Tales of the Legion #324 (Part 2)

Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes #324 (1985)
by Paul Levitz (plot), Mindy Newell (dialogue) & Ernie Colon (pencils)

This is a small story about Invisible Kid helping one of his friends, who is drawn in a far more cartoony way than anyone else but is supposed to be a human.

The guy works at a place that manufactures holographic maps of every planet in the Galaxy, but there’s a problem with the map of planet Orsde.

Specifically, whenever someone accesses the map of the planet…

…THE PLACE EXPLODES.

Invisible Kid’s friend has an idea of what’s behind this: ghosts!

Invisible Kid realizes he can’t do anything about this… because let’s face it, he’s pretty useless at this point… decides to ask the help of a fellow Legionnaires.
So who is he going to?

Brainiac 5, because he knows more about computers than anyone else?
Phantom Girl, because maybe she could fight ghosts?
White Witch, because she’s literally a witch who could easily confirm if there are ghosts?
No, the answer is obviously Shrinking Violet, because she… uhm… fights really well?

Wow is that “we both know how out of place you are here” harsh or what!?
Even if she definitely means “you’re out of place in the gym” and not “you’re out of place in the Legion”, Shrinking Violet isn’t pulling any punches!

The reason why Invisible Kid talked to Shrinking Violet is that the computer is not really haunted: it’s been sabotaged by her fellow Imskians, who shrank inside the system.

Invisible Kid defeats them with a vacuum cleaner.

Normally that wouldn’t be a problem to an Imskian, since their power allows them to shrink through molecules… but this is a SPECIAL vacuum cleaner!

Shrinking Violet’s contribution to this was to suggest to Invisible Kid to use this special vacuum cleaner. And the reason why he deduced there were Imskian terrorists behind this is because Ordse is their “sister planet”, which has never been mentioned before.

So, uhm… good for him, I guess?

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Legion significance: 0/10

Silver Age-ness: 2/10
The special vacuum cleaner is at least A BIT Silver Age, but I’m disappointed the computer wasn’t literally haunted.

Does it stand the test of time? 0/10
I don’t mean to pick on Invisible Kid II… he had a good introduction and I know he’ll become interesting much later… but this period he is soooooooo boring.
There’s nothing compelling about him, he doesn’t use his powers in an interesting way, and then there’s the absurd leap in logic on how he solved the case.
It’s like if someone was messing with a map of Mars and realizing “of course, it’s right next to Earth, so naturally someone from Earth is behind this”.
And the plan of the Imskians is just dumb. Is this the ONLY place in the Galaxy that makes maps of their “sister planet”? Wouldn’t doing this kind of stuff just lead to more investigations? Why not simply delete from the computer information about your secret base instead of STAYING INSIDE THE COMPUTER FOREVER and keep causing explosions!?!?

We are legion
19 active Legionnaires
8 reserve members
10 deceased members