The Subs get further into The Terra Mosaic. Laurel has a knock down drag out battle with BION, and the S.U.B.S. get into the battle with the Dominators!
The Subs get further into The Terra Mosaic. Laurel has a knock down drag out battle with BION, and the S.U.B.S. get into the battle with the Dominators!
At last you guys are going over the Terra Mosaic story arc. I have been looking forward to this since you first started reviewing the Giffbaum Legion, because as far as I’m concerned this was the high watermark of that run. When it started, I remember being in a position where for the first (and so far only) time in my life, i was seriously considering not reading the Legion any more. The entirely underwhelming Quiet Darkness storyline capped off close to a year’s worth of stories that to me were bland and forgettable, and I was growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of information detailing what went down during the Five Year Gap, particularly regarding Wildfire, my favorite Legionnaire. At the time, my thoughts ran somewhere along the line of “For God’s Sakes, they can bring F—ing TYROC back, but not Wildfire? Also, when the hell are you gonna tell us all about Black Dawn?” I realize that a lot of this information came out in the 2995 DC Heroes supplement, but I think you can make the argument that you shouldn’t have to track down a role-playing game module to understand what’s happening in your favorite comic book. In short, I was not a happy camper.
This changed when the Terra Mosaic story began. The quality of the book took an immediate and dramatic turn for the better. My disappointment over Giffen’s giving up the pencilling duties was more than alleviated at the time by Jason Pearson (re-reading those issues now, his work doesn’t seem to have aged too well to me, but at the time I fricking loved it). Most importantly, after what seemed like years of stops and starts, the book seemed to finally be coming together and heading in a specific direction. For most of 1992, I was on pins and needles waiting for the next issue of the Legion to come out. It’d been a long time since I felt that way.
Ultimately, though, the Terra Mosaic illustrates what I think was the biggest problem with the “Five Years Later” Legion, especially when you contrast it with the 20 issues or so that followed after Giffen left and before DC finally blew it all up and started over. Giffen’s singular creative vision for the book, which was arguably corrupted almost from the very start thanks to the editorial malfeasance of the Superman office, could not be maintained after he left. Nobody but Keith Giffen could keep that ship afloat. The Bierbaums certainly couldn’t. Their run on Legionnaires proved that they were more than up to the task of writing a “classic” Legion book, but the actual Legion itself was, when Giffen left it, a complete mess, one that could never really be cleaned up and returned to “normal.” I don’t think ANYBODY could have fixed it. It was doomed the moment he left.
Anyways, belated congrats on 600 episodes. Y’all are still rockstars, and who do I talk to about trying out for the Legion of Substitute podcasters Auxiliary? I actually have a mighty superpower that I’m desperate to wield for the good of all mankind…
Hi guys
Can’t believe you missed the obvious when you were discussing how Bion had the Earth symbol used for Earth Man many years later and missed the fact that Bion’s very powers were similar to Absorbency Boy himself!
(Makes me wonder whether the Dominators vivisected Absorbency Boy when they created Bion with the powers of the whole SW6 team).
And when I was a kid, count me among the Mag-‘nett’-o and Subma-‘reen’-er set. I’ve grown out of the latter but not the former, I’m afraid.