LSH v4 #39 annotations: In the Beginning....

Annotations for Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #39

• On sale 11/17/92
• It's OK, I'm a Senator: https://itsokimasenator.livejournal.com/18973.html
• Legion of Substitute Podcasters episode 630 (November 9, 2020)
• Timeline: June 6-7, 2995

Notes:

• Cover: “Beginnings”, as compared to last issue’s “The End”
• Page 1: welcome new penciller Stuart Immonen!
• Page 7: on the ship it reads “Ark 2” in Interlac
• Page 9: Two Brainiac 5s and two Element Lads 
• Page 12: Lightning Lad isn’t the only one who got a personality transplant in the SW6 chambers, so did Sun Boy and Matter-Eater Lad
• Page 12 panel 5: the reference to “space happy” is from when Sun Boy had a breakdown in ADV 318
• Page 14: switch pencillers from Immonen to Giffen
• Page 15 panel 5: On Gallan, that’s Leland McCauley III, aka dear old dad, last seen in LSH v3 #17
• Page 15 panel 8: That’s Dev-Em, last seen on April 11th (ADVSUP 478) as the moon blew up
• Page 15 panel 9: That’s Shagrek, formerly of the Taurus Gang, last seen in ADV 374 (his only appearance, not including a flashback to a not-previously-seen fight back in issue 10); he should be in green like all the other characters in the collection
• Page 16 panel 1: that’s Elvo the swordsman (in purple and yellow), and Dartalg master of the blow gun (in green), both formerly of the Wanderers. Last we saw them, they were in their cloned forms, flying through a space warp with the rest of the team (WAND 13) as Elvar and Dartalon. But we did see the clone version of Dartalon way back in issue 2 in an advertisement. They should be all in green, like the other characters.
• Page 16 panel 2: who’s the woman with the skirt?
• Page 16 panels 4-7: Now we know what happened to Cham, RJ, Kid Quantum, and the Proteans when McCauley and the Emerald Eye hijacked the ship at the end of issue 33. They’ve been gone a month, leaving on May 8.
• Page 16 panel 6: The Heckler has a cameo here
• Page 16 panel 9: the Emerald Eye is keeping them all in stasis
• Page 18: Ultra Boy and Ferro Lad are waiting (in vain) for Valor, who left in a Time Bubble at the end of issue 37.
• Page 19 panel 5: I don’t know who that is in stasis
• Page 20 panel 9: If you notice, this panel looks different from the previous one – Tom Bierbaum said it took Giffen so long to do his art for this issue that his style literally changed between page 20 and 21 (the lawyer in page 20 panel 9 is a Photostat from page 21). We briefly see Giffen’s “March Hare”/“Trencher” art style.
• Page 22: the quick release of Cham, RJ, the Proties, and KQ seems awfully sudden, as if Giffen wanted to wrap it up before he left
• Page 22 panels 7-9: compare and contrast McCauley father and son with RJ and Cham
• By the way, remember when Imra was kidnapped in issue 37? That was May 22, more than 2 weeks ago. And Cham was missing for a month, since May 8. I guess nobody’s too concerned with missing Legionnaires?

Legion sales data for issue #9

Comichron has done their number crunching dealy thing with Diamond and Lunar/UCS data and produced approximate sales charts for September 2020, which includes Legion #9. Still impacted by the Covid shutdown and DC's change in distributors, Comichron has managed to put together some approximate sales numbers for September's books, which, while not exact and calling the sales within a range, is better than we had last month.

Issue 9 was part 2 of the all-star artist lineup. How did that impact sales? Let's see... 

For September, LSH v8 #9 tied for the #62 book overall, with sales somewhere between 27,000-32,000. (I'll use the midpoint of 29,500 here for simplicity.) Other books it tied with in that same range were Joker/Harley Criminal Sanity #5, Batman/Superman #12, Miles Morales Spider-Man #18, Star Wars Bounty Hunters #5, Wonder Woman #763, and Marauders #12. It was tied for the #20 book for DC. Although there were two different covers, they are not broken out here because they were the same price and retailers could order as many as they wanted of each (not limited variants).

Batman 3 Jokers #2 was the top-selling book for the month, selling between 190k and 225k copies (midpoint 207,500).  

Other books that sold higher than LSH in August: 10 different Bat-books (Batman, Joker, Harley, Batgirl, Nightwing, Catwoman), 3 Death Metal, 2 each of Justice League, Superman, and Wonder Woman, and 1 each of DCeased, Batman/Superman and Strange Adventures (the usual suspects, with the extra sales for WW based on her "when is the movie coming out" factor).

So here's what our table looks like now, with the limited insight into sales. Not sure we can trust the issue 8 sales just yet, but issue 9's sales still look remarkably consistent with what we've seen for the entire run so far, both book numbers and relative DC numbers. Interestingly, the market is selling more issues but of fewer titles: there were 25% fewer titles in September compared to March, right before the shutdown, but unit sales are up by about the same amount.

LSH v8 sales and rank

Issue	Total sales (all covers)	overall #	DC #	#1 book
1	75,611	10	3	138,434
2	35,653	50	17	117,926
3	34,732	44	15	167,377
4	30,675	51	18	190,568
5	29,058	59	18	142,089
6	TBD	23	17	TBD
7	TBD	41	18	TBD
8	Est. 38,000	46	22	Est. 300,000
9	Est. 29,500	Tie 62	Tie 20	Est. 207,500

More data as it becomes available....

LSH v4 #38 Annotations: That's Great, It Starts with an Earthquake, Birds and Snakes and Aeroplanes

Annotations for Legion of Super-Heroes v4 #38

• On sale 11/3/92
• It's OK, I'm a Senator: https://itsokimasenator.livejournal.com/18778.html
• Legion of Substitute Podcasters episode 628 (October 26, 2020)
• Timeline: May 24 to June 4, 2995

Notes:

• Cover: My first thought was that this was the end of the series. I wonder if the color palate for this cover of volume 4 #38 is supposed to be reminiscent of the colors for volume 3 #38, the death of Superboy?
  
• Page 3: The Tokyo sinkhole opens up 9 days after the destruction of the underground chambers. We’ll see on the next page that they want this to be May 24 – let’s ignore the 9 days part and just go with May 24, which is the day after last issue’s baseball game.
• Page 4: Says that the chambers were detonated on May 15 (echoing what the Sourcebook says), but we know that can’t be correct because May 15 was given in issue 34 as the date that King Jonn declined the adult Legion’s offer to help from off-world. The two Brainiac 5s arrive in Tokyo on May 25. But recall that adult Brainy got to Earth the day before (last issue) while young Brainy was in Metropolis with some of the other SW6 Legionnaires sending Valor back in time.
• Page 5: May 26, the Brainys report that the Earth is doomed. The Interlac talks about the proton jelly and an estimate of how much time is left.
• Page 9: June 3, the domed cities take off; of the 480 with domes, 102 take off, and 100 make it to orbit (losing Barcelona, Spain; and Tashkent, Uzbekistan)
• Page 13: 95 cities successfully link up (losing Chongqing, China; Dakar, Senegal; Dresden, Germany; Nairobi, Kenya; and Santiago, Chile)
• Page 16: 94 cities make it to the Bgztl Buffer Zone (losing Seoul, South Korea). The Eyth Incident of ’73 was the planetary system that Lucifer Seven threatened to destroy if his demands were not met. His demands were not met, so he destroyed the system (as seen in Secrets of the Legion 1).
• Page 18: that looks like Death – notice the ankh around her neck, the umbrella, and the scarab.
• Page 21: The second appearance of Death of the Endless outside of Sandman. They basically had to get Neil Gaiman’s approval for this after her appearance in Captain Atom #42.
• Page 23: June 4 is the Great Terran Disaster