Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Rereading the Legion: Archives Volume 15

While I don't feel as strongly as you do, it's true that this story is jarring in its mix of serious followed by silly. As HWW as mentioned regarding previous issues, we're in an uncomfortable transition of adult themes with child solutions.



You know, when I was 12 years old, I think I would have swallowed all this seriously. Haven't done it, but it would be interesting to compare the level of storycraft here with other comics of that era. I know there were some outstanding stories, but I recently reread some old 1970s Batman and some of those were pretty cringe-worthy, despite Neal Adams art and compelling themes.




Jack C. Harris hates you. He knew that, some day in the future, a Shadow Lass fan would be crushed by her absence after the promise of the cover.

Agreed, FC, and I speculate that the main factors in the Assassins' inability to gain traction as a vital part of the Legion mythos are: 1) The Comics Code still being a few years away from being defied by Alan Moore & company's Swamp Thing, and 2) The DC staff, and by extension, the DCU as a whole, still recovering from the recent aftershock of the infamous Implosion, with the result that almost every character and team introduced during the late 70s/early 80s would be lumped into the category of Dead Losses.



Good point well taken. By age 12, I had turned my back on comics in favor of action/adventure TV animation series, and then, much later, when I went on a long DVD-buying spree that lasted beyond the 2000s and well into the current decade, I discovered to my great sadness that most of them, even a few which had been high on my list of favorites back in the day, did not hold up at all. OTOH, that does make me appreciate and treasure the ones which do hold up even more!



LOL Thanks, FC, I needed a good laugh.

Fanfie, good speculation on the Implosion's effect on new characters being tossed aside as dead weight. I think that effect is really apparent with villains more so than heroes even.

I can certainly see the points you made in your evisceration of the second half of the story. I guess if Conway argued "hey, I created these characters, I can wreck them if I want to," I would totally agree with it, but I don't think that was really his intent. So its a shame that the Super-Assassins are kind of brushed aside so abruptly.

I think FC is right that the 1970's, particularly at DC, just had a lot of this shoddy storytelling, as they couldn't make up their mind on whether they wanted to be adult or maintain the Silver Age adolescent charm. Just pick out any random Superman story and you'll see that in full force. Marvel had it too, but they were slightly ahead of the curve in a lot of ways. It was during this era that a lot of fanzines, including Comics Buyers Guide (which was about to be the be-all, end-all comic book news source and critique source in the 80's) started to complain about just how many "bad superhero comics" there were. I remember that being talked about all the time by comic book creators as being an impetus to start to improve the industry, which led to more adult storytelling and a rise of the indies in the 80's.

Thanks, Cobie. Yeah, more likely it was a combination of Conway feeling stretched thin and overworked, which could have impaired his judgment on how much potential the Assassins had, and misguided creative input from Harris, who on the basis of the few Conway issues I've read has just jumped up to 3rd Place on my personal list of the worst Legion editors of all time (with Michael Eury at 2 and, of course, Murray Boltinoff firmly at 1.)



Very well said, although I think Kappa Kid might beg to differ with you on 70s Superman stories.

If the Implosion took out a lot of villains with potential, maybe they'll be mined at some point in the future. Levitz said that he had trouble inventing good villains, and here was a wealth of possibilities. I suppose everyone wants to create their own. Although we do see the Assassins again, they're pretty much given shallow treatment.

Very true, FC. Who can forget what mixed feelings fans of both Dream Girl and Silver Slasher (I am one) had while reading the Legion vs LSV arc that opened the Baxter series. There's that dramatic scene where Slasher is threatening Nura...then Nura screams but we can't see what's going on...and then, uh, Slasher turns out to be all talk, maybe, because either way we don't actually see or even hear about what happened next, IIRC. So, yeah, happy for Nura, but yet another downgrade of Slasher's potential.

Superboy 253 & 254

I remember this one mainly due to the really convoluted looking set up and pay off to the Super Assassins killing six Legionnaires. In order to have a team worthy of the title Super-Assasins, they have to kill, or at least appear to kill. So, we get some battles leading to the supposed fatalities.

Like Superboy evading the light speed Lazon, Conway tries to keep the story moving ahead of the plot crashing down behind it.

How did the Legionnaire survive? Superboy saved them.

How did he save them? He used his X-Ray vision to activate suspended animation chemicals they’d all encountered in a nice throw away moment earlier in the story. How he cured them of the effects of the combat such as poison gas, shredded torsos, and being dumped from a hover car at height remains untold.

Why couldn’t he just beat up the Super Assassins? Because Lazon could replicate the colour of Kryptonite.

Who brings the Legionnaires back? Superboy goes to Brainy in the sanatorium, and he just happens to have a gadget handy to capture traces of Lazon’s energy. Being super smart, he figures out the rest.

But it’s tough going. If Superboy is affected by the colour of Kryptonite, how will he be able to stand being in the same room as a Green Lantern, or on the same street as a traffic light?

If the Super-Assassins split up to kill the Legion, why didn’t Superboy defeat everyone but Lazon, and then get another Legionnaire to tackle him?, Or then go to Brainy to use his force field? Because that would have robbed us of the fight scenes. Which makes them forced.

We get some personal moments in the build-up of the story. Conway nicely provides us with our main characters by giving us an ongoing subplot of UP and RJ Brande bankruptcy. This would foreshadow later economic collapse following events like the Magic Wars.

Gim’s melancholy was well done, and we see him shake off its effects. I particularly liked his friend, Kal, pausing to go back and cheer him up too. That panel turns out to be the linchpin of the tale, which adds to the satisfaction.

On the opposite side of that, Brin’s Loner-hero makes him more of an ass than usual here. His dialogue is appalling, and it’s a relief when Silver Slasher beats him. He also seems to be standing in for Wildfire earlier in the story when they berate the UP council.

Ayla’s endless attempts to break through his emotional repression moves form its usual simpering acceptance to almost having an effect. But it’s really, really not worth the effort.

In addition to the funding crisis, we also get the shadow of the Dark Man looming ahead and the subplot of Brainiac 5’s insanity. Even locked up, he’s still vital to the Legion.

One big plus in the story was the very effective use of the Subs. They are a very tight unit, and they show how easily they can take down threats as a team. It’s this sort of appearance from them that leads to their combat use years later against the Dominators. It was a surprise there, because they’d been used as comic relief in the interim. When you read their earlier appearances, you can understand the frustration of that change in some older readers. The Legionnaires are taken out in ones or pairs. We often see their powers work independently. The Subs combine their powers increasing their threat tremendously. We are robbed of a Stone Boy vs Blok fight though.

Which brings us onto the Super Assassins themselves. They are definitely a threat. Neutrax is probably more dangerous here than in any later appearances. He can nullify anything, much like the Persuader’s Axe. Slasher and Titania provide strength, speed and ruthlessness while Lazon combines both energy powers and super speed.

It’s Blok who sticks out in the group. He’s a moral counterpoint to them, and never really seems to fit. There’s a writer-go-round ahead, and you wonder if he was always intended to join, or if he would just be the one foreshadowed to betray the Dark Man, and them go off into the background? But with Blok, Stone Boy’s days for Legion contention are pretty much over.

The idea behind them; pawns of a greater power manipulated to see events form a different perspective has many real life parallels. It gives the group a cause to fight for that sets them apart form a lot of other villain groups. It’s a shame when they lose a lot of that power by being cast members in the likes of the LSV.

It’s seems clear to me that Blok was intended to be a transformed human, in the same way that the others had been transformed. But his brooding personality seems to have a stony mass of its own and I can understand why later writers would move to something else.

In summary, It’s a plot revolving around the self-titled threat of the villains. To get that to work, Conway has to jump through some overly elaborate plot hoops. He does manage to give us a few strong continuing subplots along the way, and shows some effective use of the characters. For example, Jo being unable to switch quickly enough to stop Titania; Brin’s actions in combat and the Subs.

I’ve never been a strong fan of Staton. Like a lot of artists I appreciate him more the older I get, but it’s never a name that gets me excited to open the book.

One sentence comic review!



Classified, super-double-secret AND redacted information.



More proof that Color Kid should have been a Legionnaire and we should have had the ultimate Lazon vs Color Kid battle.



Maybe we can assume that Lazon threw some Kryptonite pixie dust in the air.



Linchpin, perfect. In moral terms, it's as much Superboy's goodness as his powers that save the Legionnaires.



Here's a Subs substitute image (by Tom Fowler):

Nice art. Thanks for sharing, FC.

I completely missed that! And the parallel attacks !



While it’s done for the story, and to bring in some less well known characters, it’s nice to speculate why Brainy would think of the Subs and not just to bring in other Legionnaires. Not all of them would have been with Brande. Perhaps it’s a sign that Briany sees himself as outside the Legion himself, and his use of them is a message to the team that they need people outside the Legion, namely himself. Perhaps he holds them in higher esteem than the others for their effectiveness.




It’s probably the writer switches. One build up to Briany’s betrayal and departure, only for the next to have his own favourites or to find Briany really useful in pacing out the stories.

I do see it as a sign that the Legion’s other scientists aren’t getting enough panel time: Lar, Nura, Dirk etc.



That’s a good solution and another example of characters loosing out to a popular core. I suppose in Supes case, it’s still his book, so he has to be at the center of things.



Good points, on Gim, Supes, Jo & on non-physical threats to teams.



It’s interesting my previous posts built up that impression. I didn’t know I particularly disliked him.




That misogynistic looking panel in the early Baxter issues has always bothered me. Was Ultra Boy’s comment about Titania needing chains taken from her beating him up in this issue?

Speaking of those early Baxter issues, Slasher had Dreamy at her mercy, but let her live. That doesn’t seem likely based on her appearance here. Likewise, the others look to have been depowered as time went on. As Cramer said, you’d expect them to work even harder for their revenge.




I’ve got those issues to reread, but my memory tells me that Brainy went beyond the point where he could be safely reintegrated. I’ll see when I get to read them.

I’m glad there were mentions of the book containing different themes aimed at different markets. I remember being surprised when I saw the dates of some of the late ‘70s early 80s issues. I would have been going on issue numbers, so the surprise was that I thought, form some of the simplistic stories, that they were a lot older.

Looking back, I see the post implosion writer-go-round and a DC struggling for its identity.

I don't re-read the early Baxter issues as often as the issues from the 2nd & 3rd years of the Baxter run, so I don't remember that panel ATM. I'll have a quick look-through later tonight.

And anything that puts Ultra Poser in an unfavorable light is just peachy-keen with me.



I wish Slasher had chosen Vi as her victim instead of Dream Girl. If Slasher had followed through in that hypothetical scenario, I wouldn't have shed one single tear for Baxter Era Vi.

Turns out my memory is faulty. It's Sun Boy with Mon-El chaining Titania, not Jo. So, I still find it creepy.

Aha. Thanks for saving me the trouble, Thoth.

I don't dislike Dirk nearly as much as I used to, but I *do* dislike Mon-El much more than I used to.

KILL HIM, TIME TRAPPER! SET TASMIA FREE! KILL, TRAPPER, KILL!!

I'm going to assume that my man Mon was simply making a straight observation that chains would keep Titania from smashing stuff and people. Dirk, however, has too broad a grin on his face.

LOL

Dirk's facial expression looks to me more like he's just snorted some high-grade marching powder, and now he feels all "Shiny, shiny, bad times behind me."

And the look in Mon's eyes is way too creepy to be dismissed. Why, if Mon put on 21st Century casual-wear and shaved his head, he could easily be mistaken for... Geoff Johns ! AIIIEEEEEE!!

I'll just let HWW put his hands over his eyes.... Done? ....


I think Mon-El has gone a bit perverted in his 1000 year stint of voyeurism. In Dirk he's found someone who shares some of those views. Thankfully, the Legion hasn't had a writer to bring that out. Which considering all the Alan Moore Ubermensch rip offs around, is a small miracle.

It was a creepy panel when I was a kid, and it's lost none of that over the years.

Ah, HWW's is back. Play along. Hi HWW, so do *you* think Hoppy the Marvel Bunny should be in the Legion of Super Pets?

Thoth, LOL

Oh, right...*ahem*

Re: Hoppy the Marvel Bunny joining the Legion of Super Pets, there's certainly precedent for that -- and in my beloved Postboot Legion, yet:

So there is! Just seeing a Captain Marvel character like that* certainly shows that there has to be room for bright, optimistic comics as well as vengeance driven darkness as presented by the Super Assassins**.

*That was one of the post boot back issues I picked up on the cover alone. It's a shame it didn't work out for the character.

**Super segueing is my super power of the day!

Yeah, the recent Lord Pernisius thread made a lot of keen observations about that sub-era of the Postboot Legion. Thunder really could have been a breath of fresh air, at a time when the two Legion books, but especially the flagship one, were suffering from writers who didn't seem to care anymore, the lack of a viable replacement for Lee Moder (who had never been as good as loyal ol' Jeff Moy over on Legionnaires anyway), and the general waste of Alan Davis's talent on the covers -- with a few gorgeous exceptions like that one I posted. But, as with so much about the final Pre-DnA year or so of the Postboot, there was just zero follow-through on anything. A pity, because I still think that with better quality control from a more capable editor, the Postboot Legion could have gone on for years -- decades, even!!

Editorial seems to have been a bit of a bane for the Legion. From punting it out of Adventure, to not harnessing Giffen, to the post boot things I read about like the above.

Alan Davis = Miracleman= John Totleben = Alan Moore = Swamp Thing = Steven Bissette = Fanfic Lady's thread Gah!...Segue Powers ... Out of Control... turning into Anti ... Segue ... Lad... delivering unconnected ... Grant Morrison.. Fast Cut...Plots... Gah!

Oh, my.

Thoth, what I think your situation calls for is a healthy dose of Levitz Mark 2 at its best:

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net...14.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20081021121851

I am flattered by Anti-Segue Lad's mention of me, though.

Re: Mon-El's alleged perversion.

One of the things I've enjoyed most about these re-reads is discovering new traits or interpretations of these old characters. Thus, I'm perfectly willing to entertain the notion that Lar's millennium in the Phantom Zone may have left him a bit unhinged in more ways than one. After all, when you've got unlimited access to the universe's greatest peep show and nothing else to do . . .

But if it turns out that Mon's predilections pass the bounds of safety and/or civility, then we can always fall back on the idea that it's Eltro's fault.

As for Hoppy the Marvel Bunny . . . I'm largely unfamiliar with the character, but given the alleged perversions of certain Legionnaires, I'd worry about the safety of any "bunny" type character.

DC Comics Presents #13 To Live in Peace .. Nevermore! By Paul Levitz, art by Dick Dillin & Dick Giordano, colors by Jerry Serpe, letters by Ben Oda



Above Earth, Superman prevents an alien probe from attacking an American space capsule with two astronauts, who have been placed in suspended animation by the probe. Superman follows the probe as it heads home and arrives amid an interglactic war. He picks up communication from the planet Nyrvn and discovers they are cosmic kidnappers, taking people to become warriors. As he disables their robot fleet, he is stopped by four Legionnaires.

Saturn Girl tells him that he must not interfere with Nyrvn and Lightning Lad explains why. The 30th century only lives in peace because, in the past, the Nyrvns brought their advanced weaponry to aid Earth against invaders from a distant galaxy. Thus, the Nyrvns must be allowed to persist in their warlike ways. After Superman flies off, Sun Boy voices concern that Superman might discover the “whole story”. Then, the Legionnaires themselves interfere in the battle and prevent serious casualties.

Back on Earth, Clark Kent endures the snide remarks of Steve Lombard at work then is accosted by Pete Ross. Pete claims his son has been kidnapped by aliens, he knows Clark is Superman and appeals to Clark to save the kid. A drawing of the alien ship turns out to be the Nyrvnian probe.

The Legionnaires get to Jon Ross first, held in a cell on Nyrvn. They tell him that one day he will be the planet's greatest hero, but he just wants Superman to come bring him home. Saturn Girl discovers that Jon knows Superman's secret identity – so Supes is bound to come rescue the kid. The Legionnaires intercept Superman again, show him the future in which Jon Ross leads Nyrvn and Earth to war but Superman won't accept that. He tries to stop the starships of the Millenium War but fails, acknowledging that he can't change history. Instead, he conceives of a situation in which Nyrvn will be embroiled in war games with an enemy i.e. an arms race. Superman robots, now useless on Earth due to pollution, would be used to control drone fighters and keep Nyrvan occupied.

Everybody's happy – except Pete Ross, when he hears that Jon has been sacrificed for some future galactic peace. Ross vows that Superman will pay for this.

Comments:

We've seen this plot before: all-knowing Legionnaires tell Kal half-truths for a higher purpose. In the end, Supes comes up with the solution. The solution, in this case, is a real mixed bag of silver age silly and a Pentagon wet dream.

Amid the standard "Superman saves the day" story are some sad truths. War is pretty much a constant in the universe, and the enemy of my enemy is my friend. There are also the notions that past generations sacrifice so that future ones may enjoy better lives and the arms race could be a good, even necessary, thing.

There's also a dig at Earth's pollution problem, with the disabling of the Superman robots. For once, pollution has served a good purpose.

There isn't much Legion-y feel to the Legionnaires' appearance. They're messengers from the future. If Superman can't change history, why do they even need to be there? All will develop as it would have, regardless.

The real strength of this story is the fate of Jon Ross. There's something about using children as pawns, abandoning children for political purposes in comics. Sidekicks may be abused, but at least enjoy some adventure and hang out with cool heroes. Children like Jon Ross and Scott Free are just sacrificed.

Jon's faith in Superman is tragic when we learn that he will indeed be left on Nryvn, without even an attempt at rescue. Did Supes think that, since he did okay being abandoned and sent to Earth, that Jon would also be found by a Nryvnian Kent family?

The story closes with Pete making vague threats. What else can he do against the most powerful man on Earth? I got a real sense of Pete's frustration and confusion in those few panels. Such betrayal by his supposed life-long friend! Superman and the Legionnaires are like gods engineering the fate of mankind. Pete - and the reader - are the ordinary humans who live with the impossible to understand consequences.

Eeek! I don't have this one in my legion binders. I'll have to wait until I get to the box with the DC Comics Presents in them! Do I have this one at all?!



Ironically, I can see poor Eltro being the upstanding hero, willing to sacrifice his life for the ancestor he considers to be a great hero. Then, he's stuck in the head of Millenni-Perv, and learns the horrid truth behind what isolation has done to Lar. The tantrums and breakdowns are Lar trying to get free of Eltro's further sacrifice to keep Lar in check.

Actually, as I typed the last sentence, it reminded me of the goodish Bates kid in Miracleman fighting a losing battle against Kid Miracleman. SO, Moore has already done part of this.