Wednesday, February 11, 2009

REBELS, REBELS, you tore your dress...

Are we ever going to be able to look at the R.E.B.E.L.S. comic without hearing the David Bowie song "Rebel Rebel"? Sorry.

I don't know if I'm going to be keeping track of this title here, but there are some significant Legion connections at least in the first issue:
* The captions for Dox and Supergirl are the same as in the threeboot Legion book.
* Supergirl mentions her 31st century Legion stint, and it turns out that at some point before she went back to the 21st century, Brainiac 5 loaded a DVD into her brain with something Dox could build.
* Threeboot Brainiac 5 has a virtual meeting with his ancestor.

In other thoughts, Tribulus doesn't appear to be of the same "race" as Validus, as their heads are very different. Validus has a humanoid head with the open brain case and rudimentary eyes and nose, whereas Tribulus has a very elongated head with no eyes or nose. Hakk looks like a Khund. Skwaul looks like he might be from Hykraius (Tellus' homeworld), but Tellus didn't have fingers like Skwaul does.

I'll keep it on my list for a while. I love the artwork and the story of what happened to the L.E.G.I.O.N. looks interesting.

7 comments:

Murray said...

spoilers


I thought it was interesting that three-boot Brainy (pre-shooter) named Vril Dox as his ancestor (instead of say... Johns' version of Brainy). More playing around with which Legion is connected with with Earth.

Meerkatdon said...

I'm not a fan of the concept of a race of Validus-like beings -- when Validus first appeared, I'm pretty sure that no one knew what he was or where he had come from.

However, if they're determined to go with that, then maybe Trinculus and Validus are child and adult forms of the same species.

It could go either way, but I'd guess that Validus is the child form. He's been portrayed in the past as childlike...down to playing with a giant baby's rattle...and his violent, uncontrolled emotional surges seem to fit.

Of course, if Validus is a child, then that species has a pretty extended childhood.

OTOH, what little we've seen of Trinculus doesn't suggest much maturity -- so maybe Trinculus is the child and Validus the adult form.

Or maybe the connection is something a lot more complex, like the race changing in the course of a thousand years, or Darkseid creating Validus in the form of an extinct race of Trinculus-like beings....

Jim Drew said...

40 years ago, no one in the 20th century had encountered Khunds or Durlans or Controllers or pick your favorite alien race, so Validus being from an unknown species should go right out the retcon window.

For an easy retcon, Validus was not from any race that had been seen in the United Planets in hundreds of years, so on one except Brainy could be expected to identify it. And Brainy had his own reasons for not sharing any info he had, since he's a 12th level asshole much of the time.

Anonymous said...

Jim - you're very creative - but it can't be a retcon until they some how refer/explain/void the issue in the books. Fan fic is never canon - unless you become the writer like Tom and Mary :) ( I did love the 5yr gap until the superboy retcon).

What is REBELS without Mon-el - speakign of which..


If the Phantom zone is being consumed and is uninhabitable - how will Mon-el make it to the 30th (31st?) century.

So with Respect to the New Earth - what is the status of the buffer planets seeded by Mon-el /Valor.


Mongol is doing a Darkseid GDS riff over on Daxam in the GL books.

Wonder if Lar and Sodam will meet in the 20th?

Jim Drew said...

I would say that by introducing the new character who is obviously connected to Validus, they *have* voided the previous continuity. They just haven't restitched things to explain it to us.

And I would further say that they don't need to explain it to us. Who cares that Validus was once stated to be of a species/race no one recognized. No continuity points or plotlines hinge on that. Nothing is wiped away by it, and nothing of import changes.

But taking it another level: Vril Dox is now known as the ancestor of the threeboot Brainiac 5, so this Validus-connected character is tied to that continuity, and that continuity has never been seen to have a Validus. The comment about no known species/race is from the Brainiac 5 whose timeline was munged over and over again by the Time Trapper and who is now, in some form, the one in the "Lightning Saga" Legion. So what that Brainy might have said in some Time Trapper-continuity shift decades ago in a different continuity (which has itself been wiped from existence more than once) really has no bearing on a creature that looks like Validus in a completely different timeline.

This isn't fan fic, this is the current state of DC's Legion continuities. Until next week. (grin)

As for Mon-El, he's out of the Zone in another month or so, for who knows how long, protecting Metropolis in the wake of Superman leaving Earth for a year or so.

The planets allegedly seeded by Lar Gand? Isn't that part of the 5YG timeline, which isn't currently active and was destroyed in Zero Hour? Has that actually been referenced in any of the three active timelines? If not, it's inapplicable. (And since cities from those worlds were saved from Brainiac's ship and one city from that ship has now created its own planet, it's not hard to see where this may lead.)

What is REBELS without Mon-El? Lar Gand (not Mon-El, by name) was part of LEGION for a coupoe years, but the last REBELS series was post-Zero Hour, when Lar Gand was already in the Zone. So technically, doesn't apply.

(But a REBELS event is coming in less than a year, and a Mon-El who was probably never in LEGION is out of the Zone, so the odds of a meeting are good, I'd say.)

Anonymous said...

Since 3boot B5 is a variation of the normal timeline, he is one variation of what Vril's descendants could be. I wouldn't be suprised if Stealth isn't still around, but Vril ends up with a second spouse and child. Or Strealth and babe are already dead by now.

Reboot's B5 is from a dead future, Lo3W's confirms its gone, s essentially other then the fact that B5 still exists, but timeline means that line of decendancey is dead. So B5's connection to the past Vril Dox 2 is not cut off.

As for the current Retroboot B5... We've never had the full story to be honest. But if Stealth is still included in the storyline, somewhere, then either Vril has another child with her or someone else and either child could continue the family line.

I don't know where that leaves Reboot's B5, he really is a loosend now.

Anonymous said...

Hakk is indeed a Khund. He's a LEGION recruit from the original run (and his first name is Amon)

The other robotic-looking fellow may be another recruit named Darius.