posted
"It's also plausible that the Time Trapper can reference retconned-away events."
It seems that would be the nature of his power. Yet by mere mention of it creates knowledge of his power and the events that took place. How or if they have any effect on present Legion time is something that hasnt been revealed to us. However in this case there is more reference to it actually taking place then of any retcon. I think the same sort of thinking here applies to the notion that Anti-Lad helped Superboy join the Legion in the first place.
Could he have been an unknown pawn of the Time Trapper?
Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
One of my favorite super-villains of all time, Per Degaton, is also a time-traveler. He is aware of events that happened Pre-Crisis of Infinite Earths. I have read it explained nicely that all futures of Per Degaton are like petals on a flower, whereas the normal timeline is a stem. It might even be safe to say that the future is predetermined, based on the Einsteinian principle that time is simultaneous (you can learn more than philosophy from reading Watchmen). In the DCU this is compounded by the fact that amateur time-travelers like the Legion of Super-Heroes don't routinely mess up the timeline.
-------------------- Go with the good and you'll be like them; go with the evil and you'll be worse than them.- Portuguese Proverb
From: Illinois | Registered: Jun 2010
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quote:Originally posted by TimeTrapR: [Point being that is subjective. Without any 5 Year Gap knowledge we are kept with dangling plot line. A cliff hanger. Drama over a flatline. But not solid death. It would seem inaccurate to call it dead, Jim. E
You have set your standards so high that it becomes impossible to call anything in comics a death. I can come up with a scenario for any death where the character isn't really dead and the event that seems to kill the character really doesn't.
If his heart stops and everyone acts as though that means he's dead, he's dead. The death can later be retconned away, but the mere possibility that it will be doesn't mean it isn't a death.
Registered: Apr 2010
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Set
There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met.
posted
Thanks to quantum uncertainty gobbledigook and the observer effect, I'm coming to appreciate the idea that 'time' is a series of bubbles of perceived reality, more or less floating in the same bathtub. If somebody over there in the 21st century bubble changes something, that's gonna affect their bubble, maybe, for awhile, but have no bearing at all on my 31st century bubble, where I still remember the 'original' past just fine.
Superboy existed. Then he didn't exist and was mandated to have never existed, and the Legion went to hell for awhile. Now he exists again, and was a Legionnaire, to boot.
If the Time Trapper is the excuse for why 21st century 'events' (that are gonna be retconned out of existence 1d10 years from now anyway) aren't even remotely relevant to the 31st century Legion, then I'm good with that.
Go, Time Trapper!
Really, the basic 'rule' of time travel is that if a time traveller *can* change the past, and time travel could ever actually occur, then, logically, at some point in the future, it *is* going to occur, and the past has already been messed up an infinite amount of times anyway by time travellers from the future, so, relax, the mere possibility that it *could* be broken, means that it already *has* been broken, more times than you can conceive of.
It's horribly circular and incestuous and pretty much irrelevancies itself in a puff of logic.
There's really no middle ground. Either time travel can't happen, or it can happen, but nothing can be changed, or the universe has already been changed a zillion times by time travellers from the far, far, future, and any attempt at unravelling the damage and figuring out what 'really happened' or what was 'supposed' to happen is pretty much a Sisyphean task.
Registered: Aug 2006
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quote:Originally posted by TimeTrapR: [Point being that is subjective. Without any 5 Year Gap knowledge we are kept with dangling plot line. A cliff hanger. Drama over a flatline. But not solid death. It would seem inaccurate to call it dead, Jim. E
You have set your standards so high that it becomes impossible to call anything in comics a death. I can come up with a scenario for any death where the character isn't really dead and the event that seems to kill the character really doesn't.
If his heart stops and everyone acts as though that means he's dead, he's dead. The death can later be retconned away, but the mere possibility that it will be doesn't mean it isn't a death.
not trying to set high standards, actually im trying to simplify things to work through many years of belief based on what Giffen set up in the 5YG. All we saw was a flat line and Shady crying. No response from any other member, nothing.. Based on that alone and the picking up after Magic Wars there was no way of knowing if Mon-El truly had died.
quote:Originally posted by TimeTrapR: Based on that alone and the picking up after Magic Wars there was no way of knowing if Mon-El truly had died.
There's no way of knowing whether *any* character, *ever* in comics has truly died.
If your standard for death is that it's not death if there's no way to know, then you're being unreasonable, because there's never a way to know.
Registered: Apr 2010
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posted
Hold on, here. Let's stop and think about this a minute.
The whole "death of Mon-El" thing was a result of the Conspiracy.
The Conspiracy was a reaction to the death of Superboy, a character the Legionnaires shared literally hundreds of adventures with.
Now here's where current continuity comes in:
Superboy didn't die. He's now called Superman.
Thus, the Conspiracy never happened.
Thus, Mon-El didn't die.
How else can you possibly interpret it??
-------------------- First comic books ever bought: A DC four-for-47-cents grab bag that included Adventure #331. Been addicted ever since.
From: Stuck in the Psychedelic Era | Registered: Jan 2010
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posted
IAm Legion: That TV show's theories are rooted in physics. According the Newton's axioms (I just attended a lecture on Newton's Principia) matter is continuously in motion. That means everything in the universe moves; Einstein debunked Newton's concept of real space where nothing is moving. Einstein developed quantum mechanics, which is where we get theories such as parallel universes.
-------------------- Go with the good and you'll be like them; go with the evil and you'll be worse than them.- Portuguese Proverb
From: Illinois | Registered: Jun 2010
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quote:Originally posted by TimeTrapR: Based on that alone and the picking up after Magic Wars there was no way of knowing if Mon-El truly had died.
There's no way of knowing whether *any* character, *ever* in comics has ever died.
Sure , generally speaking. But specifically in the case of Mon-El, his death in the pages of Legion of Super Heroes was not shown on panel nor was any reaction of that death shown by any other character in the book. His death, or the cliffhanger moment of his flatline that was caused by a power failure, was continued in the NOW out of continuity 5 Year Later series. *If* one chooses to cherry pick that little bit of "non" continuity as continuity then surely you can not ignore the fact that the Time Trapper was hiding out inside Mon-El's body ...which , by those standards Mon-El could very well still be. But his death was shown in the 5 Year Gap. Which is not in continuity. Let's not confuse facts with emotional attatchment especially in the daunting task of cataloging continuity errors. Nothing printed ever has diminished the existence of the Pocket Universe. If so please...anyone point me to an issue number.
quote:Originally posted by the Hermit: Hold on, here. Let's stop and think about this a minute.
The whole "death of Mon-El" thing was a result of the Conspiracy.
The Conspiracy was a reaction to the death of Superboy, a character the Legionnaires shared literally hundreds of adventures with.
Now here's where current continuity comes in:
Superboy didn't die. He's now called Superman.
Thus, the Conspiracy never happened.
Thus, Mon-El didn't die.
How else can you possibly interpret it??
Current Superman met Superboy from the Pocket Universe Current Superman after Infinte Crisis remembered that he too knew the Legion as a teen and shared adventures with them. Were these the same adventures? Did the parralell exisitence of both Superboy and Superman merge as those slices of time possibly merged after Infinite Crisis? I'm sure these are the many anomalies and paradoxes Brainy contemplates as he looks back in time from the Time Institute . But one thing that won't change for us readers is that the deeper he looks in the more the REAL story will present itself from a 31st century perspective. A perspective that exists where Time Travel and time machines are "common" place. A place where cousins who don't know eachother in their own time can battle side by side with the Legion. Seems the Rocky Horror Picture Show was right, "Time is fleeting Madness" indeed.
Registered: Sep 2003
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quote:Originally posted by TimeTrapR: his death in the pages of Legion of Super Heroes was not shown on panel
By that reasoning, no death is "shown on panel". It's true that the flatline could be something other than a death. It's also true that any of the other things which are normally taken to mean death could be something other than a death. A flatline is no different from being decapitated or disintegrated or anything else--<i>any</i> of them look like death but could be explained by something else.
Registered: Apr 2010
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quote:Originally posted by TimeTrapR: his death in the pages of Legion of Super Heroes was not shown on panel
By that reasoning, no death is "shown on panel". It's true that the flatline could be something other than a death. It's also true that any of the other things which are normally taken to mean death could be something other than a death. A flatline is no different from being decapitated or disintegrated or anything else--<i>any</i> of them look like death but could be explained by something else.
Come on Ken, you really are gonna old school cut n paste out of context and reply to a general term that has nothing to do with the specifics that were presented? I feel like im trying to buy a used car. And you are the self appointed chronicler of continuity? All u have to do is read the book. Unless all you are saying is that there are huge holes in the notion that *Mon-El* died pre 5YG, so much so that one has to go all abstract in their thinking to determine if he is dead or not. Guess the truth might lie in the context....
Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
I think what's ultimately important here is the personal timeline of a character, in this case Mon-El. It's pretty obvious that the guy who is now Legion leader and Green Lantern did not die (I would think he would remember a thing like that).
Thus, as far as the characters we are currently reading the adventures of are concerned, the Conspiracy, death of Superboy and the Cosmic Boy miniseries (in which he met a Superman that treated him like a new kid in town) never happened.
Any other way of looking at it seems to me to be nothing more than an intellectual exercise with no bearing on current continuity.
-------------------- First comic books ever bought: A DC four-for-47-cents grab bag that included Adventure #331. Been addicted ever since.
From: Stuck in the Psychedelic Era | Registered: Jan 2010
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