In this feature we examine comic book stories and ideas that were not only abandoned, but also had the stories/plots specifically "overturned" by a later writer (as if they were a legal precedent). Click here for an archive of all the previous editions of The Abandoned An' Forsaked. Feel free to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.

Today, we're doing a special edition of Abandoned an' Forsaked to spotlight a character that reader Squashua has been asking me to spotlight for literally six or seven years now. So here, we'll look at Moon Maiden, who was "abandoned an' forsaked" before she ever appeared!

During Zero Hour, Triumph debuted during a three-issue tie-in crossover in the three Justice League titles at the time (Justice League America, Justice League International and Justice League Task Force). The time anomalies caused by Zero Hour freed Triumph from limbo. You see, he was with the Justice League right before they formed. In what would have been the League's first mission, however, Triumph ended up getting lost in time limbo for ten years. Now he is back along with the alien menace the League was formed to stop...



The problem is because Triumph and the aliens became lost in time, the League does not remember him...



Eventually it is all worked out and Triumph is ready to become a hero again. The problem is that while when he went INTO limbo he was on the same par with the rest of the League. It is now ten years later and he is still in his early 20s while they are all veteran heroes. So he instead ends up becoming a part of Martian Manhunter's Justice League Task Force, a team of young heroes that J'onn hopes to help mold into the heroes of tomorrow.

I mention this mostly to note that Triumph really wasn't a member of the Justice League. Not really. He's always referred to as if he was. But he's clearly shown with the team BEFORE they officially form into the Justice League, so while he WOULD have likely been a founding member, he never actually was. Actually, I shouldn't say that that's the main reason I mention it (although it IS weird how often he's referred to as a founding member of the League when he clearly wasn't), as the main reason I mentioned him is that I know I couldn't mention Moon Maiden without something saying, "What about Triumph?" So there you go. That's what about Triumph.

So let's turn our nation's lonely eyes to Moon Maiden. She debuted in 2000's JLA 80-Page Giant #3 by Dan Curtis Johnson, Dale Eaglesham and Andrew Hennessy, with two flashback sequences by Christopher Jones and Ande Parks and Steve Scott and Mark Propst.

The issue opens with Aquaman remembering an old friend...



We cut to the Justice League dealing with all sorts of space-time issues. Time is being lost all over the world. Like the atomic clock is wrong, Adam Strange's Zeta Beam was two hours late, stuff like that. Batman then makes a discovery about the Justice League's moon base, in an awesome sequence...



Eventually, the Justice League keep getting these sort of lost memories and they lead them to Barstow, California, where they meet a former astronaut (who no one remembers as ever being an astronaut - Atom makes a point of noting, "I know all the astronauts" Oh, okay, Atom, good to know. Is that some sort of secret superpower you never told us about?) who tells them about his daughter, their former Justice League teammate, Moon Maiden!!



He then shows them her origin via a comic book (Jones and Parks did the art), where we learn that he ended up on the moon where he found a baby...



When she turned sixteen, she gained powers...



Her main villain was the Centurion, who had powers from the same people who gave her her powers...



We then learn of The Century War, where the Centurion would use his a powerful weapon to ERASE people from history, starting with Superman. It would sometimes take a while for the changes from the erasure of a person to catch up to the current time, which was a clever bit...





However, in the end, Moon Maiden decides to use the gun on the Centurion himself, even though, as she discovers, he was responsible for HER existence. Still, better to erase the devastating events of the Century War than for her to survive, so she makes the ultimate sacrifice...





So she was therefore abandoned an' forsaked. I know it is different than how we typically handle retcons here, but hey, it's a special occasion.

So how did she come back? Go to the next page to find out!

As it turned out, her father just held on to her memory so tight that a little bit of Moon Maiden remained and as a result, she and Centurion slowly came back to reality, only now Moon Maiden sees Centurion as her father.

The Centurion has a "ghost army" that gives him a whole lot of fighting force, so he is a formidable foe. The bigger issue is that the longer that he and Moon Maiden remain in our time, eventually spacetime will reset and the Century War will come back into continuity, which is bad news.

Moon Maiden is attacking the League when her real father convinces her to remember her friends, in a great sequence by Johnson showing her various interactions with her teammates over the years...











I'm not quite sure how they prevented the timeline from adjusting, as you would have thought that the story would have ended with Moon Maiden sacrificing herself again, but whatever she did, it somehow worked and Moon Maiden was here once again.

But then, of course, no one ever used her again, except for Kurt Busiek and George Perez as part of their "JLA/Avengers #3 features every member of both teams ever" approach.

Here are Moon Maiden's appearances in JLA/Avengers.

On the cover of JLA/Avengers #3 (I circled her for you)...



And half of her body in this one panel in JLA/Avengers #4...



Yikes. So first she was retconned and then just abandoned! Harsh.

Anyhow, here ya go, Squashua! I covered it!

If anyone else has a suggestion for a notable retcon they'd like to see featured, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!