Tales of the Legion of Super-heroes #316
October 1984
Cover art: Terry Shoemaker & Larry Mahlstedt
Story: Meanwhile...
Writer: Paul Levitz
Pencils: Terry Shoemaker
Inks: Karl Kesel
Cosmic Boy as well as Night Girl, Polar Boy, and Stone Boy from the Subs have been staking out a spaceport to stop some smuggling. They have been hitting the same smuggler for quite a while now, and this guy is able to trap the heroes in a spaceship, rocketing then into space and disabling the controls. All the while the ship has been booby trapped.
Stone Boy is very distressed at their chances of living, and Polar Boy lets him know he is the only one who can guarantee himself survival. Cosmic Boy can't slow their ship down, but he does encase them in a metal ball and busts out of the ship. Using Polar Boy's power to help keep everything together while he sends a distress signal to his brother in the Legion Academy. They are soon rescued.
We also revisit the sub-plot between the two Invisible Kids with Jacques convincing Lyle to accompany him back to the dimension Lyle was found in. A new plot explodes as Wildfire mysteriously disappears.
This a perfectly good example of just a good, quality comic. It is a smaller story which I always like. Not everything has to be a galaxy level threat that requires the entire Legion's attention.
A few bits I liked:
Dr. Gym'll remarking how much easier his life would be if a few more Legionnaires retired.
The little snow that fell in Stone Boy when Polar Boy got into his face. A really nice touch.
Seeing Comet Queen and Laurel Kent make an appearance, albeit very briefly.
Once again I really liked the art of Shoemaker and Kesel. It reminds me a little bit of Chris Sprouse.
The back-up concludes the White Witch story with her leaving Sorcerer’s World, and teaming-up with Prince Evillo (she admits her mind wasn't in the right place then). Her return to SW, in which we see her transformation over time to her current look. Then finally accepting membership into the Legion. Nicely done story.
Replies
Paul Levitz's ability to juggle a huge cast was amazing. The team itself was enough of a challenge for any writer, and look at how well Levitz handled them AND the Subs, the kids at the Academy, Dr. Gym'll etc etc
I wrote a post explaining what was happening with the newsstand and the Baxter versions of Legion of Super-Heroes and New Teen Titans at the time. It was a bit long, so I've put it here.
According to DC Indexes Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes #316 came out the same month as the Baxter Legion of Super-Heroes #3.
I missed the issues with the resolution with the return of Lyle Norg storyline, so I don't know how much of the lead-up to them is explained in them. Pardon me if all the following is. Legion of Super-Heroes #299 had featured a story in which Jacques went to the other universe to rescue Wildfire, who was human there and didn't want to come back. While there Jacques met Lyle Norg, who told him that Myla from Superboy #203 had turned out to be one of that world's illusions (reversing the #203 story's conclusion, which indicated he was going to be eternally happy with her). The reader was led to suppose this was the real Lyle Norg, but the possibility was left slightly open that he wasn't. (As I recall, Jacques muses that if the man he has met is what he seems to be, he has just witnessed a spirit condemned to hell.) In Legion of Super-Heroes #312 the Lyle Norg of the present story was released from that dimension when Dream Girl opened an inter-universe warp using a Khund superweapon to suck Omen out of ours.
IIRC, and with SPOILER ALERT ON!!!
Lyle Norg turned out to be some extradimensional demon or such that try to capture both Wildfire and the new Invisible Kid, thus possibly un-negated Superboy #203. But it was an unsatifying resolution to a weird subplot. Did any of the older Legionnaires even mention that Lyle was back? And how could his body come back? It was last seen as a corpse in #203!
Thanks, Philip. I made a mistake in my above post: Omen's defeat and Lyle's return was in #310. There was a reference to Lyle's return in one of the subsequent Giffen issues, either #311 or #312: a couple of the characters briefly talk about it, in a catching-up-on-a-friend manner.
I also made a mistake with the link to my Baxter post. It's here.
Instead of killing Supergirl in Crisis, DC should have had her move to the future and settle down with Brainiac 5. Post-Crisis they could have said she was a descendant of Superman's, or a Kryptonian who had survived Krypton's destruction due to a journey to the far future. Think how much simpler that would have been!
(corrected)
The whole mystery of SENSOR GIRL revolved around the strong possibility that she was Supergirl who escaped her fate. Some even said that she was the most physically powerful female in the Legion since the Girl of Steel. It nearly drove Brainiac 5 crazy again. Of course that was when the Legion still remembered Our Kara!
The resolution of that mystery was unsatisfactory to me as well if anyone wants to discuss that!
The thing that's always stood out for me about that storyline is that it was obviously modelled on the Sir Prize and Miss Terious one.
Except that it lasted far longer and we were supposed to believe that Sensor Girl was that powerful.
I was actually hoping Sensor Girl would be someone completely new myself. I loved her costume though.
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