Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Re-Reading the Legion: Archives #3

AWP! I took the wrong image to scan - Stiles got the right one, and it is a beauty. It's very rare to see a Legion group shot of them all in a circle; they're usually flying or all facing forward.

Very effective, and menacing to Lex Luthor..

P.S. hope I used the semi-colon correctly.

Adventure #328

Even though Nura already played this role, I always find myself comparing Command Kid to Dynamo Boy, which comes almost right after. The Dynamo Boy story is better IMO because he's such a little snot, and then we get to see him get the best double cross ever, and his major comeuppance. So "the Lad Who Wrecked the Legion" always exists in that story's shadow for me.

I'm also a proponent of the theory that the demon controlling him is Bounty.

I also find it fascinating that after phase #1 (intros) and #2 (consolidation and detail), the next phase of the LSH has them not adding new members but instead continually being infiltrated or finding reasons someone doesn't join. Mort probably felt the roster was too large already but it also underscores some of the themes Hamilton and Siegel had about fears of people subverting a group.

Siegel is back again for a bit and this time he brings the great artwork of Jim Mooney with him. This marks the end of Forte's almost unbroken run of LSH stories. He'd be back for a few more IIRC, though I wonder if his health started to wane here? It certainly marks a shift for the strip as a whole.

This issue has a lot of cool tidbits:

- support of the theory of evolution!

- call back to Jungle King, Molock and Zaryan!

- first reveal of home planets for some legionnaires?

- Bouncing Boy shows back up! But *choke* his powers are only restored temporarily.

- ol' gullible Thom falls for another one!

The arrival of Imra and Jan, who haven't been in the story thus far, kind of disrupts the entire sequence. From there, things are wrapped up way too quickly. It wasn't a great story but it wasn't that bad until the final 4 pages or so, which resolve things in a somewhat unsatisfying manner.

All in all, there's a reason why I usually forget this one.

Poor Bouncing Boy. He looked so crestfallen when he found out the restoration was only temporary. Couldn't Superboy have warned him beforehand?

All those Legionnaires sure are gullible. Haven't they ever been infiltrated before this? The "Ultra Boy as fake criminal" story had already happened! Besides, while Command Kid's illusion powers are formidable, remember thta he can't actually physically affect anything. Hello Legionnaires!

And the whole "Hey Superboy, ultra Boy, Mon-El I detected trouble but I won't tell you where it is bit" is just silly. For one, all thre have amazing vision powers, surely it shouldn't have taken them that long to figure out it was a wild goose chase.

Dynamo Boy is a much better story. Someone controls a legionnaire or someone impersonates one has already been used an awful lot.

I love the idea that the demon could be Bounty! I wonder if there are any scenes in 5YL of Bounty/Dawnstar avoiding gold. Since this story ends with Phantom Girl trailing, but not catching or reporting back on the demon's whereabouts, there's certainly an opening for it to return.

There are some nice tidbits - supraconscious? Big idea for young readers.

That leading scientist of Preztor looks like a deranged Will Shakespeare.

The Legion is still referred to as a club, which seems to downplay their importance. Any teenagers can form a club and do good deeds.

Isn't this story a great ad for the all-pervasive NSA and other spy agencies? We can monitor everything, all the time, and catch evil-doers.

You'd think the legionnaires would have been a bit leery of Princess Projectra and her illusion powers after the Command Kid experience.

You did.

I love loose ends like this. (Not so much the Bounty connection, because that story happened 'after my time' and isn't really part of my head-canon.) The demon is floating around earth, causing trouble. Who knows how many terrible situations it has caused (or just made worse) over the years?

I used it in my Glorith fic, but there's tons of places it could meddle. Did it have something to do with the ease with which Universo turned the earth against the Legion? Did it have anything to do with the rise of xenophobia?

Tons of potential!

The rogue Demon from Taboo Island loose on Earth could be the Legion arch-villain that they don't even know about!

Like the villain they never knew had been battling them for years. I like that!

Adv. 328

I devoted an entire thread to reviewing this issue six years ago.

My opinion hasn't changed much on re-reading it; however, since this was my first Legion story, I'm admittedly biased. I still feel it is superior to the Dynamo Boy story in terms of themes explored, how Command Kid hoodwinks the Legionnaires into wanting to be like him, and how the clues about gold resurface and are ultimately resolved. I also like Command Kid better as an antagonist since he is highly competent as a Legionnaire and gives the others reason to both dislike him and feel outclassed by him. (Once again, though, CK isn't truly evil. It seems that most of the Legion villains in these stories were simply misled in one way or another.)

A lot of good points have been made about the story's weaknesses, though, such as Element Lad and Saturn Girl arriving out of nowhere to save the day and Superboy, Mon-El and Ultra Boy once again being sent away. However, I do like the scene in which CK creates an illusion of Superboy lashing out at UB and Mon--it's one of the most dramatic scenes in the story and made for a good cover shot, both in the Adv. 328 original and the LSH # 1 reprint.

Another plus is that the Legionnaires and their powers are more naturally displayed as part of this story whereas, in other recent stories, they seem to forget they have powers. Several Legionnaires do interesting things here: Ultra Boy saves Superboy from the gold k meteor, Phantom Girl disarms a nuclear reactor, Lightning Lad summons clouds with his lightning bursts, and, of course, Element Lad transmutes the control panel to gold. This feels more like a super-hero story rather than a story in which the heroes happen to have powers.

And yes, I like the Jim Mooney art, too. His figures look more natural than Forte's, yet not as perfect as Swan's.

So, while 328 is not a flawless gem, it is, I think, one of the best stories we've had since 319 and probably Siegel's strongest Legion story overall.

I hadn't realized this, but you may very well be right. This could be the first time some of their home worlds have been identified, unless they were listed on an earlier letters page.

Here's the cover to Adv. 327:



I was curious as to what deprived us of a cover-starring debut for our Brin Londo. At least he got a blurb at the bottom, right?

As I mentioned a few pages ago, it has to be because that same month the Legion dominated Superboy's cover, right?

Because the above Adv cover is for a "Hall of Fame Classic" (re: random reprint).

Hm. It isn't labelled explicitly as such, so I wasn't aware it was a reprint. Seems a generic Superboy scenario.

Yea, I can see dozens of Superboy stories like the in the 50's alone.

Yeah, Brin got ROBBED being bumped for such a generic story!

As for Adv. 328, I think in my mind I had Command Kid confused with Dynamo Boy. CK's look is pretty much what I imagined DB to look like. Interesting that DB appears in only two issues.

So many throwaway planets that are (probably) never mentioned again! Preztor is just the latest of many names that are rattled off in story after story, just as we had so many listed in the previous issue's new monitor board that were unfamiliar. If this is indeed the first mention of the various Legionnaires' home planets, it's a wonder they stuck in this willy-nilly planet-naming orgy! My point is that the U.P. is even BIGGER than what our normal perception of it is, and, well, it's kind of a shame that we don't revisit and explore more of them.

I guess one sort-of-unanswered questions is whether or not Command Kid had his powers before he was possessed. The obvious answer may be yes, but it's not spelled out here. It seems just as likely that the demon's expulsion caused his power loss. It's said explicitly that the demons would find the Legionnaires desirable for possession because of their powers. CK also refers to them as "my" powers in the aftermath. On a rereading of the sequence, I tend to think the latter is true, and the poor kid loses his powers because of it.

There's definitely a theme here of the Legionnaires feeling inadequate compared to Superboy, Ultra Boy and Mon-El. Oddly enough, they feel the same compared to Command Kid, whose powers are very similar to later member Projectra. (Ironic, since Projectra was considered a weaker-powered member until the Baxter era.) This inferiority complex reflects the views of fandom, particularly regarding the powers of the girl legionnaires.

To see it played up here with so many Legionnaires turning to CK for help is a little disheartening. For the most part I've always viewed them as being confident in their powers and their roles, especially in the pre-boot. There are certainly exceptions, such as how Violet is portrayed in the Silver Age, but to see them so desperate as to trust the egotistical CK and to let him put them into comas is pretty extreme. It was especially shocking for Violet, who is pointedly spotlighted having suspicious thoughts about him a couple of times. If Siegel hadn't written those in, it would've made more sense for her, just as you could explain Sun Boy with his space-fatigue, Star Boy with his well-documented gullibility, Garth with his PTSD/survivor's guilt and fill in the blanks with some of the others.

Cos, however, is a definite head-scratcher to be among them. He's always been the consummate Legionnaire...but maybe that's not so apparent in the early Silver Age era (as some of you have pointed out in other reviews).

In any case maybe the Legion started an off-panel support group after the events of this issue. It certainly looks like the self-esteem issues needed to be addressed in a BIG way! The galaxy needs you, you crazy kids!!!

Perhaps the demon also had the little-known (and never mentioned!) power to fan the flames of insecurity and self-doubt, making those around him less confident and easier to 'command.' (Which would perhaps fit his hosts moniker of 'Command Kid' better than just illusion casting!)

^Perhaps, but I would hope that's not the case. As I've said many times, I like my heroes to be human and have human frailties such as occasional bouts of self doubt.

I'll concede that it's unlikely every Legionnaire depicted would have fallen for CK's ploy to get them into pill-induced comas. But it doesn't seem any more egregious than how the Legionnaires have been depicted in most of these stories. From Element Lad's near fatal exposure to radiation as part of a test in 323 to the Legionnaire's rather thoughtless assaults on the citadel in 319, they don't often behave like heroes, or at least heroes with an ounce of intelligence.

I'd like to think Mort and crew knew what they were doing. They purposely modeled the Legionnaires after kids their audience could identify with, so they chose situations and themes with which their audience would be familiar, such as Lex wanting to embarrass the Legionnaires (and in turn being embarrassed by them), Lone Wolf's longing for friendship, and the Legionnaires feeling inferior to an arrogant member. From our perspective, it's hard to swallow heroes as well established as the Legionnaires falling prey to CK's scheme so quickly, but if one sees them as teenagers still struggling to find their own identities and succumbing to peer pressure, perhaps it makes a bit more sense.

A super-hero support group . . .

Given what we now know about soldiers and PTSD, I wouldn't be surprised if every single Legionnaire required counseling from time to time.

Saturn Girl, Tellus and Dream Girl seem like they would need bucketsfull of therapy.

Depending on how her powers work, Dream Girl may have not only seen everything that everyone else has seen, but also all the stuff that *didn't* happen, all the times that plans failed, or someone reacted a second too late, and everyone died, again and again and again.

Saturn Girl and Tellus are constantly having to touch the minds of entities that are evil, insane and / or incredibly mind-bendingly alien to their own. In the Universo Project, we see how just contacting the minds of Dream Girl, Chameleon Boy and Brainiac 5, *her allies,* is an incredibly alien and difficult task for Saturn Girl, who, of all the telepaths in the Legion universe, is probably the most experienced at touching upon alien minds that function so drastically differently (due to unusual modes of thinking, completely different brain structures, and / or alien sensory abilities). For Tellus, it must be even more psychologially trying, since even contacting Invisible Jacques' mind would count as 'terribly alien' to him (and, unlike Titanians, Hyrkraians aren't naturally telepathic, and he was experimented on by Gil'Dishpan to give him telepathy so that he'd be easier to order around, denying him generations worth of adaptation and training and whatnot that Titanians can fall back upon).

And there's just not enough therapy in the universe to deal with the sorts of stuff that Mon-El has been through, or Element Lad, or Wildfire.

Timber Wolf's various dramas, which still are insane and freakish by 'real world' standards, pale by comparison!

Blok's another odd one. Last survivor of a dead race, much like Jan or some version of Superkal, and that status doesn't seem to affect him *at all.*

"Oh yeah, my entire race was killed, and then I was raised by a super-villain who brainwashed me and my childhood friends to be hate-filled assassins. Now I hang out with the people I spent my childhood training to murder and whenever I see my childhood friends, I beat them up and send them back to jail."

Good observation.



You make an excellent point. Kids reading this story would have been more focused on what the Legionnaires were doing than on the adults, who, in Legion stories (and Peanuts stories, etc.) are always in the background. I think it's significant that the boy Legionnaires don't hold the girls' actions against them or become "women haters," even though the girls were not acting in their own will.



I was probably 10 or 11 when I first read the Thora story, which was given to me by a friend. I didn't get to read 326 until well into adulthood. I have to confess my reaction to girl Legionnaires ganging up on boys was somewhat different. I didn't see the fun in it at all. I suppose on some level it reflected the real tensions I was facing at the time, but I think it also drove home the point that girls really can hurt boys (and vice versa)--a shocking, sobering, and horrifying realization to someone who was not yet in puberty.

Of course, it's Kara's love for Brainy that enables her to shake off Thora's brainwashing--one of the most cliched resolutions imaginable. The real girls I knew were not like this. They wouldn't bat an eye at making the boys scrub the floor (hah! what an image, IIRC, of Brainy doing the same). Although Thora loses in the end, I felt much of the tension between the girl and boy Legionnaires remained unresolved.

This tension, I think, stemmed in part from the women's liberation movement which this story tries, unsuccessfully, I think, to reflect. Men were portrayed as the enemy, the oppressors of women, by the more militant factions of the movement, and there was a lot of justification to the portrayal: for centuries, male-dominated societies had treated women badly. Unfortunately, the Thora story fails to make any significant statement or offer insights into the issue. If a story seeks to use "relevant" issues such as women's liberation, drug abuse, overpopulation, and race relations, it should do more than turn those tensions into cardboard cutout excuses for good guys to whip bad guys. It should take advantage of the moment to educate readers. (There's no reason why a super-hero story can't be both educational and entertaining.)

In 326, ironically, there is a greater sense of resolution, but it comes in the form of the boys saving a planet full of women. I can't be sure what kind of effect this had on young female readers, but I imagine it did send a message that women need men to save them from their own mistakes. If only the girl Legionnaires had found some way to shake off their brainwashing in this story, too.

As is well known, female readers of comics did not exist back then and never have existed! Stop spreading LIES, Huey!

Some good discussion going on here. For me, I like my battles of the sexes with a lot of charm, humor and a little romance. All too often, I find stories lacking these things and leaving me generally unsatisfied.

There must have been one or two back then. Right, Cramey?

I have proof! One of my old issues of Adventure has the name of a former owner written across the top of the splash page...and the first name is Janice!

While Lardy is clearly joking, its interesting that the letters pages almost always include one or more letters from girl readers.