Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Reading the Legion: Archives Volume 11

Oh duh! Feeling a bit thick now. Thanks for pointing that out thoth.

Haven't had a chance to catch up on everyone else's posts yet but will soon...

Superboy & LSH #206

Much like there was a ghost of Ferro Lad story after his death, history repeats itself as we get a ghost of both dead members not soon after Invisible Kid dies. Though not quite ghosts as we learn. Such stories were very popular in serial fiction since inception since it was so unusual for a cast member to die and then even more unusual for one to come back. That's all been shot to shit now. But I digress.

As before, the Grell art makes it very action oriented, and gives the plot a sense of urgency and tension. This is very welcome as you quickly forget this is essentially a Superboy story sans Legion and are drawn right into the emotional impact.

In fact, soon it feels like we're actually getting a great Ferro Lad and Invisible Kid story as we get continued glimpses into their personalities. Their willingness to die in the line of duty again makes them feel real and hits an emotional chord.

All in all, I like it a lot! And then...the final two pages make the entire story a "what in the blue hell?" moment. Between the questionable morals of cloning your dead colleagues and the fact that they didn't know they only had 48 hours to live--with the Legionnaires treating it like a cold science experiment, it's like taking a turn towards a weird Sci-fi story at early 90's Vertigo. Say what? Though considering the three Legionnaires in question, perhaps this isn't a huge surprise after all. Cold and calculating, these three did form a conspiracy to murder the Time Trapper.

Honestly, even with the weird ending, I still kind of like the story. I doubt it was intentional, but the story feels dark and harsh to me--edgy by today's standards let alone 1975's.

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As we get to the Princess Projectra backup, I have to admit that even I, who has been happy with the quality of the 8 pagers, am getting a little fatigued by this format. I'm ready for some Legion epics again. I'm just ready.

And while Grell's art is stunning--his Jeckie being especially great--this one is on the weak side. Jeckie having yet another malady? Val acting like a child because she wants to visit home? The whole thing because she's sick and let her mind and powers work against her? Ugh.

At least she saves the day and Val realized he was a jerk. In a reverse from the first story, the final two pages help make the story more palatable.

A weird issue for sure. I'm ready for full length stories.

^Me, too. Alas, they will be some time in coming.

I thought we were all sick of DC force-feeding us "dark and harsh" for the past 12 years?

As for the Conspiracy connection, that's another reason for me to dislike this story. I absolutely LOATHE Conspiracy!!

Not to worry. I'm sure your clone will do better next week Just ask Cobie Mk II from a couple of weeks ago or even me from the week before that. Here's a pic of us trying to post crash the thread from a while ago (1974)



I'm taking the picture. I have a L on my outfit. Not for Legion, but from the 50 times Fickles has bumped me off. Although, to be fair, at least 40 of those were for saying bad things about Morrissey.

Thoth, LOL

Aargh! I knew was being appropriately haunted by something that I forgot to type on this one. It was to point out the number of ghost of Ferro Lad stories that have popped up down the years. Much like our chat on Lyle's fate from #203, these two certainly get used despite being living impaired.



Great spot Cobie. Legions within Legions even then.

But it doesn't win you the Re-read Pun Award...




Just thinking that this story also links Brainy's robot Supergirl to later issues where even his own team mates think he might have cloned the dead Kara.

Kara constantly returning for only 48 hours at a time, as Brainy works on improving the cloning...

HA! I never thought of that as I was typing it. Well done, Thoth.

Thoth you crack me up ... and you always make me think. Thanks.

Great spot on the conspiracy grouping Cobie. It's fun to see these things that the writers never did.

Someone mentioned that they wouldn't like to be near one of the clones after 48 hours is up.

Now, imagine that you've returned from the dead. You don't quite know why, but you do know that you died. There's every chance that you'll want to see your loved ones.

Lyle: Yes, mom. Dad. I'm back.
Parents: Lyle! Despite leaving you a little lonely first time round, we love you and will make this time around much better!
All: I love you!

>Boom!<

Querl: 48 hours precisely.
Eltro: Should we not have warned the parents?
Brainy: No. A strong emotional response may be key to breaking the time limit.
Imra: What are we going to do about the dead parents?
Querl: All we need are a few cells...

Querl Dox: Mad cloning scientist.

One wonders if the clones were programmed (perhaps via post-hypnotic suggestion, hence Saturn Girl's presence) not to approach their loved ones or to seek out any other living beings besides Superboy.

Yeah, they aren't just clones. They are comic book clones They have all of the memories of the originals. It's not as though the legion are short of mind controlling/ thought reading/altering equipment stretching back to the Adventure days. Any of those plus Imra raises a few ethical questions.

SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES 207

1st Story: I don't have much to say about this one. Officer Dvron comes across to me as a flat, lifeless character, and Bates' use of Universo is terrible (he doesn't even give the villain dialogue!) Even Grell seems to be going through the motions here.

2nd Story: This one had potential, but it gets lost in a continuity fustercluck (later stories established Mekt is the one born without a twin, not Ayla) and in Garth's out-of-character oafish behavior -- shoving Vi aside, slapping Jan and then zapping Jan...yuck. I just can't see Garth acting that way, no matter how bad a mood he's in -- at the very least, I hope Imra read him the Riot Act offstage. Or maybe I should just take a cue from the aforementioned continuity error and label this story as a tale from an alternate timeline. And finally, once again, Grell turns in subpar art for a subpar Bates script.

The most interesting/odd aspect of 207 is that none of the Legionnaires who appear alongside Superboy on the cover actually appear in the main story--except Colossal Boy, who puts in his cameo and then disappears. LL, Brainy, and Cos (if that is Cos and not Mon-El) appear in the backup, but where are Imra, Tinya, and Jeckie?

Another odd aspect is that each of the main stories since 203 has focused on characters other than the Legionnaires: Anti-Lad (204), Lana Lang (205), clones of deceased Legionnaires (206), and now Dvron. Bates seems to have been taking lessons from episodic TV series of the '70s, in which the main characters never change or do anything substantial but serve as catalysts for the guest-star of the week.

In fact, the Legionnaires in this story are pretty much flat characters. Vi and Brin are there to make up the numbers. Ayla gets knocked out (by Cham!) and just about allows the bad guy to get away. Cham is the only one who does anything substantial by getting Dvron to 'fess up.

And the ending ... all Dvron learns from this adventure is that Superboy was right: it's hard to work with the Legion. High fives and back slaps all around. One almost expects a freeze frame.

I've nothing to add about the backup. Yes, it's bad. I will say that, upon reading this, I eagerly awaited 208 and its all-out LSV war, only to be disappointed.

HA! Well put, He Who. "Tonight, on a very special Legion of Super-Heroes..." Ironically enough, Bates did end up working in episodic TV, though much later than the 70s.



Yeah, me too. Like I said earlier in this thread, I think 204-209 are pretty much a consistent slog before the book regains its spark with 210-211.

Superboy 207

When I was growing up I read Marvel’s Star Wars comics, with its Infantino art. I’m reminded a lot of Infantino when I see the science police uniforms used here. It’s a mixed feeling as I always found the Infantino art to be an acquired taste.

Ugh. “Picto-Slides” and “Cosma Bars” in the first non-splash page alone. More Bates Future Lingo that would disappear without trace.

The story has a simple set up. Universo makes a blatant escape from Prison, and the Legion are tasked with recapturing him. They even know exactly where the villain is hiding out.
Very unusually, they allow a non-Legionnaire to accompany them. It’s Officer Dvron. He’s dedicated enough here and has a personal code of honour that directly affects the story. But he’s never really made much of an impact on me, despite later appearances. Normally, considering the threats that the Legion face, you’d expect them to be backed up by United Planets forces, never mind the Science Police. But just try getting a poor artist to draw it all.

There’s little surprise behind Dvron’s actions. The (inferior for Grell) splash page and title show us he’s up to no good, ruining the surprise on page 7 when he attacks his first Legionnaire.

There’s a confused sulk, where Dvron doesn’t tell the Legionnaire why he betrayed them. It’s followed by a pedestrian fight. The best part of it seems to have taken place behind a rock when Superboy is controlled. He turns on his colleagues, but we don’t see much of it. A little bait and switch Universo style allows Dvron to redeem himself.

There are a couple of standard setups & payoffs. One involves Superboy basically declaring that the Legion are a bit too good for nearly everyone else. In the end Dvron agrees, although I didn’t see any of the Legionniares figure out Universo’s escape plan. The other is Dvron thinking like a villain. It’s put in earlier to allow Dvron to figure out what Universo was up to.
We find out that Universo is known as Argus Oranx III This clashes with Rond VIdar being his son, and later issues would quietly drop the Oranx name.

Argus/Vidar was just a villain to order this issue. He had no goals or plans, but the story needed someone with some mind control abilities. Compared to a number of his other multi part schemes, this was a day to forget for him.

A day to forget for Superboy too. It ended well enough. But he came across as arrogant. He was completely suckered by Unverso off panel, nearly allowing him to escape. Ayla subduing him using just her weightlessness powers, was a bigger sign that it was really Universo than Dvron conveniently figuring it out.
There’s not really a lot going on in this issue. Arguably the Legionnaire who came out best, was Gim in successfully patrolling the headquarters for intruders. I guess their pre-Computo gizmos were on the blink.

With a story that’s a little weak, there used to be Cockrum art to provide lots of background details. Grell’s minimal backdrops just focus attention back onto the story, and it doesn’t really stand up to that sort of attention.

Ayla has a bit of a tough issue. Chameleon Boy really thumps her on the back of the neck. And he wasn’t even controlled by Universo when he did it. In the back up story, she conveniently has a fever, removing her from a focus on her brother. That’s just brother rather than twin, as continuity gets a bit rearranged here.

The point of the story is supposed to be a continuation of the Garth/Mekt storyline, but comes across as Garth being a bit of a tool for the most part. He barges past Salu, assaults Jan and blasts a guy in space on a hunch that it’s his brother. If it hadn’t been, he could have murdered someone. It adds to my early encounters with Garth, when he was having a huge selfish sulk as leader.

The story continues to plant the seeds towards Mekt’s rehabilitation in the TMK run. Here, he’s told that the parents he feels close enough to grieve for, wanted nothing more than to see him reform. I’m trying to recall if a statue of their parents would also reappear on Winath, in TMK, when Garth was running the family business. There’s a lot to be said for Proty-Garth compared to Sulky-Garth. Livewire-Garth is also an improvement.

Superboy & LSH #207

I have to agree that overall, this story was very weak. However, I did enjoy reading it, so someone did something right somewhere along the way. You guys covered the bad pretty well (and comparison to bad 70's TV is a good one). Thus, prequalifying my comments with the recognition that there wasn't a whole lot here are a few things I liked:

In part of the long franchise tradition, another non-Legionnaire character is depicted as the story lead with Officer Dvron. Instantly in the first few pages we learn of his eagerness to join the mission and then why, and it hooked me right in to see how this goes for him. That is maintained throughout the issue, and heightened when we learn the real story. The Legion certainly appears to forgive him too quickly, but the story needs to be move on and I appreciate not wasting time. This allows the ending to be set up where he can justify their faith in him. At issue's end, I liked Dvron well enough and would not mind seeing more of him--which we eventually do: another nice thing Paul Levitz did was bring him back years later and make him an ongoing part of the LSH cast.

Universo by now was one of the better Silver Age villains, so he's definitely welcomed back. Unfortunately, he pretty much acts as a plot device all story. One thing I did like though, was the surprising flashback that showed he isn't totally evil all the time, which adds a welcome layer to his personality. One can't help but speculate if not wanting to see someone "die so young" is a reference to latent feelings towards Rond Vidar.

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Meanwhile, the second story featuring Lightning Lad is stronger IMO. If you can forgive the blatant continuity mistakes--which are jarring, I admit--there's a lot of good here.

The story is weighed down by the opening scenes where Garth seems like a huge over the top jerk, and yet another Legion female is sick. From there though, the story is chalk full of potent emotional punches.

With the death of the two parents in a tragic accident and the terrible rift between Mekt and his siblings, the Ranzz family is full of potent drama, more so than any other family in LSH lore. You actually feel the impact through all three siblings here, even Mekt. The meeting between the two brothers feels tragic and epic--with potential to reach Shakespearean or Greek tragedy levels.

On the flip side, I can't help thinking of a less tragic outcome, which was TMK: one of the best, understated parts of that run was Mekt finally being rehabilitated and reunited with his family. Hasn't anyone whose ever fallen out with a brother or sister privately wished for such an ending? It is powerful stuff and a shame that brief moment in LSH history was lost and forgotten, with Mekt resuming his traditional role.

For an 8 page story, I felt a lot of emotion here and it made me really think. Grell is great as always but it's the starry space background of the meeting between Mekt and Garth that really worked best in this story. It added to the scale of drama.

Something else else interesting to consider is that we know from the Legion Companion, Cary Bates knew by this point in his run that Legion fans knew LSH history and experienced the stories in the warmth in what's come before. Here he botches past continuity pretty overtly; yet IMO he uses the past very nicely in a way that gives each panel more weight.

Good points on the non-starring characters having key roles, guys. You'd think that spotlighting one of the actual team in something called Legion would be easy enough.

I wasn't a huge fan of Mekt's rehabilitation in TMK. I would have last seen him as a raving loon in the early Baxter issues and shortly afterwards against his sister. So, it was a jarring shift for me. I recall they did a text piece showing his rehabilitation, but for me it wasted one of the Legion's most powerful foes, and one with a direct link to the team.

There was also an element I've seen in other titles, where bad guys become good guys or allies given enough issues. The sort of thing that had Juggernaut or Sabretooth joining X-Teams I guess.

To be fair to TMK, I wouldn't have read the issues around this period where the Ranzz conflict got some attention, when I was reading their run. So, I would have missed some of the source material they picked from. Also, they did go to some length to explain the move, rather than just have Mekt turn up and make amends. I think they even had some of those Orwellian mind altering things going on, that we see all over these issues.

Oh, and Mekt's Lightning effects in TMK were poor considering we used to see him transform into living lightning. To me, the little lightning bolts showed just how weak he'd become. This isn't that relevant to this re-read thread, but it's always bothered me, and it's nice to get it off my chest.

Cobie,
You make a lot of good points about the strengths of both stories. In spite of his flatness as a character, Dvron comes off as likable, and I remember that I, too, wanted to see more of him at the time. It's always good when the Legion builds its non-Legionnaire supporting cast.

Likewise, Universo's good turn should not be overlooked. You're right that his action of saving Dvron's life adds a dimension to his personality--which is ironic since, as Fanfie pointed out, he didn't speak at all in this story.

You're also right about the emotion in "Lightning Lad's Day of Dread," though I disagree that it is the stronger of the two stories. I think it's weaker because it relies on the trope of a hero behaving in non-heroic ways: smashing the computer console, shoving a teammate aside, attacking another, and stealing a ship. Regardless of what trauma Garth had experienced, these actions would get him fired from most jobs or benched as a teammate pending psychiatric evaluation. (Ah, the insights derived from four decades of real-world experience!)

I'm also not sure why he and Ayla never told their teammates about the Ranzz parents' deaths. Granted, it was a trauma they may have had trouble talking about, but, in a year's time, one of them must have opened up to someone. Didn't Imra and Brin count for anything?

But, yes, there is a lot of very real emotion between Garth and Mekt, and this is something I connected with at the time. Even now, 40 years on, my brother and I have tiffs that become wildly exaggerated. At the time, my fertile imagination found it all too easy to cast him in the role of Mekt. (Well, of course I was Garth! What did you expect?)

I found your comment interesting that Bates was just now becoming aware that fans were familiar with and preferred to keep the old continuity. It seems odd that he wouldn't have known this all along, but I guess DC was still operating under the assumption that their very young audience turned over every two years or so. At Marvel, such blatant continuity violations would have been unforgivable--at least until somebody won a No-Prize explaining why they weren't errors.

Just a couple of things about 207:

Mike Grell originally intended for Dvron to be African-American, and drew him as such, but Murray Boltinoff instructed the colorist to make him caucasian instead. The story I heard is that Boltinoff already had a new black character in the works and didn't want to take away from that character's impact when he made his debut a few issues later. The fact that the new character (Tyroc) ended up being a horrendous stereotypical character (but a modern, hip, 70s stereotype so it was OK), combined with the lack of willingness to include a normal character who just happened to be black, shows how deep racism ran at DC at the time.

The complete disregard for continuity (e.g. the mixed up relationships in the Ranzz family and the name Argus Oranx III for Universo) was a Boltinoff trademark. Many of the stories he edited for the Brave and the Bold had blatant continuity errors, the most common being characters from Earths 1 and 2 showing up in the same story together without any acknowledgement that they were from parallel universes. It wasn't that the multiverse was all that hard a concept to grasp or that it was really all that difficult to keep track of who was from what world (even after they began adding more and more worlds such as Earth-X and S, not to mention Earth-C). No, I believe that Murray Boltinoff just plain did not give a rodent's posterior about continuity or the fans who took it seriously. It was editorial attitudes like this that allowed Marvel to supplant DC as the industry leader.

Thanks for the behind-the-scenes information, Hermit. It really puts the general mediocrity of the Boltinoff Legion era into perspective. What I still don't understand is how the same Murray Boltinoff could have edited the brilliant original Doom Patrol run.

One story I heard is that he was showing signs of early onset Alzheimer's disease by the mid-70s. Both Bob Haney and Jim Shooter have mentioned it in interviews.

Thank you, Hermit. That information makes it a lot less tempting to characterize Boltinoff as an out-and-out villain.

It's an interesting point about continuity, and particularly attitudes to it around that time. As HWW said, with a number at DC believing that there was only a few years in each readership cycle, I can understand Boltioff's view (if that's what it was).

It would make sense to continually polish each tale for its spot in the recycling. Highlight the things that make the individual story work, rather than weaken it due to links it might have with other events.

There's a bit of a sliding scale in this. A number of folks feel that continuity is something to be ignored/shifted/tweaked whenever there's a storytelling reason to do so. Others feel that this invalidates the consistency of the book. I look to the number of reboots as a blatant sign that things will get changes either gradually or by big, clumsy Events either way.

A recent example I read came from Dick Giordano's biography. It was a choice between going with a strong Batman story, or neutering it because the main character in it had been referred to as married in a single line in a single book.

The shifting of the Legion from being the kids of the Legion Superboy met is one example of the Legion's own shifting continuity when it suited.