Category Archives: Uncategorized

Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read: Revenge of the Knave from Krypton (Adventure Comics #320, May, 1964)

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Dev-Em is back! Who? What’s a Dev-Em?

Superboy readers in 1964 would have remembered “The Knave from Krypton” from about three years earlier, when he taunted Superboy in Adventure Comics #287 and #288. He’s the juvenile delinquent who lived next door to Jor-El and Lara on Krypton, and who, when his attempts to steal Jor-El’s rocket plans were foiled by baby Kal-El, placed himself and his parents in suspended animation in a lead-coated bomb shelter. They all survived the destruction of Krypton and landed on Earth 15 years later.

What is Dev-Em doing in the 30th Century? Um… we’re never actually told.

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Night Off

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I’m taking the night off. I actually have a review prepared, but I like to have one ahead, and I’ve had no time to prepare tomorrow’s. My beloved Jeep Wrangler has had a bad few days. Its heat went out, which I thought I had figured out. Then its rear window abruptly shattered in the cold. And just minutes after I had scheduled an appointment to have that replaced, I walked out to find it had leaked a quart or so of oil all over the parking lot.

Not a good day. They say don’t sweat the small stuff, but sometimes the small stuff comes on top of so much big stuff that you can’t do anything else. So I’m just gonna sit here and… sweat… TTYL.

Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Read – “The Menace of Dream Girl” (Adventure Comics 317 – February, 1964)

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Saturn Girl, clearly in charge of the team for once, summons several Legionnaires back from missions in space so that they can have a quorum for their regular meeting. Two of the recalled Legionnaires have been absent from the book for a long time. Star Boy hasn’t been seen him since his first appearance in Adventure Comics #282 in March, 1961—an almost-three-year absence. Matter-Eater Lad has been gone for over a year, last appearing in Adventure Comics #304, January, 1963.

The two are clad in radiation suits on a devastated world—the result of atomic warfare. It’s the bleakest image to appear in the Legion stories to date, and shows that John Forte, as he continued to work on the book, was coming a long way from the “Main Street, USA” feel of his pencils.

Superboy and Mon-El are trying to break through an “Iron Curtain of Time,” so-named by Superboy, who has probably only just witnessed the USSR’s establishment of the original Iron Curtain in his own time. Winston Churchill coined the term around 1945. Superboy has been given as being roughly 20 years in the current Superman’s past.

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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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El Goes to Elle

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Okay, I guess I’m really back, because I’m delving into morality, philosophy and politics. With the revelation of Harvey Weinstein’s staggering abuse of his phenomenal power to coerce his employees into undesired sexual situations, Hollywood’s floodgates have opened. It seems everyone being accused, from Louis C.K. to George Takei. And one question that keeps coming up for the public to munch on is, “Are these people, alone, to blame?” After all, along with the accusations almost always comes the statement, “And everybody knew all about it.”

So, when behavior that’s been accepted, even encouraged, for decades is suddenly revealed, and finally recognized as the problem it always was, who’s to blame?

Mara Wilson, former child star and current left-wing social activist (her Twitter presence is self-dubbed “Mara ‘Get Rid of Nazis’ Wilson”) has an answer:

We all are.

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I Just Finished – Stranger Things 2

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There aren’t many TV shows that I have to watch anymore. I like The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. I enjoy Supergirl overall. I tend to fall way behind on them, though. I’m still finishing Iron Fist and thus haven’t started The Defenders. Beyond those, I’m a little behind on This Is Us and a lot of the shows friends are watching I’m just giving a pass to. I don’t need The Orville. They made 79 real episodes of Star Trek, and enough Next Gen that I’ve never seen them all. I gave Star Trek: Discovery what I feel was a fair chance, and it didn’t impress me any more than any other non-Enterprise Trek has.

But Stranger Things I must see. It’s too gripping, too engaging, too much plain fun not to. It’s such a great piece of 80s nostalgia, not just in costumes, music and décor, but in the feel of 1980s films about young people.

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My Philcon Schedule

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Sat 1:00 PM in Con Suite (Room 800)

Yoji Kondo Memorial

Sat 6:00 PM in Plaza III (Three) (1 hour)

HOW DO I MAKE AN AUDIOBOOK OF OUT OF MY WORK? (2866)

[Panelists: Christopher Mayer (mod), Jay Smith, Steve Wilson]

How do you find appropriate Voice Acting talent? What happens to your property rights if you sign up with a company to produce it for

you? Is ACX.com the solution to all of your problems, or just a good place to start?

Sun 10:00 AM in Crystal Ballroom Three (1 hour)

THE ROLE OF ANTIQUITY AND MYTH IN SCIENCE FICTION (2868)

[Panelists: Mitchell Gordon (mod), Steve Wilson, Tom Doyle, Hakira D’Almah, T. Patrick Snyder]

Why does SF make repeated use of certain myths? How do classical

ideas expand the scope of science fiction themes? Our goal in this panel will be to understand how science fiction dialogues with ideas from the past to explore possibilities for the future

Sun 11:00 AM in Autograph Table (1 hour)

AUTOGRAPHS: JOHN GRANT AND STEVE WILSON (3030)

[Panelists: John Grant (mod), Steve Wilson]

Sun 12:00 PM in Plaza III (Three) (1 hour)

THE INFLUENCE OF FILM ON CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE FICTION WRITING (2856)

[Panelists: Peter Prellwitz (mod), Steve Wilson, Tom Doyle, Diane Weinstein, Aaron Rosenberg]

How is the hope for a Hollywood adaptation influencing writers and their current works

I Just Finished – Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein

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I should say I just finished it this time. This is probably my fifth re-reading of this, my favorite of the Grandmaster’s novels. The timing comes because I decided this year to treat myself to The Virginia Edition, a set of 40+ leather bound copies of everything Robert A. Heinlein ever published. That’s a lot of books, and it’s intimidating; so I decided to start with my favorite.

This is my desert island book. If I could only have one, this would be it. Short version if you don’t know it: Lazarus Long has lived over 2000 years and is the unwilling leader (and direct ancestor) of a society of people bred for longevity. Ready for death, he’s tempted back to life by descendants who collect his memoirs and provide him with ideas that might be interesting enough to keep living for. It’s time travel, it’s western adventure, it’s erotica, it’s space opera. Above all, it’s never boring.

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Life With Lazarus – A New Day

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Whatever god there be—or spirit, or entity, or faceless multinational or computer program—or is it Robert Heinlein’s Time Corps that watches over little orange tabby cats?

All I can say is “Thank you.”

This is the day he wasn’t supposed to be here, and he’s sitting on the bed with his feet propped on my leg. His fur is soft again, instead of matted. His eyes are no longer sunken into his head. He runs instead of walking. He jumps instead of waiting to be placed on a chair or bed.

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Life With Lazarus – Three Days

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Day 2 – Back to Work

Lazarus woke me up around 5 this morning, wanting to go out. He seemed fine, and I figured he just needed the litter box. Of course he’d already had diarrhea on the rug. No blood, at least. And it means everything is working in his digestive tract, which is huge.

It also means that we now have two aging cats who aren’t always using the litter box. In the other room, Oreo, who had become somewhat incontinent, had urinated on Ethan’s bed.

As we were getting ready to arrive at the 911 Center to begin a week of fairly stressful testing of new technology, Renee settled down onto the bed, shaking her head. “I cannot take another thing.”

She was right. It’s been almost too much. We were both feeling pretty broken.

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