Secret Origins v2 #47 (1989)
cover by Dave Cockrum
This issue is fully dedicated to the Legion, with three brief stories focusing on dead Legionnaires.
“…In Memory Yet Green…”
by Mike W. Barr & Curt Swan
Dave Cockrum is almost unrecognizable on the cover, but Curt Swan is even worse.
Must be the Mark Badger inks.
We begin with Ferro Lad fighting this random bad guy…
…but we soon learn we’re actually watching a movie about him.
Ferro Lad is so popular that they made at least six movies about him!
Including a documentary about his origins, which gets the attention of a little girl while the boys are more interested in the action movies.
We’re watching them watching the documentary narrated by his mother.
This is interesting, but I also wouldn’t mind to see the other movies!
It’s kind of weird that the kids don’t believe Ferro Lad was a real person, considering this isn’t set in the Legion’s future.
Who would have thought BOTH of Ferro Lad’s parents were famous?
Ferro Lad really won the Tragic Backstory lottery, didn’t he?
He was born disfigured AND his father abandoned him AND got himself killed. All he’s lacking is the dead mom and an evil brother… although his twin brother got dangerously close.
Kid, consider yourself lucky: MOST of the 5YL isn’t PG-13.
You know the rest.
We are firmly in the era when the general public doesn’t think highly of the Legion. But I still find it hard to believe the fact that Ferro Lad was a member would be an obscure detail for kids who are supposed to be his fans… but then again, how many fans of superhero movies don’t have any clue about what they’re based on?
A bittersweet ending, but at least the girl is a bit affected by learning the truth.
Legion significance: 1/10
The reason why the mother of Ferro (the Reboot equivalent of Ferro Lad) is an actress is definitely a nod to this story, considering she plays basically no part in his appearances.
Silver Age-ness: 3/10
The little we see about Ferro Lad’s movie seems to be invoking a little of the Silver Age, but as a whole it’s too meta for it.
Depression scale: 8/10
Ferro Lad died to save the Galaxy and the Legion swore he would be remembered forever for his sacrifice. A generation later he’s remembered as a generic fictional action hero, his Legion membership and his sacrifice forgotten.
Does it stand the test of time? 7/10
If you want to do a short story recapping Ferro Lad’s history you could certainly do worse. And the artwork, despite not looking like Curt Swan at all, isn’t bad.
It does a good job at hitting the right emotional cords, but I feel like having two thirds of the kids not caring about this AT ALL does a disservice to both Ferro Lad and the story.
I really like the idea that one of the Legionnaires with the shortest career… whose only highlight is, let’s face it, the story of how he dies… becoming the one adored by the public.
Adding that the Legion is dismissed as a bunch of losers and that Ferro Lad’s sacrifice is basically forgotten, on the other hand, comes across as needlessly cruel.
“The thorned path”
written by Tom & Mary Bierbaum
pencils by Mike Parobeck
The second story is a throwback to the period when Karate Kid was the Legion’s leader, during the Shooter era. And ALREADY on the first panel it manages to irritate me.
Why would Karate Kid decide to assign Bouncing Boy ALONE to track down Mordru???
Why would he assign Duo Damsel ALONE to get the Persuader’s axe???
Took me a while to get Matter-Eater Lad’s joke here, as my only frame of reference for Armour Hot Dogs is a Simpsons parody.
(Karate Kid blames “Cosmic Boy’s 20th century revival festival” for his knowledge of the brand)
Karate Kid shows up with his mentor, while Matter-Eater Lad (and his distressingly small head) is busy being irritating.
I consider Matter-Eater Lad to be the only Legionnaire who significantly improves during this era, but this is not a good start for him in my opinion. He comes across as obnoxious to me.
Karate Kid also gives M-E-L a seemingly impossible task, because he’s obsessed with everyone “measuring up to Legion standards”.
This… doesn’t sound like Karate Kid to me. AT ALL.
Yes he was the serious and stoic leader, but being obsessed with efficiency and treating his teammates as cogs in a machine regardless of their feelings and opinions?
That’s not Karate Kid, that’s Brainiac 5.
This somehow makes Sensei drone on and and on about Karate Kid’s origin story.
Okay, to be honest, there IS a story here. It’s just that my eyes glaze over it and it feels VERY out of place with the Legion, has barely anything to say about Karate Kid, and is generally going nowhere in a very boring way.
But eventually Sensei tells something about helping others find their own path.
I think that the right lesson to learn would have been STOP SENDING PEOPLE TO SUICIDE MISSIONS, but whatever.
Legion significance: 0/10
Silver Age-ness: (snore) / 10
Depression scale: zzz / 10
I cannot gather enough interest to score this one seriously. I guess it’s a bit Silver Age to have a story that would 100% still work being set in Japan in the 1800s but doing it in the 30th century?
Does it stand the test of time? 0/10
Is this just a random story about samurai that has nothing to do with the Legion and fundamentally misunderstands Karate Kid while also misusing Matter-Eater Lad, or is this story so boring that I had to resort to an onslaught of memes to stay awake? 
I would normally feel kind of bad for not giving this one a proper review, but I really can’t get invested in this story.
Thankfully we next have the REAL reason why this issue is remembered.
“The unique properties of Condo Arlik”
by Robert Loren Fleming & Chris Sprouse
Remember how every time I had to talk about bad of a Legionnaire Chemical King was, I always added the caveat “with the exception of one story from a later era”?
This is that story.
Which begins with a lengthy infodump that is already quite depressing, since Chemical King suffered from health problems from his birth, which also endangered doctors and nurses, and had to be raised by computers.
Also his parents don’t seem to give a crap about him.
Jumping forward several years, he’s constantly trying to develop his powers when he meets up with Invisible Kid.
Who gives him hope about being able to control his life, first through a meaningful gesture and then through a serum.
After living his whole life in a secluded lab, Chemical King is finally able to enjoy the outside world.
This story really sells you the friendship between those two, as well as just how awful CK’s backstory really is.
Chemical King is still depressed about the fact that the serum he was given doesn’t completely prevent his powers from harming him.
Cute little sight gag here: his shirt says “Where in the hell is Phlon”, which is the name of his native
They then discuss the intrinsic value of every human life. By fighting, because they’re still superheroes.
I can’t stress enough how precious this friendship feels after just a couple of pages. There are Legionnaires who have shared panels for DECADES that don’t feel this close.
Which makes it even more painful to see Chemical King’s reaction to the death of Invisible Kid; he has a really hard time processing it.
That’s all well and good from a storytelling perspective, but next panels showing the rest of the Legion are enjoying life seems to suggest that they didn’t care about Invisible Kid.
Sure they might not have been as close to him as Chemical King, but come on!!!
Especially when we are shown that the rest of the Legion ostracizes him after this!
The Reboot and Threeboot versions of Brainiac 5 get some criticism for being dicks, and while it’s not without cause (ESPECIALLY for the Threeboot), none of them ever gets to be a jackass to THIS level!
Jumping forward to Chemical King’s death, we call back to the very beginning of the story.
But more importantly, we call back to the lesson Invisible Kid gave him. And if he can teach the same lesson to someone else, he’s not really gone.
And indeed, before he dies Chemical King gives the same lesson to Brainiac 5: a lesson in bravery, in accepting that you can do anything if you hope for the future.
The idea is that Chemical King taught Brainiac 5 to be a better person and believe in hope.
Two years after the story of his death, Brainiac 5 would create a monster powered by all the hatred in the universe.
And another ten years after that, Brainiac 5 would abandon the Legion and give up trying to come up with a way to save either the team, the United Planets or Mon-El.
Oh well, it’s the thought that counts I guess.
Legion significance: 10/10
I truly believe that this story is the only reason why anyone today cares about Chemical King.
Silver Age-ness: 6/10
It’s a story about overcoming your struggles through friendship and hope…
Depression scale: 10/10
…which, as I highlighted, results in nothing because Brainiac 5 apparently forgets this lesson by abandoning his friends and locking himself in a lab.
Does it stand the test of time? 9/10
Having said that, it’s not this story’s fault that the team disintegrates in the latter part of Volume 3 and goes grimdark with Volume 4.
My only complaint, like I said, is treating the Legion as not caring for Invisible Kid’s death and ESPECIALLY for Chemical King’s blatant depression.
But other than that, it’s a powerful story that really makes you wish we had more good stories involving Invisible Kid and Chemical King.
An argument could even be made about this being the best story for either of them!
Having Invisible Kid co-star in the Chemical King story was a brilliant way for the writers to shoehorn all four of the pre-Crisis dead Legionnaires into the three stories that Secret Origins allowed them.
And since I know where you’re holding in v4 in the review, you’ll soon get to the retcon of Brainy’s insanity which means that it wasn’t his fault that the pathos of Condo’s death didn’t really stick for too long.
Chemical King was one of my favorite Legionnaires long before this story. I was very young at the time, so I’m not sure why. Thanks to Cockrum, he wore a bold green costume with a black undershirt and neck covering. It was a classy costume–one that could easily pass for street wear in the ’70s. (Hey, appearance matters!)
Power-wise, he could control chemical reactions. To a grade school student, that sounded really powerful. It also tied into a some of the things I was learning in school. (Shooter, as a teenager, was a master of using concepts he was learning in school as story ideas. This helped connect the Legion’s fantasy universe to something tangible.) The first time I saw Condo use his power was in Adventure #372, when he speeds up the rust process to cause a gun to burst into flame. I liked this mini-science lesson in a comic. The only other memorable use of his power occurred in Superboy #211, in which he does two impressive things: He causes people to pass out by slowing down their metabolism, and he turns deadly rays from a gun into a harmless light show. Oh, and he saved Element Lad’s career in the process.
It’s been said that Chem appeared rarely because comic book writers did not understand science well enough to know what to do with his power. I feel this is sadly true and a sign of comics standards declining. While the ’70s brought many upgrades to the Legion, a dedication to the “science” part of science fiction was not one of them.
The problem I have with this Secret Origins story is that it takes Chem’s inferiority complex–which he exhibited only once, in the story of his death–and magnifies it to an unrealistic level. I’ve always maintained that, to be a Legionnaire, you have to have the Right Stuff: power, character, maturity, self-confidence. These traits account for how Bouncing Boy, Duo Damsel, and others with less-than-spectacular powers stuck around. This story depicts Chem as a total basket case without Lyle. I think it does both the story and the character a disservice to present him in such a one-dimensional way.
Chem is one of those characters who, despite limited appearances, caught on with some fans. Perhaps it’s because we’re free to imprint our own stories on him (hence, the Lyle-Condo romance favored by many fans). I prefer to think that what little we saw of him hinted at something much deeper. For instance, he had to know science very well to use his power effectively. It’s that hint of something deeper–something hidden in plain sight–that resonates and which stories such as this fail to capture.
They clearly did not understand his powers, for the most part. The most egregious example of that was in Superboy # 195, where Wildfire “creates sodium” to demonstrate that like Chemical King, he has “complete control over every element”. (Maybe they meant to write Element Lad there?)