Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Legion of Super Heroes #4. (2020). Spoilers

Well LSH #4 contains the Legion’s origin story. It mimics the original Legion origin but with a twist, like this whole version of the Legion does. Everything feels familiar to long time Legion fans, and is blurred into something new at the same time.

I enjoyed the bio on Triplicate Girl on the first page along with her stated crush on Superboy. That was a nice nod to the Adventure Comics of old.

While the pacing of the orientation segment was fine, the abrupt ending made the whole issue feel lacking because we can’t complete a storyline in one issue for nothing.

Still not sure what Bendis is building towards after 4 issues in.

Agree with this completely. We were *finally* getting the orientation, and I was enjoying more than anything we've seen so far, and then it suddenly cut off! Ugh!

Anyway, I'll have more to say later.

Agree as well!

Likes:

1) The "spotlight" on a new Legionnaire on the first page. Dawnstar last issue, Trip this one. Good way to slowly meet the team.

2) The world-building. Rimbor had one, now Titan, Winath, Braal. Each is becoming very different

3) Ayla taking the lead with Garth being the more level-headed one. At first I thought Garth was coming across as bland, but I realized this is the way to differentiate him from Ayla, a nice reversal of previous Boots. And also sets up more: when did Ayla's powers change, and what made her change her mind about the UP?

4) Garth having two moms, awesome. Was the other mom calling in via holographic call though?

5) Imra being so keen to leave the collective, and the collective knowing she was lying...

6) Pres RJ Brande (still a bit jarring to have her as a female alien, but whatever) figuring out Imra was using her telepathy on her AND encouraging it so she could test for weaknesses

7) Confirmation that Lu, when integrating, absorbs knowledge and experiences from all her bodies. Makes her more potent.

Dislikes

1) The Legion origin not being finished. Dang it. It does tell us enough, but I want the know more about the rest of the team...

2) Aquaman's trident... with so much going on I almost forgot about it. I still don't really appreciate its importance.


There's enough here to keep me coming back next month, though. A solid issue.

This story is moving g l a c i a l l y. Has there been any sort of climax to a sub-plot in any of the four issues? Maybe the Rimbor stuff but so much of that still feels unanswered and incomplete. And we couldn’t even get a whole origin story in this issue.

There are nuggets of interest here and there for Legion die-hards but other than them, this is the most boring Legion series I’ve ever read.

I enjoyed the plays on Garth, Imra and Rokk. Both were almost familiar but different enough to be their own characters, for me.

Garth as the more laidback twin? Two moms? I'm down with it. If anything, this sequence made me want to see more of Ayla.

Imra as the adventurer on a planet of isolationists? Yeah, that could work.

Rokk as the politically naive planetary athlete? That's different (considering he once averted war with Mordru over dinner).



For me, each issue has ended at a weird spot - and the plotting is erratic. This series is SCREAMING for a Who's Who.

Some thoughts:

--I really wish they had included the origin in the Millennium series.
--It felt like we got a lot more of Winath than the other two founders' homeworlds.
--It appears as though they borrowed the idea of Validus-as-a-Winathian-deity from the threeboot.
--"Six other children"... so there's one missing? Mekt, perhaps?
--All the Ranzzes dress alike.
--Glad to see the metal monsters in place on Braal. Not sure about only one percent of Braalians possessing powers, though. I always liked the idea that the strength of their powers just varied wildly within the population.
--I'm really iffy on this version of Titan.
--Super-weird seeing Blok there at the founding! Six Years Old, huh?
--Not really digging this version of Brande at all.

The Winath segment definitely seemed longer. And we see the whole Ranzz family, unlike with Imra's collective or Rokk's coach/dad whatever.

Oh yeah, that "1% of Braalians have powers" thing. It reduces the character of Rokk as a particularly talented and disciplined Braalian. Ah, well.

Another thing that annoys me: the little Legionnaire "who's who" boxes are not always clear. Too bad, because some of them have some extra info that could be cool - like Bouncing Boy officially having some enhanced agility.

Interlac translations;
Page 1 (Bottom right corner)
message waiting
message waiting
message waiting

Page 2 (mid page on right)
UNITED
WISDOM
PLAZA
a place truly fon (?)
communicayion,
information,
education.

Page 8 (bottom of first panel)
winathian's overbeing is
called validus, the lord
of lightning. single
births are considered
the children of validus.

Page 19 (top)
this brings krinn's career record to 20-41 with 14
knockouts, he remains well-known for his knock-
out power. in the 142 fights that were tracked by
lexpubox, krinn landed 76 percent of his power
punches, which is 15 percentage points higher than
the braal heavy average.

Page 22 (bottom of first panel)
the president's security
team is led by a dryad.
commander blok of the 48th
he is six years old

Page 28 (top panel)
mandate
to cease and desist

So...

CON: I really hope they didn't get rid of the farms on Winath

PRO: I'm kinda really digging Ayla's energy

CON: But I'm gonna be peeved if it turns out Ayla, as an outspoken Black woman standing against police brutality, had her more offensive lightning capabilities swapped with anti-gravity powers because I really do not like the subtext in there and how it would make her less of a threat

The good things... Imra & Rokk origins, Luornu crush in Superboy, Blok.



The bad things.... all the Ranzzes family, too much children and no Mekt. The new RJ Brande, now is a non durlan female alien...

Is she? Or is the President somehow a Durlan pretending to be a female alien? (I imagine there would be checks against this but perhaps the "President" has ways around them or has a close circle of supporters that help get around them.)


It looks like all the rest of the Interlac on this document might be actual information too rather than being the usual jumble of letters. I was able to recognise a few words here and there like "unity" but not sure if I have the patience to decipher it with so much blur. Hopefully someone will post a translation if there is one.

I think I liked this issue although not as much as the previous one. As a long-time fan I was glad to see some background and interested in the changes. It was also frustrating to have it interrupted. OTOH with the pace shown I wonder if the remaining pages would have been enough to tell the rest anyway. Another thought is wondering if new Legion readers (of which I hope there are many) would not be so enthralled with the origin story and breaking back to the current action and plot may be a good thing.

The Titanian collective is an interesting change and I think a more welcome one than the mute Titanians in the Threeboot. Nevertheless we don't see enough to know how much time is spent in the Collective. Certainly some must be spent outside to interact with other species/worlds and Imra's application would be done outside the Collective environment shown. The suggestion that Imra cannot return is also full of potential.

The Ranzz family? Again interesting but wait and see.

Rokk being a champion athlete/player is reminiscent of many previous versions while stil being different.

There is obviously a lot more to learn about President Brande and the state of the UP. I look forward to it.

With the current readthrough being the 5YL version, it makes an interesting comparison to this tale, not in specifics but in pacing mechanisms. The artwork in this version is beautiful but allows for less information than the 5YL's dense approach and nine-panel grid. With that and the extra text pages we learnt so much in each issue. Yet even so there were so may questions that took a long time to resolve in that version as well so maybe this isn't too bad. Slow yes but I am still enjoying the journey. (Also 5YL had 25 pages per issue where this modern comic has only 21.)

Other things I found interesting:

Triplicate Girl's opening speal about herself made it sound like she spends most of her time split and then merges to combine memories and experience, rather than the more common portrayal of a single body that splits into three. For all her emphasis on being one person her bodies still apparently have differing opinions.

Computo? I hope this goes somewhere in the future.

Brande seems to specifically select these three. It is unclear if there were other members for the Young United Planets out of which she extracted these three of if they are all there is and she wants to re-purpose the whole idea. The words also suggest that she picked them because of their "rebel" stance, appropriate with Imra and Garth but Rokk is simply a champion athlete - although she complements him on a fight he had last year but it is unclear if this was still simply competition or something more meaningful.

I was wondering if Computo was a Legionnaire? It's not really clear from the story.

^ I was also a bit confused by that but I must say that seeing her was one of the highlights of the issue.

I also hadn’t realized that was Blok guarding the President before the Legion’s formation. That’s kinda cool.

One thing I'm definitely not keen on is the change to how the Ranzz siblings got their powers. The whole "crash-landing on Korbal" bit is pretty iconic, in my mind. Even more so that the "saving Brande" idea.

I didn't notice the bit about the Ranzz's, but I'm not sure I like the change to Rokk, being a more violent 'champion' fighting metal beasts than a 'magnoball champion.' Magnoball feels more like the utopian future-sport I'd associate with the Legion future than some alien-animal-baiting fight club...

OTOH, Blok being a bodyguard, and not just a wide-eyed innocent, is a breath of fresh air, since he's not being introduced to a pre-existing Legion as the 'newbie' or POV character meeting the setting for the first time. (Since that's Jon's role, this time around, to be our entry point. And I didn't mean that double-entendre, but I'm embracing it 'cause I'm evil.)

That in mind, one thing I've always thought was a handy thing for the Legion, as a property, is they are adding new regular members every few years, and there's *always* a fresh new POV character for new readers to enter the book with, and to whom stuff that 'everybody should know already' has to be explained (for the new readers benefit).

Ayla says something about being born with powers, and then Garth later mentions never having left his home city. I wonder if any of the other Ranzz children have powers? Mekt is apparently a "child of Validus", which presumably explains his absence, but I wonder what that means in practice?



Agreed. While I'm glad the metal monsters exist, having Rokk fight them as sport is definitely off-putting.

At first glance it looked to me like all the children at the Ranzz table were different ages and I wondered what that meant, if this was not actually a family but a gathering of "singles", "Children of Validus". On closer inspection I can see three pairs that could all be the same age; Garth and Ayla, the boy and girl to Ayla's right, and the youngest boy and girl opposite each other at the end of the table. So the Ranzz family now consists of at least two mothers, 6 siblings born as twins and a single birth presumably Mekt. A lot more than previous versions.

Looking closer I also discovered a number of other interesting items.

All the boys are in white with a blue top and the girls are in blue with a white top. The "human" mother is all in blue with three ovals on the front, perhaps representing the three sets of twins? If so is Mekt not represented because as a singleton he is a Child of Validus? As well as the common skin and hair colour it appears they all have the dichromatic eyes with boys having blue on the left and girls having blue on the right. (Is this a Ranzz family trait or rather a Winathian racial trait?) The youngest girl is mimicking the body language and attitude of Ayla while all the boys (except perhaps Garth who appears more enthused) seem uncertain and upset.

The arrangement also suggests that boy/girl twin births are the norm, as opposed to the identical twin births often shown in previous versions of Winathians. This raises some interesting questions of biology. (Getting technical here which is always dangerous with comics.) In humans and most mammals, physical genetic sex is determined by the XY chromosome pairing. Females have XX and so can only contribute X to their offspring. Males have XY and can contribute either. This results in two types of twins. Identical twins are genetic copies of each other where a single fertilised egg splits in to two early on and so both must be the same sex. Fraternal twins are where the female produces two eggs which are both fertilised at the same time and effectively produces two siblings who happened to be the same age, a bit like a "litter" of two. These twins are no closer related than any other siblings and can be of either sex. The Ranzz twins were always fraternal by this approach even though many Winathians were shown as identical twins, making all of the Ranzzes singletons in a genetic sense.

Now if boy/girl twin births are the norm, there must be a different genetic arrangement since just a litter of two being normal could produce boy/girl, boy/boy or girl/girl. Perhaps Winathians are NOT descended from Earth humans but are another DC humanoid race with a different genetic code. Perhaps they are like Earth birds which use a ZW sex determination where a male is ZZ and a female is ZW. Then the female/mother might always release a Z egg and a W egg and the "male" component would always be Z and Z resulting in a ZZ male and a ZW female.

In any case it strongly suggests that Winathians are not human but humanoid aliens. (DC and Marvel are of course littered with these, a result of speculation from the early Twentieth Century that the human arrangement was somehow superior to any other and that other planets would also produce humans by parallel evolution. This concept is no longer in vogue but cannot be proved/disproved until we actually meet non-terrestrial sentient aliens.)

One other thought is that every parental family we have seen so far (3) is either shown or suggested to be same sex parents. Both Jo Nah and Rokk Krinn refer to Prime Father or Father-One, and the Ranzzs show two mothers (although it is unclear if one is actually an AI or simply communicating holographically). Nothing wrong with this but if true it would suggest that male/female pairing is no longer the norm which would be a huge change from the Legionnaire pairings we are familiar with. Admittedly the sample size is small but it is uniform, perhaps reflecting the writer's desire to be showing current trends into the future but maybe not putting enough long term thought into the consequences. OTOH both Prime Father and Father-one could refer to group family arrangements with several men and women jointly raising children as all of theirs (an arrangement sometimes found in communes etc in the Sixties, Seventies), so the Fathers referred to are simply the "leading" (maybe only at the moment) male parent and there maybe a Prime Mother or Mother-One as well.

Who knows? Lots of ways this could go or be reinterpreted. As with any alternate universe speculation (and every version of the Legion including the original is effectively an alternate universe arrangement) the fun can be in how far it ranges.

I always saw the Ranzz family as an anomaly on Winath. Every other Winathian we saw in previous versions of the Legion was one half of an identical twin pair. Garth and Ayla were really two singleton births that just happened to occur at the same time. Mekt simply had the bad luck to have no other egg fertilized at the same time he was. Of course, in this new continuity, maybe we'll find out that Mekt had a twin who was a still-birth, and maybe that early trauma was the beginning of Mekt' s downward spiral into villainy.

Some futuristic genetic tinkering could lead to every birth being a boy/girl otherwise-identical twin birth, with every sperm of the Winathian male carrying both X and Y chromosomes, but the gene-modified egg splitting those chromosomes up and turning into two fetuses, one using the X and the other the Y. They don't have to be 'human looking aliens,' although this being comics, that's probably easier to explain than what I just typed, because some yob will invariably say, 'But! That's not how it works!' as if it wasn't genetically modified to work differently.

[quite] Who knows? Lots of ways this could go or be reinterpreted. As with any alternate universe speculation (and every version of the Legion including the original is effectively an alternate universe arrangement) the fun can be in how far it ranges. [/quote]

There does seem to be a deliberate choice for every family seen thus far to be not the 20th century 'one husband, one wife' standard. Multiple fathers, multiple mothers, possibly a group-marriage?

That's cool.

It would be neat to see if one or more Legionnaires have only a single parent, who never chose any sort of life-partner, but decanted a (slightly-modified) clone to serve as their child, or used some sort of surrogate to produce a child the somewhat older-fashioned way. (Which is my own headcanon for Sun Boy, who has a rich dad, and a growth tank who'll never take half dad's money in the divorce for a mom.)

Neat idea with Sun Boy.
I am fine with writing experimentation of differing family relationships after a thousand years. My only hesitation is the consequence of no male/female relationships being shown so far suggests that such relationships may be rare. Where does this leave such classic legionnaire relationships such as Garth/Imra, Jo/Tinya, Val/Projectra, Chuck/Luornu? Will the legionnaires follow the new norm or be rebels and recreate the ancient male/female relationship?

I was disappointed by the Triplicate Girl introduction page. We didn't learn much about the character, and she came across as a bit mixed up. I'm missing the uber competent Lu that we saw at the end of the DNA run. I'm fine with the revisions to the origin story. Imra as a Science Police candidate , Garth as a run away, and Rokk coming to Earth for a job are all classic elements that now seem outdated. So make way for the new. I did enjoy Ayla's personality and can't wait to see more. The Ranzz family sequence left me a bit confused, but we;ll learn more as time comes. I loved the artwork on the Cosmic Boy pages. His appearance and personality are winning me over. He's always been one of my favorite comic book characters, and I'm happy that I'm still able to relate to him.

On the one hand, sure, new and fresh is cool. On the other hand, I feel like even the old, old versions have barely even been seriously touched upon, after all these decades.

For just one example, every other pair of Winathian twins we've seen over the years has stayed together, even gone into identical careers and supposedly married other twin-pairs and possibly even lived together in big two-family homes. And yet, we meet Garth leaving Winath *and his twin* far behind, never looking back. What happened in the Ranzz household to motivate him to leave Ayla behind? Off searching for a missing Mekt has been one explanation, but still not a valid reason for him to be off searching for Mekt on his own, and not with Ayla along for the ride.

I've got my own headcanon for that, but, AFAIK, it's never even been addressed. Did they have some big falling out and he stormed out in a huff? Did she need to remain behind to deal with family stuff, and it was a totally amicable split of duties they agreed upon? Obviously we know the meta reason, Ayla didn't exist yet when Garth chose to leave Winath, but now that she does exist, there should have eventually been some sort of in-story reason for it.

Similarly, there are 'untold stories' lurking around in almost every Legionnaires' background, stemming from various unanswered questions or inconsistencies or developments over the many years of their publication, such as the exact situation with Xanthu and Star Boy. (He has all of Superboy's powers, and then he leaves Xanthu for good to join the Legion, and bam, they all sort of go away, and next time we see Xanthu, there's a new planetary champion, Atmos, who miraculously has all the same 'Superboy' powers that Thom lost... Gosh, that's convenent, *for Xanthu.* It's almost like the planetary government of Xanthu has some sort of process by which a single champion can be given those powers, and if that champion leaves, oh well, takes-backsy, and grant them to a new champion!).

I feel like it's a big failing of imagination to consider the 'old' Legionnaires stories 'done' just because so much has already been done with them.

Batman's story isn't done, and they've written way more about him and his life and family and city and supporting cast!

Great points Set. Love those two examples you gave.

Did anyone else point out how at one point Garth calls Triplicate Girl "Luorno" instead of Luornu?