Analysis Notes
| Cover |
“Gods or Monsters?” is probably a reference to Gods and Monsters, the Academy Award-winning (Best Screenplay) film about the life for Frankenstein director James Whale. |
| 1-4 |
These captions are from Monstress, obviously. |
| 1:1-2 |
These panels make and obvious parallel to the ones at the end of the issue. |
| 1:4 |
In the previous issue, the Legion Outpost’s remains were in the center of the nebula, but they now appear to have drifted out of it. The nebula thus may not be laced with tarnium and connected to the Outpost, despite the color. |
| 2/3:1 |
“Sectarian”: narrow, bigoted, limited in scope. |
| 2/3:2 |
“Enigma Variations” is a set of 15 short pieces by Sir Edward Elgar, perhaps best know for “Pomp and Circumstance,” often used for graduation ceremonies; the best known of the “Enigma Variations” is “Nimrod”, which was played at Princess Diana’s funeral. |
| 4:1 |
Regarding Saturn Girl as a leader, indeed, recall the questioning of her logic to split the team into disjoint Earth and Outpost-based ones. |
| 4:2 |
The two silhouettes are Chameleon and Ultra Boy. |
| 4:2, 4:4 |
The Legionnaires shift positions during this scene. They are not remaining in the same place, but are milling about the room while the situation is discussed. |
| 4:3 |
Note the difference between Monstress’ verbalizations and her internal monologue. Her “frilly” speaking patterns are largely a front for the more introspective, competent person beneath. This is partly a protection mechanism: built like she is, people will tend to dismiss her as shallow and dumb, but by fronting the “girly” attitude, she twists people’s expectations even more than she could be simply being competent. Even fans don’t quite know what to make of her. |
| 4:5 |
Nice bit with Umbra, who has needed to stretch herself for quite a while now. |
| 5:1 |
“7”: this would be the airlock to Level 7. The level are probably counted from the docking bays at the top (where the Outpost’s “fins” are), based on the perceived direction of the numbering. (Technically, though, the number should be in Interlac, a triangle with two dots stacked vertically after it.) |
| 5:2 |
Black light, eh? There have already been indications that Umbra’s darkness is the same sort of material as that used by Nightshade and other “darkforce” characters; perhaps there are also connections to Phantom Lady’s “black light” generator? |
| 5:6 |
Legionnaire figures here are Kid Quantum, Monstress, Live Wire, and Saturn Girl. |
| 6:2-4 |
This scene is poorly depicted. What presumably happened is that Garth started to fly, got a few feet off the ground, and then the ring cut out on him. |
| 6:6 |
Well no wonder the ring had gone bad: the “L*” logo is missing! |
| 6:7 |
Possibilities include going through the stargate rift, being outside the universe, the presence of the nebula, and the Legionnaires’ encasement in tromium. |
| 6:8 |
The communication circuits (and other facilities of the rings) are embedded into the rings and use standard materials. |
| Radio dialogue is from Live Wire. |
| 7:3 |
Shikari has just enabled some of her armor. |
| 7:5-7 |
If Shikari is a postboot version of Dawnstar, they have given her slightly different powers. The preboot Dawnstar would have merely complained that she couldn’t track something that wasn’t in deep space. |
| 7:8 |
To answer Umbra’s question: because if she isn’t cheerful, then she would be depressed, and you don’t want to see Monstress depressed. |
| Off-panel dialogue is from Monstress. |
| 8:2, 8:4 |
Straight out of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Sigh. |
| 8:5 |
Actually, Tinya being a Bgztlian-Carggite crossbreed with one triplet missing from birth, another transported to and from the 20th century, and the third not having a corporeal body anymore… you don’t get much more “variant” than that! |
| (Okay, so Jo’s comment is really just a <Henny Youngman?> reference.) |
| 8:7 |
Saturn Girl’s mental direction here echoes Apparition’s “suggestion” to Ultra Boy in < >. This was presumably intentional. |
| 9:3 |
We don’t really want to know what turns you on, Tinya. (And doubly so, since this is Saturn Girl talking through you!) |
| Live Wire is behind Ultra Boy. |
| 9:4 |
Imra finishes Tinya’s sentence, albeit with different wording. With any other character, this would be just a dialogue juxtaposition, but since this is Saturn Girl, it may reflect that she is using her powers, monitoring the mental/emotional state of the team during this crisis. |
| 9:5 |
This is presumably foreshadowing. |
| 10:1 |
“Monstrous” from Monstress. Heh. |
| 10:2 |
Recall that in the previous issue, killing the other two Kwai was insufficient; the Progeny retained their remains for processing. The Progeny are not wasteful, for all their other evil. |
| Silhouettes are Monstress, Shikari, Chameleon, and Umbra. |
| 11:1 |
Chameleon is “Orange-Legion,” but Monstress is not. Curious. |
| That they are nomads fits with starting off the previous issue with a comet. |
| The Brief-Home is probably a ship of some sort; a world would seem to need a sun to support life properly, and such systems don’t typically “wander” as described here. |
| 12:1 |
Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? |
| 12:3 |
And have you asked, Umbra? If they had — if they had fought back against the Progeny for millennia — would that change your attitude any? |
| Monstress’ hair is to the edge of the panel. |
| 12:5 |
They seem to be going overboard in their efforts to make this series accessible to new readers. Monstress' comment here really should have warranted a footnote. |
| Umbra’s cloak is on the right side of the panel. |
| 13 |
The unpowered Xanthuans we have seen before have either been normal humans or cone-headed aliens. The Le Parc’s are likely immigrants; Candi’s father or grandfather moved to Xanthu to take advantage of cheap labor and relaxed laws. |
| 13:3 |
The worker probably intended to use Candi’s presence and the gene-bomb to blackmail her father. |
| 13:5 |
Candi has probably convinced herself over the years of the worker’s relative innocence, but that isn’t supported by the evidence. One doesn’t build a real bomb if one doesn’t intend to use it if the need arises. |
| 13:6-7 |
It apparently altered her genetic structure to be like that of the worker, or perhaps a merge of the worker and herself, becoming almost two bodies in one form. Being so close, Candi took the full brunt of the blast, and that may have changed her even more. |
| This explains the male figures in the background of her pinup in Legion of Super-Heroes: Secret Files #2: other nearby people were horribly, painfully injured by the gene-bomb, while Candi herself was transformed. |
| 13:8 |
It appears that Candi’s father may have even institutionalized her. When she later tried to use her family’s power to help the workers, she was rejected, perhaps more because of her family name than anything else. |
| 13:9 |
The image is a flashback to before Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #<83>. |
| 14:3 |
The “alien introduced to Earth culture and misinterpreting things” schtick is pretty old hat these days, but they are doing a decently fresh job of it with Shikari. This “mascara” bit works particularly well. |
| 15:3 |
Chameleon hasn’t been using his powers much in this series thus far; here and in the previous issue, he hasn’t done much more than limb stretching, a lá Mr. Fantastic. |
| 15:7 |
Finally, a decently clear use of Jazmin’s powers. (Observe as a sideline that her powers can be read as a broader version of Chemical King’s, in some ways.) |
| 16:3 |
A bit of anti-Durlan sentiment on Umbra’s part? Curious. This may be more residual Blight recovery than anything else; Umbra is hypersensitive to how she enjoyed being under the Blight’s control, and she is interpreting any reaction against her as being accusatory as a result. |
| Umbra’s appearance here looks familiar; possibly Katherine Hepburn or Marlene Dietrich? |
| Chameleon looks quite a bit like Odo from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in this panel. |
| 17:5 |
Saturn Girl’s speech would perhaps be more effective without the second balloon. “We come in peace, but we will respond to attacks and threats in kind,” might have been a better statement. (Not that it would have engendered a different reaction from the Progeny, of course.) |
| 17:7 |
A touch of Dark Imra, there. (And thankfully free of the X-angst accompanying the return of Jean Grey as Phoenix in issues of Uncanny X-Men published at the same time as this.) |
| Imra apparently has lost her qualms about dealing with alien minds. The Legion’s need, of course, adds to her strength in such a scenario. |
| 18:1 |
This “rising out of the floor” schtick is rapidly becoming stale, Tinya. That’s three times in two issues. |
| Tinya can rise out of the floor because she can become lighter than air when phasing. It’s an old Kitty Pryde trick. |
| 19 |
The various shots of the gassed captives count as a single panel. |
| 19:2-5 |
Another poorly illustrated scene. Looking back to 10:2, the captives were apparently on some sort of a platform attached to a diagonal elevator; Monstress is lowering the platform here. |
| 19:8 |
Only following orders. The Nazi analogy is being pushed awfully hard here. |
| 20:1 |
The design of the Progeny shuttle owes a lot to Anakin’s pod racer from The Phantom Menace. |
| Dialogue is from Brainiac 5.1. Dialogue captions are from Monstress. |
| 21:4 |
Dialogue is from Saturn Girl. |
| 22:3 |
Won’t the Progeny simply follow the Legionnaires to the Brief-Home? (Of course they will.) |
| 22:5-6 |
It isn’t the Legion values that Monstress is questioning so much as the broader United Planets values: what sort of a universe is it that something like the Progeny can exist? Further, the retelling of her origin has brought to the surface the realization that sometimes “civilized” humans (like her father) aren’t all that far from beings like the Progeny. |
