Thanks, Northern Piper. Okay, a quick capsule:
-
Yes, the evil Controller who the Legion thought was the Time Trapper was just a stand-in for the real guy. But that was unrelated to the various continuity changes.
-
You have the Superboy thing down straight, as it was intended in 1986-7.
-
The Legion re-start in 1989 was not originally intended to include any continuity changes, it was just supposed to be the adventures of greatly-matured Legionnaires in a much darker universe (which it pretty much was). However, editors stepped in and mucked it up as follows:
3a) The editor of Superman decreed that the Legion’s Superboy had to be wiped out of continuity.
3b) Since the Superman editor is pretty much top dog in the DC offices, the Legion editors had to follow suit. So they cooked up a story to construct a non-Superboy time-line. This was in 1990, and the issues involved are issues # 4 and 5 of that LSH series. To recap it briefly:
The Time Trapper and Mon-El, believed dead at the end of the prior Legion series, were really alive, Time Trapper reveals to Mon-El that he created the Pocket Universe and Superboy in order that there be a legend of heroic youth that lasts into the 30th century to inspire the Legion’s creation in order that they’d fight Mordru, lose but weaken him enough for the Time Trapper to come in, defeat Mordru and take over the universe. Mon-El, horrified at the idea, kills the Time Trapper, reversing everything th eTrapper had done. In issue # 5, we see how the universe would have been if the Trapper had never manipulated anything to result in the Legion’s creation: Mordru tyrannically rules everything. In this world, Mysa Nal, Rond Vidar and Glorith figure out that the only way to overthrow Mordru would be to manipulate time so as to create a new universe in which there is a Legion of Super-Heroes. Their universe looks mostly the same as the one we’re familiar with, except that Lar Gand, instead of meeting Superboy and becoing Mon-El, becomes a 20th-century hero in his own right named Valor, and he’s the “big inspiration,” and it’s Glorith who becomes the Legion’s big time-villain. Also, Supergirl is now back in Legion continuity as a Daxamite named Laurel Gand. Since Superboy never existed, the “conspiracy” story in LSH # 46-50 (1988) was retroactively changed; what happened was that Glorith destroyed everyone on the planet Daxam, and that was why several Legionnaires conspired revenge.
3c) The Superman editors realize that due to the existence of the new Byrne Supergirl and the importance of Superman’s killing the Phantom Zone villains, the Pocket Universe story can’t be wiped out so easily. So they order that it’s back in continuity, leading to some off-hand mentions of Superboy and the Time Trapper in the Legion book which really reveals nothing about the relative place in Legion history of Superboy vs. Valor and of the Time Trapper vs. Glorith.
-
Due to the problematic nature of Legion history, the Bierbaums, two of the creators of the 90’s Legion comic, get DC to agree to writing a “young Legion” series that would tell stories of the Legion in its early days to clarify history for new readers while continuing to write the mature stories in the then-running series. Editorial meddling changes this “young Legion” idea into a team of young Legionnaires existing concurrently with the mature ones, so the Legion team writes a story in which young Legionnaire-clones are discovered and eventually spun off into their own series. Which set of Legionnaires is original and which are clones, as well as who’s responsible for creating the clones (Dominators or Dark Circle).
-
- DC decides that their big event for the year will be “Zero Hour.” The main point of that will be that following that event, every DC comic will have a “Zero issue” in which a full understanding of the character can be conveyed. Going forward, if any new reader gets into the comic, he should be able to read issue # 0 and be clear on just what he’s reading about. In the words of Mark Waid: “Kurt Busiek, Tom McCraw and I sat for days trying to figure out how we’d boil down the two [mature and young Legions] teams’ histories enough to present it understandably in two zero issues [Legion of Super-Heroes # 0 and Legionnaires # 0]. We just couldn’t do it. It was impossible.” So instead, they wrote the six-part story “End of an Era,” in which the Time Trapper’s and the young Legionnaires’ true natures are revealed, it’s explained why Legion history is so darned confusing, and the Legion’s universe is completely wiped out so that the time-line can be repaired, and “what the thirtieth century was really supposed to be like will finally emerge.” That is the new, young Legion that is seen from then on.
-
Hypertime has not yet affected the Legion. Whatever about it confuses you should not inhibit you ability to understand recent Legion history. I am not aware of any appearances of a 70’s-style “Superboy and the Legion” showcase story since Zero Hour.
-
The recent appearance of the Fatal Five in the twenty-first century (not twentieth anymore!) was just a hologram created by Brainiac 13, who has become the current incarnation of Superman’s foe. The current Brainiac “downloaded” that “upgraded” version of himself from the future. The Sun-Eater has, post-Zero Hour, become a twentieth-century evil as well.
Most, if not all, of this, can be gotten from the Help File I created, referenced above. Any further questions?