November 1989 (set October 23, 2994). The first issue of the relaunched LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES series reveals that during the five-year gap following the end of the previous series, former Legionnaire Shrinking Violet, whose real name is Salu Digby, had joined the military when her homeworld of Imsk went to war with the planet Braal, homeworld of fellow Legionnaire Cosmic Boy (Rokk Krinn). By this point, several years later, Imsk has won the war and is occupying Braal, but Vi is in a military stockade.
As the page above alludes, in 2991, Vi and her unit were involved in an Imskian war crime, and she's been imprisoned because she refuses to retract her official protest or agree to keep her mouth shut about what happened.
In the previous series, Vi had expressed a romantic interest in fellow Legionnaire Ayla Ranzz (Lightning Lass), who hesitated, briefly seemed receptive, and then made a panicky dive into an aggressive hetero flirtation with Rokk Krinn's younger brother Pol (who was then killed in the final storyline of the previous series). We learn here that during her imprisonment, Vi and Ayla have been writing to each other, and Ayla has invited Vi to join her on the family's agricultural commune on the planet Winath, where Ayla has gone to live with her brother Garth (formerly known as Lightning Lad) and his wife (Imra Ardeen Ranzz, formerly known as Saturn Girl) since the Legion disbanded. Newly released from the army, Vi finally agrees.
This is an example of the radical shift in the complexity and sophistication of this phase of Legion history. The previous series had had some elaborate plots and characterization, but at the end of the day, it was still a superhero comic. This was something else, and not only in storytelling style. It's regrettable that a pointless series of editorial battles ended up making it such a mess, and even more regrettable that DC later decided to abandon it in favor of a return to cutesy adventures of cute teen heroes with no history. The point in this series was that the characters had BEEN cute teen heroes, but they grew up, and so did the universe around them — both for good and for ill.
