Author Archives: Steven Howell Wilson

Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The Menace of the Sinister Super-Babies” (Adventure Comics #338, November, 1965)

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At long last, the Time Trapper! This guy was set up months ago, but has only been teased thus far. Now we see him in all his glory, living in a post-nuclear holocaust world in the far future. He’s a tyrant who apparently rules with an iron fist. As one of his slave-vassals observes, “When the master laughs, the universe trembles.” He meets with a beautiful woman named Glorith of Balduur, who is set to do his bidding in the past and end the Legion of Super-Heroes forever.

It’s yet to be explained, in the course of all these stories where he’s been mentioned, how the Legion first encountered the Time Trapper, and why they, out of all the heroes of history, would be a target for him. It would not be explained for a long time to come. Readers presumably were to accept that he was the villain and they were the heroes, so of course they were after each other.

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The Weddings That Wrecked The Legion!” (Adventure Comics #337, October, 1965)

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So here we have the first story where romance comes out of the closet—heterosexual romance, at least. Any other kind would wait another three decades to surface in these pages. We knew that Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl would eventually get married. We knew that Phantom Girl had a “thing” for Ultra Boy, but it hadn’t been referenced since that one issue where it was established. This is the first time that the four characters came right out and admitted their attraction to each other, and revealed that, ultimately, they wanted to get married.

For teens who were attracted to each other in 1965 the only polite word to follow “get” was “married.” Well, maybe “engaged.” The lesser status of “going steady” did not begin with “get,” because it was assumed in polite society that no one was getting anything.

Oh, my, I have the vapors…

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The Insect Queen of Smallville” (Superboy #124, October, 1965)

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I’ve already reviewed this story just recently, but that was before I started the Legion re-read. So, in addition to linking the original review of that issue of Superboy (which I had just happened to pick up at a dollar sale, if memory serves), here’s a few thoughts.

This is one of Legion co-creator Otto Binder’s few stories to be found in a Legion collection. In addition to this, he wrote only “The Sacrifice of Kid Psycho,” which I’ll be talking about in a few days, the first appearance of the Legion, “Lana Lang and the Legion of Super-Heroes” (which was really just the first appearance of Star Boy, and did not involve the Legion), and “The Six-Legged Legionaire,” again about Lana as Insect Queen. Clearly, Binder had a fondness for Lana, but he actually wrote no headline stories for the Legion. The closest he came was their first guest-shot in Superboy.

Firsts: Insect Queen

Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The True Identity of Starfinger” (Adventure Comics #336,

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With Chameleon Boy, Shrinking Violet and Triplicate Girl appearing in this issue, 18 of the 19 Legionnaires have joined the battle with Starfinger. Only Supergirl is excluded, and she often was. But one of the Seven Wonders of the 30th Century, threatened last issue by Starfinger, reminds us of her, if our memory goes back that far.

The Global Tunnel parallels one dug by Supergirl in her first (unsuccessful) bid to join the Legion. This time, Hamilton introduces the idea of how fragile such a structure could be.

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read: “Starfinger!” (Adventure Comics #335, August, 1965)

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And Happy Birthday to me! Actually, this issue would have hit the stands a couple of months before I was born, but it does carry my birth month and year, so I guess Starfinger is officially my Legion spirit guide.

With this issue we begin what I would call the first true Legion epic. Yes, we’ve had a two-part story before, but the Dynamo Boy affair was so disjointed, and its second part featured so few Legionnaires, that it only counts as the comic book equivalent of what on TV would be called a “bottle episode,” or, worse, a “clip show.”

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The Colonel’s Plan – The Blue Bathroom – Part 4

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September 15, 2017 (Continued)

Dear Daddy,

So the guy at Kendall’s told me that no hardware store could rip tile, and I’d need to spend $25 – $50 to get one tile ripped by a home contractor.

I believed him, but I was headed to Catonsville later anyway, to meet Ethan. You probably never knew that Ethan, Christian and I have, for years, gone to Cosmic Comix in Ellicott City, and later in Catonsville, every Wednesday. That’s the day new comics come out. You never understood my love of comic books. I remember proudly showing you a stack of seven of them that I’d bought with my allowance. “Look at all these great comics,” I said. Or I said something like that.

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The Unknown Legionnaire” (Adventure Comics #334, July, 1965) 

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The timeline in this story is a bit odd. It begins with a framing sequence, where the Legionnaires visit a planet in the Antares system and find a statue honoring the Unknown Legionnaire. Superboy asks if anyone remembers that adventure, as if it was long ago. This isn’t the first time it’s been made to sound as if the Legion’s adventures have been going on for the seven real time years the group has been in existence. Age-wise, Superboy hasn’t aged out of high school yet, which puts a pretty short span on his Legion career since Adventure #247. Three years would be an outside limit, and I say it’s pretty outside. 

More, at the beginning of the flashback tale, Supergirl talks about getting back to school at Stanhope College, which she started attending in the November, 1964 issue of Action Comics (#318) —less than a year ago in real time, and probably much less on the Legion’s timeline. So the flashback “do you remember” device is glaringly off.  

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Review – Iron Cage by Andre Norton

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I’ve never read Norton, which is odd, her being one of the most celebrated science fiction authors of her generation. But I think it’s like this: I started reading SF at a time when Norton was still a relatively new author. By “relatively new,” I mean her books began being published around the time I was born, and I began reading SF at age 8. When I did, I started with Bradbury, Williamson, Clarke and Blish, segued to Asimov and then to Heinlein.

All of these authors, while around the same age as Norton, were published in book format long before she was. Heinlein wrote juveniles beginning in 1948, Asimov published Foundation in 1951, Bradbury published The Martian Chronicles in 1950. Norton was writing in the 1940s, but her work was predominantly featured in magazines. I didn’t have access to SF magazines as a kid. What I had was the school library at a small, private school. The SF collection was more likely to be the tried and true novels of ten years ago than anything up to date.

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The War Between Krypton and Earth!” (Adventure Comics #333, June, 1965)

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The Grand Comic Book Database credits Hamilton and Forte with bringing us an ambitious adventure—a tale of time-travel, war, young love, betrayal and the origins of three civilizations. And, along the way, the Legion will divide into opposing camps and fight a war against each other. That couldn’t happen, you say? Well, it did happen, right here in these pages. That makes no sense, you say?

Well, ya got me there. It makes not one damn bit of sense. But, hey, did I mention it was ambitious? And, look, Lightning Lad has his real right arm on the cover, and his robot arm on the story inside. Maybe if we think really hard about that, we won’t think too hard about how idiotically the Legionnaires are behaving in this story.

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read: “The Super-Moby Dick of Space!” (Adventure Comics #332, May, 1965)

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The “A” team returns, with Edmond Hamilton and John Forte bringing us an important chapter in Legion history—the conflict with a space beast so powerful that even Superboy can’t defeat it. In discovering and attempting to subdue the metal-eating monster which is ravaging space traffic, Lightning Lad is caught in a backlash of his own powers. His lightning blast, poisoned by some green radiation emanating from the Super-Moby Dick’s body, infects his right hand and arm. To save his life, eminent physician Dr. Lanphier must amputate and provide the poor kid with a robot arm.

A very short roll call graces the splash page of this story, made a bit shorter by the fact that Sun Boy is missing from it. He appears in several panels and speaks, but doesn’t try to take over any missions. Maybe someone wasn’t sure it was really him.

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