Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #245

Welcome to the epic conclusion of Earthwar! With the reveal last issue that Mordru was behind everything, our Legionnaires must band together and vanquish probably the biggest threat they have ever faced. The stakes are high, can they do it? 

Also, we have quite a few announcements in Legion Outpost, as well as the fate of our beloved writer, Paul Levitz, revealed. But as you know, anything printed and promised in the letters’ page is not to be trusted, but we can at least sense what their intention is going forward after probably the biggest epic in the Legion’s history up to this point. 

I hope you have someone magic resistant next to you. If not find somewhere that has a lot of dirt to spare, put on that Legion ring, and face your biggest foe…

Mordru Master of Earth 

Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad, Karate Kid, and Superboy stare at Mordru’s large, looming figure in awe. Mordru chides them for not figuring out who was behind everything sooner. Lightning Lad immediately leads the attack but with a wave of a hand Mordru knocks them back with magic. He conjures a force field around them and increases the gravity, pushing them down to the ground. Saturn Girl quickly uses her telepathic powers to plant a suggestion in Mordru’s subconscious, giving Superboy and Karate Kid time to hit the force field together, and smash through it. 

Mordru tries to conjure up another spell but Lightning Lad hits him with a blast of white lightning, blinding him. When he manages to regain his sight, the Legionnaires have escaped. Superboy leads the way, digging underground out of a plan by Saturn Girl. Since Mordru was trapped underneath soil and the Earth, he is fearful of dirt and would dare not follow. Superboy takes them upward and the team explodes out of a ocean and arrives at a hideaway they built for emergencies. This will give them shelter and time to figure out their next move. 

Meanwhile, Mordru is furious and commands the Khunds to find the Legionnaires no matter what it will takes. He studies the Legionnaires he had trapped in glass bottles and reveals how he managed to escape his underground prison. The Dark Circle found him and freed him, thinking they would make him their servant. But his magic was too powerful and he controlled them instead, putting into motion his ultimate plan to destroy the Earth and the Legionnaires who have thwarted him at every turn so far. And as he studies those Legionnaires trapped in their glass prison, he sneers, and grows enraged. 

Back at the hideaway, Superboy concedes that they have always only managed to stop Mordru by magic or simple dumb luck. And now they are out of both. Saturn Girl tells them to be quiet because she detects Mordru’s sorcery. An overwhelming message of ‘show yourself’ hits Saturn Girl but she manages to thwart it just in time. They are safe, for now. Superboy, however, goes into a frenzy and tells them all they must not resist and it is obvious that Mordru’s spell has worked on him. He flies outside and begins to dig his way back to Mordru. Saturn Girl attempts to calm him down, but it does not work. Karate Kid decides it is his turn because, as we all know from the Karate Kid series, he managed to use his skills to subdue him once before. Karate Kid moves in and uses the Klenarian Muscle Lock just in time, and Superboy becomes calm once again as Mordru’s call passes out of range. The Legionnaires are distraught and something must be done. Lightning Lad tells them he has a plan, and that is to go on the offensive. He tells Superboy to use his heat vision on the sand and construct a transport bubble. They are going to the U.P. Palace and they are going to free their friends. 

Question: How fast can Superboy travel?

Answer: Fast enough to tunnel through half the globe in a matter of seconds.

Because they crash up and through the ground to face Mordru once again. Lightning Lad again tries to hit him with white lightning and Mordru is prepared and his eyes recover in seconds. He then blasts them with his magic.

Question: How fast can Superboy travel?

Answer: Fast enough to outspend even a bolt of mystic force, if it is delayed even one one-thousandth of a second. 

Fast enough that the milisecond’s delay enables him to expand a glass bubble ten-fold. Fast enough to encompass all the impresioned heroes within that bubble just before the outer edge of the mystic energies creases his costume. 

Fast enough to be hundreds of feet off the Earth before the bolt can actually make contact with his body. 

Mordru quickly chases them and taunts Superboy that there is no place he can go that he cannot follow. Meanwhile in the glass bubble, Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, and Karate Kid, quickly work to smash all the glass prisons to free their fellow Legionnaires. Superboy attempts to continue to escape Mordru’s attack but Mordru hits him with a bolt of magic and he releases the bubble, then falls to the ground. Mordru takes advantage of the situation and taunts the Legionnaires while Wildfire catches Superboy. Wildfire laughs off Mordru’s taunt and tells him they will stop him and the Legion Code of Honor be damned. He then gives the command for everyone to hit Mordru with everything they got.

All the freed Legionnaires turn to Mordru at once and each one focuses their unique power on the wizard. As the Legionnaires blast Mordru, Mordru goes silent. Silent not only because the Legionnaires’ upward flight has taken them beyond the atmosphere, where no sound will carry, but also because he has no strength to spare for a telepathic reply. For mighty as even Mordru the Merciless is, even his power is hard-pressed to fend off the multitudes of different energies being hurled at him by his former prisoners. Saturn Girl calls for a mind-link, and probes each Legionnaire’s mind for an answer or an idea on how to defeat Mordru. Each scanned mind is at a loss and Saturn Girl is gutted that Mordru cannot be stopped. The only way they can stop him is if they can imprison him underground but there is no ground in space. Element Lad overhears and he flies to Brainy telling him he has an idea. Mordru cuts in and traps him in a sphere that he constructed and presses the sphere closer around them, hoping to crush their bodies. Element Lad pleads for Brainy to help him but Brainy says there is no time. Saturn Girl links up their minds so Brainy can understand the plan instantly. Element Lad thanks Brainy for the composition and even though there my be no ground in space, there are free hydrogen atoms that he can use to create soil and imprison Mordru based on Brainy supplying the elemental composition. Element Lad increases his power and Mordur is quickly imprisoned in a soil-like cage in space. Afterwhich Element Lad reminds them all that it was not his power that stopped Modru, it was teamwork. And that is one thing magic cannot stop.

We move to the epilogue where a rare and momentous act is taking place at an official meeting. Wildfire declares the motion approved and Cosmic Boy stops Karate Kid from spoiling the news because he would like to deliver it to Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl. They amended the Legion Constitution and the married couples can now rejoin the Legion. Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl heartily accept but Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel decline to rejoin because they want to build a family. Superboy reminds the gang that they better get moving otherwise they will be late for the ceremony. Almost all of the Legionnaires are present (except for Tyroc, surprise surprise) and they are ready to witness the Treaty Announcement. Ambassador Relic, who is now free of Mordru’s hypnotic hyper-beam, announces to the United Planets that the Dominators have signed a thousand year treaty and there is not a warring confederation left in the galaxy. Peace is at hand.

Creative Team

And there, my friends, lies the conclusion to Earthwar. Was it a fitting conclusion? Most definitely. All the Legionnaires, including the Substitutes, banded as one, pouring all their unique powers right onto Mordru, with Element Lad at the end saving the day through a mind link with Brainiac Five, courtesy of Saturn Girl. There is a lot of greatness in this one.

And boy, can we give a lot of credit to Joe Staton? He handled all the characters magnificently and it shows you why he was the best in the business. I have always liked his style on the Legion and though it is a bit cartoony in comparison to James Sherman, that style allows the distinction between the Legionnaires to pop out on the page. 

My biggest complaint of course is during that final ceremony where we do see every Legionnaire…except for Tyroc. Tyroc was hilariously deemed unavailable in the beginning of the story, but come on Levitz, you could have at least brought him in just for a quick show and tell, much like you did for Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad’s wedding. To me it is quite obvious that Levitz and the editors had an issue with Tyroc, but to omit him entirely? That seems quite wrong to me. As we will see in Legion Outpost, things are going to change so will we see Tyroc in the future? I sure hope so.

So how did Earthwar hold up? I think quite well. There were some interesting choices in the reveals, such as recapping that Relnic was the one hypnotized by the hyper-beam last issue as a throwaway flashback. But all in all, Levitz, Milgrom, Sherman and Staton handled everything quite well. The biggest strength to Earthwar is the sheer scale that they managed to achieve, and this has not been done before up to this point. We had Legionnaires darting from Earth to Weber’s World, holding off a Khund Invasion, and each and every Legionnaire (except for Tyroc) was used. This was an incredible achievement. I can just imagine how much of a thrill it must have been to have bought and read these in real time.

It does feel like they went all out and played all their cards. Expectations have definitely been increased and I do wonder how they will play out the rest of the issues before it turns into the Legion of Super-Heroes. We do get another indication of what will happen in the next handful of issues or so. Either way, we are definitely at a turning point in the Legion of Super-Heroes and that is a very exciting thing indeed. 

Legion Outpost

We only have two letters in this issue’s Legion Outpost remarking about Grimbor’s return in issue #240 but also a bunch of announcements.

First off, Gerry Conway will take over as lead writer starting with issue #248. Second, in response to Sheryl Fuller’s criticism of the issue, Paul Levitz does admit “The Man Who Menacled the Legion” was another instant fill-in issue and the first chapter of the Earthwar saga was initially planned for #237 and not #241, and Dawnstar Rising was the original back-up tale. All the other stories in #237, #238, #239, #240, and in the back of #241 and #242 were fill-ins of one sort of another. It is interesting because this is a good example of how chaotic the scheduling was as Al Milgrom himself admitted. He had challenges nailing down artists to handle the team book on such a large scale as this. But thank goodness they did decide to ensure that Earthwar would continue from one issue to another and not have those weird breaks such as happened with the Stargrave Saga. 

Then we come to the bottom of the page department. And I will write this in full because it is a strong signal of where the series will go:

“Since this issue wraps up the Earthwar saga, we think it’s the perfect moment to take some time out to tell you what’s in the works for the future. First of all, the next two issues will have two stories in each: leads plotted by Paul Levitz and dialogued by Len Wein, and second stories written completely by Len, featuring the return of the Fatal Five. Then, as we said, Gerry Conway takes over, while Paul turns to other assignments after a two-year tour of duty here. Meanwhile, Jim Starlin is writing and pencilling this winter’s Legion Spectacular, wrapping up the story threads from #239, as Jim Sherman moves over to pencilling the Adam Strange feature in back of Star Hunters.

We hope you’ll stick with us for all this excitement, because as we’ve said before, the best is yet to come! -Al and Paul.”

That sums it up pretty nicely and although we will say goodbye to Paul Levitz, we know he will come back and when he does, all those scheduling issues that plagued this book will no longer be an issue and Paul will have a much beloved run on the Legion of Super-Heroes. Probably the most beloved. And it has been a thrill to see how he developed, right here in Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes. 

The Legion Medallion of Merit

With this being the third and final act, and everyone giving it everything they got, it is incredibly difficult to find the one Legionnaire who went above the call of duty. But for me it is quite obvious. And we must give it to Saturn Girl. While everyone was blasting Mordru with everything, Saturn Girl, being the veteran Legionnaire she is, took a breath and implemented a mind-link in the hopes to pinpoint an idea because, come on, surely someone had one! And sure enough, Element Lad came through, and she linked his mind with Brainy’s and voila! Day saved. And I must say, it is quite appropriate to give it to Saturn Girl since she is a founding member and she would be shortly reinstated in the Legion of Super-Heroes once the Legion Charter is amended at the end of this story.

Congratulations Saturn Girl! Wear the medallion proudly and never be afraid to ‘link up!’

And that is it for this week’s installment fellow Legionnaires! May evil magic never find you and if it does, link up with a friend and, together, bellow forth that resounding cry that can cut through any evil Wizard’s tricks…

LONG LIVE THE LEGION!