The Trouble with Time Travel

Our most recent entry dealt with Mon-El, who led a long (over 1000 years) and tragic life. As we all know, Mon-El was a space traveler from the planet Daxam. He visited Krypton where he was befriended by Jor-El and Lara. His space craft drifted for a time before drifting to Earth, where he met Superboy. Since Daxam was a red-sun planet, Mon-El found he had abilities like Superboy, but exposure to lead put him near death. Superboy placed him into the Phantom Zone with a promise to find a cure.

In comic books written in these early days, there was one general rule regarding time travel; “You can’t change the past.” One of many time travel stories depicted Superboy, after a history lesson at Smallville High, tried to prevent the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Everything he changed was counteracted by some new event.

Later in the 60s, a new principle of time travel emerged; “You can change the past, but always in an unintentionally bad way.” Remember, Star Trek” “The City on the Edge of Forever?” Bones is sent back to Earth’s Depression Era and prevents the accidental death of Edith Keeler, a peach activist, which allows the Nazi’s to win World War Two, and prevents the creation of the United Federation of Planets. Kirk and Spock, ignoring the possibility that they might also change history, go back to fix everything. This has happened frequently in the Legion lore. Just this year, Legionnaires have travelled to the 20th century to stop Brianiac from killing Superman (Last Stand of New Krypton) and to enlist the Doom Patrol in destroying an errant black hole (Brave and Bold volume 2 34). Once again, without regard for the possibility that things were supposed to end up this way.

In the early years of Legion storytelling, we find Legionnaires frequently visiting our century for rather frivolous reasons, most notably helping Superboy or Superman protect his secret identity. Why didn’t any of these trips make the 30 Century rivers run backward, or make squirrels develop speech?

Back to Mon-El. It certainly was a wonderful day when the Legion developed a temporary (later permanent) cure for his lead poisoning. They couldn’t wait to use Superboy’s old Phantom Zone projector to release him from that ghostly realm. Why didn’t Mon punch each and everyone of them in the nose for not using their marvelous time bubble to go back about 999 years and release him then? To protect the timeline? This is a fine time to develop chorological morals.

Even if they told him, “If we cure you, you have to come with us to the future, so that you don’t inadvertently do something to make our squirrels don’tdevelop nuclear weapons,” it would have been better than 1000 hetrs of watching Superboy/man and his heirs not work on a cure for Daxamite lead poisoning.

They did it in the current storyline. They sent him a cure, with a bow on it. Of course, they also manipulated him into stopping Brainiac, freeing the bottle cities, and repatriating the inhabitants to habitual worlds. And how did they reward him? After making sure that their personal histories would be intact, they said, “Sorry, you’re going back into the Phantom Zone,” Why? Because history has no mention of Mon-El surviving this battle. So, why not take him with you, and then put him in the zone, while you spend a few months on a permanent cure?

Over in Booster Gold, they have a different philosophy; “You can’t change the past, except for the things you were destined to change.” It is a small, but apparently, important distinction.

Being that the Time Institute has been destroyed in Legion of Super-Heroes volume 6 #1, maybe it will be more difficult to stroll through time. If not, I will travel back to when I wrote this, throw in some profanity, and return to watch the fun. Keep and eye on the squirrels.