Panel Vision - Legends

In March 1986 DC Comics would change the course of the comic book medium and superhero genre forever in the conclusion to their major event comic Crisis On Infinite Earths.  The conclusion featured the first ever universe reboot and a line wide relaunch, essentially allowing the company to start over from scratch after nearly 20 years of continuity.  It was a risky move in a long history of risky moves DC had been making throughout the late Silver Age such as launching numerous non-superhero comics, selling their merchandising rights to Kenner toys, and launching the Superman movie. 

The revival was a major success but with it came new issues, mainly based around establishing the comic universe’s new status quo and where a lot of characters from the previous era stood now that everything had reverted back to square zero.  So, in November of 1986 DC launched a special 6-issue mini-series entitled Legends written by John Ostrander and Len Wein with artwork by John Byrne, let’s take a look. 

Legends is one of the strangest comic events you’ll ever read mainly owed to how much it acts as the fourth act of a greater story.  Legends was only the 4^th ever “event” comic to be produced at the time and the relative newness and uncertainty over how these things should be handled definitely shines through.  What’s more, this is only the 2^nd time Darkseid, the seminal villain of Jack Kirby’s New Gods and future heavy hitter bad guy of the DC Universe as a whole, was featured as a primary antagonist.  I’ll probably come back to this in the future if/when I do a history of Darkseid but previously he’d only ever threatened the Earth as part of Jack Kirby’s 1984 5-issue mini-series Super Powers, which was itself tied into the toy line of the same name. 

Super Powers essentially worked as the first ever event comic, drawing on the basic format of previous major crossover stories for inspiration while using Darkseid and the New Gods as a great big toybox of villains to throw around.  Later that same year Marvel’s Secret Wars would build on Super Powers’ bare bones template by introducing the idea of tie-in issues and greater event impact, like Spider-Man’s black suit or the Thing remaining on Battleworld and leaving the Fantastic Four for a time.  Crisis On Infinite Earths took that idea even farther by using the event comic to alter continuity problems and then finally there came Legends, which is essentially 6 whole issues of event comic that’s been engineered to advertise future comics. 

That’s not necessarily to say Legends is bad even though it’s far from great.  The core thesis for the comic is a pretty unique one and in the hands of future writers would end up the crux of much more impactful storylines.  Essentially it’s an invasion/war story but rather than rooting those acts in a military sense like future DC crossover events Invasion and Millennium, this is an ideological invasion that sparks a culture war.  Our villain for the piece is Darkseid and of all the bad guys to try and commandeer Earth’s cultural and ideological identity he’s probably the best suited, especially given how often that was his plan while fighting Earth-based New Gods like Mr. Miracle or the Forever People or even Superman.  Darkseid’s big plan is that because he hasn’t been able to conquer Earth yet (it’s a little unclear when he last tried,) he’s decided to use his various agents to undermine the human populations faith and admiration for their superheroes.  Setting forth a group of well place minions to ruin the reputation of various heroes and subtly influence the populace towards hatred of their costumed protectors. 

The idea of a central clash between superheroes and the people they protect isn’t necessarily new but it’s rare to see it executed very well and Legends is actually one of the better examples.  This mainly comes down to iconography and how well John Byrne blends the anti-superhero mobs of the DC universe with the imagery of hate mobs and anti-America mobs from real life.  The book may have a lot of flaws but any scene of hordes of angry citizens waving burning effigies of makeshift superheroes always comes off deeply chilling.  

It also helps that the hate mobs get into some seriously ugly stuff, which was part of DC’s overall effort at the time to establish themselves as more adult and modern.  There’s an extended shopping mall sequence where a mob tears into Jason Todd, who still looks like a child, that’s thoroughly unnerving and a very well written moment where a cop accidentally shoots his own partner while aiming for Black Canary and quickly uses his hatred of her to alleviate his own guilt, only becoming more hateful and destructive.  This kind of clash was basically the same idea that Marvel would draw on during their first Civil War event only without as much visceral imagery.

Where Civil War does manage to outflank Legends is that there actually was a two-sided argument at the heart of that story.  In Legends, people hating superheroes is just the resort of Darkseid’s minion the Glorious Godfrey messing with everybody’s head.  As such, any argument against the heroes can’t help but come off patently untrue and more than a little unhinged, mainly because it just needs to be charismatic ranting instead of being actually persuasive.  

It’s still an impactful story but lacks a certain degree of nuance that might’ve made it more lasting, especially given that Godfrey’s ultimate goal is to use his anti-superhero fervor to launch a coup on the US government.  Godfrey’s mind control powers really do feel like a cop out, it all ends up a bit to clean and neatly exonerating for the public at large that they were the unwilling pawns of dark alien Gods.  At the same time, Darkseid does end up sending an alien army through to Earth to join Godfrey’s coup so it feels a lot like the whole “discredit superheroes and spread hate” plan was kind of pointless. 

The main reason for this boils down to the overall point of the comic not really being about the Darkseid culture war and ideological invasion. As mentioned, this book has a lot more to do with the now common practice of events as starting points, especially for characters who were trapped in some kind of narrative limbo prior to the event.  That’s why so many of the main characters in Legends AREN’T big names of the DC Universe.  The lead heroes are folks like Captain Marvel, Blue Beetle, Guy Gardner, Dr. Fate, Cosmic Boy, Kid Flash and more, essentially characters whose fates were left unclear after the events of Crisis On Infinite Earths. 

For some folks this had to do with DC’s decision to end its “multiverse,” an array of parallel universes that DC used to tell non-canon stories and as a storage system for the characters they had purchased from competitors.  Folks like Captain Atom, Shazam, Blue Beetle, the Question, Uncle Sam, and more were all originally published by other companies before DC purchased them and slotted them into one of their universes.  With the Multiverse gone DC wanted to maintain some of those characters so Legends was meant to fold them back into continuity. 

The same idea applied to folks like Dr. Fate, a World War 2 character DC had revived on Earth-2, and Cosmic Boy, a hero set in the future.  After the Crisis, it was unclear who among the Earth-2 heroes were part of this new continuity or indeed what DC futures were still considered “canon.”  For others, Legends was about affirming their place in the new status quo, like Guy Gardner going from unlikely fill in character to the new Green Lantern or Kid Flash Wally West officially taking the mantel of his fallen mentor. 

That same kind of shake-up applied to a lot of teams being shifted around thanks to Legends as well.  This was where the incredibly embarrassing Justice League Detroit era came to a merciful close and the incredibly influential and well written Justice League International got its start, as well as the first ever appearance of the Suicide Squad in the form of conscripted super villains rather than simply a government black ops team. 

I don’t know I have a real point to make about Legends other than really wanting to talk about the history of event comics and DC continuity in particular.  It’s a surprisingly topical comic these days given that both DC and Marvel had big, universe realigning events this past year, Suicide Squad and Legends of Tomorrow are both on their way, and Darkseid seems to only be growing in importance as we tick ever closer to Justice League.  

It’s an interesting story to revisit and you could certainly do worse, as DC and Marvel would go on to prove over the next few decades.  The pacing is a little choppy owing to how much of the story exists to facilitate tie-ins elsewhere but the artwork is incredible and there are plenty of great moments sprinkled throughout the story but as far as “forgotten events” go it’s pretty easy to see why Legends turned out to be less than legendary. 


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