Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Infinite Speculation

A few interesting Legion/Infinite Crisis speculations I've found, plus one of my own at the end:


  • Newsarama's "Crisis Counseling" with Dan Didio (following issue 4) mentioned words to the effect that James Robinson might have something to say about the Starman legacy in the aftermath of Infinite Crisis. Ragnell the Foul wonders what's going to become of the whole Legionnaire/Star Boy/Starman thing - they've got Danny Blaine, the white Thom Kallor (MIA in the time stream following the battle with the Fatal Five right before the new reboot), the black man in the current Legion series, or a new one.

  • Flash fanatic Kelson Vibber notes that we were never told the names of Wally "Flash" West's kids before they disappeared in Infinite Crisis #4. Apparently there is speculation that the kids might be revealed as the Tornado Twins in the 30th century. He doesn't think that's too likely, as the Twins have been well-established as Barry Allen's kids, and Bart "Impulse/Kid Flash" Allen has been well-established as Barry's grandson. (Less established is what happened to Jenni "XS" Ognats, his granddaughter, who's currently hanging around in the time/space continuum with Starman legacy Thom "Star Boy" Kallor.) It's more likely that they turn out to be Barry and Iris, revealed as Wally's kids in the Kingdom and Kingdom Come series. I pretty much agree with him on all counts.

  • Jer-El78 wonders where Mon-el (or M'Onel) is these days. If you'll recall, he's been rebooted a few times too. First he was a Daxamite from Earth-1's universe, he got stuck in the Phantom Zone for 1000 years, and joined the Earth-1 Legion when he got out. After the John Byrne Superman reboot, there was no Superboy on the post-Crisis Earth so Mon-el was from the Pocket Universe. After the Legion reboot, he showed up in then-current Superboy continuity and ended up in the Phantom Zone (or thereabouts) for 1000 years, and joined the Legion as Lar Gand, aka "M'Onel". He was last seen lost in the time stream with Star Boy and XS. So back to Jer-El78's theory... we have seen neither hide nor hair of him in the new Legion book so far, and we've seen just about everyone else. We've already been told that the 31st Century we're reading about is the post-Infinite Crisis version.
    Now this character may be nuts and killed people but he thinks he was doing the right thing which was helping Alexander Luther bring back Earth 2...what if (and its a big IF) that when the dust clears we see this Superboy make is way to the 31 Century gives himself a new Idenity say Mon-El and makes up for his sins and lives the rest of his life as the hero he always wanted to be.

    (This last one via Ragnell again)
    Personally, I'm skeptical of this one. We'll probably just get a new Mon-el.

Now, for my own bit of speculation. We've been told recently that this Legion is already the post-Infinite Crisis Legion.

I think that the Legion we've been reading about in the current (v5) series is the Legion of the rebooted Earth-2, or whatever they're going to call the new Earth we saw at the end of Infinite Crisis #4.

Remember, there was never a pre-Crisis Earth-2 Legion. In fact, I'm positive I remember a scene in the original Crisis in which Ayla remarked to someone that there was no Earth-2 Legion. But in Infinite Crisis #4, we saw the creation of a new Earth, and the former Earth-2vians were teleported away to it. Thus, a rebooted Earth-2 (which I'll call Earth-2.1, making the mainstream post-IC DCU on Earth-1.1 I guess). The post-Zero Hour Legion was the future of the single DCU Earth (Earth-Sigma). Now we've got another Earth and a Legion more radically departed from anything we've seen before (Mordruverse excepted).

And remember how the reason we knew about the other Earths was from the comics that we saw the heroes with, like the ones featuring the Earth-2 Flash that Barry Allen had, and the comics featuring the Earth-1 heroes in that Legends of the DC Universe Crisis 4-1/2 Special from a few years back? Anyone remember maybe a recent backup Legion story in which they found old DC issues in the rubble after a fight, the covers of which were woven into the storyline? That wasn't subtle, that was telling us that they are not part of the mainstream DC universe we read about today. It's the future of Earth-2.1.

And if that's true, what does that say about the future of the mainstream post-Infinite Crisis Earth-1.1 (that got split from Earth 2.1) - who's there, the pre-Crisis Legion (with Superboy and Supergirl), the post-Crisis/pre-Zero Hour Legion (post Five Year Gap era that vanished in Zero Hour), or the post-Zero Hour Legion (Waid/Stern/Moy/Abnett/Lanning era, currently lost in the time/space continuum)?

Mark Waid is such an admitted geeky fanboy, this sounds like something that would appeal to him in that way. We'll see if I'm right in a few months.

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