June 1964: The Legion in Triplicate

Readers got a triple dose of the Legion of Superheroes in comics on newsstands in April 1964.

In their cover feature in Adventure Comics 321, the Legion proper wended their way through the usual suspicions and accusations of betrayal to thwart the scheme of the Time Trapper.

In Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen 77, the ginger-haired cub reporter used an enlarging potion to become a 20th century stand-in for Colossal Boy, costume and all, so that he could contain the threat of Titano the Super Ape. Titano’s kryptonite vision had rendered the Man of Tomorrow hors de combat.

And in World’s Finest 142, Superman, Batman and Robin faced a foe who possessed all the powers of 20 members of the Legion. They shouldn’t have been able to beat him — and they couldn’t!

“Readers learn that the Composite Superman is actually Joe Meach, a former high diver who, down his luck, attempted a publicity stunt dive which would have killed him were it not for a timely rescue by Superman,” Matthew Grossman noted. “Given a job as janitor at the Superman Museum, Meach is struck by a freak lightning bolt that blasted statues of Superman and the Legion of Superheroes before hitting him, giving him all of those heroes’ combined powers.

“Vowing to prove himself Superman and Batman’s equal, he torments the duo again and again. Finally deciding to kill the captured and helpless pair, the Composite Superman suddenly finds his powers fading as the lightning charge in his body dissipates… The Composite Superman’s two Silver Age appearances have a distinct charm and a somewhat unique theme.”

Teenage superhero teams were in the air that month. Kid Flash, Robin and Aqualad also joined forces in The Brave and the Bold 54 for a story that would lead to the formation of the Teen Titans. And over at Marvel, the teenage mutant X-Men were between their fifth and sixth adventures.

September 1962: Time-Traveling Titanic Teenagers

In September 1962, DC marked the 300^th issue of Adventure Comics by cover-featuring a team that had begun as almost an afterthought.

Every decade has had its superhero teams — the Justice Society and the All-Winners Squad in the 1940s, the Justice League, the Fantastic Four and the Avengers in the 1960s, the Defenders in the 1970s.

But superheroes were eclipsed in the 1950s, in part because such garish figures didn’t quite fit with a war-weary, nervously conformist American society. Yet the 1950s too had its superhero teams, though stripped-down, muted and shoved into the background in keeping with the spirit of the times.

So you had the World’s Finest trio of Superman, Batman and Robin and two other bands that were probably intended to be one-shot plot devices, but which took on lives of their own.

One was The Batmen of All Nations (Detective Comics 215, Jan. 1955), consisting of the Masked Manhunter’s imitators from around the world, and the other debuted in Adventure Comics 247 (April 1958).

It’s safe to assume that writer Otto Binder, artist Al Plastino and editor Mort Weisinger didn’t know quite what they’d created in The Legion of Super Heroes, a club of teenagers who time-travel back to Smallville to recruit their inspiration, Superboy.

The concept had weird angles that weren’t particularly promising. Why should the super heroes all be teenagers? And why should they each be restricted to a single power — or, as would be the case with several members, the entire virtually omnipotent array of Kryptonian powers?

Yet hidden within the concept were elements that would give it serious legs.

Like the Harry Potter novels 40 years later, the series would combine the fantasy appeal of super powers with the plot-churning drama of high school cliques and romances. The team returned in Adventure Comics 267 (Dec. 1959), and then again and again.  Even if the situations were fantastic, the emotions had to be familiar to the feature’s young readers.

July 1962: The Boy With Ultra Powers

Ultra Boy, the Super-Legionnaire introduced in Superboy 98 (July 1962), had the right pedigree, anyway.  He was created by celebrated Superman artist Curt Swan and Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel.

In those days, the Legion of Super-Heroes was something of a work in progress. Almost certainly never intended to be a series, the Legion of Super-Heroes evolved from appearance to appearance as they popped up in the Superboy titles. Ultimately, the popular team took on a life and a mythos of their own.

“The Boy With the Ultra Powers … was typical of its period of Legion stories, serving mainly to introduce one new Legionnaire,” noted Paul Levitz. “And, like so many early Legion tales, it told only part of the character’s story… Ultra Boy really gained many powers when trapped in the energy-beast — virtually all of Superboy’s abilities, although he could only use one power at a time. In this story, however, only his vision powers are shown by writer Jerry Siegel.”

His name, Jo Nah, was a tad too cute for somebody who acquired his powers from being swallowed by a giant beast. This native of the planet Rimbor would eventually wield powers that included super strength, speed, flight, invulnerability, flash vision and pentra-vision.

“I always liked Ultra-Boy, not for the power set he shared with Superboy, but rather for the sheer creativity and quick thinking managing those powers in a crisis required,” Mark Engblom recalled. “Although some of his stories highlighted the challenge of using only one A-list superpower at a time, I always wished for a story that would delve deeper into his thought process while juggling this huge, ever-shifting array of abilities. Perhaps there is such a story someone could point me to, but until then, I’ll just continue admiring this ‘working man’s Superboy’ from afar!

Siegel clearly had some affinity for the adjective “ultra.” He named one of Superman’s earliest arch-foes the “Ultra-Humanite,” and later penned the “ultra-heroes” at Archie Comics.

August 1961: Deus Ex Time Machina

Writer Jerry Siegel enjoyed a good deus ex machina.

The “god of the machine” from ancient Greek drama has come to mean a plot device that’s introduced suddenly and unexpectedly in order to supply a contrived, far-fetched solution to an apparently impossible-to-solve problem.

Is your character in a tough spot? Just ring in some super being from the far future to rescue him at the last minute. 

Siegel used that trick first to bail out Superboy (Superboy 86, Jan. 1961) and then both Lex Luthor and Superman in the same story (Superman 147, Aug. 1961).

Recalling how he’d been defeated by the Legion of Super-Heroes’ Lightning Lad in that Superboy tale, the imprisoned criminal scientist reasons — not terribly logically — that a Legion of Super-Villains must also necessarily exist in the future, and rejiggers spare radio parts to summon them.

When the evil Lightning Lord, Cosmic King and Saturn Queen capture and cage Superman, his now-adult teammates Lightning Man, Cosmic Man and Saturn Woman appear to rescue him. 

By using radiation from her home planet’s rings, the Man of Tomorrow is able to turn Saturn Queen against the super-villains — thereby turning the tables.

“There is often a certain good/evil duality to Siegel’s mystery tales,” observed comics historian Michael E. Grost. “Characters who seemed to be evil throughout the tales are revealed to be good at the end, or vice versa.”

“Siegel has a consistent interest in showing grown-up Legionnaires,” Grost noted. “He seems to be the only one of the Superman family to have done so. His first Supergirl Legion story The Three Super-Heroes (1960) shows the kids of the original Legionnaires, an idea that was dropped from the mythos — probably it was considered as a mistake. His Superman’s Super-Courtship (1962) shows grown-up Legionnaires celebrating Christmas.”

Siegel used similarly fantastical, out-of-nowhere plot stunts in his camp stories about Archie Comics’ “Mighty Heroes” a few years later, but they didn’t work so well in those largely unsalvageable tales.

January 1961: The Sadness of Superman

Many were the times stories written by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel left his brainchild ineffectual, impotent or dead.

The world’s most powerful man, powerless. How ironic, as they used to say in the comic books.

The 1950s and 1960s were a sad, sketchy period for Siegel, so maybe it’s understandable that he’d have his most famous creation share his despair. Or maybe the having Siegel write such stories was some kind of punitive joke arranged by Superman editor Mort Weisinger. 

But whatever the reason, there they are. The pattern is unmistakable.

His energy duplicate Super Menace defeated Superman, but then vaporized himself along with his own evil foster parents in Superman 137 (May 1960).

The Man of Tomorrow was unable to repair yesterday by preventing the destruction of his home world in Superman’s Return to Krypton (Superman 141, November 1960). 

A super-powered Lana Lang was forced to exile herself from Earth because her powers overshadowed the despairing Superman’s in The Wife of Superman! (Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane 26, July 1961).

And The Death of Superman (Superman 149, November 1961) speaks for itself.

One of these stories introduced me to the Legion of Super-Heroes, in fact. 

Lightning Lad rescued Superboy and Krypto from the young Lex Luthor’s Army of Living Kryptonite Men in Superboy 86 (Jan. 1961).  

Using a telekinetic helmet of his own invention, Luthor had buried Superboy in kryptonite on an asteroid. Krypto fell into the death trap trying to save him.

But the Legion of Super-Heroes was watching through their time viewer, so they sent a boy from tomorrow to save the doomed Boy of Tomorrow single-handedly —a deus ex machina if there ever was one.

One of the more insightful comics writers once remarked that as Batman stories are thematically concerned with light and darkness, Superman stories are about power and weakness. 

Superman’s first stories celebrated his power. Twenty years later, they explored the many ways in which power couldn’t save him.