Art Show: Destroy This Mad Brute

Octomaid



By Carla Wyzgala. [Girls Drawing Girls]

The Toronto Roller Derby



By Vince Chui. [Art Jumble]

Black Canary



By Joe Quinones. [Project: Rooftop]

After the break: bats, Snowbird, Frankenstein, Scud the Atomic Hellwretch, DC fliers, Saturn Girl, and a crocodalien.

Art Show: It's a Kind of Magic

Aquaman in High Speed



By Leo Matsuda.

Mermaid



Artist Unknown [Never Sea Land]

Baroque Battle Bug



By Sam Nielson. [Avalanche Software Art Blog]

Man-monsters, space girls, heroes in fishnets, Johnny Quest fights robots, and the coolest Fantastic Four line-up ever after the break.

Saturn Girl is one of "The Three Superheroes": Action Comics #267

Last time we saw Saturn Girl, she and her Legion friends were a bunch of butt-holes. Was that because they were dealing with super-baby Superboy? Let's see what happens when they meet Supergirl.

Our story opens with a bus trip on the worst-planned field trip in history.



A) That driver sounds just a little too happy about delivering the bad news.

B) How late do they have to be to be totally screwed by a drawbridge? Did they not know they had to cross a drawbridge and that it might potentially be up?

Fortunately, one of the students is Linda Lee (secretly Supergirl). She slips out the back of the bus, dives into the water, grabs hold of the ship, and pulls it down enough that it'll clear the still-lowered bridge.



Maybe it's just me, but if I'm a drawbridge operator and I'm witnessing a ship suddenly lowering in the water for no apparent reason, my first thought is not going to be, "Yay! Now I don't have to lower the drawbridge!" What if it just as suddenly popped back up while it was under the bridge? Idiot.

At least the kids make it in time to see Superman. Yay!

But while they're at the fair, things start to go wrong. An Electric Death Machine used to demonstrate Superman's invulnerability goes haywire and almost explodes. Linda debates ruining her secret identity in order to stop it, but while she's thinking, a familiar-looking redheaded kid uses lightning powers to destroy the machine for her. He leaves, but not before letting Linda know that he knows she's Supergirl.

And then...



After the lion incident, Cosmic Boy rescues Linda from a runaway rocketship ride. She wouldn't have been hurt obviously, but again, everyone would've known something was up with her. He too lets her know that he's in on her secret.

Later, back home, the "proper time" arrives. Linda has changed to Supergirl to investigate something and the three super-heroes show up to meet her. Supergirl recognizes them from stories Superman's told her about his childhood.



And there's our answer about whether or not the Legionnaires are jerks in general or just to Superboy.

It's interesting though that they claim to be the "children" of the original Legion. I don't know my Legion history very well (which is the main reason behind these posts), but I'm guessing that never got mentioned again. And you can see why. It's stupid.

Beyond the ridiculousness that the original three Legionnaires would have kids who looked exactly like them, there's just no point to it. The Legionnaires are time travelers. Why couldn't these be the exact same kids who tortured Superboy a couple of times before? They don't have to have aged alongside Superman.

I'm going to be watching closely to see if this is ever brought up again, but I'm betting that it's not. I'm betting that someone realized how dumb it was and dropped it. But still, from a continuity standpoint, there it is in black and white. Saturn Girl claims that she's the daughter of one of Superboy's Legionnaires (I'm sure we're supposed to assume she's Saturn Girl's daughter, but it's more fun to think that she belongs to one of the guys) and neither Cosmic Boy nor Lightning Lad correct her. That leaves us with one of two options.

1) She's telling the truth and all of the Superboy Legion stories feature different Legionnaires than the Supergirl ones do. I'm guessing that'll be pretty easy to disprove, but I'll keep my eyes open.

2) She's lying for no good reason. Proving once again that the Legionnaires are scumbags.

Okay, enough about that. The Legionnaires tell Supergirl that they've come back in time to recruit her for the Legion. She follows them back the the 30th century for a tour, stopping along the way to stick her chin in a Martian ice-cream cone.



That robot arm delivering Cosmic Boy's cone makes me want to visit the 30th century right now.

The trio introduces her to some other Legionnaires and we meet Chameleon (called "Chameleon Boy" here), Colossal Boy, and Invisible Kid. Then they tell her that she has to perform some kind of super-feat to win that year's spot in the club.

She digs a tunnel straight through the Earth, claiming that it'll cut down on air traffic because now people can drive from continent to continent. There are about a thousand things wrong with that theory, but the Legion lets it slide and so will we.

Except that the Legion still turns her down for being over 18-years old.



Supergirl realizes that she must have come in contact with some Red Kryptonite while tunneling. As she explains, "Red Kryptonite has unpredictable, temporary effects on any survivor of the exploded planet Krypton." In other words, it lets the writers do whatever goofy thing they want to make the story go in any direction they want. In this case, it's to cheat Supergirl of her Legion membership.

Not knowing how long the effect will last, the disappointed Supergirl returns to her time. Fortunately, she returns to normal after about an hour, but she's still sad that she's missed her chance at this year's spot in the Legion.



Now, I haven't read a lot of Superboy or Supergirl stories - just the ones I've talked about here - so I don't know how indicative these are of the rest of them. But I find it very interesting that both Superboy stories end with the hero's triumphing over adversity and his fragile self-esteem's being boosted by the love and adoration of everyone he knows, while Supergirl ends up on her bed with a wistful look in her eye. "Dear Diary, today was the absolute WORST!!!"

I'm curious about who Supergirl's target audience was in the '50s. Was it young girls? This story was a backup feature in Action Comics, and an issue with Hercules beating up a poster of Superman on the cover at that. That's a weird spot to put a comic for girls. Unless DC thought they could get both boys and girls reading that way. And who's to say they were wrong? I don't know either way.

But even if this story was intended for a girl audience, is it true that young girls in the '50s preferred to see their heroine moping at the end instead of getting to join the Legion? I don't have any answers; I'm just wondering out loud.

Next time, Saturn Girl meets Superboy again. But which Saturn Girl is it?

Stay tuned.

Clean up this mess I've been put in

The Return of Adventure Comics



It's a confusing time to be a Legion of Super Heroes fan. Or maybe I'm not a real fan.

I got bored during the "Quest for Cosmic Boy" storyline and gave up. Thought about checking it out again during Jim Shooter's recent stint, but by then various other versions of the Legion were turning up in Justice League of America and Countdown to Infinite Mess and maybe some of the Superman books? Having lost track of the storyline, I couldn't figure out how to get my arms around it again. Then there was Legion of Three Worlds (is that finished yet?) that promised to make this all a lot more confusing before it was simplified. All of these different versions of the Legion co-existing... just tell me when the dust clears and it's safe to start reading again.

That day may be coming with the return of Adventure Comics to DC's publishing schedule. Adventure was the original home of Legion of Super Heroes stories and DC Executive Editor Dan DiDio has hinted that the new volume will be their home again. Further encouraging that thinking is Adventure Comics #0 coming out in February. It's a reprint of the Legion's first appearance.

Teenagers from the Future



If you're as confused as I am about the Legion, but still really interested in trying to figure it all out, you might want to consider this book.

Here's the press release I got about it:

Sequart Research & Literacy Organization's Teenagers from the Future: Essays on the Legion of Super-Heroes is now available for order through comic shops. (The order code is NOV084474.)

The book, edited by Timothy Callahan (Grant Morrison: The Early Years), is currently listed in November's Previews catalog. Sequart is also pleased to announce that Teenagers from the Future was chosen as the top Featured Item in the books section of the catalog. You can see the online Previews listing here.

Teenagers, sporting a foreword by Matt Fraction and an afterword by Barry Lyga, has a wide array of essays, including:

"The Death and Resurrection of Lightning Lad," by Richard Bensam
"The (Often Arbitrary) Rules of the Legion," by Chris Sims
"The Legion's Super-Science," by James Kakalios
"Architecture and Utopia," by Sara K. Ellis
"Thomas, Altman, Levitz, and the 30th Century," by Timothy Callahan
"Revisionism, Experimentation, and Dystopia in Giffen's Legion," by Julian Darius
"Gender Identity and Homosexuality in the Legion," by Alan Williams
"The Racial Politics of the Legion of Super-Heroes," by Jae Bryson
…and ten more, covering the whole of Legion history.

This collection (softcover, 6"x9", 344 pgs, B&W, $26.95 cover price), written by fans and scholars alike, is as diverse as Legion history. No Legion fan or comics scholar should go without this critical celebration of the Legion.

But please don't count on your store to order copies -- most stores won't. The best thing you can do is to order copies in advance by telling your local retailer that you want them to get a copy for you. Because we're buried in the catalog, it might help to give your local retailer the book's order code, which is NOV084474.

Legal Disclaimer: the Legion of Super-Heroes and related characters are trademarks of DC Comics. This book is not endorsed by DC Comics.

Notice that one of the essays is by Invincible Super-Blogger Chris Sims. That's reason enough to get it right there.

Meet your new Saturn Girl



It was only a matter of time before the Legion showed up on Smallville. That time has come and Saturn Girl will be played by Canadian pop singer/actress Alexz Johnson.



I'm still not gonna watch it though. Well, maybe if she wears this costume.

Saturn Girl and the Prisoner of the Super-Heroes: Adventure Comics #267

I'm really starting to hate Superboy. The Legion of Super-Heroes' first appearance was pretty much all about Superboy's being so cool that he was still worshiped and adored in the 30th century. In order to get to that happy moral though, we had to endure the Legion's being jerks and Superboy's emo whining about not being as special as he thought he was. Unfortunately, the Legion's second appearance is more of the same.

The story opens with Saturn Girl, Cosmic Boy, and Lightning Boy's coming back in time once again to visit Smallville. Only Lightning Boy is Lightning Lad now and Saturn Girl has a new outfit. Each of them performs some sort of heroic feat and when Superboy tries to congratulate them on jobs well done, they snub him. And eventually, the rest of Smallville - including Ma and Pa Kent - start to get down on Superboy too.



All of which leads to the most awesome panel of all time.



Boo hoo. Poor Superboy. Even Krypto the Superdog blows him off a couple of panels later.

Superboy becomes so pitiful that he exiles himself from Earth because nobody loves him anymore. Then, in just one of many things about this story that make absolutely no sense, he sees a crowd of super-beings flying through space and follows them to a planet that's been converted into a global Superboy shrine.

Just as he's getting his hopes up though, he learns that the Superboy world is controlled by the Legion. He's arrested and put into a Kryptonite cage, sentenced by the Legion to life imprisonment for a crime he hasn't committed yet. I guess they don't have Minority Report in the 30th century version of Netflix, because the Legion has totally bought into the idea that the soundless, out-of-context images their Futurescope has shown them depict Superboy committing random acts of violence against innocent people. That's why they created the elaborate hoax designed to bring him to their prison world.



I really hate the Legion too.

Eventually, a catastrophe strikes the Superboy planet and Superboy escapes his cage. Instead of fleeing though, he saves the Legion and the rest of the world, which of course lets them see how stupid they've all been. Forget about the rest of Superboy's squeaky clean record, this is the event that makes them doubt the Futurescope. I guess it's all about "what have you done for me lately?".

Anyway, in another ridiculous turn of events, Saturn Girl mentally intercepts a radio message from the President of the US saying that Superboy is now released from his "security oath." Superboy then explains that the Futurescope hadn't seen his future, but his recent past as he carried out a secret mission to dispose of military assets that had been exposed to a deadly poison gas. No word about why Superboy is now able to talk, but what timing!

Hearing this, Cosmic Boy checks the Futurescope and, "By Golly... there is a flaw! The machine did not work properly!" No apologies for turning Smallville against their friend and locking him away for life without a trial. Just, "Huh. What do you know?"

Fortunately, Superboy's too distracted by his renewed status as the object of everyone's adoration and worship to hold a grudge.



What a bunch of buttholes. Every single person in the story.

Maybe the Legion will be more likable in their next appearance where they get to hang out with Supergirl for a change.

Great guns! A girl, too!

Another superheroine I want to go back and learn more about is Saturn Girl. She's never been my favorite member of the Legion of Super Heroes (that would be Shadow Lass), but she's the highest profile girl on the team and I love the slightly creepy way they portrayed her in the Legion of Super Heroes cartoon.

Saturn Girl has been around since the first appearance of the Legion in Adventure Comics #247. I don't know if DC knew what a hit they were going to have when they published the story. It's a fairly disposable adventure if you don't know what a monster it was spawning.



It begins in Smallville, where some teenagers Superboy's never seen before let him know that they're in on his secret identity.



They don't leave him hanging for too long though and soon reveal that they're superheroes from the future, part of a club of teen superheroes, and that they want to offer membership to Superboy.

Apparently, at some point in the future, Superman's secret identity becomes public knowledge because everyone in the 30th century knows that he's Clark Kent. The teens take him into the future where the Kent home is an historical landmark and teachers use Superboy Robots to demonstrate his various powers.

After a quick tour of Future-Smallville, Cosmic Boy - who does most of the talking for the Legionnaires - explains that before Superboy can become a member, he has to defeat each of the three heroes in a contest. The contests are made up of heroic rescues, so whoever makes the rescue first wins.

Cosmic Boy explains that the first contest is to bring up a valuable, giant statue that sank in the ocean. He then introduces Superboy to his opponent: Saturn Girl.



Things seem to go well at first, except that one of the classroom Superboy Robots goes crazy and escapes. Superboy takes the time to stop it, thinking that Saturn Girl's telepathy won't do her any good in raising a huge statue.



Yes! Sea monster! I like Saturn Girl already.



She then taunts Superboy, which honestly sort of makes me like her even more.



"You can be a gentleman if you want and carry it for me." That's rich.

The other two contests go about the same. Superboy's distracted from the contest by a more serious threat, he stops it, but meanwhile Cosmic Boy and Lightning Boy (he'll become "Lad" later) finish the contest with unexpected applications of their powers. Since Superboy loses all three matches, the Legionnaires tell him he's not wanted.

No, wait. Yes, he is. Turns out that the Legionnaires are pretty much jerks who cheated in order to distract Superboy so that they could each win their contests. Saturn Girl explains how she pulled it off.



Apparently her telepathy also works on AI. Pretty cool.

Of course, Superboy should've known that the Legionnaires had a cruel streak after that stunt they pulled at the beginning with knowing his secret identity. But really, Superboy's such a smug little brat himself that you can't blame the Legion for wanting to have some fun with him.

He gets back at them though by completing one, final rescue, but imitating their powers to do it. Sort of. He uses a magnetic meteor to mimic Cosmic Boy's power and creates a lightning storm to copy Lightning Boy's. His duplication of Saturn Girl's powers is pretty iffy though.



They're all a bunch of square nerds, so the Legion congratulates Superboy on a jolly good joke and welcomes him to the club. Naturally, its the girl who presents the medal.



And that's the end except for one last panel in which we learn the moral of the story: Superboy is so cool that he'll be remembered 1000 years from now.



That's why I said the story was fairly disposable. Like every other Superboy story, its main purpose was to show how awesome Superboy is. There's no hint in the story that DC expected to ever do anything more with the Legion.

But kids in 1958 really liked the idea of a futuristic team of teen-aged superheroes, so Saturn Girl and the others would return over a year later with all new costumes and a new name for Lightning Boy in Adventure Comics #267.