Reign of the Supermen #148: Kent Shakespeare

Source: Legion of Super-Heroes vol.4 #12-53 (1990-1994)
Type: Future analog (since retconned)So they had it all figured out, right? The Superboy that fought against the forces of evil in the 30th century came from the Time Trapper's pocket universe, leaving Clark Kent free to join the football team in high school without any pesky Superboy-related extracurriculars in the way.

Well, three years after that story, the Legion skipped a track. Suddenly, it was 2996 (as opposed to keeping it exactly 1000 years from now) and Keith Giffen was embarking on one of the most controversial eras in LSH history. The Legionnaires were older and sadder. The dream of a utopia was dead and the future was one grimy, dirty place. And in only the fifth issue, the sorceress Glorith cast a spell that altered continuity to make things even darker. Personally? I loved it.

One of the things it allowed Giffen to do, of course, was fix continuity and fill the gap left by the erasure of Superboy and Supergirl from the Legion's ranks. Supergirl would be replaced by Laurel Gand AKA Andromeda, who would play a huge role in the series, and Superboy - though you could argue that Lar Gand/Valor/the artist previously known as Mon-El did most of the heavy lifting - was replaced by Kent Shakespeare. The name and glasses seemed a dead giveaway, but who WAS this bespectacled hero? The answers weren't very fortcoming in the LSH book itself. Giffen was experimenting heavily in the title, constantly forcing the reader to catch up with events and people they knew little about going in. Much of the information on Kent Shakespeare instead came from outside sources: His Who's Who entry, a 1990 postcard, the 2996 LSH role-playing sourcebook for DCHeroes, and interviews with his creator, Giffen collaborator Al Gordon. So here, then, are 7 things we know about Kent Shakespeare:
1. His powers - strength, stamina, speed and limited invulnerability - come from a Kryptonian virus that activated his latent Kryptonian genes, proving he was a descendant of Superman and Lois Lane.
2. Kent joined right after LSH volume 3 ended (in 2990) and was thus active as a hero (if not a Legionnaire, as the Legion disbanded around 2991) only during the lost years. This is the greatest argument against his being a Superboy analog.
3. He went to medical school.
4. His Legion codename was Impulse (though this does not appear in a single comic).
5. Kent disappeared from continuity at about the same time Bart Allen appeared as a new Impulse. Coincidence? asked the fans (albeit, not MANY fans).
6. Al Gordon planned to bring the character back in some form in his work on Wildstar for Image Comics. He never did.
7. What Glorith giveth, Glorith taketh away: Ostensibly responsible for Kent's creation, she also does away with him by regressing him to childhood.
During Zero Hour, the last hero to join the Legion was gobbled up by time and disappeared... forever? Not quite, tune in tomorrow for more, and again on Saturday for how Superboy was once again integrated into the DCU after the umpteenth Crisis.

Comments

snell said…
Oh, how I loved the 5YL era.

And I still have those postcards...
Robert said…
This was a Legion comic. Kent should have been saying, "Me am little".
Paul C said…
Really interesting post. The 5YL period is the Legion era I know the least about. Sounds like such an interesting run but probably best Levitz is ignoring it now. I'd still like to read it though.
Siskoid said…
It's as adult (in every sense) as the Legion ever got.
MrCynical said…
I've heard of the 5YL stuff, but I also heard that it was on the whole, pretty depressing and dark, and I'm not sure I want that in my comics.

Personally, I liked Mightygodking's allusions to Richard Kent Shakespeare in his "Why I should write the Legion" posts and tying it into the whole "House of El"/Superman Dynasty concept that Grant Morrison alluded to. Roberson also had a nice cameo by Richard Kent Shakespeare in a recent Superman/Batman arc