LEGENDS #1 & #2

”ONCE UPON A TIME…!” | “BREACH OF FAITH!”
Plotter: John Ostrander | Scripter: Len Wein | Penciler: John Byrne | Inker: Karl Kesel
Letterer: Steve Haynie | Colorist: Tom Ziuko | Editor: Mike Gold

The Plot: (Issue 1) On the planet Apokolips, the warlord Darkseid makes plans to destroy Earth’s superheroes. On Earth, a monster called Brimstone appears in New York and battles Firestorm, the Nuclear Man. Meanwhile, the Flash knocks out a criminal named Deadshot, then heads to Titans’ Tower to visit with Changeling. Elsewhere, Captain Marvel fights a rampaging Macro Man and inadvertently kills him, while in Washington D.C., Colonel Rick Flag is assigned the leadership of a team called Task Force X. Back in New York, Brimstone catches the attention of the time-traveling Cosmic Boy, who is quickly joined in fighting him by the Justice League of America.

(Issue 2) As the police clean up Macro Man’s remains, anti-superhero crusader G. Gordon Godfrey appears on the scene and begins to sway the populace into an anti-hero sentiment. On Apokolips, Darkseid reveals that Macro Man was actually his henchman Doctor Bedlam, who never died in the first place. Darkseid chats with the visiting Phantom Stranger about the nature of legends. On Earth, the Justice League fights Brimstone but is defeated. Elsewhere, Deadshot is recruited for Task Force X, while in Gotham City, Batman and Robin thwart an armed robbery, but Robin is set upon by a gang of enraged civilians.

In Chicago, the Blue Beetle is accosted as well, while Green Lantern Guy Gardner saves an airliner from crashing, only to be greeted by discontent from people on the ground. At Titans’ Tower, the Flash and Changeling speak with Cosmic Boy, while the villainous Professor Ivo plans revenge elsewhere. In Washington D.C., President Reagan informs Superman that until the anti-hero sentiment passes, he will order all superheroes “grounded”. Meanwhile, in Gotham, the police find Robin’s battered carcass after dispersing the people who had attacked him.

Sub-Plots & Continuity Notes: At this point, the Flash is actually Wally West, with Barry Allen, his predecessor, having perished during the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Wally notes that the disease which was killing him every time he used his powers – a condition hinted at many times in the NEW TEEN TITANS issues I reviewed a few years back – was cured during that conflict.

Captain Marvel's alter ego, Billy Batson -- who is, like, twelve or something -- hosts a TV talk show for some inexplicable reason. (I mean, I'm sure there is a reason, but the oddity of a little kid having a serious televised conversation with a grown man goes totally unremarked upon in the story.

This issue features the first appearance of Amanda Waller, head of the Task Force X program (which will soon be assigned the better known nickname of “Suicide Squad”).

Cosmic Boy is a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes from the far-flung thirtieth century. He’s apparently visiting the past as a research project.

The Justice League here consists of Vibe, the Elongated Man, Vixen, Gypsy, Steel, Firestorm, and the Martian Manhunter, J’onn J’onzz — the infamous “Justice League Detroit” team.

This version of Robin is Jason Todd, the second Boy Wonder to bear the name.

My Thoughts: So this is where the Pre/Post-CRISIS thing totally confuses me. If one reads the Superman stuff in a vacuum, especially based on THE MAN OF STEEL, one gets the impression that, even as Superman has been around for five years, he’s still relatively new and alone in the superheroic community. But LEGENDS tells another story entirely. Darkseid says he’s been thwarted too many times by Earth’s heroes, and this is apparently just his latest scheme against them. The Teen Titans here are the “New” group, which means enough time has passed for Batman to have had a solo career, then been joined by Dick Grayson as Robin, with Dick coming of age in that identity, serving with the Titans in both their original and “New” incarnations, and adopting the identity of Nightwing. Again... all in the span of five years since Superman first appeared.

(Yes, it’s possible Batman’s career began before Superman’s, but I’m just going off the conventional belief that Superman was the DC Universe’s “first” superhero. And besides, even if Batman did get his start a year or two prior to Superman, it still makes for an incredibly compressed timeline.)

This feels like a case of DC trying to have their cake and eat it too. Much of what I know of the Pre/Post-CRISIS delineation comes from the DC HEROES ROLEPLAYING GAME sourcebooks I had as a kid. I know, for example, that Superman’s story really is a pure reboot here, being told from the ground up by John Byrne. Over the next umpteen issues, we’ll see him meeting various members of his rogues gallery — and many other heroes — for the very first time. I believe George Pérez is doing the same with Wonder Woman. But much of Batman’s existing history remained in place post-CRISIS, I believe because Denny O’Neil, who had written some of Batman’s best-regarded stories, was that series’ editor and wanted his stuff to remain in continuity. As for the JLA — well, according to the new timeline, the “Trinity”, as they were not yet known, were never members (the original lineup consisted of Green Lantern, the Flash, Black Canary, Aquaman, and J’onn J’onzz), but apparently many of their published adventures still happened — just under different, unrevealed circumstances.

It just comes across as sloppy and, to put it crudely, half-assed. DC used CRISIS to clear the decks of unnecessary continuity, presumably in an attempt to streamline their universe. This resulted in new and/or revamped origins for major characters like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. But at the same time, NEW TEEN TITANS was one of the company’s best sellers, so I don’t think they were willing to just erase that series and group from history and go back to the days of Robin, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash, and Aqualad.

We also have the oddity of Barry Allen’s Flash, who — assuming he, too, started out after Superman — spent about five or fewer years in his costume, during which time his sidekick served with two iterations of the Titans and then retired until Barry sacrificed himself against the Anti-Monitor. And Barry was such a beloved legend that, per dialogue, Wally feels he must continue to wear the original costume to honor his mentor. Meaning Barry became that legend in just a few years, and somehow also became beloved and well-known to all the other heroes — again, in just a few years. Wouldn’t this whole thing have made more sense if Barry hadn’t died and was also rebooted from scratch like the other heroes?

Though the one that really puzzles me is the Justice League. If your “big three” are all being totally rebooted (even if one of them is keeping some of the stuff that happened between his origin and the current day), why not just start the JLA, at least, over from scratch? I’m pretty sure the Detroit era wasn’t exactly setting the sales charts ablaze; why not say there had been no Justice League in the world up to now, and use LEGENDS not as an opportunity to revamp the team (as would be done soon in their ongoing series by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis), but as an opportunity to form the team for the very first time? Unless it’s just a case of “The Teen Titans have existed for years, so the JLA must have too,” in which case we come back to the Titans being the one massive holdout in what this reboot could have been if DC had been willing to suck it up and pull the plug on their best-selling title.

Mind you, I really liked NEW TEEN TITANS when I read it, but I just keep coming back to them as the major cause for the discrepancies in the pre/post-CRISIS timelines. And while I’m on that subject—what’s the deal with Wonder Girl? She’s an established member of the Titans at this point, post-CRISIS, as we saw in ACTION COMICS #584 a couple weeks ago. But Wonder Woman will make her public debut in an upcoming issue of LEGENDS! So Wonder Girl existed before Wonder Woman?!

Yeah, I know Donna Troy’s history, both pre- and post-CRISIS, was always a mess, but still — Marv Wolfman and George Pérez had more or less cleaned it up in NEW TEEN TITANS, and now CRISIS throws a huge wrench into it once more. I’m just using this as another example of the fact that keeping the existing NEW TEEN TITANS continuity, coupled with the idea that Superman has been around for only five years, royally screws up the CRISIS relaunch in a way no other title can even come close to replicating. Wipe NEW TEEN TITANS from existence and keep Barry Allen as the Flash, and the post-CRISIS universe would make way, way more sense.

(Alternatively, you could up the amount of time Superman’s been around to ten years, and that could make the New Titans’ existence work too, but then you run into the problem that Superman’s been doing his thing for a decade and has yet to meet a single villain outside of Luthor and Bizarro.)

Anyway, I’m sure DC-philes have debated this stuff for decades, so I’m certainly not the first person to come up with all this stuff. (More likely, I’m the last.) So with that all said, maybe next time I can talk about the actual LEGENDS story!