BHOC: SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #254

I had fallen off of reading SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES for the past couple of months, not for any particular reason, simply that it still felt weird and off-kilter to my sensibilities. But I came back for this issue, though again, I’m not sure what motivated that decision. And I’d only stick around for a short moment, despite the fact that I enjoyed this issue pretty well. There was simply something baked into the premise that didn’t resonate with me in the way it did with so many other hardcore fans of the strip. I’d get there eventually–at the same time as a lot of readers of the early 1980s, with the Paul Levitz & Keith Giffen run. But in the late 1970s, I was only reading the series now and then.

This issue, as it turns out, featured one of those attempts to do a quasi-crossover with another company’s title. In this case, the villains of the issue, the League of Super-Assassins were created by writer Gerry Conway and artist Joe Staton as analogues for the All-New, All-Different X-Men. This was done as a bit of turnabout revenge after Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum had created the Shi’ar Imperial Guard over in X-MEN, who were thinly-disguised versions of the Legionnaires. As Cockrum had been the artist on Legion before moving to X-Men and had designed many of their updated costumes, the connection was easy to suss out. Not so much here with the Super-Assassins, though. One gets the sense that the general anarchy and lack of oversight at Marvel is what allowed for fannish (and potentially litigious) stunts like the Imperial Guard to make it into print, whereas it was harder to sneak something like that through at the more businesslike DC. All of which is to say that, while I liked the League of Super-Assassins in this story, I didn’t learn about the connection until much, much later.

Writer Gerry Conway had taken over the job scripting SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION in the wake of the DC Implosion that saw 40% of the firm’s line cancelled, including two series that Conway had launched: FIRESTORM and STEEL, THE INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN. As Gerry was under contract, he was owed a certain amount of work every month, and writing S&LSH helped to fulfill that commitment. But one gets the sense that it wasn’t something that Conway enjoyed or was enthusiastic about. It was a job, and he put a professional’s effort into every script. But it wasn’t inspired in the way his best work was. As soon as it was possible, Conway handed off the book to other writers and moved on to other things (including, eventually, a revival of FIRESTORM.)

This was the second part of the story, so I was coming into things in the middle. As the issue opens, Superboy is arriving at St. Croix Island in the 30th Century to enlist the help of Brainiac 5, the former Legionnaire who had recently gone insane. He finds Brainiac 5 to be as cold and dispassionate as he was when he attempted to destroy the Legion and take over the United Planets, and he tries desperately to reach the part of Brainy who served in the Legion for so many years. But before he can succeed, Superboy is attacked by a streaking figure moving at light speed. This is Lazon, a member of the League of Super-Assassins who have already killed five other Legionnaires last time, and he’s here to make that six. Lazon transforms his living light form into kryptonite radiation and strikes Superboy down, claiming that this is retribution for the destruction of his homeworld of Korlon. Brainiac 5 remains distant and emotionless throughout the conflict, seemingly disinterested in the life-or-death battle. But after Lazon has withdrawn, he asks his guard to summon the institution’s Board of Directors, needing to secure his liberty.

A short time later, Brainiac 5 crashes a meeting of the Legion of Substitute Heroes (real favorites of mine) with the bodies of the six slain Legionnaires in tow. He tells the astonished Subs that the Legion heroes aren’t in fact dead but rather in a state of suspended animation, due to a far-too-complicated-and-unlikely trick performed by Superboy. But in order to revive them, they’re going to need to defeat and capture the League of Super-Assassins. Brainiac reveals what he’s learned from studying the holo-vids of the Legion’s earlier encounter with their foes: they were survivors of Korlon who were given their super-powers by the shadowy Dark Man and sent to kill off the Legion. The Dark Man will be a mystery for another day. For now, Brainy has tracked the League to a half-forgotten portion of Old Metropolis, and he leads the Legion of Subs in a coordinated attack on their unsuspecting enemies. It’s a good showcase for the Subs, showing that even their supposedly-inferior abilities could be put to good use with a bit of forethought.

The League of Super-Assassins, by the way, is made up of Lazon, Neutrax, Titania, Mist Master, the Silver Slasher and Blok, who are broadly analogous to Cyclops, Professor X, Colossus, Storm, Wolverine and Nightcrawler, although the parallels aren’t immediately obvious; there’s a bit of a mix-and match aspect to them. (The Silver Slasher, for example, has a metal body like Colossus but she uses her razor-sharp metal fingernails as her primary weapon.) and there’s a general sense that the creators involved were trying not to push things. Blok would go on to become a regular Legionnaire himself in short order, the only member of the group to graduate into actual herodom. Anyway, the battle is a rout, well-strategized by Brainiac 5, who has the Subs striking from concealment so as to confuse and disorient the more powerful super-Assassins until they can each be overcome.

In the issue’s wrap-up, Brainy is able to use Lazon’s energies to revive the stricken Legionnaires, and Superboy reveals how, rather than coming to aid his fellow Legionnaires directly in a sensible manner, he instead used his X-Ray Vision to activate the suspended animation chemicals they’d all been exposed to, thus saving them. It’s a preposterous explanation, but the story is over, so it almost doesn’t really matter. Gerry also clears up that of course the Legion didn’t wipe out Korlon, they rather evacuated the inhabitants of that doomed planet. But the Assassins were all kids then, and couldn’t tell the difference (and yet somehow grew to young adulthood while the Legion members who were on that mission remained more-or-less the same age. Oops.) So Brainiac 5 is the hero of the day, yet he’s still not considered sane, so he needs to go back to his imprisonment at the St. Croix Asylum where they’ll work to bring him back to himself. He only arranged a work-release for himself to help out during this crisis.