Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes #315 (Part 2) (1984)
by Paul Levitz & George Tuska
Continuing the secret origin of White Witch, and this time she’s the one narrating.
Considering his obvious crush, poor Blok is probably dying inside every time she calls him a friend.
He origin picks up when she was brought to Sorcerers’ World by a spaceship, and once again I get major “supervillain origins” vibe from her attitude.
Her plan before coming here was:
Step 1: land
Step 2: ???
Step 3: turn into a magician!!!
Then again, she’s ten years old according to the previous issue, so that checks out.
Considering this is a galaxy with multiple shapeshifting species, seeing a talking dog shouldn’t be THAT crazy.
Then basically nothing happens.Which, considering she’s a ten year old alone on an alien planet, isn’t exactly a good thing either.
More superhero origins should include children vowing to become arsonists.
That’s what gets the attention of the sorcerers.
How can you not ship these two together? They’re just an adorable couple!
The narration continues until Mysa has grown…
…and one of her teachers might look familiar. If he wasn’t drawn completely off-model, that is…
…because that was freaking Mordru!!!
I’m not entirely sure the timeline checks out.
Mysa is explicitly 16 years old when Mordru teaches her magic. The ages of the various Legionnaires are never very clear, but she’s Dream Girl’s youngest sister, so I would think she’s currently in her early twenties. Let’s be VERY generous and say she’s 25: that would mean there’s 9 years before that encounter and the Legion’s present.
But not only it’s been quite a while since we first saw Mordru in Adventure Comics #369: his first encounter with the Legion is even earlier than that. Because according to that issue the Legion first faced Mordru in a never told story, taking place much earlier.
So taking all that into consideration… what, Mordru went through a MASSIVE power-up and aged to an old man in what, a couple of years!?
I know there’s magic involved so anything’s possible, but come on! Why needlessly complicate things?
The only reason Mordru is brought up is so that he can sabotage her initiation…
…which is done to explain why she was “The Hag” when she first showed up back in Adventure Comics #350.
So the next issue will deal with that. But I don’t expect the Devil’s Dozen to make ANY sense.
Legion significance: 6/10
This creates a link between the White Witch and Mordru, which will be explored way down the line. Including some VERY questionable decisions during the so-called “Retroboot”.
Silver Age-ness: 6/10
Technically speaking the talking dog has a reason to be here, but still…
Does it stand the test of time? 5/10
Much like the first part, diluting the story across multiple issues hurt it a little. It’s still interesting to see an origin that has all the hallmarks of a supervillain story to go in a completely different direction… but the Mordru connection feels like it’s out of nowhere.
Too bad because the pre-White Witch version of Mysa never gets any screen time… she’s an interesting concept, we should definitely see her more often. 
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