Tag Archives: Legion of Super-Heroes

Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The Weddings That Wrecked The Legion!” (Adventure Comics #337, October, 1965)

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So here we have the first story where romance comes out of the closet—heterosexual romance, at least. Any other kind would wait another three decades to surface in these pages. We knew that Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl would eventually get married. We knew that Phantom Girl had a “thing” for Ultra Boy, but it hadn’t been referenced since that one issue where it was established. This is the first time that the four characters came right out and admitted their attraction to each other, and revealed that, ultimately, they wanted to get married.

For teens who were attracted to each other in 1965 the only polite word to follow “get” was “married.” Well, maybe “engaged.” The lesser status of “going steady” did not begin with “get,” because it was assumed in polite society that no one was getting anything.

Oh, my, I have the vapors…

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The Insect Queen of Smallville” (Superboy #124, October, 1965)

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I’ve already reviewed this story just recently, but that was before I started the Legion re-read. So, in addition to linking the original review of that issue of Superboy (which I had just happened to pick up at a dollar sale, if memory serves), here’s a few thoughts.

This is one of Legion co-creator Otto Binder’s few stories to be found in a Legion collection. In addition to this, he wrote only “The Sacrifice of Kid Psycho,” which I’ll be talking about in a few days, the first appearance of the Legion, “Lana Lang and the Legion of Super-Heroes” (which was really just the first appearance of Star Boy, and did not involve the Legion), and “The Six-Legged Legionaire,” again about Lana as Insect Queen. Clearly, Binder had a fondness for Lana, but he actually wrote no headline stories for the Legion. The closest he came was their first guest-shot in Superboy.

Firsts: Insect Queen

Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The True Identity of Starfinger” (Adventure Comics #336,

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With Chameleon Boy, Shrinking Violet and Triplicate Girl appearing in this issue, 18 of the 19 Legionnaires have joined the battle with Starfinger. Only Supergirl is excluded, and she often was. But one of the Seven Wonders of the 30th Century, threatened last issue by Starfinger, reminds us of her, if our memory goes back that far.

The Global Tunnel parallels one dug by Supergirl in her first (unsuccessful) bid to join the Legion. This time, Hamilton introduces the idea of how fragile such a structure could be.

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read: “Starfinger!” (Adventure Comics #335, August, 1965)

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And Happy Birthday to me! Actually, this issue would have hit the stands a couple of months before I was born, but it does carry my birth month and year, so I guess Starfinger is officially my Legion spirit guide.

With this issue we begin what I would call the first true Legion epic. Yes, we’ve had a two-part story before, but the Dynamo Boy affair was so disjointed, and its second part featured so few Legionnaires, that it only counts as the comic book equivalent of what on TV would be called a “bottle episode,” or, worse, a “clip show.”

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The Unknown Legionnaire” (Adventure Comics #334, July, 1965) 

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The timeline in this story is a bit odd. It begins with a framing sequence, where the Legionnaires visit a planet in the Antares system and find a statue honoring the Unknown Legionnaire. Superboy asks if anyone remembers that adventure, as if it was long ago. This isn’t the first time it’s been made to sound as if the Legion’s adventures have been going on for the seven real time years the group has been in existence. Age-wise, Superboy hasn’t aged out of high school yet, which puts a pretty short span on his Legion career since Adventure #247. Three years would be an outside limit, and I say it’s pretty outside. 

More, at the beginning of the flashback tale, Supergirl talks about getting back to school at Stanhope College, which she started attending in the November, 1964 issue of Action Comics (#318) —less than a year ago in real time, and probably much less on the Legion’s timeline. So the flashback “do you remember” device is glaringly off.  

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The War Between Krypton and Earth!” (Adventure Comics #333, June, 1965)

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The Grand Comic Book Database credits Hamilton and Forte with bringing us an ambitious adventure—a tale of time-travel, war, young love, betrayal and the origins of three civilizations. And, along the way, the Legion will divide into opposing camps and fight a war against each other. That couldn’t happen, you say? Well, it did happen, right here in these pages. That makes no sense, you say?

Well, ya got me there. It makes not one damn bit of sense. But, hey, did I mention it was ambitious? And, look, Lightning Lad has his real right arm on the cover, and his robot arm on the story inside. Maybe if we think really hard about that, we won’t think too hard about how idiotically the Legionnaires are behaving in this story.

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read: “The Super-Moby Dick of Space!” (Adventure Comics #332, May, 1965)

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The “A” team returns, with Edmond Hamilton and John Forte bringing us an important chapter in Legion history—the conflict with a space beast so powerful that even Superboy can’t defeat it. In discovering and attempting to subdue the metal-eating monster which is ravaging space traffic, Lightning Lad is caught in a backlash of his own powers. His lightning blast, poisoned by some green radiation emanating from the Super-Moby Dick’s body, infects his right hand and arm. To save his life, eminent physician Dr. Lanphier must amputate and provide the poor kid with a robot arm.

A very short roll call graces the splash page of this story, made a bit shorter by the fact that Sun Boy is missing from it. He appears in several panels and speaks, but doesn’t try to take over any missions. Maybe someone wasn’t sure it was really him.

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“The Triumph of the Legion of Super-Villains” (Adventure Comics #331, April, 1965)

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Last week, as you recall…

Okay, it was last month, for readers in 1965, that Dynamo Boy, aka Vorm of the Space Pirate Pack, wormed his way (vormed his way?) into the Legion and expelled all of the sitting members, promising to turn the Legion of Super-Heroes into a “Legion of Super-Villains.” As if somehow sensing that someone in the past was infringing on the intellectual property, the three founding members of the actual Legion of Super-Villains arrive from “a few years in the future.” More than a few, to judge by looking at their middle-aged selves.

Cosmic King, Lightning Lord and Saturn Queen want to join Dynamo Boy’s Legion. Of course, he’s lying to applicants and saying it’s still a Legion of Heroes, and they’re lying to him and saying they’re reformed and want a chance to be heroes in a time before they’re known as villains.

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “Secret of the Mystery Legionnaire” (Adventure Comics #330, March, 1965)

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“Secret of the Mystery Legionnaire” – a title that sounds like several others: The Secret Power of the Mystery Super-Hero, The Secret of the Mystery Legionnaire, The Secret of the Seventh Super-Hero… More evidence that DC was gearing books toward readers who picked up the odd issue now and then, and wouldn’t notice the repetition. This, even though the Legion was a series clearly aimed at people who kept up with the history, and knew that new stories built on old ones.

The splash page looks like John Forte’s work, not Mooney’s, particularly looking at Mon-El. Perhaps Mooney had decided to adapt the spare-bangs, high-forehead look that Forte did. Or perhaps it’s the inks?

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The Bizarro-Legion” (Adventure Comics #329, February, 1965)

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For some months, Jerry Siegel and Jim Mooney took over writing and drawing the Legion’s adventures. It’s a pleasure to see Mooney’s pencils on the Legion, and, while a Bizarro story does not exactly fit the tone fans were probably looking for, Siegel at least takes the time to mention the ongoing Time Trapper subplot in this story, and to mention the mystery of a vanishing world that the Legion is planning to investigate. Whether this was laying groundwork for a future story, or just reminding us that the Legion did have continuity and ongoing business, it’s not clear at this point. It does serve to remind us, though, that the Legion does have continuity.

And the big news in this issue is that Brainiac 5 announces the invention of the Flight Ring. Two panels are spent on this most iconic piece of Legion history, and it doesn’t figure into the story at all.

Reading Bizarro stories today, one has to wonder if anyone was actually entertained by them, and what characterized the group of fans that was. I recently reviewed an 80-page collection of all Bizarro stories from about the same era as this one, and found them repetitive and unfunny. They’re about on the level of a lot of the comic adaptations of popular TV comedies of the time, as published by Dell and Charlton. To be honest, a lot of the source material for those comics were not funnier.

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