Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Reading the Legion: Archives #4

Regarding the 18 thing, I just meant as the Legion aged, its more likely new characters would age along with them. So if Mon-El is 25, few new legionnaires will be introduced at 16 years old. In the Lettercol, someone actually asks Mort strait out about the "current members turning 18" thing and he answers exactly as you have.

Lardy, regarding the LOSV, you're right that the reason the adult LOSV was include was because by now they had recurred at least 5-6 times against Superman and / or the Adult Legion. I bet Siegel simply hadn't thought of using the teenage version since it didn't exist yet. Which is ironic because Siegel loved and excelled at fitting little pieces if Superman history together like this (see: Pete Ross and Lois Lane knowing each other in college).

Btw, I actually started a thread asking about when in the LOSV timeline--in the continuity of TMK--they would have went back in time to fight the younger LSH. I was pretty surprised to find there is an actual place where they did in the 5YG.

HWW gives a good overview of the LOSV history once the teenage version arrives. It's notable that Jim Shooter was part of a second wave of DC writers that probably knew a whole lot more about DC history than the first wave who actually developed it. These guys did a lot of continuity finessing to make sure everything was coherent ("retconning" being too strong a word). The classic case is a young Marv Wolfman explaining how Wonder Girl in the Titans wasn't actually a teenage Wonder Woman...years after this had been a lingering question. Shooter, in that vein, went ahead and started to explain the LOSV, complete with Mekt. The very next Mekt story, 2-3 years later, explains how he got the white hair.

The original LOSVers, beyond the unnamed students and teachers were Mekt, Spider Girl, Radiation Roy, Nemesis Kid and Ronn Karr. In the very next appearance, a young Sun Emperor is introduced. While certainly a bit megalomaniacal, he's not the stone cold killer of Levitz / Giffen.

Cosmic King showed up in the Levitz era war for the first time though without little dialogue. TMK would retcon him as the one who was really pulling the strings, not only here but at Tarik's Academy. I believe Chameleon Chief first showed up here as well.

Saturn Queen doesn't show up at all prior to Magic Wars. In TMK, they posit that Saturn Queen of the Adult LOSV is actually much younger (possibly a teenager). She's actually younger than adult / TMK Imra. Between this depiction, and the Silver Age depiction, I found Levitz recent use of her to be wholly out of character.

Saturn Queen's an interesting case. The TMK version was hardly at the same level of villainy as this adult Saturn Queen.

How do they explain Saturn Queen turning evil again, when Superman did the whole "keep a piece of Saturn's rings with you so you'll always be good" bit? I suppose all anyone had to do was steal it away from her while sleeping, and she'd go back to being evil.



It does seem very out of character for them not to at least try to retrieve him. I wish there'd at least have been a line on that.

Chameleon Chief appeared earlier, in SUP 208.

By the way, according to the Legion Handbook, both Sun Emperor and Chameleon Chief appeared as adults in Jimmy Olsen # 63.

They do indeed. They don't exhibit much in the way in personalities, but one has to wonder what might have been if the writers kept going. I think we have a thread from a few months ago where we speculated on their names!

The reason they couldn't retrievek Vorm from the far future is because Vorm is the real TIME TRAPPER!!

This was explored somewhat with the induction of Dawnstar, who was said to be 16 at the time, and, at least at first, was portrayed as being much less mature than the veteran legionnaires. Although later inductees such as Blok, Mysa and Jacques were also assumed to be under 18 when they joined, not much was made of the fact.

Yeah, that theory just makes TOO much sense! When Cobie mentioned it as an EDE theory on the previous page of this thread, it blew me away! It actually makes me wonder if Siegel eventually intended to reveal the Trapper as being Vorm with that set-up at the end. Probably not, but it would have been AWESOME!

I wonder if it ever occurred to Levitz, Giffen the Bierbaums, etc., but they wrote it off because most readers wouldn't even know who DB was? As brilliant as Edie is, I've gotta wonder if he's the only one to ever think of it.

In any case Vorm's being stranded is an oddly hanging plot point for these generally tidy Adventure-era stories.

Adv. 332

"The Super-Moby Dick of Space" is one of the most iconic Legion stories of all time. Like two previous iconic stories we've reviewed—304 and 312—this one centers on Lightning Lad. Unlike those stories, this one lives up to its hype and holds up on re-reading.

Responding to an emergency in space, Lightning Lad encounters a giant, green, whale-like creature that eats metal. When LL tries to stun the creature, his lightning bolts rebound and strike his right arm, infecting it with a green poison. The arm has to be amputed and replaced with a bizarre yet cool looking robot limb. Angered at being maimed, LL vows to track down the creature (dubbed the Super-Moby Dick by a too helpul scientist named Dr. Lanphier) and kill it, even though doing so would violate the Legion's code.

LL commandeers a mission to hunt down the creature and, assisted by Dr. Lanphier, cooks up a powerful new weapon with his robot arm. However, the other Legionnaires fear LL has suffered a concussion due to his injuries and plot a mutiny (my, that sounds familiar). But it all turns out all right in the end, with LL having regained his senses, deciding upon a different fate for the Super-Moby Dick, and—proving what a good sport he is—not cluing his teammates in on the secret to preserve Dr. Lanphier's reputation.

Okay, maybe that last decision was a bad call on LL’s part, but it did lead to several dramatic scenes, including one in which Superboy blocks LL’s lightning blasts so they won’t kill the creature. Also, Superboy and Colossal Boy team up to capture the beast (one of CB’s first really good scenes in the entire series so far), but their scheme fails when an enraged Lightning Lad interferes.

Much of this could have been avoided, of course, if LL had said, “Screw it with Dr. Lanphier’s secret!” and told his fellow Legionnaires what was going on—their need to know was much more important than the doctor’s shame of having created the Super-Moby Dick. But if we grant the story this one lapse into idiot plot logic, it holds up exceptionally well.

Lightning Lad may be the first ever super-hero to lose a limb—a chancy move that shows how the Legion could get away with developments like this whereas other super-hero series couldn’t. Even with so many other Legionnaires to focus on, it was still a bold move for Mort and company to maim one of their most popular characters. The story resonates even more loudly today, with wounded war veterans getting a lot of deserved media attention. (At the risk of sounding flip, LL’s robot arm even looks like it might fit in with some of the wheelchair-like devices used today—though modern artifical arms are more much more advanced and natural looking than LL’s.)

This story clearly illustrates the price real heroes often pay, and how they can continue being heroes in spite of physical loss.

The story also works because, even though it features very few Legionnaires, they are well utilized. Colossal Boy’s big moment (hah!) has been mentioned, and Ultra Boy also gets a solo shot at the creature. UB demonstrates that he has perhaps been hanging out with Mon-El too much as he impulsively runs off to stop the creature alone, leaving behind a note for his teammates to find. But this scene gives UB an excuse to recount his origin and a memorable story moment: He survives being swallowed by the Super-Moby Dick by jamming his flashlight into a tooth cavity.

Saturn Girl and Brainiac 5 are featured throughout, though they don’t do much. However, Saturn Girl worries endlessly about LL’s behavior and pleads with him not the kill the creature, planting hints about her budding romance with Garth. Sun Boy, once the most prominent Legionnaire, is reduced to cameo appearances, and Superboy figures into the action without hogging the glory.

The story also ends on a hopeful but realistic note. LL does not get a new human arm—not in this story—but he is left with hope that science may one day provide one. And because he has hope, he’s willing to live with his artificial arm. That’s perhaps the most heroic message any story can convey.

Adventure #332

First off, before we get into the Super Moby Dick, I should mention that I have not read Moby Dick the novel since high school, despite glowing recommendation by Eryk and a thread years earlier where a few of us lamented reading it in our teens years.

Second, the very coolest of all Graemlins remains:

:supermobydick:

The Super Moby Dick story, despite obviously owing a ton to the famous novel, and a kind of tongue in cheek silliness of its antagonist, is actually a really solid story. Hamilton returns after a brief absence and provides one of the better character pieces of the first half of the Legion's history. Garth goes through a true literary cycle here and emerges a changed man: not only physically, though this is surely dramatic for contemporary young comic book readers, but also changed in his willingness to let go of vengeance.

One can't help but feel there is so much of Garth overcoming his death and resurrection also at play here. Severely traumatized, he's at last dealing with those emotions too. In the stories immediately following his return he's a steadfast, prolific member yet eerily silent. It's not a stretch to make the connection of him brooding. And here, that all finally bubbles to the surface. Which then sets the stage for his romance with Imra to really begin hereafter, later in the Archive.

Btw, there's a FANTASTIC blog about this particular somewhere on the Internet that I read years ago. When I'm not posting from my phone I'll look for it.

The opening pages are done quite masterfully. The monster debuts in a fury; Garth responds heroically; the horrifying aftermath; the Legionnaires intense worry; the shock!! of Garth losing his arm; the tragedy of what's happened and his grim reaction as Imra worries. Hamilton smartly uses only a few characters here. This is one of the best paced few pages thus far.

The moniker "Super Moby Dick" is explained rather nicely.

Another great job is done is highlighting the tension with Superboy failing, the cosmic panicking, others failing and then Ultra Boy heading off on his own bravely.

Part 2 is full of space opera and adventure. Glad to see Colossal Boy get some good screen time! All the Legionnaires have a chance to play a nice part, actually.

Imra being the one to stand up to Garth makes it all more dramatic. The somber tone is ever preset and well done. This is underscored by another Hamilton lost civilization, the World of Dead Robots, which has a really powerful little story.

The climax works for me in a big way, as Garth proves them wrong and resolves the threat while saving the beast too. I'd like to think perhaps he didn't know whether he'd save or kill it right until the end. His attitude at the end is positive and hopeful, despite the loss of his arm.

What a terrific story. One of the best so far I'd say.

Bonus Lettercol Review: the highlight is a letter from a young Cary Bates! Very cool! He praises the presentation of "Know Your Legionnaires" extra in the Bizarro issue.

Few things:

Great comment Hermit on Dawny being younger than then-current Legionnaires. That was touched on only ever so briefly a few times.

Lardy, there's at least two threads were Eryk really sells his TT = Vorm theory that to me leaves no room for argument. It simply is! I'd look for them and link and all...but well...you know me...

HWW, looks like we're both in agreement of the quality of Super Moby Dick. While "Mutiny" remains my favorite, I would say this is a contender for best story so far. Hamilton makes some bold choices and never lets the story get bogged down with anything that isn't driving home his themes and plot.

I've never read the Melville novel, but I have seen two film adaptations of "Moby Dick." What impresses me here is that Hamilton takes the basic idea of the story and makes it his own. In some previous stories, such as 318's "Mutiny of the Super-Heroes," Hamilton, I felt, shoehorned the characters into the story to make it work. Here the action flows logically from the characters and their motives.

I like your extrapolation that Garth was working through some post-resurrection issues up until now, though one does not need to know anything about Garth's past to understand his motivations in this story. Losing an arm would be traumatic for anyone.



Great minds think alike.

What I liked most about this story was how realistically the Legionnaires acted. They were concerned about Garth while simultaneously upholding the Legion Code; at the same time, unlike with some recent issues we reviewed they were much more compassionate for their fellow Legionnaire (contrast with them tossing Colossal Boy out in the Dynamo Boy story!)

Poor Moby needs a space dentist!

Ultra Boy must spend some time thinking about getting trapped inside space-whales. Since Moby affected Lightning Lad so badly, the beast might have given Jo some different powers, but Hamilton didn't go down that route. (It would have distracted from Garth's story, but Jo could have had some dormant effect that we only saw later.)

Everyone was very heroic and the story was more focused than most previous Legion stories.

I liked the anxious Dr. Lanphier's story. People goof, try to cover it up, then try to fix it and confess to what they've done. All good!

It would have been a nice ending to see tiny Moby Dick of Space fly off to join a swarm of other little space-whales. Perhaps people could keep them as exotic pets.


And on the previous story: Vorm as Time Trapper - excellent!

If anyone's interested, I expanded upon my thoughts concerning Adv. 332 and how it can help us cope with senseless tragedy in my latest blog post. I even linked to LW and to this thread.

Interesting blog post. Thanks for sharing. I appreciate how you've made this old Legion tale revelant for today's news worthy debates.

Thanks, Leather Wolf.

Nicely done, HWW. And you are right - people are too quick nowadays to jump to conclusions and be judgmental.

Thanks, Ibby. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

This story is definitely better than I remembered it. It's even better for the mostly unstated undertones: Garth's PTSD, Imra's growing feelings for him, etc.

You have to think that Hamilton's choosing of Garth for this particular trauma wasn't random. Since Garth had already been killed and brought back, he could've chosen any other less-spotlighted Legionnaire to suffer the injury. I think Hamilton wanted to show someone who had already suffered have their heroism tested again.

To me, Garth is the definitive Legionnaire of the Adventure era for all he'd been through and come out on the other end so impressively. This story is one of the big staples of my case. (Another staple begins in just three issues.)

But for all that's good about this stories, there were a couple of elements that were too cheesy (even by Silver Age standards) to keep me from scoring it too highly:

1) The way the injury was afflicted. So we've got this big honking, menacing whale charging Garth, and how does he lose his arm? Garth's lightning somehow bounces off the whale, reflects back with some poison and hits Garth square in the arm? Really? Those big, sharp teeth tell me a more logical way this could have happened! Yeah, I know it's the Silver Age, and I'm not saying they should have shown blood and gore--but there are tasteful ways to portray this without really showing anything. Heck, an issue of Robert Kirkman's "Super Dinosaur", an all-ages book, had a character lose a limb tastefully in a manner similar to how I described it.

Even taking how it happened at face value, I don't understand why the creature would have stopped charging. I realize it was not interested in eating people, but a bite or a tailswipe would've made sense. Also, the precision of the strike and that the infection didn't spread to more of his body as Garth's ship travelled a presumably long distance to Earth on autopilot was kind of silly. Maybe the whole arm (including Garth's sleeve! ) shouldn't have been shown to be green so quickly, maybe?

I will give the story props for the green coloration of the arm, though. It really did make for a stunning visual that made the mind thing of RL gangrene, albeit in an exaggerated fashion. I've no doubt this was brave, pioneering territory for superheroes vis a vis loss of limb, so extra props for that.

2) Did anyone else notice the inconsistency in how the size of the SMD was depicted? I mean, this thing dwarfed a city at one point! (And, no, there was nothing to indicate this was a planet of tiny people! ) He was depicted as ranging anywhere from a normal, larger Earth whale to Godzilla-sized to the size of several Godzillas! I can't be argued that he grew as the story continued because he was smaller after the city-making sequence! And if he kept growing and shrinking back and forth, that should've been referenced in-story.

Scale and perspective are basic artistic staples, and Forte failed to consistently depict the SMD's scale here, for sure. Some of that is surely on Hamilton as well by devising a story in which the threat must menace a city and individuals at the same time. Forte probably did the best with what he had with the available space, but it distracted me from the story repeatedly. A definite no-no for good storytelling.



But otherwise, it was a pretty good story!

Re the way Garth lost his arm, I guess one possibility for why they didn't have the Super Moby Dick bite it off was its size - it could just as easily have gulped Garth down whole!

I read it that Garth was more of a curiosity to the creature than an actual threat. Since Garth's lightning bolts did not hurt the creature, it had no reason to eat or tail-swipe him.

Good call, Lardy, on the inconsistency in the creature's size. In all the times I've read this story, I never noticed that. I'll have to go back and see how glaring it is.

I didn't notice the size variations either! Artist's excuse: the creature suffers size instability resulting from Lanphier's experiment.

This could also result in SMB becoming giant and menacing again in the future. Not something I'd like to see; one SMB story is enough. Unless he's the fifth member of the Fatal Five....

Adventure #333

Jerry Siegel returns, and being chief mythos-builder, he uses this story as a great opportunity to further establish the history of Krypton and Atlantis with Superboy and the Legion.

There's always something so enjoyably pulpy and adventurous to the trope of discovering a secret artifact pertaining to a mysterious unknown history. It's even cooler when the Legion can just go investigate it--which they unanimously vote to do. Ah, youths who can time travel.

I also love that 10 Legionnaires are featured, plus Luonru's small role.

The ancient past of Krypton being a time of intense anti-science sentiment is really just brilliant. Great idea by Siegel, and oh so appropriate for today. The Space Ark inspiring Noah's Arc, the origin of dinosaurs, the origin of Atlantis...it's all just so epic and grandiose. These days, this would be a weekly 52 issue series with 10 writers and artists.

Leta Lal is yet another classic Forte beauty. Stunning!

Headstrong Imra and headstrong Brainy sure are quick to draw lines in the sand. Some better effort could have been made to show how events were going in this direction despite their efforts, not because of them.

The Legion versus Legion sequence is fantastic! Some of the best action we've seen so far, complete with two armies and dinosaurs on top of it all. And then things get serious.

Superboy really shines in this story. It's one of the few stories where he is a lead character without totally hogging all the spotlight.

The ending is a mixed bag of some strong conclusions, such as Brainy helping the Atlanteans become their better known selves (good) and Mon-El showing up to save the day (meh).

Even more interesting though is the final panel revealing the final fate of the Kryptonians! Wow! Talk about bad luck! There's a ton of story potential here though that could be explored. I wonder if this was *ever* followed up on?

All in all, this was one of Siegel's best Legion stories IMO. It's sheer scale and continued forward momentum work very well.

Bonus Lettercol Review: Mort explains for the first time that Supergirl (not Saturn Girl) plants a post-hypnotic suggestion on Superboy whenever they have an adventure together.

Furthermore, if tiny SMD breeds with other tiny SMDs, his offspring will inherit his unstable genes, and . . .

Well, let's say a Fatal Fifteen Thousand may be on the horizon.

Hm. The Archive credits the story to Hamilton. It does seem more like a Siegel story, though. Was Hamilton possibly mis-credited?