By James Shooter, E. Nelson Bridwell, Cary Bates, Curt Swan, George Papp, J. Winslow Mortimer, George Tuska, Dave Cockrum, Murphy Anderson, Mike Esposito, Vince Colletta & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2185-0 (TPB)
Once upon a time, a thousand years from now, a band of super-powered kids from a multitude of worlds took inspiration from the greatest legend of all time and formed a club of heroes. One day those Children of Tomorrow came back in time and invited their inspiration to join them…
Thus began the vast and epic saga of the Legion of Super-Heroes, as initially envisioned by writer Otto Binder & artist Al Plastino when the many-handed mob of juvenile universe-savers debuted in Adventure Comics #247 (April 1958) just as the revived superhero genre was gathering an inexorable head of steam in America. Since that time the fortunes and popularity of the Legion have perpetually waxed and waned, with their future history tweaked and rebooted, retconned and overwritten over and over again to comply with editorial diktat and popular fashion.
This drama-drenched fourth monochrome compendium gathers a chronological parade of futuristic delights from June 1968 to September 1970, originally seen in Adventure Comics #369-380 and the reprint issue #403, plus back-up tales from Action Comics #378-392 – a time when the superhero genre again dipped in popularity. Also included in this enchanting tome are the tentative first forays of the team’s slow revival as an alternating back-up feature in Superboy, via game-changing exploits from #172-173, 176, 183-184, 188 190 and 191, collectively covering March 1971 to October 1972.
During this period the youthful, generally fun-loving and carefree Club of Champions peaked; having only just evolved into a dedicated and driven dramatic action series starring a grittily realistic combat force in constant, galaxy-threatening peril. Although now an overwhelming force of valiant warriors ready and willing to pay the ultimate price for their courage and dedication, science itself, science fiction and costumed crusaders all increasingly struggled against a global resurgence in spiritual questioning and supernatural fiction…
The main architect of the transformation was teenaged sensation Jim Shooter, whose scripts and layouts (generally finished and pencilled by the astoundingly talented and understated Curt Swan) made the series accessible to a generation of fans growing up with their heads in the Future but as the fashions shifted, the series was unceremoniously ousted from its ancestral home and full-length adventures to become a truncated back-up feature in Action Comics. Typically, that shift occurred just as the stories were getting really, really good and truly mature…
Crafted by Shooter, Swan & Jack Abel, tense suspense blooms with ‘Mordru the Merciless!’ (Adventure Comics #369) when the Legion is attacked by their most powerful enemy: a nigh-omnipotent sorcerer the entire assemblage had only narrowly defeated once before.
A sneak attack shatters the whole team and only four escape, using a time-bubble to flee to the remote, archaic era where Superboy lived. With him come Mon-El, Shadow Lass and Duo Damsel, last remnants of a once-unbeatable force.
Mordru’s magic is stronger though and even the time-barrier cannot daunt him. Disguised as mere mortals, the fugitive Legionnaires’ courage shines through in exile as petty gangsters take over Smallville. The teens quashed the parochial plunderers and then opt to return to the 30th century and confront Mordru, only to discover he’s found them first…
The saga concluded in #370’s ‘The Devil’s Jury!’ wherein the band again break free to hide in plain sight by temporarily wiping their own memories to thwart the Dark Lord’s probes. Against appalling odds and with only Clark Kent’s best friend Pete Ross and Insect Queen Lana Lang to aid them, the heroes’ doomed last stand implausibly succeeds when Mordru’s overbearing arrogance causes his own downfall.
Then when the exhausted fugitives get back to the future they joyously discover that Dream Girl and benign sorceress White Witch had undone the deluded Dark Lord’s worst…
Extortion and espionage were the order of the day in #371’s ‘The Colossal Failure!’ as a Legionnaire’s parents are abducted and the hero is forced to botch missions. Ordered to retrain at the high security Legion Academy, Colossal Boy is subsequently caught selling the team’s training secrets and cashiered from the organisation…
This issue also offered the George Papp illustrated ‘When Superboy Walked Out on the Legion!’, wherein hyper-advanced super snobbish aliens threaten Smallville unless Superboy leaves Earth to join their band of press-ganged heroes. It requires ingenuity, a faux civil war and massive destruction to finally convince the alien autocrats to let the assembled champions return to their own home-worlds…
Colossal Boy’s tale of woe concluded in Adventure #372 when his concerned former comrades uncover the cause of the expelled giant’s dilemma, tracking him to a ‘School for Super-Villains!’ (Shooter, Swan & Abel), where the fallen hero is compelled to teach meta-powered man rogues all the LSH’s secrets.
Luckily – and thanks to the expedited induction of apprentice and ergo unknown heroes Timber Wolf and Chemical King – the good guys infiltrate and shut down this first incarnation of the Legion of Super-Villains.
From #373 onwards Golden Age veteran J. Winslow Mortimer replaced Swan as penciller and ‘The Tornado Twins!’ Don and Dawn Allen run rings around and generally humiliate the assembled heroes… but all for a very good cause, before ‘Mission: Diabolical!’ in #374 focusses on the future equivalent of organised crime after most Legionnaires are ambushed and held hostage by the insidious Scorpius gang.
Hard-pressed by rival outfit Taurus, the mobsters decided to “recruit” a team of heroes to equal their enemies’ squad of hyper-powered goons; Rogarth, Mystelor, Shagrek, Quanto and Black Mace. Of course, after infiltrating and defeating their foes, the compromised kids – Supergirl, Element Lad, Dream Girl, Ultra Boy and Matter-Eater Lad – are double-crossed by Scorpius and might have died if not for fortuitous intervention by the Legion of Substitute Heroes…
Next (#375-376) comes a powerful and devious 2-part thriller introducing galaxy-roving heroes The Wanderers, with that temporarily-insane-and-evil group battling the United Planets’ champions. They are far more concerned with determining who will be crowned ‘The King of the Legion!’ …
The matter is only relevant because a trans-dimensional challenger has demanded a duel with the “mightiest Legionnaire”, but when the dust settles the only hero left standing is chubby comic relief Bouncing Boy. When the triumphant winner is spirited away to another cosmos he lands in a feudal wonderland – complete with beautiful princess – menaced by a terrifying invader.
Sadly the hero is soon exposed as shape-shifting Durlan Legionnaire Reep Daggle and not the at-least-human Chuck Taine, but manfully overcomes his abductors’ initial prejudice and defeats usurper threat Kodar. He wins the heart and hand of Princess Elwinda, but is tragically rescued and whisked back across a permanently sealed dimensional barrier by his legion buddies who mistake a Royal Wedding for ‘The Execution of Chameleon Boy!’
A welcome edge of dark and bitter cynicism was creeping into Shooter’s stories, and ‘Heroes for Hire!’ (pencilled by Mortimer & inked by Jack Abel) sees the team charging for their unique services, but it’s only a brilliant ploy to derail the criminal career of Modulus: avatar of sentient living planet Modo who has turned his world into an unassailable haven for the worst villains of the galaxy…
Adventure #378 opens another tense and moving 2-parter as Superboy, Duo Damsel, Karate Kid, Princess Projectra and Brainiac 5 are poisoned and face only ‘Twelve Hours to Live!’
With no cure possible, the quintet separate to spend their last day in the most personally satisfying ways they can – from sharing precious moments with soon-to-be bereaved family to K-Kid’s one-man assault on the Fatal Five – only to reunite for their final moments and die together…
The incredible conclusion sees hyper-advanced being Seeron freeze time and offer to cure the practically dead victims if late arrivals Ultra Boy, Phantom Girl, Chameleon Boy, Timber Wolf, Star Boy, Lightning Lad and Chemical King return to his universe and defeat an invasion by brutes invulnerable to the mighty mental powers of the intellectual overlords…
However, even as the abducted Legionnaires triumph and return, their comrades – having been had been found again – are afforded the honour of ‘Burial in Space!’ …
Happily, a brilliant last-minute solution enables the dead to rise just in time to lose their long-held position in Adventure Comics as changing tastes and shrinking sales prompted an abrupt change of venue.
‘The Legion’s Space Odyssey!’ (# 380 cover-dated May 1969, by Shooter, Mortimer & Abel) sees a select band of Legionnaires teleported to the barren ends of the universe and forced to laboriously battle their way home against impossible odds. This argosy includes the “death” of Superboy and persistent sabotage by the Legion of Super-Pets. There’s a perfectly rational and reasonable excuse for the devious scheme of course, with the tale best remembered by fans as the mission on which Duo Damsel and Bouncing Boy first got together…
From #381 onwards Adventure Comics was filled with the 20th century exploits of Supergirl and the LSH took over her back-up spot in Action Comics, beginning with a reprint in #377 which is not included here.
Original, shorter Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes began in #378 (July 1969) with ‘The Forbidden Fruit!’ by Shooter, Mortimer & Mike Esposito with Timber Wolf deliberately addicted by criminals to a hyper-narcotic lotus in a bold scheme to turn the entire team into pliable junkies. Fortunately, the hero’s love for Light Lass allows him to overcome his awful burden, before #379’s ‘One of us is an Impostor’ (E. Nelson Bridwell, Mortimer & Murphy Anderson) offers a clever mystery to baffle Mon-El, Dream Girl, Element Lad, Shadow Lass and Lightning Lad as thermal thug Sunburst and a clever infiltrator threaten to tear the team apart from within.
Duo Damsel declares war on herself in #380 when one body falls under the sway of an alien Superboy. As half of her turns to crime, only Bouncing Boy can clean up the psychological mess of ‘Half a Legionnaire?’ (Shooter, Mortimer & Abel), after which Matter-Eater Lad reveals lowly origins and a dysfunctional family to lonely Shrinking Violet in #381: ending up ‘The Hapless Hero!’ battling her absurdly jealous absentee boyfriend Duplicate Boy -mightiest hero in the universe…
In #382 a covert team comprising Ultra Boy, Karate Kid, Light Lass, Violet and Timber Wolf attempt to end a potential super-robot arms-race and find that to succeed they have to ‘Kill a Friend to Save a World!’, before still-heartbroken Durlan Reep discovers an Earthly double of lost love Elwinda. However, on morphing into her ideal man he quickly sees the folly of ‘Chameleon Boy’s Secret Identity!’ – a tear-jerker with a hint of happy ending from Bridwell, Mortimer & Abel.
Shooter left his perfect job with #384, but signed off in style with his landmark ‘Lament for a Legionnaire!’ With art misattributed to Mortimer but in fact a welcome fill-in by Curt Swan & Abel, it tells how Dream Girl’s infallible prophecy of Mon-El’s demise comes true whilst his shocking resurrection introduces a whole new thrilling strand to the Lore of the Legion.
Bridwell, Mortimer & Abel show how a vengeance-crazed killer’s quest for retribution fails in ‘The Fallen Starboy!’ before crafting ‘Zap Goes the Legion!’ (Action #386) wherein female foe Uli Algor believes she has outthought and outfought the juvenile agents of justice. She forgot one crucial detail, however…
Then in #387 the creators delightfully added a touch of wry social commentary when the organisation had to downsize and lay off a Legionnaire for tax purposes after the government declares the team has ‘One Hero Too Many!’
Action #388 was an all-reprint Supergirl giant, but the now revenue-compliant Club of Heroes returned in #389 with ‘The Mystery Legionnaire!’ (by Cary Bates, Mortimer & Abel), explaining how robot dictator Klim is defeated by a hero who doesn’t exist, and Bridwell’s ‘The Tyrant and the Traitor’ (#390) reflects political turmoil of the 1970’s in a tale of guerrilla atrocity, destabilising civil war and covert regime change. The Legion Espionage Squad is tasked with doing dirty work, but even Chameleon Boy, Timber Wolf, Karate Kid, Brainiac 5 and Saturn Girl are out of their depth and only ‘The Ordeal of Element Lad!’ in the next issue saves the undercover unit from ignominious failure and certain death.
Action #392 (September 1970) temporarily ended the feature’s unbroken run with a low-key but gripping yarn from Bates, Mortimer & Abel including alternate dimensions and preposterous testing of ‘The Legionnaires that Never Were!’…
The Frantic Futurists weren’t gone too long. In 1971 a concerted push to revive them began with March-dated Superboy # 172 and ‘Brotherly Hate!’ by Bridwell & George Tuska. The sharp, smart yarn details the convoluted origins of twins Garth and Ayla Ranzz AKA Lightning Lad & Light Lass and their troubled relationship with older brother Mekt – the deadly outlaw Lightning Lord.
At the same time Adventure Comics #403 (April 1971) was released: an all-Legion reprint special which included new ‘Fashions from Fans’ by Bridwell, Ross Andru & Esposito as well as a comprehensive ‘Diagram of Legion Headquarters Complex’, included here for your delight and delectation…
Some of those fan-costumes – generally the skimpier ones designed by boys for the girl heroes – were adopted for ongoing backups appearing in Superboy. They continued the comeback with ‘Trust Me or Kill Me!’ (#173 by Bates & Tuska). Here, Superboy must devise a way to determine which Cosmic Boy is his true friend and which a magical duplicate made by malefic Mordru.
The origin of Invisible Kid and secrets of his powers are examined in #176 when a crook duplicates the boy genius’ fadeaway gifts in ‘Invisible Invader!’, whilst Bates, Tuska & Vince Colletta report on the ‘War of the Wraith-Mates!’ (#183) with energy entities renewing an eons-old war of the sexes after possessing Mon-El, Shadow Lass, Karate Kid and Princess Projectra.
In a tale by Bates. Superboy #184 hinted at days of greatness to come with ‘One Legionnaire Must Go!’ Here Matter-Eater Lad is framed and replaced by his own little brother, but the big advance was the inking of LSH fanatic Dave Cockrum over Murphy Anderson’s pencils. The neophyte artist would gradually transform the look, feel and fortunes of the Legion before moving to Marvel and doing exactly the same with an almost forgotten series entitled X-Men…
With Superboy #188’s Bates-scripted ‘Curse of the Blood-Crystals!’ (July 1972), Anderson began inking Cockrum, in the sixth stunning back-up tale of a now unstoppable Legion revival that would eventually lead to them taking over the entire comic book. This clever yarn of cross-&-double-cross finds a Legionnaire possessed by a magical booby-trap and forced to murder Superboy… but which of the two dozen heroes is actually the prospective killer?
Superboy #190 featured ‘Murder the Leader!’ as the Fatal Five attack during the election of a new Legion Commander. Rival candidates Saturn Girl and Mon-El must work together if either is to take the top job, after which this volume concludes with stunning thriller ‘Attack of the Sun-Scavenger!’ (Bates & Cockrum from #191). In a staggering burst of comics brilliance, manic solar scoundrel Dr. Regulus again attacks Sun Boy and his Legion comrades, using his own apparent death as key to ultimate victory…
The Legion of Super-Heroes is unquestionably one of the most beloved and bewildering creations in funnybook history and largely responsible for the growth of groundswell movements that became American Comics Fandom. Moreover, these scintillating and seductively addictive stories – as much as Julie Schwartz’s Justice League or Marvel’s Fantastic Four – fired the interest and imaginations of generations of and underpinned the industry we all know today.
If you love comics and haven’t read this stuff, you are the poorer for it and need to enrich your future days as soon as possible.
© 1968-1972, 2010 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.