posted
This thread started out as a rough draft of my response to the "Legion Roadmap" thread. I ultimately didn't post it there because it's too long. It's evolved into sort of a Legion-oriented autobiography that's currently about 25 pages -- just for my first two years of Legiondom!
Nevertheless, I thought some of it might be interesting enough to post here. These are my reflections of the earliest Legion stories I ever read, starting with SUPERBOY # 197 (Sept. 1973) -- actually my fourth Legion story. The first three were part of the reprint series, LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES, volume I.
Feedback is welcome. If there's interest, I may post more.
SPOILER SPACE I make no attempt to hide spoilers. * * * * * * * * * * --
Once I realized I had missed an issue, I turned over hell and high water, and mixed many other metaphors, to find it. Unfortunately, it would be several years before I would find the elusive LSH # 3. Also unbeknownst to me was that the last issue I found, # 4, was also the last issue of the series.
But that hardly meant the end of the Legion of Super-Heroes – far from it. In those days, I knew nothing about what was happening behind the scenes – how the first LSH series was in fact a reprint title meant to test the waters for an ongoing series featuring new stories. The reprint title did not sell, but there was still a large, loyal fan base that begged, cajoled and demanded that DC find a permanent home for these heroes from the future. DC eventually did launch a new series for the Legion – not in a new title, as anticipated, but rather in an old one.
Equally unknown to me, DC had also been testing the waters by featuring Legion backup stories in SUPERBOY since 1971. Since the Legion did not appear on the covers (except for maybe an easy-to-miss blurb announcing an "All New Legion of Super-Heroes Story Inside"), I missed these stories entirely, despite having seen numerous issues of SUPERBOY on the stands and even buying one (# 196), which featured did not feature the Legion.
So, I was plenty confused when the next appearnce of the Legion story was not in their own comic, but rather in SUPERBOY # 197. I couldn't have missed this one. To begin with, it featured the Legion's blocky logo from the reprint series on the cover, just below Superboy's own logo. And then there was the cover scene itself, which displayed several Legionnaires being tossed around by a feral-looking character, whom the cover copy identified as Timber Wolf (a Legionnaire I'd never seen before). Superboy was on the cover, and Ultra Boy, Brainiac 5, and Element Lad were recognizable, as was Chameleon Boy, even though he sported a different costume. One of the two female Legionnaires was blonde, and therefore must have been Saturn Girl, though she was wearing a purple (!) bikini-type costume -- a definite change from her previous nun-in-training garb. The caped, female Legionnaire flying up behind Timber Wolf was unknown to me – it would take me a few issues to realize it was Duo Damsel in her new costume, also miscolored, at that.
But at least the cover contained one recognizable element of Legiondom: Once again, one of the team's own members had apparently gone nuts and was tossing the others around – just like Superboy did to Mon-El on the cover of LSH # 1.
The story inside was markedly different in tone and style than the earlier Legion stories. First, the title, "Timber Wolf: Dead Hero – Live Executioner," was far more dramatic than "The Lad Who Wrecked the Legion," from LSH # 1. And then there was the splash page. In those days, splash pages served as a second cover, depicting a dramatic scene from within the issue, and not necessarily the point at which the story began. This splash page depicted an animalistic Timber Wolf grabbing for President of Earth, as Superboy and Mon-El struggle to restrain their teammate. Even when the Legion was facing Computo in LSH # 4, the action was not depicted as being so visceral, so violent. It was as if the Legion's creative team had been taking lessons from Marvel Comics (which, as it turned out, may not have been far from the truth).
To this day, "Timber Wolf, Dead Hero, Live Executioner" remains one of my favorite Legion stories. It has a few flaws, to be sure, and the plot is simple: Timber Wolf, feared dead, returns to the Legion but mysteriously attacks the President, then tries to destroy the entire Legion before they discover that he's been brainwashed by an enemy. But the story does an outstanding job of reestablishing the Legion. This was my second introduction to the team in less than a year – and while I was confused by the disappearance of the simple artwork and ‘50s-style costumes, I was easily drawn into the story itself.
Writer Cary Bates invites us into the Legion's world through familiar surroundings (familiar to anyone who knew the Superman/boy mythos, which was just about everyone) – there's Clark Kent, relaxing with Lana Lang under a tree on a hillside. Lana leans forward as if she wants something – but it's not to know if Clark is really Superboy, as she's always suspected. Rather, she wants to know why Clark never tries to kiss her. The question makes Clark sweat. Lana presses him to kiss her anyway, while Clark acts as if he'd rather do anything else. Just then, his Legion belt alarm, which only he can hear, buzzes. Instead of kissing Lana, he uses his heat vision to burn through a twig holding a pair of apples above her head. The apples fall, striking Lana and knocking her out. At last free to answer the Legion signal, Clark switches into his Superboy costume.
I've since read some interesting interpretations of this scene – including one that suggests that Superboy is afraid of sex, and another which posits that the two apples have phallic significance. Another suggests that the scene has sinister connotations: Certainly, to anyone watching from afar, Clark disrobing in front of an unconscious Lana would appear to be less than savory. But whether or not Bates intended for us to perceive all of this is irrelevant. What he is doing here is announcing with clever subtlety that the Legion is about to grow up. He takes two established, teenaged characters – Clark and Lana – and has them experience their first stirrings of sexual awakening. It may be curious that Lana is more aggressive than Clark, or that he reacts so nervously – but maybe not. This story was written in the early ‘70s, after the sexual revolution, when women were asserting themselves in every aspect of life, including sex. Though it was understood that Superboy stories took place some 15 years earlier, that's not how they were depicted; like most comics of the time, they were written and drawn for a contemporary audience. But the end result of this contemporizing appears lopsided: Lana is fast becoming a young woman of the ‘70s while Clark seems rooted in the modesty of the ‘50s. But, hey, he's the future Superman. He's supposed to be modest.
Nevertheless, all of this is a setup for the what we are about the see when the Legion is introduced into the story. Superboy flies into the future, where he finds Legion Headquarters (now a much more elaborate complex than the old clubhouse) deserted, except for one figure – Timber Wolf. His feral appearance and dynamic brown and orange costume (designed by Legion artist Dave Cockrum) is much more animalistic – and, yes, sexual – than any Legion costume before. Timber Wolf is a slender but muscular figure, with a wavy mane of brown hair swept up into points at the temples. In an earlier time, this character design would have been employed for a villain. But Timber Wolf and Superboy immediately clasp arms – they are comrades! Superboy is overjoyed to see him, we learn, because he thought Timber Wolf was dead.
The next page remains one of my favorites in Legion history. It was probably the first time that an ensemble shot of the team had ever been attemped. With Superboy and Timber Wolf standing in the foreground, other members of the team emerge from hiding places across the compound of their headquarters: Mon-El, Brainiac 5, Saturn Girl, Ultra Boy, Sun Boy, Matter-Eater Lad, Cosmic Boy and few others were recognizable to me; others (like Phantom Girl, wearing a new, go-go style costume, and Duo Damsel) were not. Some figures were large, others very small. Furthermore, not every Legionnaire was represented: There's no Lightning Lad (though he does appear briefly two pages later) or Element Lad (despite his appearance on the cover), for example. Even so, the image perfectly encapsulates what the Legion is all about, and why their appeal is so enduring to me and other fans: The sense of camaraderie, of belonging, and of mystery. We don't have to know who everyone is in this scene – there are plenty of friends for us to meet later. But this single shot establishes that they are, indeed, friends – friends who hid so that Timber Wolf could surprise Superboy. Who wouldn't want to belong to such a large and caring family?
The scene also encapsulates something else, as alluded to earlier: the sexualizing of the Legion. The costumes of the girls are much more revealing and contemporary. The boys (particularly Ultra Boy) are much more muscular. Some wear sideburns. Their costumes accentuate their physiques. This is a Legion that could just as easily be going out on dates as hanging around their headquarters, playing with futuristic gizmos, as they did in earlier stories.
This was all part of a plan orchestrated by Bates, Cockrum and their editor, Murray Boltinoff, to contemporize the Legion: to make them appeal to a modern, 1970s audience. Of course, I didn't know this at the time. I did not even know if this was the same Legion I was reading a few months earlier. Within a few issues, it would become clear that it was indeed the same team, and that the changes were attributed to something so natural I was dumbfounded that I hadn't realized it on my own: the passage of time. The reprinted stories in LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES reflected an earlier time in the Legionnaire's lives. The SUPERBOY Legion lived in the "now" time -- if "now" was relevant to a series set in the future. Just as I had gone from one grade in school to the next, and just as many of my friends had adopted more fashionable clothes and hairstyles, so, too, had the Legion changed. It was the first time I had ever been aware of comic book characters being treated as if they real enough to grow as real people would. It made it all the more easier to buy into the Legion's world, to absorb it and make it my own. This was not a static world, but a world of unpredictability.
Within a few issues, I would learn just how unpredictable that world could be.
[ April 08, 2004, 01:12 PM: Message edited by: He Who Wanders ]
-------------------- The Semi-Great Gildersleeve - writing, super-heroes, and this 'n' that
From: The Stasis Zone | Registered: Jul 2003
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Thanks for sharing, HWW! You stated everything very eloquently and I would love to read more. Your paragraph on that initial group shot from #197 was particularly insightful. That panel has always been one of my favorites and you encapsulated why it is, perfectly.
-------------------- The Semi-Great Gildersleeve - writing, super-heroes, and this 'n' that
From: The Stasis Zone | Registered: Jul 2003
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A well-turned memoir and commentary. The "apples hitting Lana" scene is fairly famous (I think Greg may have even posted scans of it), even for those who haven't read that period's issues, as I haven't yet.
It's a problem, showing the passage of fashions -- such as an increase in physical sensuality in comics art -- while not showing the passage of time. I doubt the Cockrum-era Legionnaires were intended to be physically much older than those of the preceding Silver Age.
The changes in appearance happened to track, well, your changes in appearance as you grew up with them. I could see the same phenomenon from the early '80s, as the characters clearly were shading into their 20s ... which is what I was doing, having (re)discovered the Legion at age 22.
Oh, and I don't believe you have to worry about the spoiler phenomenon after 30 years have elapsed. {g} It was a different world in the '70s, though, wasn't it, where fans couldn't share their reactions around the world at nearly the speed of light? And had to settle for mimeographed 'zines?
From: Starhaven Consulate, City of Angels | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
Very nice, Greg! I enjoyed reading your comments & observations tremendously! Very insightful.
-------------------- "Hey Jim! Get Mon out of the Zone!! And...when do we get Condo back?"
From: Paragon City on patrol | Registered: Jul 2003
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I included spoiler warnings because people who are getting the archives may be reading them for the first time (you lucky devils!).
It is curious that the Legion was growing up with its readers at that time. Of course, this was also true for most comics in the early '70s. Instead of trying to appeal to a younger audience (as happened before and afterwards), DC and Marvel tried to adapt to the readers they already had. Too bad they don't seem to be much interested in doing that now.
-------------------- The Semi-Great Gildersleeve - writing, super-heroes, and this 'n' that
From: The Stasis Zone | Registered: Jul 2003
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