Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds and its Weird Fucked Up Timeline (And also stuff about how Bart and Conner came back)
context: i'm trying to read through final crisis (and surrounding events) but there seems to be shitloads of material and half of it makes no sense (sorry morrison) but then i found another miniseries "final crisis: legion of 3 worlds" by geoff johns (that is supposedly a tie-in to final crisis although no one seems to know when and where it ties in). this is also the comic where both conner and bart return (after being dead for about 3 years of comics in conner's case, and about 2 years for bart). anyway the timeline is absolutely crazy on this one!
by itself, final crisis: legion of 3 worlds is pretty good! i think geoff johns is good at writing large-scale action and conflict and his stuff always pairs well with perez. i am an infinite crisis fan so i figured i would probably like this too. it has a lovely visual style with these beautiful, very densely detailed panels by perez, and all of the colouring looks great as well -- very superhero stuff in the traditional, colourful sense. i don't know tons about the legion so for me, a lot of the back-and-forth between the legionnaires wasn't super interesting (ive not read much kirby/new worlds stuff and probably won't) but it was cool once i got into more characters that i know. i really enjoyed seeing conner and bart back, i liked superboy-prime getting beaten up, and i enjoyed the ending (we can have a little bit of superhero meta within comics. as a treat)
so on the topic of conner and bart -- conner gets dug up and resurrected and i think bart just gets pulled out of the speed force and resurrected that way (after adult bart was killed in flash: the fastest man alive)
(above: flash: the fastest man alive #12)
(above: final crisis: legion of 3 worlds #4)
above: the (vague) explanation of how bart came back, from final crisis: legion of 3 worlds #4
(above: Conner gets resurrected by Thom Kallor, Starman)
(above is from a superboy reading list. as you can see, he's dead for 3 years, appears in legion of 3 worlds, then is straight back to action comics, where there is a bit of an implied timeskip but it's kind of "back to normal". this guy is not at all bothered that he came back from the dead. jason todd could take some notes)
one thing was that conner's resurrection felt super abrupt to me. so he's fully off the face of the earth for 3 years and then he's straight back in the fight (complete with a terrible buzzcut. although there is something endearing to me about all of conner's awful haircuts in the 2000s). he and bart eventually manage to get rid of superboy-prime, then there is a weird ending scene where conner and bart go back to the teen titans to say that they're back. there are later scenes (adventure comics vol 3 #1 and red robin #9) that feature tim and kon meeting again but this is meant to be their first "big reunion"
i'm not far in enough to know WHAT continuity errors are going on here, but... there's got to be something. firstly tim's costume (assuming that's tim next to raven?) is no costume tim ever wore (the gloves were black when he wore the one year later suit) but also: is he red robin here? the internet can't seem to give me a definitive answer on where legion of 3 worlds fits in with the final crisis timeline. i've seen one reading order that puts legion in between some of the later issues of final crisis, plus some that say legion must be AFTER final crisis.
final crisis #6 makes a reference to the legion but that is probably not the same as the legion adventure in legion of 3 worlds.
(above is from a final crisis reading order)
evidence for tim being red robin here: red robin #3 when cassie tells tim (who is looking for bruce) that bruce is dead, so is conner (and so is bart, probably!) so bruce must've died before conner and bart come back
therefore tim must be red robin before conner comes back.
but then if we take red robin's timeline as our main source, then surely batman is well and truly dead by then (batman's corpse is found in final crisis #6, so the last issue of final crisis takes place before battle for the cowl and before red robin even starts). by the time red robin starts, dick grayson is batman and damian wayne is robin. so dick is NOT nightwing and tim is NOT robin.
(above: edited version lmao)
it's obviously hard to put any kind of timeline (in terms of weeks, months, days) on comics because they just don't really work like that, but there must be a reasonable timespan even between bruce's death and tim becoming red robin. in red robin #3, conner is DEFINITELY dead, and in red robin #9, conner is DEFINITELY alive.
so judging by those issue numbers, we can assume that final crisis happened somewhere between red robin #3 and red robin #9. i am nervous to put too much weight on the date that comics come out (the month and year) but it can be sometimes useful. here, it doesn't seem to make any sense either.
final crisis: legion of 3 worlds #5 (conner resurrected) = sept 2009
red robin #3 (conner is DEFINITELY DEAD) = oct 2009
adventure comics #1 (conner alive, in smallville) = oct 2009
adventure comics #3 (conner and tim meet in paris) = dec 2009
red robin #5 (tim half dead in iraq) = dec 2009
red robin #9 (conner is DEFINITELY ALIVE) = april 2010
so maybe it seems like it's the red robin timeline that is the outlier here? maybe the flashback to the cassie graveyard scene in RR #3 was misplaced (the flashback is probably not long after bruce's death in final crisis #6, although because they included the flashback, it definitely suggests conner is still dead). legion of 3 worlds has already been published, although because this is a miniseries (rather than part of an ongoing run) it's probably easier to move this around and say that it happens earlier or later.
it's hard to say how tim and conner's meeting in adventure comics interacts with the red robin timeline. by the end of #3, tim has already flown to baghdad, where he stays for #4 and #5, before going to london in #6 (although there isn't much of a gap that suggests he could've met conner in the meantime). this is a trip that probably only takes a few days, but the ra's al ghul plotline takes up a lot of space in red robin and there is no acknowledgement that conner is alive at all until #9. it possibly makes more sense for the meeting in paris not to happen until tim is done with ra's al ghul (if you take the "i was in a bad place, now i'm in a good one" line to suggest that. i mean, tim isn't necessarily in a good place even after that finishes, but at least he's not stressing out so much about ra's anymore) but then that would suggest that the meeting in paris and the meeting on gotham are fairly close together, which i don't think is the vibe either.
above: adventure comics #3. tim has been ignoring conner and conner confronts him about it, turns out it's mostly because tim feels guilt over things he did while conner was dead, and also because tim is preoccupied with his quest to find bruce.
ok it's conclusion time. the main reason i was reading final crisis in the first place was to find out how conner and bart's resurrection interacts with batman's death and also how they interact with the red robin timeline (since i tend to read comics with a tim-centric approach lol). the red robin and adventure comics timelines do not seem to line up with each other perfectly, and the legion of 3 worlds comic doesn't seem to line up with ANYTHING. so i am still none the wiser really, but i'm making this post anyway because it's useful ref for myself in the future
sadly i suspect we might have to take the doylist approach here and just assume that this weird continuity is due to larger editorial errors that can't really be rectified in-universe
FINAL CRISIS: LEGION OF 3 WORLDS BONUS TIME
above: Conner's absolute shit-eating grin as he repeats the words he said to cass before he died. god this is so cheesy (with death scene for comparison!)
above: not a thought behind those eyes lmao. i'm always one for a terrible conner haircut but this is the one place where the buzzcut actually looks okay
