Last week, as you recall…

Okay, it was last month, for readers in 1965, that Dynamo Boy, aka Vorm of the Space Pirate Pack, wormed his way (vormed his way?) into the Legion and expelled all of the sitting members, promising to turn the Legion of Super-Heroes into a “Legion of Super-Villains.” As if somehow sensing that someone in the past was infringing on the intellectual property, the three founding members of the actual Legion of Super-Villains arrive from “a few years in the future.” More than a few, to judge by looking at their middle-aged selves.

Cosmic King, Lightning Lord and Saturn Queen want to join Dynamo Boy’s Legion. Of course, he’s lying to applicants and saying it’s still a Legion of Heroes, and they’re lying to him and saying they’re reformed and want a chance to be heroes in a time before they’re known as villains.

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“Secret of the Mystery Legionnaire” – a title that sounds like several others: The Secret Power of the Mystery Super-Hero, The Secret of the Mystery Legionnaire, The Secret of the Seventh Super-Hero… More evidence that DC was gearing books toward readers who picked up the odd issue now and then, and wouldn’t notice the repetition. This, even though the Legion was a series clearly aimed at people who kept up with the history, and knew that new stories built on old ones.

The splash page looks like John Forte’s work, not Mooney’s, particularly looking at Mon-El. Perhaps Mooney had decided to adapt the spare-bangs, high-forehead look that Forte did. Or perhaps it’s the inks?

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For some months, Jerry Siegel and Jim Mooney took over writing and drawing the Legion’s adventures. It’s a pleasure to see Mooney’s pencils on the Legion, and, while a Bizarro story does not exactly fit the tone fans were probably looking for, Siegel at least takes the time to mention the ongoing Time Trapper subplot in this story, and to mention the mystery of a vanishing world that the Legion is planning to investigate. Whether this was laying groundwork for a future story, or just reminding us that the Legion did have continuity and ongoing business, it’s not clear at this point. It does serve to remind us, though, that the Legion does have continuity.

And the big news in this issue is that Brainiac 5 announces the invention of the Flight Ring. Two panels are spent on this most iconic piece of Legion history, and it doesn’t figure into the story at all.

Reading Bizarro stories today, one has to wonder if anyone was actually entertained by them, and what characterized the group of fans that was. I recently reviewed an 80-page collection of all Bizarro stories from about the same era as this one, and found them repetitive and unfunny. They’re about on the level of a lot of the comic adaptations of popular TV comedies of the time, as published by Dell and Charlton. To be honest, a lot of the source material for those comics were not funnier.

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The first thing about this story that should have jumped out at a regular reader of the Legion’s adventures in 1965 was that the art had drastically changed from previous stories. Not like a Jack Kirby-to-Neal Adams change, or an Early Bill Sienkiewicz-to-Late Bill Sienkiewicz change, but a pretty big change nonetheless. John Forte’s Legion boys had long, angular faces and mature features. You assumed there were probably college kids. A couple of them (Mon-El) even looked like they might have the beginnings of receding hairlines. Taking a look at Superboy and Invisible Kid in the first pages of this story, one sees they’re decidedly more boyish and high-school looking here. The girls have longer hair and softer faces.

Supergirl artist Jim Mooney drew this issue, his first crack at the Legion in the many years since Supergirl tried out.

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Our story begins with a shadowy figure being incarcerated on a remote prison world. He confesses that he joined the Legion of Super-Heroes under false pretenses, which is against the law. Who is this guy? This question is never answered! We never see him again. He exists solely to impress upon us that there’s a law forbidding joining the Legion under false pretenses—which seems a bit excessive, if you ask me. Being drummed out and publicly ridiculed would seem to be enough. And the law plays a pretty peripheral part in this story, merely giving its hero one more thing to cry about—and he already has enough.

We see the Emergency Board, a fantastic piece of technology through which worlds throughout space can call for the Legion’s help. Working in close proximity to a 911 Center, I can tell you we pretty much have this technology now, on Earth. But it must have seemed awfully cool and futuristic in 1964.

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FemiNazis… from… Spaaaaaaaace! (You think I’m kidding?)

“Too bad the girls weren’t on the level about those romances, but who knows what the future may bring?” Element Lad’s sentiment in the last panel brings out the most significant aspect of this Legion adventure: Jerry Siegel’s stories had heart, for all the grief I give him. In this one, readers are titillated, really for the first time, with what would later become a key feature of the Legion stories—who’s in love with whom, who’s sneaking off to a romantic setting to snuggle, whose feelings for a fellow Legionnaire are going to tip the story in a different direction? After six years, it’s nice to fully recognize that a group of teen boys and girls, living and working together, are going to show an interest in each other.

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Remember Jungle King? The kid with the power to control animals, who applied for Legion membership, was rejected, never collected his complimentary flight belt, and then turned super-villain? You don’t?

Yeah, that’s reasonable.

Say, how many rejected applicants did become super-villains? Not that many, at this point in time, but a bunch of the ones we’ve met in the last few issues joined the LSV some time before Adventure #372, so one wonders if the Legion shouldn’t oughtta GPS track all their failed applicants.

Anyway, Jungle King has a much older brother—guy looks about 60 if he’s a day. Jungle musta been a serious life change baby.  His name is Marden King, and he has the power to control all other people named “Marden.” But there aren’t any of them in this story, and we never see Marden King again, so… Well, that gives us something to hope for if the Legion gets their own book again in 2018, doesn’t it? Their first adventure can be a battle with the Legion of Super-Mardens.

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