ADVENTURE COMICS 300 (1962)
by Jerry Siegel, Al Plastino and John Forte
This is it: the Legion finally becomes a regular series in Adventure Comics.
The cover will receive many homages over the years, or at least its composition: a large vertical panel with two separate sets of smaller panels.
Once again we’re only 100 years in the future instead of the usual 1,000.
We have an interesting choice for the roll call: the Hall of Heroes, neatly listing each member and his/her powers.
Did Cosmic Boy lose a bet to have his name on his chest?
Another leftover from the early days: the way the powers are described.
- Cosmic Boy: “super-magnetism”
- Saturn Girl: “super-thought-casting”
- Lightning Lad: “super-lightning”
- Sun Boy: “super-radiance”
- Chameleon Boy: “super-disguise”
- Bouncing Boy: “super-bouncing”
- Shrinking Violet: “super-shrinking”
- Invisible Kid: “super-invisibility”
That’s funny enough, but I find hilarious that they couldn’t fit all of Superboy’s powers in a single plate. Especially since the writer is Superman’s creator himself, Jerry Siegel.
Nine Legionnaire statues are showed, but we are informed that most members are busy on other planets.
They are meeting to record some kind of anti-crime PSA, but Cosmic Boy’s powers inexplicably attack the robot cameraman.
We get the first instance of an extremely important part of Legion lore: Cosmic Boy says he’s from a planet where everyone has his powers, with the first mention of planet Braal.
Cosmic Boy isn’t the only one with power incontinence. First Sun Boy…
… then Lightning Lad, who takes the time to mention the origin he was given in Superman 147 …
…and Saturn Girl, who also confirms comes from a planet where everyone has powers.
Although since she talks about Saturnians, she’s probably still supposed to be from Saturn instead of its moon Titan.
How will the Legion solve this problem?
With a “PULL DOWN TO SUMMON SUPERBOY” lever.
Sounds legit.
Meanwhile in the present… whatever that means… Clark Kent has a brief encounter with Lex Luthor and wonders if he will someday be forced to exile him to the Phantom Zone.
That’s when he gets the Legion signal… with the blinking lamp.
I know it’s like the tenth time we see this thing, but it still looks like the worst way possible to contact Superboy. If that lightbulb ever goes out the Earth is screwed.
Superboy goes to the future, witnessing the Legionnaires having trouble controlling their powers. It’s so bad that the police has to get involved… the World-Wide Police, a precursor to the Science Police of the Legion’s lore.
That vehicle looks ridiculously uncomfortable.
And speaking of uncomfortable, it’s time for the villain of the story to show up… URTHLO.
Nice landing pose, Urthlo. You look like you’re going down a slide while simultaneously needing to go to the bathroom REALLY bad.
Also… yes, his name is Urthlo. If your IQ has two digits you probably already figured out who is behind the lead mask.
Despite his ridiculous… everything, Urthlo is actually quite a menace, being able to turn off the Legion’s powers at the push of a button.
He can also shoot kryptonite from his eyes. Because of course he can.
The Legion has to retreat. Urthlo decides to give them fifteen minutes to come up with a plan, instead of killing them right now, because… uhm… because we need more pages, I guess?
But Saturn Girl does have a plan: she immediately takes charge and orders Superboy to dig something out of the ground.
Why? Because that’s where she hid the Phantom Zone Projector ™, and she plans to use it to free Mon-El.
Which would be a nice twist IF IT WASN’T SPOILED ON THE COVER.
Mon-El doesn’t look like the greatest choice for an ally: not only he’s still affected by lead poisoning, but his opponent is wearing a lead mask!
But not only Mon-El is totally fine in just a few seconds, but he smashes Urthlo with a single punch, revealing he’s a robot.
What’s going on, Saturn Girl?
There’s a lot to unpack here.
Not only Saturn Girl was able to contact Mon-El in the Phantom zone, but she was also able to telepathically diagnose the damages caused by lead poisoning and come up with a cure.
Considering they have Brainiac 5 in the team, it’s amazing that he wasn’t the one to come up with it.
But also note that she intended to give the cure to Superboy as a surprise, presumably so that he could travel back to the 20th century with it and free Mon-El in his own time.
It’s only because of Urthlo that Mon-El was given the cure in the future.
Just think of the possibilities… if it wasn’t for Urthlo, the 20th century would have another hero with Superman’s powers active in the present!
Unfortunately it’s only a temporary solution: this cure lasts only a few minutes, and Mon-El is forced to return to the Phantom Zone.
Superboy vows to one day find a cure for Mon-El, which will never happen: Mon-El will stay active in the future.
Also, without this incident Mon-El would not have needed to endure centuries of complete isolation in the Phantom Zone, because Superboy would’ve given him the cure in the 20th century.
Thanks a lot, Urthlo. Who turns out to be… almost exactly who everyone thought he would be.
Get this: teenage Luthor created a robot duplicate of himself…
…and sent him into the future to discredit the Legion.
Which is very Luthor, I’ll grant that, but why does the robot look like the adult Lex instead of the teenage Lex?
Because, uhm…
…I have no idea.
What does he mean with “so it would be Luther who triumphed”? Why would Lex want his adult version to be the one to defeat Superboy instead of, you know, his current self?
Maybe there was a legit reason and the robot wasn’t programmed to know it. I don’t know if we can trust the mental capacity of something that RUNS ON HATE TAPES:
Specifically three highly specific hate tapes: “Hate Superboy”, “Hate Legion Of Super-Heroes”, and my personal favorite, “Hate Hate Hate”.
The Legion’s name is cleared and Mon-El joins its ranks.
They say he can skip the initiation test because they admire him so much…
…but the fact that HE’S STILL DYING might be a factor.
Also: Mon-El gets to skip the initiation because the Legion admires him, but Superboy didn’t get that luxury and had to get through one.
Not the most spectacular start for the regular series… but things will start to be much better really soon.
Legion significance: 9/10
Mon-El joining is of course an extremely important member of the Legion. But we also have the origin of Cosmic Boy, the introduction of the Science Police (although with another name), and while I don’t usually count real-life events for this category, the fact that this launches the first regular series can’t be ignored.
Silver Age-ness: 8/10
Oh boy. Where do I begin?
The overly simplistic story. The Legionnaires neatly summarizing their powers and origins in awkward and over-the-top ways. The “call Superboy” lever. And Urthlo… just everything having to do with Urthlo.
Unfortunately, that leads to…
Does it stand the test of time? 2/10
Yeah, this has aged horribly. There are a few good ideas here and there… the way Saturn Girl takes charge, using Mon-El as a last resort, not giving him a permanent cure right away… but the sheer ridiculousness of Urthlo and the simplistic plot really, really hurt the story.
We are legion
Now that the roster is starting to get a little more consistent, I’ll start to break it down in detail.
6 active in this story: Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad, Cosmic Boy, Sun Boy, Superboy, Mon-El
4 not appearing but officially members (shown as statues): Chameleon Boy, Bouncing Boy, Shrinking Violet, Invisible Kid
7 unknowns: Triplicate Girl (which is hilarious considering she’s on the cover!), Colossal Boy, Star Boy, Phantom Girl, Supergirl, Brainiac 5, Ultra Boy
How much Legion is too much?
With Mon-El joining, the Legion of Superheroes currently consists of 17 people.
Time travel doesn’t work like that
Considering that by this point DC has firmly established that history can’t be changed, Superboy’s vow to cure Mon-El makes no sense.
Mon-El goes to the Phantom Zone in the present. When he leaves it in the future, he’s been living there since the 20th century and he still has lead poisoning.
If Superboy or Superman cures Mon-El in the 20th century, then the future Mon-El would not have lead poisoning… and he wouldn’t be in the Phantom Zone in the first place!
Somewhat excused since Superboy MIGHT not have figured out how time travel works yet.
The glasses, they do something
Not literally since Superboy’s secret identity is never in danger, but the lead mask works perfectly fine in keeping Urthlo’s identity hidden.
Kryptonite, baby
Of course Urthlo has kryptonite vision!