“The Lightning Saga,” the JLA/JSA/Legion of Super-Heroes teamup story running through Justice League of America and Justice Society of America, reaches its penultimate chapter, and so, we reach the next to last in this series of annotations. JLA writer Brad Meltzer and JSA scribe Geoff Johns clearly have a soft spot for the DC stories of the 1970s and 1980s, but some of the references from that era that they include here might elude newer comics readers. So I’ve put together this guide. To read the first three sets of these annotations, you can click here, here and here, respectively, and for the next and final one in the series, click here. And now, on with the minutia of past wonders…
Justice Society of America #6
“The Lightning Saga, Chapter Four”
Cover art: As was the case with JSA #5, the regular-cover edition of this issue features no indication on the cover that this is part of the JLA/JSA crossover, no mention of “The Lightning Saga.” Given that this has happened twice in a row, and that this cover features a continuing series of single-character portraits by comics painter Alex Ross, I can only assume that DC doesn’t want to break the format or that Ross has negotiated some sort of deal to ensure as little cover dress as possible intrudes on his artwork. As for the variant cover by Phil Jimenez and Rod Reis, again, it appears to be part of a larger image, with the variant covers connecting to form one along poster.
The cover features Damage, a new member of the Justice Society, and he is more prominently featured in this chapter of the crossover. He is Grant Emerson, and he has explosive super-powers, the result of genetic experimentation by immortal villain Vandal Savage. Genetically, he is the child of the Golden Age Atom, and his current costume is patterned after his. Damage’s powers actually seem to resemble those of the Golden Age Human Bomb, a member of the original Freedom Fighters. That explains Damage’s brief association as a member of a modern version of the Freedom Fighters (as seen in Infinite Crisis, not the recent Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters limited series).
Page 1: The headshots lining the splash-page panel (as well as those of the Legionnaires a few pages later) are in keeping with previous JLA/JSA crossovers in the 1970s and ’80s. The “Jay” referred to in Superman’s narration captions is Jay Garrick, the Golden Age Flash. “The Legion of Three Worlds” is a new reference, but could easily be explained by the three different incarnations of the Legion of Super-Heroes: the original versions, the post-Zero Hour (a mid-1990s Crisis-like crossover) reboot incarnations of the characters and the newly rebooted team featured in the current Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes series.
Page 2: “The first Crisis” refers to Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Page 3: The lightning-rod ceremony to resurrect Lightning Lad (from Adventure Comics #312, as noted in the previous set of annotations) is exactly as Superman describes it. Lightning Lad died in the Silver Age fighting Zaryan the Conqueror.
Pages 4-5: Karate Kid refers to the Legion’s founders — Lightning Lad, Cosmic Boy and Saturn Girl — as the team’s “Big Three.” This mirrors a reference to the Justice League’s “Big Three” — Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Judging from a plotline that’s unfolding in DC’s new weekly series, Countdown, Karate Kid will be remaining in the 21st century after this adventure (as will Starman, but he was already a new member of the Justice Society). This won’t mark the first time Karate Kid has spent time in the past. He had his own short-lived ongoing series in the 1970s, during the peak of popularity of martial-arts movies and TV shows. He eventually returned to the future and the Legion.
Page 6: Starman refers to Night Girl. She is Lydda Jath, a member of the Legion of Substitute Heroes (a team of heroes made up primarily of teens denied membership in the Legion of Super-Heroes) and Cosmic Boy’s lover. She hailed from the planet Kathoon, which was in a state of constant darkness. Night Girl has super-strength, but only in the dark. Starman also calls a swamp-dwelling snake a “swamp thing.” That refers to the Swamp Thing, an earth elemental that’s had his own DC titles over the years.
The Multiverse is a concept that’s been newly reintroduced into DC continuity. Before Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC’s heroes populated multiple parallel worlds (an infinite number, as the 1980s crossover event title suggests) before everything was consolidated into one world, one continuity. At the end of 52 last month, DC revealed the Multiverse was back, but limited to 52 worlds.
Page 7: Earth-22 is the setting for Kingdom Come, Mark Waid and Alex Ross’s 1996 story of a dark, alternate future for the DC Universe. The current incarnation of Starman was introduced in that four-part, prestige-format series.
Page 9: The chapter title — presented in Interlac characters here — is “Three Worlds” (see earlier reference). Suicide Swamp is located just outside of Gotham City. It’s where the remains of a dead merchant transformed into a zombie swamp behemoth named Solomon Grundy, a super-villain that has plagued the Justice Society, Justice League and individual members of both teams over the years. He was also the mastermind villain from the first story arc of the current Justice League of America series. The reason Liberty Belle is such a big proponent of marriage here is because she’s a newlywed, having recently married the current Hourman.
The incorporation of the individual heroes’ logos is a tradition dating back not only to the original JLA/JSA teamups but to Golden Age Justice Society adventures in All-Star Comics. Liberty Belle also refers to the new Mr. America. There was a Golden Age Mr. America, but a second person to adopt the heroic guise was introduced in the first issue of this new JSA series. He was also killed in that issue, but by the end of that first story arc, his FBI partner took up the mantle of the patriotic hero.
Page 10: “Jess” is Jesse Chambers, AKA the new Liberty Belle. Black Lightning’s offer to tutor Damage privately is in keeping with his character. He’s former schoolteacher Jefferson Pierce and the former secretary of education from ousted U.S. president Lex Luthor’s cabinet.
Page 11: What we see here in the first panel is the ruins of the Hall of Doom, the one-time secret headquarters of the Legion of Doom. There’s just one problem: it’s never been a part of DC continuity. The Legion of Doom was a group of super-villains from The Challenge of the Super Friends cartoon in the 1970s. It was also reintroduced as the headquarters of the villainous Secret Society in the recent Justice League Unlimited cartoon. And Alex Ross used the general design and look of the structure as the basis for a super-villain prison in Kingdom Come. And as for Black Lightning wearing “Garth’s uniform,” the silhouetted characters are noting that his costume design is quite similar to that of Lightning Lad, AKA Garth Ranzz.
Pages 12-13: The first clue that Triplicate Girl is not the final missing Legionnaire is the fact that she is not from the same era as the rest of the time-lost Legionnaires. Triplicate Girl was from the Silver Age Legion, and the rest of the Legion members in this story are from the 1970s/1980s era. Furthermore, she is not wearing a Legion flight ring as the others have (which also serves as part of the memory-restoration trigger). Triplicate Girl later became Duo Damsel after one of her bodies was killed. The tentacled robot that emerges at the end of this two-page sequence is the one responsible for that partial murder. It is the mechanized menace called Computo, a creation of Brainiac 5.
Page 14: Younger readers may not know this, but the Speak N’ Spell was a children’s toy, a fairly basic, “talking” computer that helped kids with spelling.
Page 18: Note that the heroes who connected to cats and wolves complain about getting wet. The younger Wildcat’s comment to his father is a nod to the original Wildcat’s career as a championship boxer. Heavyweight champ Muhammad Ali used to quip that he “floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee.”
Page 19: The Legion flight rings’ jamming capability is a new trait, as far as I know, and its ability to interfere in part with a Green Lantern power ring would make it seem far more powerful and versatile than it’s been in the past. Dawnstar utters the Interlac phrase we’ve come to know so well in this story arc; it reads, “Lightning Lad.”
Page 21: The afore-mentioned death of one of Triplicate Girl’s bodies is replicated here.
Page 23: Sensor Girl first joined the Legion during the Silver Age as Princess Projectra of the planet Orando. She has illusion casting powers. In the 1980s, Legion of Super-Heroes writer Paul Levitz had her rejoin the Legion as Sensor Girl, keeping her true identity a secret not only from readers but from other Legionnaires as well. Her blonde hair, cape and the way she used her illusion-casting powers were designed to make people think it was Supergirl behind the mask.
Thanks for all of these!
One thing that is still bothering me is Jeckie became Sensor Girl AFTER Val’s death but they don’t mention he should be dead…. what’s up with that?
I’m a DC child of the 70s/80s so even though I get most of the references I’m still enjoying these annotations a lot, Don!
Had a question about your Sensor Girl reference. You write:
>>Sensor Girl first joined the Legion during the Silver Age as Princess Projectra of the planet Orando. She has illusion casting powers. In the 1980s, Legion of Super-Heroes writer Paul Levitz had her rejoin the Legion as Sensor Girl, keeping her true identity a secret not only from readers but from other Legionnaires as well.
You don’t mention, however, that Projectra left the Legion after her lover, Karate Kid, was killed in battle against the Legion of Super-Villains, then rejoined in the Sensor Girl disguise.
Unless this Sensor Girl and/or this Karate Kid that we’re seeing in this current story come from different timelines or multiverses, it seems unusual that neither SG or KK had any emotional reaction to seeing each other. You would think Sensor Girl especially would have been overcome with either joy or horror at seeing her formerly deceased lover alive.
Do you think this was a slip-up by the writers or a potential hint that there is something more going on here to be revealed in the final chapter?
I completely agree with Stephen and Scott – the choice of Sensor Girl is an odd one, as it brings up some complications within the plot regarding Jeckie taking on the Sensor Girl identity AFTER Val’s death. I can’t bear the thought of it being a slip-up, and there’s no way that something that big could have slipped by the writers and editors. I think it’s either some multiverse mumbo-jumbo, or there’s a twist coming up in the final chapter.
Even more, though, Sensor Girl herself is an odd choice. Until now, all the other “lost” legionnaires have essentially come from the same era, particularly in terms of costumes…until now. By the time Sensor Girl made her debut, for example, T-Wolf was sporting a different hairstyle and costume. Given the current group showing up in the crossover, having Princess Projectra rather than Sensor Girl would have made much more sense. I hope that it’s simply a piece of the larger puzzle, and not just another multiverse-related continuity glitch that will pop up in Countdown, you know?
re inconsistencies: The very fact that they’re dealing with multiversal cross-over and realities that are crushed together provides a LOT of flexibility. The entire setting is one huge “legal loophole” of explanations and reasons. Just hang on and enjoy the ride.
Stephen wrote:
You don’t mention, however, that Projectra left the Legion after her lover, Karate Kid, was killed in battle against the Legion of Super-Villains, then rejoined in the Sensor Girl disguise. … Do you think this was a slip-up by the writers or a potential hint that there is something more going on here to be revealed in the final chapter?
I have no idea. Could be a gaffe. Could be intentional. Who knows? To be honest, I’d forgotten the pre-Crisis version of Karate Kid had died.
“Extreme Justice” used a very altered version of the Legion of Doom, the one lead by Brainwave Jr. I -seem- to recall that this version of the group had a reference to the skull-shaped headquarters. But I don’t know for sure.
I’m going w/the glitch theory. DC’s been paying precious little attention to whom died when. During the 52 series, Terra Markov was killed by Black Adam. Small problem: Terra Markov’s been dead for years. And the alternate universe theory’s been stretched awfully thin…Garfield Logan ordered her into combat, yet he was one of her lovers before. (Slade Wilson being the other.) Surely he wouldn’t have forgotten her death enough to order her to death again.
In light of all that, Karate Kid & Sensor Girl existing side by side is a much smaller, more understandable glitch. This is one of many examples why the idea of a multiverse is flawed. I believe the countdown is towards a crisis that will join the many worlds back into one again…because a year of trying to write for a multiverse should convince DC that trying to maintain one continuity across so many titles is hard enough, much less 52 continuities. At least until they forget how hard it is again, and try to resurrect the multiverse.
I don’t think KK and Sensor Girl are glitches, but the whole team is from the same point of time in the future. I got the impression that this is a “new” old Legion we’re seeing. It’s like what would have happened to the Legion if Crisis didn’t happen. There was no pocket universe Superboy, no Magic Wars, no “5 Years Later”, no reboots.
So here we have several of the Legion in their 70s costumes, at some point KK has been resurrected and Jeckie is still in her Sensor Girl identity. And then we get weird but deliberate annomalies, like Timber Wolf in his retro costume, Wildfire being a descendant of Red Tornado, and Jeckie still being Sensor Girl. It’s the old stories, but some new elements are there.
At least they didn’t bring back Quislet.
That was not the original Terra/Tara Markov. This Terra was introduced as a member of Team Titans before Zero Hour. The reader who thought this Terra was supposed to be dead has not been paying attention. He must not have read “Infinite Crisis” either; she appeared therein.