s letter says “Only when
she visits the seventies!” Given that the first two timeslips
were to the 1950s and the 1940s, this raised the real possibility of
a “disco-era” timeslip eventually occurring, with all the funky
Legion costuming that goes with that. (We did eventually see a
snippet of that era in the final timeslip, but not nearly enough!) |
