Adventure Comics #351
June 1966
Cover art by: Curt Swan & George Klein
Story: The Forgotten Legion!
Writer: E. Nelson Bridwell
Pencils: Curt Swan
Inks: George Klein
I never realized so many anecdotes I had heard about the Legion over the years took place in one comic.
For instance:
We are introduced to the Hag, who by a spell is turned into the White Witch. Future member of the Legion.
Lightning Lad's robotic arm is replaced by a real arm.
Bouncing Boy has his super powers returned.
Superboy and Supergirl had their memories of the Legion erased, and it is restored here.
There was a cloud of green kryptonite around the Earth preventing the Boy and Maid of Steel from returning, and Color Kid turns it into the harmless blue version.
We learn Miss Terious and Sir Prize are actually Dream Girl and Star Boy. After they are found out, they are both asked to stay.
Outside of that we have a fat Matter-Eater Lad, who loses his weight. An appearance by both the Subs (whose help was actually asked for) and the Legion of Super-pets.
This was all started by Evillo who had captured Lightning Lad in hopes of turning him evil, and joining his Devil's Dozen. At some point he turns LL over to his chief scientist, and he is the one who ends up fixing Lightning Lad, Bouncing Boy, and MEL.
The Hag is turned into the White Witch by the disguised Dream Girl who has the Legion acquire the components of the spell she needed to cast to save her sister.
Just seemed liked Bridwell really wanted to fix up a lot things with the Legion.
Replies
"Just seemed liked Bridwell really wanted to fix up a lot things with the Legion."
Actually, Mr. Herrick, this story, and its first half---"The Outcast Super-Heroes", from Adventure Comics # 350 (Nov., 1966)---was intended to be more of a house-cleaning. Bridwell explained how this two-parter came to be in a mid-'70's interview that appeared in the old Legion fanzine, The Legion Outpost.
As I've mentioned before, Superman editor Mort Weisinger---and, no doubt, the Legion writers---were frustrated by the number of Legionnaires with Kryptonian super-powers: Superboy, Supergirl, Mon-El, and to a slightly lesser extent, Ultra Boy. It was difficult to come up with menaces sufficient to challenge any one of them, let alone all four. (That's the reason why Legionnaire Star Boy, who was introduced with a similar array of Kryptonian-like powers, was shelved until he could be refitted into a less-formidable hero.)
That's why in most of the stories, Mon-El was usually said to be tied up on a mission in another dimension or on the other side of the galaxy or some other remote place where he couldn't get back in time to deal with that issue's crisis. Ultra Boy, with his one-power-at-a-time limitation, was a little easier to accommodate. And they just generally ignored Supergirl, as most of the readers didn't seem to care about her, anyway.
But Superboy was the rub. Adventure Comics had been his magazine before the Legion took it over and he was still being used as the big draw, appearing front and centre on every cover. That meant he had to be included in every story. This challenged the writers' ingenuity. They either had to come up with menaces that the Boy of Steel couldn't put paid to by page two---and, to be sure, they did that often enough---or they had to find a way to minimise his participation, yet still justify his presence on the cover.
Sometimes, it was easy to do, as in the Legion's first case against Universo. The cover of Adventure Comics # 349 (Oct., 1966) showed Superboy being put under a hypnotic trance, like the other Legionnaires depicted (except the Boy of Steel, of course, was in the forefront of the cover). But the story within sidelined him from the main action by specifying that the kryptonite which powered Universo's mesmerising amulet prevented him from shaking off the spell, as the other Legionnaires had done.
Other times, they got sneaky. The cover of Adventure Comics # 344 (May, 1966), the first half of the Super-Stalag of Space story, features an escaping Superboy being blasted by kryptonite force-rings. However, when they read the story within, the readers discovered that "Superboy" was actually a Durlan who had been frozen in the form of the Boy of Steel, and it's he who is blasted by the kryptonite force-beam. Superboy never appears in that issue at all.
It was a pain for the writers to put Superboy in a story, and it was a pain to write him out.
By the summer of 1966, though, the Legion series was so firmly established and such a fan favourite on its own merit that it no longer needed the Boy of Steel as a draw. Or so Weisigner believed. So he and Nelson Bridwell came up with a script that not only would put Superboy and Supergirl out of the Legion, but also provided a rationale for why the Legionnaires couldn't come screaming to them for help anytime things really hit the fan.
Thus, the intractable green-kryptonite cloud around thirtieth-century Earth and the contrived excuse for removing their memories of the Legion. (Notice that the Legionnaires weren't concerned about twentieth-century villains taking advantage of Legion secrets that Jimmy Olsen or Pete Ross or Lana Lang might inadvertently reveal.)
To compensate for the loss of the super-cousins, Bouncing Boy would have his powers restored to him, Lightning Lad would be returned to full strength by regrowing his right arm, and Matter-Eater Lad . . . well, what the hell, they'd go ahead and make him slim, again. And, for good measure, they'd let Star Boy and Dream Girl back in the club.
They could still send Mon-El off to the other side of the universe most of the time, and Ultra Boy's power-limitation was just enough to work around.
That was the plan. And Mort and Nelson almost got away with it, too. Right down to the next-to-last page of the second half.
Unfortunately, either N.P.P. publisher Jack Liebowitz or editorial director Irwin Donenfeld---Bridwell doesn't specify whom in the interview---lacked Weisinger's faith in the popularity of the Legion on its own. When they got wind of Weisinger's intentions, the powers-that-were disagreed vehemently. So vehemently that it was one of the rare times when they put a foot down and overruled Weisinger.
That's why the solution to the whole green-k cloud mess was rectified in a matter of four panels on page 24, and by such a shaky device that Weisinger no doubt hoped the readers wouldn't think on overmuch.
...All these years later , and I still have never read #350 , ther first part of this one , which I missed at the time :-( (My first 'VENT was the Karate Kid-introducing , maiden Shooter story IIRC?? Was the first Parasite in ACTION Jimbo's Krptonian bow hello ?) .
Where is it reprinted ??? Please .
...Superboy is sure drawn out-of-proportion larger than the other normal-sized Legionnaires !!! Oh well...WHOSE name is in the logo , anyway:-) ?
Some comments:
Wow, great information as usual, Commander! Thanks a bunch.
Emerkeith said:
Not really. In relation to the "camera" he is a lot closer to the eye. The camera is looking down, and Superboy is flying higher and closer, thus he is bigger.
Philip Portelli said:
Thanks for pointing that out, Philip. I hadn't noticed.
I doubt that Pete or Lana had that much Legion tech in their possession except for a flight ring and that would be for Lana only.
As far as I know, neither could even contact the Legion on their own.
OTOH, Jimmy could have had some 30th century gadgets in his apartment. With all the Superman souvenirs, otherworldly fruit and alien gizmos stashed there, who could tell?
Didn't the rings' emergency signals work across time? In DC Comics Presents #43 Jimmy used his ring to summon the Legion from the future, but that was a 1981 story so I don't know if that's Silver Age lore. In Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #2 (1983) several Legionnaires got stuck in the past, and I don't recall if some explanation was given as to why they couldn't use their rings to get help or it was assumed the rings couldn't do that.
I think that it was a mistake to show Jimmy with a flight ring, considering he was never shown with one in the 20th century. If he had one, he would have used it!
Jimmy was an honorary Legionnaire like Pete Ross and Rond Vdar. I know Pete didn't have a ring and I doubt that Rond did. Unless they were give rings with just communication functions and not flight.
Lana as Insect Queen was a Legion Reservist like Kid Psycho so she could have had a flight ring. Both Bouncing Boy (sans powers) and Star Boy (Post-expulsion) were Reservists and retained their flight rings. Dream Girl had one, too but I think she got one from the Subs as she was briefly a member.
Now that I think about it, the absence of Star Boy and Dream Girl in the Subs vs. Pets chapter was a major clue of the story!
Actually, Jimmy did have a Legion flight ring, briefly. He received one as a birthday present from the Legion of Super-Heroes in "The One-Man Legion", from Jimmy Olsen # 99 (Jan., 1967).
However, shortly after the Legionnaires time-sent it to him, the Jimster was kidnapped by a villain calling himself the Weapons Wizard. The intrepid cub reporter used the ring and some other gifts from the Legion to fight the bad guy, and during their battle, the ring was damaged and became inoperative.
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