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

As an aside:

Dev-Em fans should take note that the other story in this issue features "Roz-Em", a Kryptonian criminal whose features were changed to look like Jor-El's brother Nim-El! Given that wears almost exactly the same outfit as Dev-Em, it seems likely that they are related!

Seems odd that the Legion would just accept Imra's grounding of all of them like that. Did they just respect her that much, did they not have enough time to get together and rebel (Legionnaires are known to do that!), or did she use some sort of mild mind-control on them? One that Lightning Lad, because of his secret love for her, was able to break?

I wondered about that as well. She threatens them with expulsion if they follow her... but wouldn't that require a vote of the entire membership?

Again, I think the story would work better if she'd stripped the other members of their powers temporarily, but then you'd have to find a way to make Garth immune.

You know, until FC mentioned it above, even though I just read it, I didn't pick up on Gim being treasurer. Many clubs elect a treasurer annually as well (and a Sargent at arms).

Meanwhile, gotta love Imra's stance on firearms.

Or maybe have Garth on a mission when it happened - he could have sent his vote in electronically, and really intended to vote for her (dun dun dun)! Mon could have caught him just as he was returning.

If Gim is treasurer, who would be secretary? Brainy seems orderly and efficient so might be a good choice.

Adventure #305

So, this is a bit of a lighter story after the dramatic events of last issue. Lightning Lad's death is referenced at the beginning of the story, demonstrating that it will have an ongoing effect on the series, but then we quickly move to an audition to take his spot in the Legion.

Antennae Boy-- A "human radio", easily rejected for lack of control!
Dynamo Kid-- Another "fake" applicant, ala Storm Boy; also notable for the first appearance of the "Daily Planet" in the 30th century!

The core of the story revolves around the new applicant Marvel Lad and the mystery of his identity. We quickly discover that he has the powers of Superboy/Mon-El, without their vulnerabilities. Good thing Saturn Girl is suddenly called away by telepathic summons so that she can't read his mind to discover his identity! (For the record, I'd like to think she was in on the charade, and made up the lame excuse to leave so that no one would ask her to uncover his identity...)

My favorite line of the story: "How do we know you're not Superboy in disguise and you've come out of the past to play a prank on us?" Such an obvious concern to have in the context of this series!

Love Brainy casually continuing his chemistry experiments in the background!

So, Cosmic Boy decides to give Marvel Lad *three* initiation tests! Along the way, he demonstrates why Braal has fallen behind the other planets of the U.P. so badly in their mathematics scores.

First-- Marvel Lad must locate the rare mineral fluvium, needed by Brainy for anti-lead serum experiments!
Second-- Marvel Lad must defeat a Sun-Eater that is threatening to consume the Sun! Er... one would think this would be a much bigger deal that the Legionnaires seem to treat it as!
Second, again!-- Marvel Lad must free the planet Brogg of weird monsters! Mission accomplished, and space-pirate booty uncovered!
Lastly-- Marvel Lad must create a new element! And so he does, and discovers the anti-gravity properties of Element 152!

Jeepers! Marvel Lad was Mon-El all along! And this was an elaborate scheme to test Brainy's new anti-lead serum! And... er... never mind all those poor applicants who might have earned a place in the Legion if Mon hadn't overshadowed them!

We get a recounting of Mon-El's origin in a pretty nice sequence where he returns to the Phantom Zone, and we get a glimpse of the torture that he has endured at the hands of his fellow inmates for centuries. And a nice tease of the great untold story of the Phantom Zone villains escaping to plague the Legion!

Anyway, a fairly solid story, though the Sun-Eater bit is a bit out of place, being an example of way too big an event being treated as a minor incident. Other than that... I kind of dig it!

Incidentally, there's also a fairly major Chameleon Boy appearance in the Superboy story this issue!

Invisible Kid joined prior to Action # 267, when he first appears alongside Colossal Boy and Chameleon Boy.

It was later retconned by Levitz (though first suggested by a fan) that Cos had served two terms as leader. During these early stories, it's clear that the writers hadn't decided (or cared) how long the Legion had been around. References to events happening "years ago" (as in the case with both Chuck's and Dirk's origins) seem intended to convey that the group is well-established by this point.

This sums up my reaction, as well.

Many of Siegel's scripts read like first drafts containing great ideas but a lot of unnecessary or ill-thought out stuff.

The main thing I like about this story is that Saturn Girl goes to such lengths to sacrifice herself on behalf of the Legion--"pushy," yes; utterly confident in being right, definitely. This trait will be explored to great effect (and with disastrous results) during the reboot's Legion Lost.

I like Eryk's earlier idea of the first Archive including a few of the other cameo stories and the second one beginning with Adv #300. I also think the Death of Lightning Lad would have been a natural place to end the first Archive. But, I guess, ending with Adv #305 makes a little sense too, as it wraps up on the major subplots in comics after a two year journey in about 6 different series. At long last, Mon-El is freed from the Phantom Zone permanently and joins the Legion!

Given the tragedy of last issue, this positive occurrence is welcome, though the story smartly (and solemnly) refers to the events of a month prior.

Forte continues to improve, and that is evident in the opening splash. This might be his best page yet! Awesome dynamic with characters in front and characters in back on screen; Dirk and Violet are especially well depicted.

And check out Violet speaking regularly!

Again, Dirk is shown with the Founders--clearly a leading man of the series. Imra turns to Cos for comfort (and only ever Cos thus far)--a side of her only he sees?

Doesn't TMK take some of those Antennae Boy broadcasts and use them as they would appear in regular time?

"Great Canals of Mars!" - are the canals of Mars so well known that this has entered the vernacular? A story is dying to be told here! Perhaps in Tommy Tomorrow's feature!

Legionnaire Lemon looks like a football star circa 1962.

Hm. The first Sun-Eater isn't as impressive as the classic one. I think all it needs is a new name though. Like the Sun Gorilla.

Even though it was established in Superman, this is the first mention of Legionnaires not killing. Pshaw! I prefer the Golden Age approach--let the monsters and criminals burn with the heat of 1,000 suns!

Here the World Wide Police becomes the Space Police...almost there now.

I like the Mon / Brainy friendship, briefly shown here.

Mon having the last laugh with the Phantom Zone villains is definitely wish fulfillment every kid can relate to!

And the story (and Archive) ends with more heavy foreshadowing! What a blast this has been! LMBers, we MUST continue on rereading all of the Archives, and all of the series!

So Eryk, where would you place the Untold Phantom Zone Criminals versus Thr Legion story? Soon after this one?

HWW, I bet Seigel only wrote first drafts of these stories. He was highly prolific at this time, writing like 4 stories a month. Of course, Mort very clearly intended all Superman related stories to he for kids and pre-teens. "Done is better than perfect" was surely the motto.

(I do like your critical analysis of the stories, though, even though their intended as kids books. It adds a nice layer to our review experiment).

You're probably right about the first drafts. Professional comic book writers like Siegel had to churn out script after script to make a living. They probably had no time to revise. More's the pity. Having written a book, I know how weak first drafts of stories can be and how they improve with successive drafts.

I'm glad you like the critical analysis. Just because these are children's stories does not exempt them from high standards. In researching my book, I read several mid-grade and young adult novels (roughly the same audience as the early Legion stories) and was impressed with most of them. Good children's stories are imaginative, well thought out, and respectful towards the audience's intelligence.

And the great thing is, a lot of Adventure-era Legion stories did the same--but we'll have to wait (not long now, though) for Hamilton and later Shooter to bring those qualities.

Cos didn't want Marvel Lad to join the Legion, did he? He keeps upping the ante, generating more and more outrageous tests and then looking for any old excuse to reject the applicant. (Killing creatures is against the Legion code? They didn't worry about that with Supergirl's destruction of the negative man and negative creature, and they didn't expel Lightning Lad, after he returned to life, for killing Zaryan.)

But none of these tests faze Mon in the slightest. Oh, to be so confident in everything one does . . .

And Mon keeps his identity secret in part so it won't ruin the morale of the other Legionnaires if his cure turns out to be temporary. Never mind his own morale. What a guy!

This is another story with a great idea that could have been stronger. There's no real tension. Nothing is at stake. If Marvel Lad gets rejected, too bad for him but since we don't know him, we have no reason to care. The Legion has no reason for wanting to keep this guy out of their club, so the multiple initiation tests (which are given, apparently, only to applicants with Superboy-level powers) seem pointless and strain credibility.

(The splash panel hints at the Legion being worried over Marvel Lad having a dark past, but this idea is not developed in the story, except for a brief mention.)

It is nice to have a light-hearted story and a return to the super-pranks that launched the Legion, but even light-hearted stories should have some element of tension or something at stake. In the first Legion story, Superboy agonizes over whether he'll get into the club and he feels crushed when he's initially rejected. We get a sense that acceptance matters to him. Not so here.

Mon's cockiness, however, does make a nice contrast to Kal's humility.

I want to like these early stories--I really do. But I like them more for the promise they hold and for the foundation they laid rather than for what's actually delivered.

Going a little further on the tangent...I agree that these stories, regardless of the intended audience, should be held to a higher standard. Especially because many of them throughout the Silver Age really reached a high level of quality that shows what could be done with the medium. I know in the 80's that was a major part of what made Alan Moore's work, among so many others, so popular: showing just what the medium could accomplish when creators worked to a higher standard.

I'm with you on looking forward to what is coming. I especially like Hamilton among all the Adventure era writers, and I'm anxious for his stories to start. Not that I dislike Siegel, but as we've talked about, his stories tend to be a little wishy washy on plot and narrative in order to keep pumping out material.

All that being said, Siegel is certainly does add a sense of fun and charm, so he's not without his pro's. You'll notice my reviews tend to be almost all positive unless the issue is really terrible. I can't help but go this way: I spend a lot of my day at work, every day, telling people their ideas are no good and won't work. It's not a fun thing to continuously do. So when I get to my hobby, I'm really more geared to liking a comic book than not; the comic has to be pretty terrible for me to dislike it. (Which says a lot that I hate about 49 of DC's 52 ongoing series).

Anyway, back to Legionnaire Lemon. As HHW points out, his cockiness does add a nice contract to Kal's humility and self-doubt. I'm looking forward to seeing Mon-El, Superboy and Supergirl all together at last in a Legion story. (With Ultra Boy fully powered up as well).

In my reprint, the disguised Mon-El calls himself "Marvel Lad". However, I seem to recall that in some reprints he identified himself as "Mighty Lad", in deference to DC's new competitor. Anybody else remember that, or have such an issue?

"Someday, we'll escape, and destroy them all!" Still waiting.

It actually never occurred to me until the other day that there's an obvious reason for the cutoff being where it is. Archive #2 opens up with Hamilton's first Legion story.

Yes, I found it interesting that DC dubbed a character "Marvel Lad" given all the legal tangles surrounding codenames associated with the word marvel. If this comic book was originally printed in 1962, we are in the second year of the Marvel Age. Do we know what year Marvel physically starts challenging DC in terms of sales and popularity?

The way I read it, it's Marvel Lad's cockiness that provides the motivation for the Legion to want to reject him. Cos (and the others) don't like him, but they don't want to just outright exclude from the club without a good reason.

I do think the mystery element of the story actually provides a pretty good hook for the reader here. It's the sort of thing where, if you stop and think, you'll realize that if Brainy had perfected the anti-lead serum already, that would explain Marvel Lad's immunity to lead, but it does actually require the reader to stop and draw that conclusion. I think a lot of times these stories lose some of the tension because we already know the solutions to the puzzles, and so it's hard to recapture the novelty they must have had for a kid in the 60s.

Kind of obvious now that you point it out! Especially since we're both such big fans of Hamilton!

Also good point about the tension and the surprise the readers must have felt when it was revealed to be Mon-El.

Also, here's another perspective: my father's. My Dad was born in December 1951, so he was about 11-12 when the Legion stories were starting to come fast and furious. That was also about the time he really got into comic books, with age 13-15 being the most enthralled he was with comics of his whole youth. My Dad grew up in a neighborhood with like 200 other kids his age or in the +/- 3 years range. Almost every one of them read comics then.

He says for his neighborhood, and this is of course unique to his experience, almost all the kids his age were totally into Marvel when Marvel exploded onto the scene. (And to answer Em's question, Marvel didn't really get going until 1962-1964; it was only around 1964 that the term "Marvel Age of Comics" was in the vernacular). My Dad and Uncle and most of their friends were Marvel zombies, totally in love with Kirby, Ditko and the new style.

*Some* of them were loyal DC diehards. More of them liked DC Comics, but only as a secondary company. The reason was because for kids ages 11-13, they saw DC Comics as being mainly "for kids"...meaning kids younger than them. So kids age 7-10. They thought Marvel comics were more geared towards them.

This was not an across the board thing. He tells me that for the most part, Flash and Green Lantern were accepted as "cool" in 1962 and 1963 for early teens. But many were not. The worst of the worst though were the Superman comics, including the Legion. There were deemed simply not "old" enough for a 12 year old.

(FYI, I have no idea about Batman. My father and absolutely no one in his neighborhood liked Batman until "New Look Batman" arrived in 1964/65.)

So my own personal theory is that by 1962, Superman comics in general--which were still the #1 seller in the industry and would be for at least another half-decade plus--were geared towards the age group 6 to 11. So whenever I read a Superboy story, I kind of try to consider the perspective of an 8 year old in 1962.

Some of you may also know that in the mid to late 60's, Stan Lee made a huge deal about Marvel appealing to an older audience, especially college campuses. Dr. Strange was a cultural phenomena in the mid-60's and late 60's on college campuses, and many an acid-taking hippy would read Dr. Strange while high. One might theorize that once Marvel captured the 11-13 age group in 1962-1964, they smartly and subtly aged with their audience so by 1968 they were appealing to kids in late high school / early college (while also still appealing to kids age 11-13).

Just some food for thought. Not all neighborhoods were like my Dad's. Back then, when almost all kids read comics, it's certainly easier and more fascinating to be able to look at a "focus group" though.

^ Oh, and as a follow-up. My father never gave the Legion a second thought until TMK #1 arrived and Keith Giffen's name got him interested. He loved it.

He was shocked when the Legion emerged as my favorite comic book series (along with Spider-Man, which he wasn't surprised about). He had no knowledge of the intervening history between early Adventure and TMK.

I appreciate the positive spin you put on these stories, Cobie.

And I agree about Siegel's sense of fun and charm. I've tried to balance my reviews by pointing out things that work well, such as Bouncing Boy's story as a whole or the fact that Chuck and Imra emerge as distinct personalities even at this early stage.

One of the advantages of having gone through higher ed English programs, I think, is that I get to look beyond the original appeal these stories had for me and appreciate them on a whole new level. (I've never tried to be nasty, but even a nasty critique can be a form of appreciation if it sheds new light on the work.) Stripping away the fanboy and emotional appeals the Legion has always held for me, I've striven for a more objective approach in critiquing, and that enables me, I think, to appreciate the true gems that are there.

For example, Bouncing Boy, as I mentioned previously, was never one of my favorite characters when I was a child, and he was largely absent from my formative Legion-reading years. His origin story, therefore, meant little to me until I was able to analyze it and realize it was one of the best stories Siegel wrote for the Legion. Coming to that conclusion was an "aha!" moment for me.

I'm hoping others find similar "aha!" moments through reading and responding to the different takes we all have on these stories.

Good points. I wish Siegel had brought out the Legion's annoyance with Marvel Lad's cockiness more, though--something Siegel did much better more than 20 issues later with Command Kid. (Of course, CK was a villain, so it's easier to make him a jerk. )

I'm on the fence about whether knowing the resolution of the mystery dampens the tension on re-reading. I suspect you're right because there is, sadly, not much else this story has to offer.

You reminded me that, even though I'm a dozen years younger than your dad and from the Midwest, the super-heroes were viewed more or less the same. Thanks to a cartoon show, everyone in my neighborhood knew the DC heroes, but everyone liked Flash, Hawkman, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and even the Atom more than Superman.

Superman got to "hang out" with the cool heroes because they were all in the JLA, and so he became cool by association.