LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES
Pocket Universe Primer
Part Two: The Greatest Hero of Them All
By Aaron Severson
SUPERGIRL
So what about Supergirl, the late Kara Zor-El of Krypton? In the pre-Crisis universe Supergirl was Superboy’s cousin, the daughter of his aunt and uncle Alura and Zor-El, born after the destruction of Krypton. Kara and her parents were natives of Argo City, which was blasted into deep space by the explosion that destroyed the rest of Krypton; when Argo was destroyed years later, Kara’s parents outfitted her in a costume modeled on Superman’s and sent her to Earth, where she met her famous cousin (Action Comics #252). She later became a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes (in fact, it was later established that, from the Legion’s point of view, she was offered membership before Superboy), trying out for the first time in Action Comics #267 and being accepted roughly a year later in Action Comics #276. She resigned in Superboy & the Legion of Super-Heroes #204, but remained a Legion reservist, returning to help the team against Darkseid (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 2 #293–294) and in the trial of Ontiir (#312–315).
Supergirl died during the Crisis on Infinite Earths (Crisis #7). There were several references to her and to her death in the Legion series during the run of the Crisis series: Brainiac Five mourned the 1,000 year anniversary of her demise in Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 3 #16–18, and several Legionnaires, including Brainiac Five, suspected that the mysterious Sensor Girl (revealed in #25 to be Queen Projectra) was Supergirl in disguise, having somehow escaped death to seek refuge in the 30th century. However, Supergirl subsequently was erased from the post-Crisis universe, wiping out her history with the Legion.
In the Trapper’s timeline there was no Supergirl in the Legion of Super-Heroes. (It is unfortunately not possible to substitute the Pocket Universe Supergirl (Matrix) for the pre-Crisis Girl of Steel in Legion continuity. She was not created until after Superboy’s death and her powers were very different than those of Kara Zor-El.) Therefore, all appearances of or references to Supergirl in Legion stories must be considered apocryphal in the Trapper’s timeline. Most of the events of those stories still took place in the post-Crisis universe, albeit without Supergirl’s presence. Those events may therefore have taken place in a manner slightly different than depicted in the original stories (for example, the Legion still pondered the mystery of Sensor Girl’s true identity, but did not suspect she was secretly Supergirl). Several stories in which Supergirl played a pivotal role, or Supergirl stories in which the Legion appeared, did not happen at all.
In Glorith’s timeline a Daxamite woman named Laurel Gand joined the Legion at the same time Supergirl originally did and took Supergirl’s place in most subsequent Legion adventures. Stories that prominently featured the pre-Crisis Supergirl’s life in the 20th century, however, are still apocryphal; Laurel Gand never lived in the 20th century. References to Supergirl’s death (and the possibility of her masquerading as Sensor Girl) in Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 3 #16–25 are similarly apocryphal; Laurel Gand did not leave the Legion until January 2090, after the Magic Wars, and there would have been no reason for the Legionnaires to believe she was posing as Sensor Girl in 2986.
There is no evidence that Laurel Gand existed in the Time Trapper’s timeline. However, one fan writer, who composed an interesting series of “Lost Levitz issues,” chronicled the would-be events during the so-called “Five-Year Gap.” This work attempts to introduce Laurel retroactively into the post-Crisis/pre-Glorith history to take Supergirl’s place. It’s as coherent and plausible as any of the post-Crisis continuity patches, but it is not canonical.
In April 2987, one of the Legion’s founders, Rokk Krinn (Cosmic Boy), and his fiancée Lydda Jath (Night Girl, a member of the Legion of Substitute Heroes) borrowed a Time Bubble for a vacation in the 20th century. For unknown reasons — perhaps residual distortions from the recently ended Crisis on Infinite Earths — they emerged not in the Pocket Universe, but in the real past, where they quickly realized that something was wrong. They found themselves in the midst of chaos (resulting from Darkseid’s campaign to destroy Earth’s heroic legends), surrounded by news of disasters and events that their knowledge of history told them had never taken place. Worse yet, when they encountered Superman, Rokk was shocked to discover that the man with whom he’d shared so many youthful adventures did not recognize him (Cosmic Boy mini-series #1–3).
After making slapdash repairs to the Time Bubble, Rokk and Lydda attempted to return to their own time, only to overshoot and find themselves in the citadel of the Time Trapper. There, they were forced to play a deadly game of cat and mouse with the Trapper before making a very narrow escape back to their own time (Cosmic Boy #4).
Back in his citadel at the End of Time, the Trapper decided that the game was up. The Legion had served its purpose: Mordru’s plans of conquest had been thwarted three times and the sorcerer had recently been stripped of most of his power by the rulers of the Sorcerer’s World (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 3 #27). Now, the Legionnaires were close to discovering the secret of the Pocket Universe and unraveling the Trapper’s scheme. It was time for them to be eliminated.
Shortly after the Legion’s final visit to Superboy’s time (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 3 #23), the Boy of Steel discovered that Smallville was threatened by a wall of antimatter. As he struggled in vain to save his adopted world, he was approached by the Time Trapper, who offered him a bargain: The Trapper would save Superboy’s world in exchange for his help in capturing and destroying the Legion. Seeing no choice, Superboy reluctantly agreed (Action Comics #591, Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 3 #38).
In the 30th century, Rokk and Lydda informed the Legion of their frightening discovery (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 3 #36). The Legion concluded that the Trapper had tampered with history for unknown reasons. At the direction of Brainiac Five, the Legion prepared to break the “Iron Curtain of Time” that prevented them from traveling into their own future, planning to launch a last-ditch assault on the Trapper’s stronghold.
As the Legion’s Time Bubble engaged, however, they were thrown not into the future, but into the past, where they emerged once more in Superboy’s time. Half of the Legionnaires proceeded into Smallville in search of their friend, while the others remained behind to guard the Time Bubble. In Smallville, the unsuspecting Legionnaires walked into an ambush and were quickly subdued by Superboy. The others managed to escape in the Time Bubble, with the Boy of Steel in hot pursuit (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 3 #37).
When the escaping Legionnaires attempted to return to their own time to gather reinforcements, they landed instead a decade or so in the future, this time in the Smallville of the real universe. There they encountered the real Superman, who had never seen them before. After a brief, pitched battle — with the Legionnaires mistaking Superman for Superboy — they explained the situation to the bewildered Man of Steel.
No sooner had the Legionnaires finished their story than Superboy arrived, paralyzing them all with a device supplied to him by the Time Trapper (Superman vol. 2 #8). Superman, however, was able to shake off the device’s effects. As Superboy gathered his paralyzed friends and their Time Bubble to return to his own time, Superman managed to grab hold of Superboy’s boots, following him through the time barrier.
Back in the Pocket Universe’s Smallville, Superman squared off against Superboy and Krypto the Superdog. Although he was no match for Superboy’s strength and speed, Superman’s greater experience and tactical skill enabled him to overcome the Boy of Steel. Superboy explained his dilemma and confessed that he had deliberately allowed Superman to follow him in hopes that he would be able to help. Superman persuaded Superboy to release the Legionnaires from the paralysis ray and helped them to devise a plan to turn the tables on the Time Trapper. Once free, the Legionnaires used the Time Bubble to return Superman to his own time and dimension. Superman offered to help, but the Legion told him that they could not risk his being killed or stranded in time, lest they further jeopardize history (Action Comics #591).
Together, Superboy & the Legionnaires returned to Smallville, where they prepared for a final reckoning with the Time Trapper. With the Legionnaires feigning paralysis, Superboy summoned the Trapper, claiming to have accomplished his task. When the Trapper ordered Superboy to slay his friends and complete their bargain, the assembled Legionnaires attacked him. The Trapper shrugged off their efforts, which only succeeded in revealing and crippling the machinery hidden beneath Smallville High School that protected the Pocket Universe from the waves of anti-matter.6 Laughing, the Trapper then departed, leaving the Legion to perish along with the Pocket Universe.
However, the Trapper underestimated the courage and heroism of the Boy of Steel. Unable to repair the Trapper’s machine, Superboy nonetheless realized that he could reactivate it by bypassing the shattered components with his own nearly invulnerable body. As the Legion and the residents of Smallville watched, Superboy made himself a conduit for the device’s tremendous energies. With a burst of incalculable power, the machine transported the Pocket Universe to a different dimensional plane, where it would be safe from the wall of antimatter and perhaps even from the Trapper himself.
His task accomplished, Superboy fell back from the now useless machine, gravely wounded. With his last strength, he lifted the Legionnaires in their crippled Time Bubble and carried them back through the time barrier to 30th century Metropolis. There, having reached the limits of his superhuman endurance, he finally collapsed. He died in Mon-El’s arms, a hero to the end.
For his final sacrifice, Superboy was honored as the greatest hero of all time in a ceremony broadcast throughout the United Planets. His funeral was attended by billions. (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 3 #38) His friends later transported his body to Shanghalla, the cemetery asteroid, for interment. (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 3 #49)
After Superboy's final disappearance, life in the 20th century Pocket Universe went on. Not long afterwards, his foster parents, Jonathan and Martha Kent, both died (as, presumably, did Krypto the Superdog, who was stripped of his powers and transformed into an ordinary dog by Gold Kryptonite during Superboy’s battle with Superman), leaving their Smallville house empty. Several years later, it was investigated by a young scientist named Lex Luthor, who had come to Smallville hoping to help Superboy overcome his vulnerability to Kryptonite. Luthor discovered Superboy’s secret laboratory beneath the Kent house and set out to study the Boy of Steel’s collection of amazing equipment.
During his investigation Luthor stumbled upon Superboy’s Zone-O-Phone, a device that allowed Superboy to communicate with inhabitants of the Phantom Zone. Activating the device, Luthor discovered the existence of three other survivors of the planet Krypton: Zod, Quex-Ul, and Zaora.7 The three claimed to be Kryptonian scientists who had survived the death of their world in what they called the “Survival Zone” and persuaded Luthor to release them. As soon as they materialized on Earth, however, they revealed their true nature. They were not scientists but convicted criminals, imprisoned in the Zone by Krypton’s government prior to that world’s destruction. Worse, under the Earth’s yellow sun they each immediately gained powers identical to Superboy’s.
The three Kryptonian villains attempted to conquer the Earth, only to face staunch opposition from all the world’s governments. Unfortunately, not even their nuclear arsenals could stop the Kryptonians, who laid waste to much of the world (Adventures of Superman #444).
Over the next ten years, Luthor, grief-stricken over his role in the catastrophe, became the leader of the human resistance. One of his tasks was to create a new hero to take the place of Superboy. Using a unique protoplasmic lifeform he himself created8 — fashioned in the likeness of Lana Lang (one of the first casualties of the Phantom Zoners’ reign of terror) and clad in a costume reminiscent of Superboy’s — he created the heroine Supergirl, who could change her shape, fly, generate a force field, and wield a number of other psionic powers. After hearing stories from other Smallville survivors about Superboy’s encounter with a mysterious adult Superman, Luthor deduced the existence of the “real” universe and dispatched Supergirl to find Superman and enlist his aid.
Supergirl brought Superman back to the Pocket Universe (Superman vol. 2 #21), where Luthor explained the situation. Unfortunately, Superman was too late to offer much help: the three villains had already used their incredible powers to strip away the Earth's atmosphere, wiping out all life on the planet save for a few survivors in Luthor's force-shielded stronghold in Smallville (Adventures of Superman #444). Like Superboy, each of the three Phantom Zoners was far more powerful than Superman, who was unable to prevent them from wiping out the Smallville fortress and killing its remaining human defenders. Luthor, mortally wounded, told Superman where to find Superboy’s samples of Kryptonite, confessing that he had known of the Kryptonite all along, but had vainly hoped to find another way to undo his earlier mistake. He died in Superman’s arms, pleading for forgiveness for the evil he had inadvertently unleashed.
A grim-faced Superman confronted the three Kryptonian villains and exposed them to Gold Kryptonite, stripping them of their powers. The Phantom Zoners taunted him, swearing that they would find a way to regain their powers and lay waste to Superman’s universe. Lacking any means to return the villains to the Phantom Zone and seeing no other alternative, the Man of Steel exposed Zod, Quex-Ul, and Zaora to Green Kryptonite, killing them. Retrieving the badly wounded Supergirl, who had nearly been slain by the three Kryptonians and had reverted to her natural protoplasmic state, Superman returned to his own universe, leaving the Pocket Universe behind him (Superman vol. 2 #22). It would remain empty, cold, and lifeless for a thousand years.
Back in the real universe, Superman took the badly injured Supergirl, now dubbed “Matrix,” to Smallville, where he left her in the care of his adoptive parents, Jonathan and Martha Kent. She later resumed her heroic role as Supergirl. Recently, Matrix merged with a human girl, Linda Danvers, losing her original protoplasmic form; it is unclear to what extent she is Matrix with Linda Danvers’s memories or Linda Danvers with Matrix’s powers (Supergirl vol. 4 #1).
In July 2987, following Superboy's funeral, a small group of Legionnaires, including Brainiac Five, Mon-El, Saturn Girl, and Duo Damsel, conspired to avenge the Boy of Steel’s death by destroying the Time Trapper once and for all. With the assistance of Brainiac Five’s friend Rond Vidar — the creator of the Time Cube and secretly the Green Lantern of Sector 2814 — the Legion conspirators devised a way to penetrate the Iron Curtain of Time and confront the Trapper in his own domain.
Unfortunately, the Trapper was waiting for them. In short order, he slew one of Duo Damsel’s bodies, wounded Saturn Girl, and severely injured Mon-El, while remaining untouched. The heroes’ futile attack, however, was only a diversion intended to buy time for Brainiac and Vidar to execute their final stratagem.
Five years earlier a failed experiment in time travel had accidentally transformed their colleague, Dr. Jaxon Rugarth, into the psychotic Infinite Man, a being who passed through time on a continuous loop, in the process gaining considerable power over space and time. Maddened by his experience, the Infinite Man sought to avenge himself on his “creators” and on the entire universe (Superboy & the Legion of Super-Heroes #233). In 2986 Brainiac Five had finally succeeded in restoring Jaxon Rugarth to normal, albeit at the terrible cost of stripping him of his mind and leaving him a comatose, brain-dead shell. Now, Brainiac and Vidar recreated the experiment that originally transformed Rugarth into the Infinite Man, using his growing power to propel them through time.
The Infinite Man — the embodiment of time as a repeating cycle — and the Time Trapper — the incarnation of entropy — clashed in a last, apocalyptic struggle. With a final push from Brainiac 5, the Infinite Man carried the Trapper with him past the End of Time to begin the cycle of the universe again, vanishing from view and apparently negating the Trapper’s existence (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 3 #50).
The wounded and weary Legionnaires returned to the 30th century, where Brainiac subsequently resigned from the Legion to explore the true nature of the time stream, absent the Trapper’s manipulations (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 3 #51). Their greatest foe, they thought, was finally and utterly destroyed.
Once again, they were wrong.
Mon-El never recovered from the wounds he sustained in the battle with the Time Trapper. Despite the best efforts of his long-time lover (and later wife), Tasmia Mallor (Shadow Lass), he continued to weaken, relying on life support to sustain him. In February 2989, during the collapse of technology resulting from the so-called “Magic Wars,” he succumbed to his injuries and died — or so it seemed (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 3 #61).
In reality, Lar Gand's tremendous Daxamite powers — rivaling even Superboy's — had sustained his life, leaving him in a deep coma from which he was slowly recovering. Finally, in November 2994, more than five years after his apparent death, Mon-El emerged from the grave, whole once more (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 #3). However, he now realized a terrible truth: his mind was no longer entirely his own. He had become the host for the Time Trapper, who still clung tenaciously to existence after his brush with annihilation.
Mon-El and Shadow Lass sought the help of Brainiac Five, who attempted to dislodge the Time Trapper’s personality from Mon-El’s body. Just as Brainiac apparently succeeded, Mon-El suddenly vanished to find himself on a grey, lifeless plain — the surface of the Earth in the Pocket Universe.
There, he at last confronted the Time Trapper, now a hollow shell of his former self. As they fought, the Trapper’s remaining power began to fade. As Mon-El prepared to deliver the coup de grace, the Trapper warned him that if he ceased to exist, it would have dire consequences for the entire universe. He explained for the first time his real motivations in building the Pocket Universe, in stopping the rise of Mordru, and in the creation of Mon-El himself, whose identity was part of the Trapper’s manipulations. The Trapper had intended Mon-El to be his escape route, his final contingency in the event all his carefully laid plans fell apart: an invulnerable Daxamite body (quite possibly the most powerful humanoid being alive, absent Superboy) into which he could transfer his essence.
He warned Mon-El that if he was destroyed, he would disappear from all points in the time stream. With him would vanish all his careful machinations, including the Legion and Mon-El himself. Undaunted, Mon-El chose to take his chances with fate rather than permit the Trapper to survive. He destroyed his erstwhile creator with a final, devastating blow. In that moment, the universe vanished in a flash of light (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 #4).
Part Three: The Legend of Valor…
Footnotes
6 The exact mechanism by which the Anti-Monitor’s antimatter waves were created was never explained in the Crisis On Infinite Earths series itself; it apparently was an automated process that persisted past the Anti-Monitor’s destruction and that was beyond the Time Trapper’s power to stop.
7 The three criminals, General Zod, Quex-Ul, and Zaora, were based on three pre-Crisis characters. Zod (also seen in the film Superman 2) was a former Kryptonian general who once attempted to stage a military coup on Krypton; he first appeared in Adventure Comics #283. Zaora was based on Faora Hu-Ul, a vicious serial killer whose mastery of the Kryptonian martial art of Horu-Kanu made her one of the Zone’s deadliest inhabitants; her first appearance was Action Comics #471. Quex-Ul was sent to the Zone for a crime he did not commit; he was later freed from the Zone and lost his memory and powers through exposure to Gold Kryptonite. His first appearance was Superman (1st series) #157.
8 In the pre-Crisis version of Lex Luthor’s origin (first told in Adventure Comics #271), Luthor was a young genius who created a primitive lifespan (described as “crude protoplasm”) while trying to create an antidote for Kryptonite poisoning. When a fire broke out in Luthor’s lab, Superboy extinguished the blaze with his super-breath, in the process accidentally knocking over a bottle of acid that, combined with smoke and fumes from the fire, destroyed Luthor’s creation and cost Luthor all of his hair. Superboy’s destruction of Luthor’s creation was the root of Luthor’s emnity towards the Boy of Steel. In the Pocket Universe Luthor did not come to Smallville until after Superboy vanished; the lab fire (and Superboy’s interference) did not take place and Luthor’s protoplasmic lifeform became Matrix (Supergirl).
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