ADVENTURE COMICS 356 (1967)
by E. Nelson Bridwell & Curt Swan
Jim Shooter takes a break, but considering the last time we saw Bridwell… I’m a bit worried.
It’s “Parents Day” on Earth, giving us a rare glimpse at various parents of Legionnaires.
The flag of the planet where everyone has magnetic powers is a magnet? That’s lame.
This is also a pretty depressing holiday for the orphan Legionnaires.
We already knew about Superboy and Element Lad, and it was easy to guess for Mon-El giving his 1,000 year exile in the Phantom Zone, but this is news for Dream Girl and Brainiac 5.
Also: good job cheering up your friends!
These Legionnaires are called to answer an emergency, where they dive into a pond to recover some gigantic jewels dropped by thieves.
Curt Swan is pretty good at underwater scenes. I’ll have to check if he got to draw Aquaman between his 1,000 or so Superman stories.
Naturally, this is the reason for them becoming younger.
And OF COURSE this ends up working on Superboy and Mon-El as well.
The Legionnaires end up in an interstellar orphanage.
The Legionnaires are between 16 and 18 at this point. Since we’re told that their age is now half of that, you’d expect them to act like 8 or 9 year olds.
Except Brainiac 5, of course, who is still a super-genius.
Did we already know about “Rokyn” from somewhere else, or did we just learn about Kandor’s fate in a throwaway caption!?!?
You might think that this is an evil orphanage, but all things considered they seem fine.
With the Legionnaires having the mind of children now (insert your own Superboy joke here), they’re all competing to get adopted.
It turns out that Brainiac 5 didn’t just keep his intelligence. He’s the only one who kept his memory!
There’s something fishy going on, however, because they ALL end up being adopted from people from the same world! From the same neighborhood even!
“Baby Brainiac” (ugh) manages to create an antidote, even figuring out how the water affected Superboy. And it’s a stupid reason, of course.
THAT MAKES LITERALLY NO SENSE.
Okay, the Legionnaires get back to their real age. Time for some exposition!
Wow. Things got dark FAST.
And then it gets stupid again!
Really. There were no children to adopt in the entire galaxy!? REALLY!?
I get that the United Planets are supposed to be a utopia, but come on!
Bonus idiocy: they didn’t even need to go through all this because they’re no longer sterile!
And apparently they will live happily ever after!
So we’re going to ignore the Fountain of Youth, I guess? AGAIN!?!?
Legion significance: 0/10
I suppose it’s technically where we learn that Dream Girl and Brainiac 5 are orphans, but that’s never going to be important. In Brainy’s case, they won’t even be consistent about it.
Silver Age-ness: 7/10
Considering the abundance of Fountains of Youth in Silver Age DC, how is it possible that people STILL die of old age there!?
Does it stand the test of time? 0/10
I suppose I can give the story credit for keeping Brainiac 5 at his real mental age, but that would be a stretch. This is still a pretty bad story.
We are legion
23 Legionnaires
2 reserve member: Kid Psycho, Insect Queen
1 resigned member: Command Kid
1 honorary member: Elastic Lad
1 expelled member: Nemesis Kid
2 deceased members: Dynamo Boy and Ferro Lad
How much Legion is too much?
The total number of characters who have been members is 30.
Interesting letters: the initial fallout of Ferro Lad’s death!
And hey, even a letter from future writer and comic book historian Mark Evanier!
Also apparently Ferro Lad had to die by process of elimination, even if the logic for Sun Boy and is a little shaky.
I wonder if readers of the time were actually entertained by frivolous stories like this. Or did they prefer the more dramatic arcs featuring duplicitous villains and peril?