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

That's a good point, thoth. There is always a balance between telling a good story and sticking to established fictional history.

As a fan, I love fictional history--be it Star Trek or the Legion or Babylon 5 or something else. A fictional history creates verisimilitude. It also gets fans involved by creating a sort of puzzle for them to figure out by adding up details as they are revealed.

One of my favorite hobbies in the early '80s was figuring out the birth years of the Marvel characters so they could age in real time. I was greatly annoyed by Marvel's "compression of time" and chose to ignore it until it was no longer believable to do so. Of course, in my version of events, I ignored the idea that a Spider-Man who was approaching 40 was still in grad school, among other things, but I could be selective. It was MY Marvel Universe. Fictional history encourages that sort of fan ownership.

However, fictional history can bog the story down and dilute the impact of any single story since it must now fit into the grand scheme of a larger story. Few creators can pull it off. J. Michael Straczynski did so brilliantly on Babylon 5, but that's because he plotted the series out as a novel, with a definite beginning, middle, and end. Most TV and comic book series are not conceived that way. The fictional history develops almost by accident instead of by intent.

As a writer, I can certainly see the pratfalls of adhering to continuity. I haven't managed to turn my book, The Power Club, into a series yet, but, if I do, I can see the potential for errors or conflicting information to creep in. In writing the False Alarm prequel, I decided on a back story for the main character that I hadn't conceived of in the original book (in which she has a supporting role). I'm toying with the idea of changing the ethnicity of another character (though it would not be a contradiction since I never referred to her ethnicity in the first book).

Those are the sorts of things that make story writing interesting and a living passion for writers. In grad school, I learned that a writer is always beholden to the story he or she is telling, and everything else must serve the needs of the story. That's why sometimes even real historical facts are bent or ignored. Some creators take this to extreme--Oliver Stone, for one--but a compelling single story is always much more memorable and meaningful to the audience than something which fits into a larger, continuity-laden series.

SLSH 207

Not much to add as everyone has covered it pretty thoroughly.

First story somewhat predictable although I was happier with the second half with Cham's tricking Dvron (although his knocking out Ayla was not good) and nice to have Dvron redeem himself - of course he had to somehow. It's a good point that the Legion hardly do anything right or well in this story except act as supporting characters for Dvron.

Second story could have been so powerful. As it is it came off as not bad and yet also terrible. I'd like to say Garth's actions are grief fueled but he just comes off as acting like a jerk. Thankfully he will gain some maturity in later years although he didn't do so well when he was leader. I was one who liked the Mekt redemption in 5YL and thought it was handled tastefully and realistically, but I can see the downside of loss of a great villain.

I am looking forward to seeing if the upcoming LSV war is any good.

I was thinking of the scene where Mekt met Roxxas. It wasn't that Mekt had reformed. It was that his therapy seemed to have emotionally neutered him. I think the SP treatment meant that he *couldn't* get angry, resulting in an easy win for Roxxas.

SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #208

Whatever the true intention was behind this battle between the Legion of Super-Heroes and the Legion of Super-Villains, the result comes across to me a contrary answer to the under-populated tales from recent issues, and even if that's a mistaken assumption on my part, it's still an overcrowded, unholy mess of a story. Neither Bates nor Grell seem to be at ease here, the former needlessly complicating the plot while the latter performs erratically (the foreshortening on Colossal Boy in the panel before the big battle is particularly poor.) The multiple coloring errors make things even worse.

Hang in there, folks. Things will get good again in 210.

Superboy 208

I always get a chuckle form the splash page. Instead of a group of evil villains cackling over the demise of their enemies, it looks like a modelling club that has just irradiated itself.
With extra pages, the pace is relaxed. We see Mon El and Superboy with the Kents, and then Ultra Boy with his parents, as the Legion prepares to award a peace trophy. All are set ups in the plan of the Super Villains. The villains have quietly planned their attack. There’s no posturing as they diligently perform their roles. The staged set up would be a hall mark of this Legion in their later return, but this is considerably lower key than teleporting a planet.

Bates finally realises that , by using time travel, Superboy can appear whenever he wants. Unfortunately, he doesn’t realise that this will also include any barriers put in his way.

With key members away, Sun Boy is in temporary charge, and it weighs on him. There’s a link from this story back to the Mutiny issue and forward to the 5YG, where leadership also proved challenging for Dirk. There’s a little flare up of anger when things don’t go to plan here too, as another reminder to Mutiny.

When the villains’ plans are undone, they are easily defeated by the Legion. Projectra takes down Nemesis Kid in panels that foreshadow a later encounter. Lightning Lad delivers a telling blow to Lightning Lord as his sister would do years later. It’s not a bad thing that the Legion are shown as superior. They have the initiative, a plan and have been more highly trained than their rogue counterparts.

There’s no real reason provided as to how Chameleon Boy foiled Chameleon Chief’s plan. He was standing outside, just as Chemical King had been before him, and there was no suggestion that anyone entered the room while on guard duty. There’s also no coverage of Chameleon Chief giving away the overall plan. It’s one thing that he was caught. But it’s another that the Legion knew to have Cham imitate a Crate Creature at the exact moment that Lightning Lord came to retrieve him. Yet Chameleon Chief would appear as a member later on, despite obviously giving the game away here.

Having the members with X-Ray vision targeted was a nice twist from them also being the strongest members.

Superboy and the LSH #208

I guess my initial reaction about 3/4 of the way through "Vengeance of the Super-Villains" and then especially after, was that this story was so rife with potential. It was right there on the precipice of being a great LSH story...and yet is falls terribly short of living up to that potential.

First, we get a return appearance of the LOSV, and this time with added Sun Emperor and Chameleon Chief, who were kind of obscure Jimmy Olsen villains by 1975. And better than that--they really seem to be on their game! Sun Emperor comes off like a true mastermind, very unlike his Levitz era psych-killer self. (I guess Ron Karr was on a hot date this night?). They truly feel like a serious threat!

Second, no less than 15 Legionnaires appear in this story! That's huge for the Legion of this era! That in and of itself has some novelty value.

But the problem is that the story just falls very flat. It's 20 pages or so but feels like a short story. And this is because rather than the big battle we want, Bates relies on his trustworthy short story tricks of a "clever trick" to resolve the problem with a quick wrap up. It's a bait & switch and its very unsatisfying.

More than that, the 15 Legionnaires previously mentioned don't really do all that much. No one changes, experiences anything, or invests the reader.

Now--there was potential. And it lies right with Sun Boy. It's hinted at that this mission may have helped him overcome is fears of being a leader. And this would be a terrific story to read if you consider his Legion past: the alpha male take-charge leader of the earliest days, then the devastating Mutiny of the Superheroes story, followed by a reduced leadership role that one might infer was caused by the trauma of mutiny. This story could have been used to pick up those themes and help Dirk overcome that trauma.

*And* they could have used Sun Emperor, who is overconfident as a leader but comes up short, as the flip side / dichotomy of the whole story, which aesthetically works well.

So much potential! But the story is stuck in the tropes and beats of the era. Even Grell's art felt a little half-hearted, as if both he and Bates were comfortable and weren't going to put themselves on the line.

208:

I like the build-up of the story: Getting to see Mon and Superboy vacation with the Kents, the "betrayal" of the Kents and Jo's parents, Sun Boy's anxiety over being leader, the LSV's well-thought out plan . . . all of this works very well.

And then we get to the battle scene, in which five Legionnaires who don't otherwise appear in the story take down the LSV in two pages. On one hand, the blitzkrieg attack is quite effective and does show the Legionnaires' superiority. On the other hand, the story ends too quickly. Compare this to the knock-down, drag-out action stories over at Marvel, and this one can't help but fall short. It feels antiquated by 1975 standards.

For me, the biggest disappointment was that emotional drama of the previous issue is not followed through. I was all set for Garth to really let Mekt have it, and for these two brothers to come to some sort of decisive closure in their relationship, but this doesn't happen. Garth is a bit player, and Mekt only slightly less so.

But, yes, nothing really happens or changes. This story, like most of the ones before it, is mind candy: something sweet to keep the reader entertained between homework and bath.

I would have been so impressed if DC had put this much thought into continuity in those days. The "Mutiny" story was unknown to me until many years after reading this story.

Good point on the wasted Garth / Mekt potential. It was so completely wasted that I easily forgot about it only one week later.

Yeah, overall, this was another Cary Bates story flop, albeit one with more potential than his most recent ones. For example, there were even more plot holes not mentioned by our panel so far. A minor one: how did Jo come to realize the LSV was behind the plot? Did he reason what Clark and Mon did about the familiar energy bubble? A major one (to me, anyway): how did the LSV control the parents? None of the members shown are known to have hypnotic power, much less the ability to travel thru time as would be required for the Smallville portion. These and other brushed-over details further illustrate how far behind Cary's plots are from contemporary Marvel plots which typically would explain these things.

One thing the story did for me unintentionally was make me think a bit more about Mon. It's a throwaway line: "Vacations can be lonely without my own parents to visit!" It made me think about how all of Mon's relatives are dead because of his 1,000-year exile in the Phantom Zone. But it also made me wonder why he couldn't visit them in addition to/instead of the Kents. Forgive me if Mon's folks have been shown to be dead before the Bob Cobb appearance, but it seems to me he could visit them or other friends and relatives on Daxam in the past if he wanted to. He could even commute via time-travel as a Legionnaire like Superboy did.

It just brings up fascinating, (presumably) unexplored story potential for the character. Was he presumed dead to his people when the Phantom Zone incident happened, or were they informed? Either way, or if none of the above happened, the possibility of his visiting or returning to live there doesn't seem ruled out. Or is there some paradox that his presence when he should have been absent for a thousand years would cause damage to the timeline? If so, that's a story I'd like to read. If not, those are also stories I'd like to read. Certainly, Mon-El and his unique circumstances feel criminally under-explored at the very least.

(This is all assuming, of course, that I'm not forgetting or never read something in the lore that explains or explored part or all of this in some manner.)

So I don't know if it's a credit or a debit on Cary's part that a little throwaway line like that could send me on such a nice mental journey. I will say, though, that "Vengeance of the Super-Villains" is definitely better than his last few stories. For one, I like to see that the LSV isn't forgotten. I'm unsure of how many appearances they have between this one and Vol. 3's LSV War, but I'm willing to bet they are few and far between. If Cary were planning on staying longer than he did, I wouldn't be surprised if he were planning to use the LSV again. And I think given the sneak attack the Legion pulled, it made sense that the LSV were easily overwhelmed.

So I'd argue that it's not a bad LSV story because at least the LSV were used. It shows they still exist and that they are attempting to execute a decidedly vile and deadly terrorist attack. I definitely would have preferred to have seen them utilizing their skills more and fighting their counterparts in a more satisfying battle. (In fact it occurs to me that this plot almost seems better suited as a Universo story, possibly utilizing hypnotized Legionnaires to do what Individual LSVers did.) But it's good to see some LSVers again, and it definitely could have been better plotted or even extended to be a satisfying 2-parter. Oh, Cary--such a lazy Legion writer...

BTW, at this point were the adult LSV still recurring threats in Superman stories, or did they stop appearing by then?

Grell's work here is still enjoyable, but there are points where his art seemingly veers away from his style and resembles typical Silver Age styles for some reason. Maybe he was on a tight deadline or because he had more characters to draw than usual? It's funny, though, how detailed Dr. Larx Kenrik appears to have been drawn. I'd swear that Mike used a real-life model for him...possibly Cary or someone at DC? Just a guess.

I see now that pretty much every male character has the Grell sideburns at this point. I commented a few issues ago about it being particularly appropriate for Jo, thinking Grell did it mostly with him. This is not exactly the case, but I think the look endures particularly long with Jo where some of the others get them dropped over the succeeding years. I could be wrong.

Overall, it'll be good to see Cary's role as writer of the strip be reduced after this issue. His run wasn't completely without merit, but it's clear he is not at all in the same league with the best writers to have shepherded the teens of the future.

I always thought Dr. Larx Kenrik was modeled after Henry Kissinger.

Now that you mention it, he clearly looks just like Kissinger!

Of course today most writers (and countries besides the USA) would label Kissinger a war criminal and mass killer, rather than deserving any type of peace award.

and Roosevelt and Churchill and Kennedy and Johnson and pretty much anyone making decisions others don't care to make during a war. "Mass murderer" and "hero" seem to have more to do with politics or which side of the war someone is on than anything else. I can see the attraction of seeking out political power but I can't imagine what it can do to a person, a good person, when they have to use that power. I just know that while there were eventually many protesting bombing, there weren't many willing to give up their cushy lives here to go fight against it.

Ultimately, in this country anyhow, the people are responsible. Individuals are just the blame.

Yeesh! It's nice to see the one of the more minor points I made latched onto.....

The thing about Mon is that is that his timeline is also complicated by the fact that he spent over a decade in suspended animation between his visit to Krypton and his arrival on Earth as well. I wonder if the (inconsistently applied) pre-Crisis DC rules about not co-existing at the same time as yourself would prevent him from traveling back to the period while he was in suspended animation? So his only option might be to visit them after he's projected into the phantom zone, which would mean he's *lost* all those years with them already.

See, that's one of those things I'd forgotten about Mon's backstory--the time spent in suspended animation. To me, that would really give Mon the responsibility to let his people know of his survival.

I suppose, though, that while he was in the PZ, he would have had the ability to observe Daxam and his family in the intervening thousand years. Maybe he sees himself returning as disrupting the timeline. Certainly, that could dissuade him from actually living in the past like Superboy. There's no telling how much his living there and producing heirs would have changed things. And of course there's Shady to consider...at least after they met and became an item.

Still, it's probably a great untold story or series of stories.

A few bit's n bobs...

I was also thinking about Mon El not popping off to see his folks while he was back in this time zone too. I put it in the same basket, as Superboy never figuring out just how flexible time travel makes everything in a Crisis.

I was wondering if there was another reason, such as Mon's age when he left Daxam...

Mrs Gand: Honey, there's another man at the door claiming to be our time travelling child all grown up.
Mr Gand: That's the third this week! They can't all be ours!
Mrs Gand: Have you been seeing that secretary again? That's it! I want a Space Divorce!

The Legion bylaws are amended to prevent anyone time travelling to meet their relatives before they should have known them.

Good spots on Jo's Ultra Psychic powers and the hypnotised parents. It also raises the question of the LSV's time bubble access and their ability to monitor events in the past and on Rimbor.

I was also wondering if we had see Radiator Roy use his energy bubbles before. No mention of it in Adventure #320

I also meant to comment on Grell's poising of the LSV. Mekt looks composed, but those hands could be gripping the arms of his chair with some internal anger issues. Nemesis Kid lounges with the arrogance of invulnerability. Spider Girl's reclining S pose is like a curl of hair. Roy is interesting. I don't see the forward leaning pose as studious. I see it as beaten down. Having spent most of his fortune on gaining powers he couldn't control, I wonder if it was his debts or revenge against scientists that led him into a life of crime. Getting experimented on became the story of a revamped Storm Boy later on too.

Cham's powers shifted around a bit, but I'm still not used to seeing him impersonate inanimate objects.

Why does the base of the trophy look just like the monument outside Legion HQ? Is there a lost story where the pointy bit of the trophy turns out to be Tyr's gun hand?

Thanks for the info on Kenrik. I had wondered if it was supposed to be a nod to someone in particular.

We also get another glimpse that Jo's life is far from the rough, gang driven upbringing later versions of him would have us believe. I think my first reference to that, would have been in the TMK run. Beyond his amnesia issues with Cpt Frake, it was something that I'd never thought of for him really. It was certainly played up at least form that point on.

Jo's dad reminds me a little of what I imagine Dirk's to be. Happy to see his son race back into adventures with a knowing wink.

Because of the order I picked up issues, I thought that Sun Emperor was based on the evil Sun Boy impostor from Adventure 290 (where the legion are in session on Xanthu), rather than the guy who showed up in a 1962 Jimmy Olsen issue (#63). In Olsen, the LSV is viewing events from the 21st Century, rather than 30th or 31st.

Also, for those with the floppies, one of #208's back up stories is Lana Lang's Detection Kit where her dad really grounds her for considering writing down that Superboy and Clark Kent are one and the same. It's from 1961's Superboy #93 and Cham impersonates Clark in it.

Was that the one where Lana's dad tries to spank her with a hairbrush, stops upon realizing how ridiculous he looks, and then grounds her? And Lana just gets more determined than ever to prove Clark's secret?

Yes, that's the one Ibby Although...quick check... he realises that Lana is too old for that before he does it. But there's no records, or snacks or dating for a whole month! It seems to put her off, but Clark knows it's only a matter of time before she's snooping again.

I'm glad even the writer realized how ridiculous the spanking would have been.

At least you got a response! I posted a very thoughtful and detailed commentary on adherence to continuity versus story integrity a page or two ago, and no one had anything further to say. Nada.

Speaking of continuity, this is one place where I think Bates made a wise choice, either deliberately or not. Bringing in Mon-El's back story or even mentioning that he had been in the Phantom Zone would have made the story unwieldy. It would have also served as a distraction from the LSV plot.

The only thing we really need to know is that Mon has no parents of his own, whatever that means. As readers, we can infer the rest.

I did, but it got rebooted

Drat that white space!

Nothing kills a good story more quickly than a lack of internal consistency. If something happens on page five that is contradicted on page 20, there had better be a good reason for it, or else the reader will feel cheated. In a series the author has to consider events from past episodes in the same way for precisely the same reason. Comics (and more recently Marvel Movies) have taken it even further, creating a narrative that covers several ongoing series happening in the same fictional setting. Still, if you are going to claim X and Y are sharing the same universe, the rules of that universe had better apply equally to both X and Y; if the author chooses to ignore those rules, then the entire shared universe is invalidated.

If you are going to write something out of continuity, that's fine. Just make sure the reader knows that it's out of continuity.