Broken Frontier

Welcome back to Broken Frontier’s weekly issue by issue roundup of events from every corner of the DC Universe! This is where to come to catch up on what’s been happening with your favorite DC characters and how events in their books affect the DCU’s recent "Bigger Picture". We also point out any interesting continuity tidbits, link to suggested background reading and examine any pertinent questions raised by events in the week’s releases.

Spoiler Warning: Read no further if you’ve not had your DC fix this week and don’t want to hear about key story elements.

Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #5

At the End of Time Superman, Lightning Lad, Cosmic Boy and Saturn Girl face the Time Trapper, now revealed as a millennia old Superboy Prime, while "simultaneously" the rest of the Legion engage the younger Prime in battle in the 31st Century. Although the Trapper’s existence would seem to dictate the battle is already lost the Legion deduce that, in reality, Superboy Prime’s future can be changed.

Summoning an army of Legions from across the Multiverse the team defeat the Trapper and return him to their time. Confronted by his unwelcome future self the impetuous Superboy Prime lashes out at the Time Trapper. The result literally wipes them both out of continuity in a massive "cosmic reset".

Occurring concurrently to this, the era’s other major player, Mordru is taken out by the White Witch but not without a cost. Her use of dark magic corrupts her and transforms her into the "Black Witch".

With the Crisis over, the Threeboot Legion return to their future on Earth-Prime while the post-Zero Hour Legion of the destroyed Earth-247 decide to scour the Multiverse for other survivors of dead parallel Earths. Superman, Kid Flash and the revived Superboy return to the contemporary DCU. Legion ally Sodam Yat lets the Green Lantern rings out into the universe to form a new Corps while Gates and XS of the post-Zero Hour team elect to stay with the New Earth/Earth-0 Legion.

Superboy Prime finds himself finally returned to his long searched for Earth-Prime which, it turns out, was one of the 52 reformed Earths all along. Now powerless, he discovers his family and girlfriend are disgusted by him, having read of his actions in the DC Comics published on that world. When we leave him a "fourth wall"-breaking Prime has angrily berated the readership and is busily taking his revenge to its next logical step – posting comments on the DC Message Boards. His glowing eyes imply his powers may not be gone forever...

The Bigger Picture: The Threeboot Legion are revealed to be from the future of Earth-Prime as I correctly speculated on in Across DC Universe #28 back in February.

The three main members of New Earth’s Superman Family have all now been members of the Legion, but of the Legions of different Earths: Superman and the Legion of New Earth, Supergirl with the Legion of Earth-Prime and Superboy with the Legion of Earth-247. This still doesn’t explain, however, why Supergirl saw members of the Legion of New Earth as the Legion of Earth-Prime when she encountered them in the Countdown crossover in Supergirl #s 21-22.

From this issue we can follow Superboy on to his new home in the upcoming Adventure Comics and Kid Flash to The Flash: Rebirth.

Tellus, reported as lost in this issue, has been seen in the 21st Century over in the Superman books of late, while Starman can be seen in Justice Society of America and Adventure Comics.

Dangling plot threads involving the Black Witch, Polar Boy and Sun Boy’s friendship and a potential new Karate Kid will probably also be followed up in Adventure Comics. The new Green Lantern Corps of the 31st Century is a subplot that could be tackled there or in some form in the Green Lantern books. Sodam Yat's GL oath in the 31st Century in Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #3 did seem to reference the war between the Corps that leads into Blackest Night after all.

Continuity Corner: At the End of Time, when Superman and the Legion confront the Time Trapper, images can be seen from stories covering all the different incarnations of the Legion encapsulating the thematic approach of this issue in one nostalgic page. These include Adventure Comics #247 (April 1958) - the first appearance of the Legion; Legion of Super-Heroes #1 (Nov 1989) – intro to the Five Year Gap Legion; Legion of Super-Heroes #0 (Oct 1994) – origin of post-Zero Hour Reboot Legion; Legionnaires #1 (April 1993) – first issue of the series devoted to the Batch SW6 Legion; Legion of Super-Heroes #37 (Aug 1987) – the farewell to Superboy story featuring the Time Trapper’s pocket universe; L.E.G.I.O.N. ’89 #1 (Feb 1989) – featuring the Legion’s 20th Century predecessors; Adventure Comics #333 (June 1965) – The Civil War of the Legion; Adventure Comics #340 (Jan 1966) – the story where Computo kills one of Triplicate Girl’s bodies; a shot of the Legion of Substitute Heroes and, finally, one from The Great Darkness Saga in Legion of Super-Heroes #s 290-294 (Aug-Dec 1982).

Braniac 5 theorizes that the Time Trapper is actually a sentient alternate timeline rebelling against the main timeline. This explains his/her/its many changes in identity (Cosmic Boy, Lori Morning/Glorith, Superboy Prime, etc.) over the years as his/her/its "history" is continually in a state of flux.

Those hoping to see the Five Year Gap Legion make an appearance in this series will be pleased to note that incarnation of the team appear when versions of the Legion from across the Multiverse are summoned to take on the Time Trapper. Presumably that part of Legion history is still intact on another Earth in the 52. Also included are the L.E.G.I.O.N.naires and among many, many familiar faces shown in that double-page spread perhaps the most intriguing of all is the pre-Crisis On Infinite Earths Supergirl…

Earth-Prime was supposedly "our" Earth in the Multiverse – a pedestrian world without super-heroes or super-villains except in the pages of DC Comics. It first appeared on the printed page in The Flash #179 (May 1968) and there were sporadic "crossover" stories going into the 1970s involving DC editors and writers encountering the fictional characters they wrote about. In Justice League of America #153 (April 1978) the concept took a, perhaps point-missing, twist when Earth-Prime briefly got its own super-hero in the form of Ultraa, last survivor of an alien planet. In DC Comics Presents #87 (Nov 1985), on the eve of its destruction during the Crisis On Infinite Earths, we first learnt the origin of the Superboy of Earth-Prime and took the first steps on the long road to FC: Legion of 3 Worlds.

When Prime punches out his future Time Trapper self and rewrites continuity the effect is very similar to the metafictional demise of Hamed Ali, "He Who Never Dies", in Animal Man #12 (June 1989).

As they prepare to embark on their exploration of the Multiverse the Earth-247 Legion call themselves The Wanderers. In past Legion history the Wanderers were a seldom-seen group of heroes who preceded the Legion in their time and first appeared in Adventure Comics #375 (Dec 1968). In 1988-89 they were revived for their own short-lived The Wanderers series which ran for just 13 issues. The name was also applied to the U.P.’s covert operations group led by Mekt Ranzz in the war against the Dominators in the Threeboot Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes/Legion of Super-Heroes.

Questions: What Earth of the 52 do the Five Year Gap Legion reside on in the new Multiverse? Or, for that matter, any of the other Legions summoned to take down the Time Trapper? How could the post-Zero Hour Legion travel from different iterations of the Multiverse if Superboy-Prime couldn't back in Countdown? As Sodam Yat is alive in the 30th Century then how did he survive his "death" in Green Lantern Corps #36? Why did Superboy-Prime fail to find Earth-Prime in Countdown to Final Crisis if it was always one of the 52? What happened to Superman’s determination to redeem Superboy-Prime?

Will we see more of the Legions of Earth-247 and Earth-Prime? What has happened to Superboy-Prime’s girlfriend Lori between his return to Earth-Prime and the end of this issue? Will the Legion of Earth-Prime be able to keep their Superboy in check? What is Starman’s new mission? Will we ever see the resolution of the Projectra storyline left unresolved when the last Legion of Super-Heroes book was cancelled with #50? And so many others... The new Adventure Comics (right) has a lot to follow through on!

And after that entirely Legioncentric Part 1 join us later this weekend when we look at what happened in the rest of this week’s DC books!