I hope you enjoyed the detour that was Karate Kid #6 and the revelations that were found therein. Now we return to the main book, and wow, what a return it is.

It is a milestone because we do have our first ever two-parter. And an old enemy makes his reappearance in a timey-wimey story courtesy of Jim Shooter. 

If you missed the momentous announcement in KK, then you would not know that Paul Levitz will be joining the series as the main writer in just two months time. This means that this first part of the two-part story is Jim Shooters penultimate issue. And I dare say that it is probably his best.

But we have not said goodbye to Mr. Shooter just yet. So check your calendar and make sure you are when you are supposed to be, and pray that you have not become a victim of Time Trapper!

We Can’t Escape the Trap in Time 

Time: The healer of all wounds…the ultimate destroyer. A blessing…a curse…and soon, very soon an inescapable trap for five Legionnaires whose powers alone can avert the cataclysmic annihilation of the galaxy. 

Lightning Lad gives the order to move it because not a second can be spared unless the galaxy is blasted quite literally into cosmic ashes. As LL, Princess Projectra, Shadow Lass, and Star Boy move ahead, five other Legionnaires try to follow but hit an invisible barrier.

Superboy launches upward but cannot fly out. Sun Boy summons the power of the sun and attempts to melt whatever is in their way, but it does not budge. Chameleon Boy attempts to transform into gaseous and liquid form but there is not even a pin hole to sneak through. Karate Kid gives a flying kick and Saturn Girl announces that whatever is hindering them, it is also blocking her telepathic powers. In short, these five heroes cannot move any further and they cannot help their teammates who are bravely sacrificing their lives to stop a threat that will destroy the galaxy. 

Superboy suddenly gets an idea and wraps his indestructible cape around his four comrades. The plan? To move at super-speed and break the time barrier, hopefully moving enough in the past to a time when this invisible barrier was not there. But as he hits the time-barrier he is still blocked by an impenetrable invisible wall. 

Stunned by the impact, the Legionnaires float helplessly in temporal limbo, until an invisible force pulls them along the time-stream, several days into the future.

“3.74 days in the future…and six parsecs through space Tony lair, to be exact,” announces a menacing voice, a voice that belongs to none other than…

Time Trapper! Whom we last saw in Adventure Comics #338. 

Karate Kid demands they be released because they have to help their friends who are trying to stop the galaxy from exploding. But Time Trapper snarls, and questions why he should worry about a puny galaxy if he has a universe to rule. In fact, he shows the Legionnaires that they are too late. Their fellow Legionnaires already tried, in vain, to seal a fissure in the fabric of space which threatened to open their universe into an anti-universe, consuming a large part of both in an anti-matter implosion. Resulting in their deaths. 

The five Legionnaires stare in stunned silence. Their friends are dead. And not just their friends, Earth and most of the Milky Way are gone forever. Time Trapper menacingly tells them that from this very point in time, there are many possible futures…an infinite number…each with its own irrevocable past history. Time Trapper learned that the possibility of ruling the universe exists only within possible futures where the five Legionnaires standing before him do not exist. So he had to make these futures a reality, and to do so he has to eliminate the five. For if he does not, then Time Trapper will die. 

Rage overcomes our heroes and they launch themselves at Time Trapper. When suddenly Saturn Girl find herself and Time Trapper transported to a room. She tries to use her telepathic powers against him but they do not work. Time Trapper launches himself at her, and wraps his hands around her neck, and squeezes.

When suddenly Karate Kid takes her place in the same room. But he does not know how he got there. Meanwhile, the scene changes to three figures watching the battle between Karate Kid and Time Trapper on a vise-screen. 

Stargrave asks the two what do they think of this Time Trapper, and Holdur comments that he is rather magnificent. He then asks Quicksand’s opinion and she answers that he is a winner but like Holdur, talks too much.

We return to the battle and Karate Kid is amazed at how strong Time Trapper is, considering that the Legion’s file indicate that he is actually quite weak. But it does not matter, because Karate Kid is enraged, remembering the explosive death of Princess Projectra. He throws a super-Karate punch, but Time Trapper does not move. He continues his assault but still Time Trapper does not budge. As KK tries to regroup to throw himself into battle once more, Time Trapper suddenly wobbles and appears shaken. KK knows he needs to take advantage and launches himself into him, feet first. But Time Trapper catches him in mid-air and then hurls him against the wall…

When suddenly Karate Kid turns into Chameleon Boy who does not know where he is, just that he is about to hit a very hard wall. He quickly turns into a soft pillow and then squares off against Time Trapper. He quickly transforms into a flying animal, and dodges a punch, while hitting Time Trapper with a newly formed anvil. Time Trapper catches him and CB turns into an eel and slips out. He quickly becomes a parabolic mirror and focuses a blinding light, hitting his eyes. But Time Trapper is not deterred. He squares up and shatters the mirror into a bunch of pieces. But where Chameleon Boy once stood now stands Sun Boy.

Sun Boy is confused on why he is alone with Time Trapper. We return to Stargrave, Holdur and Quicksand who are still watching the battle on vidi-tape. Holdur exclaims how magnificent Time Trapper is but Stargrave reprimands him and calls him a fool. He reminds Holdur that he could not only crush Time Trapper but also the entire Legion of Super-Heroes if he wanted to. And Holdur should never forget that.

We return to the battle and Sun Boy is throwing everything he has against Time Trapper. He continues hitting him with blast after blast, and finally puts everything he can at such a solar-flare intensity. But Time Trapper slowly walks toward Sun Boy, showing that not even when SB is at his most powerful can he hope to defeat him. Sun Boy turns it up even hotter but Time Trapper just keeps coming. When finally TT lifts his arms and with a malicious laugh, wallops Sun Boy, who then turns into none other than Superboy.

Superboy is also confused on why he is there, but is concerned because the punch he just received from Time Trapper actually hurt him. He has no time to think and decides to hit him with everything he has. He winds up and delivers a super-blow right in Time Trappers face, who slightly staggers back. Flabbergasted that he only staggered, Superboy keeps pressing. He blasts him with a blast of X-Ray vision but still Time Trapper just shrugs it off. And to show that Superboy’s assault did not do anything, Time Trapper hits Superboy, hard, and he crashes against the wall. Superboy can barely keep his eyes open and everything starts to spin. But Time Trapper is not finished. He opens a warp-door that leads directly to the core of a red sun. And he is going to push Superboy through it. 

But first, he wants to see Superboy suffer. He grasps him by the neck and begins to squeeze. Superboy cannot fight back. However, suddenly he hears a voice inside his head. It is Saturn Girl, telling him that she is able to communicate because in the dimension they are in, time does not progress, but everything happens simultaneously. Somehow Time Trapper is able to draw power with the cessation of time and that power must be feeding directly into his body. But how?

Saturn Girl has an idea and asks Superboy to use his photographic memory and reveal his thoughts to her. Sure enough she is able to compare Superboy’s Time Trapper with her own, and spots an hourglass on his person. She tells Superboy to destroy it. Superboy musters enough strength, draws back, and shatters the hour glass. The dam is broken and a cataclysmic tidal wave of time-energy bursts free.

Sun Boy, Karate Kid, Saturn Girl, and Chameleon Boy reappear, but where is Superboy? Superboy returns and tells them he had one last thing to do and shows them the tattered pieces of Time Trapper’s cloak in his hand. He relays to them he held onto Time Trapper as they both plummeted through the warp-door. He was able to resist just enough and tried to pull Time Trapper away but he could not. The only thing remaining from their old foe is the tattered robe in his hands.

Karate Kid looks solemn, and concludes that Time Trapper must be dead. But who is dead a voice asks in the distance. It is Lightning Lad, returning with the other Legionnaires whom the five saw perish. Saturn Girl realizes that with the death of Time Trapper, it threw everything back to Earth at the exact moment they left. And that the galaxy they saw explode was just one of a billion possible futures.

Which means they still have a galaxy to save. Lightning Lad tells everyone to get a move on and the Legionnaires are aboard the Legion Cruiser once more, hoping to be in time to stop the galaxy from perishing. Superboy reads up on Brainiac Five’s articles on time travel in the meantime and they do hope the next mission will be easy. 

But they are in for a surprise when Stargrave strikes…next month!

Creative Team

This was an incredibly exciting issue and perfectly represents what makes the Legion of Super-Heroes so great. I feel that everything that Jim Shooter was putting down was leading up to this. I think what surprised me the most about this issue was that Time Trapper was not used so much until this point. They put his last appearance at Adventure Comics #338, which was released in November of 1965, more than a decade prior. It was surprising because Time Trapper is such a classic villain that you would think he was used more often. But that was not the case. I do wonder what would happen if Jim Shooter did not bring him back. Would he be as well known as he is today?

But back to Shooter. He basically split the Legion in two, and then split the remaining five to square off against Time Trapper one by one. It was masterfully done and he manages to showcase what makes each Legionnaire different from the other. From Karate Kid’s temper, to Saturn Girl’s telepathy, it was beautifully executed. 

Also the timey-wimey stuff is well placed. Yes we might have to employ mental gymnastics, and yes we probably also need to read a summarized version of Brainiac 5’s technical notes on time travel, but it gets the job done. If I had one complaint, and even here I am stretching, the introduction of Stargrave and the others as a B-plot did not really feel really necessary, but feel that they were only placed to force a two-parter out of the story. 

Now let us move on to Mike Grell. I did feel like we were getting a bit of a substandard contribution in his last few outings so it was really nice to see him flex again here. He continues to show why he draws the best Superboy and it was a lot of fun seeing Grell’s Karate Kid explode off the page. We do know that he absolutely loves this character and is a fan of martial arts himself. So to see him depict KK’s moves was a real treat. He handled Shooter’s script nicely, kept the action moving, and he delivered each battle with a ton of movement and power.

I will reflect a bit more on Shooter’s contribution next issue, but I think it is obvious that what was plaguing this book at the time was scheduling issues. I do venture to guess that the previous issues were released out of order and we probably were supposed to get this two-parter earlier tin the schedule. And the reason for some of the, for lack of a better term, disappointing two-parters was because they were probably rushed to fit the new monthly release date and they needed stories to fill.

Super-Talk

After the bombshells that were dropped in Karate Kid #6, I was very curious on what we would find in this issue’s Super-Talk.

First we get two letters, basically praising Jim Shooter’s magnificent contribution that was the Plunder Ploy of the Fatal Five. I do agree that it was Shooter’s best, until this issue. The editor does go on to say that there will be more ‘book-lengther’s’ and that ‘you ain’t seen nothing yet!’

The second letter from fellow Missourian David Pauley asks if the Legion will meet up with the Justice League of America. And they promise that they will! Now I do not recall a crossover of any sort so I am also very curious if this will come to pass. They promise we will get more insight in future installments of Super-Talk.

And finally the news.

Jim Shooter will complete his first two-part Legion epic since his return. And then after which the story will be the first Legion effort by the current Aquaman scripter, Paul Levitz. Levitz is known at the time for killing Andy, the Aquababy. So I do imagine many fans of the Legion were shaking in their boots from this announcement, wondering which beloved Legion character he will kill next.

But that also means this is the penultimate issue of Jim Shooter’s return on the Legion book and the next issue will be his last. I will give more of my thoughts on Shooter’s contribution next issue, but this is almost the end of an era and the beginning of something new. And there is a whole heck of a lot to look forward to.

The Legion Medallion of Merit 

The Legion Medallion of Merit is the time that we reward a Legionnaire who went above and beyond in the line of duty. This was one action packed issue and we basically have five contenders since the others perished quite quickly in the story due to Time Trapper’s trap. But if I had to go back and forth, I would have to give this one to Superboy. Superboy stayed in the fight and literally gave it his all. He was assisted by Saturn Girl but because he kept at it, he was able to use his photographic memory and give SG the needed clues to understand that the hour glass was fueling Time Trapper’s powers.

And even if you thought he had nothing left, he still tried to save Time Trapper as he was pulled through the time-warp door of his own making. This act once again proves why Superboy is one of the greats. We have not awarded Superboy the Medallion often, but when he earns it, boy, does he earn it.

Wear the Medallion proudly on your neck Superboy. Despite Time Trapper putting the pain on you, you gritted through it and then even tried to save the one who was attempting to destroy an entire galaxy and your best friends along with it. You will grow into the man that you are supposed to be…that is until Byrne destroys it all with a pocket universe thing. But let us not get too far ahead of ourselves.

And that is it for this week’s installment! Join us next week for the second of the two parter and Jim Shooter’s final issue of this era. And until then, may you sound the bell and let everyone you see know…

LONG LIVE THE LEGION!