Dear Watchers: an omniversal comic book podcast

Rob: Welcome to Dear Watchers in Omniversal comic book podcast, where we do a deep dive into the multiverse.
Guido: We are traveling with you through the stories and the worlds that make up the omniverse of fictional reality we all love. And your watchers on this journey are me Gita Lad and me, Rob Boy.
Rob: And we have toured back the Iron Curtain of time to reveal our returning threat. I mean guest. It's Randall Lotowycz, author of the DC Book of Lists and a guest back way back in June 2022 for episode 48. Hi, Randall.
Randall Lotowycz: Ah, actually, it's going to be kid Randall today a little bit. Um, but yes. Uh, hey, thank you. Feels, um, like yesterday. So it definitely feels like the time trappers involved in manipulating time to bring me back here.
Guido: I think your last episode was actually a pocket universe. It didn't really happen.
Rob: Luckily, none of us look a day older. So that's the good part about being in a pocket universe. Now, before we begin today's travel, itinerary what's new with us Guido, in our little section of the multiverse.
Guido: Nothing too new today, so I'll just say, go get Randall's book. We talked a lot about it on that episode and since then, and it is such a fun resource. The DC Book of Lists, a, uh, multiverse of legacies histories and hierarchies for anyone who is either steeped in this lore and just wants to have fun reading the list or clueless about this lore and wants to learn something new. So go get this book.
Rob: Pages and pages of gorilla related characters.
Randall Lotowycz: It could have been a whole book on, um, gorillas that was just a snapshot of what.
Rob: Comics love. A good gorilla. And we love you being here, Randall. And if you are joining us for the first time, we have three parts of our journey today. Origins of the story, what inspired this other reality? Exploring multiversity. We dive deeper into our alternate universe and pondering possibilities. We examine the impact and what's followed or coming in the future.
Guido: And remember, you can leave us a review. Wherever you're listening, find us on social media and please share this episode. We're in our approach to 100, and we want to keep growing boohoo.
Rob: And with that, Dear Watchers, welcome to episode 94, and let's check out what's happening in the Omniverse, um, with our travels to today's alternate universe. Today we booked a long journey, and it all has to do with the answer to the following question. What if the time trapper created a pocket universe that turned Superboy against the Legion of Superheroes, and this is an.
Guido: Earth without a designation, sort of a pocket world, sort of real, and in between the biggest reboot of DC ever and the reboot of time that follows a few years later. So it is complicated. And Randall, why did you choose this story for the story that we were going to explore together?
Randall Lotowycz: Probably because it's my favorite random, parallel reality, where it's just one. I mean, I just love that. It's called the pocket universe. And, uh, Time Trapper, with his big, flowing purple robes, I always like to imagine he has like, a pouch with the universe in it. And it's a peculiar one because, yeah, it's coming on the heels of Crisis on Infinite Earths. And then John Burns reboot of Superman, which emphatically said he was never Superboy. But then, um, in the far future, there's still an entire team of people whose entire identity is based on the fact that they were inspired by Superboy. How DC editorial decides to, uh, reconcile that early on and all of a sudden, yeah, we have something called the Pocket Universe, where the time trapper, uh, basically control C, control p pasted, uh, the universe and then started manipulating it in order to find a way to keep continuity going.
Guido: Yeah, it's a surprisingly massive rec con. And I think we'll get into exactly why and how, but since it has a lot to do with the time trapper, I think we're going to kick off with a little bit of background before we get into his origin issues that we read on this character. Who's this mysterious villain of the Legion? As you mentioned, Randall, he resides at the end of Time behind the Iron Curtain of Time, which feels like a very timely, uh, current event reference back in his origin days. And this keeps him hidden. He has had a few identities, a few alternate identities. He has the power to, uh, basically do anything with time freeze, alter, move people through it, age people, de age people, control a portion of it, et cetera. And Rob is going to share a bit on the creators before we dive into his origin.
Rob: Yeah. So he is co created by the writer Edmund Hamilton. And before he wrote comics, edmund Hamilton was a key writer of weird fiction for Weird Tales. He published his first story there in 1926. And Weird Tales would publish 79 of his works of fiction from 1926 to 1948. He's one of their most prolific contributors. And of course, some of their other contributors and his acquaintances were HP. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, lots of other folks. And Hamilton was actually married to Lee Brackett, who's the writer and screenwriter and known as the Queen of the Space Age Opera. She was actually one of the first two women ever nominated for the Hugo Award. And in comics, Hamilton created or co created Batwoman in 1956. And he wrote The Clash of Cape and Cowl in World's Finest Comics, number 153 in 1965. And that is the source of the Internet meme in which Batman slaps Robin, the Internet meme that we have all seen, um, back to Edmund Hamilton. But in terms of the time trapper, he might actually predate DC. So Hamilton wrote a short story called in the World's Dusk, which appeared in Weird tales in 1936. And in it, Gallows Gan is the last living human being, a withered figure cloaked entirely in robes, who sits brooding in a towering hall in the desert wastelands of the Earth in a distant future, trying to bring back humanity. So that is from 36. And Hamilton probably recycled at least some of this imagery when he created The Time Trapper many, um, years later in the 60s.
Randall Lotowycz: Well, I'm blown away. I didn't know this.
Rob: It's cool with so many of these DC writers. Gardner Fox also worked a lot on the weird Tales, and because these writers were so much older and these stories were so much older, you get these people who were creating stories in the 1920s and in some ways recycling some of those ideas many years later into comics, which is in some ways the future of these kind of weird tale stories.
Guido: Yeah.
Rob: So what is, uh, all of your backgrounds with our two main topics today? The Legion of Superheroes and the Time Trapper. So, Guido, maybe you want to kick us off.
Guido: Uh, well, mine is easy because, as we've mentioned, the Legions come up once before on the show. I don't know the Legion at all. I know that they exist, but I, uh, don't know why. There's something about them that I never could get into, and I think they're pretty impenetrable, is my experience. Which is funny, because I guess my experience of the Legion of Superheroes might be what people feel about X Men if they haven't read X Men for 35 years, 40 years, like I have. So, I don't know. I never liked the Legion. I had no idea who The Time Trapper was until Randall told us, even though turns out I've read some stories he's in. But I had no idea. I have to be honest, for 94 episodes in, this is the least I've known about something we've covered. And I'm going to add a, uh, revelation that I've never really shared. I don't love time travel, so it might also be why I'm not into the Legion, and I just don't like the idea. It messes with my brain. Even though I love the multiverse, I don't love time travel. And I'll talk a little bit about why, I think, as we get into this story. But Randall, what was your background with the Legion and time trapper?
Randall Lotowycz: Um, the Legion came very early on in my comic book Discovery. I got into comics with The Death of Superman, and that led me going backward. And I think, right not long after Death of Superman, I read man of Steele, and I'm reading all the post crisis stories, and I'm learning of the crisis. So then I have to read that and just hearing all these things, and it's like everything was another thing to look into. And very early on, it was this story where Superman is confronting a Superboy who doesn't exist at this pretty much around the same time I was learning about this Superboy and Superboy prime from crisis. And so I was just kind of riveted by all this and so as like a weird ten year old trying to make sense of it all, because, um, the crisis changed history. All since Superman was never Superboy, but there's still these characters who base their entire identity on Superboy. And also I really got into the Mel drama of it after this. My next Legion story was a one set during the crisis where Brainiac Five is mourning the death of Supergirl from crisis.
Guido: HM.
Randall Lotowycz: And he's like, it's 1000 years later, uh, but it's just sort of hitting him. And she's technically been dead the entire time, but it's like, oh wait, no, she's dead in this moment. And so I was really drawn to the melodrama and yeah, this insane number of characters. Like, every issue I picked up, I was learning about someone different and they were just all so bright and colorful and weird. So that was my jam.
Guido: Did you go back and look into much Silver Age?
Rob: Like?
Guido: Have you absorbed much? Silver Age legion?
Randall Lotowycz: Actually, yeah. In my best or worst, like, OCD moments, I wound up I have pretty much every Legion comic now, um, in collection, like not individual issues, but actually you can see right over my shoulder from here down, that's like all Legion. I know we're on a podcast so other people can't it looks amazing. M every incarnation. And I love this, uh, Silver Age Legion more so than a lot of other Silver Age comics because I think just the silliness and these teenagers and we'll get to it a little bit with, uh, the one issue we're going to talk about, 318, where I hadn't read that in years. And I just sort of fell in love with it all over again because it's.
Rob: Yeah, it's funny you say Melodrama, Randall and Guido, you mentioned the X Men because I think they both have a little bit of that. Soap opera DNA of that large cast. Lots of different people interacting, the youngness as well of the characters.
Guido: Some romance and some, um, challenge like conflict and all that kind of stuff.
Rob: Mhm. And for me, both the Legion of Superheroes and the Time Trapper were really characters I just knew from DC who's who, which I was a rabid reader of growing up. I read that more than I actually read the actual DC comics. So I remember just staring at the pages with all of the Legion and seeing so I knew like, oh, that's Brainiac Five and oh, that's Polar Boy, right, or whatever his name is. So I recognized them by look, but I never, I think, had actually read this. And also, I think these time stories and a lot of this DC continuity did seem very intimidating to me. Especially reading these in the pre internet era where you'd see, oh, that's the Superman with gray on his temples. Oh, so he's from a different Earth than the other Superman with the curl. It gets very confusing. I think maybe the Internet has helped sort some of this stuff out.
Guido: Yeah, it's funny. I was looking through the Husu omnibus, uh, to prepare for this episode, and there was the whole seven or eight issue of Who's Who just for the Legion. I mean, that is remarkable when you think about that. They could dedicate an entire segment of that series to just the Legion.
Randall Lotowycz: They've got enough characters well, to tease a book that's coming out this, uh, fall from, uh, running press called Strange, uh uh, and Unsung all Stars from the DC Multiverse. Uh, there's a section on a Legion character called Starfinger. And apparently there is five different people who have gone by the starfinger name. So you got a whole star hand. And, um, I was so delighted to, like, um, I'm editing this book. I'm not writing it, but yeah, there's five starfingers. And, uh, I don't even know what else to say to that. It's just wonderful.
Guido: Well, I saw as I was looking through the Who's Who, they do have a lot of those sort of parody characters and almost like, uh, League of Regrettable superheroes or inferior five type characters, it seems. And I didn't realize that they at times, were tongue in cheek. They always seemed so sincere, uh, to me, in a way that I didn't appreciate. And now I might have to appreciate.
Randall Lotowycz: Them more, although I might push back and say they are kind. I mean, it's very sincere in its tongue in cheekness. This is part of the melodrama. They're like, sorry, your power is stupid, or your power is not controllable. We're not letting you into the Legion.
Guido: That comes up in one of the issues that you read. And I loved that. Uh, yeah, I got to go make.
Randall Lotowycz: My own club now. It's the legion.
Rob: In your book of list, Randall, you talk about all the different powers that Jimmy Olsen had had his comics. And I think it's the same thing with those of the lowest lane ones, too. You really don't know. Is this super sincere? Was it tongue in cheek? Is it a little bit of both? I think it's both very much that tone. Yeah. No, I think I agree. Uh, well, my fellow matter eating lads, let's devour our first segment origins of the Story.
Randall Lotowycz: Right now on this very show, you're.
Rob: Going to get the answer to all your questions. Our amazing story begins a few years ago. And first up is Adventure Comics 318 from March 1964. This is entitled the Mutiny of the Legionnaires.
Guido: And that's written by Edmund Hamilton. Penciled and inked by John Forte. Lettered by Milt Snappin edited by Mort.
Rob: Weissinger And next up, Adventure Comics 321 from June 1964. That's the code of the Legion, again.
Guido: Written by Edmund Hamilton. Again. Penciled by John Forte, but inked by, uh, Sheldon Maldoff and Al Pacino. Lettered by Milt Snappin, edited by Mort Weissinger. We read these because 318 is the first cameo appearance of the Time Trapper and 321 is the first story to actually feature him as a villain. And thanks, Randall, because we were starting with just the cameo. And, gosh, we would have missed a lot because these are oddly hard to find. I mean, DC has so many books. I understand they can't digitize them all, but these two are not on DC Universe Infinite to read, so they're harder to find.
Randall Lotowycz: It's kind of surprising because they have been restored. I have the old archive editions, um, and for our listeners, I'm holding it up. Uh, but then they, uh, also did, uh, omnibus collection. So the restored versions are available. I mean, the biggest thing with DC is, like, they just have they're sitting on so much stuff that's not been restored. Um, so I'm surprised that these aren't more readily available. But there you have it.
Rob: The other surprising thing, I think, too, is for a comic that maybe skewers to a younger audience or a younger audience than here today, they are very verbal. There is a lot of text in these.
Guido: Yes. They're also long. I don't know, they're multi part stories and felt a little longer as books. I don't know if the books were actually thicker, if The Legion was adventure comics. I know it had multiple stories in it, but these stories felt long.
Randall Lotowycz: They weren't invaders. No.
Guido: Um, so this was my first, probably, reading of a Silver Age Legion book. And yeah, everything you're describing, Randall, is there. It's so funny. Uh, it is funny. I appreciate hearing you love it because it helps me appreciate a little more. It's not that I hated it, but there are things, like when Bouncing Boy or whatever, in one of the issues we read, he's fat. He looks very much like Herby, the classic golden Silver Age comic character. Herby, um, and then he becomes skinny. And they're like, well, we don't know if you can be on the team anymore.
Randall Lotowycz: You're skinny.
Guido: It's just so weird.
Randall Lotowycz: Okay, can we, uh, just break since we're talking about this? Yes. Uh, Bouncing Boy is a character whose power is he can inflate himself into a ball and bounce around. And he accidentally gets skinny in this issue. But I cannot believe this comic ends with a fat joke where yes, it's like he's like, Meet my new girlfriend, isn't she? Uh uh, look, since I'm slender, girls don't laugh at me anymore. They like me. Meet my girlfriend, Irisa. And she happens to be like a fat homely girl. Even though Bouncing Boy is now, like, hot huh. Winds up with this. I'm like, wow, okay.
Guido: And we should have known then that Superboy was evil because he starts with, oh, no, he can't even hold back.
Randall Lotowycz: She's wonderful. Bouncing. God. Now I just can't help but see the comparison. That is such, like, the humor I love about herby. There's an issue of herby where I'm just going to totally take it in a different direction, where he was like, going to see the he, uh, had to go see the police about something. And the chief of police won't meet with him. And then he calls the president. And then all of a sudden, the police will meet with him. And these other officers are like, we're really sorry about Chief. Uh, um, we're getting it straightened out. We're executing him in the morning. And that's not necessary. It's an aside from the entire rest of the issue, um, to end on this fat joke.
Rob: And speaking of eating, too, I had mentioned batter eating lad. I mean, he's another character that it's just it's hard to say were they treating this as serious? Because in the second issue, we've got a member. Parts of the Legion are stranded on a planet and they're starving. They're all hungry. And matter eating land is like, well, I can eat rocks even if the others can't. So I might as well do so. And he's chewing it and he's thinking, this rock chomp is pretty good. They must envy me. And then he chomps through the rock to reveal that there's honey inside. And then they're all attacked by bees. But kind of predating our current bee crisis. They don't kill the bees. They make the bees heavy so they can't oh, great.
Randall Lotowycz: Yeah, they're like, we got to protect the bees. I, um, really wish this went dark. And there are other legions like, let's have matter eater Lad keep eating until he's fattened up and then we'll eat him. The Legion version of alive. Exactly. Um.
Guido: No. So onto Time Trapper stuff in these issues. Um, I mean, he's barely present in the first. Even in the second, he's not present other than in his disguise as the chief to try to trick out of them, um, information about this all powerful weapon. And it's such a silly premise, but it does give you a lot of fun scenes and scenes that actually reveal a lot about each of the characters, too. So it was fun. As someone who doesn't know these people to see like, oh, how is he going to challenge them? Like, oh, what exactly is Saturn girl's power and how does it work? And shrinking violet, which is terribly sexist, in the fact that every time she shrinks, she just looks terrified of everything that's happening. But it was fun.
Randall Lotowycz: So to backtrack. Yeah. Adventure 318 was the first time we saw Time Trapper. He's actually mentioned in 317, where there's just a random panel where they're like, Monelle and Superboy are off and they're trying to crack the iron curtain of time because the super criminal, the Time Trapper, threw it up. And so they're threading this and then they do it again. They show it again in 318. And then in 321, they finally reveal him while still not revealing him at all. In this issue, where the legion apparently has access to this devastating secret weapon, the time trapper knows they have it and he wants it. And he's pretending to be a police chief, uh, interrogating the Legion to see which one of them will crack and reveal the weapon. It's again, so bizarre. And if any of them actually do crack, they're going to have to be in prison for life. The secret weapon can't actually get out.
Rob: And they want to really keep this villain shrouded in mystery because in the first issue in 318, we just really see him kind of off in the shadows a bit. And then in this next one, we only really see him from behind, just his hood popping out of his disguise. And really, even then, in our later issues, we don't really ever see this character's face. I know in later recons, or whatever you want to call it, we do see sometimes who's under the hood. But basically all we kind of get is this very Ghost of Christmas Past and crimson robes kind of look, which I always love as a villain. I loved, um, the crimson cowl in Marvel, who has a similar kind of thing, the Terror, even in like, the Tick, right. Who has a kind of similar look. I just love these kind of cowled villains. And even someone like Dr. Claw, who you never really see their face.
Randall Lotowycz: You never see his face, except for there is an action figure in the.
Rob: There is an action figure, yes.
Randall Lotowycz: Has his face. And you're like, wow, this ruins the illusion. I love that. The time trapper was mysterious. And then nowadays, there's so many people who've been revealed to be time trapper. It's interesting. And just now, it's like, well, it could be anyone.
Rob: Um, just on our last issue, our last episode, we covered ThunderCats, too. And actually, he's got a very mum, raw kind of look as well. With the Decrepit, you can kind of see the Decrepit body. But then the red robes.
Guido: Yeah. The serialized nature you were talking about, Randall, surprised me for a comic in 1964 that there was that they were threading this story because otherwise, uh, the story starts and ends. Every issue starts and ends, which was most cases, maybe you'd get a two parter. Most comics were complete stories. And so it was really interesting to see that they were doing this. And Rob even pointed out that when they refer to the fact that whoever superboy and whichever one of them are going against the Iron Curtain of time, it's almost as if it has happened. It doesn't happen, though. So they're willing to tell a serialized story in a different way than I'm used to Silver Age comics doing.
Randall Lotowycz: Yeah. And I think that's what helps me go back to them where there are other times, even my favorite characters, and I love Silver Age Superman stories, but I read them once and I kind of don't necessarily feel I'd need to go back, um, here. I'm like, oh, I might get more out of it this time because of the soap opera nature to it.
Guido: And does Edmund Hamilton write a lot? What was the deal with creators of Legion? Sorry to put you on the spot, but from what you know, I'm just curious now, did they have a consistent team? Is that part of why they were more serialized? Did they have a lot of different teams?
Randall Lotowycz: I mean, they had a lot of different teams. I mean, I'm just even looking at Jerry Siegel was doing a lot as well. Much of the art was Kurt, uh, Swan or John Forte. It was pretty stable back then. But also, I'd say there's only really been a handful of creators on Legion. You have Paul Levitts and you have, ah, Steve Little, Mike Grell drawing the Legion for a bit and then keep, uh, giffin along with Paul Levitts later on. It's always been some kind of singular voices, and I think that also adds to it. Mhm.
Rob: And John Forte, he actually helped create some of even the precedents, the teams that preceded the Legion of Superheroes. But he actually died very young. He died in 1966 of cancer. So just, uh, two years, actually, after the issues that we're discussing here. So that's one of the reasons why he didn't really continue on with these characters. Well, obviously he couldn't, he was dead, so he couldn't cut through the Iron Time Curtain, iron Curtain of life. He could just well, I'm using my Saturn girl telepathy to know that we should probably move on to our next segment. So let's hop in our time egg bubble and travel to exploring multiversity.
Randall Lotowycz: I, uh, am your guide through these vast new realities. Follow me and ponder the question what if?
Rob: And today we are asking the question, what if the time trapper created a pocket universe to turn superboy against the Legion of Superheroes? And we've got lots of books here. So starting with Legion of Superheroes number 37 from August 1987. That's a twist in time.
Guido: Written by Paul Levittz penciled by Greg Laroch. Inked by Mark DiCarlo, colored by Carl Gafford. Lettered by John Costanza. Edited by Karen Berger.
Rob: Next superman eight from August, 1987. That's future shock.
Guido: This is written and penciled by John Byrne. Inked by Carl Keisel, colored by Tom Zucco. Lettered by John Costanza, edited by Andrew.
Rob: Hellfer, mike Carlin, then Action Comics 591 from August 1987. Past Imperfect.
Guido: Burn burn, inked by Burn with Keith Williams, colored by Tom Zuko, lettered by John Costanza, edited by Mark Carlin and Andrew Hellfer.
Rob: And we wrap up with Legion of Superheroes number 38 from September 1987. The greatest hero of them all.
Guido: This is written by Paul Levittz, penciled by Greg Locke. Inked by Mike Carlo colored by Carl Gafford letter by Jock Sanza edited by Karen Berger It is dedicated to E. Nelson Bridwell, who had recently died. And he was known as DC's continuity cop and really interesting character. But Levittz and Burn at this point as the architects of this story. Uh, Levittz is a huge DC architect at this point, already having written hundreds of books from the 70s onward. Editor and writer, including on the Legion. And Byrne at this point, has mostly done Marvel, with the exception of a handful of Batman stories, and now had just started his very major reboot of man of Steel post Crisis. So this is early in Burns time at DC and midway through Levitz's legendary career. So we read this because Randall suggested it. And these are four parts of one story. There's some stuff that comes before it, actually, that we didn't read. But, uh, Randall, do you want to kick us off with a summary of this?
Randall Lotowycz: Yeah, the summary is well, I'm not going to say too early. It's early in the post Crisis era. But that man of Steel miniseries spanned, I think, eight or ten years. So Superman's not young, but it's young in the reboot. And this is a Superman who was never Superboy. He's the only Kryptonian. So there's no Supergirl, there's no crypto. The dog, um, very recently discovered Kryptonite because, uh, that was with Metallo and Superman number one. And also, this new era of Superman is not as powerful as he was pre Crisis. And this comic draws that distinction where Superman soon meets this alternate Superboy, who happens to be more powerful than him. And that plays into the story. So how this comes about is the Legion is still in the 30th century existing despite the fact that the Crisis and man of Steel wiped away Superman's time as Superboy. So their entire basis of origin is no longer in continuity. And it's how to reconcile with that. And John Byrne and Paul Levittz came up with this very interesting idea that in a lot of ways just completely undoes what was supposed to be the simplicity of the post crisis universe where there was only one universe. And nothing else. And no other Earths out there but the time trapper who exists outside time was used as a device to retcon and create a major retcon where he recognized that time had changed and that the Legion was inspired by that. They're in an anomaly, can't talk today, uh, because they're based on Superboy and Superboy doesn't exist. So what does he do? He creates superboy. Um, he just copies the universe, a sliver of it. He basically whittles it down to what he needs, which is Krypton and Earth. So he creates this miniature pocket universe, as he calls it, that only has Krypton and Earth. And he manipulates it so that Superboy is created the way he was in the pre Crisis world. And then anytime the. Legion was going back in time and they thought that they were going to the past. They were being shuttled across to a parallel reality where that's where Superboy existed. And that's how they argued that all the old stories still mattered because they happened with Pocket universe Superboy, who now, uh, is the moment where a time trapper is going to use him as a weapon against the Legion.
Guido: And so, question in the 36 issues of Legion that precede this, well, are those all post crisis? I'm not sure they straddle it because.
Randall Lotowycz: I would say around issue 17 is 16 or 17 is dealing with brainiac five morning supergirl. Um, okay.
Guido: And then so post crisis, do they ever address prior to this story, the fact that they are an anomaly? Or is that left so it's left unsaid until this story comes about.
Randall Lotowycz: Exactly. The story is the reckoning for it, and then getting ahead after this story, it's like, let's never mention this and let's just move on.
Guido: Well, yeah, I have some future comments to make on this story because I was surprised actually, at some of the connections, um, that this story, I think, shows without naming them. I think the story was a major influence on Jeff John's and stuff that happens in Infinite Crisis, which was very surprising to me. Having read this for the first time.
Randall Lotowycz: I'm not sure how much you want me to talk in detail, but then, so it's the Legion having to fight against a Superboy who doesn't necessarily want to fight against them, but he's being used by the time trapper and he's trying to preserve the pocket universe. Uh, and interestingly enough, the time trapper is put a device in this parallel Earth that's keeping the antimatter waves left over from the crisis from wiping out this Earth. So the time trapper mhm, basically, um, forcing Superboy to fight and then Superman from this new reality, gets pulled into it, even though he doesn't know the Legion. They're also just kind of confused, like, wow, this is a Superman who doesn't know us.
Rob: Um, yeah, they constantly think that it is Superboy grown up and aged, which is interesting because of course that's what they would think. And I think this is a trope we've mentioned so many times on our podcast before, but we've all seen it before, where you have the two heroes or the two very similar characters that they have to battle it out. So we, of course, have to have the Superman Superboy battle. And it's interesting, I didn't know, because I don't know too much about some of this DC history that I didn't realize that they had lessened the power of Superman. I kind of thought, oh, because Superboy is younger and more virile, maybe that he has some of these other powers. But it's interesting because, yeah, that's, uh, I think always a challenge with Superman or what do you do? Because he's such a powerful character. So it is a great idea. Okay, let's have him fight this younger version of himself.
Randall Lotowycz: Yeah, no, I mean, it was definitely a deliberate thing, and it takes away from the specialness of Superman. But post Crisis, he's not the first superhero. The Justice League precedes him. He's no longer the center. It was a deliberate choice to move away from Superman as the beacon of DC Comics. And so he's powerful, but not as powerful. He's probably just marginally more powerful than, say, Martian Manhunter. Um, but he's no longer a godlike character. And I think that was the key endeavor of John Byrne in rebooting him.
Rob: And we get Mon PA Kent here, but it said a couple of times that they're not quite the same mon Paw Kent. So I don't know, Randall, if they look differently. And they also get a little not evil, but they get a little moments of being a little wicked, a little double crossy.
Randall Lotowycz: They are the Silver age mom Paw Kent who raised superboy. Not the post crisis mom Paw Kent who are still alive. So, yeah, this version of, uh, mom PA Kent died around the time Superman stopped he stopped being Superboy and moved to Metropolis. Um, so they're older, too. Um, so that's why Superman is like, I recognize them, but they're not the same. Mhm it's who they were before. And yeah, to get into the spoilers on it is yeah. To resolve this conflict, superboy ultimately has to sacrifice himself to protect the pocket universe from being destroyed by the time trapper. So he dies, and he's the only one powerful enough to temporarily hold this machine together so that the Earth is stabilized. I guess in the simplest terms I can put it and dies. And now the Legion can just move on that. Yes, they were based on a Superboy, and now Superboy is dead. So they're not going to be trying to visit him anymore. The story can continue.
Guido: Yeah, I liked that ending, even though I had no emotional attachment. I mean, I think it's done really well, and some of it has supported the art in both of these sets of issues. So both obviously burn. But also greg Laroque on Legion. Uh, so good. Oh, my gosh. The page layouts and the characters and the action mixed with the emotion, the backgrounds, which might be helped by Carl Gafford's coloring. Everything is just really cool to look at. And, yeah, I felt the emotional beats. Um, I noticed in the funeral, the gold statue, I thought that was really cool because that becomes then Superman statue when he dies, is the gold, uh, giant statue, I think there's no way that wasn't a direct reference. It looks identical, pretty much. So, yeah, very cool moments in this. Even as someone who had no attachment to this world or these characters or what was going on.
Randall Lotowycz: Well, you know what, I actually that's funny. That page, it's a two page spread where they're standing around his coffin. And the gold statue. What's just occurring to me here is, uh, Supergirl. You see her gold statue in the back. But technically, if you get into these online discussion groups, I don't know, I couldn't point to the issues. It's just been way too long. But apparently this pocket universe didn't have that supergirl. It only had Superboy and Crypto, and that the supergirl stories of the Legion were apocryphal post crisis. But at the same time, there she is. Her statue is still there.
Guido: Yeah.
Rob: And then not only does this story remove Superboy, but it also removes Crypto because we get a, uh, nice little beat with Crypto, who's adorable, and we can hear all of Crypto's thoughts. I guess he can't actually speak, but we can hear all of his thoughts. And he sacrifices his powers by getting the gold Kryptonite, which removes your powers. And so then he's, I guess, just turned into an ordinary dog. But I guess that removes Crypto from this continuity also and from the Legion of Super Pets.
Randall Lotowycz: Uh, I think it's a much more gentler send off than Alan Moore's, like Kryptonite poisoning Crypto in whatever.
Rob: Still get to be a dog and live on the farm in Smallville in this pocket universe.
Guido: He's smart enough to keep he barks at the Kent to get them to get the gold Kryptonite. So while he can't articulate his language, uh, or thoughts, he's still at like.
Rob: Lassie level intelligence, basically. And I think to what we were saying earlier, you get so much, I think, in the Legion issues, some of that great soap opera elements, because while there's so much story kind of going on, we've got two sections of the Legion and one's Frozen and one's in Smallville. But you get these other stories vary soap opera, where you get Polar Boy, who's the leader, and he's doubting, did I do the right thing by sending them there? And then you've got another I don't even know the character's name, who's I guess transformed. And now he's Flame, the one who turned into Fire. Uh, he looks like Firestorm and he's talking with is it his girlfriend? She's got wings. And they're debating, like, his transfer. So these are all so soap opera because they have nothing to do with the main story, but are kind of existing and just adding and it's like, I guess the thing when you have 50 main characters, they all get this little bit of screen time.
Randall Lotowycz: Yeah. And they just weave in and out every issue. And sometimes they're just not in issues for a long period of time. Mhm, and they're given a chance to grow. I guess that's the other thing that I from Silver Age. Even past this, the Legion grew up, and that doesn't really get to happen often. And when these characters age, it makes them special and unique in the way that Superman and Batman can't age, but we have it with Dick Grayson. I think that's part of the reason Dick Grayson is so popular is like, you know, we got to see him as Robin, and now we see him as Night Wing. And it's there is a larger storytelling thread where he's allowed to get older.
Rob: And since, of course, we're talking about, uh, um, our main villain here, the Time trapper, I don't quite know. Maybe, Randall, you can tell us what his exact plan is. He already seems pretty omnipotent.
Guido: Um, m, I get the plan, but what's the intention? Yeah, I don't take over the universe.
Rob: But he already seems pretty powerful.
Randall Lotowycz: I wish I could tell you and someone out there who could explain it. Um, but again, why did he go through all this trouble? If the Legion is an, uh, anomaly, you could argue that they probably would just disappear. But he wants to, I guess, destroy them. So to destroy them, he preserves their creation.
Guido: Right. It's one of those absurd things, like a Bond villain. Like, I have to keep you alive so that I can kill you.
Randall Lotowycz: Yeah. He's like, I'm going to fix your time problem, but just so I can destroy you. It makes he is just that evil. I want to see them wrecked. I want to see them defeated by Superboy like that, you know? So he's the sadist. Um.
Rob: Yeah, he does have that that kind of elder of the universe kind of thing where he is just wanting to toy with these rather than have his exact plan that he's marking out.
Randall Lotowycz: When you, uh, have that much power, you got to find a way to pass the time. And I think that's what he's doing. He's like, okay, mess with the Legion again.
Guido: Well, that was one fun thing I liked about him. And reading this and discovering this is I don't associate too much DC with the Marvel Bronze Age cosmic existentialism that, like, Starlin is doing, and Adam Warlock has and even a little bit Kang has at times. I don't often see that in the DC books. And this that I'm familiar with, and this brought a lot of that feeling to it. I mean, I also think there is just no way. I think it's one of those cases where I feel like Kang and Time Trapper sort of influenced each other at different junctures. And I even was telling Rob, uh, when I was reading this, they call where he is the Citadel at the End of Time. Now, I did so much to try to figure out and get the clear answer, and as best I can tell, because in Loki, they call where he who remains is the Citadel at the End of Time. Now, they don't use that language in the comics. In the comics in 75. So before this he who Remained debuts in Thor and they call it the Temple at the end of time. So it just feels like one of those things where maybe Paul Levitt here is, like, sort of riffing on what he saw with that He Who Remain story back in the 70s. Not directly, but now Loki is definitely directly taking the language of this story and Citadel at the end of time. So it's cool to see all those connections.
Randall Lotowycz: It's kind of like the Doom Patrol, X Men stuff, like, all going on.
Guido: Exactly.
Rob: Totally.
Randall Lotowycz: Let's have a leader in a wheelchair and fight the brotherhood of evil. I mean, the brotherhood of evil mutants.
Guido: Uh, yeah, exactly. Uh, so before you move on, Randall, do you think this fixed their time problem?
Randall Lotowycz: I think this revocably broke the Legion, and it's why we're now on our fifth reboot of the Legion. Um, and I think it opened the door to more contradictions and then just this need to have in story explanations for everything that's going on behind the scenes. Uh, I like the way different writers approach it, but, yeah, it's everything John does. Uh, it is Infinite Crisis to a degree. It is what John's did with Doomsday Clock. Um, and it's kind of what Scott Schneider did with metal and death metal. I don't feel comics were that self referential until this moment. And, I mean, you could argue, well, it's a new device, it's a new storytelling device that they didn't have before. But mhm, it does make things, to use your word, impenetrable. It's like, how do you do this? And then it's just constantly digging deeper. So, yeah, the Legion never really mentioned Superboy again, and they never really mentioned that their entire reality is and I could be wrong, I maybe just glazed over it, but that their entire reality was a lie in a pocket universe. So this was 87. Then, like, two years later, uh, their timeline gets rebooted, and Superboy was no longer their inspiration at all. A whole new timeline gets created for the Legion just two years later, and then that gets wiped away by Zero Hour, and we just get a whole new Legion. And that was like, a great clean slate. And I saw no reason I love the post Zero Hour Legion, and again, I love it because over maybe seven years, so much more condensed. Not decades, but over seven years, you got to watch them mature and change. Um, then, for whatever reason, DC decided they needed a new version, which I don't necessarily agree with. And so that was like the Mark Wade Legion that came out around Infinite Crisis, and they decided not to keep that around, even though I appreciated that. And Jeff Johns brought back this original Legion, so it just constantly gets a little so convoluted. Um, there's five different incarnations of the Legion, so at minimum, there's also, you could argue, more technically new. Uh, 52 had two different legions. You'll, uh, see see, both in my DC Book of Lists, on sale now. Yeah, I don't know. There's no going back from this point where it's just like some writers going to have to write themselves out of this in one way or another. And it just adds to the mess instead of adding to the tapestry, I guess is mhm best way to put it.
Guido: Though sometimes that mess is fun because like you said it did for you as a kid, the mess creates all these rabbit holes you can go down oh, yeah. Even though, uh, you need it to get its hooks in you. And once you do, it means you could have an endless lifetime of investigation in the story world. It's just that first step in is harder when you have something like this. But it is cool to think that this is the start of some of that really complex storytelling and where that can take you as it did you.
Randall Lotowycz: Yeah, it was easier for me because it was like, I mean, at the end of the day, at the time I was discovering it, it was the same legion, um, just with one story sort of explaining away the contradiction of the new reality. Whereas now it's like, which of the five legions are you going to? That first step is M much bigger now and I don't envy people coming into it. It was simpler for me and then just to touch on it. I know we're going long is then this parallel Earth gave us another one of the most major Superman stories ever. Uh, so this world went on without Superboy, and as we find out a year or so later, uh, the General Zod and the Phantom Zone criminals on this parallel Earth exist, come over and decimate the Earth, and Superman is pulled back in to have to go fight them. And he famously kills the Kryptonian villains because there's nothing else to do with them. And then he has an existential crisis himself and exiles himself to space for quite some time. And also the post crisis supergirl comes out of it where she's no longer a Superman's cousin, but she is this weird shape shifting clone of Laura Lana Lang, mhm, and that's who we have for all the supergirl until Peter David put his own spin on her.
Guido: Yeah, well, it's all ambitious storytelling and that's something that I always appreciate. But, uh, the, uh, impacts, I think, are endless. So, yeah, I think there's a lot more to talk about, Rob.
Rob: Yes. So let's talk about those impacts in our final segment. Pondering possibilities.
Randall Lotowycz: Will the future you describe be averted? Diverted? Diverted.
Rob: So Gito, what are we talking about for our pondering possibilities?
Guido: I think we're just going to continue this conversation. You know, I looked at whether or not we should read, but it frankly would have been a heavy lift and just weighted us down more if we should have read Zero Hour. And the arc that time trapper has leading into it or the role he plays, kind of in The Final Crisis Legion of Three Worlds, he does appear in an animated movie from 2014, which we didn't watch. I don't know if you've seen Randall JLA adventures trapped in time.
Randall Lotowycz: Um, I did see that, but I was very stoned at the time, invited me over, we got high and watched that. And I could tell you.
Guido: Well, we'll have to hold that for another episode and see if it's the time trapper we know and love. But, yeah, I figured, let's just talk timeline in DC time in DC, what we want the future of the Legion or these kind of convoluted timeline stories to be. Um, one thing we've sort of been skirting around, and Randall, if you've referred to, is Superboy Prime. So, Infinite Crisis is one of my favorite stories ever. It's probably my favorite DC crossover ever. I love Infinite Crisis. I love the architecture of it. I love how every piece fit into it over, like, a two year span. I think it's massive, and I think it actually nails the landing, which is unusual for something that big. I could not believe that I had never heard of this storyline and had never read it because this is Superboy Prime. This story, even if it's not actually him, this feels like an origin for him because it's the same sense of, like, this deranged character who's trying to protect his world and does, uh, evil through that. And so I think it's really remarkable to me that there's no doubt in my mind that this story influenced and inspired Infinite Crisis, Superboy Prime. And then even in Final Crisis, you get, like, those scenes where Superboy ends up trapped back in the fake smallville, and he's, like, reading comics about himself. And I'm like all of those stories. Grant Morrison, Jeff Johns had to have been inspired by this story.
Randall Lotowycz: No, I mean, absolutely it does. Although it raises the question, it's like, do stories always have to revert to an evil Superman to make him interesting? Uh, but I do kind of like, in both these cases, he's not straight out evil. He's just conflicted and he's a kid. Um, those two elements are, yeah. Although I'm going to say, have you ever actually read the Superboy Prime origin issue? It's a DC Comics Presents comic. Uh, it came out during the Crisis.
Guido: During Infinite Crisis.
Randall Lotowycz: Yeah, I think I did Crisis on Infinite Earth.
Guido: Oh, then no, I don't think I did.
Randall Lotowycz: When I was reading that, circa this period, I discovered I'm like, I had this issue when I was, like, four years old. It must have been a random comic I picked up somewhere. Um, but I read it. I know this story. Oh, my God, I've read this before. And that was a weird moment for me at, like, eleven or twelve, reading something from that I had seen before. I was into comics. But, yeah, I recommend that, but it gives you the entire Earth prime origin of Superboy.
Guido: Mhm. That's very cool.
Rob: Certainly seemed like to me, too. That kind of what you were saying, Randall, where they were using these issues to really justify a lot of what was happening. And I feel like that's what we're also seeing on screen now with the upcoming Flash movie as well. I know they're not using the time trapper, probably we don't know, maybe he's there, but using that to kind of justify okay, all these past things are existing in one place. I think Greg Berlanti also doing kind of similar things on television as well, taking these we've certainly seen on Superman and Lois, lots of alternate universes where Lois Lane was also John Henry Irons's wife on Another Planet or another World. So, yeah, I think we're seeing a lot of the ramifications of this, whether it was directly coming from this story or just kind of what this story helped birth in making giving everything a reason for being for better or for worse.
Randall Lotowycz: Absolutely. And I mean, it's I think just yeah, the existence of Lois and Clark where that spun out of the Infinite Crisis TV show, but they waited until was it the second season to reveal that it's not even in the same universe anymore. It's not the Tyler Hochen superman we saw on, uh, supergirl. It's a different Tyler Hochen Superman. Um, I'm curious to see how the flash shakes out. I can't talk much, but obviously, you guys know I wrote a tie in book and I was about to say.
Guido: Rob Randall might know the answer to your question. Not that he can tell us come June.
Randall Lotowycz: I can speak as a fan who knows the stuff at this point. We know that Michael Keaton is not Batman. Going forward where when they made The Flash, he was more or less because he was in The Flash. Then he was in, uh, Batgirl. Uh, then that, you know, there was the you know, that the news reports that he was going to be in Aquaman, but then that they reshot the scenes with Ben Affleck. I don't know how flash is going to end, but I will say that in a lot of ways it was being used as an in story pivot to explain what was going on and what was going to happen when Walter Hamada was still steering the ship. Like it was going to be the bridge from what came before to what comes next.
Guido: And by the way, this is you speaking as the author of The Flash, the official visual companion, The Scarlet Speedster from page to screen out this June. We've preordered our copy already, of course. And I'm really excited because I think that movie is going to have a lot to explain. And you're going to help us do that in this book.
Randall Lotowycz: At that point, I can come back on and give you a little bit of the what if parallel reality, the script hadn't changed.
Guido: That's, uh, fun.
Rob: And do you think we talked a little bit about the similarities in some ways between Kang and the time trapper as well? Do you think because Marvel has kind of gone all in with Kang there, that we would see the time trapper or any of the other many DC time traveling villains? I'm also thinking of like Per Degaton, the, uh, time traveling fascist who's also kind of doing very time trapper kind of things of trying to erase the JSA and stuff like that. But do you think we'll see these characters, or do you think, like, DC wants to maybe step away from them because Marvel has kind of now been doing that on screen?
Randall Lotowycz: I feel like if DC would be great if they leaned into a character like this, but I just get the sense that they don't know what to do with the Legion, and anything affiliated with the Legion is just going to be sitting on the back shelf for a while. I, uh, know they just did, uh, the one supergirl in the Legion animated movie. And I haven't watched it yet. I've heard some very positive things and I've heard some negative things. But, um, I'm curious to see it. And, uh, any Legion content is exciting to me, but hopefully that means it's their opening doors. But just based on everything that's happened even in the past five years with the latest incarnation of the Legion, I don't know. I don't know what the Legion is going to look like when they come back. And the time trapper is going to be that's going to be entirely contingent on what they do with the next version of the Legion. Mhm.
Guido: Yeah, I think, though, Rob and I'm thinking Randall, about in the Book of Lists, the hierarchy of extra dimensional beings outside the multiverse that you create, which is really great and outlines all these characters. And Rob, I'm thinking about when we covered Kingdom Come a few weeks ago and the quintessence which appear in Kingdom Come and have since then been brought into the DC canonical universe. And James Gunn's interest in Elseworld storytelling, probably Kingdom Come since he posted the COVID with no explanation when he took the job. I think we will see. Uh, I don't know that they'll try to do, like, the Marvel multiverse and hold everything really closely tied together, but I don't think the Else worlds are going to be totally distinct strands. And I think this first chapter being called Gods and Monsters might hint at there being a cosmology that James Gunn is interested in building for these characters. And so I think a Time Trapper or someone like him, certainly the Guardians, uh, he already said that the Green Lantern TV show is going to be a huge part of telling the story in the first chapter. So I do think we'll see some of these cosmic beings.
Rob: Yeah, we talked also, I think on the kingdom come episode, that the Specter could also be another great character that kind of brings these worlds together. Kind of like the time trapper. He's got that hooded and thing, and he's kind of existing outside of time, a very ghost like. And you could almost see both of those characters. I don't know if they've ever really interacted, but you could see both of those characters kind of on the good and evil. Well, Spectre sometimes not so good, but on those kind of two realms of the timeline battling it out.
Randall Lotowycz: Yeah, that's true. I feel like Specter has got to be I don't know. I want to go back to that list and see where I'd put time trapper on the hierarchy, because I feel like to some degrees, he's a little bit lower than I mean, Specter's hand was used for the creation of the universe, and Christopher, so he's like, next level. But then again, if you bring in what Scott Snyder added, perpetua is probably she's more powerful than Specter. Um, you could debate this all day, but time trapper, if not on the Quintessence level, maybe a notch below. Um, mhm only notch below because his motivations are so I'm going to go screw with the Legion today. He's not like a omniversal thinker, uh, in a way, but immense power.
Guido: Yeah, I think that is true. He is constrained by his fascinate or focus on the Legion.
Rob: And Randall, we're going to put you on the Quintessence level as an excellent guest for bringing us these interesting stories that neither Guido or I knew too much about. So thank you so much.
Randall Lotowycz: My pleasure. Thanks for having me on again.
Guido: So that is a wrap. Thank you for listening. And yes, Randall, special thank you to you. Can you tell listeners, uh, again about the Flashbook that they should buy? Again about the Book of List book that they should buy and where to find you and support you?
Randall Lotowycz: Yeah, um, you can find me pretty much anywhere online. It's pretty easy as long as you learn how to spell my last name. L-O-T-O-W-Y-C-Z. Uh, you'll find me on the Socials. Uh, the DC Book of Lists is on sale. It's my big celebration of trying to make sense of everything I love about DC. Also going to plug Superhero uh, Playbook is my most personal book. It's all about lessons kids can learn from superheroes. And I have a book on the Flash coming out, looking at the inspirations and making of the film, and I hope people enjoy that, because I took it because I wanted to do a project similar to these oversized Batman and Batman Returns movie books that came out back in the 90s or 89 and 92. Um, and I wanted to make one, so I did.
Guido: But yours is in hardcover. Yes. And I have been.
Rob: Gido and I have been rob.
Guido: The reading list is in the show notes. You can follow us online at dear.
Rob: Watchers and leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. We'll be back soon with another trip through the multiverse.
Guido: In the meantime, in the words of Uatu, you keep pondering the possibilities.