Legends #1
Released August 7, 1986
John Ostrander – Story
Len Wein – Writer
John Byrne – Penciller
Karl Kesel – Inker
Tom Ziuko – Colorist
Steve Haynie – Letterer
Mike Gold – Editor
With the success of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, a sequel was pretty much inevitable. In fact, the project that eventually became LEGENDS started off as a more direct follow-up to CRISIS that I’ve found alternately referred to as “CRISIS OF THE SOUL” and “CRISIS OF THE CAPTIVE EARTH.”
This part of the history is too complicated to get into here, but Tom Brevoort has a great piece about it on his blog. There’s also a subsequent post with old memos written by DC creators reacting to that proposal.
Eventually that project gave way to LEGENDS, and its objectives became defined. The crossover would conclude with the formation of a new Justice League. It would also instigate the formation of a new Suicide Squad. And the story would take advantage of the Post-Crisis merged Earth and incorporate characters bought from other publishers who were once relegated to their own Earths, such as Captain Marvel (Fawcett Comics) and Blue Beetle (Charleston Comics.)
From one point of view, LEGENDS is a crossover about how Darkseid’s most natural partner in destroying the legends of heroism is American conservatism. Before the end of the story we have a frenzied mob in America’s capital, whipped into an insurrectionist frenzy by a media personality named G. Gordon Godfrey*, and no less than Ronald Reagan plays right into Darkseid’s hands.
(*The name is an obvious-to-the-point-of-being-hamfisted reference to G. Gordon Liddy, who first became notorious as one of the Watergate burglars. He became a talk show host, though ironically, not until years AFTER this comic was published. That’s not even the weirdest entry on his resume because he also had a brief acting career that included the 1990 ABC TV movie CAMP CUCAMONGA. This is one of those projects with a giant roll call of sitcom stars of the day including Danica McKellar and Josh Saviano from THE WONDER YEARS, FAMILY MATTERS’s Jaleel White, FULL HOUSE’s Candice Cameron, a pre-FRIENDS Jennifer Aniston, John Ratzenberger from CHEERS, and Brian Robbins, then of HEAD OF THE CLASS but eventually CEO of Paramount Studios and Nickelodeon. So if you ever need a good trivia question, ask someone how many degrees of separation between Steve Urkel and Watergate.)
Somehow, while working on the bi-weekly MAN OF STEEL and preparing to launch two Superman titles, John Byrne found time to draw this six issue miniseries. (And seriously, I need to know how he pulled this off without needing a fill-in somewhere.)
I first read this story through acquisitions in the back issues bins and entirely out of order, so I’m not sure what I would have made of this at the age of 6. As a SUPER FRIENDS viewer, I was familiar with Darkseid, though it was jarring here to see his motivation is to defeat Earth’s heroes by turning the population against them instead of an endless number of schemes to “make Wonder Woman my queen!”
Anyway, in LEGENDS, Darkseid wants to defeat the heroes by attacking the very concept of the legends they represent. And to that end, he sends Glorious Godfrey and Doctor Bedlam to Earth.
One of Darkseid’s techno-seeds is droped into a nuclear reactor, creating a giant behemoth of flame, Brimstone. Firestorm doesn’t make much progress in battle against him.
We also see The Flash defeating Deadshot and get a few reminders that Wally West is new to this gig. He pops into Titans Tower and finds Changling there watching a broadcast of G. Gordon Godfrey appearing on Billy Batson’s interview show to denounce superheroes. Godyfrey claims that heroes teach that violence is a solution to problems and are negative role models to children.
Like I indicated earlier, going from a minion of Darkseid to a conservative mouthpiece is pretty much a lateral move.
A costumed giant attacks near the studio and so Billy changes into Captain Marvel and battles the so-called Macro Man. He’s not too effective against him, and once he’s trapped in Macro Man’s grip, Cap thinks the only way out would be to turn back to Billy and slip out of his fingers.
But when he calls down the magic lightning, it appears to fry Macro Man, leaving Billy to be utterly horrified that he ended a man’s life.
We also catch up with a time-lost Cosmic Boy, who narrowly survives an encounter with Brimstone long enough for the Justice League to arrive. When they do, naturally they all stand around announcing themselves.
Man, that is one sorry JLA roster there.
And finally, we pick up with Billy Batson near the scene of the crime. He’s still processing that he killed a man – accident or not – and vows he’ll never become Captain Marvel again. End Issue #1
There’s no Superman appearance at all in this issue. For the purposes of this blog, when it comes to crossovers, I’m mainly gonna focus on Superman’s part in them. In this first issue, most of the subplots are disconnected from each other. The heroes stay in their own separate story pods for much of the next couple issues, which sometimes makes this crossover feel like a collection of subplots.
Darkseid hadn’t quite yet become overexposed by the time of this issue, but the clock is ticking. His role in this as a master manipulator behind the scenes suits him, though. The idea of the public turning against its heroes is a bit of an abstract one in some ways. The trap of that premise is that for it to have any teeth, there needs to be some truth to it.
That, of course, means that by the end of the miniseries, if the arguments against the heroes aren’t discredited fully, the reader is left thinking, “Yeah, but they kind of had a point.” Yet, it’s also a cop-out if the general public’s hatred for super-heroes is the result of manipulation because then the entire conflict is artificial.
The comic does give a few inciting incidents for the change in public attitude, but too few of them feel significantly different from everyday heroic encounters. (Yes, that means I’m asking the dreaded “Why now?” question every writer hates.) Because of this, we have possibly the safest exploration of this premise. It’s entertaining enough, but might be too down-the-middle at times.
The letters page has a long peek behind the scenes from Editor Mike Gold. This continues in the second issue.
Leave a Reply