Ghosts of Blackest Night in the 30th Century!

DC's latest epic crossover, Blackest Night has been pretty good so far, though the second issue seemed featherlight compared to the first, and told us nothing we didn't already know. Except, of course, that we've already been here. A couple of times.


In 1998, DC's JLA annuals were haunted by "GHOSTS", as the various JLA'ers were haunted by the dead from their pasts. (Note that by now, many of those "dead" have since returned.) I don't have most of these, but if the Green Lantern, Flash, and JLA Annuals I do have are any indication, it looks like the Bernie Wrightson covers were the best things about 'em.


Ignore that innacurate-but-excellent cover; Flash Annual #7 saw the Flash, haunted by the flickering, barely coherent speed force ghost of Johnny Quick. He finally has a heartwarming ghost-hug with Jessie Quick, but no point does Johnny become a zombie and attack Flash.



Green Lantern Annual#7 is a different story however, as Kyle Rayner finds himself meeting his fellow Green Lanterns for the first time, as hideous, undead revenants! You'll recall that in 1998, the Green Lantern Corps were still dead, Mogo was destroyed, and the Corps disbanded, leaving Kyle Rayner the sole Green Lantern. Nekron shows up, taking advantage of the supernatural forces behind the larger "Ghosts" storyline to elbow his way back into our universe, and sics the Lantern Corpses on Kyle, before being subdued. We'll be talking more about that guy soon.

No, the true force behind the haunting in the Annuals is revealed in JLA Annual #2. It turns out Felix Faust, in one of his many bids for immortality has awakened an ancient Egyptian wizard, Hermes Trismegistus, and angered him enough to cause all this mess with the ghosts.

All of this, indeed, all events in the story so far, is of secondary importance to the GHOST OF VIBE:

Yes, Paco Ramone returns, looking for his former team mate, Aquaman. The Ghost of Vibe is accompanied by eerie strains of old school electro Break dance music wherever he goes, and soon Ice, Steel, and other dead JLA members re-emerge as well. At the end, Vibe leads them to dog-pile on the evil-wizard-possessed Faust:





Five years earlier, in the 30th century, The Legion of Superheroes 43-48 (1993) saw a multi-issue saga that had the 30th century heroes caught in a struggle between Mordru and the White Witch. Mordru raised an army of the undead, among whom were such dead Earth heroes as Vigilante, the Justice Society, and Jason Todd:


As if that weren't bad enough, the Legion had racked up quite a body count by this time in this continuity, so eventually, all of the dead Legionaries showed up for a Live Legion versus Dead Legion showdown:



So yeah, DC has done the "Undead Heroes return" thing before, albeit never on the Scale of Blackest Night. It remains to be seen how Blackest Night turns out, but lets hope we at least get Black Lantern Vibe out of it, before we're through.








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Matter Eater Legends: Tenzil For the Defense!

Now that Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds has finally wrapped, it looks like almost all Legion of Super-Heroes stories still “happened” somewhere in continuity, albeit maybe not in the timeline we thought they did. The original Legion that debuted in Adventure Comics #247 has been restored to its rightful place in the Earth-1/New Earth/Earth-Wherever-the-Hell-It-Is-That-All-the-Main-DC-Books-Take-Place timeline with most of their history intact, the exception being pretty much everything that happened after Crisis on Infinite Earths and the attendant erasure of Superboy from the Legion's timeline...

...You know, there's no way to write some of this stuff without sounding like a complete, gibbering loon.

Unfortunately, that means that the entire “Five years Later” Legion was wiped from the slate in favor of whatever new path the adult Legion forges from here on out. I can live with that, I guess, but it also wipes out the awesome and hilarious solo adventures of Tenzil Kem, a.k.a. Matter-Eater Lad, including “Tenzil For the Defense”.



Matter-Eater Lad was the longtime Legion member whose power was to basically eat anything. He became emblematic of the goofy nature of the early Legion of Super-Heroes era, but was hardly the goofiest thing they had going, or even the goofiest individual member. Nonetheless, his return to the 5YL Legion saw him played for laughs, and Tenzil was much needed comedy relief in the otherwise somber proceedings at the time. In his own blog, Writer Tom Bierbaum described how he wrote Tenzil as a Peter Venkman type of irreverent hero, a move that ended up being a truly inspired choice. This way, at least we're laughing with, and not at Matter-Eater Lad for a change. We first saw “the new Tenzil” in LoSH vol 4, #10 trying to get through space customs with an unorthodox form of currency:



Matter-Eater Lad had been out of the Legion picture for a long time, having eaten the reality-warping Miracle Machine in Superboy and The Legion of Super-Heroes #251, and subsequently being driven insane by its strange, cosmic energies. He recovered, but was drafted back into his home planet’s screwy compulsory political system, where he was an overwhelmingly beloved Senator. He returned to his unwanted political duties with a sense of freewheeling abandon, actively trying to get thrown out of the Bismollian senate by blowing taxpayer money on several increasingly-popular documentary shows, including the fact-ignoring and sanity-defying “Wild Archaeology”:




Of course, the shows are so popular that he ends up bringing in more money to his constituency than he could ever effectively piss away, therefore the people love him, and the government hates him. After awhile, interest wanes, and Wild Archaeology is canceled to make way for a courtroom drama: Tenzil for the Defense! Tenzil is only half-interested until he finds that his first case involves former Legion leader Polar Boy, arrested for inciting dissension at a pizza parlor. Remember that Earthgov was shadow-backed by Dominators at this time, so Tenzil knows that there is no way that Polar Boy is going to get a fair trial. Tenzil throws himself into Brek’s defense the only way he knows how; unapologetic, madcap stalling antics, and one of the funniest courtroom scenes I’ve read in comics:





Tenzil wins the case but wisely hauls ass off Earth with Polar-Boy in tow, still wearing his Braino costume, before anyone has too much time to think about it. This was a classic issue, with some truly hilarious moments. It also led to another couple of epic Tenzil/Polar Boy adventures, but those will have to wait for another day. As of Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #5, Matter-Eater Lad is among a few still-missing characters that the Legion needs to locate, so let’s hope he eats his way back into the spotlight soon!