Legion of Super-Heroes #313 (1984)
written by Paul Levitz & Keith Giffen
layouts by Keith Giffen
finished art by Larry Mahlstedt
cover by Keith Giffen
This is the last issue of volume 2 on a technicality: the series will be renamed “Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes”, running concurrently to volume 3.
The Legion has been soloing the series since #259, and we end the run with a cover that is… kind of terrible, to be honest. It looks like a cutout of a single panel.
Continuing the theme from the previous issue, the 30th century is such a utopia that even the President of Earth has trouble considering the fact that she might need protection.
Despite, you know, having been the target of supervillains even before she was President!!!
Element Lad and Sun Boy as still disguised as Science Police officers to help find the criminal responsible for the various explosions. I’m still not clear WHY they need to be in disguise (don’t they have the Espionage Squad for this stuff?), but it’s even starting to make their investigation kind of pointless.
Still, White Witch is there to help capture the suspects.
Not sure why Element Lad is still in disguise, since Sun Boy has dropped his. It’s not a bad character design, but it’s weird seeing him in blackface! Glad he doesn’t grow a mustache after this, though, it definitely wouldn’t work with his usual design.
By far the best part of this otherwise unremarkable two-parter is the glimpse into how the Science Police works. Plus Levitz uses the opportunity to plant some seeds of worldbuilding, like the fact that the Proteans (a.k.a. Proty’s race) are a bit of a controversial topic in the 30th century.
Also Ontiir is on trial for treason. It’ll be addressed in the next story.
I’m sure he’ll be acquitted. Does this look like someone who would commit treason?
There’s also a bit of a grey area on how the Science Police operates, at least from a 20th century perspective.
Despite the additional security provided by the Legion, the President is still the target of an assassination attempt.
I like Chief Zendak as a character, but at this point it’s clear that he’s not as competent as everyone seems to think. How do you NOT know which officers have access to Science Police computers!?
This is getting nowhere, AGAIN.
Yeah I agree with Shvaughn. This was a fun interlude at the beginning, but the plot is starting to look a little light at this moment.
It’s almost navel gazing at this point.
Honestly I’d rather see a further exploration of the United Planets politics, because the President’s speech sounds like it’s hinting at some isolationist tendencies from some planets.
Naturally, since the President was warned she’d be killed if she didn’t pay her blackmailer… there’s another assassination attempt.
But surprise: the President wasn’t the only one being blackmailed!
Wait wait wait… the Science Police has known all this time that they’ve employed civilian programmers and ONLY NOW they think that one of those might be the mysterious hacker!?!?
Yeah that cements it: Chief Zendak is a moron.
As soon as THAT’s revealed, the Legion has SUDDEN SUPERBOY!
That’s actually pretty funny. And consistent with the Golden Age Superman rarely caring about which walls he crashed.
Brainiac 5 is too polite to answer the truth: “You didn’t need a supergenius to figure this out, it’s just that you guys are morons”.
And so the hacker is captured in one of the most anticlimactic finales I’ve seen a while.
In other plots, Shrinking Violet gives Duplicate Boy a piece of her mind.
It’s a small glimpse into her far more fierce new personality. She’ll get a lot more spotlight in volume 3.
In a sort of coda to the Great Darkness Saga. Mon-El feels a bit responsible for the whole thing since Darkseid learned about Daxam from him.
Still, Shadow Lass is right: it’s not like Darkseid couldn’t learn it on his own!
This is so late after the ending of the GDS that I wonder if Levitz got the idea to talk about this plot point from a fan’s reaction.
Dream Girl and Star Boy are still on vacation. We get a nice encyclopedia entry on Ventura, though.
There’s definitely some relationship trouble with these two.
And she has a vision of what’s going to happen in volume 3.
I wonder if she also foresaw the winners of the next Legion Awards!
Legion significance: 0/10
Nice fluff, but fluff nonetheless.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
As fun as chastising Superboy for the unnecessary damage is, not really.
Does it stand the test of time? 6/10
Basically all my observations from the previous issue still apply. The artwork is a little better, but it suffers from a much slower pacing.
We are legion
20 active Legionnaires
8 reserve members
1 honorary member (Rond Vidar)
41 people have been members
Interesting letters: this is really a nice summary for the post-Darkness era of this volume.
You’re definitely going to love volume 3, Rex, both for the big plots and the downtime!
It is fun to find and translate the bits of Interlac scattered in these stories. For example, Star Boy’s credit card shows that Visa is still alive and well after a thousand years.