Adventure Comics 323

ADVENTURE COMICS 323 (1964)
by Edmond Hamilton & John Forte

The cover promises an exciting adventure. Despite the fact that the scene happens, it’s anything but an exciting adventure.

Audition time again! We begin with the daughter of Spider-Man applying for membership.

Sorry, my mistake: this is “Spider Girl” without the hyphen, and she continues the trend of applicants rejected because they can’t properly control their powers.

The pre-Crisis Spider Girl will return as a villain. Her post-Crisis counterpart will be a far more nuanced character, something of an anti-hero even.

Then we have Double-Header, who continues the trend of the “what the hell were they thinking” applicants.

He’s also firmly in the “why would anyone consider this a superpower” category.

Now that’s been taken care of, Saturn Girl’s term as Legion Leader has expired.

For some reason she doesn’t simply call for an election, but wants a machine to determine who is the most clever of the team.

Brainiac 5 objects that since he’s already the smartest member of the team this wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the Legion. Fair enough.

So we just take a vote, right?

*sigh*
Fu##ing Proty.

Okay, so apparently this time the Legion Leader will be whoever solves Proty’s puzzle, which involves sending each Legionnaire to a different place to gather clues.

First is Saturn Girl, who is sent to the planet where they have DINOSAUR THROWING CONTESTS.

And where they ride winged kangaroos.

The kangaroos are wearing telepath-proof helmets, but Saturn Girl mind controls a green kangaroo to lead her own flying kangaroo through the volcano obstacle course.

And having written that I probably know how taking LSD feels like.

Ultra Boy’s mission is to capture some invisible criminals. Kind of a letdown after the flying kangaroos if you ask me.

Phantom Girl’s mission is to discover Jor-El’s greatest award without a time machine.

My money is on the “Most Likely To Throw Something Into Space Award”.

She accomplishes this by entering the Phantom Zone on her own!

Apparently all the Phantom Zone criminals have been released by Superman (even General Zod? Even Kru-El ?), all except one: “the Mighty Gazor”.

Ironically, Gazor’s greatest crime was trying to destroy Krypton. And even more ironically, Jor-El was the one who stopped him.

Gazor was given the longest Phantom Zone sentence ever, while Jor-El was given the prize of A LIVING BRAIN IN A JAR.

So… yeah, Jor-El had a brain-in-a-jar as a lab assistant.

And in case the irony of Jor-El preventing someone from exploding Krypton escapes you, Superboy spells it out for you.

That’s some heavy stuff.

Let’s lighten the mood with Jimmy Olsen fantasizing about leaving his sort-of-girlfriend!

Jimmy Olsen, ladies and gentlemen, striving to become the worst human being since 1941.

That was just a tease: before we get to Jimmy, it’s Element Lad’s turn: at the Cosmic Eye Of Doom Crater.

Despite its name, the crater is harmless.

Element Lad’s assignment is to expose himself to uranium for TEN MINUTES.

He’s not allowed to use his transmutation powers to change the uranium back into another element, but he’s pretty confident he can stand in the crater without harm.

I fully expected something silly, but Element Lad’s solution is actually quite clever.

Quickly, we need to balance this with something stupid!

The quality of the above scan isn’t the best: the second panel says “I just wrote down Superboy’s secret identity… which makes me a mind-reader, right?”.

Superboy’s reaction is basically the same as mine: “sure, let’s go with that”.

Brainiac 5’s mission is to win three games of chess against supercomputers. Simultaneously.

He wins (of course), but he’s such a “swell guy” that he doesn’t take the credit due to an undue advantage.

That’s nice and all, but I prefer the jackass Brainiac 5 of later years. My ideal version of Brainiac 5 would notice the faulty wiring, repair the computers and STILL win the match.

And finally we have Jimmy Olsen’s mission: “just be funny”.

He fails.

To clarify: he fails spectacularly at being funny, despite some minor puppet cheesecake.

There is, of course, the strong possibility that the Legionnaires are laughing AT Jimmy, instead of WITH Jimmy. I can sympathize with that.

And that’s the end of Proty’s mystery! Did you get the solution? Saturn Girl can.

Here’s the solution: take first letter of each contestant’s name, and put Proty backwards at the end since he was pretending to be a Bizarro when he gave the challenge.

Note that Phantom Girl and Element Lad are holding a card with their initial letter… which is completely unnecessary since their costumes have a giant P and a giant E on the chest!!!

And why, oh why did Proty II did this? Because it’s apparently the anniversary of Superboy joining the Legion.

Interestingly Chameleon Boy, Triplicate Girl, Colossal Boy, Invisible Kid and Brainiac 5 are shown to already be Legionnaires by the time Superboy joins.

This is fair for most of them, who have been introduced in Supergirl stories as already members and could conceivably have been members when Superboy joined… but Brainiac 5 is a problem.
He can’t have been a member longer than Superboy: he was introduced with his first audition, where the Legion tried to recruit Supergirl AFTER they already recruited Superboy.

Anyway, the result of this entire story is that Saturn Girl’s term as Legion Leader has expired and she will be replaced… by Saturn Girl.

Did we really need this story for that!?

 

Legion significance: 0/10
It’s a story that explicitly replaces the existing status quo with the exact same status quo, what did you expect?

Silver Age-ness: 10/10
Honestly it could’ve been a 6/10 until we reached the Phantom Zone mission. Then we get “the mighty Gazor” and the brain-in-a-jar lab assistant.

Does it stand the test of time? 2/10
This was painful. There’s a lot of creativity in wild scenarios and imaginative alien worlds, as it’s the norm for this creative team, but it’s all in service of a scavenger hunt that makes little sense.
Saved from a 0/10 by Element Lad’s no-bulls#it solution and for Phantom Girl’s awesomely crossing into the Phantom Zone like it’s nothing.

We are legion
11 Legionnaires active in this story: Sun Boy, Saturn Girl, Superboy, Phantom Girl, Chameleon Boy, Brainiac 5, Element Lad, Triplicate Girl, Colossal Boy, Invisible Kid, Lightning Lad
8 not shown but officially members
1 reserve member: Bouncing Boy
1 resigned member: Dream Girl
1 honorary member: Elastic Lad

How much Legion is too much?
The Legion has 19 active members. The total number of characters who have been members is 22.

EDIT: as pointed out by reader Commander Benson on the comments to Superboy #98, Pete Ross is identified as a honorary member in a caption right above the Spider-Girl panel I posted. I missed that in my review, so Pete is not officially counted until Adventure Comics #370.

Legion rejects: 19
Spider Girl and Double-Header are added to the list, which is now a tie with the active members.

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Interesting letters: when Brainiac 5 was introduced, Superman villain Brainiac was just an alien. Later stories later changed him to an alien robot, so here’s the solution to this contradiction.