Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Reading the Legion: Archives #1

It all comes back to the cardinal rule of genre fiction - One Big Change, and only direct consequentials thereafter. As soon as you start asking the audience to swallow multiple things that strike them as implausible, suspension of disbelief starts to collapse. So super-powers lead to super-tech, including time-travel, and thus the Legion exists and can visit a young Superman. But whereas "two imposters showing up simultaneously" would be an interesting story for a "mundane" universe - i.e., one set in the "real world" - it's yer second "suspension of disbelief" point for a fantastical universe that starts pulling the whole story down...


It isn't as though they weren't willing to pull stuff out of their behinds. Look at Adv #267 (as I now have, repeatedly...). The whole conclusion comes out of nowhere, and means the story requires that:
1) The Legion can't tell the difference between young, skinny Superboy and steroid-freak Superman.
2) There's a recent "security oath" mission Superboy's been on which hasn't been mentioned.
3) People on Earth realise that Smallville rejecting Superboy is entirely down to (2), even though the Legion don't know this due to (1), and get the President to broadcast his "security oath revoked" message.
4) Saturn Girl can pick up radio transmissions across interstellar distances shortly after transmission even though they would take years to reach "Superboy Planet"
5) Saturn Girl can pick up radio transmissions at all.
6) The Legion are unaware of the range of things, starting with Red Kryptonite, that could make Superboy/man go wonky for a day
7) The Legion are willing to destroy their own future on the basis of that single day's viewing, and yet willing to U-turn on such a serious decision with no evidence when they never thought Superboy was bad *yet*, even before the security oath revoked message comes through.

I could go on, but I think seven is enough.

Given the rate of impersonations in the Silver Age, the real question is: why don't two imposters show up simultaneously more often?

Speaking of which:

Special Bonus Review of Superman #152!

So, Clark Kent shows up at work one day to discover that Lois, Jimmy, and Perry are all there when they are supposed to be out of town at a newspaper convention!

Not only that, they are acting strange. And Lois writes a story which reveals Clark's secret identity of Superman! Bizarrely, Clark doesn't deny this, but simply tries to convince Lois, Jimmy, and Perry not to print the story, as he would have to adopt a new secret identity, and it might not be as useful as his "Clark Kent" alias.

A little x-ray vision reveals that these are not really Lois, Perry, and Jimmy, but robots! Then a Clark Kent robot shows up, and the four of them reveal that their creator, The Robot Master, had programmed Supes's secret identity into them!

When the robots suddenly collapse, Supes calls Supergirl and they take them to the Fortress of Solitude, where they examine the robots and wonder about the identity of the Robot Master.

Suddenly the robots come back to life and begin wandering about the Fortress! They explore the rooms of the Fortress dedicated to their namesakes, and then get in a fight about which person in Superman's life he prefers the most! Soon, all but the Clark robot have destroyed one another!

While the super-cousins nap, "Clark" fetches items hidden within the destroyed bodies of his comrades, and then proceeds to open the door to the Fortress to let the Robot Master in!

Superman and Supergirl fly to the door to discover that... surprise! The Robot Master is six people! In fact, it is six members of the Legion of Super-Heroes, who have shown up to surprise Supergirl with busts of themselves (hidden in the robots) on the anniversary of Supergirl's coming to Earth! And so, they live happily ever after, with Superman's secret identity safe once again!

On the one hand, I'm kind of surprised this story isn't included in the Archives, simply because the Legion do play a fairly major role in it. Historically, I believe it's significant as the first real meeting of Superman and the teen Legion (as I recall, they show up at his funeral in the imaginary story in #149). On the other hand, it's a fairly mediocre story. Not Adventure #267-style bad, just very run-of-the-mill. The core of it is a mystery that the reader isn't really given any means of solving. And there's not really anything significant added to the mythos in it (unlike, say, Superboy #86, which has a similar level of Legion content but is really important to the mythos).

So, yeah, worth a read if you can get your hands on it (it's in the third Superman Showcase volume, for example), but not exactly a lost treasure or anything.

Incidentally, whatever "continuity" says, this is another early story in which Saturn Girl clearly seems to be taking the lead among the Legionnaires! And, if anyone is curious, the six Legionnaires: Saturn Girl, Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, Brainiac Five, Chameleon Boy, and Sun Boy!

IB, you're right about Bouncing Boy being so prolific early on! Like Sun Boy and Brainy, he's one of the most prolific non-founders in the first two Archives.

And FC is on to something. Professor Lang was an obvious intelligence operative. I'm thinking high level OSS / CIA dealing with extra terrestrials. The question is, does Lana get recruited off panel prior to her reappearing in Metropolis to fight with Lois over Superman?

It's worth noting that the story Eryk reviewed is the basis for the Alan Moore Supreme story in which the Allied Supermen of America play a similar practical joke on him.

I've never read Superman #152 before!

Ah, for the days when the Legion had nothing better to do than play practical jokes on the Super-cousins. No Time Trapper. No Fatal Five. No Sun-Eater. No Dominators. Just endless and elaborate pranks.

If I were Supes, I'd be pissed that the Legionnaires were so cavalier about my secret identity. And where were the real Lois, Perry, and Jimmy all this time? Did the Legionnaires make sure they didn't pop in to interrupt their scheme? Was kidnapping involved? (Well, if the Legion manipulated all of Superboy's friends into turning against him, why not?)

The Legionnaires in these early stories remind me of elite rich kids who have nothing productive to do with their time and who have all the resources in the world at their disposal.

Of course, the intent of the story is to show their appreciation for Supergirl. She and Supes have the souls of angels, being able to see the intent behind the actions.

I wonder how Insect Queen's origin fits into this?

Action 287 also involves Supergirl killing the Positive Man. (The Legion Index suggested that they were sent to another dimension, since of course we know that Supergirl doesn't kill. But the story shows nothing of the sort.)

Re: Adv. 293

A couple of Super-Pet curiosities: Neither Super-Horse nor Super-Monkey are called by their names; apparently "Comet" and "Beppo" weren't settled on until later.

Super-Horse has no thought balloons anywhere in the story--odd since he would later be revealed to be a half human centaur.

Re: Action 287

Ken A. is right about Supergirl killing the Positive Man (and the Negative Creature). Kara even thinks to herself, "I must destroy it!" in reference to the Positive Man. I suppose the gender-neutral pronoun suggests she and the Legion thought of the PM as no longer living, though that's mighty convenient since he has a human motivation--jealousy--for destroying planets.

It was also in the Supergirl series that, as I noted earlier, Superman just casually tossed Brainiac into a shrinking ray, shrinking him into non-existence!

Anyway, just wanted to note two appearances of the LSV that followed closely on the heels of their first story:

--Action #283 features Jan-Dex and Zo-Gar, two "Chameleon Men" who are members of the Legion of Super-Villains
--Action #286 features Cosmic King, Saturn Girl, and Lightning Lord (along with Luthor, Brainiac, and Electro) as members of the "Jury of Super-Enemies", though as I understand it this is really just some sort of dream sequence.

Hm. With Superman and Supergirl killing villains left and right, it seems the Legion adopted a rather selective interpretation of the no-kill policy.

It may be that the code against killing hadn't been explicitly formulated yet, though that seems unlikely to me.

Alternatively, I wonder if it could be a Jerry Siegel thing, harkening back to the more rough-and-tumble Superman of the Golden Age. Though that seems kind of unlikely as well.

Maybe that was one of the ways of getting around the Code. I think that also the reason why we see so many stories with monsters and robots in Silver Age stories.

I think it's likely that the writers simply didn't regard Brainiac, the Positive Man, or the Negative Creature as living . . . which shows, I think, the sort of logical hurdles one must leap to enforce any kind of policy.

The abortion debate, for example, frequently hinges on whether or not the fetus is "alive" (and how that word is defined).

I just read a series of Huffington Post blogs by Steve McSwain, arguing for a more liberal interpretation of what Jesus meant when he said, for example, "I am the Way." The traditional interpretation is that belief in Jesus is the only way to know God. McSwain challenges this interpretation and questions what it means to "believe" in Jesus.

I find it interesting that the Legionnaires, who had a near-religious reverence for Superman, might have had an overly narrow interpretation of his ethics. Poor Star Boy got railroaded but good.

I can see how the Positive Man and Negative Creature could possibly be seen as "not alive", but it's hard to explain the Brainiac story in that way, since this was well before the retcon of him into a machine (if he weren't alive, then wouldn't the same apply to his descendant, Brainiac 5?).

Though there are definitely some weird distinctions made in this area, such as Bizarros not being considered alive.

Brainiac 5 was actually a descendent of Vril Dox, Brainiac's adopted son. As I recall (from the Legion Handbook), Brainiac had forced Vril to masquerade as his son to enforce the illusion of humanity.

I was not aware that Brainiac had not been regarded as a computer/robot from the beginning.

Brainiac wasn't a robot until 1964. You can read all about it here.

Fascinating. Thanks for the link.

This means, of course, that Superman was not averse to killing when the situation warranted it. And, as Superboy, he even defended Star Boy at his trial because the Legionnaires, who were more vulnerable than Superboy, should not be held to the same standard of non-killing. Ironically, Kal didn't hold himself to that standard either. (Though one might suppose his views on killing changed as he matured.)

Here's the thing about the shrink ray - logically, it absolutely should kill someone. Either it deletes atoms, rendering you increasingly simple like an overcompressed JPEG, or it shrinks them, in which case even a relatively tiny change would deny you the ability to take on sustenance/oxygen/etc.

HOWEVER, this is comics, where size-changers are ten-a-penny, and the likes of the Atom can get smaller than actual atoms without an also-shrunk oxygen supply, yet not immediately choke to death. Furthermore, there's a tradition of "if you shrink enough, there's another universe(s) on a tiny scale" stories - Marvel have made more use of it, with Psycho-Man, Micronauts, Jarella's World in Hulk, PAD's Captain Marvel, etc, but DC haven't avoided the idea. There was even a throwaway nod to the concept in the Legion (postboot, LSH v4 #113, the "United Molecules").

Tl;dr - smells like setup for "Brainiac and his subatomic army" more than "Superman actually killed him".


So Supes was convinced Imra was evil, huh?

Well, Brainiac Five claims that Brainiac's ship "popped out of existence... reduced in size to nothingness". Also, note that Superman blatantly sends a message to Brainiac that "If you attack Earth, you'll be destroyed."

Though, as Klar pointed out, later stories bizarrely decided to explain how Brainiac survived this by ending up in a subatomic universe, despite B5's claim that this was story of how Brainiac "died battling Superman", which could very easily have taken place at any time in Superman's future.

I suppose the best thing to do is to chalk it up to "unreliable historical records" if you want to fit it into continuity, but still, from the point of view of this story, it's pretty hard to escape the conclusion that Superman disregards any code against killing he might have had at this point.

The other early LOSV appearance is soon after, the very same month as Adventure #300, which is Jimmy Olsen #63. This one is noteworthy for introducing Sun Emperor and Chameleon Chief.

Their introductions speaks to A) Dirk's early prolific role in the LSH and B) Cham having a great visual, so someone smartly wanting to reproduce that as a villain. I think Brainy is the obvious alien to use at first, but its obvious the Silver Age writers considered Brainiac to be the LOSV equivalent to Brainiac 5.

With the "Emperor" and "Chief" monikers, the writers were really stretching to keep that bit going. It would be funny if they kept that going. Colossal Czar? Triplicate Triumvirate? (Ooh, I like that one!)

Regarding Action#286, the best part of that story is the awesome cover--among the very best Swan covers of the Silver Age. My Dad had this one before I was born so when I was a kid I was fascinated by it--always wondering who the heck is Electro?!! And then learning, with disappointment, that he's just one of a whole race of aliens that hate Superman.

Meanwhile, the two Chameleon Men and the story in Action #283 are a complete surprise to me!! I had no idea about this. It's exactly this kind of thing I was hoping would happen--learning of stories I didn't know about. I'll have to hunt this down to read it.

It also occurs to me that Action #285 should have been included, which is a full length story with the major Silver Age turning point of Supergirl's existence being revealed to the public. Not only do the Legion guest star, but Brainiac 5 plays a pretty critical part in the story. It's one of the more important early Supergirl / Brainy romance stories.

There's a few options!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Royal_titles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Noble_titles

Ah, the mind boggles . . .

Matter-Eater Marquis

Element Earl

Bouncing Baron

Dream Countess

Ferro Sultan

Shrinking Viscount!