BC: LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #4

This is another comic book that I never quite borrowed. Rather, I saw it lying around over at the house of my neighbor Charles Grella at some point when I was there. I think the fact that it was such an odd thing was what made me remember it; at the time, the Legion of Super-Heroes didn’t have a series of their own and I had no inkling that they ever did. So it was a surprising thing to behold. It was actually a reprint title, one of several that DC head Carmine Infantino released in 1973 in an attempt to hold onto display space for the DC line in the wake of Marvel’s aggressive expansion. This must have been an easy and affordable book to produce, given that it reused the story and even the cover artwork from a 1966 issue of ADVENTURE COMICS. Still, that didn’t mean it was successful, and this fourth issue was the last one in the series.

Charles Grella didn’t really have any interest in comic books, and looking at his exposure to this one, I can kind of see why. Even only a relatively short number of years from its original publication, the story feels immediately dated and quaint to even 1973 eyes. The bit threat of the story, Computo, feels almost comical in his throwback design. And the titular Weirdo Legionnaire is similarly an absurd creation. Add on top of that the antiquated names of several of the Legionnaires themselves (in particular the Lads and Lasses) and the entire package doesn’t feel like it’s designed to appeal to a kid in the 1970s at all. The artwork by Curt Swan and Sheldon Moldoff (not George Klein as the splash page mistakenly miscredits) feels like a throwback to the 1950s or even the 1940s in its depiction of the far future.

The story was written by Jerry Siegel, Superman’s creator, and its tone is all over the place. Siegel, it seems, isn’t quite certain how seriously he should be taking any of what he’s writing, so he bounces back and forth between attempting drama and then undercutting his own stakes with comedy. This can readily be seen in the opening sequence. This is the second part of a two-part adventure, and in the opening, Computo, a sinister automaton accidentally created by Legionnaire Brainiac 5, has killed Triplicate Girl. So this story opens with the Legionnaires having an impromptu funeral for her, gathering up the scattered particles of her remains and sending them by rocket to the hero’s graveyard on far-off Shanghalla, there to rest among the memorials to the greatest fallen heroes in the galaxy. This group includes poor old Leeta 87, whose memorial tells us that after triumph after triumph, she broke her own skull tripping on a space banana peel. It’s a memorable gag, but one that deflates the somberness of the occasion.

It’s okay, though, because it was only one of Triplicate Girl’s three bodies that Computo killed–the other two are just fine, And with a codename change to Duo Damsel, she’s ready to get back into the fight. This means first freeing the members of their team that have been captured by Computo, which requires the Legion to unleash their secret weapon, the Weirdo Legionnaire, on the angry AI. Weirdo is an absurd design, with three heads and strange tentacles for arms. He’s also a motormouth with a bad attitude and he distracts Computo for long enough for Colossal Boy to free Star Boy and Sun Boy from confinement, though Colossal Boy makes it look as though he’s killing his fellow Legion members to justify the cover illustration. Weirdo turns out to be Chameleon Boy’s pet Proty II, who can change form, in case you were wondering. He was an enormous bluff, in a story filled with nonsensical actions. With that taken care of, the Legion retreats, hiding out in the now-disused Batcave which is still there untouched in the future world of a thousand years from now.

But Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad and Invisible Kid are still the captives of Computo, and so to rescue them, Brainiac 5 decides to employ the Imperfect Duplicator Ray that created Bizarro on Computo, creating a Bizarro Computo that he hopes will help battle their foe. But this whole stratagem is a bust, as Bizarro Computo acts just as goofily as you’d expect, trying for laughs but eliciting only groans with his ill-timed antics. Eventually, Computo himself has had enough and he casually destroys his Bizarro counterpart. Bouncing Boy, one of the more ridiculous Legionnaires, steps forward intent on rescuing Saturn Girl despite the fact that he’s lost his bouncing powers. The fair-minded Computo exposes Bouncing Boy to a gas that’ll restore his abilities for thirty minutes–pretty nice of the dude. But even given all of his old skill back, Bouncing Boy can’t lay a finger on either Computo or the captive Saturn Girl.

But Brainiac 5 still has one last card to play. Using equipment scavenged from the Batcave, he cobbles together a device that releases an Anti-Matter Force into their universe, hoping that it will be able to destroy Computo and his minions. And what do you know, it does! In the excitement, Superboy and his fellow are able to rescue Saturn Girl and the remaining captured Legionnaires before the robots holding them are vaporized. At that point, it’s a simple enough matter for Brainy to devise a way to knock the Anti-Matter Force back into its own universe. So the day is saved–but as Superboy returns to the present, the details of the adventure escape him, as he can’t retain his knowledge of the future. The whole story is a bit of a farce, with stakes that feel more comical than critical, and events that rely on silliness. The Legionnaires themselves don’t come across as particularly heroic or even competent. So there’s very little here to make a fan out of a new reader apart from the sheer number of costumed characters. The story was produced right at around the time the BATMAN live action series was first hitting the airwaves, and you can sense a similar strain of self-parody in this story.

As the lead adventure ran a bit short, there’s a back-up as well, a Tommy Tomorrow story from 1957. I was never much of a fan of Tommy Tomorrow’s series. There was something at once both silly and dull about it. In this Otto Binder-written outing, with art supplied by Jim Mooney, Tommy and his buddy are posted to a spaceport where they’re on the lookout for contraband evil robots that can steal the minds of their victims. turns out that a space salesman by the name of Bart Bruce is the one smuggling them into port disguised as spaceships rather than smuggled aboard them. Tommy naturally figures out the deception when he spots that Bruce’s space odometer doesn’t indicate a trip to Saturn as he claimed, but rather one to Mars where the evil robots are being manufactured. It’s harmless but tepid, the kind of background strip that DC was rife with in the 1950s. It’s pretty easy to see why issues like this one wouldn’t have retained their power over children in the early 1970s.