Legion of Super-Heroes #273 (1981)
by Gerry Conway & Jim Janes
cover by Joe Orlando
Maybe having Colossal Boy’s mom be elected President of Earth wasn’t such a great idea.
We don’t waste any time: the cover is basically the opening scene.
Yeah, the Legion doesn’t have much luck with politicians.
The new President does have a point, though: killing is against the Legion’s own rules, and yet they’ve basically ignored the fact that one of their members is a murderer.
Yeah, you probably remember An Ryd because Jim Starlin’s issue #239 was pretty awesome…
…but you might have forgotten the trainwreck that was #250, where we learned that Brainiac 5 was behind it. Nice visual callback to the moment when we learned about it.
Still, the new panel is much better thanks to the queen of reaction shots, Saturn Girl.
So there’s enough evidence to force Brainiac 5 to leave the Legion but not enough to judge him guilty in a real trial? Man, 30th century law is screwed up.
Chamelon Boy is not convinced Brainiac 5 is the real murderer (kind of weird since it was him who outed Brainy the first time).
But we also have a subplot coming out of nowhere: Timber Wolf having some kind of mental problem. It will have SOME relevance in future issues, but not much.
The An Ryd plot tumor is causing a lot of problems.
Brainiac 5 is an indispensable member of the Legion, so it made sense to cure him and make him join the team again… but at the same time, since they completely ignored the fact that he murdered somebody in cold blood (even if he was insane at the time), it lead to the conclusion that the Legion simply didn’t care about An Ryd’s death.
So it makes perfect sense to revisit the murder scene. The problem with THAT, however, is that this investigation didn’t need to wait for Brainiac 5 to get in trouble in order to be re-opened!
So once again, the conclusion can only be that the Legion seriously doesn’t care about this murder until it causes other inconveniences.
See what I mean? Why couldn’t they do this MONTHS ago?
Someone suddenly attacks the Legionnaires, and Star Boy defends himself by absorbing the solar energy. Yeah, that’s not how Star Boy’s powers work, AT ALL. Is Conway confusing him with Sun Boy or something?
Phantom Girl and Ultra Boy are also running a second investigation; makes sense, since An Ryd was his friend and he was originally accused of being the murdered.
Notice the proto-Interlac on the computer; we’re not very far away from Interlac becoming a familiar sight!
Once this part of the investigation is complete, Phantom Girl discovers the spaceport employee that let them use the computer has been seriously injured…
…by the REAL mastermind behind this whole mess: Pulsar Stargrave.
Who, you might have forgotten because of the various retcons, was supposed to be the original Brainiac back from the dead.
Phantom Girl… even if he’s incredibly confusing, you have seen Pulsar Stargrave go toe-to-toe against Superboy. What makes you think you can take him down with a kick!?
It’s not often that I can say “Ultra Boy is the only one making sense here”.
And that’s when Pulsar Stargrave MURDERS ULTRA BOY.
More on that soon. But first, Brainiac 5 demonstrates that his fellow Legionnaires are not the only one who didn’t give a crap about An Ryd until this issue, because he’s figured out everything on his own.
That is one flimsy deduction, Brainiac 5. Leaving aside that you’re in an universe full of technology that replicates stellar energy (heck your benefactor builds stars for a living), Pulsar Stargrave isn’t even the only Legion villain with star powers. Couldn’t it have been Doctor Regulus!?
Also Ultra Boy is totally dead for real, guys. I wonder: did anyone really buy it? I know there are precedents for Legionnaires dying, but not in a throwaway scene!
But speaking of trying to make sense of very long plots, we have the final confrontation between Brainiac 5 and Pulsar Stargrave that attempts to make some sense of the latter’s convoluted origins.
So that takes care of the first Pulsar Stargrave retcon… he wasn’t Brainiac 5’s father. And since to the old retcon about the original Brainiac being a robot, we already know that Brainiac 5 is not TECHNICALLY related to the original Brainiac anyway.
It still leaves us with the idea that Pulsar Stargrave really IS the original Brainiac. He stays consistent with that claim, but future references to him cast doubts about this.
Perhaps because he’s defeated in a very stupid manner: Brainiac 5 traps both of them inside his force field, taunting him that it can hold him forever. Except the force field is created by the belt that is inside the field with him, and the belt is not indestructible… so Pulsar Stargrave should really find this suspicious.
Instead he blows himself up like a complete idiot. Doctor Doom would be proud of Brainy’s use of semantics, though.
At any rate, Brainiac 5 is definitely thinking that Pulsar Stargrave really was the original Brainiac.
Now that this plot tumor is finished, let’s go through the full Pulsar Stargrave plan, shall we?
1) either make Brainiac 5 go insane or wait for him to snap
2) murder a woman that Brainiac 5 doesn’t even know
3) make Brainiac 5 believe he is the murderer
4) blame Ultra Boy for the murder
5) have Brainiac 5 reveal himself to be the murderer
6) have Brainiac 5 use the Miracle Machine to create Omega
7) have Omega destroy all life in the universe
Legion significance: 7/10
This begins a long plot thread revolving around the death of Ultra Boy: he won’t return to the active roster until issue #282. So I’ll be counting him as “presumed dead” for now.
Pulsar Stargrave will return in absolutely hilarious 1985 Substitute Heroes story.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Not really.
Does it stand the test of time? 0/10
If you think about any plot point for more than five seconds the entire thing comes down crumbling. Even the admittedly good artwork can’t save this one. I have a little bit of sympathy for Conway because he’s trying to fix the mistakes of previous writers… but he ends up making the situation worse!
We are legion
21 Legionnaires
6 reserve members
1 on sick leave (Matter-Eater Lad)
1 presumed dead (Ultra Boy)