Legion of Super-Heroes v3 #11 (1985)
by Paul Levitz & Ernie Colon
cover by Steve Lightle
“Taking Care of Business: Old Business”
We’re back to having two separate stories in the same issue. The first one focuses on the Legion founders, who haven’t had a solo adventure for quite a while.
Cosmic Boy is introduced to the son of Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl, and it doesn’t go all that great.
Cosmic Boy brings up a good point. Granting Lightning Lass an exception to the “no duplicate powers” rule isn’t a great idea. He’s right about those rules being flexible: they were originally waived to allow Supergirl to be in the same team of Superboy.
Levitz seems to be going back and forth between having the parents retire or stay in the Legion, but at least it’s reflected in the story. And I give him credit that it DOES make sense that they’d be indecisive on the matter.
Cosmic Boy is having doubts on the role of the Legion founders. He has effectively retired from active duty in the previous issue, although it’s not official yet.
Breaking news on the “Who shot Laurel Kent?” plot: there are no news.
Despite Earth being a nearly crimeless utopia in the 30th century, there’s at least one prison in Antarctica.
The founders are visiting the prison, but apparently nobody told security.
Why did you bring the kid!? Are there seriously NO babysitters in the 30th century!?
The Science Police is weirdly fine with accidentally firing on the most famous people in the Galaxy.
I’m honestly amazed Saturn Girl doesn’t fry this guy’s brain because WOW, that is an astounding level of incompetency even for the Science Police.
You would think this was plot-related, but… no the Science Police really is THAT incompetent.
Okay now I get why she brought the kid. The little guy is tougher than most Science Police officers!
The founders are here to visit some prisoners, and they are shocked that hard labor still exists in the 30th century.
Ernie Colon’s artwork in this issue is awful, but I do like Saturn Girl’s expression as she simply opens the gate that leads to the prisoners while Lightning Lad wanted to blow it up.
I suck at reading Interlac, but if I’m not mistaken the sign on the gate spells “Drill rig SP.7” (with “SP” being “Science Police” I would guess).
The panel is right below a different Interlac sign that says “Keep out. SP.”
Notice that one sign has the little vertical line before “SP” and the other one doesn’t. In Interlac, that means only one of the two is capitalized. So one should be “Sp” and the other as “sp”?
That’s one of the things about Interlac that I don’t think really works… capitalization is all over the place.
Saturn Girl senses the prisoners are hostile, and sure enough they try attacking the Legionnaires.
But it’s not because they recognize them: the don’t even remember the Legionnaires are the ones who put them in prison in the first place.
Yeah, uhm, this is kind of dark. The prisoners aren’t’ EXACTLY lobotomized, but they definitely don’t seem to be alright mentally after this treatment. Kind of creepy.
So what was the point of visiting those prisoners, who were set to be freed the same day? Because these are exactly the criminals who, by trying to murder R.J.Brande in Superboy #147, indirectly created the Legion of Super-Heroes.
And that’s it for the main story.
The only other subplot is that we have a new President of Earth. Always a good side when first thing the newly elected leader says he’s going to change EVERYTHING, including laws, right?
The last page shows Superboy has returned to the 30th century for one last adventure, and it’s used as a lead into the second part of the issue.
Legion significance: 0/10
I spent most of the time talking about Interlac. Do the math.
Silver Age-ness: 3/10
The mental treatment would’ve been shown to have no harmful effects in the Silver Age, but here it’s not so clear-cut.
Does it stand the test of time? 4/10
This is clearly a breather issue, so I can excuse the guest artist… even though the artwork is pretty bad… but this was just boring. It has the Legion founders reflect on their role, but they’ve been doing that for some time and this doesn’t add anything.
We are legion
19 active Legionnaires
8 reserve members
10 deceased members
Interesting letters: if you like Lightning Lass’ latest costume (and I do, it’s a great improvement) you can apparently thank Joe Orlando.
I have to agree with Kevin, though: the artwork in issue 6 was pretty bad.
Dream Girl might have something to say about Lightning Lass being “the sexiest girl in the Legion”, though.
There is a lot of talk about the artwork of that story. And a clear answer about why Joe Orlando didn’t pencil a lot of stories in this period: that story took three months to pencil!
So is this the last pre-Crisis appearance of Superboy?
On the Legion, almost: next issue is the last pre-Crisis Legion story where Superboy appears.
There may be other stories published right before the end of Crisis where the original Superboy appears.
I don’t think there were, I believe you are correct about this being the last.
It’s really too bad we never got to see Nose-Grabber Kid grow up and join the Legion. On the other hand, his strength is nothing compared to his brother’s.