Continuity insert – Page 10 – Comics Archeology

Legion of Super-Heroes v2 #267 (1980)
“To Bottle a Genie!” by Gerry Conway & Jim Janes
“The Grounded Legionnaires” by Paul Kupperberg & Steve Ditko
cover by Dick Giordano

You would think having Steve Ditko at the pencils of the second issue would be advertised on the cover.

We begin with Duo Damsel pulling double duty in saving her teammates from being thrown into space. One of her bodies saves Bouncing Boy and Colossal Boy, while the other one deals with Element Lad.
The fact that he’s in trouble is interesting… I guess running out of oxygen might be an issue for him, since he can’t create matter out of nothing. In theory he should be able to exhale carbon dioxide, turn it into oxygen and then breathe it, right?
And how is he trapped inside frozen oxygen? Can’t he transmute it into something else?
I’m pretty sure that he’s unconscious because he was knocked out when he was thrown into space, so it’s probably a moot point. But still, food for thought.

Still, great job at making Duo Damsel very resourceful.

We then change scene with a very cool sci-fi concept: a mobile mining city!!!

Though it’s a little hard to appreciate the science when in the next scene the mining city is shaken by a giant evil genie.

We interrupt this 80s superhero story for a badly aged 70s anime.

For a moment I was expecting the ships would merge into a giant robot.

Great job, guys!

Remember that last time the genie didn’t obey Bouncing Boy’s order? We have an explanation for why that didn’t work.

The Legion rescues the only survivor of the mining city, who reveals the backstory of the genie (he told her telepathically). And it involves the Guardians Of The Universe!
The relationship between the Legion and the Green Lantern Corps is… complicated, so I didn’t expect to see their bosses here.

Turns out that the Guardians are responsible for the existence of genies throughout the universe.

Don’t be surprised. One of the core tenets of the DC Universe is that 90% of all problems can be traced back to something the Guardians did.

It’s bad enough whenever we see a 20th century city in the Middle East that looks like it’s still in the Middle Ages. It’s exponentially worse on the 30th century!

The genie is here to unleash another one of his kind…

…except it’s a trap: there’s nothing but gas inside the bottle, allowing Colossal Boy to get the drop on the genie.

This is all a plan so that Bouncing Boy can get his second wish…

…but confusingly it’s Duo Damsel who threatens him with the third wish. Wait, why is the genie listening to her if Bouncing Boy was the one opening the bottle?

And that’s the end! You would think this two-parter was just to have the married couple rejoin the Legion, but nope.

Well that was just meh. Let’s move to the second story, which at least has the novelty of being drawn by Steve Ditko and it’s about Shadow Lass giving a history lesson to some kids visiting the Legion HQ.

Always neat to have those little expansions to the lore. Also it’s extremely convenient that the Flight Ring can be turned invisible: in-story it helps camouflage, even when in reality it’s to cover up the fact that an artist can forget to draw it.

The story is actually an almost direct continuation of Adventure Comics #305, which included Mon-El creating an antigravity metal as part of his initiation.

“Months later”, the Legion receives a distress call from a space elevator that has been attacked by… *snicker*… Vibrex, Master of Vibration.

Must… resist… joking about his name… that’s… too easy a target…

The space elevator is still within Earth’s gravitational pull, so the Legionnaires are screwed once *snicker* Vibrex switches off their antigravity belts.

That makes sense for Saturn Girl, sure, but isn’t there enough metal on the space elevator to allow Cosmic Boy to save himself!?

However Brainiac 5 has an idea that allows the team to sneak back into the elevator and punch Vibrex.

And that, folks, is the extended secret origin of the Legion Flight Ring.

Now I understand why they kept it a secret.

Legion significance
First story: 0/10
Somehow even more forgettable than the first part!
Second story: 6/10
If I’m not mistaken (sorry but it’s A LOT of Legion stories to remember!) this is the first explicit connection between the Flight Rings and Mon-El’s antigravity metal. Future incarnations will skip the complication and just make Brainiac 5 the inventor of the whole thing, but it does carry through (and it’s sort of switched around in the reboot, where Brainy invents the metal and Invisible Kid the rings).

Silver Age-ness
First story: 4/10
The overall idea is very Silver Age, as is the scene in “New Damascus”, but it loses points for having the villain actually murder a lot of people.
Second story: 10/10
And that’s despite the fact that it features villain with a dumb costume and the name of a sex toy.

Does it stand the test of time?
First story: 2/10
There’s a good story in here. Unfortunately Conway doesn’t seem to be interested in actually telling it.
Second story: 0/10
The actual first appearance of the Flight Ring, Adventure Comics #328, was WAY better than this.
You know, the issue that had the Bizarro Legion and was thoroughly unfunny?