The Great Valor Yada Yada part 1: We read Valor issues 1-5 so you don’t have to!

This is number 8 in a continuing series of Great Yada Yadas, where the motto is “We read them so you don’t have to”. (LOSP podcast episode 655, May 3 2021)

• Karate Kid parts 1-2 in 2017 (18 issues), episodes 463 & 464
• Crisis on Infinite Earths (Arrowverse) parts 1-2 in 2019 (5 TV episodes plus 2 comics), episodes 583 & 588
• Timber Wolf in 2020 (5 issues), episode 624
• Eclipso parts 1-2 in 2021 (20 double-size issues), episodes 638 & 651
• Valor parts 1-2 in 2021 (11 issues)

The Valor series was one of two new series that spun out of the “Eclipso: The Darkness Within” series that ran through the 1992 DC Annuals, the other being Eclipso himself. We heard in episodes 638 and 651 that Valor spent most of that series as a statue being monologued to by Eclipso before getting snapped out of it and helping to defeat Eclipso. At this point in the present of 1992, he was still Lar Gand, introduced in the Invasion! series and appearing from time to time in the L.E.G.I.O.N., Superman, and New Gods books. He had not yet been sent to the Phantom Zone (or whatever they were calling it that day) in the present, though in the future with the Legion we have known for a while now that his code name is Valor and he seeded the worlds of what would eventually be the United Planets such that in the 30th century he was revered.

So there’s a Valor in the 20th century who has his own series – let’s call him Valor A - and then at some point in his future a few years from now (as seen in the Legion annual) he gets put into the Phantom/Stasis/Bgztl Buffer Zone for 1000 years before popping out in the 30th century for good in 2975. This Valor B has been a member of the Legion for 20 years and we refer to him as Adult Valor in the LSH v4 5YL series. In 2978, he was cloned by the Dominators and then awakened in 2995 with the rest of the SW6 batch, he’s Valor C. As of now where we are in the retelling, the SW6 Valor C went back in time and hasn’t been seen since. And recall that Valor A, the one from the solo series, is at least 3 years younger than SW6 Valor C, but in the series he’s written and drawn as being about 18 when he should be 15 (and SW6 Valor C should be about 18, when he appears to be about 15).

This series was meant to be an outer-space super-hero story, with Lar Gand leaving Earth and wandering around space for a while. About halfway through the series, the main Legion titles had a change in writers and editorial decided to bring the Valor series into continuity with the Legion and Legionnaires books. But we won’t see that until issue #11. So we’ll be covering the non-Legion issues en masse and then we’ll fold the Valor series into the rotation starting with issue #12.

Anyway, onto the series….

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• Issue 1
• The saga of ECLIPSO: THE DARKNESS WITHIN has concluded, and Lar Gand emerges as a hero named Valor. Now, his adventures continue in the ongoing monthly series VALOR. Due to his lengthy possession by Eclipso, Valor is obsessed with Eclipso's evil and is compelled to prevent the villain's plans to build a new base called Lunar City. VALOR is a complement to the ongoing ECLIPSO title, also debuting this month. But where ECLIPSO is a dark, grim series, VALOR is the story of a young hero discovering what it's like to be so powerful. VALOR is set in the 20th century, before the Legion of Super-Heroes brings Lar Gand to the future, and charts the DC Universe as Valor travels from one planet to another. On his journeys, he discovers new characters and encounters some that are rarely seen. In the first issue, Lex Luthor II appears to befriend Valor!
• cover date 11/92
• written by Robert Loren Fleming, pencils by Mark Bright, inks by Al Gordon, cover by Bright
• on sale 9/15/92 which was a week before LSH v4 #35, the issue where deep-fried Dirk Morgna meets the SW6 Legion

Issue 1 has a blurb on the top saying “Eclipso: The Darkness Within Aftermath!” This is pretty much the classic Valor, with big shoulder pads and pouches on his belt (because it was the 90s and any superhero worth anything had pouches). Lar Gand is in therapy for PTSD from his run-in with Eclipso, and he ends up telling his therapist about his father: he’s mad at his father for leaving and getting killed in the Invasion. But the therapist is working for Lex Luthor, back when had a red beard and a ponytail, and he shows her he’s building a spaceship. Later, at home, Lar has a vision about Eclipso and then rushes to a jungle in South America where apparently Eclipso’s lunar city was transported to (even though it was destroyed at the end of Darkness Within #2, but don’t worry about it because we never see it again). Lar fights a bunch of Eclipsoids (which you’ll recall are just Eclipso creations, not possessed people), while showing off his new retractable hide-a-cape. He fights them until sunrise when they disappear, then he spots a giant Daxamite chess game that he destroys because he’s mad at his father. Lex Luthor is watching all this, then he calls in his girlfriend/employee Supergirl (aka the Pocket Universe shapeshifter Matrix). Oh, and that blurb about him being obsessed with Eclipso’s evil? Forget about it, that disappears after this issue.

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• Issue 2
• Valor barely has the time to recover from last issue's rematch with Eclipso when Lex Luthor II sends a powerful operative to retrieve DC's newest hero. It's Supergirl vs. Valor in an action-packed slugfest.
• cover date 12/92
• written by Robert Loren Fleming, pencils by Mark Bright, inks by Al Gordon, cover by Bright/Gordon
• on sale 10/13/92, which was a week after Timber Wolf #1 and LSH v4 #36 which was the Terra Mosaic finale and a week before LSH v4 #37 which was the baseball issue

Issue 2 opens with Lar Gand repairing some machinery and remembering when he was a 14-year old mechanic back on Daxam. It turns out he’s been making a memorial to his father – “all these years I’ve been angry with you without even realizing it” but how long has it been since his father died in the Invasion? It was only a couple of years ago in real time. Watching via a drone, Lex Luthor monologues that while he can control Supergirl, he has to get Valor out of the way before he can turn on Lex. Supergirl shows up to tease and flirt with Valor, and then tells him she was sent to bring him back to Lex Jr. He’s not so keen on that idea, and so they fight. She accidentally knocks him into the memorial sculpture and it’s destroyed. They fight some more and she pushes him faster than he’s gone before. They crash into a mountain, and she uses her invisibility power to disappear, but Lex shows up and orders him back to Lexcorp. He goes, but doesn’t realize it’s really Supergirl using her shapeshifting powers. Lex Jr shows Valor his new interplanetary star cruiser he’s been working on, and he gets excited to work on it. Meanwhile, Supergirl goes back to rebuild the memorial to Lar Gand’s father.

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• Issue 3
• While putting his new ship, Pilgrim One, through its shakedown run in space, Valor runs into Lobo...and Lobo's not happy about that!
• cover date 1/93
• written by Robert Loren Fleming, pencils by Mark Bright, inks by Trevor Scott
• on sale 11/10/92, which was a week after Timber Wolf #2 and LSH v4 #38 which was the Earth blowing up and a week before LSH v4 #39 which was Giffen’s last (and in between L.E.G.I.O.N. ’93 #47-48)

Issue 3 opens with Valor inside his new spaceship, which has an AI named Babbage running it. He’s under attack by aliens and Babbage notes that evasive action is required, but he’s not programmed for it yet (Babbage is written as a sarcastic English butler). An alien who calls himself the White Spider tells the rest of his convoy to take the target intact. They trap Valor’s ship in their tractor beams, but he comes up with a plan to escape (“On the count of three….” “Are you up to it, sir?”). He plans to make an escape to Cairn, where he can get help from Dox and the L.E.G.I.O.N., but his ship is not yet equipped with a targeting computer so they’re jumping blind. The White Spider’s convoy follows. While they’re in hyperspace, Valor reminds Babbage that he needs to get more anti-lead serum from Dox and recounts the ship’s history in a flashback (even though Babbage was right there). Turns out that Valor dismantled a bunch of Luthorcorp’s ships to create Pilgrim One. On a test drive, he spies Supergirl and Luthor and he knows she’s with him, and once they’re in space Babbage tells him that he’s been programmed to safeguard Luthorcorp’s investments and to relay info back to Earth. They pop out of hyperspace (and the flashback) into an asteroid field. White Spider’s ships arrive too, and feedback knocks out his ship. Valor exits his ship and starts punching White Spider ships, but when Lobo shows up to help, the White Spider ships leave. Lobo calls Valor’s ship a sissy, and Valor punches Lobo, saying “Nobody insults ‘The One’”.

  

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• Issue 4
• Lobo guests as his “discussion” with Valor escalates into a situation that places them shoulder-to-shoulder against an entire planet! Plus, L.E.G.I.O.N.'s Vril Dox has a potentially deadly surprise for Valor!
• cover date 2/93
• written by Robert Loren Fleming, pencils by Mark Bright, inks by Trevor Scott & Brad Vancata, cover by Scott
• on sale 12/15/92, which was 2 weeks after Timber Wolf #3 and a week before LSH v4 #40 which was the “Guess Who’s Back” story, and in between L.E.G.I.O.N. ’93 #48-49, although an editor’s note says this takes place prior to #48

Issue 4 opens with Valor fighting Lobo, while Vril Dox watches on a monitor. Dox knew Valor would come back since he’s the only source of the anti-lead serum, and as Phase walks in he tells her that it’s her old friend Valor and recaps that he got to Cairn on his new ship. Phase notices that Valor didn’t kill the White Spider craft occupants and decides they need saving. Lobo fantasizes different ways to kill him, but ultimately decides to trash his ship instead. Babbage takes the ship into evasive maneuvers (apparently Babbage got an evasive maneuvers upgrade since last issue, when he noted that he wasn’t equipped for it). So Valor and Lobo fight a lot, but before they can trash the space station that the L.E.G.I.O.N. is using, Dox stops them. Three days later the space station is fixed, and Valor goes inside and meets up with Phase, Stealth, and Strata. Dox offers to fix Pilgrim One for free and to install the warp telemetry unit. Valor meets Lydea Mallor and after offering condolences for her mother Lyrissa’s death, they both “wow” that they have the hots for each other. I guess Valor has a thing for blue women! Phase privately advises Valor to have the serum checked to make sure it’s the right anti-lead serum. Days later, the repairs on the ship are done and Lar leaves the L.E.G.I.O.N. but Dox confides to Lobo that he sent Valor to Starlag II where he’ll be imprisoned for life under a red sun. And Lobo confides that he got to carve “Lobo rules” on the ship.

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• Issue 5
• Thanks to L.E.G.I.O.N.'s Vril Dox, Valor must “Go Directly to Jail.” Rendered powerless under the red sun system of Starlag II, Valor sends out a distress call that is answered by…the Blasters!
• cover date 3/93
• written by Robert Loren Fleming, pencils by Jeffrey Moore, inks by Trevor Scott & Brad Vancata, cover by Moore/Scott
• on sale 1/12/93, which was 1 week after Timber Wolf #4 and a week before LSH v4 #41 which was when the SW6 and adult Legions finally met

The issue opens with Valor realizing he’s in a wormhole, and Babbage tells him that the ship is going exactly where Dox intended: the prison planet Starlag II, which is in a red sun system. The first Starlag, you’ll recall, was where Dox and the rest of the prisoners who founded the L.E.G.I.O.N. were kept (as well as members of the Omega Men and those who would eventually become the Blasters), as seen in the Invasion! miniseries, and it was destroyed at the end of the third issue. Valor tells Babbage that he’s had powers under a red sun before (as seen in Starman #35), but when he says he just got a shock from the control panel, he gets a transmission telling him to prepare to be boarded. He can’t get away, because Dox programmed the ship (and Babbage) to shut down after the warp sequence concluded, though he manages to send a distress signal before that happens. He leaves the ship but falls into a trap door. He then fights off one robot who’s sent to collect him, but not the second, who drops him into a cell. He meets the Warden of Starlag II, Kanjar Ru, who we’ll later find out is the hot sister of JLA villain Kanjar Ro. She tells him that he’s been arrested for stealing a L.E.G.I.O.N. warp drive and Dox not only reported the theft but is paying to have him kept there. In his cell, he finds a roommate, who is a former Green Lantern, who tells Valor nobody has ever escaped from Starlag II, not even the Unimaginable. Meanwhile, out in space, Snapper Carr and the Blasters are deciding whether or not to disband the group and go back home when they catch Valor’s distress call. Babbage fills them in, saying that Lexcorp will pay for the return of the ship, and also Valor as long as his recovery doesn’t jeopardize the ship’s. Back on Starlag, a tremor causes Babbage to wake up and after looking at the schematics of the station, he finds the Unimaginable, after which he leaves with the ship to check it out (because one of his main directives is to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new lives and new civilizations (though he doesn’t put it quite like that), regardless of the cost. Not far away, the tremors continue and alarms go off…

  

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Next up: part 2 (issues 6-11)