Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Reading the Legion: Archives Vol. 8

I'm glad that Cobie posted his review of Adventure 371-372, because I'm too tired to write mine tonight.

I'll read Cobie's review and Thoth's review of 370 tomorrow and comment accordingly.

Thoth, sorry to jump ahead before you posted a review--I hadn't realized you were going to.

As usual, I enjoyed immensely, especially the image of Mordru burning his toast while his army searches Smallville for the Legionnaires. Can't you just see him getting pissed off and zapping his toast with a bolt of lightning so powerful it causes the ground to collapse in on him and he's trapped again? That would be a funny ongoing parody, actually.

That's... >sniff<.. okay >choke< My friend Anti-Lad is helping me get over being forgotten... >sob<



Mordru the Mirthless. Issue 23:-

Mordru: With my armies poised to attack, and my political puppets in place, the galaxy will finally be mine! Just a quick comfort break, before I lead them to their destinies!

>flush<

Mordru: Now my armies...uh, armies? Why are you lying unconscious? Why have you broken all your weapons? Nooooooooooooo! Legion! I was away for two minutes! Two minutes! I hate you Legion!

I forgot to mention that in #370 Mordru mentions Yog-Sothoth. So there's a link between this story and the Avengers fill in issues over on the All-Avengers thread.

Shooter gets it to make sense, considering that Mordru is expanding his powers across time and space.

A reason to actually like those Avengers issues!

LOL




Agreed 100%.

And I apologize for not realizing you hadn't reviewed 370 yet the whole while that I was insisting that we get to the Colossal Boy story.

Adventure Comics 371-372

I admit I had forgotten that the whole business starts with Colossal Boy naively letting strangers into his and his parents' apartment. But those were less paranoid, less cynical times, so I can let it slide.

Ultra Boy takes to leadership like a duck to water. Unlike Cobie, I think TMK Mary Sue-d Ultra Boy, but I'm not a fan of the dumb jock portrayal either; as the saying goes, the truth lies somewhere in between.

Nice use of Bouncing Boy and Brainiac 5, showing sides of the two of them that hadn't been seen much if at all back then.

Page 11, showing Gim being found guilty and exiting the headquarters in disgrace, is masterfully drawn. Even Abel seemed to be giving it his all.

And...that's it for Part 1. The second story in this issue is obviously a rush-job fill-in, but I think the Colossal Boy/School for Super-Villains story is just right at its length of one-and-a-half issues. Any less and it would have felt truncated; any more and it would have felt padded. So in the end it works out.

Abel is back to slop-work in the first five pages of 372, and, as Cobie already pointed out, even Swan's pencils seem a bit off. But they rally when Vi goes on her journey, her first of its kind since 350-351 and ten times greater.

I think Tarik the Mute and his android are actually pretty neat, and don't need any irony to appreciate them.

I can't say enough good about the whole plan to get into the School for Super-Villains (including the use of Chemical King and Timber Wolf), the nods to past continuity in the form of Legion rejects and evil relatives, and Gim's heartbreaking, desperate decision.

Superboy giving Nemesis Kid a black eye is pretty graphic for its time, as is Tarik's punishment to the guy who got duped by the Legionnaires.

Great climax with Gim completing his journey from fallen Legionnaire to redeemed hero, Swan and Abel once again outdoing themselves.

Overall, this issue just clicks for me on all levels. I think it's the culmination of Shooter's learning-while-doing craftsmanship, and while there would be some more good Legion stories to come from him, I don't think he ever got better than this. Rather telling, in my opinion, that Shooter went on to borrow elements from this story for the fall-and-redemption arc that he put Hank Pym through in the Avengers book, but Shooter's execution there was a lot more heavy-handed (and Shooter didn't even finish that story, Roger Stern did.)

So, in a way, even though Swan will be sorely missed until many stories later when Cockrum comes on board, this was in hindsight the perfect point at which to exit. As I said, there were still good stories to come (the rest of the Adventure run remains inventive right to end, tainted only by the ending of the Taurus Gang story which I'll elaborate on when we get to it). However, comics is both a verbal and visual medium, and Win Mortimer just wasn't up to the task of filling Swan's shoes in my opinion. That's something else I'll elaborate on when we get to Mortimer's debut next issue.

The story in Adventure 371-72 has a special place in my heart, dating back to those halcyon years when my love affair with the Legion began. In a nutshell I jumped onboard the Legion train the first time right at the dawn of the Levitz/Giffen run while simultaneously experiencing many of the highlights of the Legion's Silver Age primarily in the form of the Adventure Comics digests which was the form the long-lived book took in its final days.

At the same time, I was also picking up the Best of DC Blue Ribbon digest series, which would feature reprints with different headliners every month. One month would feature Christmas stories, another Best of the Year selections, another a selection of stories featuring the top Batman villains, another the JSA, another Superman Red/ Superman Blue and so on and so on. Basically, I experienced a great selection of DC's past and present and got a great feel for the DC universe in a unique way.

So, anyway, while the Legion was headlining Adventure (sometimes sharing with the Challengers of the Unknown), one of the Blue Ribbon series also headlined the Legion. (After Adventure was cancelled, LSH would headline Blue Ribbon every few months.) It was issue 24, and it looked like this:



It's a bit of a rarity for Legion fans, I'd wager, because it features an all-new present-day framing sequence around "The Colossal failure/School for Super-Villains" that serves as a sequel. As the cover shows, Marte Allon is again turned into glass and Gim must save her. Unfortunately, I got rid of the digest (and all my other digests) long ago in my misspent, suddenly X-Men-addicted youth, so I can't remember exactly what happened in it. I seem to recall that Tarik the Mute's android actually ended up being behind the latest attack, but I can't find a synopsis here or elsewhere to fill me in. I guess I'll just have to give up and buy it someday because it's unlikely it'll ever be re-printed somewhere.

(BTW, that digest also featured the "Ghost of Ferro Lad" story!)

So all of that is a necessary prologue for me because that's how I originally experienced this story. In a way it feels incomplete to me without the framing sequence for that reason, even though it's clearly a fine story on its own and not in need of a framing sequence. Suffice to say, I could bitch-slap my younger self for selling off all of those digests and a ton of other of my early '80s DCs for virtual pennies on the dollar, so I could buy more X-Men!!! It would certainly save me some massive recent eBay trawling, part of which has been to recapture those beloved stories in the digests!

Anyhow, the original story itself is another hit from the mind of Shooter. Again, SO much world-building, this time in the form of finally giving us a contemporary LSV. I love how several characters return, showing us that the Legion's history is building on what may have seemed (and probably were intended to be) one-off characters whom we'd never see again: Nemesis Kid, Spider Girl, Radiation Roy and Ron Karr are all in the LSV academy--and every one of them would figure into the line-up in the great LSV War that would finally pay off the concept to the utmost many years later.

Even better, Mekt shows up, and we have one-third of the future LSV we're familiar with accounted for at the beginning. And on the side of the angels, we have the debut of Chemical King, heretofore only glimpsed as a statue in the Adult Legion story, and Timber Wolf, who's future self appeared as a Legionnaire in the same AL story but who hadn't been seen in the present in quite some time since his debut.

Honestly, with all the pieces Shooter was putting together here, one can only imagine the heights he might have taken the Legion had the feature not been bumped from Adventure just a few issues later. There's honestly no telling! I mean, you can argue that Shooter was JUST really hitting his stride with this story and the Mordru story just before it. He was really damn good from the start, but these stories---MAN! I don't know all the politics behind the decision to pull the plug on the Legion--I assume sales were dropping?--but it's incredibly hard to believe the book was hemorrhaging readers after being so popular and the quality SO high!!

Basically, I freaking love so much about this story! I'd put it maybe a tiny notch below Mordru, maybe because the art wasn't as utterly mind-blowing as the latter. Indeed, it was a return to the ordinary after all the flourishes and experimentation of the other. The artistic standout, though, was clearly that sequence with Violet for all the reasons others have mentioned. But I don't feel it was a poor effort--indeed a lot of the character work is beautiful--but it wasn't quite the eye-opener of Mordru's tale.

It's actually pretty freaky how far Gim crosses the line to save his parents--so far, that I wouldn't have been all that surprised to have seen him expelled if the same story had been done, say, five years later when consequences would have been taken into account much more and the status quo less likely maintained. I mean, think about it: had Superboy and Cham not taken the precaution they'd taken, Superboy would have been DEAD and history absolutely WRECKED! It's only after seeing Superboy apparently shattered that Gim is horrified into taking action and helps turn the tide in the battle.

His decision to expose his teammates was absolutely shocking! I would have expected him to covertly solicit their help and work out a way to save his parents and then take the academy down. In a way it's a brilliant move on Shooter's part and how it sets up the horror of the moment where Superboy is seemingly killed. Actually, it would have been set up better if he hadn't planted the seeds in readers' minds with the makeup reference, but at least, he didn't spell out exactly what they were doing.

It's certainly a well done Legion story. It's a very humanizing one for Gim, showing that he can be vulnerable to his loved ones being in danger and be paralyzed into taking heroic action until something awful galvanizes him. I also love Chuck's role in the story; Shooter uses him so well that I found myself wishing he had used him more often. Again, I sure wish Shooter had continued writing the Legion as a lead feature for another year or two! DAMN!

P.S. Fickles, I think Tarik and the android are neat, too!!!

I agree. I think he was building up to something spectacular in Adventure #400. If he had continued up to that issue, he would have had a nice run of about 50 issues.



I don't know, either, but I'm speculating it might have had something to do with all the layoffs at DC. Believe it or not, Mort Weisinger was also "let go", albeit with the proverbial golden parachute. Maybe nobody felt they could execute the Legion the same way as it had been by Weisinger, so rather than cancelling it, they downgraded it.



Awwww...thanks, Lardy.

Oh, and, Lardy, your story about your lost digests is very moving, and it reminds me of a personal experience: when my family and I moved from South America to the U.S., I had to choose between my massive collection of Peanuts paperbacks and my massive collection of Disney digests. I chose Peanuts, never suspecting that Peanuts would be kept in print decades later, while most of the Disney stories, which had never even BEEN printed in the U.S., would not be reprinted anywhere but Europe and Latin America.

I definitely feel your pain!

I think what it amounts to for me is that while I don't regret the great joy those X-Men comics gave me, it sucks that I decided to sacrifice all the DC books I'd collected in the prior years. Especially so because DC, though they were an innovator in the TPB format, have done an incredibly SHITTY job collecting material dating between the Bronze AGE thru much of the '80s! If you aren't classic GL/GA & Neal Adams this or that or New Teen Titans or a few other scattered super-high profile runs, chances are you've never seen a print beyond the original floppies!

Much of the stuff I want to rediscover via color trade or hardcover is simply NOT available, be it Flash from the death of Iris-on, DC Comics Presents, latter-day Brave & the Bold, the dollar-issue runs of Detective, Action and others, much of Curt Swan's latter-year run on Superman and so on! Even a lot of great Batman stories by writers like Wein and artists like Colan and Newton are only JUST RECENTLY getting handsome collections!!! DC is leaving a freaking GOLD MINE boarded up!

Comparatively, Marvel is doing a SUPERIOR job collecting their older material! Just like your Peanuts books, the X-Men collections are readily available while those old gems from DC's Bronze Age are practically NOWHERE to be found!!!

And I certainly didn't have the understandable dilemma of moving to another country! I was an IDIOT selling those great books for practically nothing! Really--I could just SLAP my younger self!!!

Adventure #371

The cover would have been drawn before the Mordru story, but it's easy to think that Luornu still carries a torch for Superboy from the cover. A cover that reminds me of the old Justice League one (#19 May 1963 - Editor Lad) where they leave the earth. It's something to do with the curved walkway.

Inside, we learn lots about life in the future. I embraced microwaves, not in a sad attempt to get powers of my own as Irradiated Boy, but because the Legion were computer-synthesizing meals years before. Remote broadcasts from people's living rooms, streamed across the world? No problem, thanks to Universe TV. There's no doubt good science fiction helps you broaden your technological horizons.

Something else else that a little harder to accept is that the future is such a trusting place...

>bing bong<
Gim: I'll get it mom! >opens door< Hi!
Old Bearded Figure: Hello mortal young man. I wish to interview you for our Legionnaire Lives scrying televisual entertainment event.
Gim: Wow! That will be galaxy wide. What an honour!
Old Bearded Figure: Now, if you could just step into this pentacle here, it will help the reception signals.
Gim: Y'now, that beard looks just like Mordru...
<Zap!<
Mordru: Yes! "Legionnaire Lives". Our obituary show! Ha ha ha ha ha >breathe< ha ha ha ha!

The Legionnaires have no secret identities. They have no security around their off headquarters addresses that we can see here. There's no checking on anyone's identities in a futuristic world.

Interviewer: tell me Mrs Allon. What's our favourite song.
Marte Allon: Why, it's Blondie's Heart of Glass.

This page is another gem, and not just because of the fascinating life force jewel that makes an appearance on it. The villain's dialogue is excellent. One is pleased with the results of their ruse. But the other expresses doubt that it was going to work. That simple emotion elevates them from being merely Acme Henchmen.

Then, their plan doesn't quite work out. It was a good plan, and they executed it well. But there's a hitch and it' s that flaw (ouch) which gives us our very well set up story.

Moving swiftly past the convenient teleportation device, the following panel shows a forlorn Gim trying to think of a plan. A simple caption shows that his solution didn't come to him easily or without a lot of soul searching. This panel does a lot to establish Gim's thought process.

The next day, we see Salu and Superboy spending some time together. They were also seen as a couple waving Gim off just the night before. Yet the possibility of this Legion romance never went anywhere. Therefore, I can only imagine Salu saw Ayla crying on the cover, and is looking to see why Superboy gets such an emotional response from her.

In the future it seems that the Legion are the only ones with diving gear, as the police are useless. Their monopoly on such equipment has enabled them to get specially adapted kit for Gim and Salu. The underwater adventure gives us some great visuals, with Gim in the diving mask looking quite eerie.

Colossal Boy really fouls up the mission. Not easy to do with Superboy and Ultra Boy on the team. Each goof is well structured step by step, taking the reader to Ultra Boy's decision to send Gim for retraining. Years later it's very hard to imagine Ultra Boy being so harsh about anything.

Even the Legion has to meet a budget in the future. So, they split the costs of training with a small cult that trains only clean cut, white, anglo saxon men.

We then get a sequence that would have an big impact on future Legion story. It's the Legion Academy being taken through their paces. It's not just all those great recruits of the future or that this would lead to Montauk point. It's that the Legion has developed into an layered, well structured organisation. It's not only about powers.

Seeing future Legionnaire Chemical King progress through the ranks endearing him to the reader. Like a football team, the home grown talent always gets a bit more support.

Although they could do with paying some attention to who's actually in the team as Gim isn't recognised.
We also see that Karate Kid teaches regularly here. This line of dialogue supports all those previous Karate Kid training scenes, his sensei's wish for Val to find students and all those Legionnaires with enhanced hand to hand skills later on. That's quite a pay off.

Interestingly, Gim seems to have super strength at normal height.

Finally, this sequence establishes Chuck Taine's role on the team. Considering his young age, he's a very good man manager, immediately seeing Gim's stress. Taine's peer conference with Imra and Querl also underlines his importance to the team. This is another panel with a huge pay off as Chuck would take over the Academy duties.

We get another chance to throw scorn over 30th century security as Chuck breaks into the Allon's apartment. He makes a bumbling, but successful detective. Both Gim and Chuck are compared, in an understated way, with the stealthier espionage squad in this issue. Having broken in, Chuck then gets Gim arrested while escaping punishment himself. None of Chuck's evidence is deemed to be inadmissible, leaving opportunities for traitor legionnaires.

Like the Salu and Superboy panels, nothing more is ever done with Jo calling Gim "Big Boy."

Just think.: A sens tank embittered Salu could have paralysed Lois Lane's brain in the Legion version of Identity Crisis, while Jo and Gim would have been an in-team alternative to Jed & Tel, as Gim goes off to Sci-Pol duties.

Gim wisely refuses to tell Brainy anything in his defence. Having Brainy anywhere near your trial will result in certain expulsion.

Whew! Ultra Boy is a total jerk when sending Gim along the walk of shame. Then I notice that Dirk is sitting beside him. So, Dirk is presumably passing Jo notes, and Jo's just showing those acting skills again.

It's a downbeat last panel, as we see Gim leave. How can Gim save his parents? Where was Element Lad, who could have made such a difference this issue? Who do the shady villains work for? How can Gim redeem himself? More than just a simple action based cliff hanger.

As always, Swan's art makes the visit to the future a treat. The underwater scenes were a nice change of pace, and as always Swan made them look great.

A longer review than normal, as there's just so much going on in such a well plotted issue.

I don't think you should be so hard on yourself, Lardy. We all do such things in our youth.

DC's weird royalty issues with their Bronze Age and Modern Age stuff are certainly an impediment, although the recent release of a trade collecting the first year of the Ostrander/Mandrake Spectre seems to indicate that at least some of those issues have been taken care of.

Adventure #372

The cover shows a surprisingly emotional, clean cut Brin Londo marking his return to the series, but it's mainly there to show Superboy in peril.

The splash page leaves the reader in no doubt about how far Colossal Boy has fallen. Looking at the expression, even knowing he's there in future issues, doesn't dispel the doubt that something may be permanently changed. And his four students look familiar.

There's a bit of a disconnect form the end of the #371. The Legion expel Gim, but not only is he allowed to keep his flight ring, it's a while later before he's arrested by the Science Police.

Additional punishment, beyond expulsion, wasn't mentioned last issue. While it does show the all too frequent divides between organisations like the Legion and UP, it's really there as a device to push Gim into having to turn even more villainous.

Who controls the post internet Computo News? Buyers accept what's being told even though it doesn't tally with what we saw. Gim grew away from the science police rather than "clobber" them.

I'm reminded of news reports in our time where the police report numerous injuries during events, only for a number of those to be self inflicted or unrelated to the actual event. Cue changes in reporting after they had been found out after who knows how many years of misrepresentation. Ten peaceful protesters in hospital does not equal one policeman stubbing his toe on the way out of the police station.

There's a million dollars on Gim's head. You'd think he'd have to grow to support such a weight. But it's only $10 dollars in our money once you adjust for inflation. Which is why no one bothers with Gim until the villains manage to find him, using that best forgotten teleportation device.

Another piece of strong plotting follows, as the Legion decide to talk to the people closest to Gim to find out what's going on. Meanwhile, our two villains are still able to adjust their plans to get some mileage out of Gim's knowledge.

I really wish every few years the Legion would encounter Elza Perkins. She moves apartment, from crime hotspot to hotspot, providing useful information to the team. "I'm not a busy body, but..."

We then get the pay off from the jewel macguffin of the last issue. But tied in with this is a focus on Violet's powers. She's not only small but can ride on energy waves. Considering how often super-teams rely on tracking odd energy signatures, she's the perfect advance agent.

Readers may also note the similarities between the suit Vi wears here and the Giffen redesign towards the end of v3. I'm a fan of the accessorised Legion, years ahead of such things for super hero action figures. So underwater and subatomic suits are lots of fun in this story.

Keeping the story moving forward at pace, while developing characters is always good to see.

Vi is the one who discovers the Legion of Supervillains. From her perspective they look all the more intimidating, thanks to the Swan/Shooter composition. We see Nemesis Kid immediately and remember that he can beat any single foe, including Superboy.

Colossal Boy's expression is very complicated thanks to Swan. He has grown to tower over the prospective villains. His arms are crossed defiantly or defensively. His face is a mix of impassiveness or having given into his situation.

Like last issue, we also get another moment that has repercussions for future stories. In this origin of the Legion of Super-Villains, Shooter provides context for their previous appearances and leaves the door open for future uses, such as the start of v3.

We can only be thankful that Gim didn't have any involvement in the creation of Tarik's android. I'd not trust many writers to avoid turning him into a guilt ridden Hank Pym knock off.

Salu continues her dangerous scouting mission, calmly finding out the truth behind Gim's actions. Only then does she make the journey back home. Compare that approach to Ultra Boy's idea to just burst in on the villains.

Her information means that the Legion, and Shooter, have to find a more subtle way of solving the problem.

Having not long gone through a spate of traitorous team mates, it's the Legion's turn to infiltrate an organisation. While I would have liked one of the team to impersonate the arrested Vrenn G'Ondd (just to have another recurring character), it's fun to see Cham and Superboy in their disguises. We also get a quick summary of Condo and Brin's powers. I quite like Marco Malik's (Superboy) costume too.

With the team in the Villainous academy, they see who they are up against. I wonder if anyone feels the slightest guilt about how some of these people were treated when they were rejected from the Legion.

Normally, the heroes would contact Gim and the combined group would defeat the villains. Not here. This time, Gim betrays his colleagues again. Remember that expression on the splash page? This is that moment of seeming no return for Colossal Boy.

With the heroes getting captured (great black eye for Nemesis Kid), we learn that only one of them has a communicator for a mission. Then what you see on the cover is exactly what you get. Superboy gets turned into glass and smashed. But in the future of impeccable disguises, it was Chameleon Boy all along. I've no idea why Chameleon Boy was able to shake off the glass beam.

Two final moments are seeing the Kid who could kill Superboy easily beaten by Luornu ( a classic representation of what the Legion can be about), and the graduation of Lone Wolf and Chemical King.

Gim rebelled in the end. Had Tarik not asked Gim to be the killer, would he have let it happen? What other secrets would Gim have been willing to share, when he was being blackmailed? Would the Legion increase its security procedures? None of these questions are answered in what is a happy ending all round.

In summary, this adventure was as important for many future stories as it was a well plotted and executed (ouch) tale in it's own right. We had betrayal and loyalty, powerful villains (Lightning Lord was there too - not long after the Legion origin issue) and spotlights on Chuck, Gim and Salu.

But who was the executioner in the hood?

LOL




LOL

He says he dodged it. Great reflexes!

Sorry for the long multi- post (one after this one too)...


Thanks Cobie



There I was breezing through all of the past and future links, and I forgot to mention that one. D'Oh! I think we picked out a lot of the same good things about this one.




Et tu Fickles? Hey Lyle! Quit putting your stupid serum in my coffee, darn it!



I was very much of the same mind as you, especially with the TMK Annual against Glorith. But you know how your Black Knight fan fic ties in exactly to Dane's portrayal in an Avengers issue I hadn't read at that point? There's a Legion issue where TMK were clearly mining for those aspects of Jo. It made me reassess their approach to him, although the result may be the same.



I had no idea who he was for years, beyond Who's Who. I quite like him, and his need for revenge. I'm a fan of the recruiters from #371 too.



The next time anything goes missing, or there's a hint of betrayal, the first question should be "How's your mom today, Gim?"



I hadn't realised that was Shooter on the Avengers when I was thinking of Tarik's android and Ultron. I would have read all of Busiek & Perez's retread of that, before I got to read all of that earlier Shooter tale. Both seem ponderous by comparison to this. The Weisinger influence?

Fair enough.

The framing sequence is by Levitz & Infantino. The splash page has President Marte Allon put to rest a reported feud between the government and the Legion. She does this by awarding medals to the Earth born quartet, and discriminating against the other Legionnaires. Form this page I'm very strongly reminded of TMK's Earthgov feud with the Legion and of Earth Man's Justice League.

As Gim and Marte discuss their relationship, a crook appears and turns Marte into a glass statue. Gim immediately thinks of Tarik. The crook says that Marte Allon is putting too much pressure on the criminal element, so he's killing her for free. He and Karate Kid capture the crook, but destroy the weapon. Gim tells Wildfire about the first time this happened...cue flashback.

After the Adventure story, Gim goes through the legion's paper based files to find out where Tarik has gone. Fortunately, there's only one planet that manufacture's androids as complex as Tarik's. Gim and Dirk interrogate the head of the manufacturing facility, only to find out that Tarki died of a heart attack shortly after setting the plan in motion. Gim despair, but pulls himself together to continue the search. As they leave the planet, the solution hits him. THe head of the manufacturing plant didn't sweat when Sun Boy used his powers (handy it was Dirk that went along). He also mentioned that he would "turn database"

The head of the plant is Tarik's android. Dirk melts it in place, and Marte is cured from the files found in it's memory. A small subplot of uncertain feelings between Marte & Gim over responsibilities is resolved. "Love you mother." "Love you Gim... my Legionnaire." >sniff<



Like Fickles, I put this down to the fall out from DC responding to workers daring to ask for some health care benefits by not giving them any further work.

On lost collections, our loft growing up would be subject to parentally imposed clear outs. Fickles posted recently about Star Wars comics. They all went. Loads and loads of reprints from non big two comic companies went. All those atomic age sci fi, post code suspense tales. Oh,lots of things.

But hey, they made space for more things. I'm very lucky they were bought for me to enjoy in the first place. So, I got the best out of them.

It's just that once in a while, I'll be watching something. The plot will pop into my head, and it's probably from some Lev Gleason comic that I'll never see again to make sure.




I'll let you know when Euro Disney finally gives up the ghost. You can see if they're reduced to selling discounted old comics to make it through.



But it's your, and others, great joy in X-titles that meant I got to cheaply add to my 1960s go-go checks collection. Because no one was remotely interested in them.

Dealer: Um... this isn't a X-Title. Does anyone die in it? Is it the first appearance of a grim, gun toting vigilante? Is it one of 10 multiple covers? Why are they wearing scuba outfits? Sea Devils? Okay, yours for buttons. I think I got implosion titles for even less.

LOL

Great reviews by everyone! I really couldn't think of much to add. (I'll have to start getting here before the rest of you.)



With a team the size of the Legion, who have such wide-ranging kinds of powers, it must be challenging for writers to decide which team members they must leave out of the story or disable within the story in order to carry out the plot they're writing. And when use of Superboy is mandatory, writers sometimes resort to some strange twists to disarm him, or they just fall back on using the ubiquitous kryptonite.

There's one small incident in #372 when no effort was made at all. It's when the police try to arrest Colossal Boy and he escapes. Immediately Superboy, Ultra Boy, and Vi appear and Superboy says, "We saw what happened, but had no chance to catch him!" Superboy? Ultra Boy? That's just silly.

I just think it's cool that it's Giant Gim's complementary teammate, Tiny Vi, who discovers the truth about the situation and sets the Legion on the proper path to recovering Gim.

Superboy: Look! Gim's escaping from the police! We have to do something!
Jo: We are doing something Kal. These Future Frappes are dangerously close to getting warm. Dangerously close.
Superboy: Then there's the health and safety dangers from Frappe spillage if we race off at super speed...
Jo: Exactly. We'll go help at ultra speed when we've dealt with this emergency.

I remember that I bought Adv #371 new but I missed 372. It's one of the reasons that I hated 2 part stories back in the day. I was able to pick up #372 a few months later in one of those 19¢ 3-packs of coverless comics that the local distributer would send out to local corner stores. Another really good 2 parter but the downside is that there's only 8 more issues with the Legion in Adventure.

Adventure #373

As the Silver Age moved on and Marvel's inter-connected universe proved a huge success with fans, DC started to take notice and used many of the same tricks. As always, the Superman titles didn't need to be a part of all that since Uncle Mort ruled over his kingdom with an iron fist. But finally at the end of the Silver Age, as Mort's power waned, that began to change (though it wasn't until the 70's that Superman truly became enthralled in the rest of the DCU, often masterfully done by Cary Bates). And all that trickling down finally comes to a rare LSH connection to a franchise beyond the Supers.

The Tornado Twins were always largely forgettable to me, except someone figured out a way to get Barry and Iris out of the total fiasco that was the trial of the Flash was to get them to the 30th century--where the Twins might actually have been their children rather than their descendants. That little tidbit inspired Mark Waid to use them to create XS and Impulse, and that finally was a worthy payoff to the promise of the characters.

But for the most part, I don't like the Twins, and the old bit about the jerk playing a trick on the hero / heroes while secretly doing it in good fun is something that the series and DC in general has moved past. By the late 60's that concept had lost a lot of its charm.

J. Winslow Mortimor comes on as ongoing Legion artist and the difference from Swan is striking. He does a satisfactory job, with nothing really too bad to complain about, but the art is lacking the pop and dynamic that we've grown accustomed to. It's also scratchy in places and that is jarring. It will take some time getting used to.

The beginning shows the Legionnaires briefly having their downtime interrupted: Dirk and Tinya at school, Jan ditching his beard girlfriend, a nice scene showing the Clark / Brainy friendship, and a nice sequence with Val and Jeckie as Shooter continues to build their romance--which is a lot steamier when Jeckie is sans cape since her costume basically looks like sexy lingerie then.

From there we get an old fashioned "new character(s) acts like jerks" which never was a favorite of mine the first 5 times around. And then the action leaves a lot to be desired: Tinya hit from behind? Val tossed around by a robot? Random green-K falling on Superboy? It doesn't add up and Jeckie plays the damsel yet again.

I don't mind the panel hogging from Val at all, since I know this is really his one great era. But he doesn't come across well here, picking a fight with Don just because he's a jerk.

The concept of feeling you're no longer needed is a good one, even if it's difficult to watch. But it's a fine line to not make your heroes look like whiners and quitters. Here, I feel the story strays too far into that territory. This is a familiar trope in Superboy's stories, and there are a dozen or more good examples how to do it right. I wonder if Shooter, who as we've seen in our reread appears to be exploring many classic Superboy / LSH ideas one last time, ventured into this territory as part of that process? If so, he should have stuck to what he does best and leave this type of story to Leo Dorfman or Jerry Siegel.

All in all, this is one of the weaker issues in Shooter's run. Perhaps not as bad as the Thora issue but close.