Legion of Super-Heroes #49 – “A Time to Live” – Paul Levitz/Pat Broderick/Mike DeCarlo
This one starts with Sensor Girl confronting Brainiac 5, Saturn Girl, Mon-El, and Duo Damsel about the secret stuff they’ve been doing (which isn’t so secret anymore since they brought a white dwarf star to Brainy’s lab as a power source last issue). Saturn Girl points out that they haven’t broken any Legion rules, but Sensor Girl is adamant that their plan is wrong. Mon-El’s ready to fight about it, but they’re interrupted when all the Legionnaires suddenly keel over in great pain. The same thing happens in the hangar and on a Legion Cruiser out in deep space. Everyone soon recovers from the wave of pain (although White Witch
seems to have been affected more) and Polar Boy is the first one to realize that the pain seemed to come from their flight rings, starting in their fingers and radiating through the rest of their bodies. Of course, we know why that is: Starfinger ordered a captured scientist named Hazeg (who’s really Colossal Boy in disguise) to find a way to kill all the Legionnaires simultaneously, using their rings as the delivery method. Obviously Colossal Boy wouldn’t kill his teammates, so he just caused some temporary pain instead. Starfinger’s not happy, but “Hazeg” begs him for another chance to perfect the weapon. 
Starfinger gives him one more day and leaves Reefej (who also disappointed him last issue) to experiment on. Reefej is really Chameleon Boy in disguise and he soon reveals himself to Colossal Boy. Back at headquarters, the argument continues and Saturn Girl tells the others how the conspiracy started. The four of them swore an oath at Superboy’s grave that they would go after the Time Trapper and kill him for all his manipulations of time that led to Superboy’s death. Sensor Girl agrees that Time Trapper needs to be dealt with, but says it should be a matter for the whole Legion and Saturn Girl agrees. Sensor Girl also knows that the four conspirators pledged to die to get rid of Time
Trapper if necessary, but she keeps that to herself. In Starfinger’s lab, Cham and Colossal Boy compare notes and wonder how they’ll be able to get out alive without having to actually kill all their teammates. Starfinger gets impatient when his men suggest leaving and he demands Hazeg give him the weapon immediately. At Legion HQ, Brainy tearfully admits that he can’t construct a machine to break the time barrier. The others try to encourage him, but he’s sure that all his previous time-travel equations are just wrong 
and figures maybe time-travel is just impossible. But Sensor Girl has found someone who might be able to help, someone who’s supposed to be dead … Rond Vidar. At Starfinger’s lab, he loses patience with Hazeg and Reefej and uses his powers to figure out who they really are. They try to fight, but he pounds them and declares that he can use them to finish off the entire Legion. (This story is concluded in the Annual, which I’ll review after the regular issues, so we’ll have to wait a while to see what happens.)
New Teen Titans #46 – “Mindquake” – Marv Wolfman/Eduardo Barreto/Romeo Tanghal, Pablo Marcos
Last issue, Chris King came to the Titans for help when his ex-girlfriend Vicki Grant went nuts and tried to kill him. Chris and Vicki were the Dial H for hero kids, using the magic dials they found to turn themselves into a slew of temporary superheroes. But they outgrew that, broke up, and moved on with their lives … except Vicki seems to have some trouble letting go. She’s using her dial to get superpowers to she can make Chris’s life hell and after pounding the crap out of the Titans last issue, she grabbed Chris
and took off, saying her new asters (the Children of the Sun) wanted him. The Titans feel stupid for getting trashed by one girl and go to STAAR Labs to have their wounds patched up. (Danny Chase freaks out because he’s never been hurt before, but the others calm him down.) Jericho actually projected himself into Chris before Vicki grabbed him, so Nightwing expects to hear from him soon. Raven fought Vicki in the netherworld and got blasted, so it takes her a while to get back to Earth’s dimension and find her teammates. She offers to heal them with her powers, but the doctor says that’s a shortcut and that 
they need rest in order to heal fully, especially from the emotional shock they’ve all experienced. In San Francisco, Vicki (who’s dressed like a hooker now) tells Chris how she was bored out of her mind when her family first moved to Marin County and how she started hanging out with new friends who introduced to a lot of fun stuff (like drugs and bisexuality). She says she dialed HERO backwards on her H-dial when she was stoned and it opened up a whole new world to her. Jericho (who left Chris’s body earlier) has been listening to all this and sends a signal to the Titans that they can track. Vicki tells Chris about the naked ceremony the Children of the Sun made her undergo and how they wanted her to find him and his H-dial. She stole the H-dial from where he hid it, and now that she has him her masters will be pleased. 
The Titans show up and Starfire attacks Vicki, letting her anger take over and beating the shit out of her. The others pull her off, afraid she’ll kill Vicki, but she just knocks her out. Vicki is taken to STAR Labs in San Francisco (where Sarah Charles now works … too bad Cyborg was too injured to come along) and she’s drugged to keep her quiet, which Chris
thinks is funny since drugs are what fucked her up to begin with. But Vicki has residual energy stored in her body and she overloads the machines and busts loose, transforming into an energy being. She blasts the Titans (including Cyborg, who did show up after all) and changes into a metallic form. When Raven grabs her, she tries to change to pure light and loses her H-dial. Chris grabs it, but Vicki manages to change to light and vanish. So Chris has her H-dial, but she still has his and he vows to find Vicki and cure her, no matter how long it takes. That sounds like it’s setting up a future story, but I don’t think these characters ever appeared again.
Suicide Squad #16 – “Deathzone” – John Ostrander/Luke McDonnell/Malcolm Jones III
Last issue, Nightshade and her teammates went to another dimension to look for her brother, but he turned out to be a bad guy (the Incubus) who wanted to bang her so their kid could play host to a demon named Azmodeus. (He also pulled the evil Enchantress persona out of June Moon because it was his demonic “sister”, Succubus.) Things got a little wild and Deadshot killed Incubus’s human host, which dissolved the dimension. The Squad were pulled into a vortex, so Nightshade opened a portal and they end up in another dimension … a
pretty weird one. Nightshade passes out and monsters assail them from all sides, They try to fight back, but it looks like they’re outnumbered. Luckily, there’s someone there to give them a hand … Shade, the Changing Man. He pounds all the monsters and determines that they’re from Earth but can’t get back while Nightshade is unconscious. He uses his fancy vest to tune in to her powers and teleports them back to Belle Rêve, scaring the shit out of Amanda Waller. Shade explains the powers of his Miraco-vest and tells them his origin (being framed and stealing the M-vest to clear himself). He also 
tells them about the different “zones” (or dimensions) like the Meta-Zone where he’s from and the Zero Zone, where he met the Squad. He mentions the Occult Research Center, a Metan outpost on Earth run by Wizor and his assistant Leno, and how Wizor covers up Metan activity on Earth by telling the truth about it (making everyone assume it’s bullshit because it comes from the Occult Research Center, which people assume is some nutty cult). Shade says that a renegade named ZZ is trying to conquer Earth and Meta and has cut off access to Meta. The Metan leader promised Shade a new trial if he can stop ZZ, but now that access to Meta is cut off, Wizor won’t know about
Shade’s mission and will probably try to kill him on the spot. The Squad (including Rick Flagg and Captain Cold) figures that sounds like their kind of mission and offer to help. At the ORC, ZZ is torturing people to find any hidden agents. The Squad go undercover at an art show (The Far Side of Space by Erik Larson, which is obviously a take on Gary Larson’s Far Side … they even mention the French Mammoth cartoon). When ZZ’s men attack, the Squad fight back and Shade goes after ZZ, who gets an advantage over him. Flagg ends 
up shooting ZZ and tells the Metans Shade is leaving with the Squad. Wizor wonders how to explain everything and Shade says he should just tell the truth, since nobody will believe it anyway. McDonnell’s art here seems to mimic Steve Ditko’s, who did the original Shade stories in the 70s; and the ORC headquarters looks a lot like Dr. Strange’s mansion, which I assume is intentional.