Valor #23 annotations: End of an Era part 5

 Annotations for Valor #23:

• On sale 7/12/94
• Legion of Substitute Podcasters episode 721 (August 8, 2022)
• Timeline: 10/1/2995, 8/8/1994, and the End of Time

Notes:

• Cover: shows Valor fading to white. In the late 1990s I met Kurt at a convention and had him sign my Valor “End of an Era” issues. Kurt wrote a word balloon for Valor on the cover, saying “No! Wait! Sales are going upppppp….. (Damn! There go the royalties!)” Just like last week’s Legionnaires #18 (End of an Era part 4), this one also had a second printing. It came out about 4 weeks after the original printing, and can be distinguished primarily by the different color Zero Hour logos (red with white letters on the first, yellow with red letters on the second). Additionally, there's a small Roman numeral "II" in the price box in the upper left corner of the reprint, and the color palette is slightly different between the two - the blacks are darker on the reprint and the reds are more muted, same as with the Legionnaires reprint.
• You can see the two covers in my Field Guide to Legion Second Printings at https://adventure247.blogspot.com/2020/07/second-printings-in-legion-history.html
• Here is what Kurt Busiek wrote on the cover to this issue:

  .@ColleenDoran @KurtBusiek Look what I recently discovered while cataloging my collection! pic.twitter.com/w7DkLyAItt

  — Michael Grabois (@mgrabois) July 2, 2022

• Page 1: this takes place 2 hours after Legionnaires #18.
• Page 3: glimpses of Valor’s previous life in this book, including him meeting the Justice League, fighting the future Braalians, with Glorith, and being dead, and also things that didn’t happen (that we saw) like pulling the sword from the stone, one-eyed pirate, and taking on the mantle of Superman.
• Page 4: meanwhile, at the end of time, Rokk has just come out of the Infinite Library and met the Time Trapper (who was dead, but he got better), as seen in Legionnaires #18
• Page 4 panel 1: this Time Trapper got his powers from the Infinite Library, an eternity ago
• Page 4 panel 3: the Iron Curtain of Time was built to protect the 30th century from the coming of the Zero Hour wave in this retcon
• Page 7 panel 1: the original pre-Crisis Superboy saved Valor and brought him and Shady to Talus to help fight Glorith and Mordru
• Page 8: no, it wasn’t the Dominators who created a set of clones in the Weisinger Chambers, it was the Time Trapper who split time and stored one set of Legionnaires while the other set lived their lives. It's just that the Dominators found them and took advantage of that.
• Page 12: The Trapper says he created the Pocket Universe as a safe haven so the Legion could ride out the storm, but shit happened and it was destroyed before he could use it.
• Page 13 panel 1: Other times the Time Trapper fought the Legion happened differently in his reality: 
• “Turning you away from the power of the Concentrator” – in his first appearance, he built the Iron Curtain of Time to prevent the Legion from traveling to his era, in order to steal a super-weapon that would draw upon every energy source in the universe (ADV 317-318)
• “Sending the Matter Master to aid you” – the Molecular (or Molecule, but never Matter) Master was a robot sent by the Time Trapper to steal the Miracle Machine, defeated by new member Wildfire (SBOY 201)
• “Shielding Garth and Imra’s wedding from the Controllers” – in another attempt to steal the Miracle Machine, he created an alternate timeline (All-New Collector's Edition C-55, aka the Wedding Tabloid)
• Page 14 panel 1: He messed things up so badly that he had to keep trying anything to re-create his original timeline
• “Teaching you the dangers of time manipulation” – the Cosmic Boy and Legionnaires 3 miniseries
• “Devolving the Legion to childhood” – with Glorith, in ADV 318
• “encouraging you to cast me out of existence” – LSHv3 50, which was later retconned to be Glorith destroying Daxam
• Page 14 panels 3-4: he recounts being attacked, as seen in ZH #4 
• Page 22: Adios, Shady and Valor. Too bad you spent an extra 1000 years in the Phantom Zone for this.
• Page 24: Farewell, Superboy. Great speech at the end, too bad nobody will remember it. (Superboy appears next in Superboy v3 #8)
• Final issue of the series

I asked writer Kurt Busiek for some words on his writing tenure on Valor, I'll have those in the next post.

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Cutting down the timeline to just the last few days of story as we get close to Zero Hour. I'm color coding them based on whether the date appeared in the 2995 Sourcebook (yellow), it's a confirmed date that was given in the comic (green), or an estimated date based on keeping track of events and days (cyan). Bold text is something new added this issue. Italics are unknown dates.

Due to the timelines in the stories bouncing between 2995 and 1994 and things happening "simultaneously" 1001 years apart, I'm keeping the events in the order that they happen to the people involved, not strictly chronological by day and year. To make it easier to follow, the 1994 dates will be in red text and anything outside of time (like at the beginning or end of time) will be in blue text.

• Fri 9/29/95: Arriving at Weber’s World, the team tries to stop the Khunds’ bombs from destroying the planet; Dawnstar arrives and meets Wildfire; Firefist kills Veilmist; and after studying at the Infinite Library, Glorith travels to Tharn where she restores Mordru’s powers to help her conquer the universe (LSHv4 #58). Meanwhile, SW6 Brainy & Triad find that Valor has been retconned from history (Valor #13, Legionnaires #16 pages 9-10), so a team of Legionnaires goes back in time to find out what happened (Valor #14, Legionnaires #16 page 10).
• Outside of time: the Legionnaires enter the time stream and crash their Time Bubble (Valor #15); the Legionnaires fight Valor and find out that Lori is Glorith (Valor #16), and then fight Glorith, but Valor succumbs to the effects of his lead poisoning and dies; SW6 Valor appears (Valor #17); Brainiac 5 tells SW6 Valor that he will have to spend another 1000 years in the Phantom Zone in order to save time, and Valor does not take it well (Valor #18), but the presence of Waverider and seeing his fellow Legionnaires vanish changes his mind. Once he accepts his fate, the Legionnaires appear back in their own time and the legend of Valor is restored (Valor #19, Legionnaires #16 page 11. From Vanishing Point, the Linear Men see a timequake affect the 30th century (Valor #20), which causes Dream Girl and Star Boy to appear (Legionnaires #16).
• The Legionnaires instantly return to their present, unaware of their meeting with Glorith and the Valors (Valor #15-19, Legionnaires #16 page 11); Star Boy, Dream Girl, and Bouncing Boy appear with the Legionnaires and Ferro Lad is long dead, leading Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, and Lightning Lad – who seem to be the only ones aware that something funny is going on – to take a Time Bubble to figure it out (even though Invisible Kid and Rond Vidar are secretly aware that something’s happening); Polestar appears at New Earth (Legionnaires #16, LSHv4 #59); Rond, SW6 Brainiac 5, and SW6 Invisible Kid arrive on Weber’s World in a time bubble at the same time as with Mon-El, Shadow Lass, and Dev-Em, but they're all too late to prevent the death of Laurel Gand from the Khund bomb; Jo leaves for 1994 to find Tinya (LSHv4 #59). The SW6 Legionnaires confront Polestar at New Earth (Legionnaires #17).
• Sat 8/6/1994: Valor tries to re-create the feats he did before he went into the Phantom Zone, but fails; the Linear Men watch Valor from Vanishing Point (Valor #20). As a result of the timeline issues, Valor splits into multiple copies of himself and manages to do all the things that legend said he did over the years, in just a few hours, then resigns himself to having Glorith send him back to the Bgztl Twilight dimension. But the Linear Men realize it’s too late, the future is doomed (Valor #21).
• Sun 8/7/1994: Jo Nah arrives from the future in the time bubble (L.E.G.I.O.N. #68). He meets who he thinks is Tinya, but it turns out to have been her cousin Enya all along. He wants to bring her back to the 30th century (L.E.G.I.O.N. #69).
• Sat 9/30/95: Laurel Gand is laid to rest on Shanghalla in a ceremony attended by a number of adult and SW6 Legionnaires, after which Glorith and Mordru attack the group with replicas of some of their old foes and kidnap Rokk, and then Dawnstar fades out (Legionnaires #17). Valor and others go to New Earth to help RJ Brande bring Pocket Earth into this universe, but while the Subs and several Legionnaires blink out of existence, Pocket Earth turns out to be unstable and will explode in 72 hours (Valor #22). Rokk tries but can’t escape Mordru and Glorith (LSHv4 #60).
• Sun 10/1/95: Rokk escapes Mordru and Glorith by going into the Infinite Library; the surviving members of the adult and SW6 Legions meet on Winath to help look for Rokk, but when Glorith and Mordru show up on Talus seeking the Time Beacon, the Legions go there. The magicians call forth the Infinite Man, and then they take his powers. Gim Allon disappears when his SW6 counterpart Leviathan is killed (LSH v4 #60). Mordru and Glorith begin to remake the universe, and the Legion teams fight them and their evil dopplegangers. But one by one, more Legionnaires fade out. Mysa manages to break Mordru and Glorith apart which causes their spell to fail, at least temporarily, before she fades out (Legionnaires #18). Valor and Shadow Lass meet Pre-Crisis Superboy, who helps the Legions fight Glorith and Mordru. The team beats Glorith, and her Infinite Man powers flow to Valor. He then dumps it all on Mordru, who is unprepared to have his mind merge with the universe. Mordru teleports away into the core of Pocket Earth, which is ready to explode in a couple of days. Valor and Shady vanish, and after Superboy makes a rousing speech, he too vanishes (Valor #23).
• End of Time: Time Trapper is blasted by someone unknown, who starts to destroy time from the end going backwards and from the dawn of time going forwards (Zero Hour #4).
• 8/8/1994: Jo tries to go back to the future with Enya/Phase, but at the last second she leaves him and returns to her L.E.G.I.O.N. team (L.E.G.I.O.N. #70). His time bubble is blocked from going to the future moments later. SW6 Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, and Livewire fall out of the timestream in 1994, where they are met by Jo (Legionnaires #18). Metron, Superman, and Batman gather some heroes, including the Legionnaires (Zero Hour #4, Legionnaires #18).
• End of Time: Rokk spends an infinite amount of time in the Infinite Library and meets the Time Trapper when he finally escapes (Legionnaires #18). The Time Trapper explains his history and reveals that the SW6 Legionnaires were taken from time by him, not cloned by the Dominators. But their continued existence warped time and caused the Trapper to go insane trying to “fix” things to actually protect the Legion from the Zero Hour energy wave (Valor #23). He then reveals himself to Rokk that the two of them are really temporal duplicates (Valor #23, also shown in Zero Hour #3).
• 8/8/94: Vril Dox launches a probe into the time stream to try to figure out what’s going on; it will reappear in ZH #1 (L.E.G.I.O.N. #70).