Pocket Universe Primer

In the absence of the Time Trapper, the course of history in the 30th century was drastically altered. In the new timeline the Legion of Super-Heroes never formed; without it, Mordru’s rise was unchecked. With no one powerful enough or organized enough to stop him, he claimed control over much of the galaxy, which he ruled with an iron fist from his castle on Earth. As a result of his tremendous power, Mordru was aware of the timeline that proceeded his own, even maintaining a few mementos for his own amusement. Save for a small handful of resistance fighters, some of whom had been Legionnaires in the previous timeline, his domination of the galaxy was complete.

That resistance force, led by Rond Vidar, managed to evade Mordru’s all-seeing eye and ever-present secret police long enough to devise a plan. Using forbidden magic spells and carefully studying the stories that Mordru sometimes told his wives of the now-vanished alternate history, Vidar and his allies pieced together a rough outline of the timeline that had gone before, including the role of the Time Trapper (who they knew only as the “Puppet Master”). They concluded that the only way to end Mordru’s domain was to somehow restore the Puppet Master and the machinations that prevented Mordru’s rise in the previous timeline.

Desperate to complete the plan before he was discovered, Vidar struck a desperate alliance with Mordru’s scheming first wife, Glorith of Baaldur, who in the previous timeline was an ambitious servant of the Time Trapper (Adventure Comics #338). While Mordru’s operatives closed in on Vidar’s resistance forces, Glorith carried out a perilous ritual that would allow her to take the place of the “Puppet Master.” Standing naked in the cold, Glorith drew the necessary magic symbols in the snow with her own blood, knowing that if the spell was not complete by morning, the instant Mordru awoke he would know what they had tried to do and kill them all. As dawn broke, Glorith collapsed, feeling her life drain out of her to power the final stage of the spell. Mordru stirred, realizing what was happening — an instant too late. For a second time, the universe disappeared in a flash of light (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 #5).

Time restarted at the instant after the Time Trapper originally was destroyed. This time, only certain aspects of history had changed, the result of the other timeline’s patchwork repairs (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 #6).

In the new timeline the Legion’s creation was orchestrated by Glorith rather than the Trapper. The group’s inspiration was not Superboy, who initially did not exist in the new timeline, but Lar Gand, no longer known by the name Superboy had given him, Mon-El.

The new timeline’s Lar Gand was the son of Kel Gand, a 20th century Daxamite who heroically sacrificed his life to aid the people of Earth during an alien invasion organized by the Dominion (Invasion! #2). Lar Gand briefly served as a member of Vril Dox’s interstellar police organization L.E.G.I.O.N., attempting to fill the void left by the disbanding of the Green Lantern Corps (L.E.G.I.O.N. ’90 #16). He later left that organization and devoted himself to safeguarding the galaxy against threats like the Dominators, becoming the legendary hero known as Valor. Among his many accomplishments was the “seeding” of many of the worlds that would later be part of the 30th century United Planets. Those worlds were colonized with super-powered humans, their superhuman potential activated by the Dominators’ experiments with the human “metagene,” to act as a buffer zone between Earth and the Dominion (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 Annual #2).

Valor’s heroism, strength, and handsomeness soon caught Glorith’s eye, and she offered him a chance to rule the universe if he would agree to become her consort. He refused, enraging her. In a fit of pique, she imprisoned him in the Bgztl Buffer Zone, where he would spend the next thousand years as a disembodied phantom.

Valor’s legend, however, lived on, later becoming the inspiration for the Legion of Super-Heroes. One of Lar Gand’s distant descendants, Laurel Gand, became one of the Legion’s earliest members in September 2973 (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 #9). In December of that year, the Legion traveled back in time to visit Valor in the 20th century and induct him into their ranks as an honorary member.

Valor’s ultimate fate in the 20th century was never recorded, but in December 2974, the Legion discovered that he was still alive, trapped in the Buffer Zone. He was finally released from the Zone permanently six weeks later — to great fanfare from the United Planets, many of whose members considered him a divine figure — and became a full-time Legionnaire.

The Legion’s subsequent history proceeded much as it did in the Time Trapper’s timeline, with Valor taking the places of both Superboy and Mon-El and Laurel Gand taking the place of Supergirl (see Sidebar: Supergirl). The Legionnaires never met Superboy or the Time Trapper, although they had three encounters with a time-traveling Superman, first in 2973, again in June 2981, and finally in April 2995 (Adventures of Superman #476-#478).⁹ However, Glorith later realized that she had made a mistake in not restoring all of the Trapper’s creations. By removing the Pocket Universe, she had affected the course of key events of 20th century history¹⁰. She hastily restored the Pocket Universe and with it, Superboy, although he would not meet the Legion until relatively late in its history.

There was one other major difference between this timeline and the Trapper’s: this time, at least one of the puppets saw the strings.

Jo Nah, a former street gang member from the planet Rimbor, joined the Legion in April 2974, taking the name Ultra Boy. His membership test was to travel back in time to the 20th century to uncover the truth behind Valor’s ultimate disappearance. Although Jo failed to learn Valor’s fate, he did encounter the legendary hero and managed to alert him to a Dominion invasion fleet of which Valor would otherwise not been aware. As a result, Valor prevented a second invasion of Earth, one of the principal accomplishments that made him a legend.

Jo returned to the 30th century and the congratulations of his new comrades, who were impressed by the way he had dealt with the situation. When he raised the question of whether his actions altered history, Brainiac Five assured him that there was nothing to worry about: his presence had simply displaced some other event that would have produced the same result.

Jo Nah, however, was not convinced. During his journey through time, he had experienced a strange temporal distortion accompanied by an eerie purple glow. Casually inquiring about it with Lyle Norg (the Invisible Kid), one of the Legion’s leading scientific minds, he learned that there had been a similar distortion in 2949 and that a new, larger anomaly had recently formed a barrier in the timestream, preventing the Time Viewers of the 30th century from seeing into the future.

Even more suspicious, Ultra Boy surreptitiously investigated further and learned that 2949 was the first year in which there was any record of the existence of R.J. Brande, the Legion’s financier and a well-known aficionado of the 20th century. Jo confronted Brande in private and got Brande to admit that he was from the 20th century, although the billionaire did not know how or why he had ended up in the future. The two agreed to keep that information a secret.

Jo’s suspicions grew. Had someone created the legend of Valor by altering history? Was the Legion itself part of the same scheme? And if so, who had done it and why?

He would soon get his answers. Not long afterwards, the Legion set out to crack the barrier in the timestream, the origin of which they had traced back to the planet Baaldur, Glorith’s homeworld. When they attempted to breech the barrier, they were repulsed by a mysterious force; it had the same purple glow as the distortion Jo encountered in his first trip through time. He needed no further proof: Glorith was responsible.

Ultra Boy deduced the reason for Glorith’s interference months later, as the Legion prepared for its first confrontation with the sorcerer Mordru. Jo realized that as Mordru’s principal rival, Glorith stood to gain tremendously if Mordru exhausted himself in destroying the Legion. Unwilling to watch his friends die as pawns in Glorith’s scheme, Jo decided to interfere.

Disguising himself as an old man, Ultra Boy traveled to Zerox, the Sorcerer’s World, and confronted Mordru, warning him that Glorith was a serious threat to his power. As a result, Mordru attacked Glorith, triggering the bloody, mutually exhausting stalemate that she had been trying to avoid.

Jo did not tell his comrades of his discoveries or of his meeting with Mordru. His rough-and-tumble youth had taught him that it was always better not to reveal everything you know. In any case, he thought, the others might not believe him — after his first mission they had casually dismissed his suggestion that history had been altered, and he was far from the most intellectual or scientifically minded Legionnaire. Worse, the revelation might do more harm than good. He elected to keep it to himself.

His fears later proved justified. In February 2983, Brainiac Five reached the same conclusions about Glorith’s involvement, but was confronted by the sorceress (who was monitoring him, expecting that the super-intelligent Legionnaire might learn the truth) before he could warn the others. Glorith admitted that she had created the Legion to fight Mordru, but she had no intention of letting her pawns in on the game. She drove Brainiac Five mad, giving him a mental compulsion to eliminate anyone who might suspect what he had learned. In a psychotic state, Brainiac framed Jo Nah for the murder of his former girlfriend, An Ryd, and then created the monstrous creature called Omega in an effort to destroy the United Planets.¹¹ The Legionnaires stopped him, but never learned what caused him to snap. Ultra Boy, quickly exonerated, kept his mouth shut (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 Annual #1).

On July 4, 2987, the Pocket Universe Superboy, whom the Legionnaires of this timeline had never met, mysteriously appeared in the 30th century and was invited to join the Legion. Three weeks later, he led them back to the 20th century, where he encountered Superman and then sacrificed himself to save his dimension from a mysterious, purple-robed figure, who the Legionnaires believed was Glorith in disguise. As in the Trapper’s timeline, Superboy returned the Legionnaires to the 30th century, where he died of his injuries. He was buried there and mourned by the Legion, who lamented that they had not had the chance to know him better (Adventures of Superman #478).

What the Legion did not realize was that the robed figure was not Glorith, but the Time Trapper. Glorith had made her first serious mistake: by restoring the Trapper’s creation, she also restored the Time Trapper himself — only for a brief instant, true, but for the Trapper, that instant was enough.

The Trapper did not have the power to challenge Glorith directly, but he realized that serious damage had been inflicted on the timestream and took steps to ensure that he would have a universe to rule. He formed a temporal duplicate of the Legion of Super-Heroes, plucked from the past (in the same way he had created the Pocket Universe) at moments when they were the strongest.¹² He concealed them in stasis within the Time Institute in Metropolis, hoping to eventually use them as a cat's-paw against Glorith and/or Mordru (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 #53). He then bided his time, waiting for Glorith to make another exploitable mistake.

In this timeline, the Legionnaires did not move to avenge their fallen friend, as they had in the Trapper’s timeline, but they soon had another grievance against Glorith. In late 2987, Glorith learned of a secret Dominion plan to mind-control the population of Valor’s home planet, Daxam. The resurrected Darkseid had done that in 2984, creating an army of three billion super-powered servants with powers like Superman’s. To prevent the Dominators from doing the same thing, Glorith used her powers to devastate Daxam on January 1, 2988, wiping out the planet’s entire population.

A small group of Legionnaires — Valor and Laurel Gand, two of the few surviving Daxamites, along with Brainiac Five, Saturn Girl, Duo Damsel, and honorary member Rond Vidar — made a secret pact to avenge the destruction of Daxam. Ultra Boy, however, learned of the conspiracy and approached Saturn Girl, allowing her to telepathically scan his mind and see everything that he had learned. Ultra Boy knew that Valor owed his existence to Glorith’s manipulation and feared what might happen if he fell under her thrall. Unfortunately, Jo Nah was unable to persuade Saturn Girl to call off the assault on Baaldur.

On February 6, 2988, the Legionnaires confronted Glorith on her homeworld. In the ensuing battle, Valor was nearly slain when Glorith used her powers to age him 200 years in an instant. Saturn Girl was wounded and one of Duo Damsel’s bodies was apparently killed, but the conspirators finally forced the sorceress to retreat into the timestream.

Before she vanished, however, Glorith picked up Saturn Girl’s thoughts and realized that Ultra Boy — whom she had dismissed as a dim-witted street urchin — had deduced her entire plot. Incensed at being thwarted by such an unworthy foe, she plotted a special revenge on Jo, arranging for his long-time lover, Tinya Wazzo (Phantom Girl), to be killed in a mysterious shuttle accident in April 2991.¹³ Heartbroken, Ultra Boy resigned from the Legion a few weeks later (Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #1).

In this timeline, Lar Gand eventually recovered from his injuries, but his presence was not enough to turn the tide of the Magic Wars of 2989 or the subsequent collapse of the United Planets economy. Accompanied by his wife, Tasmia Mallor, Valor set out on a mission of exploration beyond the borders of known space. Meanwhile, Dominion agents began a covert takeover of the Earth, which withdrew from the U.P. in 2990. In July 2992, the Dominator-controlled Earthgov finally succeeded in forcing the Legion to disband. Some of its former members had already moved on to other pursuits; others were arrested and imprisoned or forced to flee Earthgov agents.

These events represented a serious problem for the Time Trapper, who had still not recovered sufficiently to reassert himself. His greatest foes were gaining strength: On the same day the Legion disbanded, Mordru — restored to full power — became Lord Emperor of Tharn, the new Sorcerer’s World. To commemorate his victory, he married former Legionnaire Mysa Nal (the White Witch) on August 28, 2992. With no one powerful enough to seriously oppose him, he began a campaign to annex the surrounding star systems.

Worse, the Trapper’s duplicate Legionnaires were discovered on Earth by the Dominion. Believing them to be clones grown by the Dark Circle, the Dominators moved the alternate Legion, code-named “Batch SW6,” from their stasis field in the Time Institute to the Weisinger Chambers beneath Metropolis, hoping to mindwipe them and use them as super-powered soldiers (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 #53).

In December 2994, the Trapper, still weak, invaded Glorith’s dreams, attempting to convince her to fully restore his existence. She angrily refused, scoffing at his offer to share dominion of the universe with her. She knew what he had done in the previous timeline, she told him, but he was no longer necessary. With that, she consumed his ethereal form, adding his power to her own and apparently destroying him once more (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 #13).

Bolstered by the Trapper’s power, Glorith embarked on her own campaign. She traveled to the heart of the Khundian Empire and convinced its rulers that she was the Khunds’ feared and beloved goddess, the “Demon Mother.” Using her new divine influence, she persuaded the Khunds to invade the United Planets in January 2995, armed with powerful weaponry she gathered from other eras of history (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 #15–#16). The Legion, however, discovered Glorith’s involvement and attacked the sorceress with a captured Dominator weapon, the so-called “chronal howitzer,” which catapulted Glorith into the distant future. Glorith found herself at the End of Time, realizing bitterly that returning to the populated eras of history would exhaust most of her power (Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 #17).

Part Four: End of an Era…

Footnotes

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