Legends of the Legion #1

<em>Legends of the Legion</em> #1 cover

Date:

February 1998

Title:

“guts”
(Cover Title: “Solo Origins of the Legionnaires Featuring Ultra Boy!”)

Plot:

Chuck Taine is giving some kids a tour of the Legion headquarters, and he convinces Ultra Boy to tell his origin to the kids.  Jo Nah grew up on Rimbor, a rough and tumble world.  Running from a gang, his space cruiser got swallowed by a Space Whale.  Jo adapted to his new imprisonment, eventually surviving by eating the Space Whale’s stomach lining, which gave him super powers.  He found other castaways, also surviving in the Whale’s belly and super-powered like him, but they didn’t want to leave.  Jo managed to escape the Space Whale, and he eventually joined the WorkForce and then the Legion of Super-Heroes.  Spark offers to tell her origin story next.

Credits:

Barry Kitson (Plotter) • Tom Peyer (Scripter) • Todd Nauck (Penciller) • Lary Stucker (Inker) • Tom McCraw (Colorist) • Albert T. DeGuzman (Letterer) • Frank Berrios (Assistant Editor) • KC Carlson (Editor) • Steve Lightle (Cover)


CHANGE HISTORY

Date of Change
Content of Change
01/09/04
Posted

Tinted cells and text indicate missing or incomplete information.

Character and Object Tracking

         

Name

Previous Appearance

Next Appearance

Heroes

Ultra Boy (Jo Nah) Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #100 (story #3) Legends of the Legion #2
Also appears in flashbacks to before Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #64, to between Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #64 and Legionnaires #21, to <timestream>, and to Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #96
Spark (Ayla Ranzz) Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #100 (story #3) Legends of the Legion #2
Also appears in flashback to <timestream>
Umbra (Tasmia Mallor)
Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #100 (story #3) Legends of the Legion #2
Star Boy (Thom Kallor)
Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #100 (story #3) Legends of the Legion #2
Also appears in flashback to <timestream>
Karate Kid (Val Armorr) Appears in flashback to between Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #64 and Legionnaires #21
Live Wire (Garth Ranzz) Appears in flashback to between Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #64 and Legionnaires #21
Chameleon (Reep Daggle)
Appears in flashback to <timestream> and on a trading card
M’Onel (Lar Gand)
Also appears in flashback to <timestream>
Triad (Luornu Durgo)
Also appears in flashback to <timestream>
Cosmic Boy (Rokk Krinn)
Also appears in flashback to <timestream>
Saturn Girl (Imra Ardeen)
Also appears in flashback to <timestream>
Apparition (Tinya Wazzo-Nah)
Appears in flashback to <timestream> and to Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #96
Invisible Kid (Lyle Norg) Also appears in flashback to <timestream>
Kinetix (Zoe Saugin)
Also appears in flashback to <timestream>
XS (Jenni Ognats)
Also appears in flashback to <timestream>
Leviathan II (Salu Digby)
Also appears in flashback to <timestream>
Brainiac 5 (Querl Dox)
Also appears in flashback to <timestream>
Ferro (Andrew Nolan)
Also appears in flashback to <timestream>
 
Inferno (“Sandy Anderson”)
Appears in flashback to between Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #64 and Legionnaires #21
Spider Girl (Sussa Paka)
Appears in flashback to between Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #64 and Legionnaires #21

Villains

Bone Spike Clan members (5) (footnote #1)
None Some appear in Legends of the Legion #4

Supporting Characters

Chuck Taine
Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #100 (story #4) Legends of the Legion #2
 
Li’l Calamity King (Doro) None Legends of the Legion #2
Li’l Antenna Lad None Legends of the Legion #2
Li’l Color Queen None Legends of the Legion #2
Li’l Porcupine Pete None Legends of the Legion #2
Li’l Infectious Lass None Legends of the Legion #2
Li’l Night Girl
None Legends of the Legion #2
Ginger (settler)
None None to date
Professor (settler)
None None to date
Gilligan (settler)
None None to date
Skipper (settler) None None to date
Mary Ann (settler)
None None to date
Mr. Howell (settler)
None None to date
Mrs. Howell (settler)
None None to date
 
One-shot or Untracked Characters:
     unnamed bartender
     unnamed citizens of Rimbor (12)

Locations

Rimbor (plus two moons and nearby asteroid field)
None Legends of the Legion #4
 
Legion Headquarters, Metropolis Adventures in the DC Universe #10 Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #100 (story #5)
Weisinger Plaza, Metropolis Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #100 (story #2) Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #100 (story #5)
Hamilton Park, Metropolis None The Legion #1
Rimbor City, Rimbor
None Legion Worlds #6 (story #1)
 
One-shot or Untracked Locations:
     unnamed bar, Rimbor City
     interior of Space Whale
     unnamed planet plus a moon

Alien Races and Creatures

Winathian < > Legends of the Legion #2
Space Whale
None None to date
 
One-shot or Untracked Races:
     carnivoroaches

Technology

Powersphere No appearance; mention only
Space Whale meat None Legends of the Legion #4
Silverale
< > < >
 
One-shot or Untracked Items:
     Gameboy and cartridge
     Chameleon trading card
     Spikemobile (gravcar)
     ’72 Fleetway (Jo Nah’s cruiser)
     Space Whale stomach acid
     holovids
     servo ale
     meat-shoes
     food package
     satellite

1. The gang members are not named or tracked individually, but are tracked as a group since they reappear in Legends of the Legion #4.
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Analysis Notes

General Throughout this series, the present day scenes feature a group of kids being given a tour of Legion Headquarters.  Never named as such, they all wear the costumes of preboot Legion applicants.  We will refer to them by those codenames, with “Li’l” prepended: Li’l Calamity King, Li’l Antenna Lad, Li’l Color Queen (since that’s the name Color Kid was referred to by when under the influence of Grandian Gender-Reversal Germs), Li’l Porcupine Pete, Li’l Infectious Lass, and Li’l Night Girl, jointly referred to here as the Li’l Subs.  We might assume that these are supposed to be the pre-applicant postboot versions of those characters except that Night Girl has already been seen in two separate stories; unless this is the same character in a different costume, this is not Night Girl.
The flashback origin of Ultra Boy occurs several years before this story, probably a couple years before he joined the Legion.
Since it involves Ultra Boy, this mini-series must occur after Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #100 (story #1), and since it involves Umbra, it occurs before Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #100 (story #5).  We will place it just before Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #100 (story #5), to make things simplest when it comes to tracking character appearances.
1:1 Dialogue is from Chuck Taine.
Doro and Chuck can be identified from the dots here, but there are only four dots for the other five Li’l Subs, so they are not tracked in this panel.
1:2 The preboot Calamity King’s real name (per the DC Heroes role playing game sourcebook, but never named in the comics) was E. Davis Ester.  This is another indication that “Doro” is not the real Calamity King.
It’s not clear what “greatest challenge” Chuck is referring to.  Since he mentions repairs, something to do with Brainy’s labs is a good bet.
1:3 This parklike area is on the back side of Legion Headquarters, a view not typically seen.  While we usually see buildings crowding behind it, there could be a park space of sort between the HQ and the rest of the city.  Hamilton Park is seen in the city in The Legion #1; although it would have been completely redone following the Blight invasion, we’ll still dub this as the same park.
1:4 Then again, maybe he is Calamity King.
2 Notice the trading card featuring Chameleon.  Also dropped are a piece of candy, a Gameboy and a cartridge for it, and a ball of some sort (a Pokéball, maybe?).
4:3 In the preboot, Star Boy got his powers by flying through the tail of a comet.  We will see his postboot origin in Legends of the Legion #4.
4:4 This panel counts as dialogue for all the Li’l Subs.
4:5 The back of the heads are Li’l Calamity King and Li’l Night Girl.
5:1 Blue captions throughout the origin flashback count as dialogue for Ultra Boy.
None of the non-human characters in this scene are from known races, despite superficial skin color similarities with some of them.
They are presumably drinking Silverale here.
It’s interesting to note that Jo is not wearing the Emerald Dragon gang symbol, here or in the rest of his origin.  Of course, no one else, including the Bone Spike gang members, are wearing symbols either.  Possibly this bar is a neutral territory where everyone is expected to remove their symbols before entering.
6:7 Why are you cross-eyed in this panel, Jo?
7:3 The blonde girls are presumably Winathian.
8 In the preboot, Jo’s origin had him taking a space joyride rather than running from a gang.
9 In the preboot, Jo was swallowed by an Ultra-Energy Beast (or if you go by one of the trading cards very late in the preboot, by an Imskian Space Dragon).  This Space Whale looks a lot like the preboot Super Moby Dick of Space.
This scene has strong echoes of when the X-Men met the spacefaring whale creatures, the Acanti.
10:3 Most kids wouldn’t have supplies on board.  Either Jo is more responsible than average or a certain amount of supplies are just standard issue on spacefaring gravcars like these.
12:4 Notice that Jo’s boots apparently completely dissolved, but his feet, while perhaps in pain, are not noticeably burnt.  This implies that, as with the preboot Ultra-Energy Beast, merely being inside the Space Whale is having an effect on Jo (possibly because he is breathing the atmosphere); the later eating of the meat just boosts that.
12:5 Giving the Space Whale an ulcer there, Jo?
14:3-4 Jo probably discovered his powers via wish fulfillment: “Grife, I wish I didn’t have to walk through this muck.”  This may imply a mental block on his part which prevents him from using his powers more than one at a time, and perhaps which limits him to the half-dozen or so powers which he displays.  Jo may be potentially much more powerful than he thinks.
14:5 The Space Whale is (only) the size of a couple Legion HQs, per Jo’s comment upon being swallowed, so how much distance can he be covering, even if he is travelling through the intestines and such?  The primary answer here is that, with the dim light (phosphorescence, probably) and the unfamiliar setting, everything looks the same, so Jo covers miles and miles, going in circles, never realizing he is covering the same ground (er, meat) over and over again.  A possible second explanation would be some form of dimension warp or natural tesseract in the Space Whale’s gullet, making it much larger on the inside than on the outside.
15:1 Did the shock of using the penetra-vision for the first time knock Jo on his butt, or did turning that power on turn off his flight, and he fell down as a result?
15:4 Wonderful.  “Seven stranded castaways, here on Space Whale Isle!”  And all of them color coded for easy recognition: green, yellow, red, indigo, blue, orange, and purple.
16:3 They missed a great chance for a thought balloon here: “And did it make you all pale and three-fingered, too?”  Who knows what an extensive diet of Space Whale meat would do?
16:4 The castaways/settlers all have whale-meat shoes.
17:1-2 Don’t these castaways know they are supposed to be hoping to be rescued, maybe building a raft or something?  Or do they just wait for guest stars to show up?
18:3 The Space Whale probably eats every ten days, like a snake or some such.  Possibly it, like the Acanti, creates a natural space warp for travelling between star systems, and a jump always takes about ten days, regardless of the stellar distances.  (This would also explain why they are so seldom seen, since they never stay in any system for long.)
20:3 This planet isn’t one which has been seen before.
20:4 The satellite looks a little like Nomad from the Star Trek episode “The Changeling”.
21:1 Missing here is how Jo hooked up with Leland McCauley and details about his costume (which differs here from any seen in early WorkForce appearances) and codename.  Even more than his Space Whale-oriented origin, that would be the interesting story.
Seen here with Ultra Boy are Inferno, Spider Girl, Karate Kid, and Live Wire.  Evolvo was also a member of the WorkForce, but he isn’t shown here.  This scene must occur between Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #64 and Legionnaires#21.
21:2 The text in 21:3 implies that this scene occurs prior to Jo and Tinya’s wedding, but this scene is most likely to have occurred during Legion Day in Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #100 (story #2).
21:3 Since this panel mentions Jo and Tinya’s wedding, we will assume it comes from Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #96.
22:1 The Li’l Subs here are Li’l Antenna Lad, Li’l Infectious Lass, Li’l Color Queen, and Li’l Porcupine Pete.
22:7 This is a non-continuity appearance of Ultra Boy, but it still is tracked.
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Appearance Counts

Character Name

Cover

Panels / Speaking

Heroes
Ultra Boy (Jo Nah) X 88 / 88
Spark (Ayla Ranzz) 8 / 7
Umbra (Tasmia Mallor) 4 / 0
Star Boy (Thom Kallor) 6 / 2
Karate Kid (Val Armorr) 1 / 0
Live Wire (Garth Ranzz) 2 / 0
Chameleon (Reep Daggle) 2 / 0
M’Onel (Lar Gand) 1 / 0
Triad (Luornu Durgo) 1 / 0
Cosmic Boy (Rokk Krinn) 1 / 0
Saturn Girl (Imra Ardeen)
1 / 0
Apparition (Tinya Wazzo-Nah)
2 / 0
Invisible Kid (Lyle Norg)
1 / 0
Kinetix (Zoe Saugin)
1 / 0
XS (Jenni Ognats)
1 / 0
Leviathan II (Salu Digby)
1 / 0
Brainiac 5 (Querl Dox)
1 / 0
Ferro (Andrew Nolan)
1 / 0
 
Inferno (“Sandy Anderson”)
1 / 0
Spider Girl (Sussa Paka)
1 / 0
Villains
Bone Spike Clan members (footnote A)
Supporting Characters
Chuck Taine 6 / 5
 
Li’l Calamity King (Doro) 13 / 8
Li’l Antenna Lad 7 / 4
Li’l Color Queen 6 / 3
Li’l Porcupine Pete 8 / 5
Li’l Infectious Lass 7 / 2
Li’l Night Girl 6 / 2
Ginger (settler) 8 / 2
Professor (settler) 12 / 7
Gilligan (settler)
10 / 4
Skipper (settler)
7 / 4
Mary Ann (settler)
7 / 3
Mr. Howell (settler)
5 / 0
Mrs. Howell (settler)
5 / 0

A. The gang members are not named or tracked individually.
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