Supergirl in Final Crisis:Legion of Three Worlds #3

Most people know that I am a pretty big Legion of Super-heroes fan. Legion was one of the first books I collected on a monthly basis and I have followed them through most of their incarnations. (I will admit I did not follow the Legion Lost years).

So Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds is an interesting idea for me. Mark Waid's reboot place in continuity was put into question by Geoff Johns' Legion from last year's Action Comics. And what of the Legion 5yL stories and the Legion Lost stories? Are they in continuity? Out of continuity? In continuity on one of the 52 worlds?

Of course it might have been nice if this mini-series was released during Final Crisis. But I digress. The third issue came out last week and included a nugget about Supergirl.


The plot seems a little muddled to me right now. Superboy-Prime forms an army of the future's biggest super-villains and goes on a reign of terror against the Legion. But he is more of a puppet for the Time Trapper who is plotting something larger.

Of course it is scenes like the one above that makes the comic so fascinating for Legion fans. Three Ultra Boys and three Phantom Girls? Kind of cool.

It is clear that the Johns' team, basically the Levitz/Giffen team (without the 5YL stories), is now *THE* Legion of the future.

There is a 2 page spread where the 3 Brainiac 5's talk about the universes' Legions and how they were formed. One thing is that XS, from the Legion Lost reboot, actually belongs on Earth-0 (the main DCU) but was shunted into a different universe for her protection.

And now the Kara nugget. The Waid Brainiac can't believe that he is not from 'Earth', that is Earth-0. He brings up the fact that his team included Supergirl for a time. The Johns Brainiac explains it away saying that time travel can often include universe-shifting.

So all those Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes issues are most likely in continuity, just occurring in a different universe.



Just a couple of comments about the Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes issues.

This was sort of the 'peanut butter and jelly' combination of my 2 big loves of the DCU ... a perfect blend.

Supergirl joined the Legion at the same time that the sub-par 'Candor' storyline was happening in her main title. 'Candor' was the beginning of a long string of issues where I didn't think Kara was being written very well.

In stark contrast, the Supergirl/Legion issues was much closer to what I was looking for. She was smart, powerful, and good. She often flew right into danger to save people or fight evil. So what if at the beginning of the run she thought she was dreaming everything. She still was a hero.

I picked a few scenes from Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes #17 to highlight this.

Here she deactivates a giant robot threat pretty easily.

And here Waid shows his respect for the character. Cosmic Boy explains to the Legion that in her time Supergirl very quickly earned the status of 'living legend' in the 21st century.

Even semi-silly scenes like this, where Kara stops an earthquake by whistling a counter-vibration, really showed that Waid 'got' the character much more than Greg Rucka (briefly) and Joe Kelly did.

Yes it shows some Silver Age innocence but it also showed some ingenuity, quick thinking, and heroism.

On top of that, I really really liked Barry Kitson's rendition of Kara. She was cute, self-assured, and healthy looking.

Now we know that Supergirl gets involved in the new R.E.B.E.L.S. series because her time with the Legion impacts Brainiac 2. How (or even if) the revelation that Kara's Legion is from another universe impacts this new title remains to be seen. Review for that issue should be coming soon.

So in sum:

1) The Johns retro-fitted Legion appears to be the Legion of Earth-0.

2) The Waid/Kitson version of Kara was delightful, especially in contrast to the bitter one running concurrently in her main title. Certainly worth raiding the $1 box at conventions to look for them.