Tag: Val Armorr

Welcome back Legionnaires! If you have been following along in our spin-off series Karate Kid, you would know that, last issue, basically every dangling plot thread has been resolved, leaving many (myself included), wondering where the book is going to go now. If you thought this issue would clear it up you are in for a disappointment.

But fret-not, because if the letter’s page be our holy guide then hope would be instilled in our hearts for they do give us a hopeful direction. Lest ye not look to thy future since this book only has a mere four issues left after this one. So that hope will be quickly dashed. That’s the biz. 

But hey, this one might be a disappointment but it is still a lot of fun. Jack C. Harris flips in for David Michelinie and Ric Estrada does his kata solo this time around. Also we have the return of an old villain that made an appearance when this book was just a newborn babe. And if you need a hint on who that is, read no further than the title of this story…

Disasters of Yesteryear

Time: The endless link between what has been and what will be. 

Time: Where we find the Legion of Super-Heroes’ martial arts master, Val Armorr feeling rather annoyed that despite him stopping the ruthless Black Dragon from taking over King Voxv’s planet Orando, he still needs to prove himself to win his daughter’s hand. So back he goes to New York, 1,000 years from his own time and he hopes he will be able to take whatever is in store for him.  

As he nears the past, the controls in his time bubble start to go awry and it crash-lands in New York City. When he disembarks the streets are eerily empty and as he questions the whereabouts of its residents, he is met with a wave of prehistoric cave-men. And the meeting proves to be violent as the group attacks. Val just barely fends them off but their brute strength is too much, and he is shortly overwhelmed. But with a thrust of monumental power he explodes outward, throwing the group off and gaining a short respite and seizing on this. moment, he flees. 

Soon, our Karate Kid is racing down 51st street thinking on the events that have transpired and wondering why he is attacked by creatures that existed at least a million years before his current past. He makes a plan to get back into the time bubble to find some answers when he hits an invisible wall at the spot where he left it. He then sees a crack in the ‘wall’ and realizes to his horror that all the cars and buildings are fake. 

As he stands stunned, there is no way Karate Kid can realize he is being observed from a far, and as we zoom out to see Val on a monitor, a shadowy figure pushes a lever to ‘quake.’ And at that moment, many miles away the whole ground starts to shake apart. Val glances over and sees one of the cavemen also in trouble. He casts the concern for himself aside and leaps toward the caveman, reaches his position, and moves him out of the way just in time, narrowly missing a heavy piece of fallen rubble. 

They land on a platform and overlook the damage. And as quickly as the quake came, it quickly subsides, much to the amazement of Karate Kid. Peering closer at the damage he also realizes it was confined to only one street. He kneels down to take a closer look and sees something underneath the cracked street. He attempts to move a large piece of concrete and is helped by the caveman he just saved. Together they remove the piece of rubble and find sophisticated machinery that was hidden underneath. Is this a quake machine underneath a quake city? Not wanting to wait to find out and because Karate Kid is a Legionnaire of action, he springs down and delivers a mighty two-footed stomp, sending machine parts everywhere. A faint hum of protest, and the quake machine lies silent. The caveman helps Karate Kid back up to the landing point and the shadowed figure sneeringly reveals that though Val Armorr might have survived this test, there are more to come.

Karate Kid changes tactics and decides to try to communicate with the caveman. At first the caveman does not understand his questions but then motions him to follow. The caveman leads Val to a large power cable at the edge of the fake city. He deduces that there must be a source to this power but as he steps closer, the entire street is suddenly engulfed in flames trapping them both.

But Karate Kid is not one for standing around. He quickly deduces that the fire must be controlled somewhere. He punches down a land post and uses it to smash through a fake wall. The wall crumbles and he is able to follow a set of wires that lead to a tank that is supplying the fire. He disables the pipe and blocks the gas flow, allowing him and his caveman companion to escape.

The duo finds themselves in what appears to be a large, prehistoric swamp. They make another discovery and that is a large boiling magma pit. This must be the source of how the entire fake city is being powered. Karate Kid knows that if he disconnects it he might be able to goad our antagonist out of hiding. Val starts to kick the cable and soon he is attacking it with everything he has, but to no avail. 

He pauses to think and decides to learn more about the city and by doing so he might know who is pulling the strings. He takes the caveman with him, and together they race down the fake Broadway avoiding any danger that might come their way. The problem is, danger finds them quickly, in the form of a taxi that hurls itself at the two. Karate Kid quickly does a controlled flip onto the hood of the car, and the flips again to safety.

Back in the monitor room and high above, the hooded figure yells at the monitor and decides that he cannot hold back any longer. He reaches to another lever and pushes it to the ‘supreme calamity’ setting. And on the street below everything happens at once; earthquakes, fires, auto accidents and a series of…major disasters. Karate Kid figures it out and realizes they must be in Major Disaster’s testing ground that is hidden deep in Earth’s past. 

Major Disaster reveals himself and congratulates Karate Kid on the discovery. In fact, he needed a real life superhero to test his new catastrophes. And since Karate Kid managed to disable most of his devices, the only thing left to do is to blow it all up. And he presses the city’s self destruct button.

The explosions commence and Karate Kid is desperate to stop him before he becomes ensnared in the dying of the fake city. Dodging the falling debris, Karate Kid and the caveman race toward the tallest structure in the 20th Century, the World Trade Center Towers. The control center must be in there. But when they reach the entrance, the front-doors do not work, because they are also fake. Val is not deterred and since he cannot find a way through the structure, he will simply go up. Making his own hand and foot-holds, he slowly scales the side of the building until he reaches the top. As he places his foot on the top of the roof Major Disaster quickly jumps into his getaway plane and takes off. Karate Kid helps the caveman to the top who also senses Karate Kid’s desperation. His primitive instincts take over and he picks up Karate Kid and hurls him right at Major Disaster. Val grabs onto the side of the plane and delivers a swift kick right on MD’s jaw. 

With the aid of Major Disaster’s Time Ship, the return to the twentieth century is relatively simple and soon he finds a group of police offers that he gladly hands over Major Disaster to. Iris Jacobs arrives and welcomes him home and hopes to pick up where they left off last issue. Karate Kid tells her he missed her and that it means a lot to have a friend like her. Picking up on the friend noun, which is a downgrade from their last meeting, she leaves, telling him that whatever they had to settle is now settled. And a tiny tear falls down her cheek as Karate Kid looks on, confused. 

Next Issue: A new Iris Jacobs! A new guest hero!

Creative Team

With issue #10 closing all the outstanding plot lines and finally bringing a closure to the monitor-globe saga as well as Karate Kid and Iris Jacobs’ ‘will-they-or-won’t-they’ I was very curious on how the series would continue.

With issue #11 it looks like they decided to go backward instead of moving forward. And probably to its detriment. For me, issue #11 needed to be spectacular in order to keep our interest on this series. In my opinion they could have ended it at #10 and I do not think anyone would be worse off for it. I can only imagine that either, one, the sales were still very strong on this bi-monthly book, or, two, Paul Levitz wanted to keep it around for the reason we will dive into in Karate Comments. I have to imagine it was probably the Paul Levitz factor. Perhaps there was some unfinished business that he needed to attend to by being kicked off the book after it was deemed that he was too young.

Either way, this issue really was not needed and it is a 100% filler issue. It does nothing to give us a new direction and it is very formulaic despite Jack C. Harris’ best efforts to keep the seat warm. The only saving grace is once again, Ric Estrada, who flies solo on this book. He is a bit divisive, some people do not like his style on the book and others love it. I tend to love it because I do think it fits quite well with the type of villains, plots, and the need for movement and action. I think if the martial arts factor was given to any other artist, the figure work would be too stiff, even if it was more realistic. Ric Estrada and martial arts just gel together.

That being said, that really is this issue’s only saving grace. We get a nice recap in the beginning and a ‘gosh darnitt’ vibe from the man himself on having to go back to the twentieth century even if he saved the kingdom. But that was about it. I do not even recall Major Disaster having a little place in the past to test out his new abilities and I am not even sure if it is used anywhere else in DC continuity at the time. Because if that were the case then Major Disaster would be a pretty darn powerful villain in the first place. If he does have powers to move through time, why did he not use them in the first place? In fact, I do wonder if the original villain was supposed to be the Time Trapper because this is something the Time Trapper would have done. And after writing this sentence I cannot help but believe that to be true and they did a last minute switch. But surely they could have found another villain instead of Major Disaster. 

To make matters worse things are still not resolved with Iris other than her storming off at the end. It does seem like she will still make an appearance but I think we can safely conclude that any chance of making this character interesting and digging deep into her backstory is now gone. But hey, I have been wrong before.

All in all, I have to say that even if we took the previous issue out of it, it still is a weak issue and probably the weakest in the series so far. Sadly, we do know that this series has four issues left after this one, so there probably is not much hope of this book getting any better. And they should have probably stopped at #10. But I do hope I am wrong. 

Karate Comments

We have the standard fare in this issue’s letters section. The first item of note is the editor responding to James F. Mills letter and confirming that Jack C. Harris is, in fact, not Barry Jameson.

The second is from David Hayes who suggests he figured out the whole mystery and drops the clues in for us:

“Ish #2’s lettercol stated that the mystery involved another character Jim Shooter created. My bet is Princess Projectra. Ish #5 told us KK was being tested and would be judged, and showed us someone wearing what looks like a crown. Would you believe Jackie’s father, King of Orando? I would.

“In #6 we see a picture of a castle, much like those on the Princess’ home world, while #7 tells just hat KK will be getting a reward or prize….I have concluded that Val is being tested by King of Orando to see if he is worthy of Jeckie’s hand in marriage. Am I right or am I right?”

The editor then congratulations him except for the marrying part…so far.

Now this is significant for me because I still believe they did not know where the book was going and were making it up as they went along. So to say that the first breadcrumb was dropped waaayyy back in issue #2 is a bit of a stretch. But sometimes we project and produce things we do not expect. 

The third, and last notable item is an update to the series’ direction. Barry Jameson (David Michelinie) opted to move on to other efforts, so after this issue Paul Levitz is coming back. Yes, the same Paul Levitz who wrote Karate Kid’s first issue and is currently the main writer in the main series. 

So that at least gives us some hope, but as we are looking into the past we know there are only four issues left of the book so let us hope Levitz ends up tying everything off in a satisfying manner.

Super-Karate Hour

Karate Kid is known for action and though we did get it here, it was not as memorable as in previous issues. Furthermore, the action parts were quite typical and definitely not fantastical. If I had to find a moment that is worthy of our Super-Karate Hour it would have be the moment at the end, when he had no choice but to continue his chase of Major Disaster. And by doing so he created his own footholds and handholds in the side of a frickin’ building. Not only is that hard but it is also cool. Karate Kid can basically go anywhere and will use whatever physical means to capture his opponent. And that, my friends, is worthy of the Super-Karate Hour.

And that is it for this week folks! Join us next week Tuesday when we close out the second part of the JLA/Legion crossover. And before then, please remember, especially when life has you down, to always, and I mean always, keep kickin’!