Category Archives: Reviews

Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The Return of Lightning Lad” (Adventure Comics #308 May, 1963)

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Edmond Hamilton was on a roll in the Spring of 1963, as his third story brought his count of characters introduced to the Legion mythos up to eight. We open with the Legionnaires saluting their new flag, and Cosmic Boy reflecting how sad it is that Lightning Lad didn’t live to see it. Kind of an odd reflection, really. Of all the things a teenage boy misses by dying, getting to see a new flag isn’t the first that leaps to mind.

As Saturn Girl and Mon-El leave on a mission, she instructs the remaining Legionnaires to drape their new flag over Lightning Lad’s crypt, where his strangely non-decomposed body lies in state beneath miniature lightning bolts. Saturn Girl is very clearly in charge here, so either Hamilton found that memo from Mort Weisinger about the leadership change, or Imra took Rokk aside and had a word with him about bossing the troops on her watch.

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“The Secret Power of the Mystery Super-Hero” – Adventure Comics #307, April, 1963

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After gentling into his Legion-writing career by focusing his first story on all-new characters with “The Legion of Substitute Heroes,” Edmond Hamilton plunges into the first-string this issue, and gives us a powerful new Legionnaire to boot!

A group of raiders led by the villainous Roxxas is taking much needed natural and technological resources from far-off planets. The Legion is enlisted to help, but their numbers are limited right now—too many members are off on other planets. So, apparently breaking their rule about only taking on one new member annually, they decided to interview applicants and see if they can expand their ranks right now. (From this point on, I think the “once a year” rule is forgotten.)

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The Legion of Substitute Heroes” (Adventure Comics #306, March, 1963)

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Edmond Hamilton’s first Legion Adventure adds a very important element to the franchise: The Legion of Substitute Heroes. Not only do Hamilton and Forte create five new heroes out of the gate on their first team-up, but they create the idea that there’s a backup team for the Legion. That’s something no other team up till now really had—Not the Justice League, The Justice Society, or the Fantastic Four. Oh, a lot of Golden Age heroes had squads of sidekicks and admirers who would step in to help when their idols were indisposed, but no one had a formal team of super-powered substitutes… not until the Legion did. It not only expanded the simple number of super-heroes in the Legion’s universe, it added to the richness of their history.

It all begins with Polar Boy, Brek Bannin of the planet Tharr. Tharr is a desert world, and its inhabitants have developed the power to generate cold in order to protect themselves from extreme heat by “neutralizing heat vibrations.” Vibrations? Well, yeah, but I had to stop and think about it, and re-read some basic physics. Thermal energy is the energy of molecules moving—vibrating. Hamilton, as I’ve mentioned before, was a real science fiction author. He’s including real science here, where Jerry Siegel generally did not. I wonder, though, if less educated readers noticed the difference.

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Star Wars: The Last Jedi – Pros and Cons

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I’ve seen this movie twice already. I enjoyed it both time. I must be honest, however, this movie frustrated me. Maybe it’s because it’s a middle film, like The Empire Strikes Back was. That one frustrated me a little, and was definitely my least favorite of the original trilogy. (Yeah, real film buffs… favorite film… so well-done… yadda yadda yadda. Never got into it like I did the first, found it less emotionally satisfying than the third.)

But it’s more than just the “middle” aspect that frustrates me here, and that’s probably partly because this “middle” film feels like someone took half the elements of an “end” film and threw them into a blender with this film as it should have been.

But I don’t hate it, I just… Let me just run down like and dislikes.

SPOILERS FOLLOW.

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The Secret of the Mystery Legionnaire” (Adventure Comics #305, February, 1963)

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The vultures are here. Lightning Lad is dead, and the first thought on the minds of the people of the 30th Century is apparently, “Can I have his job?” A number of teenagers show up at the Clubhouse to apply for his open membership in the Legion.

Wow.

This is the second occurrence of “throwaway applicants,” and this one is more detailed than the last. We see Antennae Boy, who can pick up and share radio transmissions from the past. We hear that Kennedy was elected President again. That’s ADORABLE. And morbid, because, well, the creative team had no idea what was coming in just a few months. Kennedys being elected President was something of an in-joke in the science fiction community through the late Sixties. Even after JFK’s assassination, authors continued to list as “future history” that a Kennedy was in office for most of the rest of the 20th Century. Kinda shows the futility of being so certain in your knowledge of the future. Anyway, Cosmic Boy’s kind of a dick to AB, but, honestly, it’s not a useful power, now is it?

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The Stolen Super-Powers!” (Adventure Comics #304, January, 1963)

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This is an important issue in Legion history, for a few reasons, yet you’d never know it to look at it. The Legion isn’t even on the cover, and the splash page makes it look like just another gimmicky, I-don’t-believe-they-would-really-do-that, Silver Age story from the Mort Weisginger stable.

So the opening blurb tells us that Saturn Girl is “sweet.” Mmmm… would we call her sweet? Actually, we wouldn’t call her anything other than “Saturn Girl,” at this point in history. The distinct personalities of the different Legionnaires had yet to emerge. The closest we’ve come to it is having them make the “Bastard People” list, and there seems to be neither rhyme nor reason to who winds up there. Although, if I’m honest, Cosmic Boy seems to make it more often. Maybe it’s the pink tights making him self-conscious. But here we’re told that Saturn Girl is “sweet,” and that it’s a surprise when she becomes Legion leader and transforms into a harsh taskmaster.

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The Fantastic Spy!” (Adventure Comics #303 – December, 1962)

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His Supreme Reverence and Benevolent Omniscience, Cosmic Boy the First, declares that “One of us Legionnaires is a—traitor!” And Saturn Girl is ordered to read everyone’s mind to find out who!

Wow. Don’t mess with this guy! Don’t let the pink tights fool you.

In a 21st Century hospital, Cosmic Boy and Brainiac 5 visit Lightning Lad and Sun Boy, who just crashed their rocket. The famous Martian fourth-dimensional surgeon, Dr. Landro will operate on them soon. The what now? He operates on time? He goes back in time and operates before the surgery happened? And why do these two happy, smiling, naked, redheaded boys need operations anyway? Something’s suspect here. (And, BTW, it’s almost impossible to tell Lightning Lad and Sun Boy apart without their costumes. I can only guess Sun Boy’s the one with the slight hair flip going on.)

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “Sun-Boy’s Lost Power!” (Adventure Comics #302, November, 1962)

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This adventure is still labeled as “In the 21st Century.” I guess that lasted as long as Jerry Siegel wrote the book.

Sun Boy is honored by the Mayor of Metropolis with a statue. “<Gulp!>–I’m thrilled!” he says. Then he melts it.

To be fair, he melts it because it’s about to fall on a bunch of people. Still, you melt the metal statue in order to protect people, destroying months of work… when your teammate with magnetic powers is standing next to you. And everyone thinks it’s brilliant! Where is the bastard people streak now? Or, to paraphrase Ellen Ripley, “Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?”

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – The Secret Origin of Bouncing Boy͟ (Adventure Comics #301 – October, 1962)

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It’s recruitment time again for the Legion—which, we’re told, is a once-a-year day. Pretty funny, then, that in the four years since they first appeared, we’ve seen them recruit Superboy, Supergirl, Brainiac 5, Mon-El, Bouncing Boy, Sun Boy, Star Boy, Shrinking Violet and Ultra Boy—nine members, and mostly male, so the one-time one boy/one girl rule doesn’t explain it away. Plus we’re told it’s been some years since Bouncing Boy joined. Once again, the “one per year” rule defies belief if the kids are all supposed to be under 18.

So We’ve seen many recruitment days already, but this is the first time we see what would become a Legion tradition—the rejects. So far, all the applicants we’ve seen have eventually made the cut. Here we start to see the likes of Lester Spiffany, whose super-power is that he’s rich (hey, it works for Batman!) and Storm Boy. These unworthies are soundly dismissed by the Legion: “It hasn’t been nice meeting you!” Cosmic Boy tells Lester. “We don’t want your ilk in our club!” the Triplicate Girls tell Storm Boy as they manhandle him away from the clubhouse.

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The League of Fantastic Supermen!” (Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #63, September, 1962)

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Another “not Legion” story appears in a “not Superboy / Supergirl” story. Jimmy Olsen had his own title throughout the 1960s, as did Lois Lane, making them certainly the first—possibly still the only—non-costumed, non-super supporting characters to rate their own titles. (To be fair, both Jimmy and Lois took on costumed identities fairly often in these stories, including Jimmy’s assumption of the identity of Elastic Lad, a reserve member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, down the road.)

Of course, Superman, Supergirl and the whole Superman Family showed up in every issue. Indeed, in 1974, Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen was re-titled Superman Family, and Lois and Supergirl’s titles were canceled so they could be rolled into it. Jimmy’s book was also, strangely enough, Jack Kirby’s first assignment upon arriving at DC Comics, and thus is the title in which the Fourth World was launched.

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