Category Archives: Reviews

Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “Escape of the Fatal Five” (Adventure Comics #365, February, 1968)

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At long last, the Jim Shooter / Curt Swan team is back! It’s been four long issues since they brought us “The Legion Chain Gang.” The title of their triumphant return, though, betrays the mystery they so carefully develop in the story itself. It must have been an editorial edict that the cover and splash reveal that the Five were waiting on Page 19 of the story. The author and artist were otherwise too careful to keep it a secret.

Talok VIII is a peaceful, advanced planet that has suddenly undergone a dramatic change in its behavior towards other worlds. The cities have become armed camps, deadly anti-matter weapons are being tested in space, and any ship that comes near is blown out of the sky. (Actually, we’re told, it’s any ship that comes within “a million miles.” That’s awfully damn close, in planetary terms—less than four times as far away as the Moon is from Earth.)

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “Revolt of the Super-pets” (Adventure Comics #364, January, 1968)

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Welcome to 1968! It’s a year of big changes in comics. Wonder Woman is going to lose her powers and her costume. Aquaman will begin a months-long quest for Mera, with art by Jim Aparo, and And while Silver Age greats like the The Challengers of the Unknown would soon fade away, the Doom Patrol would die, and Rip Hunter had already been canceled, over at Marvel, Iron Man, Captain America, The Hulk and The Sub-Mariner all premiered in their own titles. Within a year, Green Arrow would his fortune and become a hard traveling hero. Dick Grayson would go off to college. Neal Adams would take over the X-Men, too late to save their title. It was a time of change. Indeed, a house ad from DC, appearing in December, 1967’s Adventure Comics #363, heralded “New Things Are Coming from DC!”

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The Chemoids Are Coming!” (Adventure Comics #362, November, 1967)

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The villain of this month’s piece looks mighty familiar, and for good reason. Dr. Mantis Morlo was co-created by Jim Shooter and Pete Costanza. As mentioned yesterday, Costanza was a longtime senior member of the Marvel Family creative team. He surely drew the Big Red Cheese’s (that’s the original Captain Marvel’s) arch-nemesis many times over. No doubt, when he was told that this issue called for an evil mad scientist, he thought of Dr. Sivana, consciously or non. If it was consciously, well, it had been a dozen or so years since Sivana legally appeared in comics. In comics time (at the time, and from the perspective of the publishers) that’s a couple of generations.

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The Lone Wolf Legionnaire Reporter!” (Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #106, October, 1967)

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An Unknown writer brings us this Legion tie-in story from the pages of Jimmy’s late, lamented comic. Regular Olsen artist Pete Costanza drew it, and would draw the next couple of outings of the Legion in Adventure Comics as well. Costanza was 54 when this story was released, and has been a regular penciller of Captain Marvel and The Marvel Family, and Marvel-creator C.C. Beck’s chief assistant, from the time Billy Batson and company were created, until they folded under the weight of the DC lawsuit in the 1950s. Fawcett alumnus Otto Binder brought Costanza on board to draw Jimmy Olsen.

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The Unkillables!” (Adventure Comics #361, September, 1967)

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This one’s a little offbeat. As the story opens, we’re informed that the war with the Dominion has been going on for 20 years.

As I’ve been saying all too often lately, “Wait… what?”

You mean to tell us, Master Shooter, that Earth and the United Planets (because, as far as we can see, Earth is the United Planets) have been at war the entire time we’ve been reading these Legion adventures, and we never knew it? So Lyle, Gim, Dirk, Chuck, and the late, lamented Andrew were all born on a planet at war? It sure doesn’t feel like it!

But that may be part of the point. Jim Shooter was born in 1951, in the midst of the Korean War. That ended in July, 1953. But just over two years later, on November 1st, 1955, the United States went to war again. Jim Shooter was not yet two when peace broke out, and had just turned four when it ended again. His nation would be at war in Viet Nam until he was 23. (If you’re American and you want to get really depressed, here’s a Washington Post piece on how much of your life has been spent in war time.) (Yes, I’m being political, but I don’t believe I’m being in any way partisan.)

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The Legion Chain Gang!” (Adventure Comics #360, September, 1967)

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Ironically, the group for whom this story is named barely appears within its pages. Superboy, Ultra Boy, Mon-El, Element Lad and Matter-Eater Lad, sentenced to ten years on the prison world of Takron-Galtos, appear only on the splash page and one other page before the story’s conclusion, when they return to Earth. One wonders if perhaps someone’s intention was to set an adventure on the prison planet, and the cover was drawn to illustrate that idea, but then the creative team realized that the Legion had all-too-recently done a prison story, the memorable “Super-Stalag of Space.”

After the obligatory recap of the previous issue, which tells readers why eight Legionnaires are hiding out in the thousand-year-old sewers of Metropolis, our heroes find one of Lex Luthor’s underground lairs, as immortalized in Richard Donner’s film, Superman. Being Luthor’s lair, it’s high-tech even by 30th Century standards, with food and clothing synthesizers included. The fugitives are soon fed, rested and clad once again in their Legion uniforms.

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The Outlawed Legionnaires” (Adventure Comics #359, August, 1967)

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This is part one of one of the most memorable two-parters of a memorable run. The entire Legion is featured—even the oft-forgotten Supergirl!—we get more glimpses of the Legionnaires private lives, some Legionnaires go on the run and others wind up in prison on the hellish world of Takron-Galtos.

While all the Legionnaires are off Earth (with one team performing the impressive feat of slowing down the supernova death of a sun by pumping chemical compounds into its core), the President of Earth is killed in a freak accident, and his V.P., Kandro Boltax, steps up. His first act is to force through a worldwide water purification plant. (I don’t want to sound like a McCarthy-ite, but any time a new leader wants access to the water supply, ya gotta ask if he’s on the up-and-up.)

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The Hunter” (Adventure Comics #358, July, 1967)

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So I celebrated my birth month back in Adventure #335. This issue falls in the birth month of my lovely wife, Renee.

Of the two events—her birth and Otto Orion’s, I think I favor hers. She has, after all, been by my side for just about every step of this crazy journey into fandom I’ve made these last 34 years, and most of it wouldn’t have happened without her. But I might be biased. Anyway, on with “The Hunter!”

This month, Mort Weisinger’s assignment to his student writer (Jim Shooter) was to do a Legion story based upon Richard Connell’s 1924 story from Colliers, “The Most Dangerous Game.” Well, now, that’s not so bad, is it? I mean, who remembers a story from 43 years earlier, after all?

Damn near everyone, it seems. The story had been filmed no less than five times before Otto Orion showed up in the pages of Adventure. And it was familiar to TV viewers as the plot of episodes of Get Smart, Gilligan’s Island, Bonanza, and The Outer Limits. Later, it would also be adapted for Logan’s Run, Fantasy Island, The Incredible Hulk, Dexter’s Laboratory… The list goes on endlessly. Clive Cussler even “borrowed” the story for his Dirk Pitt adventure, Dragon. Continue reading →

Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The Ghost of Ferro Lad” (Adventure Comics #357, June, 1967)

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Andrew Nolan was not out of Jim Shooter’s system, no matter how determined the young writer was to leave his creation dead. No soon was Ferro Lad’s empty burial urn safely landed on Shanghalla than Shooter told the tale of the Adult Legion, which was focused heavily on memorials to the dead heroes, amongst which naturally Ferro Lad was prominent. On top of that, the “villain” of the first adult Legion story was Andrew’s twin brother Doug, Ferro Man.

(And Ferro Man might have been to have a future—in the letters page to Adventure #359, the editor (Weisinger or more likely Bridwell) told readers that there would be future tales of the adult Legion, and that they would include Sun Man, Chameleon Man, Color King and a youth auxiliary. One would assume it would have also included Ferro Man, once he was healed of the psychic trauma inflicted on him by Saturn Queen. Sadly, these tales never surfaced.)

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Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The Five Legion Orphans” (Adventure Comics #356, May, 1967)

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So, looking at the cover of this issue, you get that feeling you’ve been here before—not that long ago, either. Several Legionnaires were turned into babies by the Time Trapper back in Adventure #338. That wasn’t really an experience worth repeating, either, but Nelson Bridwell, filling in for Jim Shooter for the third time seven issues, obviously saw un-mined potential in the idea. It’s a different group of Legionnaires getting babified this, with just Element Lad taking a return trip to Toyland, and Superboy and Brainiac 5, who were the adults in the room last time out, getting shortened this time.

It goes down like this: It’s Parents’ Day in the 30th Century—a combination of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, proving that the greeting card lobby is weaker in a 1000 years, but not powerless. Metropolis celebrates with a parade led by the Legionnaires and their parents. Well, that is just the Legionnaires of have parents. While Star Boy, Invisible Kid, the Ranzz Twins, Duo Damsel, Sun Boy and Cosmic Boy share a sumptuous post-parade banquet with their families, the Legion orphans—Supes, Brainy, Dream Girl, Element Lad, Mon-El—eat cold sandwiches and guard the clubhouse.

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