Despite having followed the series for a few issues now, I still wasn’t entirely a convert to SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES. For whatever reason, its stories of adventure in the far future with a veritable army of super-powered characters didn’t grab me the way that other comics of the time did. In some ways, I’m sure that’s because so much about the Legion was an anachronism, a product of an earlier tie. Right down to their names: Lightning Lad, Shadow Lass and so forth. They felt like they belonged to another era, and not a futuristic one. On top of which, the book seldom scratched the same heroic itch that other books did. So I was following it for the moment, but I’d drop off again soon.
This was a pretty good-looking issue, thanks to the work of the mysterious Steve Apollo. For those who may be unaware, Steve Apollo was a pseudonym. This story had actually been started months earlier, intended for an issue of the oversized DC SPECIAL SERIES, which had been discontinued. It was the sequel/follow-up to a story that had come out now more than a year earlier, in which some secret mastermind had framed Ultra Boy for murder. But in order to fit it into current continuity, scripter Paul Levitz was forced to break it in half and even shuffle around certain elements of it. Starlin wasn’t happy with the way his story had been manhandled here, and so he requested that his name be taken off it. Hence, Steve Apollo.
The issue opens up with chameleon Boy continuing his ongoing investigation as to who might have been behind the framing of Ultra Boy. He’s convinced that the perpetrator was a fellow Legionnaire, and so he’s kept his investigation largely private. Now, he’s found the last bit of proof that he needed in order to confirm his suspicions. But before he can tell anybody about his discovery, he’s confronted by the mastermind, dressed in obscuring hood and bodysuit. The villain promptly zaps Chameleon Boy into a coma–he’s found shortly thereafter by Wildfire–thus maintaining the secret of his true identity. But now, knowing the gist of what Chameleon Boy had been working on, the Legionnaires realize that there’s an enemy within their midst.
And so, the entire Legion assembles to try to get to the bottom of this puzzle. But a hologram of their secretive foe materializes in their midst to taunt them. The hooded figure tells the Legion that he intends to play a game with them–and should they lose, the entire universe will be destroyed. Suddenly, an alarm goes off signaling a threat of such magnitude that it cannot be ignored. Superboy and Mon-El race across intergalactic space as the ones able to get there the fastest, only to discover a gigantic cosmic creature calling itself Omega. Omega tells them that it intends to destroy the universe in the fulfillment of its creator’s grand desire. And it proves too powerful for Superboy and Mon-El to take on alone.
With that, Omega takes off, seemingly walking across space towards Legion headquarters. He tells the defeated Legionnaires that when he arrives there, he’ll fulfill his mandate and destroy everything. It’s all Superboy can do to pick up the now-concussed Mon-El and race him back to headquarters for medical treatment. The Legion doesn’t know what they can do to halt Omega’s inexorable march towards their location. But it turns out that Wildfire has decoded information concealed within Chameleon Boy’s Legion flight ring, and now he knows the identity of the traitor amongst the Legion.
And the culprit is none other than Brainiac 5. The exposed Brainiac doesn’t so much as deny it, smugly declaring that he’s ready with his great intellect to destroy the universe. He’s clearly gone insane, and is driven by an unexplainable hatred. He tells the Legion that the reason that Omega is coming to Legion Headquarters is to acquire the one missing element that he needs in order to carry out his objective. Which means that the Legion still has a chance of stopping him, if they can dope out what that element might be and prevent Omega from getting it.
But right now, there’s a foe to face. Wildfire orders the Legionnaires into action, tasking most of the team to journey forth and engage Omega in space while a small group remains behind to attempt to get to the bottom of Brainiac’s psychosis. At this moment, dream Girl pipes up to tell Wildfire that she’s had a vision of Wildfire confronting Omega in this very room, and everything burning away to white. Nice pep talk there, Dream Girl, thanks, that was a lot of help. And as the issue ends, Wildfire goes to confront the now-captive Brainiac 5, hoping to be able to pry the secrets of Omega’s invincibility out of him and somehow save the day. To Be Continued. I have to say, the reveal of Brainiac 5 as a mad villain had little impact on me somehow. I don’t know whether I didn’t quite believe it, or that I simply didn’t much care either way. But it was a big reveal that fell flat, at least for me.
The Legion Outpost letters page contained this year’s Statement of Ownership, which gives us a glimpse into how well the book had been selling across the previous 18 months or so. According to the data, SUPERBOY & THE LEGION had been selling 204,473 copies an issue on a print run of 354,765, giving it an efficiency rating of just under 58%. That’s a pretty strong percentage relative to most of the other titles from this period that we’ve been looking at.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
The reveal about Brainiac 5 apparently hit harder if you’d been reading the book since Cockrum’s brief run. It probably would have been better still if it weren’t for incredibly lame way that Levitz used to get the character out of the situation. That and M-E Lad not getting the obvious new power set he should have had after his being cured too are what I felt were let downs, nothing in this two parter.
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Jim Starlin gets outed as ‘Steve Apollo’ in the response to the last LOC – so much for the pseudonym
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Regarding the Statement of Owner (so glad you share these), is there a site that shows sales for DC and Marvel (and the other companies) from early 70’s to mid 80’s (my reading period)? Just curious. I’ve never seen anything much beyond 70 or so.
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I did a series of posts that compiled the average annual sales of titles from the published Statements of Ownership from the 1969-1970 sales year through the 1988-1989 one.
Here’s a link to the 1969-1970 post. You’ll find links to the other years at the bottom of it.
R. S. Martin: Comics Sales 1969-1970
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Thanks so much for the information. Much appreciated.
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Huh. Cham realizes, and I quote, “One of own OWN MEMBERS has BETRAYED us!” “One of own own”? Ownch! That had to hurt. How many howrs did spend on figuring it out?
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It’s funny: I owned this issue, and read it many times, and only now do I notice that error. It would have been hand-lettered too, none of this computer stuff yet, so it’s even more strange.
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It could have been a cut and paste issue but yeah, strange.
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At the time, I thought that Brainiac 5’s heel-turn was surprising, but also made sense. He’d always been depicted as pretty “tightly wound”…aloof from the rest of the team and prone to obsessive behavior. Literally “too smart for his own good”. And the fact that he’d genuinely just snapped, rather than it being the result of some villain manipulating him, or some convenient “space disease” or something, was definitely unusual for the era.
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There were also a bunch of pages cut from the story to fit it into two issues.
If anyone had saved copies, this would have been a great candidate for a “restored” special project, with Paul scripting it as originally plotted/paced, and Joe Rubinstein finishing it. Could have been an up-priced hardcover, collected with the earlier issue.
Ahh, fannish dreams.
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To this day, only one of those pages has turned up. I ran it in The Legion Companion, then Joe Rubinstein reached out to me to see if the owner would like it inked. He did, but a lightboxed copy, which I ran in The Best of The Legion Outpost. I asked Jim Starlin about the other pages, and he said they’re long gone. He sold them off at conventions, I think. I can only imagine what happened to them (my nightmares include fans trying to finish them, themselves). What makes it worse is Starlin wrote “Superboy” on the top of the page, not “Legion” so some people may have them and not know what they have.
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We need more packrats in this world.
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As a kid I always looked at the Bronze Age Legion as Star Trek with super-heroes, probably because both shared utopic views of humanity’s future. That’s probably why attempts to deconstruct the Legion (hello, “Five Years Later”) never really worked for me. Well, that and the constant reboots.
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There was a “Star Trek / Legion of Super-Heroes” crossover series that was surprisingly good.
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I think the optimistic outlook on the future was appropriate 60 years ago. Personally, since watching most societies squander our goodwill, resources, and do so much wrong for the benefit of the few, I think somehow just assuming things will just work out for the best becomes more like denial. I started seeing the utopian destiny as unrealistic, because we stopped laying the groundwork for it in the present.
“Star Wars” showed us space junk, fascism, & rebellion in a high-tech setting. It was set “a long time ago”, but the technology hinted at our own future. And knowing some Earth history myself, human nature shows patterns. LoSH “5 Years Later” fit with my evolving perspective of human civilization. There’s still hope. But y expectations are lower.
I’ve no interest in colonizing other planets. I’d be happy if we just saved this one. So the struggles in the “5YL” LoSH era just rang more true to me, and as more realistic to human nature. And still fighting for good, for altruism, in the face of massive & malevolent opposition, is much more admirable & heroic to me.
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I was getting this and X-Men at the time. Starlin’s art really shone. That was 2 amazing months of Starlin and Byrne. I stuck with Sherman and Staton afterwards, but remember being a little more disappointed with each successive issue.
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Sherman was really screwed by the inkers assigned. Most were good artists but were completely unsuited to him. The debut of the Infinite Man stood out because it was one of the few times there was a sympatico inker in Bob Wiacek.
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I can certainly appreciate Sherman and Staton now, and I remember there were always individual Sherman panels that looked really good to my 12 year old eyes, too. But even back then, while I didn’t notice the slightly odd proportions of Starlin’s characters, I did recognize his compositional excellence, the characters and the pages both. I think only Byrne and Perez reveled as much in big group shots. You can see it in his earlier Captain Marvel and Warlock covers, too.
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Brainiac 5 when he was sane creates Computo [ Adventure Comics#340 ( January 1966 ) ] as a mechanical assistant which becomes homicidal ( Attempted its own rise of the machines before Skynet ) and Omega when he was insane ( I wonder if Computo’s creation is the origin point for his mental problems. You are a genius hero and you create a murder-machine, that can’t be good for the ego ). Hank Pym creates Ultron and has had his own mental problems over the years. Plus after Hank Pym abandoned all his super-hero aliases he started calling himself Doctor Pym and that red outfit with the pockets he wore reminds me of Brainiac 5’s look here.
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