New Titans Annual #6 – “Starfire’s World” – Marv Wolfman/Paris Cullins, Curt Swan, Tom Grindberg/Al Vey
This one starts on Tamaran, with the Citadel forces attacking the planet and demanding the eldest daughter from each ruler’s house. Starfire’s father turned her over, but another ruler preferred to send his daughter (Xyannis, who is Karras’s sister) out in a rocket to avoid her being enslaved, kinda like Superman. But she’s picked up by scavengers who take her to a shithole planet where she ends up in slavery anyway. After being passed around for years, one guy (Zorgan) figures out she has super-powers and frees her so they can
embark on a career of thievery together. They end up falling in love and trying to take over the planet, but they bite off more than they can chew. Xyannis decides to go to Tamaran and trick King M’yandr into fighting for them, but she’s surprised to see that Blackfire is now in charge. Blackfire figures a war might give her subjects some pride and cement her popularity, but the attackers prove stronger than expected. Reluctantly, Blackfire decides to call her sister Starfire for help. Karras and Ryand’r (Starfire’s brother) go to earth to recruit her (and the Titans), interrupting a fight with the Society of Sin. They head back to 
Tamaran and Starfire is glad to come home, but doesn’t trust her sister at all. Troia wonders why the attackers seem to be concentrating on Xyannis and Zorgan and figures they’re lying about what’s really going on. When Starfire and Blackfire’s parents are wounded, Starfire sees a different side to her sister, but still can’t forgive her for all the shit she’s pulled in the past. Karras notices how bloodthirsty Xyannis is acting and tells Nightwing. The Titans join in the big attack on the alien forces, but they’re not happy at the wholesale slaughter carried out by the Tamaranians and they soon realize Xyannis and Zorgan set the whole thing up to take out their competition. They follow Xyannis back to
her planet and find out she’s planted bombs all over the city, hoping to sow enough chaos to take over. TheTitans find some of the bombs and confront Xyannis and Zorgan. Karras challenges his sister to a duel and wins, but Zorgan kills her before she can reveal where the other bombs are. Karras attacks Zorgan and they’re caught in an explosion. Karras dies but Raven gleans the bombs’ locations from Zorgan’s mind before he dies too. Blackfire tells Starfire she’s welcome on Tamaran anytime and Starfire realizes that ruling Tamaran has given Blackfire what she’d been looking for all her life … acceptance.
Legion Annual #1 – “Charade” – Tom and Mary Bierbaum/Dougie Braithwaite/Doug Hazlewood/Larry Mahlstedt
This story features Glorith quite heavily and takes place in the new reality she created after issue 6. So some of the historical details are different and we get an altered version of the conspiracy story that started in Legion of Super-Heroes 46. Ultra Boy’s backstory is slightly different in this reality too. This story starts just before the Great Collapse, with Glorith destroying Daxam. Naturally Lar Gand (aka Mon-El) and Laurel Gand (this reality’s Daxamite version of Supergirl) are pissed off and want
revenge. They’re joined by Brainiac 5, Saturn Girl, and Duo Damsel and decide to keep their plans secret to protect their fellow Legionnaires. Ultra Boy figures out what they’re planning and warns Saturn Girl not to take Lar Gand when confronting Glorith because there’s some kind of connection between them. He lets Saturn Girl read his mind and she’s shocked, but insists on letting Lar join them in the final battle. That battle takes place on Baaldur and Glorith’s time manipulations make her too powerful for the Legionnaires to handle. After 
killing one of Duo Damsel’s selves, pounding Rond Vidar and Laurel, and turning Lar into a zombie with a kiss, Glorith gets a flash of telepathy from Saturn Girl about whatever she saw in Ultra Boy’s mind. So we get a digression into Ultra Boy’s origin, starting with him growing up on Rimbor as Jo Nah. Rimbor is a rough place and Jo starts running with the gangs at a young age, allying himself with one gang and fighting others. He meets a girl named An Ryd, who gets him interested in acting, a skill that comes in handy when he has to rescue An from a rival gang. But the gang leader (Si) is interested in An too and has
prior claim. Si takes An into space during an Imskian dragon hunt and Jo goes out to save them, getting swallowed by a dragon. But this dragon is an “energy beast”, so Jo ends up with super-powers … and with An. When he uses his powers to help Phantom Girl stop a super-villain, Marla Latham invites him to try out for the Legion and he accepts. His test is to go back in time and find out what happened to legendary hero Valor (aka Lar Gand/Mon-El, aka this reality’s version of Superboy), who disappeared suddenly in the late Twentieth 
century. When Jo and Marla go back in time, they run into a time storm and pop out in the middle of a Dominator fleet in orbit around Earth. Jo helps Lar Gand (or Valor. If you prefer) defeat the Dominators and they find out the aliens were establishing secret bases on Earth to prepare for an invasion. Jo and Marla return to the future and Jo assumes he failed the test, but he’s welcomed into the Legion with open arms. Phantom Girl congratulates him and it’s obvious there’s an attraction between them. Ultra Boy starts wondering about what happened in the past, feeling like someone manipulated them into showing
up at the right moment to help Lar Gand find the Dominators, thus insuring he’d become a legend. Ultra Boy starts looking into time disturbances and finds one from 2949, which he figures out had some connection to R.J. Brande showing up out of nowhere and later forming the Legion. There’s a counterbalancing time anomaly thirty days in the future, but Ultra Boy can’t figure out what it is. He thinks someone manipulated events to make Valor a hero in the past and to form the Legion a few years ago and when Brainiac 5 figures out the future time 
anomaly is a barrier (which he calls an “iron curtain of time”) put up by Glorith, Ultra Boy deduces that Glorith is the mastermind behind everything. He doesn’t tell anyone his suspicions (having learned on the streets to keep his mouth shut about what he knows), but when the Legion gets ready to go after Mordru, he puts it all together: Glorith basically created the Legion so they could fight Mordru—the only being who could be a threat to her—and weaken him enough for her to finish him off. Ultra Boy keeps his deduction to himself, but Phantom Girl knows he’s hiding something (since they’re a couple now).
Ultra Boy pretends to mistakenly screw up an assignment that makes it impossible for the Legion to attack Mordru, which makes everyone think he’s an idiot. Phantom Girl knows he’s not that stupid, but decides to play along. Ultra Boy uses his acting skills to push Mordru into confronting Glorith before either of them is ready, hoping they’ll exhaust each other and neither one will be strong enough to take over the universe. It seems to work, but Brainiac 5 puts together the same info Ultra Boy did about Glorith. Unfortunately, he’s not as careful as 
Ultra Boy and Glorith realizes he’s on to her scheme. She admits she created the Legion to keep Mordru from ruling the universe in perpetuity, but only so she could take his place. She drives Brainy insane with a kiss and orders him to deal with anyone else who knows the truth. He kills An Ryd (which we saw in Superboy and the Legion 239) and sets Ultra Boy up for it before trying to destroy Earth with Omega (as seen in Superboy and the Legion 251). We snap back to the fight against Glorith on Baaldur, with her realizing Ultra Boy knows her secret. That distracts her enough for Laurel to attack and Glorith is
forced to retreat into the timestream, swearing revenge on Ultra Boy. She decides to hit him where he’s most vulnerable, waiting until after he proposes to Phantom Girl to blow up her ship, killing her. (Of course, it turns out Phantom Girl wasn’t really dead, but Ultra Boy thought she was for a long time, so Glorith’s revenge scheme basically worked.)