Analysis Notes
| 2-26 |
The narration of this story occurs in the “present,” with all the images occurring in flashback, mostly before and just after Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #0, with the last panel from just after the final panel of Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #100 (story #2). Based on the final panel and the format of the text narration being more journalistic than narrative in intent, the narration probably takes place during the Legion Day celebration in Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #100 (story #2), shortly after the flight of the Legionnaires which ends that story. It could easily be an interview or part of an entertainment vid program akin to the 1990’s television show Biography on the cable station A&E. |
| 2 |
The vehicle below Saturn Girl appears to be smaller than the standard gravcar, as seen above her. We’ll dub this enclosed, single passenger vehicle a “grav cycle.” |
| The three Legionnaires are flying via Cosmic Boy’s powers. He is effectively dragging them by the iron in their blood, which can’t be good for the passengers for long periods of time, nor can it be easy for a Braalian due to the relatively small volume of iron available to work with. This was probably a promo shot intended to show the “working as a team” concept, rather than a real means of travel for the trio. |
| Saturn Girl’s earrings are colored to match her uniform. |
| The narration here is from Luornu Durgo, aka Triad. |
| 4:1 |
Note the neck clasp that Brande wears (and variants of it throughout this story and his other appearances). It evokes a bolo tie, which gives Brande an image parallel to that of a 20th century Texan cattle baron: a little bit rugged and a little bit unconventional, but firm in his convictions, exactly the sort of person who would strive to create the likes of the United Planets and the Legion of Super-Heroes. |
| 4:2 |
Ambassador Winema Wazzo and her daughter, Tinya, can be seen in the second tier, on the right side. The man seated next to Winema is probably a Xanthan Prefect, but miscolored. |
| Note that the United Planets globe has apparently not yet been installed in the council chamber. Alternately, due to the fact that it would block the view of the delegates from seeing across the chamber, perhaps the globe can be lowered into the floor during debate sessions. |
| We’ll refrain from trying to create names for the miscellaneous races seen in the Council Chambers which are never seen again. |
| 4:4 |
The Durlan is not insulting the Vyrgan, as least not completely. Vyrgan’s bear a certain resemblance to Terran arthropods, and as such, they probably go through various body forms (larval, pupal, etc.) during their life cycles. Thus, a Vyrgan might have a better sense of the value of change. |
| This is Ambassador Roxxas of Daxam. It is unclear
where he is seated in the chambers; he is apparently in the third tier,
but the Quothoni in the tier below him should be with the rest of its
delegation, seen in 2:2. Roxxas is a member of the White Triangle,
of course, so the dissent appeals to him. |
| The woman seen in this panel bears a resemblance to Phase, from L.E.G.I.O.N., but that is just coincidence. |
| 5:2 |
The three Luornu’s can be identified both by eye color and body language, from left to right: Lu-Orange (introvert), Lu-Neutral, and Lu-Purple (extrovert). |
| 5:5 |
Here, it is Lu-Purple, Lu-Orange, and Lu-Neutral. |
| Doyle is also a White Triangle sympathizer, hence the smile at what he realizes is despair on Brande’s part over the vergent failure of the United Planets. |
| 6:2 |
Vyrga is modeled on insect societies, and so is ruled by a queen. Durla, of course, is a planet of shapeshifters. |
| 6:6 |
Winath is an agricultural world, hence the flat, field nature of the landscape. |
| The quarter-dome over the spaceport is a curious architectural detail. If it were on the other side of the spaceport, it might act as a sound shield. Serving no apparent purpose, it may be merely decorative. |
| The take-off ramp is reminiscent of the ones in the film When Worlds Collide. Given the presence of the larger interplane tary vehicles at the spaceport, the ramp may be used mostly to boost vehicles into sub-orbital trajectories to enable rapid access to other parts of the planet. It might also be used for boost smaller vehicles to orbit, especially for use in loading space tankers carrying grain and such which are too large to set down safely on the planet itself. |
| 7:1 |
Interlac translation of menu board: large text says “moe’s,”small text is largely indecipherable and may be in several languages. The second column of text, however, contains several sets of initials corresponding to members of the creative team: “KC” is KC Carlson, “J.M”is Jeffrey Moy, “F.B” is Frank Berrios, “W.C” is W.C. Carani, “T.M” is Tom McCraw, “P.B” is Pat Brosseau, and “R.S” is Roger Stern; “CA” might be Carmela Merlo, and “T.P” for Tom Peyer is not included. |
| The “Alien Nationer” race was seen as early as Legionnaires #22. |
| Given the monkey-like tails coming from the back of the head of the third character in the panel, we’ll call this race “Monkey Tailer.” |
| 7:1-4 |
Moe is based on a similar character on The Simpsons cartoon show. |
| 7:2 |
“Tenzil” is Tenzil Kem, the preboot Matter-Eater Lad, destined to become the Legion’s personal chef in the postboot continuity. Tenzil is from Bismoll, where the natives can eat anything, and hence his having taken a bite out of the spatula. |
| Note how Moe’s comment about everyone eating something different echoes Brande’s comments in 6:3. |
| Given 30th century technology, which undoubtedly has food synthesizers and such, an eatery where the food is hand-prepared on site would probably be a novelty restaurant, although perhaps somewhat less so on a lower tech planet like Winath, where the “creation” of food is the specialty. |
| 7:3 |
Translation of sign: indecipherable; some characters appear to be Interlac, but most do not. |
| 7:4 |
The purple alien vaguely resembles a manatee; call it a “Manatoid.” |
| 7:5 |
This Probe would seem to have been assigned to R.J. Brande. Since we never see it again after Brande disembarks at Earth (assuming it is the same one seen on the shuttle in 8:1 and on Earth in 8:5), it is probably not a member of his usual staff. |
| 7:6 |
This resolves the question from Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #0, page 10, of why R.J. Brande was travelling in the same compartment as the three Legionnaires-to-be. |
| 8:1-2 |
The passenger seated next to Brande appears to be based on Roger Stern. |
| 8:4 |
The passenger seated directly behind Rokk is from the same race as the one who yelled at Moe in 7:1. We’ll call the blue alien an “Overbiter.” The eyeball on the purple stalk is a Polarian, a race prominent in the preboot. |
| 8:5 |
The characters next to Brande are, of course, Doyle and Luornu. |
| 8:6-9:1 |
These are spoken by Saturn Girl. |
| 8-9 |
This scene is essentially the same as the one in Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #0. Some of the shuttle passengers appear to be of different species than in the original story, but the disembarkation scene seems to be almost a direct match. |
| 9:2 |
Despite similar hairstyles, that is one of the White Triangle assassinsin the background, not Rokk. |
| 9:5 |
We’ll call the alien speaking to Brande an “Elephantoid,” due to the trunk. The character with spiked hair further down the stairs is a miscolored “Jaegerite” (named for the green character with forehead bumps from Alien Legion, Jaeger Grimrod); she is seen again in 9:5, and the same race is later used for President Chu’s bodyguards. |
| We’ll refrain from trying to puts names to the various races appearing in this crowd, with the exception of the “Parakeeti” standing next to Rokk; this race is later seen as Violet’s doctor and one of Andromeda’s sister nuns. |
| 12/13:4 |
Luornu didn’t put periods on all the bullet items on the Omnicom for Imra. Shameful inconsistency! |
| The indication of other Lightning Beast attacks indicates that the Ranzz children are probably all metagene positive, able to survive (and gain powers from) an otherwise fatal accident. |
| 14:1-2 |
There are slight wording changes to the dialogue in these panels vs. Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #0. |
| 14:2, 4, 6 |
The Luornu who visits Rokk is clearly Lu-Purple, based on the dialogue and body language; the body language and eyes of the one in 14:6 identifies her as Lu-Orange; therefore, the one visiting Imra is Lu-Neutral, although her right eye has been miscolored. |
| 14:3 |
Cuspin’s dialogue differs significantly from his wording in Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #0; the phrases are the same, but rearranged. |
14:3,
15:2 |
Cuspin and Brande’s comments here echo the idea that Braal is economically depressed, as it was in the preboot. |
| 15:1 |
Luornu’s dialogue refers to events seen in Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #0, pages 18-20. |
| 15:2 |
“Warring worlds” refers to the apparently recently concluded war between Titan and Braal. |
| 15:5 |
Dialogue is from Luornu. |
| 16:1 |
This panel occurs between Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #0 21:2 and 21:3. |
| 16:3 |
Rokk’s dialogue was spoken by Garth in Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #0, 21:4, and Garth’s was spoken by Rokk in 21:5-6. |
| 16:4-17:3 |
Quite a bit of liberty was taken in condensing the previous two pages down to one. A few pieces of new dialogue are added, and a lot are removed. |
| 18:1-3 |
This scene occurs before the one at the end of Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #0. |
| 18:1 |
Doyle and Jando’s “masters” are the White Triangle, specifically Roxxas and the Direct Action Cadre. |
| 18:2 |
Doyle’s first “discredit” attempt will involve the globe bomb in Legionnaires #0. |
| 18:4-5 |
Classic super-couple building: introduce the two characters with antipathy yet attraction so that the audience roots for them to get together. See any television soap opera for the standard formula. |
| 19-25 |
The events on these pages are recorded and edited into the promotional holovid that the trio sees at the start of Legionnaires #0. |
| 19:3-25:3 |
These assorted zoo beasts are very reminiscent of the weird alien animals seen throughout Silver Age Legion stories. |
| 19:1 |
This sort of an outdoor restaurant is the equivalent of Japanese-style fast food. Garth appears to be having qualms about eating some of the food, perhaps the squid. Winath being an agricultural world, Garth may not be used to eating much meat, and seafood may be exceptionally unfamiliar to him. |
| The orange, antennaed alien in the background is almost certainly not a Durlan, given the reactions we later see toward Durlans on Earth. The restaurant proprietor will be dubbed a “Clam Head.” |
| 19:2 |
The squid-headed aliens will be dubbed “MIBians,” due to the obvious take-off of the similar creatures in the film Men in Black. We’ll call the dog-like aliens “Canoids;” Lori Morning will meet one in Legionnaires #< >. |
| Interlac translation: “custo,” presumably “Customs,” since the caption indicates the Legionnaires are at the spaceport. |
| The alien on the left side of the panel looks vaguely familiar, but I can’t place it. <Perhaps based on Lucifer from Battlestar Galactica?> |
| 20:3 |
Since the cage holding the eels didn’t go away when the energy cages for the mineral-dragon and gemhog did, perhaps the green cage is made of plastic or glass instead. Or perhaps Grimbor rigged a different release mechanism for that cage. |
| 20:5 |
Cosmic Boy shows his leadership. |
| 20:6 |
Brande can see his revitalized dream slipping away once more. |
| 21:1 |
The gemhog has rolled itself into a ball, much like an armadillo does. |
| It is arguably a bad layout to place a mineral-eating beast like the mineral-dragon next to one like the gemhog, its natural prey (if they were from the sameplanet). |
| 21:3 |
Since the gorilladillo has acid spit, it is likely that the physical bars we see here were aided by energy fields which Grimbor already disabled. |
| 21:4 |
The costume and facial tattoo are decidedly different from those of the preboot Grimbor. In the preboot, he was a jailer seduced into a life of crime by his lover, Charma. Here he is more of a Great White Hunter and Animal Trainer, a role played in the preboot by Jungle King and Otto Orion. |
| 21:5 |
Grimbor works for Doyle, and shows a mindset that fits with that of the White Triangle. |
| 21:6 |
Pity that Saturn Girl didn’t catch his thoughts a few seconds earlier; both of the later bombs could have been avoided. |
| Because Saturn Girl’s telepathic “astral image” appears here, it is counted as an on-panel appearance. |
| 21:7 |
Since she is quoting from a law dealing with protecting captive animals, section 9 most likely deals with either the release of natural enemies in proximity to one another or the use of explosives near subsentient creatures (which would scare them), rather than the simple release of the animals or the endangerment of sentients by such release. (He would of course be held liable under other perti nent strictures in addition to the this one, no doubt.) |
| 22:4 |
Natives of Bismoll are later seen to be able to spit acid, too, so the gorilladillo may be from Bismoll. |
| 22:6 |
The eels are eating metal. Again, this is a trait of natives of Bismoll, so we’ll call these “Bismoll Flying Eels.” |
| 23:3-5 |
Imra can’t control the gorilladillo because she is unwilling to mentally touch it deep enough to have the desired effect, due to her aversion to alien minds. |
| 23:8 |
This mummification trap is very like the Grimbor we know from the preboot. |
| 24:2 |
And hence the real value of a team (especially a Legion-sized one): there’s always someone to back you up. |
| 24:5 |
Extremely clever. This severely takes Grimbor down a peg for the postboot, at least when up against Saturn Girl, although he could always make use of a psi-screen in future appearances. Note that Imra could do the same trick against many foes: if she knows what to look for, she can pickup her foes’ knowledge of their own weaknesses. |
| 25:1 |
Unless the construction of the zoo would automatically funnel the freed beasts in this direction, it is unlikely that they would all stampede in the same direction. More probably, Grimbor has a device on his person (or nearby) that emits a an ultrasonic signal (or whatever) that summons the beasts. |
| 26:2 |
This takes place at the end of the Legion Day flight in Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #100 (story #2), as seen by the presence of both Ferro and Chameleon in the flight. |
| As before, no attempt is made to identify the various alien races in the crowd scene, although several were seen earlier in this story. The“MIBians” are presumably the same ones seen in 19:2; as per the movie Men in Black, the smaller one was a newborn on 19:2, but is nearly two years old (per the Timeline in this issue) at this time (since there is no information on “MIBian” growth patterns, there is no reason to believe that the small one here could not be the small one from 19:2). The “conehead” aliens behind the “MIBians” are probably Xanthans (conehead). Note that the “Jaegerite” woman’s forehead bumps were not drawn in this panel. |
