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.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
Looking at this I have to say I’m surprised my Legion love survived runs that didn’t include Cockrum, Giffen, Levitz, or Lightle (I’d include Sherman on that list but he only got an inker that didn’t butcher his art one time). Staton was awesome too but he never really had a writer that did a more than acceptable job on the title. The X-Men thing? Yeah, it was totally impossible to see and my brain still refuses to accept it despite reading it in a blog by a comics historian like yourself. They make the horrible analogs to the Avengers in one JLA issue look inspired by comparison.
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I bailed out on Legion around this time too. There’s nothing really “wrong” with Staton’s work, and I’ve enjoyed him on other books. But after the trifecta of Cockrum / Grell / Sherman, anyone was going to look a bit anemic. Likewise, Conway was making a decent effort — I always enjoyed seeing those loveable losers, the Legion Substitutes — but it just didn’t click for me.
I can’t remember now where I read it, but supposedly the Assassins were originally a much closer match for the X-Men, but someone got cold feet and they were modified to be less so. At least we got Blok out of it, who went on to be a fairly important character. (Did he ever team up with Stone Boy? Seems like a natural…)
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Well at least they gave Stone Boy the ability to move in his petrified form ( At some time he underwent hypnotherapy and gained the ability to stay conscious during his transformation and, eventually, he was able to move in his stone state which was a major achievement — https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Dag_Wentim_(Pre-Zero_Hour). Ferro Lad [ Adventure Comics#346 ( July 1966 ) he has a twin brother ] would have made a great Colossus counterpart ( Add Saturn Girl, Dawnstar, Polar Boy, Sun Boy & Duplicate Boy and you have Colossus, Marvel Girl, Angel, Iceman, Sunfire & Mimic ). So Stone Boy was created before [ Adventure Comics#306 ( March 1963 ) ] before Ferro Lad, to bad no one sooner thought to have Stone Boy get exposed to something ( energy, chemical or gas ) to give him the ability to move.
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I forgot Tyroc as Banshee’s counterpart. Universo as Mesmero’s counterpart ( Maybe with a robot with magnetic abilities like Mesmero and the Magneto robot ). Have the LSH ever battle a giant robot ( that could be replicated ) or giant robots ( that could controlled by a LSH hater and be counterparts to a Trask or Lang and Sentinels )?
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Computo had giant robots serving him in his first appearance — they were even used to capture and imprison Legion members, so very Sentinel-like.
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Computo, Triplicate Girl’s murderer, created an army of lesser Computos to serve as his army.
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Gotta confess that while I have a soft spot for the Legion, my experience with them is limited to a few Cockrum issues, the Grell run and a good sampling of the Levitz-Giffen team. What I always found challenging about the Legion is how in the world does anyone successfully write a series with so many characters? When I was following it, I’d want more “screen time” for, say, Cosmic Boy or Phantom Girl. Definitely Mon-El and Saturn Girl. But what about the fans of Princess Projectra or Timber Wolf? How does a writer balance all of that? I realize this is essentially a rhetorical question. But while I’m far from an avid follower of the series, I can’t really criticize any writer attempting to tackle what seems a herculean task.
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Maybe someone with brains will decided to make a magazine sized 120 page magazine for the LSH. This would allow 8 15-page stories to be written which would give all those characters and the Substitute Heroes more time to shine. Obviously, you will need multiple writers and artists. Maybe each could do a 2-3 issue story arc with the characters they are writing and drawing for. I would be willing to pay $15-25 for a comic magazine like that.
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Someone who was involved somehow once told me that the original plan was for the Super-Assassins to appear the same month as the Imperial Guard, but there were schedule upheavals that made it not possible, so when they did show up eventually, the people doing the book didn’t want it to seem like an annoyed response rather than a fun “crossover,” and changed up the characters to make them deliberately less like the X-MEN.
On the one hand, the month the Imperial Guard appeared would have been two editors ago for the Legion, with a different regular writer and a different artist, so it would seem unlikely — except that on the other, that month’s issue of SUPERBOY was by Gerry, who’d been doing fill-ins on the book at the time as the schedule needed it. And there was ongoing schedule chaos on the book at the time, as an overcommitted young Paul Levitz and a variety of schedule-pressed artists tried to manage the book.
So it’s possible the Super-Assassins were originally planned for a fill-in issue, and something went awry.
I did notice the similarities at the time, but thought it was disappointing, like the Heroes of Angor had been in the Silver Age. DC seemed to get the short end of the stick of the unofficial crossovers, maybe because their editors weren’t into it, and at Marvel, the writers and the editors were all having fun. And often the same person.
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Re: Tom’s CT that Conway didn’t seem enthusiastic for the Legion material– I would make the same speculation regarding Staton. Though his outings with Green Lantern and Plastic Man weren’t my favorites for those features, it looked to me like he was creatively engaged with designing various characters in those stories. In this specific case Staton might’ve been called on to do quickie re-workings that made the Storm-analogue look less like Storm, sure. But I don’t recall any Staton original characters that grabbed me– and even Blok, who stuck around and became a serviceable hero, got better looking when someone, I forget who, re-designed his look.
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Re: Kurt’s CT about cross-company character-spoofs, for lack of a better term– I know DNAGENTS did a bit where the Agents met spoofy versions of the Titans. Did TT return the favor?
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Yes, drawn by Steve Rude, no less.
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Tom covered it here. Lost Crossovers: The Unofficial Inter-Company Crossover between the New Teen Titans and the DNAgents – The Tom Brevoort Experience
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Let’s not forget that the Inferior 5 did their own “crossover” with the X-Men in their original 60s series. Actually, I think it was during their 3 issue Showcase run, but not sure which issue it was. They would up teaching at a school of gifted misfits who were thinly disguised version of the original X-Men.
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SHOWCASE #65. The name of the Iceman-analog, “Winter Wonderlad”, still cracks me up.
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That one was terrific.
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Funny how they weren’t afraid to do character-spoofs in the Inferior Five series:#1 ( C.O.U.S.I.N.F.R.E.D. a parody of U.N.C.L.E., Yellowjacket & Plato ( Green Hornet & Kato ) & H.U.R.R.I.C.A.N.E. Agents ( T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents ). #2 ( Kookie Quartet ( Fantastic Four ) & King Size and Tse-Tse Fly ( Giant Man and the Wasp ) ). #3 ( Darwin of the Apes ( Tarzan ). #4 ( not a parody of another company’s characters, but appearance of the Norse Gods: Thor, Odin, Beowulf ( not a Norse god ), real Norse myths Valkyrie names ( Hrist, Mist, Skogull, Hild, Goll, Brynhild ), Heimdall, Freyja, Bragi, Njord, Freyr, Sleipner ( Odin’s horse, Loki’s offspring ), Tyr, Sif, Mimir, Loki, Garm, Surt, Jormungand & Fenfir De Wolf ). #5 ( Crimson Chrysanthemum ( Scarlet Pimpernel meets A Tales of Two Cities ). #7 ( Thor, Iron Pants ( Iron Man ), Sub-Moron ( Sub-Mariner ), Cobweb Kid ( Spider-Man ).
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In my curiosity about DC Comics heroes I once again picked up a Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes ( Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes#253 ( July 1979 ) the first appearance of the League of Super-Assassins. Who thought they were cousins; Titania & Silver Slasher as sisters — made them similar to the Inhumans royal family ) — Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes#243 ( September 1978 ) was my first. So the League of Super-Assassins were suppose to be an unofficial X-Men crossover, only like with the unofficial Avengers crossover [ JLA#75 ( November 1969 )] once again DC writers chickened out. The League of Super-Assassins like American Eagle & Tom Thumb [ The Avengers#85 ( February 1971 ) ] and Nuke [ The Defenders#112 ( October 1982 ) } didn’t really match their counterparts ( American Eagle had arm wings ( no back wings until he was Cap’n Hawk in issue 148 ( June 1976 ), Tom Thumb was to short to be a counterpart to the golden age Atom and to tall and no shrinking ability like the silver age Atom. Nuke didn’t have the same powers as Firestorm nor was he 2 people. Don Perlin should have given Nuke energy hair like Phobos [ Wonder Woman#2-5 ( March-June 1987 ) ] ).
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I looked at that cover and said to myself, “What the heck is Platinum from the Metal Men doing in the bottom left of the cover!”
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Dave Hunt’s inks on this seem to have removed all of the cartoony quirkiness of Joe Staton’s style that I like.
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I thought he was Byrne’s best inker but yeah, he doesn’t mesh with Staton.
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I’m a huge fan of Staton’s work. and I don’t think Hunt’s inking was a good fit for him.
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