Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Reading the Legion: Archives #6

In any case we've very nearly "caught up" to you! I'll be looking forward to you joining in and sharing your insights with, what, "The Adult Legion"? I can't imagine what it must have been like to have that story as your very first! It must have been confusing and great at the same time to start with a look at the Legion's future.....

Thanks for the correction, Lardy.

Yeah, it was the Adult Legion story. When we get to it, I'll tell you why it fascinated me.

Only one week 'til we get there! Can't wait!

Say, LT...reading between the lines, does that mean you've never read the Fatal Five/Death of Ferro Lad two-parter?

Now, for some notes on Adventure #351, "The Forgotten Legion"....

-Interesting choice for the cover. There was so much going on inside, but the choice was made to feature the scene in Smallville. Not the Devil's Dozen. Not the Subs vs. Super-pets, Mxyzptlk, the mystery of Sir and Miss, the action on Brande's planetoid or the attempted "evilling" of Lightning Lad, among a few other possibilities. I think it was a poor choice, personally. So much excitement within, but the selling point was Superboy's amnesia?!? Random Fan might have passed it by assuming it was yet another Red K story. Pretty cover but a pretty tame representation of the wild, fun story within!

-The splash page! See! That's more like what the cover should've been!

-Lyle socks Jo with an uppercut and knocks him to the ground! HELL to the YEAH! Already we've seen that Lyle's a strong leader who takes no guff. Kneel before Lyle! It's really too bad that Cary Bates had to kill Lyle off later. I mean, I definitely liked Jacques and some of the adventures he had, don't get me wrong. At least the reboot authors saw Lyle's potential and let him become one of that continuities biggest stars! Stories like this, though, showed preboot Lyle had a lot going for him!

-Yay! A flashback to Vi going up Superboy's nose! So cool! Too bad she wasn't carrying a rubber hose, though...

-Nice continuity nod where Sir P puts Jo in his place for his suspicions!

-I love the 2 and a half-page sequence with Cos, Ferro, Miss T and Tenzil trying to get to the Hag. Especially, because this is Ferro Lad acting as a Legionnaire in a story that is neither his first story or his last. Having him see some significant action in between just builds his legend. And you get some small insights into his enigmatic character. He has a braveness to him that puts him in the path of a deadly beam to protect his teammates. And he basically laughs it off. And Tenzil also has a rare great moment to use his unique power to get them out of a trap.

-Garth gets a full three pages-plus to be menaced by Evillo. Evillo tries infusing Garth with "concentrated evil" to brainwash Garth into being one man closer to making his "dozen" a reality. While I like garth's explanation for not succumbing, I also think it would've been another great continuity nod for Garth to mention his experience as Starfinger and how he was able to resist this new attempt because of the prior experience.

-Odd that Evillo's power apparently required an "energizer" and that said device happened to look like a gun? Oh well, it lead to a cute pun, right?

-Then, we get the paintings that show the future for the four Legionnaires. The readers get a tip-off to Ferro's sad fate. They won't have to wait long to see it pay off...

-Miss T's in comparison is..."meh". At the very least, it could have had some hint that she was actually Dream Girl, right? I mean, we get a small one with her somehow knowing Cos's is "too dreadful", but something in her image would've been nice.

-And we never get to see Tenzil's or Cos's! How could Bridwell do that to us?!?

-I like how Miss T's plan dovetails into 2 missions for the Legionnaires at HQ....and the Subs!

-So off to Smallville! Clark saves a teacher from hurt feelings by super-puffing a harmless caricature of her off the blackboard. I wonder how Clark can make such precise strikes with his super-breath with no one ever noticing a sudden strong gust? He didn't even muss the brunette's hair!

-Hah! I figured the clubhouse was Projectra''s illusion!

-And as far as super-precise power use, isn't it interesting that Jan could pinpoint his power to change a small pill deep within Superboy's brain? Even if he could do that, what about Superboy's famed invulnerability? Brain....hurts.....

-So a few pages with Mxyzptlk. I'm not sure if I've ever read a story with the imp battling Superboy, but it certainly appears to be a younger version that the Boy of Steel faces. A shock of red hair and apparently no derby!

-Man! Sugyn SURE loves him some water! Too bad he gave Evillo a useless, non-powered ex-Legionnaire. Sugyn, we hardly knew ye....

-Nice battle between the Super-pets and the Subs! Gotta love Color Kid making Stoney look like Kryptonite and Chlor growing some catnip in a pinch to take care of Streaky. (I wonder what else Chlor can grow in a pinch...? )

-Also nice that they don't have some mysterious trick to snap Kara out of her amnesia. They didn't have Jan with them, so that makes sense. I guess Color Kid was saving his trick for the ending....

-So the spell is complete and--the Hag is a Hottie! Miss T and Sir P complete their mission (to free the "Hag") and reveal themselves! And Lyle implores them to stay!

-We get a whirlwind wrap-up and three panels for the remaining DDer Wild Huntsman to attack and be promptly whooped! Evillo had pissed off his crime doctor by making him hideously ugly, so he restored garth's arm, Chuck's bouncing ability and un-super-fat-assed Tenz to get his revenge!

-And Color Kid saves the day! His power is apparently so vast yet so precise that he can change the color of a cloud as big as earth and a tiny pill inside Kryptonian brains! Did Ulu ever have a better moment? Unlikely!

Whew! Was that a busy story or what?

Busy, but fun, FUN, F-U-N!

This 2-parter was easily the most fun experience I've had re-reading the Legion Archives to this point! As I said, I wasn't expecting much at all from this story, and my expectations just flew thru the frickin' ROOF! I honestly don't know how ANY Legion fan couldn't read this and smile ear-to-ear. Yes, it's goofy and hokey and has more than one logical leap, but it's thoroughly entertaining and full of fan service, past, present and future! I'm so glad I got to re-read this and look forward to doing so again!

One more note that occurred to me. Anyone else notice that lots of Legionnaires featured in 350 were inexplicably absent from the action in 351? Brainy, Vi (except in flashback and at the meeting table on the last page), Lu, Dirk, Val and Cham are all no-shows. This occurs to me especially because in 351, the Legion was apparently so short-handed that they had to call in the Subs and powerless Chuck to help. Maybe they ended up on an unseen wild goose chase? An off-panel unrelated emergency?

Not a huge deal, I reckon, but in a story that had everything AND the kitchen sink--it would've been even MORE fun with those guys included in the resolution!

The cover

It might not be palatable now but at the time, Superboy was the connection between picking the book off the rack and learning there is a future superhero team. Probably the wisest thing they did was putting him on the cover.

While I can't speak for other neighborhoods, in mine there were no comic shop guys to recommend books. Of course there were no message boards. Not even a tv commercial that I recall. It was all word of mouth, cover attraction and name brand recognition and that name was "Super..." or "Bat..." because they were on TV or Sat. morning cartoons. Probably the only reason I ever picked up a comic, I started getting an allowance, had money burning my pocket and saw the cool covers...

That was probably fairly typical back then.

Has anyone read anything that says Bridwell un-did so much injury to the Legionnaires with a purpose? There's some discussion on the LSH #23 thread that Levitz was doing damage control by placing the story on Earth 2 (though I do not understand the significance of that). Could the Bridwell have been doing the same?

I hadn't really picked up on the Legionnaires in #350 being absent in this issue. It sure would have added to Kitchen Sink (the perfect name!), but it was good to see a mission resolved by Legionnaires other than Brainy or the big hitters Superboy/Mon-el/Ultra Boy. (Especially since we've had Brainy overload lately.)

Cobie wrote this story made him feel like 13 again, in the best way, and I agree. Parts of it are really silly, but never insipid.

Like all great evil-doers, Evillo talks a lot - yet he avoids the hackneyed self-referencing and heavy exposition that Nardo used (I, Nardo, have imprisoned you!).

It's good to see the Subs actually refining their powers, rather than just practicing turning them on and off. That one panel both introduces them all and presents their powers simply and effectively.

It's odd that Projectra didn't come up with a magician or two when they needed one, but I guess at this point her mystic background hadn't been developed.

Ferro Lad seemed to have a bit of attitude regarding R. J. Brande. It made me think of Denny O'Neill's Green Arrow but I think that came later than this story. I wonder if Ferro Lad would have developed into a critic of the wealthy and privileged had he lived.

What was the dreadful fate foretold for Cosmic Boy? Maybe the 5YL team used that as the basis for his time at war with Imsk, or becoming the Time Trapper.

Nice idea that Sir Prize might have been Rond Vidar! Don't remember my first reading of this story, but I'm sure I didn't know who Sir Prize and Miss Terious were until the end.



Girls used a lot of hair spray back then....

As I said, I loved this story, but the main problem I have with it is the whole reason for the brainwashing doesn't hold water. "you may inadvertently leave clues to our secret weapons which your enemies could find and use against you." So what's to keep Kal and Kara from "inadvertently leaving clues to our secret weapons" while they were ACTIVE members? What? only honorably discharged members get sloppy and start leaving super weapon clues lying around willy nilly? Why weren't Bouncing Boy and especially Star Boy who may have had an axe to grind at the Legion similarly brainwashed? Shirley, there could have been a better reason for the brainwashing of the super cousins.

Nowadays a story with this many characters and developments would take several months to tell and DC would make it a major "event" with all kinds of crossovers throughout its titles, etc. etc.

You're correct; I've never read it.

Resisting a "don't call me Shirley" joke. Doh! I messed up.

I thought of that as well, though it's odd that Dreamy didn't reference this ever again if so. Perhaps it was a different fate that was foretold. Perhaps it was something that Bridwell just wanted to throw in and see what future writers would do with it.



I wonder. Invulnerability should protect them from harm, but I don't think it would stop some powers from working - Imra can still read their minds, so Jan should be able to transmute substances in their bodies. They just won't be affected unless he transmutes something into kryptonite.

Which begs the Q, if he COULD do that, why didn't he just transmute some raw other element already in their bodies into kryptonite? I suppose they didn't want to risk him accidentally messing with their internal functions. And at least we got a cool set of panels for Vi to show off her ability to go really really tiny.

It also seemed weird to me that Kara would be so quick to attack the Subs. What gives, Girl of Steel? Ever thought about talking first? The Subs did well though; despite being outmatched they used their powers well.

That's a really valid point, Jim. It does NOT make any sense as far as explanations go for the memory-wiping!

A better explanation might have been, for Superboy at least, that this would insure that his memory-conditioning that was done to keep him from remembering crucial details of his future wouldn't fade. It's reasonable that Supergirl might find out some details of her own future during her visits that she might be conditioned for, as well. (I doubt, though, that she had ever learned of her own death, though.)

Brainwashing:

Probably made perfectly good sense to the writer at the time. Or perhaps he thought, drat I have to get this out the door, my readers are 12 years old they don't really give a crap why we're brainwashing them, I haven't written 'superweapons" in awhile, boom, done.

Yeah, BB...that's the REAL explanation. I just wish E. Nelson had put a little more thought into it. I think my germ of an idea above is better, for example.

Still, with a story giving us everything including the Kitchen Sink I can forgive the small details!

It's interesting, though, the recurring story point of the super weapons. Shouldn't those be guarded by the S.P. instead of a group of teenagers? Even if you adjust for younger people being apparently more mature in the future and all the responsibility the LSH is given, I would think that all the numerous instances of the Legion and their HQ being infiltrated by villains so far would give the higher-ups pause!

???

I meant this, that you wrote:

Not a response I would have expected I guess. I'm kind of curious how you interpreted my post?

Bad enough my writing skills do not match my thoughts as well as I would like and when I try to adjust before hitting "send," my editing skills are at best, ... occluded (?) by my vision. I wonder if I led you to a misinterpretation of my intention with that post. Or perhaps, I'm just misinterpreting your response.

What I meant, Beebs, is that Bridwell came up with a reason for giving them amnesia which 12 year-olds wouldn't question too much, as you imply in that quoted post. few of them would question that it made zero sense! Hell, I didn't question it on my re-read until Jim's post! That's why it's so good to re-read with others!

Nope. Not the intended interpretation at all.

My intended interpretation was facetious to a point that anyone can get into a rush when trying to get product out the door and they have to get to a point where they say, "it's done."

For ME, it's interesting to compare the process for getting a comic out the door to other things. At least in these ADV days, there doesn't seem to be a lot of vetting. Someone writes. Someone does a quick edit. Gone. No audience preview. No panel discussion. None of the things one might expect for a movie and certainly nothing compared to what we did in Engineering where vetting is a coded part of the process and can involve dozens of fact checking layers both in pre and post development.

So: it would for ME it is interesting when we have the writer available to ask their intent, if any. It would be interesting to know if the writer really had a deep purpose behind the stated reason for "brainwashing" the Super cousins, thought it really made sense to him at the time or if it really was just something to say to move to the next panel of the story.

It wouldn't at all surprise me that they considered the general ages of their readers, when determining how much time to spend on dotting i's and crossing t's. If written to an adult audience, I would expect a level of vetting and editing consistent with novel fiction and even that can go horribly wrong.

I also now realize that my pronoun, "them" was horribly misplaced. As written it refers to the "12 year olds" when it was meant to refer to the Super cousins.

The way you think, Beebs...you're kind of a strange cat. But that's all right: we pretty much ALL are here! And that's a GOOD thing, imo!

I'm considered pretty normal when hanging out with the other people like me.