Legion of Super-Heroes #55 – “Different Paths” – Paul Levitz/Keith Giffen, Ernie Colon, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Erik Larsen/Al Gordon
This one starts with Legion leader Polar Boy worrying about a few Legionnaires who have taken off for personal reasons and fallen out of contact. The rest of the issue is a series of vignettes letting us know what these “missing” Legionnaires are doing. We start with White Witch, who went home to Sorcerer’s World when things got too intense with Time Trapper. She’s conflicted about herself, knowing
her soul holds both Light and Dark elements, but unsure which represents her the best. She talks to a Khund initiate named Harlak and runs into a fellow mage (Sarvisa), who tells her their masters need a message taken to Earth. White Witch considers it, but decides her time on Earth is over and prefers to remain on Sorcerer’s World, so Sarvisa says he’ll take the message in her place. Later, the masters ask White Witch to teach Harlak and she agrees. Our next stop is Colu, where Brainiac 5 returned after being acquitted of conspiracy charges. He’s set up an ultra-sophisticated lab to study up on time-travel (purely theoretical) after the changes to history wrought by the 
Crisis and the Time Trapper. But he’s stunned to find out that time travel research is forbidden on Colu. He’d expected complete freedom for intellectual pursuits on a planet dedicated to that, but can’t go against his elders. He decides to focus on other research (although he notes that the ban doesn’t stop him from thinking about time travel) and thinks about reconnecting with some old friends he hasn’t seen since he left Colu to join the Legion. Our next stop is Xanthu, where Dream Girl has gone with Atmos, the appointed champion of the planet. Star Boy (who just happens to be Dream Girl’s ex) is also there acting as a second champion and the Xanthans are happy to have Dream Girl as a third, although they seem more impressed with her
attractiveness than her heroism. Naturally, there’s friction between Star boy and Atmos which turns into a fight during an emergency. Star Boy wins, but ends up leaving the planet, unable to watch Atmos and Dreamy getting so close. The weird thing is that Dream Girl has no idea why she’s there; it’s almost as if she’s under some kind of spell that she can’t break. She admits to herself that she doesn’t want to be there (and doesn’t even like Atmos all that much), but for some reason, she just can’t bring herself to leave. Our last check-in is with Blok, who we last saw leaving with a freaky little alien who promised he could help Blok find other beings of his kind. Blok has been feeling isolated as the only silicon-based being among carbon-based life forms, plus his 
body has been changing and he doesn’t know why. His new alien pal tells him he just has to want the answers badly enough and he’ll find them, but Blok wonders if the alien is just screwing with him and gets pissed off. The alien takes off and we see he’s working for a different alien (called the Inquisitor) who created him to antagonize Blok. The Inquisitor wants the secrets of silicon-based life and thinks that pissing Blok off will help him get those secrets, so that’s why they keep trying to frustrate Blok. But Blok ends up calming down and meditating, which delays the Inquisitor’s plans. Back on Earth, Polar Boy wonders again about the missing Legionnaires, adding Shadow Lass and Mon-El (who are out looking for a way to heal the wounds inflicted on Mon-El by Time Trapper) to the list when they don’t respond to his communications.
Suicide Squad #22 – “Final Round” – John Ostrander/Luke McDonnell/Karl Kesel
Last issue, Rick Flag found out that Tolliver was blackmailing Amanda Waller into helping get Senator Cray re-elected by threatening to go public about the Squad. Flag went rogue (and a little nuts), deciding to kill Tolliver and Cray to preserve the team’s secret. This issue starts with Waller assembling a team to stop Flag from carrying out his crazy mission (she doesn’t know yet that Flag has already shot Tolliver) by any means necessary … including killing him. Bronze Tiger, Vixen, Nemesis, and Shade don’t like that idea and are ready to bail on the mission, until Waller points out that the rest of the team (Deadshot, Captain
Boomerang, and Duchess) will have no qualms about killing Flag … unless someone’s there to stop them. (Duchess has a thought about not wanting Flag dead because it’ll interfere with her own plans.) Waller admits she screwed up by not letting Flag know she’d turned the tables on Tolliver, doing a little blackmail of her own to keep his mouth shut. What she doesn’t know is that Tolliver was going to call her bluff, killing Cray himself and blaming it on the Squad after he leaked the story about them to the press (blaming Cray for being mixed up with them, of course). Flag shooting Tolliver derailed that plan, 
but Flag left without seeing the memo Tolliver had prepared to release about the Squad, so when the cops find Tolliver’s body, they find the memo too. But one of the cops steals the original (leaving a carbon copy in its place), thinking it’ll be good blackmail material. The Squad arrives in Washington (it’s the night before the election) and they split up to look for Flag. Meanwhile, someone has faxed the press release about Cray and the Squad to the Daily Planet (which isn’t named, but it’s obviously Perry, Lois, and Jimmy discussing things), where there’s a debate over whether to run the story without corroboration.
As the Squad hears about Tolliver’s death, Flag and Deadshot both show up at the Lincoln Memorial, where Cray thinks he’s meeting Tolliver. Flag is ready to blow Cray away when Deadshot interrupts them, but Flag says he’ll have to kill him to stop him. Deadshot shoots Cray instead and seems to be reliving some weird thing from his past (which is probably a reference to the Deadshot mini-series that came out around this time). Flag takes off and the cops show up and shoot Deadshot down like a dog. It was almost like he wanted to die, but he ends up surviving and Waller visits him in the hospital to give him 
shit for killing Cray. Deadshot points out that he was just following her orders, not letting Flag kill Cray. Flag has disappeared and the press did end up running the story about the Squad, which basically finishes them as a concept, since they depended on secrecy to make things work. But the alien invasion is dominating the headlines and Waller hopes she can use the Squad against the aliens to create some good will among the public.