Adventure 321 – Lightning Lad betrays the Legion

Edmond Hamilton is back, penning the Time Trapper story in Adventure 321 (June 1964), which deals with a mysterious machine, The Concentrator, and the Legionnaries vow to protect its secret.

The story opens with Bouncing Boy losing his powers, in a manner as stupid as the way he gained them.  He bounces in front of a matter-shrinking ray being used by Element Lad.  The Legion has modified their previously harsh behaviour to members who lose their powers, now placing them in the Legion Reserve.

Thinking about it, perhaps the change in rules was due to Sun Boy’s freakout a few issues ago.  It’s possible the Legion felt that the horrible way they had treated him during his power loss had contributed to his breakdown.

At any rate, that’s all dealt with in less than a page, and then we get onto the real story.  Ultra Boy joins Superboy and Mon-El in attempting a flying wedge to break through the Iron Curtain of Time, but with no more success than previous attempts.

Commisioner Wilson of the Science Police shows up, informing the team that the Time Trapper is after the secret of the Concentrator, and takes them all to a empty planet to undergo tests, to see if they can withstand torture.

The story could get really dark at this point, but instead turns kind of unintentionally funny.  The “tests” are often just laughable.

Even so, Lightning Lad breaks under such lame pressure, and confesses the secret to Wilson.  Once Wilson leaves, Lightning Lad reveals that he suspected Wilson was really the Time Trapper in disguise, and lied to him.

The panel in which Time Trapper removes his mask, to reveal a bag on his head, does not help this story feel serious.

The Time Trapper sends “dark stars” to wipe out the planet the Legion are on, but they rapidly construct a Concentrator, which concentrates “all the power in the universe” for a split second, and wipes out the stars.

The Time Trapper’s plot is foiled, Lightning Lad is hailed as a hero, and skinny Bouncing Boy gets a fat girlfriend.  Cause fat girls are funny, right?  Sigh.

 

 

Adventure 313 – The Legion vs Satan Girl, and Superboy learns his heritage

Supergirl makes her first appearance with the Legion in their Adventure Comics run, in issue 313 (Oct 63) in a story that sort of features the female Legionnaires, in so far as they all come down with a mysterious disease.

Saturn Girl,Phantom Girl,Triplicate Girl, Shrinking Violet and Lightning Lass fall ill from the Crimson Virus, as does Night Girl from the Subs, and are taken to Quarantine World.

Satan Girl shows up and claims responsibility for the disease, and that she intends to head to Quarantine World and kill the women.  Rather than pursue her, Sun Boy appoints Supergirl temporary leader and sends her off to battle Satan Girl, while the rest of the guys stay safely on Earth.  Cowards.

Anyway, Supergirl is mystified by Satan Girl, who not only is equally powerful, and immune to kryptonite, but also seems to know everything about Supergirl.

Supergirl heads back to Earth, and convinces the boys that they need to move the girls to a secret location.  Bouncing Boy once again proves himself extremely useful.

As Satan Girl’s powers cannot affect animals, Supergirl assembles the Legion of Super-Pets and has them take down the villain.

Ultimately, it turns out Satan Girl was an evil duplicate of Supergirl, created by red kryptonite she was exposed to on her trip to the future.  Satan Girl does make one further appearance, as part of the End of an Era storyline in the early 90s.

Not the greatest Legion tale by Edmond Hamilton, but it does have Curt Swan art.  And I’m a sucker for the Super-Pets.

 

After giving Pa Kent a Father’s Day present, Clark uses a mind-probe machine to remember how the day was celebrated on Krypton.

We get to see Jor-El taking baby Kal to the family tomb, with its row of statues commemorating great heroes of the El family.   Superboy seeks out the statue and in space, and wouldn’t you know it, finds it intact and floating around, along with a box of curious objects.

It’s much more of a challenge to approach the poisonous statuary group than to figure out the purpose of the objects, which clearly fit into the hands of the statues.

Superboy succeeds by covering the whole thing with lead, and we (and he) learn that the El family included a great explorer, inventors, the writer of Krypton’s constitution and a renowned architect.

This statue group would appear occasionally, as would some of the men pictured.  Primarily, it would be the basis for part of the Krypton Chronicles mini-series.

 

 

Adventure 309 – The Legion vs Jungle King

The Jungle King story in Adventure 309(June 1963) is a simple one, and important not for the one-shot villain, but for the monsters that he assembles, most of which return in later Legion stories.

The story itself drips with irony.  Rejected by the Legion, Jungle King goes on a vengeance kick, and puts together a “Legion of Super-Monsters,” although he rejects a gas beast as being too useless.  The gas beast then goes on a vengeance kick and kills Jungle King.

Of the creatures introduced in this Edmond Hamilton tale, the Earthquake Beast would be the most frequent in its appearances over the years.

Bouncing Boy proves to be no help in this tale.  Rather than follow orders, he starts bouncing for fun and reveals his presence, and the Legion’s, to Jungle King, almost messing up Chameleon Boy’s infiltration of Jungle King’s crew.

Adventure 302 – Sun Boy gets booted from the Legion

Sun Boy’s powers suddenly disappear, and he gets kicked out of the Legion in this Jerry Siegel tale from Adventure 302 (Nov 62).

It’s a fairly simple tale.  He tries to have his powers recharged by Superboy and Ultra Boy, using their heat vision, but it fails.  He gets expelled, is hunted by an old foe, but successfully reboots his powers, after realizing that Superboy and Ultra Boy were robots, and he needed the charge from a living being.

What makes this story entertaining is the really horrible way he gets treated by the Legion.

Zero compassion from Cosmic Boy, though he does get to keep his nameplate and figurine.

But they check every last item once he is gone, it seems, and Bouncing Boy comes to his home to retrieve a porta-monitor he kept, so he could watch his former friends and teammates.  It’s thanks to the porta-monitor that he realizes Superboy and Ultra Boy are really robots.  But you can’t help but feel bad for Dirk Morgna, who continues to wear his outfit even though he no longer has powers.

And just to hammer in what a sad loser Dirk is, once he recharges he rejoins the team that treated him so shabbily, and is almost reduced to tears from joy.

 

Adventure 301 – The origin of Bouncing Boy

As new applicants to the Legion fret over whether they are good enough to join the team, Bouncing Boy relates his origin, and how he became a member, with the apparent message that, if someone as silly as him can become a Legionnarire, anyone can!

Adventure 301 (Oct 62) was written by Jerry Siegel, so perhaps that’s why there is something almost Bizarro about this story.

Thanks to Storm Boy’s embarrassing attempt to join the team, we learn that one must have actual powers to become a member, that high tech devices are just not good enough.  Storm Boy is so bitter about this that he spends years and a fortune having devices implanted into his body, returning 40 years later in vengeance.  Triplicate Girl gets to show off her ability to single-handedly gang up on someone.

Then we get the intense origin of Bouncing Boy.  Check Taine was a lazy delivery boy, who stopped to watch a robot gladiator tournament while carrying an experimental formula to the Science Council.  He then mistook it for a bottle of pop and drank it.

This borders on Jimmy Olsen level stupidity, so it’s appropriate that it endows him with Jimmy Olsen level goofy powers, in this case becoming a big bouncing ball.

He applies for Legion membership, but is promptly rejected.  The Legion even seem to follow him around, laughing at his feeble attempts to stop crime.  But ultimately Bouncing Boy proves himself against a villain with electrical powers, who he can defeat because he is not grounded during his attack.

Other Legionnaries appear in the story, but few really get much opportunity to do their thing.  Cosmic Boy runs the whole application process, as Legion leader. One of the two men shown in the final panel is credited as being Matter-Eater Lad, who becomes a member by the next issue.

The earliest version of the Mission Monitor Board appears in this story.  It neatly demonstrates the far ranging scope of Legion activities, while at the same time allowing some Legion members to be shown in action, without detracting from the story.  In this case, Colossal Boy, Phantom Girl and Ultra Boy.