A Comic a Day: Adventure Comics #333

Adventure Comics #333

June 1965

Cover art by: Curt Swan & George Klein

Story: The War Between Krypton and Earth!

Writer: Edmond Hamilton

Pencils: John Forte

Inks: George Klein

Members of the Legion are on an archaeological dig when they discover a tablet written in Kyrptonian. Hey, nice to see the kids involved in a scientific endeavor outside of their clubhouse. Later, Brainiac 5 does confirm that the tablet they found is millions of years old, and Superboy had translated it. It was to commemorate the war between Krypton and Earth. The super teens decide to investigate what the heck went on.

Superboy, takes one team that includes: Saturn Girl, Colossal Boy, Element Lad, and Lightning Lad. The other time bubble has: Brainiac 5, Star Boy, Chameleon Boy, Phantom Girl, and Light Lass. Alright, now we got the teams squared away.

We next see Superboy and his team arrive at Krypton. They soon discover a scientifically advanced group of Kryptonians who are planning to leave Krypton for Earth, since they are hated for the scientificty ways by the rest of the planet. The teens agree to help them finish their Space Ark, and go with them to Earth.

When, they arrive at Earth, the Sun is still so new it is a red star. Thus no powers for Superboy. On Earth, Brainy and his group find another set of aliens from the Planet Vruun colonizing the planet. This team helps the Vruunians finish building their city.

The two groups soon meet with Superboy making eyes at Leta Lal one of the Vruunian leaders, and she is attracted to him as well. The situation dissolves very quickly (2 panels). Brainiac 5 tells Saturn Girl that now that they know the Vruunians are here they should leave for another planet. Saturn Girl counters that the Kyrptonians made a great effort to get there, so why should they leave?

Wait! Wait! Wait! These guys are on Earth. It is a pretty decent sized planet. Surely, someone could have picked a different spot. The Kryptonians had just arrived, they could have easily gotten back into their ship, and found a new location to colonize. Also, I can't help but think if the Legionnaires weren't there this never would have escalated so quickly. Since Brainiac 5 and Saturn Girl were the instigators.

Battle lines have been drawn! The Legionnaires on each side agree to help once they learn their allies will use non-lethal weapons. Leta Lal bemoans her fate, and why must she begin going against Superboy, and he, of course, thinks the same thing.

We get a number of nifty scenes. Chameleon Boy spying on his former comrades. Brainiac 5 trying to find out why the Atlanteans (Vruunians) are bothered by Earth's atmosphere. Star Boy taking Element Lad out of the mix. We also find out that the Atlantean weapons are a little to powerful, and it ends up killing a few of the Kryptonians. Whoops!

Superboy can't believe that his friends would ally themselves with killers, and volunteers to sneak back to Atlantis and find out the truth. Saturn Girl uses her telepathy and finds out the Hormones of Steel are also running roughshod over the kid, and he wants to see Leta Lal again. Well, Superboy does make it to Leta Lal, yet never finds out the truth about the weapons. Never even asks, he is just happy to see her again.

Brainiac determines that it is Xenon in the air that is harming the Vruunians, and it will eventually kill them. The Kryptonians launch a missile at Atlantis to get revenge for their fallen fellows. Saturn Girl warns Superboy, who flies up and intercepts it. A very lame twist is that it is actually Mon-El who just arrived. Don't know why it needed to look like Superboy who stopped it.

Brainiac 5 then artificially jump starts the Vruunians, and they end up being the race of underwater dwelling Atlanteans. Which of course means, that Aquaman is at least partial alien. Superboy is sad he will never see Leta again. Plus, we learn that the Kryptonians later perished because they were a small number, and the tame giant lizards (think dinosaurs) they brought to Earth escaped, and went wild and ended up killing them.

Well that is quite the downer. I can't believe how dark these Silver Age stories are. They needed to go back to the happier times of the Golden Age and not have such depressing tales with so much death and destruction.

Seriously, a really good comic, more in line with what I like about Edmond Hamilton's writing. John Forte's art is great because not everyone looks like a super buff dude/dudette. Highly, recommended. You can skip the Superboy reprint in the back.

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  • Here at Stately Dunbar Manor, I have a copy of the first LSH Showcase.  Confession time:  I've never gotten all the way through it, even though I bought it 2 or 3 years ago.  Years ago, I bought several issues of Adventure Comics from the late 1980s when it was in digest form, reprinting early Silver Age LSH stories.  I had the same problem then as I do now:  I find the pre-Shooter LSH dreadfully dull.  The personalities of the Legionnaires, for the most part, seem completely interchangable to me.

    And the odd thing is, I really like Silver Age Superman.

    However, this story sounds intriguing.  Do other people find the early stuff, circa Adventure 300, as boring as I do?  If so, do things get better?  If you are a fan of the early stuff, what am I missing?

    It's been a while since I've cracked open that LSH Showcase, maybe I should give it another try.

  • The reprint of the story I have doesn't reproduce the cover. At some point I decided the bit where Mon-El dresses as Superboy was there to explain the cover. I imagined an image of Superboy catching a missile, with dialogue from a watcher along the lines "Superboy has caught the missile! But how can he have super-powers here in the distant past, under a RED sun?" Eventually I was so sure of this I thought I'd looked the cover up online and seen it. When I finally saw the real cover I couldn't believe it.

    John, I like the imagination in the stories, and I like John Forte's distinct, naïve approach to SF. If you didn't get to it, you might like "The Renegade Super-Hero" from Adventure Comics #316, which has members of the team in conflict and a lot of action (and which introduced the Ultra Boy/Phantom Girl romance).

  • There are superpower ideas that are too offbeat or insufficiently interesting for the star of a series. Nowadays we're all familiar with many superheroes who don't have their own titles but back then I suppose the Legion's feature was one of the chief places you might find these ideas: a boy who can inflate himself and bounce, a girl who triplicates herself, a boy who has matter-eating powers.

  • You would think that the Legion would suggest that one side take the Eastern Hemisphere and the other the Western Hemisphere. At most there couldn't be more than a couple of hundred of each race.

    This is the most emotion we see out of Superboy in a Legion story in a long time. He does seem to have a fetish for mermaids!

    Still I wonder how warmongering Brainiac 5 would have been had Supergirl been on the other side! It does look like he enjoys arguing with Saturn Girl!

    I'm betting that when they returned to the 30th century, they silently agreed to never discuss their Civil War again!

  • John, while I agree that a lot of the Legionnaires lacked some personality, at times they came out. Like here. Generally, I really enjoyed Edmond Hamilton's stories. He came from a sci-fi author background, and he created some truly alien worlds, and unique stories. I dug them at least.


  • Luke Blanchard said:

    The reprint of the story I have doesn't reproduce the cover. At some point I decided the bit where Mon-El dresses as Superboy was there to explain the cover. I imagined an image of Superboy catching a missile, with dialogue from a watcher along the lines "Superboy has caught the missile! But how can he have super-powers here in the distant past, under a RED sun?" Eventually I was so sure of this I thought I'd looked the cover up online and seen it. When I finally saw the real cover I couldn't believe it.

     

     

    The embarassing part for me, Luke, is that, as many times as I've read "The War Between Krypton and Earth", I never stopped to puzzle over the whole "Mon-El borrowed Superboy's costume" thing.  It took up two panels out of the entire story, and I guess I was just so used to the way the early Legion stories tossed out plot points in passing, I never stopped to consider the logic of this one.

    I didn't connect it with the cover.  There, I presumed that Superboy able to fly by the same method as were Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl, who were also airbourne---thanks to a flight ring.

    If I had to advance an explanation, I''d guess that Edmund Hamilton intended to give the Mon-El-as-Superboy thing a stronger emphasis and justification, but he ran out page count.  Thus, it was shoehorned into two panels.

  • I notice the art on the cover shows the red sun, but the dialogue doesn't draw attention to it. Contrast Superman #164, where Superman's thought balloon explains the sun's significance.

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