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 30^th 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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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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