Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Reading the Legion: Archives #3

To me, though, what stile86 says is basically implied by the scene in question, and it would just seem like clunky over-exposition if Hamilton put all of that in there.

Adventure 318

So, I agree with Cobie that this is a really solid issue, though I'm not sure I'd go so far as to rank it near the top Legion issues of all time. I would agree that it's probably the best of the Legionnaires stranded in space stories.

--I actually kind of love the Xennians. I still think to this day one of those little Xennians children should've grown up to become a Legionnaire!

--I kind of suspect the multi-colored robots are introduced just to set up the "black gang" pun!

--Er... what the heck is "double full-speed"? Is that like cranking your amp up to 11?

--It would've been nice if they could've saved some the rest of the ecosystem of Xenn!

--Interesting that Tenzil is one of the first to challenge Sun Boy! I'm sure this fits in with his suspecting Brainiac Five and Dream Girl in previous appearances!

--Note that humans can apparently survive in the natural environment of the Xennians, though the reverse is apparently not true!

--The "heavy gravity" world here is one of the few times differences in planetary gravities are really mentioned in the Legion. One would think it would be much more important in a sci fi book.

--Creatures that fly through space and land on worlds to eat minerals seem to be common in the Legion's universe. The most famous, of course, is the Super-Moby Dick.

--Notice Tenzil is able to tell if the honey is poisonous by tasting it, as well as to detect the petrifying chemical in the water by tasting it. An interesting aspect of his power that's rarely used.

--The spacemen growing into giant statues of themselves is definitely silly, but still a beautiful scene!

--Space fatigue is definitely a variation of an idea that's prevalent in a lot of classic science fiction. The fear that astronauts would "crack up" from long exposure to the conditions of space was certainly a concern, probably influenced by the problems faced by sailors aboard submarines and such.

Anyway, I love the whole idea of the Legionnaires stranded in space and having to use their powers and wits just to survive and make it back to civilization. A fun story, and definitely one of the best so far!

Re Tenzil's power, he could be a one-man crime lab. Any time the Legion had to solve a murder or other crime he could go around tasting samples and spit out an analysis so fast it'd make Brainy envious.

Aha! I missed that. I wondered how he could tell the honey wasn't poisonous and just put it down to 60s exposition, but now that you've mentioned it I feel like I've come across that aspect of his power some other time - darned if I know where.

And thanks everyone for the warm welcome.

A Super-Bird! I never heard of that before. Has anyone seen or heard anything in their travels about this apparently undeveloped idea? Maybe someone pointed out that it might not be good idea with Streaky around! With Krypto-Mouse as well it could have led to no end of drama.

HWW no you're not wrong for wanting more. Certainly in later decades more would be put in. To be honest I hadn't even thought about why Sun Boy was in charge until you raised the point so I'm glad you did.

There's an interesting thought. Does Light lass decrease gravity or does she reduce mass? If the former then certainly her power would not have helped. If the latter however it would have made a great deal of difference. I remember reading sometime that her opposite number Star Boy supposedly temporarily added mass from the stars to whatever he used his power on, although this could have been some writer's idea to link his power to his name. Anyone with evidence one way or the other?

And just one more comment. (Boy, ideas are flowing thick and fast with me at the moment - am I smoking something without knowing it?)
Did anyone else think it was a bit strange to lock up Cosmic Boy behind IRON bars? Lightning Lad even tells us that's what they are. Why did he need Matter-Eater Lad to get him free? Maybe the manacles and chains were non-magnetic but iron bars?

Thanks I will. I have one or two thoughts burning in my brain so I'll see if they are worth repeating in the light of day.

When you never can be sure just what it is you're eating, you tend to be suspicious and distrusting of authority!

Yea, please do!

The question of whether Light Lass affects mass or weight is an interesting one. I always assumed she affected mass, so her power would indeed be helpful here.

Let's try a thought experiment: Suppose she does affect mass, and is in a spaceship that is moving but is not under thrust. Now, let's say she reduces the ship's mass.

The question is, does the ship speed up? Is momentum conserved or not?

Food for thought...

I had always believed that Star Boy affected mass, and Light Lass affected weight... which meant that using their powers together could be interesting...

However, Star Boy's powers in recent years have become gravity-based, as a link between he and the Golden Age Starman was forged.

So it may be the other way around.

Hmm. Hadn't thought about that.

Cos was just being a trooper by waiting until LL and M-E Lad confirmed his suspicions before openly rebelling against Sun Boy.

It reminds me of the scene in "The Caine Mutiny" when some of the officers decide to report their concerns over Captain Queeg to the admiral. Before they enter the admiral's quarters, however, Fred MacMurry (who has his own agenda) changes his mind, and, without his support, the others do not proceed.

Cos probably wanted to make sure he had support before mutinying. And using iron bars against someone with magnetic powers was probably just another indication of how Sun Boy was losing it.

(Now I'm doing Hamilton's job! )

Perhaps.

As a member of a writing critique group, I can appreciate how difficult it is to decide what needs explanation in a story and what does not. What seems perfectly clear in the writer's head may not come across to the audience at all--or it may come across to some members of the audience and not others.

I wonder if Hamilton or any comic book writer has the luxury of running their scripts past beta readers before submitting them. The editor may or may not catch such things, but even the editor is only one reader.

It's interesting that 10 years later, in the 1970's, one of comics major problems was the writers basically couldn't help but beat the readers over the head with every bit of detail possible. There was almost no subtlety.

One might think we're doing a bit too much of the writer's job for him by reading into the work, but as they say, the reader is always the writer's greatest collaborator.

I guess I really don't agree at all at Hamilton not being too clear on what's happening. Leaving it somewhat ambiguous is a benefit to the story in my view. While I appreciate the need for everything to make sense and be straight-forward, when a writer "holds the reader's hand" it's an even worse crime they can commit. When a work allows for multiple interpretations of the exact same scene, it can take on a more abstract and better nature. Certainly many authors have done that over the decades, and done it well.

I realize there are many issues with Hamilton’s Legion work, but at the end of the day, I find it so far superior to Jim Shooter, Cary Bates, and in many instances, Paul Levitz. Hamilton could tell a strait forward story but in a way that allowed for a lot of discussion and nuance—all the while creating a vast universe of characters, concepts and ideas. And on top of all that, create high tension scenarios for fairly light hearted kid’s characters. Very few Legion writers have ever been able to do all that since.

My recollections of the 1970s are different. I can't say that writers didn't over-explain things (one of Jim Shooter's mandates while he was EIC at Marvel was that every issue explain who the characters are and what they're doing, etc.), but it seemed that writers of that generation--Englehart, Gerber, Wolfman, Wein--were more naturalistic in their dialogue. Characters spoke more like human beings--or at least human beings the reader might encounter--than they did during Hamilton's era. Exposition was often confined to flashbacks, footnotes, or text boxes at the top of the splash pages--all of which were easy for veteran readers to ignore.

(However, I loved the footnotes. They gave comics a scholarly feel and gave me the impression of being an "insider" when I was already familiar with the story or event referenced.)

And I guess I'm not being very clear myself in identifying what I perceive to be weaknesses in the lack of clarity in these stories. There is a huge difference between "holding the reader's hand" and giving them essential information they need to make sense of the story. Writers should always respect the reader's intelligence, but doing so requires the writer to make reasonable guesses as to what the reader already knows. Character motivation is crucial. The reader needs to know the character well enough to anticipate how each character is going to act in any given situation. One of the understandable failings of the Adventure-era stories (pre-Shooter) is that most of the Legionnaires were not given well developed personalities--only hints that we, as fans, have since extrapolated from. We know from later stories, for example, that Sun Boy liked to hog the glory, that Cosmic Boy was more subdued as a leader, and Star Boy wasn't the brightest bulb in the pack. But these are imputations by later writers or fans.

Leaving things open for readers to interpret is a wonderful strategy--but it has to be done on purpose. I'm not sensing that the issues we've discussed (Sun Boy's being chosen as leader, his insistence on going on or leading this mission, etc.) were deliberately left open to interpretation. They seem more likely to have been forced by the needs of the plot.

Re-reading and analyzing these stories requires (for me, at least) accepting them on their own terms. While it's fun and worthwhile to tie these stories into later developments in Legion history, I find it more useful to consider two questions: 1) What was the writer trying to achieve, and 2) was he successful in accomplishing his purpose? To answer these questions, I approach each story on its own merits and within the context of the Adventure run at the time. (If, for example, power levels fluctuate from issue to issue, as they appeared to do for Superboy and Mon-El in 313 and 314, then that's a major gaffe that interferes with the pleasure of reading.)

If the general purpose of these stories was, as I suspect, to entertain the reader, anything which interferes with that purpose merits scrutiny. There are two reasons for this scrutiny: 1) so that those of us who write or aspire to write can learn from the choices made by writers of the past, and 2) so that we as readers can come to a fuller understanding of why a story works or doesn't work for us. Both reasons require going past our love for the characters or the creators and analyzing things in a more impartial manner--something I think we have all tried to do in various degrees.

I agree that Hamilton's stories possess the strengths you cite, Cobie, though I wouldn't put him above Shooter, Bates, or Levitz. Each had different strengths and weaknesses. Hamilton's stories were, in general, appropriate for the time and young audience for which they were written (and, it's worth noting that they played a significant role in the popularity of the Legion at the time and built the foundation of what many of us love about the Legion). But, as with every piece of writing, they could always be better.

I guess I just don't get where there's any great mystery here.

Sun Boy has been shown as a prominent alpha male in pretty much every story thus far. He's the one who makes the promise to the Xennians to save them. He's the one who call it to the attention of the Science Council.

Now, if at that point they'd decided to appoint Cosmic Boy as leader of the expedition, then I'd be wondering what the heck was going on, and why they'd picked him over the obvious choice of Sun Boy. At that point, I'd want some sort of explanation like "Oh, we've picked Cosmic Boy because his greater leadership experience" or something.

I also don't think it's necessary to impute later characterizations to understand why people are doing stuff. It seems to me pretty clear that Hamilton has certain rough characterizations in mind for many of the Legionnaires, even though he's kind of making them up and testing these out as he goes along. I don't think, for example, that it's just coincidence that Star Boy is always getting duped, but that Hamilton deliberately casts him over and over again in that role. Part of the fun of these stories is seeing how these choices of characterization play out, and which elements were picked up on by later writers and which were ignored.

I'm trying to think of instances of it being used, but nothing obvious is coming to mind. It seems to me pretty clear that one of things Hamilton is doing in this story is thinking of ways to use Matter-Eater Lad, who he had never featured until the previous issue (and there he didn't use his powers). The fact that he tastes the honey to decide if its poisonous, and then on the very next page is shown taking sip of the water to discover the petrifying chemical shows that he's pretty clearly trying to establish a new aspect to Tenzil's abilities.

That's the way I've always understood it as well. It's pretty clear that, until recently, Star Boy affected mass rather than gravity (in addition to be stated over and over again in the Adventure era, it's a major plot point in the Yark Althu story).

I'm less certain about Light Lass, though. I'm pretty sure by the time of SW6 she's established as canceling gravity, but I'm not sure if it's ever specified before then.

It would have been nice if someone had said, "Oh, there's Sun Boy being an alpha male [or whatever term was used] again!"

The Legionnaires are worried about him going on too many missions, but we're given no reason for why Dirk does so, why he is so passionate about being the one who saves the Xennians, or why he can't trust his colleagues to carry out the mission without him.



I agree to a point. Matter-Eater Lad, in particular, comes off as a strong personality in both of these stories (and in 341, in which he badmouths Brainy). And with so many characters to keep track of, it's understandable why personalities and motivations for each one didn't always come through clearly. (Also, the limitations of the 18-page story format and the fact that young readers might not have been so keen on motivation and individual personalities of the Legionnaires may have been a factor.)

I agree, always good to have new voices chiming in!



Certainly sounds like Cos.

Re Sun Boy, I always just thought that he'd been the leader of the mission because of how passionate he was about the whole thing. And that the other Legionnaires with him just weren't aware of his space fatigue, so they let him go ahead.

In Adv. 380, the space odyssey idea is revisited and Light Lass again makes their ship weightless in space. She says herself that she cuts off the effect of gravity.

It's after midnight, and I can't sleep again, so . . .

Jimmy Olsen # 76

In "Elastic Lad Jimmy and His Legion Romances," Jimmy is having such a hard time impressing Lucy Lane that his Legion buddies rescue him. They take him into the future, where Light Lass, Saturn Girl, and Triplicate Girl each stage a scene where Jimmy comes off as a hero. The three girls even up the ante by pretending to fall madly in love with Jimmy and fight over him. Jimmy returns home only to find that Lucy, who should have been watching on Jimmy's time monitor, fell asleep.

This story, like the previous Jimmy Olsen Legion outing (# 72), succeeds because it's a very simple story played for laughs. It portrays Jimmy as a hapless schmuck who believes he's irresistible to women but can't woo the one he likes the most. Jimmy wins our sympathy because he truly goes to great lengths to impress Lucy, importing champagne from France and treating her to pheasant. He also demonstrates he has the makings of a hero by using his elastic powers in inventive ways to catch a criminal, save passengers on a monorail, and stop a runaway animal.

One wonders what Jimmy sees in Lucy, though, since she is egotistical, rude, and boorish. However, her own cluelessness accentuates his. Clearly, these two were made for each other.

As for the Legion, it's good to see a story focus on the girls. We don't learn anything new or interesting about them, though it's nice that they staged this practical joke merely for the purpose of getting Lucy to appreciate Jimmy. Too bad their ploy failed. Also, it's a darned good thing Jimmy was up to the task Ayla set for him as she placed a lot of lives in danger on that monorail.

It's also good to get a breather after stories involving Satan Girl, Hitler, Nero, Dillinger, and Dream Girl (who, oddly enough, belongs in the same sentence as the rest). This story and 315 remind us that the Legion was always about more than being super-heroes. It was also about camaraderie and fun.

Her power may effect mass as well? That could conceivably make a different in acceleration, though I may be remembering physics poorly.