LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES
Omnicom Exerpts
These two fictional text pieces were printed as part of an ongoing "Omnicom" series. Most issues in the volume 4 series featured these documents at the end of the issue, before the letters page. These two "excerpts" deal with the revision in history to Mon-El, and his transition to Valor. Scanned from the original.
From Legion of Super-Heroes v.4 #4 (February 1990)
TITAN IN A CHINA SHOP:
The Unauthorized Biography of Mon-El
By Baretta West
<< scroll up for previous text >>
…would never acknowledge it publicly, it was an open secret among Talok VIII's upper administrators that his death ultimately brought more relief than grief to Tasmia's scarred psyche.
They say that's why Tasmia failed so completely as planetary champion when she returned to Talok VIII after the Mystic Wars, and why she's now retreated to the seclusion of the Abbey of the Ancestors.
While his Legion friends continue to paint the picture of a stoic, noble Mon-El, loving toward Tasmia to the end, journalists covering the Legion closely during those final months know different.
Even Tinya Wazzo has been quoted as admitting that before the ill-fated showdown with the Time Trapper, in which Mon-El was mortally wounded, he and Shadow Lass had barely spoken a sentence to each other in weeks.
Wazzo has written off that episode as a manifestation of the grief Mon-El was feeling after the death of the 20th century champion Superboy. But there's convincing evidence Mon-El's psychoses were by this time running rampant After years of wavering on the brink, this unstable boy-in-a-titan's-body had become a source of constant anxiety to his teammates and friends. Massive, world-threatening tantrums were becoming commonplace.
Kahnya Nahtahnie, Lady Memory and co-prefect of Talok VIII, describes in vivid detail an embarrassing incident the Legion's P.R. machinery has attempted to hush up. While attempting to interfere in a political dispute on Talok VIII, Mon-El suffered a violent mental breakdown, according to Nahtahnie.
Legion records are conveniently sketchy on the details of this rampage (while unusually thorough in cataloguing the group's grievances against Nahtahnie, whom Tasmia considers a political enemy), but there's no doubt the berserk hero attacked and injured fellow Legionnaires Gim Allon, Thorn Kallor, and Brin Londo, finally being physically restrained only by Kallor's powers.
Ultimately the Legionnaires had to project Mon-El into the Phantom Zone and simply wait out his fit before they could resume their interference in the Talok VIII dispute.
But perhaps the Legionnaires talk so little about that incident because it was quickly overshadowed by another, far more frightening breakdown. Legion records, obtained only through the invocation of the Information-Freedom Decree, provide sketchy details of the greatest Mon-EI rampage of them all.
The episode was apparently triggered when the Daxamite developed an immunity to the serum that was protecting him from lead poisoning. As Brainiac 5 worked to update the serum, Mon-El suffered a complete breakdown that some Legionnaires have privately admitted was a suicidal rage.
The Legion headquarters took a battering. Records indicate the damage Mon-El inflicted cost 30,000 credits to repair. Finally, the berserk titan, in an apparent attempt to end his life, simply streaked out of the headquarters and threw himself at super-speed into the Earth's polymer shield.
In his weakened condition, the ploy almost worked. The mighty Legion had no alternative but to project the critically wounded Mon-EI into the Phantom Zone to save the hero from himself.
Even then, Legionnaires Tinya Wazzo and Tellus had to enter the Zone and physically force the rampaging titan to submit, against his will, to attempts to save his life. Finally, a life-saving injection was administered while Mon-EI was restrained bodily by teammates Jo Nah and Tellus.
Unfortunately, that incident did not mark the end of the psychological battering Tasmia was subjected to. In the weeks that followed, Mon-El's violent mood swings and long, sullen period of silence continued. But Tasmia's torment would grow far worse after the subsequent unexpected death of Mon-El's close friend Superboy.
After that tragedy, Mon-El's obsessive, suicidal behavior seemed to take on an entirely new scope, totally eclipsing whatever geniality remained a part of his nature—a grim foreshadowing of things to come.
From Legion of Super-Heroes v.4 #6 (April 1990)
The Last Days Of Daxam
By K.J. Weber
Excerpt: Pages 232-34
...and at last report was battling against the Khundish invasions of U.P. space
Daxams greatest hero of the 20th and 30th centuries, Lar Gand, had initially looked to be one of the most tragic victims of the great atrocity.
He and Glorith had been blood enemies since the days of Gand's legendary exploits in the·20th century, and her callous act of genocide apparently affected the Legionnaire profoundly.
His teammates say he was a driving force behind the conspiracy that led to the cataclysmic battle with Glorith. And the depth of his rage probably contributed to the rash direct attack on Glorith that very nearly cost Gand his life.
Exactly how he survived the injuries is still somewhat of a puzzle. Glorith's counter-attack left the legendary hero in a ghastly condition—virtuallu a living corpse, aged beyond recognition.
Still. Gand cheated fate and confounded medicine by recovering fully. Experts eventually deduced that his Daxamite invulnerability sparked a regeneration of the withered tissue and his body literally de-aged. Dr. Raub Woker, Chief of Medicine on Medicus Two, has termed it "the most astounding example ever documented of the recuperative qualities of the Daxamite solar powers."
But few disagree that survival would not have been possible if not for two factors:
The constant. unwavering support of Tasmia Mallor. Her insistent, forceful demands for medical attention of an unprecedented magnitude won her few friends in the medical community, but may have proven critical to Gand's survival. Probably more important, though, was the powerful emotional support she gave Gand throughout the ordeal. Doctors believe that support is a key reason why Gand's character and determination never wavered, despite the physical devastation he'd suffered.
The dislodging, during Gloriths attack. of the previously unknown presence of the Eltro Gand psyche in Lar Gand's personality. Psychological experts now agree that the invasion of the Eltro Gand persona was largely responsible for Lar Gand's celebrated manic-depressive behavior through the '80s.
Experts till don't fully understand the Eltro Gand factor, but all seem to agree that the shock of Glorith's attack on Lar Gand finally separated the two peronaliities and allowed the formidable strength of the legendary Lar Gand personality to emerge.
By all accounts the Legionnaires were seeing, for the first lime since the early '80s, the quiet strength that had marked the hero since his emergence from his thousand yar exile in the Bgztl Buffer Zone.
A popular element of the Lar Gand legend had been his emergence from the zone as a changed, yet equally heroic figure. Lost perhaps was an exuberance and vigor associated with his classic exploits of a thousand years earlier. But they were replaced by a quiet nobility that brought him an exceptional patience, judgment and wisdom.
The legend, however, was being significantly tarnished as the depressions and fits increased through the '80s. Gand was being championed by cynics as a symbol of the inevitable decline of all great heroes.
The evidence now suggests, however, that the spirit of this legendary hero, the greatest son of Daxam, remains intact. Gand's close brush with death seems to have also profoundly affected his relationship with Mallor. After years of apparently waffling on the issue of marriage. they quickly tied the knot during the recovery period.
And when Gand's health had returned, Mallor finally convinced him to resign from the Legion and at long last fulfill the dream he'd harbored for more than a thousand years—to explore the far reaches of space.
They said their good-byes shortly before the Great Collapse hit, and were last heard from when the disappeared beyond the range of the Lallorian Colonies, plunging deep beyond the unexplored frontiers.
Little is known about the fate of the third great survivor of the 20th century, Dev-Em. He is known to have lived beyond the destruction of Daxam and has long been linked to the Interstellar Counter-Intelligence Corps, but no information on his whereabouts…
©1990 DC Comics. Reprinted without permission.