Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Adventure questions

This would be a good example for parents to use in getting their kids to do their homework: "See, Jeremy, if you do your algebra, you could be writing comic books one day!"

So Blockade Boy is really Proty???

I never knew that. (i think)

Blockade Boy II. Not to be confused with the original Blockade Boy.

Ah ok. Great Rao I am up at 1am on a Saturday night reading Adventure Comics from 1967?! What have you people done to me?! I..I..like it.

Was Adv. #369 Mordu's first appearance? In the story it says the Legion (well atleast Superboy and Mon-El) encountered him before. Strange.

Hiding in Smallville? Mordu showing up? heh.

I have to say Mordu is very scary though. Still is.

Mordru's first encounter with the Legion is an unknown tale that's never been told beyond the flashback.

Thanks Gary.

You know I didn't dig the Mordu story all that much. It was all over the place. Smallville, gangsters, courtroom drama? It was very successful in making Mordu scary. Infact, I just read the GDS the last few days and Levitz certainly went for that Mordu factor of being down right scary.

Maybe because I read it late but Mordu downright scared me. He was omnipotent dictator.

The 2-part Mordru story (Adv #369-#370) happens to be one of my all time favorites. It introduces one of, it not the premier, LSH villains and shows him at his best (worst?).

It also makes great use of Lana & Pete, showing them both to be worthy of their quasi membership in the LSH.

The scene in which Lu cries herself to sleep is one of the most talked about character developments of the Adventure era. It also opens the door for Chuck to finally get his shot at courting Lu and lays the groundwork for my favorite Legion couple.

This story also lays the groundwork for me least favorite Legion couple...Lar and Tas. Perhaps Lu's thoughts/comments had something to do with my dislike of this pairing but, like Lu, I didn't like the way Tas shifts her interest so readily from Brainy to Mon in just a few issues.

The last scene in which Kal wipes Lana's memory to preserve his secret and then Lar turns the tables on Kal and wipes his memory of Pete knowing it is brillant.

BTW Jorge, I'm really enjoying being along for the ride as you begin to explore & appreciate the Adventure era. Glad you finally decided to give it a shot.

I agree with Vee's last two posts so I can reserve my posting time for commenting on...

While imitation is supposedly the sincerest form of flattery, Proty was thinking much too small(ish) in some departments.

And when will BB get his long overdue scene on Shanghalla?

The major flaw in the Mordru story is, I believe, the fact that it's a two-parter which really demands to be more than a two-parter. As ot stands, it does feel like Shooter is trying to pack a lot into those issues. Honestly, though, I could read a year's worth of stories just of the Legionnaires hanging out in Smallville.

Two parter was a big deal at the time I'm supposing but it brings a good thought, this might be a story worth a remake (but not a change).

Mostly if the "original" Legion were to be written I would wish new stories written around established canon without rewriting the premises or facts of established stories. Stories to flesh out and diversify the characters in ways they couldn't be in the 50's and 60's because of business and cultural concerns would be great!

The first meeting with Mordru would seem fair game.

I could see a story in which the founders detail their reason for wearing bubble heads to visit Superboy was a historical record (old pulp magazines) indicating this is what an "alien" was expected to wear.

I've always thought Roy Thomas's All-Star Squadron was one of the coolest comics of all time. It's been forty years since those early Legion stories were published, which is about the same amount of time that fell between the Golden Age stories that Thomas was writing his series around. I always thought it would be cool if they could give the Silver Age Legion the All-Star Squadron treatment in some way, with a series that added to the background of those stories without changing any of the essential details.

I thought Lu was just being catty in that scene. It's impossible to know what was going through Tasmia's mind and why she lost interest in Brainy. It could be that she realized, in Greg Behrens' words, that "He's just not that into you." In this case, it would have been both justifiable and sensible for her to look elsewhere for dates.

In fact, Tasmia's reaction to a failed romance seems healthier than Lu's.

Wouldn't disagree with you at all.

I suspect however that Lu's comment (rightly or wrongly) did influence my feelings about Tas and Lar becoming a couple.

EDE, Thomas' All-stars started out as an interesting and entertaining revamp of Golden Age continuity, but it quickly got out of hand.

Within 1.5 years, we had the door open on endless Degaton time-manips all ending without repercussions. By the mid-20s, Atom's 1947 costume/powers had weak roots in 1942. Taratula and others had a very un-1940s costume. Each and every white All-Star had very late 20th century outlooks on race - while heroic, this was also unrealistic, and made a very black-and-white (pardon the pun) caricature over what could have been something more complex and interesting. All sorts of voyages to Earth X undermined the specialness of the original E1/2 crossover.

In short, Thomas went into anal detail over every single detail he could - too much so. In an Ambush Bug special (not written by Thomas, of course), Hawkman is shown in 1946 thinking "asterisk." A buddy of mine once commented that Thomas' style would have resulted in a convoluted nine-part story explaining why Hawkman was thinking "asterisk," and he was not exaggerating very much.

to return to topic: Roy Thomas is a very good example of why Retcons should be few and far between. Even with the best of intentions and a reasonable degree of talent, they still often fall flat on their faces.

A ret-conned first meeting with Mordru would prove to be very unsatisfying. I would suggest it works better as a mystery, with everyone conjuring their own impressions.

The main problem I had with the Mordru story is that an incredibly powerful foe is introduced, yet only four Legionnaires (Superboy, Mon-El, Duo Damsel, and Shadow Lass) are featured. I had seen references to this story years before I actually read it, so I envisioned a climactic battle featuring the entire Legion. How disappointed I was in discovering that the story I wanted to read was told only in flashback.

On the other hand, Shooter does a fine job of fleshing out the characters he used, and it was good to see my boy, Mon, in a featured role. Also, the story provided a by-then rare opportunity to revisit Smallville, Lana, and Pete. It must have been hard to come up with credible Legion stories that would feature them.

Another disappointment, though, was in the "Devil's Jury." Why not use some of the Legion's past foes instead of characters we've never seen before and would never see again?

But I guess that's the difference between my expectations of continuity-driven stories of the 1970s and the more self-contained stories of the '60s. All in all, Adv. # 369-370 was a well-told story, if hardly the one I wanted to read.

Part of what's disappointing is that at the end, the rest of the Legion are revealed to have escaped Mordru through a trick. Okay, well why didn't they work out some way to help the four who were stuck in the past? What exactly have they been doing in the meantime?

I had some reservations about that ending, too, Eryk. It makes our four main heroes seem like chumps for running off to the past when all they had to do was deceive Mordru, as Jeckie and Mysa did, in order to buy time to come up with a plan to defeat him.

This story, like just about all of my fave ADV tales, is chock-full of... well, I'll just say things that could be handled better*. But I think EDE hits it on the head that this tale screams to be at least a 3-parter. How groundbreaking would THAT have been?


*See also Adult-Lex Luthor and Myxyzptlk, The Legion of Super-Forgetters forgetting about those memory-altering kryptonite capsules, no one ele AT ALL offering to come to the Legion's aid against the Sun-eater (where were all the wannabee Legionnaires?), etc

You know my ALL my Legion history comes from the Who's Who in the Legion series.

It's interesting to see how they actually went down versus how I imagined them.

TheTarik/LSV inflitration with Chemical King and T-Wolf was less dramatic than I thought. This was a story that certainly needed another issue. I like it especially the Colossal Boy part.

Was that Lightning Lord's first appearance?

Again I see lots of influence in the WaK Legion stemming from these issues. I guess I can appreciate the WaK more now. Maybe WaK should've done just two parters.

As a teenage villain, yes. He had first appeared as an adult in Superman # 147, Aug. 1961 (seven years earlier), and had also appeared in flashbacks to Lightning Lad's origin.

I really love the Mordru story. The character scenes, Lana and Pete, and so many others things just work for me. The social consequences of it are what inspired a series of threads I did years ago here. I feel that this story is a late Silver Age shift in the social map of the Legion in a way. As Luornu finally must get over the fact that she’ll never be with Superboy, it opens the door for Chuck, as Vee said, and likewise, Tasmia has gotten on from Brainy and shifts to Mon, who up until then had no love interest at all. In a way, Lu’s shift to Chuck almost confirms that neither has a career much longer in the Legion (when looking at it in the big picture—as I read all these stories in the 90’s for the first time), so in an odd way, it sets the stage for a shift of Tinya and Lu being the best of friends (as referred to by Vi in late Baxter) to Tinya and Shady being best of friends (as we saw under Levitz). This was no doubt because Jo and Lar were already great friends and it opened up the door for relative newcomer Tasmia to spend more time with Tinya. I find that fascinating.

I find it cool that there is an untold first encounter between Mordru and the Legion. This is only heightened when reading about the TMK timeline that goes into those early years and shows Mordru’s status in the universe (and highlighted again in the Jo Annual). Its just so cool. Mordru is by far my favorite Legion villain and I feel that in this two-parter, at least the Legion has their truly ‘Great Villain’.

I want more reviews from Jorg! I may have to reread the late Adventure run from Shooter forward. For the longest time, I only had part 1 of this story, and finally got part 2 about three years ago or so.
And his history is cool when you look at it like this. I think he appears next in an Action flashback with Garth and gets silver/white hair, and then later in the LSV story that serves as their second appearance (Mekt, Nemesis Kid, Spider-Girl and Radiation Roy), though this time with new leader Sun Emperor (his first teen appearance).

Actually, Cobie, Mekt got his silver locks in Superboy # 172, March 1971. That story was not a flashback, but was happening in concurrent Legion continuity.

And yes, that was Mekt's next chronological appearance after Adventure # 372. Following that came his bitter confrontation with Lightning Lad in Superboy # 207, and then the LSV story in the following issue.