Analysis Notes
| 1:1 |
Darren is greeting his coworkers, the ones whom the Legionnaires
pound on before page 4. |
| The text on the door should have been in Interlac. |
| 1:3 |
The Interlac on each door is the translation of the English
text below it. |
| 1:5 |
It’s not clear why the lunar terraforming would mark
the end of the Footstep Drive project. (Well, for Ra’s al
Ghul, it makes sense, but it doesn’t follow why he would project
that information to anyone outside his immediate staff.) |
| 2:5 |
First reaction is “How could the power go out?
Especially since it’s of vital importance that the likes of Gates
not get free. There must be redundant generators and such, right?”
Second reaction is “Oh, wait. Brainy is with the team on this
mission. He’ll have dealt with such redundancies, and easily.” |
| 5:1-2 |
Note that Ra’s al Ghul is speaking to someone remotely,
not to Venge here. |
| 5:3 |
While Venge knowing that McCauley is Ra’s al Ghul
is no surprise (and in fact is known after the end of the previous issue),
there are at least six other people here. How open of a secret has
his identity been? (Then again, they are presumably all faithful
lieutenants in the Demon’s organization, not just Joe Random Technician
off the street.) |
| 6:3 |
“I’ve never seen you do that before.
Stop it. It scares me.” |
| 6:4 |
Not longer than Venge can imagine. As seen
in The Legion #11, Venge is actually C.O.M.P.U.T.O., survived
since the 20th century. Well, perhaps still somewhat longer than
Venge can imagine, but less longer than Ra’s al Ghul thinks. |
| Note the double entendre of the “true face”
comment, coming from the disguised C.O.M.P.U.T.O. |
| 6:6 |
C.O.M.P.U.T.O. perhaps can’t be afraid. |
| 7:4 |
“I have time”: actually, he probably only has
until moonrise, but this is more of a reference to “I’ve had
time to learn how to deal with Daxamites.” |
| 8:1 |
Dialogue is from Leviathan. |
| 8:3 |
“Subterfuge Team”: oblique reference to the
Legion of Substitute Heroes. |
| Many of the prisoners here look alike because they are
Winathian or Carggite. |
| 8:6 |
There’s more to the story of Gates being Vyrga’s
sole teleporter than that. He is also an independent thinker —
most Vyrgans are part of a hive society — and a scientist; Gates
gave himself his powers. Another Vyrgan, Mantis Morlo, attempted
to duplicate the effect, but ended up mutating himself and creating the
Proties instead. At least one other Vyrgan, a criminal, developed
some form of the powers, which were later distilled into the Tac-ring
originally used by Klen Rokkart (in Legion: Science Police) and
currently possessed by Abyss of the Oversight Watch. These three
cases together point to the teleportation possibly being a race-wide latent
ability; EarthGov presumably couldn’t make use of the Tac-ring on
a broad scale. |
| 9:2 |
Curiously, there had been no such rumblings from Winath
about missing persons, and it was on Winath in Legion Worlds
#2 (story #2) that we first heard about the Cargg situation. Perhaps
Carggites proved more usable and those were taken in far larger numbers
than Winathians. |
| 9:3 |
Brainy is having to carry Gates. This and the silhouette
in 10:4 imply that the experimentation on him might have been so severe
as to constitute vivisection, cutting off entire pieces of his body.
Gates seems to recover fairly well over the next couple issues, though,
so he is probably merely weak from captivity but not injured. |
| 10:3 |
The inset of Triad counts as a separate panel. |
| 10:4 |
Brainy and Cosmic Boy seem a bit surprised by Triad’s
statement, or by her intensity. |
| The silhouettes are Brainy carrying Gates, the merged Triad,
Cosmic Boy with two guards, Shikari, Chameleon with one of the prisoners,
Leviathan, Ultra Boy, and Kid Quantum bending over a guard. |
| 10:5 |
Recall that the Legionnaires found the skeletons of McCauley
and Amelia Crugg in the Metropolis sewers in The Legion #2. |
| 11:1 |
Dialogue is from Invisible Kid. |
| 11:3 |
These are the remains of the Rosette, destroyed in the
battle between Progenitor and the Omniphagos, and then further when Live
Wire destroyed the combined creature. |
| 11:4 |
Perhaps it’s just a nostalgia thing, or just being
used to comics being a bit conservative, but “My lover” just
doesn’t feel right from the teenage Saturn Girl; it should be “My
boyfriend” or even “My fiancée.” Then again,
there were cases of Legionnaires referring to their boyfriends/girlfriends
as “lover” in the early 1980s and even before. |
| 12:1-2 |
Just energized rocks? No, they are tromium crystals
— the same substance Element Lad had turned himself into as Progenitor
— and they are energized by a lightning-like power. In other
words, this is presumably what is left of the fused Progenitor and Omniphagos,
infused with and ruptured by Live Wire’s power. |
| Some fans wondered why the Legion was going back to Kwai-Space
so soon. (Never mind that it had been ten months; Legion Worlds
gets forgotten easily since it wasn’t generally moving the main
plot forward.) Since most everyone “knows” (suspects,
hopes) that Live Wire and Element Lad aren’t really dead
— you know how death and comics are — this venture can be
seen as a way of putting a nail in Garth and Jan’s coffin: “See,
we went back to where they did and all we found was rocks. They’re
dead.” |
| 12:5 |
Per the next issue, the Kwai with the orange loincloth
is Leos, the one in purple is Herros, and the third Kwai is not named. |
| 13:2 |
While he was exploring the universe as Valor, Lar had a
ship called Babbage which was supplied by Lex Luthor. M’Onel’s
knowledge of Ra’s al Ghul probably comes from that time rather than
from brief glimpses out of the Stasis Zone. |
| 13:4 |
Does Ra’s al Ghul know that M’Onel is Valor
because he remembers the actual seeding, or from McCauley’s records,
or because Venge (actually C.O.M.P.U.T.O., who would know) told him, or
just because he’s smart enough to put two and two together?
Could be any of these. |
| 14:2 |
Ra’s al Ghul is referring to Superman, Batman, and
Wonder Woman here. Curious that he would refer to Superman before
his arch-enemy Batman. |
| “Icon” was the name of the Superman-inspired
black hero of the Milestone comics line. Icon himself was originally
slated to be called Paragon, a name in use by Americomics. |
| 14:4 |
Note what a 20th century revolver will shoot: a lead
bullet. Nothing better for killing Daxamites, is there? |
| 14:5 |
M’Onel seemed quite done in by the
red solar lights at the end of the previous issue, when Ra’s al
Ghul was able to punch him into unconsciousness. The other instance
of red solar lights used on Daxamites (Brainiac 5 on Andromeda in <
>) also had a sudden effect. Now however, apparently some hours
later, M’Onel still has significant invulnerability. Barring
some super-strength on Ra’s al Ghul’s part in The Legion
#3, perhaps the best explanation is that Daxamites utilize yellow solar
radiation in two ways: for immediate power and as an ongoing power source,
and it takes a brief time to shift between the two. Thus, the sudden
exposure to red solar radiation serves to strip out all of a Daxamites
powers for a brief moment — long enough to stop them in their tracks
and get the tar beat out of them — and then the reserve energy will
slowly take over, supplying some residual powers. Extended exposure
to red solar radiation will sap those reserves over the course of a few
hours, lessening the power available to the individual. |
| This shadow counts as an appearance of Ra’s al Ghul. |
| 15:1 |
“Swan Boulevard” is named for Legion creator
Curt Swan. |
| The signs read “terraforming? no thanks!”,
“stop the [terra]form[ing]”, and “leave our moon alone!”
This is a protest march against the McCauley Administration’s lunar
terraforming initiative. |
| 15:2 |
“Bridwell Square” is named for Legion creator
E. Nelson Bridwell. |
| That is a holo billboard beyond the gravcars. |
| The tubes out the backs of the Science Police gravcars
are probably afterburners, allowing a burst of extreme speed to get the
SP’s to where they need to go quickly. |
| 16:3 |
Cill’s profile here, with the sloping brow and jutting
chin, has a strong resemblance to the art of gay erotic artist Etienne
(Dom Orejudos.). |
| 16:4 |
The sign says “stop the terraforming”. |
| Dialogue from the gravcar is from Zoe. |
| 16:5 |
This is apparently caused by the lunar terraformer. |
| 17:2-3 |
Only scenes where actual Robotica constructs appear count
as appearances from Robotica, despite the huge columns from space being
part of the species, too. |
| 18:2, 18:4, 18:6 |
These speed traces count as appearances for XS since we
know she is there at the head of them. |
| 18:5 |
Thank goodness Jenni ditched that stupid looking helmet
from Legion Worlds #4 (story #1). The jacket and kneepads,
those are a bit better. |
| This sort of pairing of powers is something seldom seen
before with the Legion, but an idea which has great merit. Imagine
Saturn Girl and Dream Girl working in tangent, or more obviously, Cosmic
Boy and Ferro. |
| 19:1 |
Dialogue is from Sensor. |
| 19:2 |
Love the side comment from Sensor. |
| Is the return to “disco swimsuits” a sign of
the postboot Legion maturing? |
| 19:3 |
The most likely explanation continues to be that, a year
after her disappearance, the tribal elders have granted the shadow powers
to someone else (probably a cousin named Grev), which withdraws them from
Tasmia. |
| 20:1 |
As indicated earlier in the issue, a homing signal from
the Footstep Drive ship which the Legion stole is what led Venge and company
to the Zatar Nebula. Such a homing signal is probably fairly standard
equipment, allowing rescue ships to track down a missing ship in the vastness
of space (as occurs for the ship Apparition and Timber Wolf are stranded
on in The Legion #9). |
| 20:5 |
Ultra Boy is between Chameleon and Cosmic Boy. |
| 21:1 |
Chameleon is on the left edge of the panel. |
