Adventure Comics 247

ADVENTURE COMICS #247 (1958)
by Otto Binder and Al Plastino

The cover is, of course, one of the most parodied in the history of DC comics. Probably because of its simple design and, let’s be honest, silliness of the concept.

One thing I never noticed before: is Superboy doing a double-take? Why wasn’t he looking at the panel where the people judging him are sitting?

Sadly, Cosmic Boy will not be wearing that space helmet in the story, as you can see on the first page. Which, as per the standards of the time, gives away half of the story.

Well I’m sure we needed a teaser for a story that’s 12 pages long, including the teaser.

We truly open in Smallville, when a random guy is calling Clark Kent “Superboy”. To which Clark responds by… laughing it off. Yeah, sure, smooth move Clark.

It happens again, in reverse: another guy calls Superboy “Clark Kent”. This can’t be a coincidence, so Clark decides to take action by… pretending he didn’t hear that.

Now I’m starting to think that the guy who protects his identity with a pair of glasses isn’t the best person in the world at keeping a secret identity, especially when a third person, a blonde girl, also knows his secret.

But don’t worry, his secret is still safe: they’re actually from the future and nobody heard them!

Man, I’m so glad that the mystery is solved after an entire page!

I’m not joking, by the way: this is the ENTIRE first page. I’m starting to think that decompression isn’t always a bad thing in storytelling. I mean, look at this!

The team invites Superboy to the future, to invite him to their club of super-heroes, and he agrees since things are quiet in Smallville right now.

You know I’m starting to think that the guy who can time travel on his own doesn’t really understand how time travel works.

They arrive a thousand years in the future, where we have a nice touch: Superboy considers the Smallville of the future to be a big city, but for the locals it’s… well, still a small town.

I’d like to see this in reverse sometime: someone from our time visiting the past and being disappointed to see a real historical place.

Just as I’m disappointed in watching superheroes visit a space ice parlor.

I wonder if they had to deal with protestors when the Pluto flavor was discontinued.

They have preserved the Kents’ house as a (choke) shrine for one thousand years, and  their schools are teaching how Superboy used his powers.

I’m really getting some weird vibes about this future, like there’s an oppressive Superboy Church or something.

They’re not even teaching things right, telling how Superboy used his X-Ray vision to melt steel, instead of his heat-ray vision.

Consistency, guys! What is this, the Silver Age?

I love the reaction when the real Superboy shows up. It’s like you’re teaching about Lincoln, then a time-traveling Lincoln shows up. Would you just say “how fortunate”? Well, it’s the future, who knows what drugs are legal now.

 

But speaking of history, now the team formally introduce themselves as the Legion of Super-Heroes.

I can’t decide what’s sillier: that they have the names on their costume, that they have a sign that tells us what their powers are, or how they’re described. Not just lightning and magnetism, but SUPER lightning and magnetism! And for some reason they don’t use “telepathy”, even though it was a well established word in science fiction, instead of the awkward “super thought casting”.

 

Cosmic Boy activates the “television trouble-finder”, which I think is what the Super-Friends used, to find out a mission for a job to test Superboy against Saturn Girl.

Note how they say that her powers were taught to her by scientists, while in the future (pun intended) we’ll get a different origin for her telepathy.

But Superboy is distracted by the robot running away, and he has to stop it before it’s lost: after all, it’s worth a million dollars!

Which in a thousand years will probably be worthless, but then again it’s the teacher saying this, so maybe teachers are paid like crap in the future as well.

Saturn Girl completes her mission by using her telepathy to command a sea monster (suck it Aquaman!), meaning that Superboy loses his test… and it’s even worse because he lost to a girl.

That’s how 1958 imagined a thousand years in the future, guys. Yeesh.

Then we go through the same thing again: Cosmic Boy his magnetic powers to stop a meteor shower, but Superboy can’t help because he was stopping a falling satellite.

Cosmic Boy will also get a different origin of his powers from the “special serum” he talks about here, by the way.

 

The Legion continues dicking with Superboy, pointing out that with all his powers he’s failing against people with just one power, so things need to get serious.

And in the Silver Age, getting serious meant getting silly. Get ready.

During the next context an invisible eagle escapes from a zoo:

So a guy with all sorts of super-senses does the easiest thing to do to catch it: FLY AN ENTIRE ICEBERG TO SMALLVILLE, cooling the ice and making the eagle visible! After all it was the easiest thing to do for a guy with x-ray vision and ice breath.

The third member of the Legion, Lightning Boy, who will later change his name to Lightning Lad, tries his best to match the silliness, using his electric powers, excuse me his “super electricity”, to create a giant sign to warn a spaceship that was running out of fuel.

Yeah, I’m sure that was the easiest way to send them a signal.

The Legion continues to mock Superboy, who tries to keep a brave smile but *sob* immediately starts crying.

But wait! It was all a trick!
The team used their powers to dick with Superboy, in order to make him fail. In a nice little touch, nothing they did actually put anyone in danger.
This time.

But why be jerks to Superboy? Because it’s an initiation to make him join the club! Sigh. Yeah, not your brightest moment, team, but nice try.

Note the kid with green skin in the room. He wasn’t like that in the original story: he was re-colored in future printings to make it look like a future member of the team, retroactively making Brainiac 5 present during the initiation.

But can the team  upstage his Kryptonian dickishness? Of course not. Because there’s immediately another alarm… crap how long has he been in the future, there’s been like five incidents already…

He uses his powers to emulate the Legion’s powers, although anticipating Saturn Girl’s obvious question hardly count as telepathy.

Dude you already have like twenty super-powers already, you don’t need to pretend to have the few that you don’t actually have!

And we close with Superboy returning to the twentieth century, to show to his father that he’ll be honored and revered like a god for a thousand years.

I swear Pa Kent is thinking of ways to return this freakin’ kid to Krypton.

 

Historical significance: 6/10
You’d think this moment would be referenced more often, but there are FAR more parodies of this issue than actual refences to it other than “Superboy is a member of the Legion”.

Legion significance: 10/10
Recruiting Superboy is what puts the Legion on the map.

Silver Age-ness: 8/10
Superboy stops an invisible space eagle by moving an iceberg! Which is pretty tame for DC Silver Age.

Does it stand the test of time? 4/10
Yeah, this hasn’t aged well at all.

We are legion: We have 3 active Legionnaires during most of the story, with Superboy becoming the fourth member

How much Legion is too much? The Legion of Superheroes currently consists of 4 people.

Time travel doesn’t work like that
“I can go a thousand years in the future because right now Smallville is fine”. You’re not thinking four-dimensionally, Superboy.

A thousand years in the future, you say?
The ice cream parlor screams 1950s, the school screams 1930s, and the attitude about girls screams what the heck?

 

Since this is a Superboy story, let’s look at the Superman categories:

The glasses, they do nothing!
Okay, the Legionnaires know Superboy’s secret identity because it’s public knowledge in the future, but he’s TERRIBLE at handling a potential exposure!

That shouldn’t be a superpower
Guessing what another person is about to say is NOT telepathy!

 

Superman significance
They’ll eventually explain this away with super-hypnotism, but Superman’s knowledge of the future is never used in his comics.