Green Lantern Corps Quarterly #1

Green Lantern Corps Quarterly #1
Cover Date: Summer 1992
Writers: Various
Artists: Various

Previously...

Last time we talked about how Hal Jordan hooked up with a 14 year-old (which gets retconned down to being a 13 year-old in this issue). Anyway, that relationship lasted for the rest of that run of Green Lantern, but, by 1992, Arisia had kind of fallen off the map. Now, you might think that the writers of Green Lantern would celebrate the fact that they no longer had to deal with that...unpleasantness, but Gerard Jones wasn't your typical writer. No, Jones decided to address the situation head-on....

Plot

So the framing story for this anthology is Hal and a bunch of other Green Lanterns looking at the Book of Oa, which tells them about famous Green Lanterns. The other stories are particularly memorable, but eventually Gerard Jones gets his chance to explain what happened to Arisia after we say her last.

Well, at some point after the end of the second volume of Green Lantern, Arisia decided to make a trip back to the old Green Lantern Corps headquarters in L.A., which unfortunately coincided with Guy Gardner and Kilowog accidentally demolishing it. The upshot is that Arisia gets hit on the head and reverts back to her 13 year-old personality, but still has the body of an adult.

This inspires her to have a flashback where it's revealed that she never really had a fully mature brain, but instead was using her power ring to fake having an adult personality so she could seduce Hal Jordan, which, uh...turned out to work like a charm.

You know, it's funny, because Gerard Jones was the writer who objected to the story where Hal went crazy and killed the Green Lantern Corps because, you know, he felt like it would ruin Hal's character, but revealing that Hal was sleeping with what was essentially a 13 year-old, that's apparently okay.

Anyway, Arisia, using her quasi-adult brain, also became a model, because apparently Jones felt like his story wasn't making the audience feel uncomfortable enough:

Anyway, her brains still scrambled, Arisia manages to get into a car wreck, which gives her amnesia. Meanwhile, back on Oa, Hal and his buddies have been watching the whole fucking story, and Hal vows to fix everything, whenever he gets a chance to head back to Earth. Then he decides just to go onto the next story, since, you know, what's the worst that could happen leaving a 13 year-old with amnesia and the body of a fashion model alone for a few weeks? To Be Continued!

Commentary

Here's the thing, when Hal Jordan got replaced as Green Lantern in 1994, this was probably exactly the sort of shit that made DC editorial say to themselves, "Yeah, it's time for a new Green Lantern." The Jones version of Hal Jordan was interesting, if only because Jones seemed to really have it out for Hal. I mean, this was a period where Hal was portrayed as a chronically unemployed, graying ex-test pilot with jail time on his record. And then you add the fact that his last relationship was retconned into having the mind of a child? Hal would've better off getting written out of the book three years earlier.

Damage Stars: *****

Legion of Super-Heroes (v4) #33

Legion of Super-Heroes (v4) #33
"Untitled"
Cover Date: September 1992
Writer: Tom and Mary Bierbaum
Artist: David A. Williams, Chris Sprouse

Previously...

The Legion is still fighting the Dominators for control of Earth, as is the other, younger Legion. It was just that sort of time for the Legion.

Plot

Get your tinfoil hats on people, because it's time for some double-barrelled Bierbaum retcon action! Fortunately, I'll be here to keep it all manageable.

Chameleon Boy (the adult one, since his SW6 counterpart died in the previous issue) is on the planet Val to meet with his father R.J. Brande. (Finding out that R.J. Brande was actually a Durlan and Chameleon Boy's father was one of the first and most respected of all of the Legion's retcons).

Meanwhile, on Winath, Adult!Lightning Lad meets with Proty II, the Legion's old team pet/mascot thing. Lightning Lad wishes that he had gone to help Kid Quantum. (Because, you see, he is actually the soul of the first Proty who basically possessed Lightning Lad after the later had died, although very few characters know this fact. This was another fan theory that the Bierbaums wrote into their Legion run.) So, two pages, two retcons mentioned already? We are making good time!

On Earth, a head Dominator hears about the 'Soul of Antares' and so hires a guy named Adam Orion, the Hunter to go capture it.

Totally, definitely, not a rip-off of Kraven.

Anyway, back on Val, a man named Rouvin heads to the local saloon, flirts with the bar-tender, and bribes a robo-sheriff, before heading back to his cabin which contains a Legion Flag, a Legion costume, could he be the mysterious Kid Quantum? And, more importantly, can he convince the readers that he isn't a terrible character that has no reason for existing? Spoiler Alert: Yes, and emphatically no, respectively.

But now it is time for some exposition. Both the Dominators and R.J. Brande and Chameleon Boy have conversations that, between the two of them, give the audience the backstory here. So, it turns out that there was a planet called Antares where a species of telepathic shapeshifters lived, but Glorith, who at this point is essentially the arch-enemy of the Legion, wanted to enslave them, so they...and bear with me here....put their species' sentience into one of their number, who was stripped of his telepathy and shapeshifting skills for some reason. Anyway, he is the Soul of Antares.

And there's some more. So, the Soul of Antares decided to create a new identity for himself, that of James Cullen, Kid Quantum, who had some sort of belt that let him manipulate quantum...stuff. But his identity got compromised, so he faked his own death and has been hiding out on the planet Val ever since.

Okay, almost done. Apparently, seven other Antareans also had their sentience preserved, and so have been bugging R.J. Brande and Adult!Lightning Lad to find the Soul of Antares/Kid Quantum for a while now. Yeah, well, let's just go with it.

So, Adam Orion shows up on Val, and starts wrecking shit and taking hostages, looking for Kid Quantum, Chameleon Boy and Brande try and stop him and fail horribly. So, finally, Kid Quantum shows up to save his friends, but, before he can do that, we really need a page where the characters try and talk themselves into the idea that this whole set-up makes even the slightest bit of sense.

"Yep...no need to question it any further."

 

 

 

But, just as Adam Orion is about to do us all a favor and plug Kid Quantum in the skull, those sentient Antareans from earlier show up and stop him. And so Brande, Cham, and the Kid Quantum head off to Antares to restore the spirit of the Antareans people, except the Emerald Eye shows up to redirect them to a planet called Gallan. I'm beyond caring at this point.

Back on Earth, SW6!Lightning Lad is pissed that a bunch of his SW6 friends got killed last issue. SW6!Saturn Girl shows up and wonders why Garth is being such a dick. The short answer: because of retcon bullshit. The long answer...

The Long Answer (Take Two Aspirin Before Reading)

At this moment in Legion continuity, it had been established that when Lightning Lad was brought back to life, it was really just his body being possessed by the soul of Proty. Now, the SW6 Legion were originally from a time after Lightning Lad had died and come back to life, but, for some convoluted reason, the Bierbaums decided that SW6!Lightning Lad would have the soul of the real Lightning Lad, even though, from a continuity perspective, he should have the soul of Proty. The change in souls also affected Lightning Lad's personality, so SW6!Saturn Girl is confused to why Lightning Lad had reverted to the way he acted before he died, rather than his new personality after he came back from life. And that is exactly the sort of story knowledge and intuition you need in order to make sense of the closing scenes of this issue, which basically explains everything that was wrong with the Legion at the time.

Commentary

Why? Why did they make this story. I mean, if you want to make a new character, fine (although at this moment, readers already had to keep track of something like forty characters). But why retcon another new character into Legion history? It just makes the entire continuity that much more unstable.

As for the Kid Quantum character, well, he's a complete dud. I mean, he's such a dud that when Mark Waid had an edict from editorial to kill off a Legionnaire in the first issues of the reboot Legion, Kid Quantum was his sacrificial lamb.

But, yeah, he's the sort of character where, just due to his backstory, the other characters continually go, "Oh, man, remember the awesome times we had with Kid Quantum", even though no such stories were ever printed, which means if feels like we're something like 80% of the way to fanfiction.

So, yeah,  in summary, 1992 was a shitty year to be a Legion fan.

Damage Stars: *****
 

Legion of Super-Heroes (v4) #31

Legion of Super-Heroes (v4) #31
"The Elements of Heartbreak"
Cover Date: July 1992
Writer: Keith Giffen, Tom and Mary Bierbaum
Artist: Coleen Doran and Curt Swan(!)

Previously...

Okay, get some Tylenol because we're now in the part of Legion history where the stories make no God-damned sense unless you've read thirty years worth of Legion stories AND know exactly how the retcons have affected them.

The adult Legion (I'll get to that in a minute) is on Earth. In five-year gap between Levitz' and Giffen's runs, Earth has been secretly taken over by the Dominators, who, as you might guess, aren't great dudes. Anyway, the revolution against Dominator rule has starter, and the Legion has spent the better part of last year fighting them.

But wait, there's more! As part of the story, some stasis chambers under the surface of the Earth have been opened, releasing the SW6 Legion, who are essentially younger versions of the Legionnaires, meaning that, in addition to the two dozen or so characters already in the Giffen run, now you've got another entire Legion to keep track of. Oh, and no one knows if they're clones or not or where they've come from, but they're fighting the Dominators too.

Oh, and for the past dozen years or so, Jan Arrah, known as Element Lad, has had an on-again, off-again relationship with a Science Cop named Shvaughn Erin. Okay, ready? No, you aren't, but let's get on with it anyway.

Plot

On the wartorn Earth, adult!Element Lad breaks into a drug store to get some pills for Shvaughn. 

At the same time, and not too far away, SW6!Chameleon Boy and SW6!Element Lad are attacking a Dominator patrol squad. SW6!Element Lad fucks up and accidentally kills a bunch of them, so runs off alone out of shame.

Adult!Element Lad get the drugs back to Shvaugn, who is taking them to help her get through her ProFem withdrawal. You know the second you hear the word 'ProFem' that things are about to go off of the rails. Anyway, Shvaughn wants something to take her mind off the pain, so asks Adult!Element Lad to tell her a story.

Not missing the chance to use a tired dramatic device, Adult!Element Lad's narration of the story is juxtaposed with SW6!Element Lad's running around being sad. The story is about a Trommite kid (on Trom everyone had the power to transmute the elements at will, but they all got killed, and now Jan is the only one left). So, the kid asks his father why he can't kill things with his powers. His dad answers "A Trommite can kill no one if not himself." The kid does not respond well to this zen bullshit, and so kills his dad by turning him into "flakes of carbon."

Around this time, Shvaugn cuts her hair and insists on being called 'Sean', but wants Adult!Element Lad to finish the story. So, it turns out that all of the people and animals of the planet Trom shun the kid for killing his father, and, depressed by the isolation, the kid kills himself by turning himself into "flakes of carbon." The End.

The lesson that Sean takes from the story is that he has to go through the rest of this transition on his own, which does not seem like a particularly good interpretation of the story that Adult!Element Lad told. He leaves, and Adult!Element Lad lets him go. Sean stumbles around for awhile, and then collapses into a snow bank, and who should happen by but SW6!Element Lad, they talk for a bit, and SW6!Element Lad gets retrieved by SW6!Saturn Girl while Sean just kind of wanders off.

Meanwhile, in space, SW6!Valor meets Adult!Valor, and they're mighty confused by this turn of events. Also, the Emerald Eye teases a return, but it's hard to get excited about that.

Finally, as was the custom of this era's Legion, there are a couple of text pieces that give important exposition. It's really a testament to how continuity-heavy this Legion was that, even with Keith Giffen using a Watchmen-esque nine-panel grid for every page of his run, they still didn't have enough room to get all of the necessary information in the actual comic.

The important text piece her is a letter written by Shvaugn Erin right before she became Sean. She explains she grew up as a dude on a planet with some seriously regressive gender-identity norms, so he had trouble fitting in, and he had a crush on the young Element Lad, so this led him to run away to some sort of future-hippie commune on Earth, and then decided to become a woman for some vague reasons about not being comfortable with who he was, also, so as to make the wooing of Element Lad slightly easier. And she had been doing it ever since, except the Dominators outlawed ProFem, and now she's about to turn back into a man.

Commentary

I suppose my first question is...why? I mean, on the one hand, I guess making a long-term recurring character a transgender person is a novel form of retcon, but this probably isn't the way to do it, not the least of which is because it kind of conflates being gay and being transgender in a way that's confusing at best.

I've heard two theories about why they made Shvaugn Erin into a man. Keith Giffen in an interview he did for the Legion Companion said that he wanted to kill Erin off, but some other member of the creative staff was against is. Giffen said the only way he wouldn't kill her off is if she had some sort of interesting hook he could use. The other guy blurted out 'She's really a man' and there you go.

The other theory has to do with the Bierbaums, who were longtime fans of the Legion before they became writers. There was a popular fan theory that Element Lad was gay, primarily centered around the fact that he originally wore a pink costume and didn't have an established girlfriend. Eventually, when Paul Levitz took over, he gave Element Lad a new costume and a girlfriend in the guise of Shvaughn Erin, thus foiling the fan's speculation. Ten years later, the Bierbaums find a way to make continuity conform to their wishes by making Shvaugn into a man, which would then lead to Element Lad becoming gay or something.

Anyway, either way, those theories do kind of point to the problems the Legion were having at the time. On the one hand, you had a guy like Giffen, who could be a tad bit capricious, and on the other you had the Bierbaums, whose stories often teetered close to fan-fiction. Incidentally, their partnership ended about as badly as you might think, with Keith Giffen blowing up the Earth in his last issue, and then the Bierbaums moving on to a spinoff featuring the SW6 Legionnaires.

Just not a good moment for the Legion.

Damage Stars: *****