A new Legion retrospective, which will run in parallel to the regular one: Legion Apocrypha.
We’ll be taking a look at Legion stories that explicitly take place outside of any of the major continuities and that are not already scheduled to be included in other retrospectives.
Superboy #117 (1964)
by Jerry Siegel & Curt Swan
“Superboy and the 5 Legion Traitors!”
We’re going back to the Hamilton era for this one!
To give you some perspective: this shares the same cover date of Adventure Comics #327, the first appearance of Timber Wolf.
We begin with Superboy casually moving a planet to get out of the way of a supernova.
This works, because Silver Age, and then Superboy sticks around to watch the fireworks.
It’s a nice showcase of just how broken his invulnerability is, when he can hang around AN EXPLODING STAR just for giggles.
Once he’s back to Smallville, he witnesses the people celebrating the return of the Legion.
This brings up an interesting point: just how much does the 20th century know about the Legion? They obviously know they exist, since they’ve visited many times in very public adventures… but does the general public know they are from the future?
There is a story reason for Superboy repeatedly thinking that the Legion is doing a good job at keeping his secret identity, but if you don’t know what’s coming it feels very patronizing on his part.
Silver Age Smallville had a huge crime problem, because of course if you’re going to commit a crime your first choice is the only place on the planet that currently has a superhero.
The Legion handles things easily.
Incidentally, this might be the first time I’ve ever seen a comic book use the word “auto” when talking about a car; since that’s how a car is called in several languages, I have to wonder: would this have sounded like a strange word to use in 1964?
Jerry Siegel is doing a good job using the Legionnaire powers in a creative way!
Uh. I guess Chameleon Boy was onto something with in his awkward Adventure Comics 350 fourth-wall-breaking comment.
“Guys, be careful not to expose the secret that I’m yelling!”.
Well it looks like the comic answers my previous question, the general public DOES know the Legion is from the future.
There had to be a better way for Brainiac 5 to show he’s smart.
Also, if you know these people are from the future, would this be the first thing you’d ask!?
Siegel is just too good at creating bizarre worlds. Tell me you wouldn’t want to read stories set in these worlds! And they’re just throwaway panels!!!
Curt Swan might have been influenced by the regular Legion series because those are some seriously John Forte alien designs.
And you’re going to ask Element Lad to synthesize some of that element, right?
Right?
But we’re going back to the plot, specifically the scene shown on the cover: Ultra Boy exposing Superboy’s secret identity.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, is when the story turns absolutely bonkers.
Yes.
NOW.
Because the very next panel Superboy discovers that he’s not in Smallville: he’s in Smallvile.
To be fair, the earlier scene DID have this exact spelling.
So in this reality things in Smallvile are the opposite of Smallville?
I’m guessing this means that this reality eventually had a prequel series that lasted only one season, was consistently good and didn’t needlessly shove other characters into the story no matter how little sense it makes.
Superboy is now in a parallel Earth because of the supernova from the beginning. Somewhat awkwardly, because a very similar plot happened in the previous issue!
That one wasn’t exactly Siegel’s best work.
It is interesting to see Superboy having so many adventures involving alternate Earths; I normally associate Superman to be more involved in the Multiverse.
Also apparently having a female counterpart is more unusual than a “ape-like being”?
(and aren’t all humans ape-like beings anyway?)
Superboy then makes the absurd leap in logic that the Legionnaires are out to expose his counterpart’s secret identity.
Dude, you JUST learned this is not your Earth, you don’t know anything about these people!
All of this takes place in less than a second!!!
And then the Superboy of THIS Earth shows up to capture the Legionnaires.
Speaking of leaps of logic, though, get ready for a truly insane one.
Because apparently all Superboy needed to figure out the Legionnaires were not the real deal was that did not salute the Legion flag!!
This is not what happened in the rest of the story! There are a number of contradictions in Superboy claiming he knew everything from the start!
Not only he expressed zero mistrust towards them, he was shocked when they tried to expose his identity AND he didn’t figure out he was in a parallel Earth until later!
Was Superboy just making stuff up in order to look good in front of his alternate self?
Also, since this is an alternate Legion, how does HE know this version doesn’t have the rule about saluting the flag?
Also also, if all they wanted was expose his secret identity, what was the point of going through the school stuff instead of just yelling the secret?
Wait, Superboy can move between alternate Earths on his own now???
Sounds legit.
Does any of this show up in any regular continuity?
Replacing the usual “historical significance” category, which would hardly apply.
But I reeeeally struggle to thing of anything that shows up again. We’ve had multiple planets inhabited by robots and ghosts, but saying this was an inspiration would be a stretch.
SHOULD any of this have happened in regular continuity?
The concept of an alternate timeline where the Legionnaires are villains would be worth exploring. Although I guess since it’s already a very big team, having them interact with another one could get crowded.
Silver Age-ness: 30/10
Casual planetary rearrangement, confusing Multiverse shenanigans AND insane leaps in logic.
Does it stand the test of time? 0/10
That is A LOT for 7 ½ pages, but at the same time very little. The concept of evil Legionnaires is completely wasted, and as a mystery this does not work AT ALL.
Bonus round: while there’s another Superboy story that is not particularly interesting, there’s also a Krypto adventure! The writer is uncredited.
Superboy #117 (1964)
by unknown & George Papp
“Krypto’s Superdog Pal”
It begins normally enough, with Krypto clearly wanting to play.
Why does Superboy have to label every compartment? Can’t he just look inside with X-Ray vision? And what does he need a spare robot head for?
But no, Krypto wants him to take the Phantom Zone Projector™.
That’s when we get the shocking revelation that there’s a dog in the Phantom Zone, and Krypto directs his master to free him.
The dog’s name is Spot.
No, really. Just Spot.
It could make sense if Superboy named him Spot right now, but that’s his actual Kryptonian name.
I like Krypto. But you have to admit that the concept of a dog having Superman-level powers should be absolutely terrifying.
Superboy wonders how could Spot have been exiled into the Phantom Zone, since it’s essentially a prison and dogs can’t commit crimes.
Except he should know the Phantom Zone can be used for other reasons: he’s the one who put Mon-El there to save his life, couldn’t someone have placed Spot there for the same reason?
Of course not, this is the Silver Age so the explanation MUST be insane.
Superboy investigates by pulling an old trick: tracing the light that escaped Krypton and watching everything with super-vision.
This trip reveals that some criminals tried to trap Jor-El into the Phantom Zone, but Spot saved him.
Which can’t be the true story because it makes sense.
Further investigations bring Superboy to revisit Krypto’s origin story.
(yes, it will be eventually covered in the Hero Origins retrospective)
It will be years before Krypto shows up again on Earth, so Jor-El made the logical choice: make a replacement robot dog.
That’s all kinds of messed up when you think about it.
Spot ends up saving Krypto because they randomly came across some Kryptonite.
And Superboy doesn’t rebuild his dog’s best friend because… I’ve got nothing.
I get the feeling this was another instance in which the cover was designed first, and Siegel had to write a plot on the fly to match it. The premise set up by the cover is intriguing for the young target audience: Who wouldn’t fear their greatest secret being exposed in a roomful of classmates? I thought the story did okay in bringing us to that point. But, yes, the ending reeks of “make it up as you go along.”
If the story were done today, the possibilities are endless. Jo exposes Clark’s identity, but we find out the Superboy of this world is actually someone else (Pete Ross?). The evil Legionnaires are disgraced because they failed history!
Nice analysis of this, can we refer to it now as an “Elseworlds” tale? DC’s multiverse, now that it seems to be mostly canonical again, is fun. Curious though, a question comes to me as a retired teacher: Just how much classroom/school time did Clark really miss? In this story, the alternate world Superboy is off flying around while “our” Clark is in his place at school (Wow, mighty fortunate coincidence that alternate Clark was not in the room, huh?). In “reality” how could Clark miss so much school during the day while he is off saving worlds? One would assume he would be sent to the Principal’s office for non-attendance…considering that Silver Age stories usually came with a large dose of 1950s/60s middle class morality tales, what kind of role-model was young Clark to the young readers of the day?
You would think “the teenage hero is missing school” would be a recurring thing for Superboy, but I can’t think of any comic when it’s a plot point.
Maybe the Superboy of Smallvile is a bad student? It is a universe where several Legionnaires are bad guys after all.
As for the regular universe, I guess he might be using robots to have Clark in class whenever he needs. It’s not like he goes to school to learn, he’s already a super-genius.
Either that or bad stuff only happens after school hours.
Planet Inanor, with its living cities, might be where Pixar’s Cars and related works take place.
As is typical for the period, none of the 30th century tech-gimmicks introduced in this story ever appear again.
I got the omnibuses for the Silver Age era of the Legion and I could not for the life of me understand why they did not include stories like these, despite being at least somewhat interesting and original, being the first alternate earth Legion and all. One could reason it was due them not being part of the main title/continuity, but they instead add stories like ”The Insect Queen of Smallville” (where we are introduced to Lana’s powered alter ego), in which the LSH does not appear or is even mentioned yet is nonetheless included for a very tenuous connection. That story in particular has been part of at least 3 LSH reprints and it drives me nuts everytime.
Sorry for the small rant, but it is a big pet peeve of mine. I just can’t wrap my head around it.
Personally, I skipped it during the reviews of the Hamilton run because I always intended to it separately later.
I highly doubt they wanted to do an Omnibus of the Elseworld Legion stories of the Silver Age… mostly because this is basically the only one, the rest of the Silver Age section of this retrospective will be cameos.
Well technically there’s another Legion from a different earth in World’s Finest #172, although we only see a few of them very briefly.
And I meant that it made more sense to put in a story like this in the Silver Age collections they’ve made of the LSH than some of the comics they’ve actually decided to include in such collections, that Lana Lang case being the most egregious example.
Don’t worry, World’s Finest #172 is scheduled in the retrospective 🙂
Necropolis is honestly really interesting. It deserved to come back.
Krypto.
The Superdog.
That cannot recognize a ROBOT.
Just. yeah!
It’s possible that these evil Legionnaires showed up in continuity later – much later. There’s a bunch of evil Legionnaires in the “End of an Era”/Zero-Hour story, they might be one and the same as the group from this issue.