The Legion #30 - The End of the Not-So-Great Darkness Saga.

Released February 25, 2004

DC Comics, Color
23 Pages

Foundations The Final Chapter

Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning - Writers
Chris Batista - Pencils
Chip Wallace - Inks
Sno Cone - Colors
Ken Lopez - Letters
Stephen Wacker - Editor

Synopsis

Superboy gets the jump on Darkseid as Garth, Violet and Kid Quantum emerge from their quantum time portal. Superboy fights Darksied while the others handle the minions. The time barrier the older Darkseid begins to fail, possibly because he had some kind of a failsafe that only he knew about. The young Darkseid has no idea how to proceed.  Vi and Garth have an idea to go back a short period of time to stop Darkseid and go back 20 minutes to when the young Darkseid comes out of the boom tube. The foursome pops out, and Connor and Vi punch the young Darkseid back through the tube and follow him in. The rest of the Legion handles old Darkseid. The combined powers of Superboy, Kid Quantum's powers, Garth's electricity and Vi's brute force keep pushing Darkseid back and Jazmin realizes that this is the moments she's been seeing over the last several issues. 

On Apokalips, old Darkseid weakens, and he pulls the energy from his dark servants to fortify himself.  This makes the dark servants disappear, and their 20th century counterparts to emerge confused.  In the boom tube, Vi has young Darkseid talk to the hand and pushes him out into his proper time. The boom tube closes.  Clark defeats Darkseid on Apokalips, which turns dormant again.

Back at Legion World, which is under repair due to the time wave, the Legion prepares to return Clark to his proper time. Superboy stays, because they haven't figured out his specific time of origin.  Connor and Clark say goodbye.  Connor helps Brainy restore the dark matter back to the universe. Imra and Rokk deliver Clark. 

One thousand years in the future, Darkseid stirs on Apokalips.

Commentary

So we're finally here - the conclusion of the Foundations epic.  As a final issue, I think this actually works pretty well considering the timey-wimey nature of this story.  As has been the case for many issues now, the art is just amazing.  Finally, the art and story do very well together.  Things really move along and makes this particular issue a page turner.  Not perfect, but pretty well done by itself. The Superboy team "do-over" was handled pretty well, and I (personally, mind you) loved Vi having a literal hand in putting Darkseid in his place.  Things get put back in place as they had been generally, although I'm still confused as to how a time wavefront physically affects the real world to the point of repairable damage.  

I actually enjoyed Superboy in this issue.  Irreverent and cocky, yet capable, but yet he was never given his real redemption moment by an apology from his tormentor, Cosmic Boy. The overall storyline was what we've seen is classic DnA and should be used to it - multi-part stories designed to be sold as a package, so the editing isn't as tight as it should be, especially with the waste of a first issue in #25.

I'm going to pause here for a moment, to comment that this overall storyline is obviously a homage to the classic Great Darkness Saga.  Its obvious from issue 25 that this story is supposed to be a celebration of the Legion in the DC Universe, but while the GDS really collected almost all elements of Legion Lore together at some level (25-ish years at that point?), this storyline is really just a celebration of DnA's Legion, and not what had come before them the prior five years.  The original GDS was five issues.  In six issues, this overall story just doesn't have the level of care with anything outside of DnA's work.  It's something I've commented on often during these reviews - This Legion existed before DnA and barely acknowledging its existence is kind of a diss to those creators and the fans. An equivalent story to the classic would include Andromeda, Mysa, Lori, Marla, etc, but no, nothing - no magic, barely even select relationships - existed before DnA took over.  

I understand why fans love DnA.  I get it.  DnA came along at a time when things were bad for a lot of fans - the stories for the most part were stagnant since the 20/30 split - and they re-ignited the flame.  It doesn't mean they should have been allowed to be gatekeepers to that universe; whether they (or the readers) liked it or not, DnA built upon what Peyer, McCraw, Stern, Merlo, Waid, Carlson and others had built before them. Inclusion or recognition of characters and events prior to McAvennie pulling them in and bum-rushing the earlier creators out would have been welcome.  The original GDS had almost every Legion ally involved in the story.  This one couldn't even be bothered to pull in the characters dispatched to the Kwai galaxy, so failing to reference the earlier creators was a massive fail on DnA and Wacker's part.  As a tribute the story arc falls flat on its face.

Grade: B+.  Good stuff, but not quite A-worthy