LIKE "ELSEWORLDS" and "Year One" before it, "Legends of the Dead Earth" is the uber-title given to the DC annuals of 1996. Each story stands on its own, and there is no connecting storyline linking them together.

The concept is pretty much a retreaded "Elseworlds," but with a twist. Each story is set thousands of years in the future, in a time when Earth's descendants are living on thousands of worlds. In each annual, someone recalls the legends handed down to them by their ancestors, legends of heroes and villains in battle. Of course, the stories they tell don't exactly get the details right.

A good example is the Batman annual, in which an old man named Posea is filling the minds of little children with stories and "nonsense" about heroes and villains. Only later do we realize that they live in a society where the children must be implanted with mind-control chips before they become adults, and that Posea is far more than what he seems.

There are some real stabs at originality here, especially in the framing stories that set up each story about the heroes. That said, there are only so many ways DC can find their way back to the "Elseworlds" well, and "Legends of the Dead Earth" shows that even a good idea can occasionally get stretched a little too far.