Superboy and the LSH #244 (1978)
by Paul Levitz & Joe Staton
cover by Jim Sherman
Earthwar approaches its conclusion. Will we find out who’s behind everything?
After a recap with the events of the previous issues, we begin with the Legion traveling back to Earth from Weber’s World: the Dominator diplomats have vanished, and Dawnstar has tracked their position to an abandoned ship in the middle of nowhere.
There are only robots inside, and Superboy is more eager to fight than Wildfire.
Now THAT is a sentence I don’t get to write often!
Turns out there is a cube of Inertron on the ship: in addition to being indestructible, Superboy’s X-Ray vision can’t see through it.
And to give you an idea of just how broken Dawnstar’s tracking power is: she just found her target outside of the galaxy AND hidden behind something that would stop Superman.
I know we’re typically told that lead is the only substance that blocks them, but I’m giving the Superman writers a pass since Inertron is not a thing that exists in 99% of Superman stories.
And speaking of overpowered: Element Lad is able to make Inertron vanish like it wasn’t even there. He’s going to pull of this trick a lot in the future.
The missing Dominators are found inside the cube, and they drop a bombshell: the United Planets representative is a member of the Dark Circle.
Back to Earth, the Khunds are able to break through the force field that protects the Legion HQ. You would think Brainiac 5 would put up something better, considering what HIS force field belt is capable of doing!
However the Khunds are stopped by the presence of the married Legionnaires, with the narration pointing out the blatant stupidity of the rule about leaving the team upon marriage.
You would Saturn Girl would contribute more to the fight than doing the splits (????); maybe the Khunds have some kind of protection from telepathy, but if it’s there I missed the explanation.
Lightning Lad is understandably a bit grumpy for having to deal with an alien invasion during his honeymoon.
The four are under no illusion of being able to stop the entire Khund army on their own, but they won’t need to: someone else is bound to join the fight.
Even Shvaughn Erin, just in case you were wondering why she of all people got to hang around the Legion.
Guess who’s back from his awful series!!!
At this point the rest of the Legion makes it back to Earth… for a disappointingly penciled action scene.
Then Wildfire stops the fight (!!!) because he’s afraid the Khunds are going to take hostages. Isn’t the entire planet their hostage at this point?
The story praises him for the decision to go to the Presidential Palace to confront the United Planet representative who has been working for the Dark Circle… but I’m not buying the idea that the bloodthirsty Khunds wouldn’t still take hostages.
It’s a moot point because, once the Legion gets there, they meet the Dark Circle members responsible for kidnapping the various Legionnaires throughout the storyline.
Note that they even took the Subs but even the Dark Circle wants nothing to do with Tyroc… poor dolt.
The Dark Circle leaders are sore losers, though: if they can’t have Earth, they’ll just blow it up!
We even get a reference to the madman responsible for the death of Chemical King in Superboy and the LSH #228.
However the “four supposedly invulnerable Legionnaires” shield the explosion with their bodies, preventing it from destroying Earth.
Which is fine for Superboy, Mon-El and Ultra Boy, but… Wildfire? He’s a powerhouse, sure, but “invulnerable”? The dude gets blown to bits every other issue!
Sure, it makes sense to have him help… he’s made of energy so maybe he can absorb part of the energy of the explosion… but still that’s a bit much.
Once they survive the explosion, Karate Kid goes after the leader of the Dark Circle.
And at last we have arrived at the revelation of who is behind Earthwar.
The Resource Raiders were working for the Khunds.
The Khunds were working for the Dark Circle.
And the Dark Circle was working for… drum roll…
That’s right, MORDRU is going to be the final adversary of the final chapter of Earthwar!
Let’s hope he doesn’t screw this up like… checking my notes… basically every other finale of a Mordru storyline I’ve covered so far.
Legion significance: 8/10
An integral part of Earthwar.
Silver Age-ness: 4/10
I’ll cover next issue why Mordru being behind everything does make some sense, but it really does come off as being out of nowhere here.
Does it stand the test of time? 7/10
The quality of the artwork continues to degrade… we’re almost at John Forte levels of stiffness here. Which is a shame because the story is still great, even one major caveat that made me drop a full point: why use the Dominator infodump to tell the readers that the United Planets representatives worked for the Dark Circle? It should’ve been included in a scene last issue!
We are legion
21 Legionnaires
8 reserve members