30 days of comics I love #19: I have taken his name, I must take his destiny

Legion of Super-Heroes #59 

by Levitz, Giffen, Bright, Gordon and Garzon 

With such a large and sprawling cast, a long-running series like the Legion of Super-Heroes always needed issues like this, where a solo member gets something of a spotlight, and usually learns an important lesson about life and heroism, often by studying something from the Legion's past adventures. 

This particular one was the last of the classic period Legion - the next issue saw the Magic Wars kick off, and then the whole concept was crashing into the five years later era, and literally nothing would ever be the same again. 

That v4 Legion is my favourite incarnation of the team ever, so I will never regret the decisions that led to those comics, but it is still a little wistful to see Levitz sign off from his long run on the regular Legion with a focus on the Invisible Kids (and poor old Chemical King).

It's a pretty standard effort, giving a little more depth to characters that were killed off years and years ago (although it is weird how much Lyle Norg keeps calling Chemical King a kid, when they're all basically children), and has some lovely Mark Bright artwork which looks a lot like something Curt Swan would have done in 1968, along with some gorgeously grimy Giffen pencils on the framing story.

And while it might not have felt like it at the time it was published in early 1989, it really is the end of an era. There was one more small epic too come, and then innumerable reboots and rethinks, but the simple pleasure of a basic solo Legionnaire comic book would never quite be the same again. The future moved on, a long time ago, and is already ancient history.