 | The Legion of Doom (through a Glass darkly) |
A beloved memory for my generation, the Legion of Doom is a nostalgic shard of badness from the small screen. Debuting in the Challenge of the Super Friends and housed in what looks hauntingly like a flying version of Darth Vader's helmet, they are the baddest of the bad.
In his Flashpoint mini-series, Philip Glass will examine an alternate version of the villainous supergroup. Made up of several also-ran villains rather than the likes of Lex Luthor and Brainiac, this Legion of Doom is nonetheless just as deadly.
Adam Glass made his comics writing debut for DC Comics earlier this year with "JLA 80-Page Giant." With the Super Friends tucked away into his bat-belt bucket list, the supervising producer of Warner Bros.' hit genre series "Supernatural" is now playing both sides of the oversized penny as his next challenge is re-imagining some of the most sinister villains of all time for the "Flashpoint" tie-in miniseries "Flashpoint: Legion of Doom."
And while this alternate reality incarnation of the Legion of Doom is without classic members of the team from the original "Challenge of the Super Friends" animated series like Lex Luthor, Bizarro and Gorilla Grodd, there is Black Manta. And Sportsmaster? And...Animal Man?
Remember, this is "Flashpoint." That means Bruce Wayne died in Crime Alley, not his father; Cyborg is the new Superman; and Heat Wave, the miniseries' featured ne'er-do-well, is badder than Leroy Brown.
Created by John Broome, Heat Wave originally appeared in "Flash" #140 in 1963. A long-time "member" of the scarlet speedster's famed Rogues Gallery, Heat Wave was also affiliated with the Secret Society of Super Villains during "Infinite Crisis" and "Final Crisis." However, Glass told CBR News, in "Flashpoint: Legion of Doom," Heat Wave doesn't play nice with the other supervillains; he's more of a one-man wolf pack. And more importantly, he's Cyborg's greatest threat.
Glass also revealed that while the Darth Vader-looking Hall of Doom does exist in this altered reality, it's no longer the Legion of Doom's secret hideaway. Instead, it's a supermax prison containing Heat Wave and all the other rogues -- meta and non-meta -- that Cyborg has decommissioned.
Kicking off June 22, the three-issue "Flashpoint: Legion of Doom" features art by Brazilian illustrator Rodney Buchemi ("Incredible Hercules") and long-time "The Flash" inker Jose Marzan, Jr., with covers by Miguel Sepulveda ("Thunderbolts").
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As you know, "Flashpoint" is very much not regular continuity. It is set within the DCU proper, but it's very much an altered version.I guess the best way to explain it is, this is basically Heat Wave's story, and it's a classic revenge story. Cyborg, who is the Superman of this world, is his target because he stopped Heat Wave from doing something he really wanted. In the process, Heat Wave received burns over 60 percent of his body and he loses his sense of smell and taste. So he can't smell or feel fire, which sets him off even more.
What he was trying to get to was, he found a way, which I can't reveal, to become the ultimate weapon of fire but was stopped in the process by Cyborg and sent to prison.
So the Hall of Doom, in this setting, in our world, is a maximum security prison for supervillains. It literally flies to the villains and picks them up from wherever they have been incarcerated. It's really cool. You actually see it coming out of the swamp, flying to these places and coming down to pick these guys up.
Amazo is the superguard and inside, the supervillains are separated by metas and non-metas. So instead of the classic ethnic structure that would be in a regular prison, it's the guys with powers versus no powers. All of the metas have collars that sap their energy and powers.
Heat Wave is a total lone wolf. He's up against everyone. He hasn't joined anyone. He has his mind set on revenge and how he is going to escape. No one has ever escaped from there, so he's attempting the impossible.
But he has an ace up his sleeve. We're going to take one of DC's most beloved heroes and give him a villainous makeover. I can't say who it is. You may have already figured it out, but you're not going to hear it from me.
You have KGBeast, Black Manta, Atomic Skull, Sportsmaster. You have Animal Man, who has been wrongly accused, but he is in the prison dealing with prison life.
He's in there because he's wrongly accused of killing his wife. But like anything, the prison has turned him into something else. He's trying to stay straight and trying to be hero, but you have to make your bed with somebody sooner or later, and he makes his bed with the meta gang. Eventually, they say, "Look, we've been protecting you for a long time and we're not going to protect you anymore unless you start doing our bidding."
So he's forced into a big fight with Heat Wave to prove himself. He doesn't want to do it, but if he doesn't, his days inside are numbered.
[Heatwave] is more than an arsonist. Fire drives him. It's his everything. In that book, and we talk about it a little in our book, he burns his house down with his family in it when he was a kid. And he didn't go running to the police. He was excited about it. Once you get under the layers of the guy, he's fucking crazy. He's a true, true psychotic, so I used that as the jumping off point for him and like I said, I took from him the thing that he loved. And if you love something and all of sudden, you can't feel it anymore, smell it anymore, taste it anymore, it just amps you up even more.
Plastic Man is far deadlier in the alternate Flashpoint reality
You'll see when you read the book, right from the jump, he has this ultimate plan for how he can basically become this living inferno and be one with the fire. And when that gets taken away from him, he's a dog with a bone. He is literally obsessed, and his obsession is not only, "I am going to hurt Cyborg," it's, "I am going to destroy everything that Cyborg loves, to whatever extent that means." And you'll see that's a pretty far extension.
It's a classic revenge story, but on a really big, global level. It's not about how powerful you are. Our history shows that. Look who shot JFK or Martin Luther King, Jr. It's not some supervillain. One man can change the world. He doesn't have to have superpowers. All he needs is drive, and Heat Wave has that in spades.
So we're obviously going to see a really dark side of Heat Wave and a dark side of humanity. When someone is out for revenge like him, a twisted psychotic like he is, it's a really interesting journey. I think people are going to be surprised by how the book has a ton of action but also, how psychological the book is.
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