Triple Treat

I always liked Triplicate Girl, even though she was useless. In a club where everyone has to have a super power, her power is to turn into three girls with no powers. And yet somehow nobody ever brings this up.

Of course her powers are actually tremendously useful. It's just she never gets a mission that would take proper advantage of them. Imagine how great she'd be in a covert operation: she can be in two or three places at once! She could be having a conversation with the evil overlord, while at the same time rifling through his panty drawer. And eating pizza.

There are great stretches of Legion stories I haven't read yet, so it may be that someone did get around to writing her well, but there's not much sign of it in the two Showcase volumes so far available.

And it gets worse. In volume two, one of her selves is killed! One third of her being is destroyed! And so we get a touching little scene in which she says "Oh, guess I'll need a new name, then." You can almost feel the entire lack of emotion. By complete coincidence, the day I read the story, I also saw the episode of the Legion cartoon where T-Girl #3 gets offed, and they at least gave her a couple of minutes to be upset about it before changing her name to Duo Damsel.

And then to cap it all, in a recent storyline (mostly Countdown) she loses her second self, and renames herself Una. She now has the super power of being able to be one girl. I'm not sure if this technically counts as a super power anymore.

Cause, but no effect

One of the things I find endearing about characters in silver age Superman comics is their incredible naivety and lack of awareness of the world around them, not to mention their entirely disproportionate response to situations.

Jimmy Olsen tries to drum up publicity for the Daily Planet by pretending to be an alien from Mars, because he's seen the success the newspaper made out of old hoaxes. He's perhaps momentarily forgotten that these days Superman drops by to give them daily exclusives better than any dumb hoax.

And then in order to help a girl become more popular at college, does Lois give her a makeover? No, she gets Superman to pretend the girl is his secret girlfriend, thus making her the target of any criminal in the world who might want to get back at him. In just the way he uses as an excuse not to get serious with Lois.

And that's not even counting the occasion where Superman fights a villain with ice powers by moving the Sun closer to the Earth to make it too hot for him. Overreact much?

Yellow Peril

One of the things you have to understand about yellow is that it is a colour. Colour is not a quality possessed by things you cannot see. In fact one might say that an invisible object could be defined by it's complete lack of colour.

Not so for Green Lantern, where I've encountered at least three occasions in GL Showcase volume #2 where our dumb hero is laid low by things that are both invisible and yet at the same time also yellow.

It's a neat trick if you can pull it off.

The Legion of Bland

I've been reading the second volume of Green Lantern Showcase, and I'm enjoying it a lot more than the first. John Broome seems to have picked up some of the nuttiness of his colleagues, and the stories are a lot more entertaining for it.

They are also full of howlingly dumb moments, which are often funny for all the wrong reasons, but at least they're not boring. The stories written by Gardner Fox are still dull, though. And when he adds a level of the fantastic, he then goes and spoils it by spending way too much time on leaden explanation that doesn't actually work anyway.

At some point I'd like to get on to the peculiar qualities of the colour yellow, as defined in this volume, but I'm about half way through now and I just reached Green Lantern #32, which introduces a group of heroes so generic that it stopped me in my tracks.

While Jack Kirby might imbue a character with a distinctive look and hint at a fascinating backstory, even when they are only intended to appear for two pages, like Gnorda, normal size queen of the giants, Broome gives us a super group composed of Energiman, Golden Blade, Strong Girl, and Magicko.

Nothing tells you how how important a character is than giving them a name like Strong Girl.

The budget for this issue must have been very low, as they don't even get to do a team up, spending the entire story imprisoned for GL to save them. So we never do get to find out what powers Strong Girl and Magicko might have. The assault on the villain's fortress also occurs off-panel to the extent that we have GL shooting off rays in one panel, and in the next it's so destroyed that there isn't even any rubble. A rare example of Gil Kane phoning it in.

On the plus side (depending on what you consider a plus) this story does include GL fighting a giant sentient oxygen atom with electrons that look and behave a lot like basketballs.

And how much of a dick is Hal Jordan at the end of the story, telling the released heroes he'll have the Guardians assign a Green Lantern to this sector, since they obviously can't handle it on their own?

Have these guys ever turned up again?

Duh

I have no idea how I missed it, but I only just found out that there's a Supergirl Showcase due out next week.

There is not enough squee in the world to adequately describe how I feel.

Excuse me. I have to go queue at my local comic shop now.

Or I could, you know, tell them to hang on to a copy for me. Which probably won't leave them one to put out on the shelves if I know them.

Not that I'm saying Steve Trevor is a creepy stalker, but...

Sense of Wonder (Woman)

Robert Kanigher wrote Wonder Woman in a peculiar steam-of-consciousness way that reads a lot like dreams in comic form. In the second story in the Showcase collection Steve Trevor is for no explained reason now piloting a rocket plane to chase and observe an experimental rocket. (1). Unexpectedly, Steve's plane accelerates faster than the rocket and disappears into space, so Wonder Woman gets her invisible plane a quick refit at Paradise Island and follows, also becoming caught by the strange effect and sent hurtling across space.

Once she's retrieved her wayward boyfriend, she observes the Earth being destroyed by a flaming meteor, except no, it's only a cardboard cutout of the Earth that evil aliens were using for target practice, because they feed on planetary fragments, and Earth is next on the menu, even though it's 200 light years away and there are plenty of uninhabited planets closer (2). And they appear to have brought the reluctant astronauts from their home purely to gloat at them (3). Tough for them that Wonder Woman can fashion a giant magnet out of the nearby landscape and use it to pull the meteors off course and send them crashing back to the planet that launched them (4).

Of course now Wondy and Steve are stranded in space, hundreds of light years from home, except what's this? Could it be a handy spacewarp that will return them to Earth space? You can bet it is.

It's only with the third story that some of Kanigher's less entertaining themes become explicit. The problem is the relationship between Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor. Personally I've never been able to understand why she puts up with his nagging. The situation is that Steve wants Wondy to marry him and settle down, i.e. stop going out and doing hero stuff. Wondy's response is that she cannot marry him until she is no longer needed to battle crimes and injustice. Only then can she think about herself.

This is a twist on silver age Superman's lame excuse for refusing to marry Lois Lane. Here Wonder Woman has to put the concerns of the whole world before herself until she is no longer needed, and her definition of being needed is impossible to fulfil, since it not only requires there to be no crime and injustice, but no natural disasters too. And yet rather than challenge this absurd notion, Steve instead repeatedly attempts to trick the woman he claims to love into marrying him. It seems to be far more about control than love, and it's my least favourite aspect of these stories.

But back to the plot: this story completely rewrites part of the origin story, with an entirely new telling of how Wonder Woman became Diana Prince and came to work at Steve's office in Military Intelligence. In this variation Steve bets Wondy that if he can find her three times in 24 hours, regardless of how she is disguised or hidden, then she will marry him. When she finds that he has tricked her, she gets her own back by applying for a job in his own office (5) so that she'll be right under his nose all the time without him recognising her.

Would I recommend this as a book to give to kids? On the one hand the stories are light and fantastic, bursting with sense of wonder and fairytale logic, while short and self-contained, but on the other they have some underlying values that I would be uncomfortable exposing to someone who was not experienced enough to recognise them as the BS they are and able to reject them while still enjoying the rest of the story. Don't get me wrong, I love this stuff, but that doesn't mean I don't see elements in it I don't like.

Notes.

1) We are told that the plane is slower than the rocket, so I doubt it can be observing it for very long.
2) I can only assume that Earth is a particularly tasty morsel on the galactic menu, since it seems to attract planet eaters from across the galaxy.
3) no better explanation is given, and that's all they actually do with them.
4) She never did have an actual code against killing, did she?
5) and only in a Kanigher story would an office worker have to take part in an underwater race as part of the application process

Showcase of wonders

For some, the publishing event of the year might be the final adventure of some schoolboy wizard, but for me it was the Wonder Woman Showcase. And although I wasn't queuing at my local comic shop for my copy at midnight (because I knew it wasn't going to be delivered until around 10am), I was there to pick it off the shelf before it had time to get comfortable.

Just to point out how important this collection is, I want to remind you that while Batman and Superman have enjoyed reprint collections from throughout their history, Wonder Woman has not been so lucky. There was a collection of golden age adventures published in the early 1970's, and four volumes of DC Archives that got up as far as Wonder Woman #9, but nothing has ever been reprinted from the late 1940's to 1986 in any substantial form. Robert Kanigher was writer on Wonder Woman for over 150 issues and yet there has never been a collection of his work available until now.

But be warned: before you read this book you will need to rise above all thoughts of logic and continuity. There is no place for them here.

The volume opens with Kanigher's retelling of Wonder Woman's origin in Wonder Woman #98. This is a good starting point as not only does it give us an origin, it's also the first issue with full art by long time WW artists Ross Andru and Mike Esposito, and is arguably the point where Wonder Woman enters the Silver Age.

As an origin story, it's quite different from the usual version; the Amazons hold their contest to decide who will be sent into the outside world before Steve Trevor even arrives, and to avoid favouritism, all the contestants are dressed in Wonder Woman costume, including masks of Diana's face so that they will all look alike. But having won the contest, our heroine must prove herself by turning a penny into a million dollars, to finance the building of a summer camp to be donated to children's charities, because Pallas Athena is very big on healthy summer fun for children in rich first world countries.

The more bizarre aspects of the story start to become apparent when Steve Trevor arrives on the scene, parachuting down from his stricken aircraft. Since men are forbidden to set foot on Paradise Island, our plucky heroine launches herself into the air, and then catching Steve, she blows his parachute all the way back to America.

If at this point you are considering how many laws of physics this breaks then you should probably stop now, as it only gets worse. Wonder Woman's adventures with the penny she has been entrusted with, and her ultimate solution to her dilemma are so bonkers that I'm not even going to tell you about them. I wouldn't want to spoil the fun.

And that's just the opening story.

The Big Finish

When you are reading through the Legion Showcase you could be forgiven for wondering if they missed an issue. The one that introduced their arch-nemesis The Time Trapper.

When he is first mentioned, Mon-El and Superboy are pursuing him through time after he has a fight with Cosmic Boy and Sun Boy, but we never saw this initial encounter and it's never recapped in detail. All we get is an ongoing subplot where the Legion are unable to break past the "iron curtain of time" 30 days in the future.

Whether this is a set point thirty days from the initial encounter, or a moving point that is always thirty days from the current time is unclear. I originally assumed it was a fixed point and the Legion were facing a countdown to a major battle, but their adventures continue on for issue after issue without it appearing to get any closer, or their being especially concerned about an approaching deadline.

The penultimate story in the collection features Superboy's evil babysitter, Dev-Em. This appears to be a sequel to a Superboy solo story but unusually there's no editor note to tell you. The short version is Dev-Em was bad; now he's good but he's pretending to be bad. And the Science Police, who you will remember claim there is no crime worth bothering about and the best way to deal with a planetary threat is to send in a bunch of teenagers rather than try diplomacy or military action, are now found to have a counter intelligence corps. Or maybe the Interstellar Counter Intelligence Corps has taken over the Science Police in a bloodless and entirely uneventful coup, since the Legion initially say that's who they will turn Dev-Em over to when they believe he is a criminal.

Either way, it's obviously the same lot because they decide that rather than send Dev-Em to complete the mission they've trained him for, they'd prefer to send Superboy in a plastic mask pretending to be Dev-Em. At least if they'd sent Mon-El they wouldn't have needed the contrived deus ex machina to get our hero out of the trap when the villain pulls out the kryptonite.

And so we come to the final entry, and the first actual appearance (of the back of the head) of the Time Trapper. It transpires that the Legion have a Secret Weapon. A weapon so dangerous and powerful that they don't want anyone to know about it. Except somehow the Time Trapper has heard of it and cons the Legion into letting him torture them to get the secret out of them.

Under the guise of some Commander Wilson of the Science Police, who are back in charge of running the universe by ignoring most of the crime going on, he persuades the legionnaires to go through a simulated interrogation to see if any of them will crack and give out the secret.

Problems with this: first, they know it's not real so why do they get so scared? Second, I'm not sure what the secret is they are supposed to be hiding since the weapon is quite a complex piece of equipment that they need to build from scratch. It's not like they are giving away a location for this doomsday device. They'd need to draw diagrams.

Anyway, we get a series of scenes of legionnaires being put through tests and either overcoming them or failing in a way that prevents the secret being given, like Shrinking Violet getting so small that her voice can't be heard, because a thousand years in the future they don't have the technology to pick up faint sounds. And Lightning Lad fails and gets locked up in a giant hamster ball forever, except no, it was a trick. He spotted that the commander was a fake and gave him the wrong information. Was it too much to ask that he tell his friends instead so they could prevent the villain's escape?

So the Time Trapper proves that he doesn't actually need any more doomsday devices as he is already powerful enough to throw suns around, and the Legion run up their ultimate weapon out of household objects they find lying around, and siphon off all the power of the entire universe to blow up the errant suns.

Seems like overkill to me. I mean suns are big to you and me, but on a universal scale they are barely dust. Of course the Legion live in a very small universe, as has been noted earlier, so things may be different for them.

And so all is well and we end on a totally sitcom note as newly thin and no longer Bouncing boy introduces his girlfriend who is a little chubby, and our heroes are surprised because of course now he is thin he doesn't need to date fat chicks. Was that even funny in 1964?

It's a small universe after all

Adventure #319

The inhabitants of the the tiny planet Throon are entirely xenophobic and set up a barrier around their planet to prevent anyone visiting them. They haven't quite thought it through, though, as this barrier causes rocket motors to fail, which basically means anyone getting near enough is not so much persuaded to go away as stuck there without the ability to move, or worse, caused to crash on the planet.

Now this wouldn't be a huge problem in Star Trek. They'd just set up a warning beacon and everyone would avoid the area. The problem here is that not only is the universe a lot smaller than you'd expect, the mysterious planet Throon with its xenophobic occupants are apparently right in the middle of the spacelanes.

Yes, traffic throughout the universe is going to grind to a halt because there's a 60,000,000 mile diameter area of space that they can't travel through.

The furthest Mercury gets from the Sun in its orbit is 43,382,322 miles, so if you imagine the orbit of Mercury, the Throon exclusion zone would fit within that.

How small is the Universe when space traffic from one end of it to the other cannot bypass an area that tiny? And how is it that a planet of such immense strategic importance remains virtually unexplored?

Anyway, the Science Police are on the case. Unfortunately they aren't very good with crime, and there's probably some legal red tape about invading an independant planet's soveriegn airspace to sabotage their defence systems, so they call in a bunch of teenagers to do the job for them. A later writer might have used this story to make a point about sending young people off to war, but here it's just another day for the Legion.

Deciding their best plan is to send in a small team to infiltrate the planet and destroy the force projectors, our heroes pick members for the team based, not on whose powers are most appropriate for the task, but the Planetary Chance Machine, a device that randomly fires out little balls to hit people on the head.

Proving that they are not entirely useless, the Science Police dig up a couple of people who claim to have visited Throon, but there's an odd gap in their information that becomes apparent at the end of the story. We are informed that the Throonians all live in one huge building and the rest of the planet is covered with dangerous jungle.

This is obviously a dangerous mission, and logic would dictate simply dropping large rocks on the force projectors until they break, but as far as the Legion is concerned it just means not letting the girls go. Though curiously, once the first team has been wiped out and the promise of danger has been fulfilled, none of the other male legionnaires try to shut out the girls.

The Throonians must have been expecting the Legion as they zap Superboy the moment he shows up. The rest of the team sneak around from the far side of the planet and then run out in front of the building. Their clever strategy is for Brainiac 5 and Lightning Lad to go one way as a diversion, while the rest of the team go another. It never occurs to Brainiac 5's amazing computer mind that they might be able to shoot in two directions at once, and so that's the end of the first team.

At this point you might be thinking "Why didn't Chameleon Boy make himself useful for a change and turn into an indiginous creature and try to sneak in?" or wondering why they didn't pick Invisible Kid for a stealth mission. Because then Night Girl wouldn't be the hero, that's why.

Meanwhile, the universe is grinding to a halt. People on distant planets are starving because they have given up all agriculture and are entirely dependant on imported food that has to be flown through Throon airspace. It's a bit like America being entirely reliant on imports that can only come via Gibralter, regardless of their origin.

So with the first team flattened in short order, what's their strategy? Do they suggest to the Science Police that they nuke the site from orbit? No, they send in another team consisting of whoever happens to be left back at Legion HQ.

Again, they come up with a cunning strategy for getting close to the Throon building, and once there simply run out in front of it to get zapped.

Back on Earth, Legionnaires who were on missions in space have returned without going via Throon, which makes complete nonsense of the whole premise of the story. Having failed to learn any lessons from the first two attempts, they send in a third group. This time at least they have Phantom Girl, who can use her powers to avoid being hit by the zappy rays that took out the first two teams.

Except no, she is infected by the secret invisible Throonian stupid ray that is an integral part of their defence systems and forgets to go out of phase when they are attacked, so she goes down too.

So finally all that's left are the Substitute Legion and those legionnaires they forgot to include this issue. They didn't even think to summon the Legion of Super Pets like they did to fight Satan Girl.

And since it's Night Girl's story, she doesn't run out in front of the building to get zapped by the defences, she burrows in underneath it to come up inside. So much for Brainiac 5's amazing computer brain. He never thought of that one.

She finds the vast building virtually empty, and discovers an important point that the two advisors had somehow missed; the entire Throonian civilisation is extinct apart from two old guys. It's never explained how the rest of their race died out, and there must be one hell of a lot of automation to keep the place running and even install new defence systems when the only people left are a couple of mad old duffers.

So everyone lives happily ever after, and the old gits aren't even censured for almost causing the collapse of galactic civilisation and the deaths of many billions of people from starvation. And the Substitute Legion gets a tickertape parade for being not stupid.

Batgirl Showcase: take two

Walaka challenged me to find an alternate image for the Batgirl Showcase cover and after scanning through the book this was the only candidate I could find. It's taken from the splash to Batman #214 and although I don't think it's any more appropriate than the one used, it has the benefit of depicting our heroine in a strong position. She might be doing something foolish and waering ridiculous shoes, but she's doing so in an empowered way.


Obviously this is a 5 minute Photoshop chop job, not a loving recreation of what might have been, but you get the idea.

Meanwhile, back in the 30th century

Adventure #315 presents us with a badly misjudged morality tale. The Legion in their infinite wisdom condescend to take one of the rejected members of the Substitute Legion by requiring them to compete against each other, and then in the end take the one that fails his task because he knows when to quit (1) over his companions who were not faced with the same moral dilemma, and who completed far more difficult tasks.

Adventure #316 includes a panel that hurts my brain.

So there is so little crime in the 30th century that nobody much uses the big room full of police records right behind you, super powered girls are so afraid to reveal their abilities for fear of kidnapping and being made to commit crimes, and oh yes, there's all those people who the Legion spend fighting every issue (2). This was my first intimation that the Science Police were not up to the job.

At least Phantom Girl gets her nineteen pages of fame this issue, after being so thoroughly ignored for so long that you could be forgiven for wondering if she's still a member; though being a girl this means she has to spend it swooning over a Ultra-Boy who seems to have gone bad (3). When Shrinking Violet gets her moment in the spotlight in a later issue it is also so that she can pine over a bad boy.

Phantom Girl has vanished again by next issue, wherein we basically get a rerun of #304 only with Dream Girl taking Saturn Girl's role. You'd think Saturn Girl might at least have got a feeling of deja vu. And they never do explain why all the male legionnaires are drooling all over Dream Girl at the beginning of the story.

This episode also gives the first insight into the Pokemon nature of the Legion. Lightning Lass's powers are conveniently altered but it's okay as her lightning power isn't needed because it's the same as her brother's. Considering how many stories revolve around rejected applicants it's surprising they don't get one who is mad that he can't join because there is already a member from his planet/with his ability.

The other thing that puzzles me about this issue is how is it that Shrinking Violet's clothes don't fit her when she is turned into an infant, but they do when she shrinks?

The oddest thing about Adventure #318 is that Sun Boy goes bonkers and everyone else lets him. All the complications of the plot derive from that.

Then we get an issue of Jimmy Olsen which consists of female legionnaires fawning all over Jimmy to make his date appreciate him. Do the Legion spend all their free time watching the time scanner like it was a reality show or a soap opera or something?

Next we get to a story that is so big and so stupid that it's going to need a post all of its own...

Notes
1) and has powers so pointless he makes Bouncing Boy look useful
2) okay, half of them are rejected candidates for membership out for revenge, but it's still illegal
3) it's only a trick, of course

Batgirl on show

I hadn't been planning to get to the Batgirl Showcase until I finished the Legion volume, but there's been some kneejerk outrage over the cover, so I'd like to take a look at that. I realise it can mess up a perfectly good rant to complicate it with facts, but I'm mean like that.

The plan:
Showcase covers follow a standard format of a recoloured version of a cover from one of the comics in the collection. They do not include text on the image. Obviously the ideal image is one that prominently features the title character(s) in iconic pose.


The problem:
All the stories in this collection are either guest spots in another character's comic or backup strips from Detective Comics. The backup character rarely gets cover featured. In fact Batgirl only appears on 6 covers of Detective comics and all but one are where she is appearing in Batman stories. Not only that but there are precious few full page images of Batgirl because space is maximised in her short backup feature and the splash page often contains three panels. On some episodes there is no splash at all, just a title strip at the top of the first page.

So there aren't a whole lot of images to choose from. Let's look at the covers, shall we?


Excellent cover but the text is heavily integrated into the composition, and it would look unbalanced without it.

Here Batman is as prominently featured as Batgirl. It's far from iconic, and relies on the dialogue to make sense of what's going on.


Again, it's not Batgirl specific or iconic, and relies on dialogue to explain the situation.

Here Batgirl is far more prominent but again, take out the dialogue and it's incomprehensible. But we'll come back to this one later.
This one would almost do. Batgirl is prominently displayed and the picture would work without the speech, but still it's as much a Batman image as a Batgirl one.
And finally we get to the only cover for a solo Batgirl story and it is once again reliant on dialogue. It's also too narrow because of the menu down the left hand side, but the main problem is that it's not a very good picture.

Even though Batman is the victim here and Batgirl the rescuer, the composition leaves no doubt who is the star of this show.
Again, this is not Batgirl's comic.

Of course the problem with guest starring in someone else's comic...

...is that they tend to want to be the hero.
This is one of my all time favourite silver age covers, but it's not saying "this is a Batgirl comic".
Bleh.
Don't think so.
This one's not going to do it either.

In fact there aren't any covers to comics in this collection that would suit a Showcase cover. But remember this one?
It's almost the right sort of composition, but take out the dialogue and you lose the sense. But the story did have a full splash page.
Here Batgirl is featured prominently, Batman and Robin appear, but are not the focus of the image, which is reasonable, given that they do appear in the volume, and it works without the dialogue.

Only problem is that it makes Batgirl look stupid, appearing to be more interested in fixing her makeup than fighting crime.

Of course there are vast numbers of silver age covers that feature the hero behaving in a bizarre or inappropriate way. Batman wore the most ludicrous costumes and Superman was always thinking he was a cowboy or getting a big domed head. So how does it work in the context of the story?

The Story:
In fact the story is all about Batgirl believing that she is too concerned with her looks and making an effort to overcome her perceived fault, ultimately using it to her advantage by distracting the bad guys by showing a little leg, as is pictured on the cover. In fact the examples given of her distraction are first where her mask is knocked out of place and she pauses to straighten it, and secondly where mud is thrown in her face. In both cases her behaviour is quite reasonable as she is in danger of having her vision obscured, so it is possible to read it as Barbara over-reacting to a perceived fault and working to overcome it. This is a bit undermined by her letting out an uncharacteristic scream at seeing Batman in danger; she's never done this before, and it's not even extreme danger, so it's very contrived. But despite this, the story is a positive in that it's all about Batgirl taking control and working to not only overcome her faults but use them to her advantage.

It is a bit cringeworthy, but if you can't accept that women were written clumsily in the 1960's then you won't be reading this volume anyway. Is it better to try to depict a female character having issues different from male characters and do it poorly, or to have no characterisation at all and the only difference between male and female characters is the girl is the one in the skirt, as you'd find in Teen Titans or JLA from a similar period?

In context, the cover depicts a scene where Batgirl is playing on the "silly woman obsessed with her looks" image to defeat the villains, and as such is okay. In a world where the default image of a female hero was the heroic stance associated with a male hero, this would work as the equivalent of Superman in a cowboy hat, or Batman turned into a baby; not iconic, but representative of the fun weirdness of the silver age. But the world is not like that, so it doesn't.

And of course, they didn't use the cover image, they used the splash image. Which does not represent any incident in the story and in fact suggests the complete opposite of the actual theme.

The conclusion:
Yes, it is a bad image to use for the cover of the collection, and one that is liable to put off as many potential readers as if it was all T&A, but given the alternative options, what would you have picked?

Thanks to the Grand Comics Database, from whom I steal many cover scans.

Kids of Tomorrow got No Respect!

I think one of the things I like most about the early Legion is their total lack of respect for anyone. They'll travel back in time ten thousand years in order to invite their greatest hero to join their club, and then play a practical joke on him and make him cry.


They cross centuries again to invite Supergirl and then refuse to take her because while following their directions she accidentally gets a dose of red kryptonite that makes her look too old, even though A) she hasn't actually aged, she just looks slightly different (visually she just appears slightly taller and to be wearing lipstick), and b) it's a temporary effect that will wear off in a couple of hours.


So it's hardly surprising that when you see what appears to be a continuity error, such as them telling Supergirl that they are the children of the legionnaires that met Superboy, it's easy to read it as them just having a laugh at Supergirl's expense.

The bastards.

The Legion again

(I hadn't been planning to write much more about the early Legion adventures, but these Showcase volumes are so full of daft ideas that I can't help wanting to share the fun.

But first, a correction. In my previous article I said Shrinking Violet and Triplicate Girl weren't introduced until Adventure #300. In fact they, and Bouncing Boy first appear in a Supergirl story in Action #276 that, more than any other appearance, has all the hallmarks of a stealth pilot, as it features the most complete version of the Legion prior to their own series.

In this story we are told that the Legion has revised its policy of only allowing one new member per year to allowing one boy and one girl per year (1). Applicants shown include Brainiac 5, Sun Boy, Bouncing Boy, and Shrinking Violet. Since all of them are members by Adventure #300, the Legion series must take place at least two years later, assuming that these guys were taken on their second or third attempts, over other applicants that hadn't already been rejected (2)(3).

Other highlights of this story include Saturn Girl fooling Supergirl into not recognising her by wearing a mask, even though she is in full costume and has demonstrated her powers; the whole "super-girlfriends" routine which is ripe for innuendo by someone with a smuttier mind than I, and Supergirl's demonstration of power for her membership application, which involves destroying hugely important archeological sites by burrowing down to cherrypick a couple of choice items that made the archeoligist in me wince, and my experience is limited to watching the odd episode of Time Team; and how convenient is it that a kryptonite meteor just happens to fall out of the sky right on top of Supergirl just in time for Brainiac 5 to demonstrate his cleverness and self-sacrifice by slapping his force field belt on her and tuning it to fit her personally in less time than it takes for her to get out of the way of it. Anyone would think he had arranged it on purpose...

I feel a bit sad for poor Shrinking Violet here. I mean here she is, she's got as far through the Legion application process as having a placard with her own name on it, and then at the last minute she has to go up against someone who is related to the most famous hero in history that inspired the Legion in the first place, and who they have traveled back in time to personally invite. It must be particularly galling when Supergirl bogs off as soon as she's inducted and hardly ever turns up for meetings(4). She doesn't even get to be one of Supergirl's super-girlfriends.

Notes.

1) which makes you wonder how they end up with a 3:1 male/female ratio.
2) In Adventure #301 we find that Bouncing Boy was rejected once.
3) However, since there are no new female legionnaires between this and Adventure #300 I can only guess that Sun Boy reapplied in drag.
4) Talk about nepotism...