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MUST HAVE:
Pinnacle of the industry. If you're a comic fan, you must possess this book.

MUST READ:
Get it if you can, but by all means at least find a way to read it, you'll be glad you did.

CHECK IT:
Default rating. Comic is there. There's good and bad about it. Read it if you're so inclined.

PASS IT:
Give the book a miss unless you really really really want to read it. But don't say I didn't warn you.

BURN IT:
Under no circumstances read this book unless it amuses you to watch your brain cells curl up and die. The destruction of this book would better the comic industry.

This scale formerly used by IGN.com for their reviews.

Your definitive home for all things Dave Hines.



Sunday, May 17, 8:52 PM:

OK, let's start covering some of the members of these various Legions running around. As shorthand, I will append the continuity number (from my last entry) to a name if I'm speaking specifically about that hero from that continuity. For example, Cosmic Boy-1 is the Cosmic Boy from continuity 1, whereas Phantom Girl-3 is the Phantom Girl from continuity 3. Sound easy? OK, here we go.

Cosmic Boy (aka Polestar 1.5)
Name: Rokk Krinn of Braal
Source of Power: Native ability of Braalians*
Romantic Ties: Night Girl (1, 1.5), Saturn Girl (2, false pretenses)

Cosmic Boy is one of the founders of the Legion and invariably its first leader. Similar to the X-Men villain Magneto, he controls magnetism. Typically, he's a champion at the sport of Magno-Ball and is on his way to Earth to make money for his family when he helps stop the assassination attempt on R.J. Brande. In continuity 1, he would move his family to Earth and they would end up the victims of a "fireballing", which is a protection racket using nuclear weapons against those who refuse to pay. His mother perished and his father and brother were both severely injured, but recovered. Cosmic Boy-1's brother would end up joining the Legion as Magnetic Kid (when Rokk stepped into an advisory role) and ended up sacrificing himself to help the Legion triumph in the event known as the Magic Wars just prior to the 5 Year Gap. This event may or may not have occurred in continuity 1, as we see no evidence that Magnetic Kid joined the Legion. On another sad note, in Lo3W #1, he tells Lightning Lad that he has given up his relationships to help protect the Legion, so Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl would not have to. He says this right in front of Night Girl.

In 1.5 continuity, Rokk married Night Girl and had a son, Pol. He lost his powers as a result of a war between Braal and Shrinking Violet's home planet of Imsk. He ended up regaining them (but temporarily becoming insane) with the help of an invention of Brainiac 5. In attempting to stop a plot by Glorith and Mordru, he ends up becoming the Time Trapper and aids the Legion in sacrificing themselves to save existence during Zero Hour. Early on, Rokk did have a Crowning Moment of Awesome (tm TVTropes) when, powerless, he accompanies some of the Legionnaires to retrieve the White Witch from Mordru, and manages to be the one who stares down Mordru during a dinner and convinces him to let them take her (through the veiled threat of a war).

In continuity 2, Rokk is the initial leader of the Legion until the UP mandates that Leviathan (Colossal Boy) take over. Leviathan ends up botching leadership and turning it back over to Rokk after one mission. A group of Legionnaires would end up stuck in our time, with Rokk acting as their leader. He almost marries Saturn Girl until it's revealed that he's actually in a coma, and Saturn Girl's expanding powers are controlling him.

In continuity 3, Rokk is again leader of the Legion, having to play all sorts of political games to fend off usurpation attempts by Brainiac 5. The Legion ends up fairly split between the two of them until they have to make peace to fend off a universal threat. Shortly thereafter, Rokk is approached by a group claiming to be from the 41st century wanting to recruit him just as the Legion recruited Superboy and Supergirl from our time. He goes with them and has not been seen since. Cosmic Boy-3 is thus far not a part of Lo3W and at this point seems unlikely to be seen again.

*Native abilities happen a lot with the Legion. In the first continuity, they were being explained as evolved traits to help the inhabitants survive such and such a peril on their homeworld (even though in real life, people on that planet would die before Natural Selection could be that much of a help). In the 2nd continuity, most of these planets are inhabited by humans who had various powers granted to them by Dominion experiments, and who were settled on these worlds by Valor as a buffer zone protecting Earth from further invasion.

Lightning Lad (aka Livewire 1.5, 2)
Name: Garth Ranzz of Winath
Source of Power: Attacked by "lightning beasts" on the planet Korbal
Romantic Ties: Saturn Girl (1, 1.5, 2, 3)

Lightning Lad, as you may have guessed from the name, generates and shoots lightning. He shares this power with his twin sister and fellow Legionnaire Ayla (aka Lightning Lass) and older brother Mekt (aka Lightning Lord). Typically, he's on his way to Earth to search for Mekt when he helps stop the assassination attempt on R.J. Brande. Garth would fall in love with and later marry fellow Legionnaire Saturn Girl. At one point, Lightning Lad was killed by Zaryan the Conquerer, but was brought back when Proty (a shapeshifting alien kept as a pet to that point by the Legion) sacrificed his life for Garth's. This event is referenced in the JLA/JSA/Legion crossover The Lightning Saga with the Legionnaires all holding up lightning rods (though thankfully no one died in that event). He would also lose an arm for a time to "the super Moby Dick of space" (classic comics are weird sometimes), earning him a reputation as the unluckiest Legionnaire.

One of the earliest events in continuity 1.5 seemingly not included in continuity 1 is fathering twins with Saturn Girl only to have one of the twins abducted by Darkseid and transformed into the supervillain Validus, given that Validus is still active in continuity 1 despite being transformed back in 1.5. He would also go on to have a second set of twins with Saturn Girl. Due to his various injuries, he is retired as a hero, and runs a farm on his home planet of Winath with Saturn Girl, his sister and his rehabilitated brother. In an unpopular twist, it was revealed that Lightning Lad was never resurrected at all, but Proty assumed his form rather than sacrifice himself for him.

In continuity 2, he adopted the name Live Wire (which was used for his time duplicate in 1.5) and was typically brash and hotheaded. He was paranoid about Cosmic Boy stealing Saturn Girl from him. He again lost his arm, though this time, it was vaporized by his brother Mekt. During a battle with an insane Element Lad, he is killed and resurrected in Element Lad's body. During Lo3W, his transmutation powers are strengthened enough to let him transform his own body back to normal (though he keeps his artificial arm for some reason).

In continuity 3, he makes an effective group member, but after becoming leader following the disappearances of both Cosmic Boy and Supergirl, he is way over his head. He is the one who agrees to have the Legion adopted as an official arm of the United Planets, and the Legion nearly goes bankrupt until a boy with the "super power" of management skills shows up and handles day to day affairs. The series ends just as Garth is beginning to get a handle on his responsibilities.

Saturn Girl
Name: Imra Ardeen of Titan (one of Saturn's moons)
Source of Power: Native ability of Titanians
Romantic Ties: Lightning Lad (1, 1.5, 2, 3), Cosmic Boy (2, false pretenses), Ultra Boy (3, one encounter)

Imra Ardeen was on her way to Earth in order to apply to join the Science Police when she "overheard" two would be assassins plotting to kill R.J. Brande. When she shouted out a warning, two of her fellow passengers stopped the assassins with their powers. She then went on to be one of the founding members of the Legion of Super Heroes and fell in love with fellow founder Lightning Lad. At one point, she received a prophetic warning that a Legionnaire would die in an upcoming fight with Zaryan the Conquerer so she used her powers to win the election for leader of the group and then abused her leadership to suspend every other member of the group so that she would be the only possible member to die. However, Lightning Lad disobeyed her orders and was killed instead (he got better, though only kinda sorta in 1.5). She would go on to legitimate terms of leadership and even saved the Earth when her powers enabled her to overcome Universo's attempt to hypnotize the entire planet.

In 1.5, she lives with her husband Garth in semi-retirement as a hero running a farm. She ends up with a total of four children, but is able as ever when called into battle.

During continuity 2, her usage of power became somewhat suspect, as she would unconsciously manipulate the comatose Cosmic Boy into almost marrying her while stranded in our time (she was only stopped by the realization that she loved Garth seemingly transforming Rokk into Garth), and as leader, she would knowingly create an illusion of Apparition (Phantom Girl) in order to keep Ultra Boy calm during a crisis.

In continuity 3, Imra and all Titanians are actually physically mute due to exclusively using telepathy to communicate (which causes a real issue when she briefly loses her powers). Later, when the burdens of Legion leadership are causing Lighting Lad to neglect her, (that sentence has too many L words), she has a brief and mostly telepathic affair with Ultra Boy. This plotline was largely left unresolved at the end of the series.

Whew. I think I'm going to cut down to 3 a day. So next up (I'm going in order of Wikipedia mention), Triplicate Girl, Phantom Girl and Superboy.

Thursday, May 14, 11:48 AM:

If you're lost, you can look and you will find me
time after time

If you haven't been keeping up with the excellent series Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds, you're simply either not a comic fan, or you're really missing out. That's all there is to it.

But a friend let me know that he hadn't really read Legion of Super-Heroes, so he was a little lost as to who all these characters were, and what was going on. So I'm going to take it upon myself to explain all the shenanigans and goings on.

First off, as you see by the title, we're dealing with three worlds here, or at least three continuities. So I'm going to start with a little crash course on them.

Continuity 1 is the classic Legion continuity, ranging from 1958-1986 or so in terms of publishing dates as the version we're dealing with here stops with the Crisis on Infinite Earths. This continuity has been established as the future of the mainline DC Earth (also called New Earth or Earth-1, not to be confused with the Pre-Crisis Earth-1, which I may talk about someday). Most of what you've heard about Legion continuity likely happened here. The Legion began when Rokk Krinn (later known as Cosmic Boy, possessing magnetic powers), Imra Ardeen (Saturn Girl, telepathy) and Garth Ranzz (Lightning Lad, shoots lightning) were all on their way to Earth and stopped an assassination attempt on R.J. Brande, typically considered to be the richest man in the universe. He suggested that the three take inspiration from Superboy and become heroes. And thanks to this idea and his financing, the Legion of Super-Heroes was founded. Applicants were accepted who had at least one useful power not possessed by any current Legion members, were able to control said power and (it was revealed) passed a telepathic check from Saturn Girl to make sure that they were good people. It is worth noting that some developments from the comics of the time, even before the next continuity I'll speak about, have been retconned away, notably the supervillain Validus being a child of Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad stolen and transformed by Darkseid. However, the death of Karate Kid (he briefly got better) and Princess Projectra's change to the Sensor Girl identity did happen. These will be covered more when I talk about the individuals.

Continuity 1.5 isn't represented in this series, but bears talking about. This is the continuity retconned away by dropping out the post-Crisis continuity of #1. Here, we're talking about comics published between 1996-1994. After about a year or so, a 5 year gap was put in place to establish a new continuity. The Legion was dissolved and its members scattered to various worlds, and Earth's government was under the control of the alien species known as the Dominators. The Legion would be reformed (and in fact a SECOND younger Legion would be found that ended up being time duplicates), and Earth would be freed from the Dominators and then destroyed, with only about 100 cities surviving as linked bubbles. The main plot developments during this phase however concerned DC's edict at the time that Clark Kent was never Superboy (and was the only survivor of Krypton). Given that Superboy was the inspiration to the Legion, there was a void that needed to be filled. First, it was established that the Superboy that the Legion knew came from a "pocket dimension" created by the Time Trapper. Pocket-Superboy ended up sacrificing his life to save that dimension. The same pocket dimension was also where the Matrix-Supergirl came from, and where Superman ended up having to execute three Kryptonian criminals who destroyed that Earth. The entire pocket dimension thing has been retconned out pretty thoroughly, so both those developments are in limbo, as is the Eradicator, since Superman encountered the Eradicator while exiling himself from Earth due to guilt from the three executions.

Shortly before the 5 Year Gap, members of the Legion attacked and seemingly killed the Time Trapper in retribution for the death of Superboy (this was later changed, but that's a whole other story). However, part of the Trapper's essence survived locked in Mon-El's brain (...yeah) and Mon-El ended up destroying it. However, without a Time Trapper, Mordru took over the universe, so a woman named Glorith had to assume the Trapper's role. In the process, Mon-El got a retcon where he had a brief 20th Century run as the hero Valor, and ended up himself being the inspiration for the Legion. As you can tell from even this brief glossover, this all got pretty confusing and one of the purposes of the Zero Hour event was to fix problems from CoIE, including the Legion.

That leads us to Continuity 2, which was revealed to mainly take place on the now destroyed Earth-247, and lasted from 1994-2004. The Legion again started with Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad saving R.J. Brande from an assassination attempt. Here, Brande went to the United Planets government for help financing the Legion, which caused all sorts of meddling. The government instituted a policy where members were "drafted" into Legion service (despite the Legion's or the member's wishes on the subject) and only one member could come from any given world (Lightning Lad was actually forced out when his home planet of Winath drafted his sister, Lightning Lass). By exposing the president of the UP as corrupt, the Legion eventually came free of these restrictions. Beginning back in 1.5, there were two Legion series, Legion of Super-Heroes and Legionnaires (the latter of which covered the adventures of the younger time-duplicate Legion). The two series persisted into this continuity, and so the Legion was divided twice. In the first division, half of the Legion was trapped in our time and played a major role in the Final Night event. (In Lo3W, Brainiac 5 of continuity 1, hereafter dubbed Brainiac 5-1, stated that time travel could often also involve dimensional travel, explaining this and why Legion-3 could have Earth-1's Supergirl as a member). Later, the titles were divided into the Legionnaires stationed on Earth and the Legionnaires stationed on an orbital base. This continuity persisted until the Teen Titans/Legion Special, where this Legion ended up recruiting the Teen Titans to help fight the Fatal Five.... Hundred, which consisted of the Fatal Five and their counterparts from 99 different Earths. As a result of this conflict, the Titans were sent back home (except for a minor side trip 10 years into their future) and the Legion-2 were lost in limbo.

Continuity-3 lasts from 2004-2009. Here, the Legion's origins are never explained, but the Legion is a social movement rebelling against a status quo that shuns personal contact. The Legion considers anyone who shares their ideals to be a member, and thus the Legion is about 20,000 members strong. However, the core team is limited by the number of Flight Rings that Brainiac 5 can produce, and they are extremely expensive. Later, the Legion is adopted as a formal arm of the government, and much of this premise is lost. This Legion's stories apparently stop when their series is cancelled at issue #50, but as Lo3W had already started before then, certain plot developments may be excluded, and it's hard to tell exactly when the Legion-3 is brought over in their continuity.

So there's some material to chew on for now. Next time, I'll try to start covering the various members, 5 at a time.

Whew.

Wednesday, April 1, 1:13 PM:

You might think it's an April Fool's joke, but sometimes I actually do complete a project.

Quite a while back, I promised a revamp of my Wrestling Match Database in order to improve readability. I took forever on the project, then when my Hard Drive failed, I lost all the work anyway.

I trimmed back some of the work I had planned as unnecessary, and managed to do all the work in one day. It actually went up last night, but I forgot to include one of the discs I got since I last updated. I included the Tagged Classics PPVs I got from 2003 that I've discussed here previously, as well as the Best of Saturday Night's Main Event set I got yesterday. (I should note that if I suddenly disappear, then Matt Sutton needs to go to JAIL. Jealousy is a horrible thing, Matt.) But I forgot to include Wrestlemania XXIV. For some fun, check my archives for 2006 or so and see my database from when I first started it.

Maybe I can now eventually finish some of my other projects, such as that Hogan Anthology review now a bit more than TWO YEARS late.

But I suppose that's a faraway dream...

Sunday, March 29, 9:09 PM:

In addition to needing to update my blog more often, it seems like I need to update the way I update as well.

I use Netscape Composer for my updates (and I'll let all my tech oriented friends get in their laughter now). Netscape Composer is pretty much a dead program, as it was removed from the Netscape suite even before Netscape itself died, but it was, amongst free programs, what I was most used to and what fit my needs the best. Remember, this isn't like Blogspot or other programs. Since my page and blog are integrated and I don't have fancy schmancy PHP apps or anything like that, I'm updating the page itself with the new entry, uploading the revised page to my server, then C&Ping the entry to MySpace, which automatically propogates it to Google Reader and FaceBook through RSS feed. Got that? Good. There will be a quiz later.

After the great Dave's Hard Disk Death of Late 2008, I wanted to reprocure Composer and got the last version of Netscape it came with. It was higher than the version I was used to and some things functioned a bit different.

One of the odd things I can't figure out is just why this resulted in my last entry getting so oddly and randomly spaced when I C&Ped it to MySpace, Google Reader and Facebook. But to combat this, I am writing my entries up in WordPad and then C&Ping to both my blog and MySpace from there.

I've been playing some more in The Sims 2 lately. I decided to settle down and start a family. I failed to join the PTA, and buy some sensible shoes and a Chevrolet, but that's another story. I got married to a made up Sim (no, not based on any girls I know in real life), and we went about the baby having business. We had a boy and I figured to have one more child so that when they get old enough for College, I could choose one of them to continue play with. Plus, it'd be keeping with the whole Zero Population Growth thing that some people swear is important.

A number of real life couples can probably predict what happened... when you absolutely only want one more child, you have twins.

In The Sims 2, having one child can be enough of a handful. Babies are eating, pooping and especially crying machines. Toddlers just add the dimension of pure unadulterated chaos. I still laugh remembering a toddler in one of my games who had a fondness for finding the toilet and gleefully splashing water everywhere. Now we had two babies and a toddler. I think if we didn't have a butler and a nanny around at various times, we would have died, or at least lost one of the kids to a Social Worker. Oftentimes, I was locked in a cycle where my dead tired Sims went to bed, and one of the kids started crying, which woke both Sims up to take care of the various eating and pooping needs, only to fall asleep again and be woken up a second later again.

This goes without even mentioning my Cat sim who somehow managed to completely reduce a brand new single bed to lumber scraps by scratching on it. Perhaps he was angry that I colored him neon green with rainbow stars with the unlockable options for pets.

I reached the point where the twin babies became toddlers and the toddler became a child (and thus much more self sufficient and less randomly destructive) and unfortunately my game crashed shortly thereafter. My last save was when the oldest was still a baby and the twins were still in the fictional wife's womb. So I get to do this all again! Yay?

I'm still considering the possibility of real life fatherhood someday... and I'm hoping it's a lot less hectic than that.

Thursday, March 26, 9:01 PM:

"It's raining inside my house!"

Of all the sentences I never expected to read, that has to be on at least the top 100.

But in a recent game of The Sims 2, my Sim started freaking out when it was raining. Even when I cancelled the sudden freakouts, my Sim generated more in his planned action list.

So, obviously, something was up. What kind of game designer would make my Sim freak out simply because it was raining.

So I investigated.

I switched to an upper story view of my house only discover that on my home that I had built from scratch neglected a vital element. I put in walls, I put in floors... I simply neglected to include a roof.

I suppose my roofless house was quite fun until  inclement weather hit. Like camping or something.

Fortunately, none of my nice things were ruined by being rained on, and as soon as I constructed a roof, my Sim stopped freaking out.

I suppose there is a moral to this narrative, but I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.

More later.

Saturday, January 10, 3:20 PM:

There's this one online program that I'm a part of wherein you're sent surveys every once in a while, and for each survey you do, you build up a little bit of credit. With that credit, you can claim various rewards once you've built up enough. I won't plug  them directly, but I bet you can find them if you look (or if you ask me). The only reward I personally find worth having is a $25 Gamestop card, which oddly requires $50 worth of credit with the program. I've just claimed my second card from them.

Back in September, I used a card to pick up Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney : Justice for All for the DS, and Madden 2005, NHL 2004 and MLB 2004 for the PS2. Sports games are dirt cheap once they get older. Wright is interesting, but in a game that is about being a lawyer, the idea that your closest allies are spirit channelers is really not necessary. It's really disturbing when the 10 year old channels her really buxom cousin (especially given that this spirit channeling makes the channeler take on the appearance of the channeled person.)

I have long had the far superior ESPN NFL 2K5. The only reason I'm playing Madden 2005 now is that  it has a corresponding NCAA Football game that I also have. It's really cool to see a player come through the created Pt. Loma Nazarene football team I created and get drafted onto my Rams team.

I've just gotten the second card, and I used that to pick up Fire Pro Wrestling Returns, Rumble Roses and Robotech: Invasion.

Fire Pro is a descendant of games released in Japan dating all the way back to the Super Nintendo system. It's a little simplistic in that the wrestlers are sprites rather than 3D polygon models, but the character creation is unrivalled in its depth and you can create up to 500 characters. You also get to put the characters in matches like where the ring is surrounded by electrified barbed wire instead of ropes, and at a certain point in the match, the ring explodes, knocking down everyone in it. I don't see SmackDown ever including that.

Rumble Roses is an all female wrestling game made by Yuke's who also develop the SmackDown games. Its gimmick is essentially improbably built and scantily clad ladies wrestling, but the wrestling is pretty solid. In fact, I'd even place it above Def Jam Vendetta in terms of being the best non-WWE wrestling game out there play wise. It has a feature that you can "vow" to do certain things before a match that make you more of a face or more of a heel. If someone does enough heel things as a face or vice versa, they actually "turn" and unlock their alternate persona, which is a feature I wish WWE games would have, but I bet we'll never see.

For the last one, I almost went with Ultimate Wrestling featuring MUSCLE to complete the theme, but instead decided to complete the collection of Robotech related games on the PS2 (all two of them). Robotech: Invasion is set, appropriately enough, in the Invid Invasion portion of the series, which is the final of the three series that were put together to make Robotech. You ride a Cyclone, and the game is essentially a first person shooter where you can transform part of your armor to a motorcycle. However, the motorcycle is really only useful to move quickly between the various missions, and the game won't even let you transform in enclosed areas like caves.

All in all, not bad for just filling out surveys in my free time.

In the meantime, I'd like to restart an old tradition I had on the blog here. Using Google Analytics, here's the visitation figures for December, 2008.

I ended up with 59 visits outside of my home county for the month. Way down, but given the lack of updatery, not surprising. Since December has 31 days, that amounts to 1.31 vists a day. This includes visitors from 17 states and 12 countries. The only continents I blank on are South America and the typically absent Africa, given that Antarctica doesn't count.

In any event, you may notice that this page is a lot shorter. 2008 has been offficially moved to its own archive page, and the archive pages got a little work to make sure their menus sync up with this one.

Happy 2009, everyone!