Episode 152 - The Legion: Foundations with Jim Fetters, Jay McKiernan, and Chris Batista

In this special crossover episode of Men of Steel, we kick off a two-part team-up with the Long Live the Legion podcast!
We’re diving into “Foundations,” the early 2000s arc from The Legion—with special guests Jim and Jay from LLtL and the artist of the arc himself, Chris Batista! Together, we explore Superman’s legacy in the 31st century, the evolving identity of the Legion, and what it was like illustrating this future-forward storyline.

Part 2 continues on Long Live the Legion—don’t miss it!

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Overview

Case Aiken introduces crossover episode, featuring Jmike Folson, Jim Fetters, Jay McKiernan, and Chris Batista discussing the Legion of Superheroes 'Foundations' arc, celebrating its 45th anniversary. The plot centers on Darkseid snatching people from time to harness dark matter, with the Legion uncovering Superboy during the investigation. DNA (Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning) established as the core writing team; their earlier success with Marvel's cosmic stories enhances credibility. Chris Batista expresses concern over technology portrayal, advocating for a more advanced depiction of the Legion compared to Justice League. The Legion World headquarters is praised for its futuristic elements like replicated home worlds and teleportation gates. Despite rising sales and positive fan response, the series faced cancellation, causing frustration as issue 25 became the second-best selling of the series with a 25% readership increase. Character designs for the Servants of Darkness were mostly created by Chris Batista, with a conscious effort to maintain Kirby's aesthetic. Superboy's dual role as both Legion member and connection to Titans was anticipated, reflecting long-time fan expectations for character involvement. Kid Quantum is recognized as the first female leader of color in the Legion, showcasing character dynamics and development alongside Cosmic Boy. The evolution of Superboy's design aimed to match Teen Titans appearances, highlighting editorial influence on character aesthetics.

Notes

️ Podcast Introduction and Setup (00:00 - 02:09)

• Case Aiken introduces the Men of Steel podcast crossover episode with Long Live the Legion podcast, featuring co-host Jmike Folson and guests Jim Fetters, Jay McKiernan, and artist Chris Batista.

• Discussion focuses on Legion of Superheroes 'Foundations' arc, specifically issue 25 which serves as both story continuation and 45th anniversary celebration.

• Chris Batista reveals behind-the-scenes details about working as lead artist on the arc, noting DC doesn't produce this Legion continuity anymore so he can speak freely.

Story Overview and Context (02:09 - 09:54)

• Jmike Folson summarizes the Foundations plot: people being snatched from time by Darkseid to steal dark matter for restarting Apokolips, with Legion discovering Superboy during investigation of warp phantoms.

• DNA (Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning) established as the writing team, with connections drawn to their later successful Marvel cosmic work including Guardians of the Galaxy.

• Legion Lost miniseries and Legion Worlds established crucial backstory, with 25 issues of world-building leading to this commemorative arc.

️ Technology and World-Building Discussion (09:54 - 16:05)

• Chris Batista expresses frustration with Paul Levitz rejecting advanced technology concepts for Legion, arguing they should appear far more advanced than Justice League.

• Legion World headquarters praised as major advancement - a planet with replicated home worlds and teleportation gates, making Legion feel appropriately futuristic.

• Discussion of how DNA run embraced technological advancement while previous runs kept Legion at similar tech level to 20th century heroes.

Character Design and Development (01:01:03 - 01:24:10)

• Chris reveals Servants of Darkness designs were largely his creation except for Orion, with specific mentions of including Firestorm, White Martian, Lobo, Green Lantern, and Big Barda.

• Orion design intentionally modeled after Destroyer from Thor, maintaining Kirby aesthetic while creating intimidating servant appearance.

• Invisible Kid and Brainiac 5 romantic moment revealed as editor Steve Wacker's spontaneous addition 'just to mess with fans' - became lasting fan discussion point.

Publishing History and Cancellation (01:24:16 - 01:59:06)

• Series cancellation explained as sudden higher-up decision despite rising sales and positive fan response to Superboy addition.

• Issue 25 was second-best selling of entire series with 25% increase in readership, making cancellation timing particularly frustrating.

• Original plans included Superboy remaining in both Legion and Titans simultaneously, with extensive story arcs planned for Element Lad return and Lightning Lad separation.

Artist Collaboration and Creative Process (20:40 - 01:19:06)

• Chris describes working relationship with DNA as collaborative, with writers trusting him to design new characters like Legion cadets and including Easter eggs like Kent Shakespeare and Polar Boy.

• Multiple pencillers used for issue 25 to handle commemorative scope, with each artist assigned specific character groups to avoid overlap.

• Coloring technology evolution discussed, with modern computer coloring providing more tools but potentially reducing creative necessity of older 64-color process limitations.

• ⏳ Superman Connection and Time Travel Elements (34:02 - 01:54:06)

• Clark Kent and 90s Superboy both featured as characters pulled from time, with Clark becoming servant of darkness while Superboy joins Legion.

• Superboy wears classic costume with Legion belt buckle addition, fulfilling long-time fan expectations while serving story purposes.

• Time dilation plot involves universe getting smaller and past being erased, though hosts acknowledge the temporal mechanics don't fully make sense.

Character Relationships and Dynamics (46:03 - 01:30:24)

• Mech (Lightning Lord) rehabilitation storyline discussed as more complex than typical villain treatment, showing struggle between evil nature and love for siblings.

• Kid Quantum established as Legion's first female leader of color, with organic romantic relationship with Cosmic Boy developing throughout arc.

• Livewire/Element Lad fusion creates extremely powerful character combining lightning abilities with matter transmutation in crystalline body.

Technical and Production Details (01:36:23 - 01:51:38)

• Secret Files issue placement in continuity questioned due to timeline inconsistencies with main story events.

• Chris notes Superboy's physical design evolution throughout arc as editorial mandated size increases to match Teen Titans appearance.

• Force field technology and advanced Legion equipment discussed as properly futuristic elements that should distinguish team from contemporary heroes.

Transcription

00:00
Case
We have a nice little romantic walk between Invisible Kid and Brainiac 5.

00:05
Chris
I could tell you how that came about. That was not part of the story.

00:08
Jim
Another one, not on my question list.

00:11
Chris
That was never part of the story. It was Steve Whacker literally said to me, have him kiss him on the cheek just to fuck with the fans.

00:20
Case
Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

00:21
Chris
Let's just do that, you know? And I said, of course. Yeah, I get it. Cause you could see Lyle's face. He's like, huh.

00:55
Case
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the Men of Steel podcast. I'm Case Aiken and as always, I'm joined by my co host, J. Mike Falson.

01:02
Jmike
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show.

01:05
Case
Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the future. We are once again digging into the Legion of Superheroes. In our conversation about Superman and how that character is intertwined with this property. And to have that conversation, we are joined by several people. So for starters, this is a two part episode and this is going to be a crossover. We are crossing over with the Long Live the Legion podcast. So on that note, we've got returning the show. Jim Fetters.

01:31
Jim
How's it going, Kase? Great to be back.

01:34
Case
It's so wonderful having you back and I'm so glad that you've got Long Live the Legion. And I'm so glad that you've introduced us to your co host, Jay McKiernan.

01:41
Chris
Hi.

01:42
Jay
So glad to hear. So glad to be here. I've been a big fan of this podcast for a while.

01:45
Case
That's so weird to hear still to this day. But we had one more person laugh and that is a special guest. We have the artist who is the lead artist on the Ark that we are talking about today because we're talking about the Legion found. And so we've got Chris Batista.

02:04
Chris
Pleasure to be here, guys.

02:06
Case
Chris, it is so great having you back on. I, I frankly am flabbergasted that you're allowed to like come and just like talk about a book that you were an artist on. Like, I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure what was allowed.

02:16
Chris
No, we're definitely. First of all, it was years ago and I'm not even. And D.C. doesn't even do that Legion anymore, so I can't. There's like no toes being stubbed or anything. Not many secrets, like, and this person was killed in the making of the issue kind of thing are going to be revealed. So I think we're all good.

02:33
Case
Okay, cool. Well, again, I Just really appreciate you being here. So, yeah, let's talk about this, I think, before we get into too much context. I'm very curious in the absence of context. J. Mike Falson.

02:49
Jmike
Oh, gosh.

02:52
Case
Having read this, and this is part of a continuation of a series that we did look at before we did read the Legion Lost or Not crossover, the Legion Lost miniseries. So this is a direct follow up to it. But there are. There. There's several issues along the way.

03:07
Jmike
I was going to say.

03:09
Case
Yeah, yeah. So what. Describe what? Describe the overall story of Foundations. Because we're going to go through issue by issue, but describe the overall story of Foundations and the context that you understand for all the characters.

03:25
Jmike
Okay. So everyone who listens to this podcast basically knows that Legion is not my thing. This is Case's thing. It's a fun story, but Case is very intimately familiar with these things. But I was laughing before we started. This feels a very familiar Case. Like we've kind of done an arc like this before. I just can't put my finger on it. Seems like we're revisiting something. But let's see if I can sum this up the best I can. There is a big. A big problem going on where people are, like, losing time or something like that. And people are lost in, like, they find a super boy out in. I want to see a warp gate.

04:08
Case
Yeah, yeah, that's a thing that.

04:10
Jmike
Yeah.

04:11
Case
What was explained in the. In the preceding 25 issues, they find.

04:17
Jmike
People, people out of time. People are being snatched from time and being used for nefarious deeds, which I automatically exactly knew who they were when I saw them. And I was like, oh, I know that person. I know this person too. But come to find out that this is all some kind of big brain 5D chess plot by Darkseid for some reason, who is stone crusted to his throne on Apocalypse because the planet's dying. He's trying to restart the planet, which I didn't know was possible. But he's using these people from time and space to steal dark matter, to restart the planet, to give himself.

04:55
Chris
More.

04:56
Jmike
Energy slash life, to steal his body from the past, to reignite himself and give himself even more power so he can be evil dark side maniacal thing again, and it's up to the Legion to stop him. Was that close.

05:10
Chris
He, like, totally ripped off Thanos.

05:13
Jmike
What?

05:14
Chris
He totally ripped off Thanos. Just to say the whole young and old Thanos, you know?

05:20
Jim
That's right. That's right.

05:23
Case
I did have some vibes of endgame when looking at that. And it was funny to think about that, especially considering a thing that the Legion as a whole is weirdly in a lot of ways, like DNA's test run before they would go on to do the Guardians of the Galaxy stuff, like the Marvel space stuff. And there's a lot of arcs in the Legion that feels very much like here's the beta test of what we're going to then do and be very successful in the Marvel space stuff that directly launches the Guardians of the Galaxy movies in the Marvel space. Like Ouvreau in the movie space. Yeah, there's actually weird lineage here on that front.

06:05
Chris
Yeah. It's actually made the connection now as I was thinking about. Sorry, was old and the old one is kind of usurped. I mean, they did it differently, of course, but it still was the younger one, you know, taking advantage of his place and reasserting his role in the great scheme and taking it over and saying, nope, I'm going to actually do it this way now. And the movie did it differently, of course. But Abbott and Lanning, those two, I don't. They just did not get enough credit for just how awesome they were.

06:36
Jim
Sounds to me like Marvel owes you guys some money.

06:39
Chris
Not me. Not me. I can't take credit for that. But I think Dan andy are. It's a shame that they don't work together anymore, but they were. I was a fan of everything they did and then all of a sudden I got to work with them and it was. And they were really easy to work with and we could throw ideas back and forth and stuff like that. There was. We were all on the same page, which was really nice that.

07:04
Case
Yeah, I mean like this series is such a fun arc and I know that there are a fun run in general. So. So J. Mike, I would say that you got pretty close on all the things that matter about it. There's the stuff that you're missing is the stuff that was leading into it all and that's that there's 25 issues of a lot of world building that happens in Legion.

07:28
Chris
And don't forget, Legion Worlds was also part of the world building. An excellent six part miniseries.

07:33
Jim
Yeah, agree. In fact, Legion Worlds miniseries is one of my favorites.

07:41
Chris
I remember being very impressed. The sheer amount of world building, just the way they layered it really well. I mean I was so impressed. Like every world, like the original series, you know, they, they definitely had all of that stuff laid out, but they actually like just even from Rimbo to Lightning Lads World, which I'm just drawing a blank on the name.

08:05
Case
Yeah.

08:06
Chris
Every world felt like it had a culture and a texture to it and I really appreciated that. And it looked like they were just having a blast with it. It gave it a real sense of scale.

08:17
Jim
I'm really glad to hear you say that, Chris, because I've noted this in the past too, in other discussions around this era. Right. Is that I think world building is the best thing that Avnet and Lanning do. That's in my book. Just to the points that you're saying. It's so. They're so richly detailed and they're detailed.

08:36
Chris
In a way where you're not lost in the details, you're just kind of brought into it because it's done in a very characteristic way. Like they'll use. You'll have your focal point character just take you through that world and then as the plot progresses around them, they would try like I remember the Timberwolf on Rimbo story, and I love that version of Rimbo. You had Killian Plunkett on artwork. It was just a killer story. But I love that, you know, this could have been your typical, you know, Wild west kind of world, but they made it work. You know, they made it work in a way where it wasn't like every other version I'd seen before.

09:12
Jim
Yeah, I felt it was like Nar Shadda from the Star wars universe.

09:15
Chris
Yes. Well, it definitely had that, but I like that it, you know, they had the advantage of the fact that they could still connect to Earth, so those kind of like Terran kind of ideals would be, you know, they wouldn't be so far fetched.

09:27
Case
But.

09:27
Chris
Sorry, getting off on a tangent. Just you said Legion worlds. I told many.

09:32
Case
And I mean like, yeah, we should talk about Legion worlds too. Jim and Jay, do you want to like give some sort of background on what went on in Legion worlds and then like what overall happened in the Legion leading up to this point? Or, or I can do sort of.

09:46
Jim
Like, yeah, happy to do it so. Because it's, it helps set the table, I guess is the best way to, to talk to getting to this point. Right. So there's.

09:55
Case
Yeah, we don't need to do every arc, but like here's, you know, like what are the big things that tie into this are.

09:59
Jim
For sure. Well, because they all do. Right. They'll, you know, we talk about Legion lost. Right. And I think probably everybody listening to this podcast probably knows what that is.

10:08
Case
Right.

10:08
Jim
It was a 12 issue mini that dealt with a subset of the Legion being kind of lost in time and space and the story of them kind of pushing themselves to the limit to get back home. And then after that was Legion Worlds, which was basically a six issue miniseries that talked about the legionnaires that were left behind and to Chris's earlier point, introduced a lot of this specific worlds of the United Planets in a lot of really great detail and told stories around those legionnaires and then that launched directly into the Legion title, which this issue 25 of. We have several story arcs to get up to this particular point.

10:49
Case
Yeah. Things that I think are interesting that become important in this story specifically is this like the two galaxies situation. So conveniently Legion Lost. Yes, they were thrown outside of time and space, but they all woke up at the same time that they had left at or more or less like could have been any century, could have been any time. But they happened to wake up in a different galaxy that had been shaped obviously by element Lad who had gone mad.

11:20
Chris
I think that they implied that they were there for a year and concurrently with the regular timeline. That's why they had age within that year concurrent with their legionnaires that they left behind.

11:33
Case
Yeah, I just mean that it was extremely convenient of course, that it wasn't like some different century was all considering that they were sort of like flung. It's just, it's still a great story. I'm just making fun of one detail of it. It's a fantastic story and we covered it here with you, Chris. So if people want like a full breakdown of it, check that out. But they established this other galaxy and they established a means of traveling back and forth between it and that becomes like this expansionist element of the Legion. Like the book the Legion is this continuing to push the boundaries of the technology that they have, which I find really cool. Like by the time that they're going up against Darkseid and dealing with like a boom tube based society, they have easy access to their own teleportation systems.

12:24
Case
Like they are like, it's one of those cool elements of like, yes, the Legion is the most impressive team of their era. Like, and like this is an era that is like far more advanced than like the Justice League, you know, And I find that really cool that like the Legion is scaling up in power and is able to deal with then a version of Darkseid doing the Great Darkness saga.

12:48
Chris
It's Funny that you say that. It's just a brief side. When were doing Legion Secret Origins, I was with Paul Levitz and the editor at the time, Chris Conroy, I believe. And I would be the guy in the corner throwing out idea after idea, because I think that the Legion, you know, a lot of times when people wrote it in the past, Justice League and Legion would almost have the same level of technology. And I always thought that was silly because it's a thousand years ahead and they should make the Justice League look like they're playing with toys. And so I was saying to. I was throwing out ideas that the Legion should be able. What makes the Legion effective is that they should be able to get anywhere at any time. And in this universe, they have access to Zeta technology.

13:27
Chris
They have all these things that are already part of the 20th century DC universe and brainiac 5 or who, whatever, would have come up with a far more efficient version of that. And I remember Paul just shot down all those ideas because he thought they were too. He took it too far. He didn't like teleportation technology. He didn't like things that were. Made it too easy for them. And I kept saying, but the Justice League has that. The Justice League uses that. And the Legion should. I was like, the ring should have like Zeta tech in them and force field tech, and the ring itself should be some ridiculous thing, you know, like. And because of just nanotechnology would have taken a whole thousand year leap with a Kalu intech. And every idea I had was shot down.

14:14
Chris
And I literally would almost go in the corner like, come on, it's the Legion.

14:19
Jmike
Yeah.

14:20
Chris
Yeah. So sorry about that. I just. I just wanted. I just. I'm going through a lot of old memories right now, and they're. They're just like flashing back to me. Yeah.

14:28
Jay
Well, I would say that was probably the. The biggest strength of the DNA run, of the evident landing run is that embrace and embracing the technology. Like, one of the other things I wanted to mention was the Legion world, right? Their new headquarters was they like, you know, that's one of my favorite parts of this. And it's a big key to what's going on, because it's not just a building in the middle of Metropolis. It's this planet that, you know, and the fact that they have everybody's home planet replicated and the fact that they've got, you know, the. It's. They're not trans matter gates. They're. Sorry I'm mixing up reboots now, but yeah, they're using the gates to get it and they can just. We're going to go here, we're going to go here. And it was, I think Chris, you said it best.

15:13
Jay
Like the Legion should feel like it's a thousand years in the future. And I've always made that comment of like when a Marvel movie looks as technologically like looks technologically the same as the Legion. You failed something in the Legion. Like it should be, you know, you should be seeing stuff. You're like, I've never seen this before. Like this is blowing my mind. The best runs always do that.

15:34
Chris
Yeah, I completely agree. It's that when the Marvel movies is a good point is because they all have the same tech. I really got sick of the masks coming down. The whole like that. That to me was just really lazy and I, I always thought that should be limited to one character. Like they have that level. And when it came to the Legion, it wasn't like I. It should almost seem like absurd like what they could have. Like just like you take a cop and they have their security belt and they have handcuffs. They have all these things that are their accoutrement that make their jobs easier. The Legion aren't kid like playing cops and robbers. They literally are law enforcement. They are tied into the United Planets. They have authority, you know.

16:14
Chris
And I thought that everything the Legion should have should make Iron man look ridiculous. Like I wanted their costumes to be armor. Like even though they look like skin tight. It was like they would be self healing, self like, you know, it would administer meds. Like I had this idea that one of them get their arm blown off and the arm seals off and meds are being pumped and they don't feel it and they're still going into combat because you can't stop the Legion. And then I thought then what are the bad guys have that the Legion would have to counteract? Like just to show the scale of how, what they would have to deal with. Because it's like technology be run amok in that era. And I wanted to show that with Brainiac 5, they literally @ the cutting edge.

16:55
Chris
But it would how the bad guys would respond to that. How you would take something like triplicate girl who you know, she's. I love her, but you could take her out pretty easily. But I would as these legionnaires be like, no leaders have advantages that no one else would have. And that just made me sad that we never got to Use that.

17:14
Jay
She does have Trijitsu, right?

17:16
Chris
Yes.

17:17
Jay
And she. She did defeat Ra's al Ghul. So, I mean, it's.

17:22
Chris
Oh, that was a great story. I love that story.

17:24
Case
Well, but, like, for example, like, the force fields that Brainiac 5 has, like, why is this not stand array for everyone?

17:30
Chris
Like, hey, that's what I pitched too. I pitched that, and Paul said, no. I was like, Ultra Boy's ring should be synced to his aura, where every time he shifts a super strength, it's. It switches to a force field. So he's automatically protected because, let's say I'm Lex Luther, I'm a bad guy. Ultra Boy is powerful, but I could kill him within five minutes because I could figure out how to make him use his super strength and try to divide that with his invulnerability at the same time. It doesn't take that much to figure that out. And Brainiac 5 would have figured out that puts Ultra Boy at a tremendous disadvantage. And he would have, like, a serious force build, just like the rest of them have. And also, like I said, They're 20, 22 or 28.

18:12
Chris
Whatever the threats that they're handling, they really should be, like, top of their game, the stuff that they have. And then you. You elevate the bad guys and you show what they have. You know, it's like, I think someone like Grant Morrison would have a blast with the. The Legion with just the crazy ideas he could throw out. If you. You know, if you keep him on the right path, you know, you don't want to deviate too far. But I. I think he would definitely get like, you. You need writers. Like, and that's what DNA, what I loved about what they did, like, that Dark side Story. I remember when they told me we did dream crime first, and then there was the hint of dark side, and then it was like, oh, but it's just a. It's a. It's a bait and switch.

18:52
Chris
And then when the story arc was over, Dan andy and Steve Whacker, their editor, said, no, no. It's real. We're doing it, we're doing it. We were just teasing the audience. I said, we're doing it, we're doing it. And he said, then we're bringing in Superboy. And then you just sort of see my head explode. And they were like, is he gonna. And I'm like, is he gonna be in the original costume? We put the Legion belt buckle on, and they're like, oh, we didn't think about the Legion belt buckle, but that's a good idea. And I said, done.

19:14
Case
You know, that's awesome.

19:16
Chris
So everyone was.

19:16
Case
We were genuinely.

19:17
Jim
I was going to say one of the things to mention there, too, though, Chris, is that this was this story, right. The foundations and issue 25 specifically was it was a commemorative issue. Right. It was the 45th anniversary of the Legion at the time, too.

19:31
Chris
Yeah. I remember I was like, I had just done the first five issues of my arc, and then when Steven told me they were doing the issue, and I was like. And I was supposed to get started on the next issue, but then I was like, I can't not be a part of this celebration. So I. You know, I kind of, like, got some extra pages thrown to me there, even though I had to go to the next issue. But I want to be a part of it because Dave Cochran was in there. And I was like, yeah. I can't remember why Mike Grell wasn't available at the time, but I'm pretty sure that he was asked because the editor was very big on Legion history, and he wouldn't ignore him without a good reason.

20:06
Case
Yeah, I didn't know that context, but that makes so much more sense for issue 25 now. That's very cool. Yeah. That is not a thing I realized looking at it. But I was going to ask, what is it like working on a book where there are multiple pencils and just doing a portion of it?

20:23
Chris
They try to make sure that your portion doesn't overlap too much so you're not directly doing things that are so different from each other. They let me do all the recruits and the rookies, and they trusted me. They left me alone. And I even said, I'm throwing in Kent Shakespeare. I'm throwing in polar Boy.

20:42
Case
Thank you so much. By the way. I was gonna ask you. Yeah.

20:45
Chris
That was my existence. I'm like, we're throwing in Kent. And I said. And I said to the colorist, make sure the hair's brown. You know? And just like, that's. Every real Legion fan old school is going to know that's Ken Shakespeare. Didn't need to be. I was glad it wasn't said. Like someone said, Mr. Shakespeare. It's like it was, we're in this anniversary issue, so fans would appreciate that he was there. And I threw him Polar Boy. But the funny part about polar boy was that Dan andy had already done a version of polar boy in. There was one of these guys with the progenitor. Not the progenitor what's that big guy who was in the last story arc? He was in Legion Lost. He was the guy who was a superhero.

21:24
Jim
Singularity.

21:24
Chris
Singularity, yeah. He was one of Singularities Soldiers. Oh, yeah, right. He looked this big polar bear, like Ice Bear. But they was like, oh, we thought that was going to be Polar Boy. We have to throw in Brett. Come on, let's throw in some Polar Boy. But they let me create those. I mean, they had outlines for everybody, but they were content to let me come up with their looks. And I threw in that rocket raccoon looking thing just because I wanted. That was literally. I'm not sure why I did it, but it was just like, let me. Let me just do that. And those recruits were all supposed to come part of. They were all like. At one point, Dan andy were talking about the Legion being up to 40 characters. While that's a nightmare for the artist, it makes sense there.

22:07
Chris
Why would there be a hard cap on their recruitment? And there are other worlds that are joining the UP all the time, you know, and they should be taxes. They should be the Legion. You know, there's nobody like them and.

22:19
Case
They need the dues.

22:21
Chris
Yeah, that.

22:24
Case
Yeah. No, I mean, were talking before you got on Chris. One of the interesting things is that this feels like a very monumental arc. And then the book is canceled not too much longer after that.

22:35
Chris
Like, that's funny because from what I understood at the time was that fan response was going through the roof. They were very happy with Superboy. Our sales had actually gone up. Not like huge numbers, but were. We were pretty stable and were getting a lot of good feedback. And the plan at the time was Superboy was not going back to the Titans. He was going to be in the Titans and the Legion at the same time because they had the idea that they didn't know which fixed point of time Superboy was taken from, though it was nebulous. Were to send him back. So they were going to. And I don't think fans were going to be upset about having Superboy in two different books, especially since both of them kind of made sense. One wasn't going to, like, be bad for the other.

23:18
Chris
And I remember getting a lot of push. We got a lot of pushback from the Titans office because they were kind of getting annoyed. It's like, but guys, it's Superboy, it's Legion. You know, it. We actually have a greater claim to what he means the Legion. You know, he's vital to the Legion. And this is something that has been kind of missing. And this version fixes a lot of the plot holes that were made from all the retcons. It like it actually worked really well. It was a solution that make everybody happy. But I remember there was a. Yeah, they were. He was always annoyed at that. Out of the blue, all of a sudden we're getting a lot of like weird like friction in the office.

23:55
Chris
And all of a sudden Dan andy were being taken off the book because they were going to start a new series. And they were. It was kind of like a sucker punch because they, like I said, sales were rising. Not like huge numbers. It's the Legion. But there. The interest was definitely there. We, they, we had tapped into people. They were really happy with what was going on. There are classic characters that were redone like Wildfire. Like they were showing like this great appreciation for all of the history and fans liked it. And then Dan andy were. Were given only they're originally supposed to be given five issues to wrap everything up. And which sucks because they had set up storylines for.

24:37
Chris
There was that the Joe Ultra Boy and Cub situation that all of these storylines and in fact Element Lad was supposed to be brought back and Lightning Lad were supposed to be separated. At one point I was going to.

24:50
Jim
Ask you about that.

24:51
Chris
That was definitely in there. That was supposed to happen. There was so many things that were being set up and then all of a sudden you're given five issues and then they're trying to do an outline for that. Then they were given two issues. So if you're wondering why the last two issues are so like slammed into the door. Yeah, because they were.

25:10
Jim
Okay, yeah, thanks for explaining that, Chris, because I was actually going to ask you about everything that you just talked about.

25:17
Chris
And then to wrap it up, Dan andy, they were really. They were kind of stung. You know, it wasn't. The editor didn't do. Steve didn't do that to him. It was a higher up decision. And then they were like, well, we want you to stay. And I'm like, okay. I was sad without my boys because we really were. We were a team that was like, it's a hard book to do, but were all really into what were doing. And then they were like, all right, well you'll stay. And I actually had pitched a two issue fill in story where I was going to do a new version of the Secret six infiltrating Legion World. And I think fans would have loved it because it was going to be Easter Egg City. I was Going to put devm in there.

25:53
Chris
I was going to put duplicate boy. Like, I. My editor loved it. It was going to be like an Ocean's Eleven kind of story within Legion, like a Mon El versus Dev Am fight.

26:03
Case
Oh, nice.

26:04
Chris
But then all of a sudden, I got booted off the book. Because then it was decided that originally, I think they were going to get a new writer out of the blue. I'm not sure why, because they were doing such a good job. And then all of a sudden it was the way kits and book had taken over, so were all kind of booted, which, I mean, I get it. Mark Wade has like, you know, he's got the name, he's got the pedigree and he's amazing. But it definitely stung because were all like, man, were good. I thought were doing a good job, you know, and he went with the retro look. We were more of the futuristic look.

26:39
Chris
But I mean, I always thought it was kind of a mistake to do a reboot in the middle of an arc that was actually in trajectory, that was actually working for the book. But people, those are the higher ups that made the decision.

26:51
Jim
Yeah. I made a little note here in my notes about this particular arc, about the different issues that for me, Right. I mean, and I don't know if you felt this way working with Dan andy, but I felt like most of the course of the Legion up to about basically when you came on, when Dream Crime came on and then this arc, I didn't feel like it was a full on Legion because they really kept focusing on a lot of the same Legion lost characters for a lot of it. But it was here when you jumped on and started doing these. That's when it really felt like, okay, the Legion is really back now. And yet, to your point, it became a lot more interesting. Right.

27:31
Jim
You know, I got it for me anyway, for me personally, I found I was very much more invested in the book at this point.

27:38
Chris
Well, it's like that we've said earlier, but if you kind of look at the context, when you're saying with the Legion lost characters, that still was adding into the whole element of world building. They were world building from Legion worlds into the new launch of the Legion, but it was still opening the borders, it was still making things bigger. And then when they brought in, you know, Legion World, which as we discussed, I thought that was a magnificent concept because it put the Legion above jla. It was like they had their own bloody world and they were tapped into the United Planets. They were authority. They. They actually, like people would go there to negotiate things. They had such an importance to the universe there. They were the center. And it worked because it didn't just say, hey, here's your world.

28:23
Chris
Like, they had to go through this arc of, like, breaking everything down and then building it up. Like, they went from the blight stuff, which their plan was to always go from the darkest point to go to the lightest point because they understood what the Legion stood for. You know, Legion Lost had that as well, where it was like their ideals were what really mattered. Yeah, it's sad because they were. Even with all their story arcs, their idea was to always keep building the Legion forward. And. And I think that's, you know, it's ambitious, and you need someone who understands that, because if you're writing it like you're writing the Teen Titans and stuff like that, and that's not a slight on the Teen Titans. I love the Teen Titans, but the.

29:01
Chris
The Legion's different because it's like they have more of a more critical role than even the Justice League did because they literally guard the universe.

29:12
Jay
No, I was just going to say I love the fact that you said the Legion has to keep looking forward. And I always find the best Legion arcs are the ones where they're pushing everything. They're pushing everything towards a new idea. Whereas I think a lot of times where the Legion fails is when they get stuck in the past where they're. It's just like, we only care about the Silver Age or we only care about this. And one of the things that I did really love about when. When Dan andy took over was that they were, you know, they were embracing every part of the Legion history and moving it instead of being stuck in that, you know, like, nothing important happens after 1970. And. And I think a lot of Legion writers get stuck in that. So I thought that was a.

29:54
Jay
It's a really great comment.

29:55
Chris
Yeah, you're right, that. That there. There are some times, like when Paul came back to the Legion, he kind of was very. And I get it that's an era that is, of course, incredibly dear to him. And he was a vital part to it. He had revitalized it, and he absolutely owns that era. But when you. The advent of our current technologies, which are evolving every day, kind of under. I mean, we can look through our old stories that we know and love, and they're kind of undone by the fact that I have a cell phone.

30:22
Jim
Oh, yeah.

30:23
Chris
You know, and the Legion doesn't. And you know, and Paul didn't have a very futurist take. He wanted to tell, like, his character stories, and I completely get that. But you got to throw in those wild curveballs. You know, you have to, like. I remember I was a huge. I'm a huge Timberwolf fan, Huge Wildfire fan. We're all classic Legion fans here. And there was no Wildfire. But I love what they did with Legion Lost. I literally cheered when I saw that. It was, like, real wildfire. And even Olivier Coypel's new design, where he looked kind of like a knight. And I was like, oh, that's a bitch in design. Like, I don't like when you mess with my classic characters, but he looked great. You know, it's like, that looks really good. I can't wait to draw that.

31:08
Chris
And I remember talking to Dan andy, and they said, I love what you guys do with Timberwolf. And they literally said, yeah, we took Furball, we took Bryn Londo, Classic Legion, and we took, like, the Joe Phillips Timberwolf, and we smashed him into one. And I was like, holy shit, you're right. He literally was all versions of Timberwolf in one and pushed a little bit forward, and I think that's what you would have. Like, when I was on doing Secret Origins, I literally was pitching every. I wanted to honor all of the characters, sources, their roots. You don't break something. You don't have to break property to make it better. You have to embrace what it is, and you got to take it forward. And I was throwing out things for every character. Like, my. My plan was that you have this.

31:54
Chris
Paul had this idea of an alien invasion, and they were so tough. They were kicking everybody's butts. And I said, why don't we have it that the most dangerous legionnaire in this story arc is Invisible Kid? And he's like, why? And I'm like, well, Invisible Kid, that these guys are so advanced. But Invisible Kid isn't just a guy who drank a formula who turns invisible because we can detect him with our technology now, in the future, invisibility wouldn't matter. People could download programs, apps to their retinas where they could see it in any spectrum. So Invisible Kids power is useless in the future. I said, why don't we just make it that Invisible Kid? Literally, in an era where technology so advanced, he. He's the blind spot. In the future, no one could detect him, like, by telepathy, by anything.

32:37
Chris
And he's the one thing the bad guys can't stop. And he becomes the most dangerous, critical element. And you take this seemingly kind of benign legionnaire and you make him very important. Let's take Triplicate Girl. Let's take all of, like, the lesser legionnaires and make them so special. Like, why is Triplicate Girl special with this? Literally a planet full of them? We have to do something to make her the best Triplicate Girl, make her power individualized. You know, Kazakh boy is the best because he is so powerful and he's so gifted with his control. Like, everyone's got magnetic powers, but he's next level magneto. You know, like, let's make each recruit take their powers, do something special with their powers every issue. And, like, we go scientific, we go a little Warren Ellis with it. And.

33:21
Chris
Yeah, I was talking in the air at that point. Not one of my ideas was used. I was literally going, this could be so cool.

33:28
Case
Well, one thing was used. Weren't. Didn't you say that you pitched the Superboy wearing the. The classic look as opposed to wearing his more updated design from.

33:36
Chris
I did. I mean, I wanted to. I. I said we got to put him in it. We don't mess with the suit one bit. But the Legion belt buckle works because he has the. His belt buckle is already round anyway.

33:45
Case
Yeah.

33:46
Chris
And I said it just would make him blend in. I mean, maybe Alex Ross. No, Alex didn't do that.

33:51
Case
No, he had a stripe design. Yeah.

33:53
Chris
Yeah. I was like, I said, every single real Legion fan is going to go batshit if they see him in that regular in the classic suit. But then Dan andy came up the idea with the ideas. Just don't throw on Superman's costume and you're Superman. You know, it's like there's more to it. And. And I love that they actually had an actual character growth arc for him in that story. So it's not just a gimmick.

34:16
Case
Yeah. So that's a thing I wanted to hit on before we actually get into the actual issues of this. The fact. Why are we talking about this on the Men of Steel podcast? Like, this is a Superman podcast. And so there's two big things. So one, Superboy, the 90s Superboy is introduced in the first issue of the arc and then plays a major part throughout this in a fun way. And then two, Clark Kent's a fucking character in this as well.

34:43
Jim
Which.

34:43
Case
That one surprised me, like, when I was reading this. Yeah. So Clark Kent's a character in this. And so they play with the great Darkness Saga concept, but instead of having like these weird clones. These are actually plucked from time characters. And so we have Clark Kent plucked from time and turned into a servant of the darkness and powered up in a way that, you know, honestly, they could have just done from the get go and we would never have had the fucking issue with the whole pocket universe. Superboy. They. They could have just said like, yeah, he was plucked from time. He was char. He solar charged and he was running around with us for a little while. And then. And they went back and forgot it all.

35:20
Jim
Oh, don't get me started on that.

35:23
Case
They could have just done that. It's so confusing why they made it so complicated. Like, there's so many head scratching decisions about the 80s. God damn it. Sorry, that tangent there. Anyway, so I really enjoy that we get Superboy as an active participant. He had been established as a honorary member of the Legion prior to this. I believe it was just in his own series when they were around. But it might have been a crossover somewhere.

35:48
Jim
It was a crossover in there.

35:50
Case
I had. I was a subscriber of Superboy. Like, I was not reading Legion as regularly. So, like, I think I just owned the Superboy issues and I didn't have the Legion.

35:58
Jim
Gotcha. Yeah. No, in fact, it was actually interesting. They brought him. It was a crossover event, so they had to go through time. And basically, I think at the end of the day they had rescue Valor. Was that what the end of the. They were trying to do at the.

36:11
Case
End of the day?

36:12
Jim
And that's so that, you know, they.

36:14
Case
Get Valor the other side of that story. Yeah. Right.

36:16
Jim
Yeah.

36:17
Case
Okay, so that brings up a note that I have for us to talk about that we might as well talk about here. Chris, why the fuck did Valor and Superboy not talk?

36:25
Chris
That I, you know, it's funny is that was my one objection to the story was that I'm a huge Mon El fan. Like, he was one of my favorite legionnaires and I always loved that. It was like Superboy's older brother in spirit. I was, I. When they had told me that, oh no, they're in the other universe right now, they took away key legionnaires. Oh, I'm not going to get to draw Mon El. You know, like, I wanted to have scenes with Mon El and Superboy, like, interacting, like to show, hey, I remember you and I, we threw knuckles. You know, like we had a. A fight when you were champion. I think it was. It was too late to do anything about it and it would already been decided that Monel had Been written out of the story.

37:05
Chris
It kind of like it made me sad. I remember I pitched something and it was so late. I'll just bring back model and let's bring in someboy like Dirk Morgan. I can't remember why they couldn't do some boy, but my pitch to take down Darkseid and I know that you needed Clark Kent to do it. I was like, we could use it for another foe, was that you bring in Monel and he's got some boy. And some boy wasn't going to be a Human Torch knockoff. He's Sunboy. He was going to, he's going to have solar plasma. He's going to plasma beams. Like some boy was going to be terrifyingly powerful, you know. And I had this idea that they threw in Mon El to go after this great threat and some boy is pumping him with solar radiation the entire time.

37:45
Chris
So he's like fit to explode. And he's taking at it on dark side, whoever it was.

37:50
Case
It's so funny you say that because I was just the other day thinking about like, I was wondering like, has Sunboy and Superboy ever done a team up move? I. I legitimately was just like wondering that like while walking to my car, like, he's.

38:03
Chris
But it's like. And it wouldn't be. And it wouldn't look like he was pumping fire into him. It would look like solar radiation. Like Dirk is incandescent at this point. All you can see is like his sun symbol. Like he's like, he's like a living sun. And Monel is just like, he's smoking at this point because he's so powerful. But it's like a car that's going to go right off the rails. And at the end of the story when the bad guy, whoever it was defeated, was it going to be dark side? No, but I like this idea was that Monel's done. He just like. And they have to take him to the dark side of the moon.

38:36
Chris
And he's there for like a month, like having everything drained out of him because he's, it's like he's going to explode at this point or something or have very negative side effects. But yeah, that was, those were ideas that if I had stuck around on a book, like, I, I literally barraged Steve Whacker with Legion. I kissed all the time and he loved them. He was like, you nerd. And I'm like, yeah, that would be so cool with this guy. And that guy, he's like, all right, if you. If I give you a story arc, you'll do that. But, yeah, Mono. I was kind of sad that he was. Him and Superboy didn't interact, but I guess maybe. And I can see the point in it is that Superboy would need more to shine.

39:17
Case
Yeah, no, from. From a power standpoint, like, Mono is.

39:20
Chris
Way more powerful than Super Boy anyway, and he has, like, you know, he's got the stature and everything like that. You don't want him literally, to Superboy, the entire issue with Cosmic Boy for that. So they would kind of like. So I understood it.

39:33
Case
Yeah, no, it certainly made sense from a power shifting perspective. It, I guess, really the. The area where I'm surprised they didn't do it is that they could have just done it in the Secret Files issue and just, you know, just allowed for a moment where those two characters are together talking, because that one's already, like, seemingly out of continuity anyway, or not like, fully out of continuity, but it's like a weird, like, sidestep to the continuity of the whole situation. So, like, they could have just, like, done it there and we could have gotten that moment because, like, it's so weird. And it's so nice that we get a moment like that, but with Pharaoh, like, I really appreciate that being, like, checking in on you, buddy. Like, I know you're from the 20th century. How you liking it so far?

40:13
Case
It's like, oh, it's pretty good. I'm making my life here.

40:15
Chris
Oh, that's nice.

40:16
Case
Like, that's a nice little conversation that they have. On that note, why don't we actually get into the conversations about the issues at hand? We'll kind of, like, breeze through the, like, the individual plot beats just so that we're not here all day. But It's. It's only 6.5 issues, so I. I feel like we can do this in. In not too much time, especially since we're chopping it up into a second episode after that. So on that note, we are going to get into the Legion issue 25, foundations part one. So as were discussing beforehand, this is a. A monumental issue, which I was not aware of. And so thank you, Jim, for bringing that. That detail here.

40:55
Jim
Yeah, it has a nice dedication to Otto Binder and Al Plastino at the beginning of it too. So it's kind of, you know, kind of a nice nod to the history.

41:02
Case
Yeah, no, I see. I honestly just, like, didn't I rarely, like, spend too much time staring at the credits unless I'm specifically Being like, oh, who did that?

41:10
Jim
Right, Right.

41:11
Case
So, like, yeah, I was like, oh, yeah. It is celebrating 45 years of the Legion. That's great. And so that makes more sense for why it's opening with this, like, callback to the, like, the classic, like, introduction of Superboy being inducted into the Legion. And it's part of this, like, larger plot that's going on, and it has different artists for each of the different segments. And like Chris, as you alluded to, they allow for all the characters to have or, like, it's a big jump in the story when the Artist shifts. It's not the same characters that we're dealing with for the most part, with the exception of Cosmic Boy flying between one scene to the next and just shifting Artist. So we get this callback to the Superboy story.

41:50
Case
We start setting up the resurrection of Livewire by way of seeing the memorial to Element Lad.

41:57
Jim
Well, let's talk about that a little bit, Case, because one of the things we mentioned, we kind of breezed through Legion Lost, but. But we need to talk about the fact that the end of Legion Lost, Livewire sacrifices himself.

42:07
Case
Yeah, yeah.

42:10
Jim
So that his friends can go back to their proper time and place. Basically sacrifices himself fighting what has become of Element Lad. So an Element Lad, as we know, is kind of this turned into this crystalline entity of some kind. So through Mordrew's magic, I believe, if we go back and far enough into the history there. But yeah. So that sets up what we see at the end of this issue.

42:34
Case
Yeah, yeah. So they put these two sets of memory crystals, which they'd already established earlier in the Legion run. So there's a lot of good setup and payoff throughout the Legion. Lots of doing the Levit style BCD plotting going on, where it's like, this will have payoff later, which is why it's so frustrating that they get kicked off the book.

42:53
Chris
Oh. And just to make it. I know we're on the issue itself, but their plan for bringing Element Lad and Livewire as two separate characters was that memory crystal that you keep saying, you know, because they like to layer. That was that. That was going to have the original essence of Jan unaged, you know, when he was younger, like that. The purest version of Jan was still in that memory crystal. And with Garth, you could take. They were going to take Isla, his twin, who literally has his same DNA.

43:21
Jim
Right.

43:22
Chris
And clone a body form him, but make it male, and then put his essence into the body. Problem solved.

43:28
Jim
That makes totally. I love that idea.

43:30
Case
Yeah.

43:31
Chris
You're not like, you're not breaking the rules. It makes perfect sense. It's a simple solution. And you'd have Jan have to struggle with the idea of his version of himself that became this. So there's more growth for him. He has to go through his own arc of like, I was this monster. But go on. I'm sorry. I just wanted to.

43:51
Jim
No, no, that's awesome. Thank you for sharing that.

43:53
Chris
Cool.

43:53
Jim
I mean, that is like one of the coolest sci fi capabilities, right, that people don't talk about a lot in sci fi. Right. Because you have, you know, women have two X chromosomes, men have X Y chromosomes, and all you do to make the X a Y is to snip off a little section of it. Right. So it's something that's in sci fi, but you don't see it a whole lot. And I'm. Now I'm really disappointed.

44:15
Case
Yeah, well, they could also just. They could have gotten from Mecht the Y chromosome and they would have been fairly well set there as well.

44:21
Jim
Yeah, there's that too.

44:23
Case
Yeah, good idea.

44:23
Jmike
Yeah.

44:24
Case
But anyway, yeah, so we have this like.

44:25
Chris
Except wait, Mech wasn't his twin.

44:27
Case
No, no, but the Y chromosome would be the true.

44:30
Chris
But she would have the literal DNA assist because she was his twin.

44:33
Case
Well, but they're fraternal twins by virtue of being.

44:36
Chris
He was a solo.

44:37
Case
Right, But.

44:39
Jim
Oh, Mech was. Yeah.

44:40
Case
Yes, Mac was a solo. But the. But Mecht is a male versus Livewire and Spark are fraternal twins. They're not identical twins. Thus they. That's why, like, they have different genders and so they effectively are just siblings that happen to be conceived at the same time. So, like, it works. It works. But like, I'm just saying you, you could, you would be able to make probably a perfect reincarnation of Garth, but you would have to use Ayla and Mech's DNA between the two of them.

45:10
Jim
While we're on the subject of Mech, let's talk about him a little bit because he actually is in this book.

45:15
Case
Yes.

45:15
Jim
Yeah, a decent amount. So one of the things and I definitely wanted to ask this about of you, Chris, if you had any insight onto this, is that they go into here, when we see him, there's one of the better Legion worlds issues is the one with Ayla and Mecht. And at the end of that one, the implication is very much that he's turning back into evil ways. But when we see him here, he's Much more of a kind of hero worshiping Garth.

45:43
Chris
I don't think they were planning on turning him evil, if I recall. I think they would imply it because it would be expected. But to see that it was something that he was actually struggling with, that after being. He was always embraced, but he could see that he was embraced. He's given this second chance at life not being treated like a criminal or a dangerous person. And I think it was going to be something that he was struggling with, but inherently I think he was going to stay the path. And I like the idea that they imply, ooh, this is going to be the evil within. You know, like, he's going to turn. But I think long term, I don't think he was ever going to become the evil threat that he was implied to be.

46:21
Jim
Yeah, because, I mean, I love me some, Some Lightning Lord, right?

46:25
Chris
Yeah. Yeah. Great. You know, I think Dan andy would have had a blast with him, but, you know, it could have been something where he does go bad. But there's like that whole icky. It's. It's easier if you just have them. I'm evil, I'm bad. But what if I'm evil? I'm bad. And I don't want to hurt my siblings either. You know, I've got to fight these things inside me. I don't want to hurt them. You know, I think that could have been far more interesting or, I mean.

46:48
Jay
As you just said, if they're. The plan was to bring Garth back all along. You can set it all up by having Mech replace Garth on the Legion.

46:55
Chris
Oh, that's a good.

46:56
Jay
And then Garth reappears and then now you have this conflict. Conflict. I mean, like, that was the great thing about just that whole scene is you're setting all of this, you're setting all these layers, and you're, you're making this more interesting rather than the normal meched, you know, mustache twirling. I am this. And, you know, I don't have a twin. And there was a, there's so many, you know, Lightning Lord comics where you're like, really? Like, that's the only motivation we're going with.

47:22
Chris
Yeah, he was just, you know.

47:24
Case
Yeah, yeah.

47:25
Chris
That's not interesting after a while.

47:27
Case
Yeah, I like that.

47:28
Chris
That's a good idea. Like, if he had been, like, kind of his replacement or maybe being groomed to be his replacement, and then Garth comes back and then he's like in his old anxieties, his neurosis. Tell him this is what happens to you. You're always meant to be a solo.

47:43
Jim
You know, it should have been you.

47:44
Chris
You know this. And then at some point in there, you could have empathy for him, even though it's misplaced. But it's like, I've never really liked a straight villain. They're just not interesting. And a family dynamic is always fun, you know, like, you need to put your characters through hell.

48:03
Case
Yeah. I do want to get back to, like, just going through the beats of the issue, because we'll definitely talk about Mech when we come across him again in a second, but. Yeah. So as we noted, we are introduced to a bunch of the Legion cadets, and it's just a lot of Easter eggs for old school Legion fans. So, Chris, thank you for placing those Easter eggs there, since you're the artist on that section.

48:27
Chris
They left me alone. It was nice.

48:30
Jay
I love how Comet Queen just keeps coming back. Like, of all the characters that. And I appreciate that.

48:38
Chris
I was like, she's got to be in there. She's got. You got to have Comet Queen. Got to have her in. Yeah.

48:43
Case
So Connor Goldsmith talks about this on the Cerebro podcast with all the X Men characters. Like, it's the ones that have distinct looks that are going to get those extra appearances, because in the crowd shots, like, it just makes sense to have them there because you don't have to do all this work to explain the differences between, I don't know, Cosmic Boy and Magnetic Kid.

49:03
Jay
Or realistically, most of the legionnaires in the 60s.

49:09
Case
Whites.

49:11
Chris
They all look alike. My hair part is this way.

49:16
Jay
Well, that's why Mike Grell was so critical. The sideburns. Like, he was what made it so you could tell who everybody was.

49:22
Chris
That's true.

49:23
Case
So a bunch of the legionnaires get called away. And this is one thing I wanted to mention when were talking about the advancements of technology, I think one thing that they do well with the Stargates, like the teleportation system that they have, is that it requires the Shikari or another one of her tribe to act as a navigator for it, and that keeps it from being too powerful. Like, it. It has this. Like, it. It is unlimited teleportation, but they. It requires a navigator to get there. And I think that's a really cool element of it because it could very well just be like, power creep on unto a level where you're like, how is this not like, being used? Like, for example, like in Irredeemable, like, the way teleportation becomes like the, like this tool of the.

50:04
Case
This alien race uses for weapons where they have like whips that like teleport away your skin and shit like that. Where like, you know, like the level of advancement that you could get with infinite teleportation technology. And it's nice to have like a focusing agent that is like, okay, well, we have the navigator here. So anyway, so they come onto the ship that's having. That's being attacked by like space phantom type. I forget what they're called. Exactly. Warp phantoms. I was very close. Warp Phantoms that like came out of the Stargate, attacks the ship. This plot thread will lead to the discovery of Superboy by the end of the issue.

50:38
Jmike
Spoilers.

50:41
Jay
Spoilers on a 20 year old story.

50:46
Case
And also, like we said, we're going to go beat by beat in this issue. We're pretty far into this episode, so here's where we get the Mech stuff and the recollections of it. I find it. It's an interesting digression and I appreciate that. Knowing that this is a commemorative issue, it makes a lot of sense to spend some time on the Mechta dynamic because I think that is a really important supervillain in the pantheon of the legion of superheroes. And so it's an interesting dynamic. Like we said, having it be this villain who has this love for his siblings and the shared origin with them is a really dynamic character to play with. And he's played such a vital role in periods like in five Years later. He has a very big part in Garth's story.

51:34
Case
You know, it's good that we spend some time with him here. Even though he's not going to be the main. A main character in the actual story arc that this is like the kickoff to.

51:42
Jim
No, it's good to have him because you need to understand. Again, spoiler. The spoiler of Garth's return needs to have context. And so this kind of provides that. Because at the end of the day, if you zip through this issue, right, this issue is kind of a. It's a long issue, right? It's because it's the 25th anniversary, or 25th issue and a 45th anniversary celebration. This is really designed to bring in new readers is part of the purpose of this particular issue. And so you need to have a lot of that intro stuff, that intro shorthand. And because Garth becomes kind of a central element of this particular story, you need to be able to build up his story for these new readers.

52:25
Jay
My only pushback on that, and it's probably because I've read so much. Legion is at this point, the Rand's family origin story is kind of like the Batman origin story, where you've seen it so many times that you're just like. And like, I love seeing Cockrum come back. Like, it's. It's amazing. But I wish he had done something different. Like, I just. Like, to me, this is when you do the Legion origin story again, but you put whatever changes that you want, and then you can focus on the three of them. Just because I've seen it too much. So I don't know, I gotta ask, like, J. Mike, since this is not overdone for you, did that. Was that a work, like, did that work for you at that point?

53:09
Jmike
Well, first I was gonna. I thought you were gonna say Uncle Ben, which is gonna make it even funnier.

53:14
Jay
Yeah, you know what?

53:15
Chris
That.

53:15
Jay
That's actually, like.

53:19
Jmike
This is, I want to say, my second time coming in contact with that story. So. No, this is. I was still like, who is this guy? This guy came out of nowhere. And I was like, oh, it's. It's. It's. It's their brother. Gotcha.

53:30
Chris
Haha.

53:31
Case
Yeah, we.

53:32
Jmike
I know what's going on.

53:33
Case
Stumbled across Lightning Lord a couple of times, but I think. Yeah, the only time that we've seen a story in something we've covered on the show was when we covered the cartoon.

53:43
Jmike
But I do, like. I do like, they gave the story that they gave along with him having the flashbacks of, like, growing up a solo and then him trying to be rehabilitated, and then with Garth visiting him in prison, I was like, oh, this is.

53:55
Jim
This.

53:56
Chris
This is sweet. This is. Yeah, yeah.

53:59
Case
There's more emotional complexity there. I like it.

54:01
Chris
Yeah.

54:02
Jay
Although they've never talked about how they have so much advanced technology and they can fix so many things, but apparently their psychological research is not really.

54:11
Case
Well, they had the whole thing with Starboy, like, it's not this era of Legion, but, like, where he has mental problems that cannot be solved in the 20th century.

54:20
Jmike
I was like, man, they really have him locked down in a giant chair with his hands and everything. I was like, oh, this is. That's dark.

54:28
Case
I mean, a character with mental health issues that has electrical powers can't help but sort of invoke, like, electroshock therapy kind of iconography. I don't know.

54:41
Chris
I know. I think that the psychology would have advanced considering they have, like, people from Titan who could literally go into your psyche, you know? And help you cut through a lot of stuff. Like, you know, I know you're not telling me the truth. You know, I can actually go into your mind and see, you know, I imagine that would help with multiple personalities. And I mean, come to think of it, be a really cool story if you knew how to write that, like, with some scientific theory behind it. But just how a couple of therapists, maybe one for each personality to, you know, try to delve into this guy and help him become whole. I mean, you could do some real. That's what we say about taking the technology and the ideas forward.

55:23
Chris
You know, like, a Legion story should always push things forward.

55:27
Jay
The problem, of course, is that then you don't have any villains.

55:30
Chris
That's true. They'd all be pretty.

55:31
Jay
Right.

55:32
Chris
Because they could be shown, you know, this is going to get you here, you know.

55:37
Jay
Yeah, like, here's universal. We fixed him. So.

55:41
Case
Yeah, like, yeah, I mean, that is potentially the situation there. I, I.

55:48
Jay
Sorry, I ruined my own.

55:49
Case
No, I mean, like, I do like the idea of, like, rehabilitating, like, past villains. And so it does create a situation where you only have so many stories you can tell because you can't, like, keep bringing back the villains of yore. But. But then it, then that does lend itself to a more utopian viewpoint. And I do appreciate the Legion, like, being. Being the Star Trek of superhero comics. Anyway, moving on. The next big beat is we jump back to the, like, outside of the ship that's in distress, and we're reminded of Apparition, AKA Phantom Girl, Tinuazo. Her mother is president of the up, and so we get sort of reminder of that. And she's kind of a bitch.

56:29
Jay
No, not kind of. Not kind of. That is her sole character trait.

56:37
Case
Yeah. Just to make the Star Trek connection, this is the Troy situation. Right, Right. We cut back to the cadets. And so this is a prompt for us to explain the Element Lad situation. So it's a good reminder. If you haven't read Legion Loss, what was the deal with Legion Lost? Which is seen as sort of the jumping on point for this era of the Legion. And it's also obviously huge foreshadowing for then what will happen with the character at the end of the issue and for going forward setting up those plot threads. Anyway, the Legion is successful in closing, like, defeating the warp Phantoms and closing the issue with the gate. And it's like, oh, we found a thing in there. Oh, it's Superboy. Which should be the cliffhanger for it. But this is an extra long issue.

57:19
Case
So not only do they find Superboy, they decide to go to the memorial of Element Lad. And there, here's the dun, dun. That's right, A resurrected Element lady, but with the mind of Livewire.

57:32
Jim
What?

57:33
Chris
It's funny that I just had a based on the Element LED Livewire thing. There was something that I tried to imply in later issues. I don't think anyone picked up on it, but was the longer Garth was in his body, he started to wear his hair differently, like, the way Garth would.

57:50
Jim
I did notice that.

57:52
Chris
While Gar. I mean, while Element Lads was shaggier. So I had him pulling it back because, like, the Livewire's hair was kind of pulled back, like. And I don't know how many people caught that, but my editor loved it. He was like, oh, that's. That's nice.

58:05
Case
I noticed that he seemed to be using more like, lightning ish powers towards the end, which I wasn't sure if he full on just had those powers or if it just, like, kind of looked that way.

58:14
Chris
No, those were. He had his lightning powers. Yeah, he definitely did.

58:17
Case
Okay. Awesome. Super fucking powerful, by the way, as, like, we need to talk. Like, when we talk about, like, most powerful legionnaires of all time, the com. Or the combined abilities of Livewire and Element Lad in. In a crystalline body version of the character.

58:30
Chris
Yeah, that'd be scary.

58:32
Case
Yeah, it's like, what was it in Superboy's Legion, Jim, that you were on for? We talked about how they. They only allow. Or like, they wiped out the Daxomites. And it was like, okay, well, we can only have the Termites or the Daxites. We can't have both. Like, it's too powerful anyway. So like I said, it's the dun, but it's not even the dun, because there's another dun. And that is that this callback to the opening story of the Legion of Superheroes with Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad, and Cosmic Boy. Or I think it was Lightning Boy in that first issue. Right? Like, yeah, you know, like, go to Smallville and, like, take Clark Kent into the future. Anyway, in this, they take Clark Kent to the future, but it's not the future or it's not the Legion's future. It's fucking apocalypse.

59:15
Case
And this pageantry was all for a reason to summon him. For some reason. I don't know. It doesn't seem like they needed it for anyone else, but for him, it was a great excuse to redo the story and steal him away. And The Dun Dun is welcome to Apocalypse. And this sets up then not one, but two superboys that we are going to have to deal with in this story.

59:38
Jim
Exactly.

59:39
Jay
And I just wanted to make this comment just because we always, like on the Long Live the Legion podcast, we always call out arts that we never really get to talk about. Eric White did the. Did that final Dun Dun. He did the beginning.

59:51
Chris
I love his work on that.

59:52
Jay
Yeah, it was so beautiful. Like, he captured Silver Age so perfectly. I. I wanted to make sure that we said something that I was forgetting, so.

01:00:00
Chris
Well, thank you. I forgot who I was. Like, I remember we. He specifically stayed on drawing that interpretation of Clark, and I had to imitate it at one point where they were sending Clark back and he had like the. He had the same haircut and the T shirt and plaid. And I was like, that was cool. I actually liked that his Clark looked more like a real boy.

01:00:20
Case
No, thank you. Thank you for mentioning that. I am terrible about referencing artists, so thank you.

01:00:27
Jay
No problem.

01:00:29
Case
Moving on to the next issue, so we've got a motionless Darkseid surrounded by his servants. Servants of Darkness. I was confused because I was coming from the perspective of a fan of the Great Darkness saga, where they were all like, the copies. And so I was assuming that these were all the copies, but then it's revealed that they're actually all time displaced, like, mind controlled ones. And I think that's. I think that's the intent. I think the intent is to. To. To fuck with people who are expecting it to play out the same way. It's not just doing the Great Darkness Saga, but updated. Even though it is in its own way, it's got plenty of other stuff going on. On that note, let's talk about the designs for. For the servants, because I find them really dope. And Chris, you're the artist.

01:01:12
Chris
Like, it's funny that you say that. I found. When I did my sp, I found a lot of the original designs, so I'll have to scan them up.

01:01:21
Jim
Oh, that's awesome.

01:01:22
Chris
Basically, they told me the servants, they only had one that was really defined, and that was Orion. And the rest, they were just like, left up to me. They were like, no kidding? And I was like. So I thought Firestorm would be great because he'd be like, ridiculous. I threw in a White Martian but made him black because they're all in that coal black.

01:01:41
Jim
Is that the one with the mouth in the chest?

01:01:43
Chris
Yeah, yeah, that's a White Martian.

01:01:46
Jim
Thank you. Okay.

01:01:47
Jay
That's the one I couldn't figure out. Thank you.

01:01:49
Case
Okay. I just, I assume that was Jean Jones just in like his most like, predatory looking form.

01:01:54
Chris
It could be. No, absolutely. You know, it's like the implication could definitely be there. There was one with the staff. I just thought we needed to throw in one Kirby esque one. I don't know who that character is. I just came up with it.

01:02:05
Case
I was gonna ask because that's the only one I couldn't identify and like.

01:02:09
Chris
But I wanted to. I thought it wouldn't be fair that everybody had to be like, you've got all these centuries of history, there had to be something.

01:02:17
Case
No, no. That's one of the things I like about like the great Darkness saga where it's just like, oh, it's superheroes from all over the galaxy that they pulled from.

01:02:25
Chris
So I, I don't know who that character was. It's just. I was sketching some stuff out, came up with it. They loved it. And I was like, okay, let's use that.

01:02:32
Case
And I, I love that. Except my only caveat is that I wish there were more because it was driving me inside insane because it was the only character I didn't know. I couldn't just immediately identify. I was like, is it Starman? Why the fuck would it be Starman?

01:02:48
Chris
I think maybe in the original script there was like a Hawkgirl character. I think that was definitely part of it. I do remember that there was supposed to be lots of minions, so I, I came up with like the like Nazi looking cadets with the black and red uniforms, which would be much easier to do in crowd scenes because crowd scenes are a nightmare for an artist in a Legion book as it is. So I needed just like, just you could just tell who they are. And I, Oh, I made them all look white, you know, so I'd like to give them the whole Nazi kind of thing. But yeah, the servants there wasn't. And one of them is definitely Lobo.

01:03:20
Chris
Yeah, I, I remember saying we got to use Lobo because why the hell wouldn't you use one of the most dangerous bounty hunters in the universe? Yeah, there wasn't a lot of like, they didn't put that much into them in terms of. It was just Orion, which was the most important one, to be honest.

01:03:35
Case
Okay, so I, I have a question about the Green Lantern in the group.

01:03:39
Chris
Yeah, he was a Green Lantern. That's right. There's a Green Lantern.

01:03:42
Jim
Oh, I thought that was Cyborg.

01:03:44
Case
No, no. It's like it clearly has green constructs and if you look at it, like the chest.

01:03:47
Jim
Yeah, yeah. I mean, well, it kind of looks. You could go both ways. Because the first thing I thought was it was a Green Lantern. Then I was like, no, that's Cyborg, because he's all metal.

01:03:55
Chris
Then I'm like, yeah, it's a lantern. Now I'm remembering it was just a Lantern. I just thought that it would be easy. Not. Not really. Just made sense to grab the real heavy hitters from what you would take from the DC universe. Like, you have to throw a lantern there. Throw in.

01:04:11
Case
And a lantern makes sense as a callback to the great Darkness saga because they had a guardian as like one of the servants of darkness.

01:04:17
Chris
Yeah. It's like I just tried to make sense out of, like, you know what would be. If I'm looking for my rogues gallery of people that I want to kick everyone's ass with, I'd be like, yeah, let me get a Kryptonian. Let me get that. That. Because it just makes sense that the pieces are there. You don't necessarily have to just come up with entirely new things just to suit what your perception is. Unless there was something that you were coming up that was so essential to the story.

01:04:42
Case
Okay, so here's then the question about the designs for them. So you said that Orion was locked in. Was Orion's design locked in already by.

01:04:49
Chris
No, none of their designs. I made them all up. Oh, and Big Barda, I wanted. Because I love Big Barda.

01:04:54
Case
Yeah, yeah, it totally makes sense.

01:04:55
Chris
I just said, can I throw in Big Barda? And I. I mean, I see she and Scott Free are my favorite new gods. So they were like, you want to throw in Big Barter? I throw that. I showed them my sketch. They're like, yeah, you're throwing in big Barter.

01:05:06
Case
So, so basically the directive was like, we need like a shadowy, metal as version of all these characters. And that. And that was it.

01:05:14
Chris
That was it. Just like, let's see what you got. I remembered what Keith did. I needed to reflect that, but then do something completely different, you know, other than the fact that they were black. I was going with, like, I wanted them to have that unifying red, black and white theme. Like Superboy, the evil Clark Kent was definitely like this Romanesque looking soldier, but with, like, heavy blacks. And I had a blast coming up with those designs because like I said, were all on the same page in the office. Like, everybody was totally into this, like, storyline. We loved the book. Everyone knew the book.

01:05:47
Chris
And it's like, you can Tell Sometimes when you see people do the Legion, I remember joining Legion in an issue of Booster Gold, and I was really irritated because the colors are nice, but they don't actually look at the. Like, they got all the colors wrong, all the characters. I was like, wait, this isn't the chameleon boy costume I see in the new book. So I'm just gonna color it like that chameleon boy instead of looking at like. When you do the Legion, I think it's vitally important that if you come on the book, you better understand the history and you better love the history. Even if there's things you don't like about it, you got to love it because it's the only way you're going to make it work.

01:06:25
Chris
And you can tell when people don't like the Legion and they're trying to write the Legion.

01:06:29
Jim
Yep, 100%.

01:06:31
Jay
Although I will say this, I always get caught with these stories of why he keeps pulling Orion. Yeah, like, like that's the one that. That never makes sense to me. It's like.

01:06:40
Case
And especially the real a shitty dad.

01:06:45
Chris
Why go to bite your hand, you know?

01:06:48
Case
Yeah, but he just can't. He's like, I know. I just need to abuse my son. I just. I just need to, like, I didn't get a chance to growing up. I just need to abuse that son.

01:06:55
Jmike
Like, that was like, even other dark side was like, why would you pick Orion? Like, of all people, why would you pick Orion? And I was like, oh, right, because the prophecy. It was like, that was one of the dumbest decisions he could have made.

01:07:07
Case
Right?

01:07:08
Chris
Yeah, but.

01:07:08
Case
But we have to. We have to say Servant of darkness, Orion looks metal as fuck. Like awesome. Like, I just need to call out specifically. And this is why I was like getting at like the Orion part because, like, he looks like the fucking Destroyer.

01:07:22
Chris
Oh, there you go. That was intentional, my friend.

01:07:24
Case
Like, I love it.

01:07:26
Chris
I was going Kirby all the way and I was like, I'm throwing in he's going to look like a version of the Destroyer.

01:07:31
Case
And I'm glad you got Fantastic. Okay. Just needed to. Just needed to get. Get to there. So I. Then we get to what I. What I. I laughed so goddamn hard when I was reading through. Mainly because I just recently read the series that this is referencing when we get to a. A time skip and they do five weeks later. And considering I just finally finished reading the five years later dual Omnibi.

01:07:56
Jim
Oh, well done.

01:07:58
Case
It took me years.

01:07:59
Jim
It did.

01:07:59
Case
Like, I'll believe it. They were sitting besides my, like, my bedside table for goddamn years of being like, yeah, no, I should finish that. Oh, okay, I'll finish that.

01:08:09
Jay
So that'll be. We'll invite you to join us when we tackle the fly first.

01:08:13
Chris
It's a lot. It's a lot, it's a lot.

01:08:16
Case
But then we get a great group shot of the team flying. I am definitely using this as the COVID image for the Men of Steel art, just because it's a great shot with Superboy in this costume, which is stands out as opposed to like just his classic costume. Just looks more like other Legion of Superhero stuff.

01:08:33
Chris
Oh. So here's a. It actually ties into everything we're talking about with Superboy was. When I first drew Superboy in the arc Teen Titans was being relaunched with McCone and Geoff Johns. Superboy had kind of changed. Where the Superboy I was doing was tying into the Superboy that they had for like the last 10 years. The leather jacket one. He wasn't gigantic. He was. He was in great shape, but he wasn't. He was leaner, he was smaller. And I drew it because that's the way Grummet and everybody had drawn him over the course of the story. If you notice, Superboy starts getting.

01:09:04
Case
I noticed that because by the end, when he's with Superman or with Clark and he's like looking very ripped, I'm like, oh, that. Like, he's looking very big.

01:09:14
Chris
And that's. That's that. And that was because they told me I had to make him bigger because in the Teen Titans book, he was drawn pretty big, which made sense because Clark Kent's like a six, four guy. He was never saw. You know, he was always a well built dude. Like, that guy just was like, there was. There was no way anyone was going to call him a nerd. It was so I didn't mind that, but it was. If you could definitely see from the first issue I did of him to the last issue that he is much bigger.

01:09:43
Case
Did they tell him or tell you that he also needed a receding hairline over the course of it?

01:09:48
Chris
Oh, no. I insist that he's got the spit girl. I'm like, superboy's got the spit crawl. No, no, no. We're going to. He's not gonna have that haircut. I. That was the one thing I loved that Teen Titans look, but I hated super boy's haircut. I was like. And I remember when Francis Manipal doing Super bowl, he took that old haircut, but he spiked it up and he made it look like a real haircut. He looked more modern and instead of just the Clooney cut. That was the only thing I didn't like about his design. But it was a great book. I love that Teen Titans book.

01:10:15
Case
Yeah, we'll definitely have to talk about that at some point on this series, because at some point, like, Titans Tomorrow, if nothing else, is certainly worth discussing. And the whole Superboy being turned into a clone of Lex Luthor is worth discussing. I know I've ripped on it plenty of times. I'm sorry. I just grew up with him being the clone of Paul Westfield modified to look like Superman anyway, so we get the friction that is going to be a core part of the story, which is that Superboy is very headstrong and really pisses off Cosmic Boy. And in this scenario, it's because Superboy just keeps on calling the Stargate Space Gates, which I. There was a moment where I'm like, wait, but is Superboy speaking Interlac or are they using a translator? Like. Like, either. If. If it's a translator.

01:11:03
Case
I feel like those words might actually get lumped to get, like, if what he's called, you know, because they're not speaking 20th century English. Unless they are, but that's not the normal thing they're speaking.

01:11:15
Chris
So you're saying it would be corrected anyway because of interlacing? Yeah.

01:11:19
Jim
I always figured that there was some kind of hand wavium either through, you know, telepathic earplugs or, you know, Saturn Girl.

01:11:26
Case
I'm totally fine with whatever hand wavium it is. Like, I, Like, I. I am here for that bullshit, but I am just curious what that is. And like I said, like, it's. It's only just one where I'm like, does that make sense that you'd get mad about, like, the saying Space Gate versus Stargate, which, like, again, doesn't actually matter because the point is that Cosmic Boy is like, well, annoyed at it. And I. I will say this reading, rereading this arc after listening to your episodes on Comic Boy made me really appreciate him as a history buff and really appreciate, like, the. Him being this, like, believer of, like, the myth of Superman. I thought, like, that. That. I don't want to say fully changed because I. I always had this. This, like, understanding that.

01:12:14
Case
That he was a character who had an appreciation of history, but that he was specifically a character that had appreciation of history.

01:12:20
Chris
Yeah, he had the miniseries about it during the Legend Day where it was established that he was a historian and Then he went back because he wanted to appreciate history. And I always liked that about Kazakh Boy. And to tie into the whole, like he was a stick in the mud. He was the. The. The guy who's always doing the right thing. Raza Ghul made a comment in earlier in the Legion run where he said the word is given or something like that. Like Kazakh boy given a command to the legion that Raja Ghoul was overhearing and he laughed at it. And he goes, legion, we are a go. Or something like that. And he goes, he's just like the square jawed Kryptonian. Like, he made a comment that he was.

01:12:59
Chris
He was reminding him of Superman with how heroic he was and he was sneering at it. And it was a. It was that Dan andy had always wanted Kazakh Boy to be that guy for the Legion. He literally was the Superman of the legion in terms of the idealism, the heroism, the guy who always gets it right. And yeah, he's a bit square.

01:13:19
Jim
Or more than.

01:13:20
Chris
Yeah, more than a bit. But he, there was a reason for it is that he's. He's focused, you know, and that's why you had Livewire being more of the wild, you know, the wild card, you know. Yeah, that's how they worked.

01:13:33
Jim
Right. I mean, so on our podcast, that was one of the first things we talked about, right? Where we have kind of this trio where you have, like you said, Livewire, Garth, Lightning Lad, whatever is the id, right? Of he's just fiery, impulsive. Then you have Cosmic Boy being the ego, right? He's the person thinking about that. And then you have Saturn Girls, kind of the super ego of the bunch.

01:13:54
Case
Right.

01:13:54
Jim
So anyway, yeah, all that and more you can find on the Long Live.

01:13:58
Case
The Legion podcast, which totally you should check out because it's wonderful that you get into these character profiles and it's great insight into these characters because it's easy to see that Cosmic Boy is really useful in a fight. And we get a dope shot right here of a thing that I've always wanted to see and I'm so glad it happens here, which is Cosmic Boy and Pharaoh being used as a double whammy using magnetism.

01:14:25
Chris
I love when they came up with.

01:14:27
Case
That to the Fastball special, An Iron Man.

01:14:32
Chris
Yeah, that's gonna hurt.

01:14:33
Case
That's really gonna hurt so good.

01:14:35
Chris
I'm gonna throw Pharaoh at you. That's gonna hurt.

01:14:38
Case
It's so good. But they. So they engage with the servants of darkness, and so we get to see Them getting battered around by them. And so, yeah, we see the Green Lantern one, we see the Martian, and we see Clark Kent. They're pretty goddamn tough, as you would infer. I don't know which one's the weakest in that group, actually.

01:14:58
Jim
Yeah, well, as Violet says, they are so not covering themselves with glory.

01:15:03
Chris
Yeah.

01:15:05
Case
And we note that the one that is clearly the Superman one in the group, when he punches Superboy's like, man, that felt like I just got hit by Big Blue. So we're right off the bat establishing that. And again, if you're a fan of the great Dark side Darkness saga and you're thinking these are like shadow copies, then that's like, okay, it's doing more. It's doing that story again. But in fact, nope, it's. It's pulled from time because we're at. We're adding more fourth dimensional bullshit to this.

01:15:33
Jim
All right, so let's get back to.

01:15:34
Case
Legion, where Garth is having a emotional breakdown because of being trapped in a different body.

01:15:44
Jim
Not only that, but Saturn Girl, who is, you know, they were. I think they were engaged to be married before the whole Legion Lost thing took place. Is. Is obviously very uncomfortable around him for, you know, the obvious reasons.

01:15:56
Case
Yeah, I mean, it would be uncomfortable even if he was. Even if he looked like Garth but was made of crystal. Like, that would just be a difficult situation. But he's made of crystal and looks like a person who became one of their great enemies.

01:16:09
Jim
Yeah, the person who killed him, basically.

01:16:11
Case
Yes, that killed him. That killed Monster Girl.

01:16:13
Chris
You know, there was something that, if. If I had stayed on the Legion and I threw this at the editor, was that in the old vintage Paul Levitz book, remember, they would have, like, them at rest and they'd have their group shots and, you know, Timberwolf would be a block and stuff like that. You'd see the little factions and the little cliques that were within the Legion. And I wanted to kind of imply that the Legion Lost team, you would. You would see it in background pictures a lot, was that they always kind of hung out with each other because they were forged through something different, like those bonds. And. And I was hoping that if we did it enough times, real fans would catch that those guys always congregated with each other. It would. And.

01:16:55
Chris
And to ever state it, I think would just be a waste. I. I hate when you just can't let the story write itself, you know, like, no one would say, hey, I noticed that you guys always stick together. I wanted it to Be like to something that the fans would pick up on, but, you know, we're all booted.

01:17:12
Case
Yeah. The things that we wish. Chris, I have a question for you about drawing. So from your perspective as an artist who worked from the 90s into the sort of, like, the revolution of, like, modern, like, coloring techniques. So Elementlad has this very, like, very crystalline kind of design to him, which has. One thing of note is, like, the pencils are done in. In a colored style. Is there anything that. Any considerations you have to make when you're doing a character that has that sort of extra layer of, like, computer, like, coloring going on?

01:17:48
Chris
Not really. I mean, I drew him in the pencils. He's definitely crystalline. And if I remember the colorist, Rhonda Patterson, who was really good, I think the editor always kind of made sure to, like, make sure she knew. But after a while, we're all clicking on the same page anyway and didn't need to be reminded. Like, back in the day, if you want to do, like, separate color effects, you do them on vellum, which would be separate from the artwork, would be inked, and sometimes it'd be like entire layers different from the artwork. But nowadays everything is. No, it didn't affect my drawing at all.

01:18:20
Case
Okay.

01:18:20
Jim
Now, it's interesting you say that, Chris. I picked up at the Baltimore Comic Con last year, I picked up a page from one of the early Jefferson Legionnaires books, and it has that same effect. So it has that kind of that. That, like you said, the vellum with the.

01:18:34
Chris
Yeah, it's like. It's an overlay.

01:18:35
Jim
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, aligned with the actual page and everything. It's kind of fascinating.

01:18:40
Chris
So. Oh, yeah. Like, I. I was. You should see some of these things like that some of them had three layers. Oh, wow. They'd be like. It would depend how extensive it would get, and it'd be annoying when you had the original artwork. You know, man, I can't really appreciate it because I have to go through one layer any other. But that was before the advent of computer coloring and stuff. And while computer coloring bought a whole new dimension, I do think creatively it. It gave them too many tools While the old 64 color process, I think they had to be more creative, you know, with, like, the colors that they use. Like, you could really tell who knew color theory and who didn't. Because, like, you remember those old image books where color was just.

01:19:21
Chris
Every page was hyper saturated, and then some of them were really good at it, and then you had guys who just like, oh, I have this new toy, these new tools. And then every page had to have some kind of an effect. And they forget that coloring is also just as equally important as the artwork itself. You are. You are telling a story. Your eye needs to go somewhere. Like Michael golden, it was the master of using the old 64 color process. If you look at his covers for Marvel and DC over the years, he would use purples and yellows for background elements. And your eye knew exactly where to go. He knew how to paint with color. And a lot of these guys just. Nowadays there's more guys who are really good at it.

01:20:02
Chris
But I do kind of miss, like, when you see, like, these old, new editions where they reprint them and they recolor them. When they recolor Jack Kirby, I hate it. I hate it. It's like, what are you doing? This is. They. I mean, it kind of worked a little with Walt Simonson. They.

01:20:18
Case
I was just gonna. I was just gonna bring up that yesterday, someone shared on. On Blue Sky a Walt Simonson thing, and I was, like, so bothered that it was recolored. Yeah.

01:20:26
Chris
Yeah. It's like, they do a better job on the Walt Simonson stuff than 95% of the other ones. But it's still. I missed the primary because it's Walt Simonson. He did that color. Like, they. He knew. Same with Jackson. You know, those colors, those flats made the artwork pop 10 times more than all of these little color scales you're throwing in there, which are all fighting for your attention.

01:20:51
Jay
Oh, yeah. When the. When you. I see this stuff, like, there's certain colorists from the 70s and 80s, Tatiana Wood.

01:20:57
Chris
Oh, yeah.

01:20:58
Jay
Like, her stuff is so good, and that's part of the story. So whenever I see that recolored, like her, I think it's Swamp Thing. She was on, like, those old Allen War. Like, nobody should touch those. Those are as perfect as they can be. I think they. I think they have once or twice, and I think they realized. Everyone said, don't do that.

01:21:16
Chris
Oh, good.

01:21:18
Jay
You know, but same like, you know, like the old Giffen legion from the 80s. Like, those shouldn't get touched either. Like, it's.

01:21:24
Chris
That's.

01:21:24
Jay
That's the art.

01:21:25
Case
Right?

01:21:25
Chris
And it also worked. The colors look great. They. They. I didn't notice them being off. You know, it becomes more distinct when you actually see. See it now. It's distracting.

01:21:36
Jay
Yeah, no, I, I, I can't agree more. Like, that is. It's that old. Those other old coloring jobs are so good. When they're done well. And to change them is just.

01:21:44
Chris
And it's not like I'm an old fuddy duddy. I'm stuck in my ways. If they were doing it better, I mean, I'd begrudgingly admit it looks great, but I mean, I'm not getting paid to like it or dislike it. It's like, what. What works is what works. When I see a lot of those old like it. I think they stopped doing that with Jack Kirby's work because people were audibly complaining. They were like, no. So when they reprinted the Fourth World stuff in the hardcovers, they even printed them on almost like a newsprint type paper. And Chef's Kiss, it's like. It's still beautiful.

01:22:17
Case
It's good. But I will say the colors in this look gorgeous and are a good balance of being able to use modern gradient technologies.

01:22:28
Chris
Yeah, Rhonda was terrific.

01:22:30
Case
Just like a lot, like, very nice control of that color scheme. But yeah. So moving on. So, yeah, we have a scene with Emma and Garth where it's. They're trying to connect, but it's just awkward. We cut to the legionnaires, like, doing a wrap up of the fact that they just had this whole fight and sort of going over the details. And we start to see this issue of Kid Quantum having, like a lapse in time. It's initially presented as if she just sort of spaces, but as we see, it actually will eventually be her being able to perceive herself moving backwards through time in a cool sequence. So again, lots of good setup and payoff. I appreciate that we have a nice little romantic walk between Invisible Kid and Brainiac 5.

01:23:15
Chris
I could tell you how that came about. That was not part of the script.

01:23:18
Jim
Another one not on my question list.

01:23:20
Chris
That was not part of the script. It was never part of the story. It was. Steve Whacker literally said to me, have him kiss him on the cheek just to. With the fans. Oh, my God, let's just do that, you know? And. And I said, of course. Yeah, I get it. Because you could see Lyle's face is like, oh, you know, like, he's totally, like. So, yes. It was never planned. It was more of. And I loved it because it added, like, it's like we say, where if you have to state what's going on, sometimes you can just let the scene speak for itself. You're losing the moment. And yet people have talked about it ever since, which was like, mission accomplished, God damn it.

01:23:59
Case
Yeah. If they could have done a five years later for the reboot continuity, like, and they didn't pick up with Lyle and Brainy, like, being an item, like, I would have been so fucking mad.

01:24:10
Jim
Well, Chris, did Steve tell you or did you already know that they were going to out or they were thinking about outing Lyle?

01:24:17
Chris
No, I mean, I think it was always. Because, you know, with Legion fandom, like, the real fans, all of these ideas and stories and theories that circulated, they're all passed on. We all know it. And yeah, Legion heads are nuts. You know, we. We just like go over everything and that's what makes us Legion fans, you know, And I pretty much. I'm not apologizing for it. I'm proud. You know, I think, like, it was literally like, as I got the script, you know, and I was coming up to those pages, like, you just have a pack of a kiss on his cheek. And we both laughed about it because it wasn't like done in a mocking way by any means. It was just more like, yeah, that's awesome. Let's do that.

01:24:53
Jim
I was thinking, because back in this, in the. When Roger Stern was writing the Legionnaire stuff before Andy and Dan, there was the whole mysterious thing where he was going to go meet Condo Arlic, but they never really explained what was all that. That was all about, right. And you know, the. The creators, actually. Yeah, he was. Yeah, he was going to meet Carlo on a date.

01:25:14
Chris
I mean, I. I think that it's like Steve, the editor, he. He was a genuine Legion fan. So he had read five Year Legion, Kurt Swan, all of that stuff. So he. He definitely had an appreciation for all that. And I mean, there was even something in the last issue we did, and I'm not sure if I have to look at the old pages, but there was supposed to be a scene with Brand just in the background. And he said, how about you have Brands going like this to his head? Almost like he's mentally. You know, because there was the implication that maybe he was Jones. Right. That kind of thing at one point. Is it. Maybe he's just using some mental powers. Just leave it like that and let fans think. And I love that. It was like, that's a really cool.

01:25:55
Chris
But it also showed just how much he understood the assignment. You know, you do the allegiance. You got to have these Easter eggs, but they have to be Easter eggs that make sense, that really tie into things that make fans genuinely smile. Yeah.

01:26:07
Jim
No, love it. Thank you.

01:26:08
Chris
You're welcome.

01:26:10
Case
But yeah, so they have this. This nice little romantic walk as they walk past these catastrophists. That we set up this. This doomsday cult that don't even care which, like, which doomsday that they're, like, following, as long as there's something that's a doomsday for them.

01:26:25
Chris
Yeah.

01:26:25
Jim
So I was wondering about this. I figured it took them just a long time to get there, because, you know, prior to this story, right? Like, the Earth had been, like, terraformed, then paved over by Robotica, and then before that, there was the blight. I mean, where were these guys this whole time?

01:26:40
Chris
Come on. Things move.

01:26:42
Jay
Oh, that was just the.

01:26:43
Chris
They move fast.

01:26:44
Jay
That was the result of it, right? Like, if Earth is almost destroyed every three months, do you just go, all right, I'm giving up?

01:26:51
Case
And I mean, like, to be fair, in the. In a Legion timeline, Earth does get destroyed, but so the doomsday. Yeah, so the doomsday aspect is, like. Is fitting. But anyway, they walk past this doomsday cult. They just set them up, and they're going to be important later because they get used as fuel to power apocalypse. But. So Invisible Kid and Brainiac 5 are inside the Time Institute on Earth, and that is where they get attacked via boom tube by Orion and what appears to be a Thanagarian hawk woman.

01:27:25
Jim
That's so awesome.

01:27:28
Chris
She was angry.

01:27:29
Case
So, J. Mike, I figured you'd be excited about that. Do you want to. Do you want to take a moment there to.

01:27:34
Jmike
Where do. Where do I begin? Like, this brought joy to my heart because I'm a big Thanagarian fan. Yeah. I was like, oh, man, I can't wait. My secret hope is that new DCU universe they're building with James Gunn, because Hawk Girl's there, we might eventually get the Thanagarian invasion. And I was like, please.

01:27:57
Chris
That would rock.

01:27:58
Jmike
That'd be so cool.

01:27:59
Chris
I would love even. I would love to see an actual Hawkman. Hawkman. You know, like, full appreciation of all that history. I always said you could do Hawkman as your next Highlander movie with all of, like, the timelines and everything. You could literally make Hawkman, like, so different from any of the MCU movies.

01:28:19
Case
That would actually be dope.

01:28:22
Chris
And for people who want to talk about diversity, you literally could just sew an opening montage where Carter hall has been literally every ethnicity, you know, through every walk of life. So it's like, no one's gonna get pissed off. You know, it's like he's been them all. He's been a samurai, he's been a knight. He's been a Chinese peasant. He's Been everything. And in every one of those with, with Chiara, now I'm just picturing.

01:28:46
Case
Like a, like a rapidly cut version of him, like swinging a mace between the different Personas. And it's always. He always has a fucking mace.

01:28:54
Jim
It doesn't.

01:28:54
Case
Like each version of him is always like, yeah, cowboy, exactly. Like it's a big club or something like that. You know, it's like it's setting appropriate, but it's always. It's always a big fucking cudgel of some kind and you just like get this like smash cut between him all. Anyway, getting back to the story we. To Legion World where we get Cosmic Boy and Kid Quantum having a nice little romantic scene together. And I like this romance. I know that Kid Quantum is not the Cosmic Boy Forever, it's Night Girl, but actually, you guys were talking about that. Thoughts on that?

01:29:33
Jim
Yeah. Night Girl is the. Or Linda Jath, who has the power to create dark fields is. Or. No, she. I'm sorry, that's. That's Shadow.

01:29:41
Chris
Super Shadow.

01:29:42
Case
Super strength and darkness.

01:29:43
Jim
Yeah, yeah.

01:29:44
Case
She's strong and she's inverted Superman.

01:29:46
Jim
And that's. No, that's the historical one. But here, I mean, yeah, there is. Night Girl is introduced once in this era of the Legion, but we never see her again. But this relationship, this romance seems just very organic to me. Right.

01:30:04
Chris
It does come out of nowhere. But it worked.

01:30:07
Case
Yeah, it works.

01:30:08
Jim
I mean, well, because, you know, she's the new Legion leader. By the way, kudos to DNA for being. For making the first female of color leader of the Legion.

01:30:16
Chris
So of all the characters not to put in further iterations, I was really sad when Kid Quantum got just tossed. She was a great character. I loved her.

01:30:26
Jim
Although we did get it. So, you know, since we're talking about Darkseid as part of this, we did get a glimpse of her in the Dark side Legion for this event that's happening this summer.

01:30:35
Chris
Oh, she is. Oh, I haven't checked up on it.

01:30:36
Jim
Yeah, she's in the big splash page from I guess the all in special at the end.

01:30:40
Chris
Oh, it's just. I don't know if it ties into anything, but I recently did some Legion of Superheroes trading cards for dc.

01:30:47
Jim
Oh, nice.

01:30:48
Chris
It's coming up for a new flir and it's an upcoming card set, but I don't know how it ties in because I drew DNA. I mean, I drew the. That version of Cosmic Boy. I drew Lightning Lad with the metal arm. I drew Saturn Girl. I drew Brill Docs, I drew Brainiac 5 and I drew Superman. So I don't know if that implies any future connection. They haven't told me anything. But I got to draw the versions of the Legion that I drew.

01:31:16
Jim
That's awesome.

01:31:17
Chris
In an upcoming card set. So do with that what you will, because I have no answer.

01:31:21
Case
Interesting.

01:31:22
Jim
Keep my eyes out from the cards.

01:31:23
Case
One thing I note that you did draw is. So the bottle that Kid Quantum pours from is like the one from Star Trek, which I've actually seen. Oh, you could. Which I've actually seen in the original bottle.

01:31:34
Chris
Yes, yes, exactly. It was like Romulan ale or something.

01:31:38
Case
No, if you go to Bardstown Bourbon Company, they've got a whiskey room and they've got the original bottle from Star Trek in there. Yeah.

01:31:46
Jim
No way.

01:31:47
Chris
Yeah, of course you would catch that case.

01:31:51
Case
But yeah, it's the exact Venn diagram of my overlap of interest in spirits, interest in Star Trek, interest in comics.

01:32:00
Chris
Wow.

01:32:00
Jim
So here's my only thing about this scene is that man, for somebody getting laid, Cosmic Boy is really given. Yeah, he's kind of a hard ass.

01:32:08
Case
That's true.

01:32:09
Jim
Yeah.

01:32:11
Jay
I was going to say the same thing. I mean, you'd think he'd be happier.

01:32:16
Case
So we get Dreamer showing up and I was shocked to be reminded that, like, oh yeah, she wasn't part of the Legion until just now in this timeline, the little thing. Because I think of the reboot as like hitting all the major beats of the Legion fairly concisely, all things considered. But it's like, oh, yeah, it did take them a while. Anyway, so she informs them that the Precogs are saying that there is no more future, setting up this whole time problem that is going on. And meanwhile, Pharaoh has a nice little scene with Superboy. And I was talking about this before. I like that Pharaoh, who is from the 20th century, has this conversation with Superboy and we get to be like, oh yeah, like how. How's it. How is it living in the future? Like, would you want to go back?

01:32:56
Case
Like, now you've made your future cool?

01:32:58
Chris
There is an Easter egg in that scene where Superboy is wearing a Karate Kid T shirt that was from a costume contest from the 70s with the. There's a hand. Like a karate hand. Yeah. And it was a fan. It was a fan Karate Kid costume. And I, I just, I asked Steve if I could do it and he said, hell yeah. So it was a literal. It was only old school fan where the cat said if they wondered what was.

01:33:23
Jim
I don't know what the hell.

01:33:24
Case
Because I was like, what is going on with this?

01:33:26
Chris
It was from a costume. It was from a fan costume contest. And the hand looks, it's such a goofy costume.

01:33:32
Case
Yeah.

01:33:32
Chris
But I'm like, yes, I gotta throw that on the shirt. I was like, please let me do that. And he let me.

01:33:37
Case
You know, that's a wonderful Easter egg. Yeah. And. And then we get a very nice shot. This, this is competing for the episode art. I do think I'm going to go with that Legion spread that from earlier. But this is a good central image of Superboy and like a good looking Superboy.

01:33:53
Chris
Yeah. As you notice, he's still lean. He wasn't, he hadn't hit the Mike McCone Muscle Gym yet, but I was still keeping him lean. You know, I toyed with that a few times. A couple of the shots were a little too grandiose and overdone. I was like, no, he's just coming out of a dressing room. I don't want him to be like this and stuff like that. I figured a little more casual and that. I was really happy. And you see the mirror reflection of Pharaoh going like that. I was very happy with how that came out.

01:34:18
Case
Yeah. No very nice details there then. So if you're reading on the DC Universe app, it recommends reading the Legion Secret Files 303 or 3003, number one, which I get well enough. We'll cover it real quickly. But it's not like there's not much of a story.

01:34:39
Jim
Well, I mean, this. Every, like, few years, they would do one of these Secret Files issues for the Legion just because I think it's one of the things where, you know, there's so many characters and there's a lot of lords if you're in new, if you're new to it's a.

01:34:51
Case
Nice thing to have. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to have. Like, like, the Secret Files books are great for, especially for fans who want to like, get caught up on, like, what is, like, what is the deal with this book? Who, who are the. Who are the major players? It's like who's who.

01:35:06
Chris
But, like, I think there's a great, if I remember correctly, there's a great moment with Karate Kid and Superboy.

01:35:12
Jim
Yep, yep.

01:35:12
Chris
Yeah, there's that. And Karate Kid has a great line in there. Superboy says, oh, man, you saved me. You saved him. I was about to hit him or something like that, or wreck him or something. And Karate Kid Calmly said, no, no, it's.

01:35:25
Case
You're very close. So it's cosmic boy chastises, you could have hurt him. And he said, no, he wouldn't.

01:35:33
Chris
Just like real matter of factly. And it wasn't even bragging. It was just. That was Val.

01:35:39
Case
Yeah. Yeah. So this issue has the framing device that places it as being part of the, this larger story. I would honestly put. I don't know where to put this because. Because it feels a little out of continuity.

01:35:52
Jim
No, I think it's. I think this is, this works kind of. It's a nice little, you know, in the middle of some of these events, you know, sometime after that.

01:35:59
Case
Well, here's why. So the next issue appears to be Superboy's public appearance. And they reference it in this. And this is where it gets weird because Superboy's public appearance is referenced, but it happens after the attack on the Time Institute. So that's why I'm like a little like, where does this exactly fall in the timeline? It's like a Dragon Ball Z movie, you know, like, and it doesn't have to be perfect. It's. It's a secret file. It's fine. It has the framing device of the servants of darkness traveling. And then we've got this Trudy Trousseau narrative of her doing an expose on the Legion. And it's a good excuse to be like, who is this legionnaire? Who is this legionnaire? And they kind of just go through it all.

01:36:43
Case
It's a good catch up for what the deal is gonna throw this one out there to Mr. J.M.C. Falson. Was this at all helpful to like catch you up on like what was going on in the Legion of Superheroes at this time?

01:36:57
Chris
Kind of.

01:36:57
Jmike
It was kind of cool to see like a little bit of a backstory for like certain people. Like, I was kind of wondering who was like, who's that snake lady?

01:37:04
Case
Yeah.

01:37:09
Jmike
They'Re like, oh, okay. She had. There was an accident where she got hit with a beam or something. Purple ray.

01:37:16
Case
Something like that. Yeah, they. They dealt with this whole thing that was kickstarting evolutions and it blasted. And so her natural form is a snake.

01:37:23
Chris
I, I always thought. I'm sorry to interrupt, but it just made me think was that secret file, was that if Legion was like, let's say was in the best universe, like an X Men selling title, where it was really like putting out big numbers, was that I always thought instead of doing what Marvel does, where they'll put out a Successful X Men book, but then do like 11 inferior versions of it which dilute the brand. I don't mind one or two, but make it the best creative teams, like make every issue matter.

01:37:52
Chris
I mentioned it to Steve that wouldn't it be great that you would have a parallel Legion series, sort of like a Legion insider, where it'd be the, since the Legion is so big, you'd have your main story and then you'd have the side stories that supplement the main story with other members of the Legion that tie into the greater whole that they would, you would read them parallel with the main book and you could read the main book without it. But the side story is like, here's what Invisible Kid during this story that made that thing happen in the main issue, like pay off.

01:38:23
Case
It's kind of like Invincible World.

01:38:24
Chris
Oh, I didn't, I've never read that.

01:38:26
Case
But Invisible Universe, whatever. The side book that they had like Guarding the Glyph. I mean they had like a whole bunch of like side books for Invincible that were, it was never one consistent book, but there were, there was at least at 1.1, 1 spin off book that was like it was Invincible Universe or something to that effect.

01:38:41
Chris
I just think it could have been really cool. But of course it doesn't have, the book doesn't sustain those kind of sales. But I think it would have been really cool with something like the Legion, which is such a gigantic cast where you don't feel like you're cramming everything into the main book just because you need to give side Legionnaires things to do.

01:38:59
Jim
You, that's why the 90s were good, right? Because you had the two titles right? And you could let the stories breathe.

01:39:06
Chris
A little bit more. The thing is though, I mean, I, I just think that I, I, I, I understood those books, but they still felt a little soft to me. You know, they felt a little more generic. I thought that I, I want like the side book to be just as good as the main book so that they become like, must read. And that's why when Marvel does, like I said, like when they did 10 Avengers books, you might get two or three that are actually kick ass, but the rest suck. You know, flat out, they suck and they dilute the brand. It's like, yeah, okay, maybe if you just not do that, you will have these books that will sell in perpetuity. You will have that audience come every damn month because you are handing them a quality meal every time.

01:39:46
Case
Yeah, I mean, that's why I thought that the Legion As a relaunch of the Legion of Superheroes was a pretty strong, like, singular book to sort of, like, keep the brand all kind of together. I've got a question for you all, which is that as they kind of cut through the different interviews of people, and here's some coverage of them, they're mess hall and so forth, they walk into a room and they've got Wildfire saying to Timberwolf, she's got seven. And he's talking clearly about Shikari. Like, seven of what? Seven boobs. Seven of what? Like, my brain's. And he's an energy being. So, like, what does he like?

01:40:24
Chris
What? He's not talking about Shakari.

01:40:26
Case
Well, but that's the thing that they've been setting up. Like, I just. Then who has seven?

01:40:35
Chris
He could just be telling. It could be.

01:40:36
Case
It could be. Yeah.

01:40:38
Chris
Because it is. I mean, remember, Wildfire was one of those outgoing characters, you know, I prefer.

01:40:44
Case
To think of it as being Shakari, in which case it's like, what? What?

01:40:47
Chris
I never got the impression that it was Shikari. I think he was just telling.

01:40:50
Case
Okay, well, fair.

01:40:51
Chris
That were getting, like, the punchline, you know, and he's also talking to Timberwolf, who's kind of a rough and tumble guy, that they could just be having a moment. But I don't think.

01:41:01
Case
Again, it's just funny to think about.

01:41:03
Chris
You know, it's funny based on Shikari. Dan andy did not set out to recreate Dawn Star. It was just that when they were creating her, they realized that she was Dawn Star.

01:41:15
Jim
Okay. Okay.

01:41:16
Chris
You know, but it was not their intention to do it. And the thing is, I love dawnstar, but I actually love Shikari more, you know, And I know that's sacrilege. It's just that Shikari was such a great character, you know, she was that fish out of water type, which. But she was a. A badass fighter. I love the skin. I love to look. I think you could have had a separate Dawn Star, but then it would kind of undermine Shikari. But she gave it that alien kind of quality. I. I was a huge Shikari fan and I. And it was that rare time where it's like you mess with the original toys, but you did something really good, you know?

01:41:51
Case
Yeah. It felt like a really cool update.

01:41:54
Chris
Yeah, that was really cool. And they still. Those people were still very much. They had that kind of Native American, kind of People of the Land kind of esthetic, you know?

01:42:04
Case
Right. But it was a little less problematic.

01:42:06
Jim
It was more Alien.

01:42:07
Case
Yeah.

01:42:07
Jim
Yeah. It wasn't as.

01:42:10
Case
Right. Yeah.

01:42:11
Chris
So it's like. I know that's sacrilege, but I, I love Shikari, you know, she was one of my favorites.

01:42:17
Jay
I've always said. I've always said if you're going to reboot the Legion again, if you take Shikari and Dawnstar and you combine them into one character, because I agree that Kupel design in the beginning is gorgeous, but then the Grail design is.

01:42:29
Chris
It's great. Yeah.

01:42:30
Jay
Is amazing as well. And you're like. Because you can't really have the two of them together because they do essentially the same thing, but if you can combine them somehow and make it so that it works for both fans of both versions of the Legion, I think that might be the best.

01:42:42
Chris
And Shikari had something that Dawnstar didn't have, was that Shikari was.

01:42:46
Case
Yeah, she had her like, combat form. You know, I actually could have both of them if the Legion was that big, because it would make sense that you would have multiple navigators. But that's only in that like 40 person legion scenario. I, I want us to move through because we've been. We have waxed poetically quite a bit and we have a whole nother segment to get through. So we reinforce the Kid Quantum seeing apparitions. I shouldn't say apparitions because that's a Legionnaire Kid Quantum seeing things and having these weird time stuff happening. In this scenario, we see. In this scenario, it's more. You actually see figures. So it actually looks like what we will ultimately see. So it's more setting up the ultimate time dilation story arc. And she, you know, wants to confide in it with Cosmic Boy.

01:43:38
Case
So we get more of that relationship, but it doesn't necessarily go anywhere here. Then we get the Superboy. I. I actually rather enjoyed this, like, weird little outfit he's wearing in this one. This like combat gi or like workout attire that he's wearing as he faces off against Karate Kid.

01:43:54
Chris
Oh, yeah, I remember that. Yeah.

01:43:56
Case
I wouldn't want it as his, like, regular outfit, but as. As like a workout outfit. I think it looks pretty good. I like that we get the conversation about the Believers in the Last Son. Like this mythologizing of Superman, I think is really interesting and makes a lot of sense. It makes sense that a group that is founded on the idea that they have this reputation of a superhero who was so damn cool that they went back to his teen self and brought him to the future just to be like, look how cool we think you Are that fan club aspect of the Legion of Superheroes is a important. And so it's important to update the context in terms of how people see Superman and how people see Superboy in this modern world.

01:44:36
Case
And having Cosmic Boy be a believer in the ideology of it is very cool.

01:44:42
Jim
Yeah. It is interesting though, because this is the first time we see it and obviously writers are free to introduce new elements whenever they want. But at the beginning of this run, Valor is the character who is shown as being an actual religious figure. Of course, Valor becomes Mon El. So it's just interesting contrast that you see both of the heavyweights, right? The super characters have these religions following them, basically.

01:45:10
Case
And again, so annoying. This is where. Because again, it doesn't seem to be like they explain where they are in this story, but they could have been at the start of this issue on. On the same. Like on Legion World together before they went off to the other galaxy. Like, this doesn't seem to be in the midst of the actual story. You could have easily had a Mon El con El little conversation right there. Just. Just to be like, hey, we know each other.

01:45:37
Chris
Yeah, no, I. It was definitely a missed moment anyway.

01:45:41
Case
So we get also a reminder that Cosmic Boy is not particularly impressed with Super Boy. He gets an off the record moment there. We go over to Censor and we get the whole explanation of her having been transformed from Snake to Not Snake.

01:45:57
Chris
Snick Snakey.

01:46:00
Case
And then we get the explanation of where are all those really powerful members like Chameleon and Mono and Gates and Connects and RJ Brand.

01:46:10
Jay
But did you notice how they stopped giving background on those characters by the end of this book? Like the beginning, all the characters, it's like they are in love or they're crushing. You know, they. You know, this is happening and this is happening. And then we get to the end, it's like, this is Mon El and we're done. I was kind of. I was kind of like, did the writers just. Just like we're tired. We're writing way too much stuff. We have this big story. I know that's not what happened, but it was. It was very interesting to see like how just Chameleon done. And you're like, come on, he's important. I want to see some stuff. So.

01:46:44
Case
Well, in the next page. We get the thing that just happens throughout this. This run of the. Or this era of the books, which is that we get Leviathan just being big for no reason, just. And there are small just as big just for the sake of it. Just because like, it's a group shot. And so we need to establish like. Like, oh, right, yeah, she's big. Even though it makes just as much sense for him to be small.

01:47:06
Jim
Yeah, yeah. Chris, I wanted to ask you about that. Is. Were. Were you given notes to say, make my big.

01:47:15
Chris
I believe. I believe I was. I believe I recall. I think I was pretty good with trying to make the writers happy. So if they asked her to be big, she would definitely be big. But I don't know why she was big, you know? You know, I. I just. It was just for fun. Fun, I guess. I mean, I remember there was an issue where she was working out and she was big, but she was working out with robots or something like that, like some combat robots. I. I don't know. Just, you know, but it was. It was a Legion thing. They did that back in the days of Grell. They did it. Not in the old Swan days, but he generally.

01:47:48
Chris
If you put Colossal Boy in the background, he generally had to stand out for some reason, you know, that's the big guy, you know, like, I know that guy. You know, like, they. They had to be performing, I guess.

01:48:00
Case
Yeah. I mean, it makes perfect sense from the standpoint of, like, well, it's a group shot. We need to. We. Anyone that we can give their shtick. It's again, like the, like, if they've got a distinct look like that, you know, you use them in that. That scenario. So then we get a tour of the Legion worlds with Sparks and. Or Spark. Pardon me. Sparks is a character from the. From Superboy and the Ravers, a totally weird little book from the 90s.

01:48:27
Chris
We don't need to talk about that.

01:48:30
Case
We get the reminder about the Garth being Livewire. This one does get a profile. He gets a full page to himself and a whole bunch of text box. Because he's important.

01:48:40
Jim
Yes, exactly.

01:48:42
Jay
Sorry, I was just going to say that was a moment that just made no sense to me. It's like, hey, we've got a reporter flying through. We're going to. So we're going to stop her in front of a legionnaire who everybody thinks is dead. But we're not going to explain anything. We're just going to keep going. And I was like, I was. And I get that they're trying to explain everybody and we're, you know, there's the. There's the conceit of the story, but I was like, this just like, seems odd. It's like, oh, yeah, that's my brother, but he died and he died, and.

01:49:08
Case
Now he looks like one of history's great monsters. Yeah, yeah. Like, I mean, it makes sense to, like, keep on moving, but like, yeah, like, unless you're just sort of saying, like, yeah, the Legion world is like, full of wonders and so forth. And like, yeah, my brother's alive still, in a weird way. Kind of a prote way. Anyway, so moving on, we get a wrap up of the, like, oh, hey, here was our video on this whole thing. And then we get the Servants of Darkness coming and this beat of like, oh, the Legion can face anything. And it's like, now we're going to deal with Darkseid. And so it makes sense that it is part that you would want this in any collection discussing foundations. It just doesn't really make sense in terms of where it falls in the story.

01:49:56
Jay
Yeah, that is very true. Like, it's. There's just huge problems like Invisible Kid and Brainiac 5 are on Legion World and they're not at the. They're not being attacked by the servants.

01:50:06
Case
And the servants are busy doing something else, like, which we. We know that they were doing something. So like I said, I. It doesn't bother me. It's just like, clearly a side story that doesn't really quite fit the continuity, but it's an info issue anyway, so it's like whatever last issue that we are going to cover on the Men of Steel podcast before we take a break and head on over to Long Live the Legion. So we open with Kid Quantum having a weird dream taking her, what I think is to the mountain that, like, they found Garth on, like, where they. They like, put the, like, I think it's.

01:50:38
Chris
I can't remember.

01:50:39
Case
It is what it looks like. It's like the snowy mountain in like, I'm.

01:50:43
Chris
I remember snowy mountain, but I can't remember if it had context.

01:50:46
Case
Okay, well, regardless, it's quickly, like, revealed to be like some kind of nightmare or day, you know, like waking nightmare kind of thing. And she, like, fires off a blast and it actually tears open a wall in her quarters. And then we cut to back to Invisible Kid and Brainy dealing with the servants. And this is again, why it's like. Well, it's an awkward fit in terms of, like, where in the issue it falls. Maybe it happens right before they, like, head over to the Time Institute. I don't know. Like, like I said, it's just like. But. But then Superboy doesn't show up until after the Time Institute thing. So again, like, it. Blah, blah. Yeah, timing Wimey.

01:51:21
Chris
We.

01:51:21
Case
We. I. I like that Brainiac 5 deals with Orion pretty well when it's just like I said, hey, and his force fields are really dope. Like, this is appropriate. Like, this is a. A member of the Legion who is. Is that goddamn smart. Like, again, the text should be available to more people, but he should have the best version of it. And so that's appropriate.

01:51:39
Jim
Yeah, I mean, I made a note here that it was awesome seeing him using a force field technology for offensive reasons for going on the attack.

01:51:47
Chris
Yeah, they did a great job. Abnet and Landing really took advantage of that extremely well. It was. I. I loved seeing Brainiac throw down and almost. And in a dispassionate kind of way. Like, yeah, you know, he was doing that before the Sherlock movie. You know, he was already breaking down, like, fight variables in his head, you know, and he would be that guy. But I like that they didn't oversell it. It was just. That's Brainiac, you know, that's Brainy.

01:52:13
Jim
Like, he's.

01:52:14
Case
He goes a couple rounds with Orion and like, Invisible Kid does well against like, this Hawk Woman person, but. But then they escape or the servants, like, flee and Invisible Kid follows. And I like that. Like, he's just like, you'll find me. You'll figure it out. Because you're Brainiac 5. I trust you. Like, I love you. I have faith in you. And then they leave a bomb. And so Brainiac 5 apparently puts a force field around him and some important tech and some important people. And. Yeah, so the Legion shows up to, like, clear away the, The Damaged Time Institute. And this is where Superboy shows up. And everyone's just like, oh, my God, fucking Superboy's back. This is rocking crazy. And causes like, all of this, like, commotion about it. And Trudy. Trudy. Trousseau's like, whole story is about, like, it's.

01:53:01
Case
It's crazy that Superboy is back and again getting back to. It's weird that she's so dispassionate in the Legion secret files. It's just a weird detail. Like, I, I know I keep harping on it. Like, and again, it's just like, yeah, that's all. Anyway, so I, I love that the choice to wear the classic Superman outfit is immediately, like, cosmic Boys. Like, so do you think that was a good idea?

01:53:23
Jim
And I'm like. My point here is like, you know what? Superboy should just tell him to pound sand because he's not the boss. It's Kid Quantum's the boss. So you know what it's like, you know, screw you, man.

01:53:35
Case
Also fair.

01:53:39
Chris
I got some DNA, bro.

01:53:42
Case
But I mean, like, he's not wrong. Like, he apologizes to Cosmic Boy because Cosmic Boy is right. Yeah. Pharaoh tries to like take the heat because he's the one who like had the costume worked up that way. But you know, whatever. We cut over to get an expedition dump from Brainiac 5, talking to everyone here, finding out that the universe is getting smaller, which is one thing that is just like crazy detail. And then we're also figuring out the whole like time to time dilation issue that is going on. There's a lot of timey wimey in this plot. I, I never understand where it's just like there's no more past anymore. Like, I don't fully understand how you would ever be able to tell where it's just like there's no more 1942. How would you know?

01:54:25
Jim
Yeah, yeah.

01:54:27
Jay
Well, if you start asking any of the questions about the time problems in this story, your brain breaks a little, which is fine.

01:54:34
Case
Like it's.

01:54:35
Jay
Yeah, yeah. Which, yeah. And, and it's the conceit of this again, it's the conceit of the story. But yeah, I mean, it's the same like when they're going, oh yeah, there's a huge temporal anomaly 10 years ago. And you're like, how do you know? Like, how is that being censored? And it's just you kind of wipe it away with, well, this is our tech or this is our science.

01:54:53
Case
They have time sensitivity.

01:54:54
Jay
To me, the one that always gets caught is like if Superman was taken from when he was 15 and he hasn't gone back, then how is there a Superman? And then how does everybody know there's a Superman? And then my brain hurts. So it's.

01:55:08
Case
Yeah. The other thing is the fact that this is a huge time altering crossover event makes it feel like this should have been the end of the story if you were going to go into the three Brute era. Like, it would have made more sense, like coming right off of this.

01:55:21
Jim
But that's, it's, that's the.

01:55:25
Jay
Insane part of all of this. Like secret files shouldn't have existed if you were going to cancel this book. Like this whole story feels like a go into the future. Like we're, this book's going to be excited. You know, we're getting fandom again. And so every part of this, it doesn't make sense knowing where the book is going to go.

01:55:45
Chris
Yeah, they, they especially, like I said, they did have plans. They, they had arcs that they were, they, they had planted lots of seeds. Like I said, they were going to bring back Garth and they were separating them and they were going to bring back the Progenitor, you know, and possibly the Omnifigus. All of that stuff like, you know, because, you know, scale, you know, like the Legion should have universe ending and then here you could have two possible universes ending, which is just so Legion. Also they had plans for Rachel Ghoul was that he was going to be kept at the most secure location in the up, which was on Legion World.

01:56:22
Chris
But that was going to have its own problems was that he was, from what Dan andy told me was that they were going to find that he is kind of got a corrupting element of him, you know, because he's Rachel Ghoul. He's the math manipulator. He. He knows these things. What was going to happen is that because of his knowledge, the hidden knowledge of the world that most people don't know because what he knows was never put on paper and things like that is that they find them turning to him for help at times. And that in itself would have its own dilemmas, you know, and all pitfalls that are leading into them. So there was a plan. There was a definite plan. Go further.

01:56:58
Chris
And I remember wanting to use my Secret Six story was that the president of the Up Chanu Wazos mother basically has a Legion world being infiltrated and it was going to be with the new Secret Six, among them being Duplicate Boy and devm and Mig, the other Karate Kid, he was supposed to be one of them. And you were gonna have him and Val square up. It was like three more. I'm just having a brain fart who they are. It might have been Saturn Queen or something like that, I can't remember. But it was all Legion related characters. But through this story, it was supposed to be revealed at the end that it looked like it was just testing their defenses of Legion World. But the whole point was to get to Rachel Ghoul because devm is sent there to kill him.

01:57:41
Chris
Because if they can't get him and rip every fucking secret from his head, then nobody can have him as far as the President is concerned. And I wanted that really dark, almost section 31 fly, you know, to use the Star Trek analogy, that she's a president but she's not like brand or anything like that. She Plays fast and dirty.

01:58:01
Jim
Oh, yeah, well, she tried to kidnap her own daughter.

01:58:03
Chris
You know, she'll take out Rachel Ghoul because it's like, if I can't have what's in his head, no one can.

01:58:08
Case
Yeah, yeah.

01:58:10
Chris
So sorry, I went on a tangent. I'm just remembering all of, like, this is like some serious memory lane for me. And I'm just remembering all the things that were throwing her out back then. But yeah, they had some serious plans. And it really was shocking when the ax came because it literally just kind of came out of nowhere. Like, what? We're done? Well, I'll give you.

01:58:33
Jay
I'll give you one more thing. And, and you. I mean, I. I could have these numbers wrong, but it's the sales numbers that I can find online. Legion 25 was the second best selling book of the series.

01:58:45
Chris
Really? Oh.

01:58:46
Jay
So like having that reboot, having that like doing that whole big extra issue that brought in almost 25% more readers than the issue before. So like this book was like, okay, we're back up and it's going. So that's why, like this whole story just seems so crazy when you know what's coming.

01:59:06
Chris
Yeah. And they actually threw in something to keep the readers back by. Super boy, you know, like, you give. Here's the 20th. Here is a big anniversary. But we're actually really giving you something that this actually will have merit with. This is not just like a standalone. Like we want you to come with us. And here we got Superboy. Oh, shit, it's Darkseid. You know, like, this is a good point to hook readers and. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, I still don't understand it. I'm not sure which bean counter make that decision because the reboot didn't boost sales either, Right? Yep. As far as I know. I remember, I think it came out solidly, but then it just declined pretty fast.

01:59:46
Jay
Yeah, the numbers were better, but they weren't like. Well, there's always that argument of like, was it the Legion that was boosted or was it just the fact that it was Mark Wade?

01:59:57
Chris
Yeah, probably, I would say. Right. Well, Mark brings. Brings his own pedigree to it and his own fans, but I'm sure not every fan would be there because not every fan can get into the Legion.

02:00:08
Case
Yeah, I mean, it like makes sense as, like, here's a relaunch to try to get more people. I know don't like it from the standpoint of trying to get more people, it makes sense to relaunch the book, like, is. Is the problem that they keep. That has become their, like, thing to go to for the Legion. Yeah, it's the huge, like, it's the huge problem with the Legion of Superheroes now. Like, that it always is a relaunch at every point. Just because.

02:00:33
Chris
Yeah, I mean, I. I don't know. I mean, what was. As far as I could tell with the Bendis relaunch, I don't remember hearing that the fans were really into it.

02:00:42
Case
Nope, nope.

02:00:44
Chris
Oh, no, I. I personally wasn't. And I'm actually really enjoyed Michael Ben Marry Michael Bendis's work for ages, but he was kind of in decline at that point. You know, like, he had hit the point of we figured him out instead of being like the guy he was in the beginning. But I remember reading the first three issues and I. I just kind of peaced out. Even though I love Ryan Sook's art, there was just. I was like, you have three issues and nothing's happened, and you have giant heads and conversations that are taking me out of it. And issue number two, Robin. Robin has more lines and more scenes than actual Legionnaires that still never got a line, as I understood through several issues of the book. Still didn't get to speak.

02:01:29
Jim
Shrinking Violet and Matter Eater Lady.

02:01:31
Chris
Yeah, they never got. From what I understood, they never got any scenes or dialogue. But Robin got like a third of an issue.

02:01:37
Jim
Yeah, well.

02:01:38
Chris
And you're like, that's. That's not priorities when you come to priorities.

02:01:43
Case
However, let's. Let's finish up this. So they get a message from Invisible Kid, who correctly figured out that Brainiac 5 would be able to figure out something. So Invisible Kid is narrating the whole sequence. And, like, he gets found out while he's, like, investigating everyone. But because the Legion has now updated their teleportation tech, they're on the fly. Like, they're there immediately. And that. That shows off just, like, how the team has become so much more advanced. So we get some wonderful, like, big spreads here. Just going to stroke your ego, Chris.

02:02:15
Chris
Like, I had a blast doing it. I was having so much fun.

02:02:19
Case
Yeah.

02:02:19
Jim
They're beautiful.

02:02:20
Chris
Thank you. Thank you.

02:02:21
Jim
And I'll tell you what. Now that I know that it's a Martian, an evil Martian, that thing scares the shit out of me.

02:02:28
Case
Good, good.

02:02:29
Chris
He should be scary. I want him to do like a Martian meets a xenomorph.

02:02:33
Jim
Yeah, yeah.

02:02:34
Chris
Toad.

02:02:34
Jim
That's exactly what it is. Oh, my God.

02:02:36
Case
Yeah. Now I see it very effective there. The green accents is why I thought it might be a Jean Jones and like his like most like evil Martian looking or like kind of form because.

02:02:46
Jim
It has the white.

02:02:47
Case
The White Martian body type. But I just always sort of figured that Green Martians and White Martians because they're shapeshifters ultimately could look like each other regardless. You know, regardless. It doesn't really matter. But. But yeah, we. We get some dope Legion showing up to fight. We get Leviathan gets get. Takes a full on direct blast of the Astro Force and just has a ribs broken. So she's obviously fairly tough in her big size. This is. This is not a black Goliath getting taken out by Thor situation here. But yeah, the Legion fights back and this is where we get the kiss that were talking about for a while earlier.

02:03:19
Jay
Sorry. We also get the little bit where it's Spark holding Violet after Violet's hurt when she shrunk down.

02:03:27
Case
Oh, nice. I didn't think about that.

02:03:28
Chris
I think I remember that. Yeah, there was that moment. Yep.

02:03:33
Case
That's nice. I like hinting at that relationship.

02:03:37
Jim
Yeah. There's also a call out in the next episode. Next episode too as well where she's also still carrying her. But then also there's some interplay between Spark and Timberwolf.

02:03:47
Chris
Yeah, that was intentional. Yes.

02:03:49
Case
Yeah. Nice.

02:03:49
Chris
Yeah.

02:03:50
Case
And yeah, so the cliffhanger is that now that they have sort of figured out the plan, they. They have figured out that the. The servants of darkness were pumping dark matter out of our universe into the past in order to create this. This giant dam in time by having more mass be disproportionately at this one point, 10 years in the prior, somehow they're able to figure all this out. Because I don't it trying to wrap my brain around how you feel like there's the mass.

02:04:17
Chris
It's Brainiac. That's all you need to know.

02:04:18
Case
The mass that's between. Between the atoms is like, is now being transferred into another reality. Cool. Okay. Or another time. Okay, cool. Again, it's a lot. But. But they reveal that it was being that this thing that was surrounding the galaxy is actually a giant boom tube that's like sucking the dark matter out, which is pretty dope. And this is Darkseid's plan that. That he's creating this. This time barrier. And we're going to find out some more when we continue. But that concludes Foundation Part three. And on that note, we are going to pause this episode and we're going to Head on over to Long Live the Legion, and that's where we're going to finish up our coverage of the story. But on that note, Jim and Jay, who are you? What is this podcast that we're crossing over with?

02:05:06
Case
Where can people find you and follow you? Start with Jim.

02:05:10
Jim
Sure. Well, so the Long Live the Legion podcast is, you know, we decided to. Jay and I decided to. After talking across Discord and Reddit and several other platforms about Legion stuff, we're.

02:05:21
Case
Like, you know what?

02:05:22
Jim
Hey, let's have a podcast and talk about it. So we are doing that. We have the Long Live the Legion podcast is really designed to explore themes of specific story arcs or characters or settings and things like that versus going through episode by episode or issue by issue. We'll cover stories like we're going to do Legion Lost, I think soon. So we'll do those kinds of things. But we're really designed to talk about the Legion so that if you're kind of somebody who's either already a big fan of the Legion, you want to just geek out about it, or if you're new to it and you want to learn more about it, you can come and listen to what we have to say.

02:05:59
Case
Awesome. And so you guys have been running now for several episodes. You're part of the certain Point of view family.

02:06:05
Chris
Yes.

02:06:05
Jim
Thank you for bringing us into.

02:06:07
Case
Yeah, I mean, I joked that you guys are doing a similar thing to what Men of Steel does, but for Superman, but for the Legion, for your case, you know, where it's not necessarily like a specific. We're going to look at just like this one era and just, you know, go issue by issue. Like you said, that we are. That you're jumping around and you're showing off, like, all the complexities of the Legion. And so I'm so happy that, that you're here. Where can people find you on the Interwebs?

02:06:31
Chris
Sure.

02:06:32
Jim
Well, so I have my own personal Legion review website over@jimboslegion.blogspot.com I try to do one issue a week, but I've been very lazy the last couple of months. But you can find me personally on bluesky@jimbofett, BSGuy Social. I'm on Reddit @jimbofet87 and on Discord as Jimbo Fett on the Legion fan club Discord.

02:06:53
Jay
All right. And you can find me if you want to look for my reviews. And I review two issues a week and I haven't been lazy. So I'm still, I just like doing that to bug Jim. You can find that at jm. Long live the legion.blogspot.com and find me on bluesky@j.mckernan bsky social. And you can find me on Reddit or Discord. The name I go there is Drake Burrows. So any Legion fan will immediately get who my favorite Legion.

02:07:19
Chris
Are you guys on Facebook? Facebook.

02:07:21
Jim
We are on. We are on Blue sky. So our Blue sky address is Long live the Legion Bsky Social.

02:07:27
Chris
I just wanted to see because, you know, that we could still keep in touch and stuff. And I posted a ton of Legion artwork on my page.

02:07:33
Jim
Oh, awesome. Yeah. So we're not on Twitter because I'm.

02:07:37
Chris
I don't blame you. No need to explain. Understood.

02:07:41
Jim
So, yeah, but we are in B sky, so if you. Are you in Blue Sky, Chris?

02:07:44
Chris
No, not yet. Not yet. I was on Instagram, but my account got hacked, and I've been furious ever since.

02:07:52
Case
On that note, Chris, where can people find you and follow you?

02:07:55
Chris
I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Facebook. Pretty much. That's it. LinkedIn and Facebook, you know, but old.

02:08:01
Case
Man, you know, and.

02:08:03
Chris
And my phone number, you know, I wouldn't mind keeping in touch with everybody. It's been a fun little jamboree. But those are. Facebook is my primary right now because I. That's. There's just so many professionals that I've known over the years, and we still keep in touch. Sure. On there. And I had posted a bunch of scans from my lead. If you go through my art section and there you can see, like, pencils from that Legion era. And I'm gonna be scanning a lot of this old Legion stuff that we literally talk about now. That's why all these memories come back. I have to scan them all up. Sometimes I look at them and I go, how the. Did I get that done on time? You know, it's like, oh, my God. Like.

02:08:42
Chris
But it did help that, like, at that era, were all on the same page and were all very happy. Like, everyone was miserable because were exhausted, but everybody was into what were doing. And you didn't really get that impression from later iterations of the Legion. You always got the impression that somebody there wasn't really the fan. You know, it's like. No. And that's. That's the curse and the blessing of the. The Legion at the same time. Yep.

02:09:07
Case
Yes. On that note, someone who has been both cursed and, I would argue, blessed by the Legion is J. Mike Falson, who has been subjected to this all where can people find you and follow you?

02:09:21
Jmike
J Mike it's never a curse, it's always fun. But yeah, I'm on Bluesky at J5, Bluesky Social and Remo on the Discord occasionally.

02:09:33
Case
Yes, the Discord is a great place to come interact with us. So we're all on the CPOV Discord. Of course, the Legion has Long live the Legion also has your own Discord server that people should also check out where lots of fun conversations about the Legion is going on. But the certain point of view, Discord is a great place to come interact with all of us. We post our episodes there. We have lots of conversations going on. There's a lot of really fun video game sports boards, ttrpg, a lot of good conversations going on without it being like one of those Discord servers where it's just like you can't follow everything because the conversations are so rapid. Like, generally speaking, it's a good pace, I want to say on that one.

02:10:11
Case
And I should note that we, when we're recording this, we have recently launched our Patreon for Certain POV Media and that covers the shows that I produce, which is the show Another Pass and all the stuff on the YouTube channel. So I, I have to thank some people who are donating at the executive producer level. So I want to thank Carter Hallett, Sean Muir Lee, Gregor Memento Young, Logan Crowley, Joe Mastropiero, Casey and Nancy Aiken, Adam Sampter and Keith Letinen. So I just wanted to thank all of them for coming in on the Certain POV Patreon. It's awesome. I have been putting out essays that are available to the free tier. So we have a lot of people who have joined at the free level.

02:10:50
Case
And it's been really cool to like be putting out like just random musings about stuff I was thinking about. And I've been doing those a clip roughly one every three days. But it's a good place to come support this show and all the other stuff that I'm working on. So I just wanted to shout that out. Otherwise you can find me on the Discord or on the Blueski where I Amase Aiken. You can also find me on Instagram where I am holding on to my aim screen name for Dear Life, where you can find me at quetzalcoatl5. Otherwise I still have Twitter, I still have Facebook, but you know, Facebook I'm on pretty frequently because it's, you know, can't help it. It's a Rolodex for everyone at this point. But. But yeah, when I get on Twitter, it's like, oh, right, I'm still here.

02:11:32
Case
Anyway, we're going to head on over to Long Live the Legion, which you should as well, where we're going to wrap up this arc, but until then, stay super man.

02:11:48
Jmike
Men of Steel is a certain POV production. Our hosts are J. Mike Fsen and Case Aiken. The show is edited by Sofia Ricciardi. Our logo is by Chris Batista and episode art is by Case Aiken. Our theme is by Jeff Moonan.

02:12:10
Jim
Hey Jay.

02:12:10
Jay
Hey Jim.

02:12:11
Jim
You're a fan of the Legion of Superheroes, right?

02:12:14
Jay
Yeah, I've been reading their adventures for decades.

02:12:17
Case
Me too.

02:12:17
Jim
It was tough at first with all the characters, but now I think I'm an expert.

02:12:20
Jay
It's not too hard to get into the Legion. And to make it even easier, we have a podcast called Long Live the Legion. We talk about different aspects of all its history to help you out.

02:12:30
Jim
So whether you're a new reader in the Legion Academy or have your own flight ring, or anywhere in between, along live, the Legion podcast should be on your playlist.

02:12:41
Case
CPOV certainpov.com.