ADVENTURE COMICS #282 (1961)
by Otto Binder and George Papp
The cover is your typical Silver Age one with the comic’s premise and speech baloons.
We start off with Superboy ignoring Lana Lang. Possibly because, judging by the Superboy shrine she keeps in her bedroom, she’s probably a crazy stalker.
Meanwhile, Clark Kent is busy giving his father cancer by lighting his cigar with X-Rays, because the tobacco wasn’t killing him fast enough.
But enough about attempted patricide. Someone is trying to get Superboy’s attention in… weird ways.
There’s a new super-guy in town, and he used his super-powers to get Superboy’s attention.
Because calling him was out of the question, apparently. Overflowing the dam and potentially endangering people was way more effective.
And so we get the very concise origin of Star Boy. Which is rather generic, like his costume.
Note that he has a secret identity, something extremely rare in the Legion time. I’m not sure how it’s even supposed to work: he doesn’t even wear glasses!
He then joins the Legion of Super-Heroes, which now includes Chameleon Boy.
Chameleon Boy first appeared in the Supergirl story of Action Comics #267, where he was a member with the children of the original Legionnaires. Here it’s implied that he’s from the same era of the original ones, which may be why that point about Supergirl meeting the children was retconned away.
No idea about the two Legionnaires we see from the back. The one on the right could be Colossal Boy or Invisible Kid, sure, but who’s the blonde? Saturn Girl is supposed to be the only girl in the team at this point.
Anyway, Star Boy is in the 20th century to pursue criminals who stole a time-ship. I can see why it was so important to attract Superman’s attention by overflowing a dam instead of calling him.
It’s not like one of Star Boy’s powers allows him to create giant letters in the sky.
Lana Lang overhears Star Boy telling Superboy not to use his real name, so naturally the first thing she does is blackmail the alien superhero from the future to make the alien superhero of the present jealous.
Sounds legit.
Superboy overhears everything (I know it’s more plausible for him since he has super-hearing, but come on!), including Lana Lang threatening Star Boy to reveal his secret identity to… uhm…
Now wait a minute. Star Boy is from another planet in the future. If she tells someone on Earth, in his past, why should he even care!?
Lana asking her parents permission to visit another planet in the future is amazing.
Which they allow because, I’m not kidding, Star Boy has more superpowers than Superboy.
Sound legit. Imagine if the stranger bringing your teenage girl to another planet (in the future, no less) had fewer powers! Now THAT would be dangerous.
Once on the alien planet, Lana proceeds with her scheme to make Superboy jealous by treating Star Boy like crap.
I thought this might lead to Superboy crushing coal into diamonds, but he has the best possible response:
Considering the sheer amount of monumentally dumb stuff Superman has done with his powers in the Silver Age, I find this absolutely hilarious.
Then Superboy makes Lana jealous by flirting with a local girl:
This works surprising well, and not just because we’re at the last page:
There’s a joke about swingers somewhere to be made.
Interesting letters: someone writes to scold Superboy writes about telling children that Santa isn’t real.
Now I have little tolerance for those who insist of continuing the Santa thing, but the answer is unnecessarily rude.
There’s also an Aquaman story where a bunch of whales are used as a landing strip for a plane.
Cool panel, but I’m pretty sure either the whales or the passengers should die.
That’s the only interesting thing in the Aquaman story.
Historical significance: 2/10
“Star Boy exists” and “Lana Lang knows something about the future” are the only things that will have a slight impact.
Legion significance: 4/10
It’s the first appearance of Star Boy, a mainstay of the group, but almost nothing about this issue will carry over to his later appearances.
Silver Age-ness: 6/10
The weird stuff is kept at minimum, but having the superhero stuff being barely mentioned to give the jealousy lot center stage is very Silver Age.
Does it stand the test of time? 4/10
The plot is bland and the characters are pretty flat. Star Boy in particular doesn’t have any reason to fall for Lana besides “she looks cute”, and she comes off as particularly mean spirited in the way she treats him.
We are legion
Presumably 5 active Legionnaires, including Star Boy
How much Legion is too much?
Adding Star Boy to the total, the Legion of Superheroes currently consists of 8 people.
Time travel doesn’t work like that
Time ships are easily available for space criminals to steal.