Back Issue #68

COMICS’ BRONZE AGE AND BEYOND!

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Legion of Super-Heroes TM & © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

BATES ★ GIFFEN ★ GRELL ★ LEVITZ ★ LaROCQUE ★ LIGHTLE ★ AND MORE!

SPECIAL LEGION IN THE ’70s AND ’80s ISSUE

THE RETRO COMICS EXPERIENCE!

Edited by MICHAEL EURY, BACK ISSUE magazine celebrates comic books of the 1970s, 1980s, and today through recurring (and rotating) departments like “Pro2Pro” (dialogue between professionals), “BackStage Pass” (behind-the-scenes of comicsbased media), “Greatest Stories Never Told” (spotlighting unrealized comics series or stories), and more!

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“Licensed Comics”! Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Man from Atlantis, DC’s Edgar Rice Burroughs backups (John Carter, Pellucidar, Carson of Venus), Marvel’s Warlord of Mars, and an interview with CAROL SERLING, wife of ROD SERLING. With art and commentary from ANDERSON, BYRNE, CLAREMONT, DORMAN, DUURSEMA, KALUTA, MILLER, OSTRANDER, and more. Cover by BRIAN KOSCHACK.

“Avengers Assemble!” Writer ROGER STERN’S acclaimed 1980s Avengers run, West Coast Avengers, early Avengers toys, and histories of Hawkeye, Mockingbird, and Wonder Man, with art and commentary from JOHN and SAL BUSCEMA, JOHN BYRNE, BRETT BREEDING, TOM DeFALCO, STEVE ENGLEHART, BOB HALL, AL MILGROM, TOM MORGAN, TOM PALMER, JOE SINNOTT, and more. PÉREZ cover!

JENETTE KAHN interviewed by ROBERT GREENBERGER, DC’s Dollar Comics and unrealized kids’ line (featuring an aborted Sugar and Spike revival), the Wonder Woman Foundation, and the early days of the Vertigo imprint. Exploring the talents of ROSS ANDRU, KAREN BERGER, STEVE BISSETTE, JIM ENGEL, GARTH ENNIS, NEIL GAIMAN, SHELLY MAYER, ALAN MOORE, GRANT MORRISON, and more!

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“JLA in the Bronze Age”! The “Satellite Years” of the ‘70s and early ‘80s, with BUCKLER, ENGLEHART, PÉREZ, and WEIN, salute to DICK DILLIN, the Justice League “Detroit” team, with CONWAY, PATTON, McDONNELL, plus CONWAY and GEOFF JOHNS go “Pro2Pro” on writing the JLA, unofficial JLA/Avengers crossovers, and Marvel’s JLA, the Squadron Supreme. Cover

by McDONNELL and BILL WRAY!

“Toon Comics!” History of Space Ghost in comics, Comico’s Jonny Quest and Star Blazers, Marvel’s Hanna-Barbera line and Dennis the Menace, behind the scenes at Marvel Productions, Ltd., and a look at the unpublished Plastic Man comic strip.

Art/comments by EVANIER, FOGLIO, HEMPEL and WHEATLEY, MARRS, RUDE, TOTH, WILDEY, and more. All-new painted Space Ghost cover by STEVE RUDE!

“Halloween Heroes and Villains”! JEPH LOEB and TIM SALE’s chiller Batman: The Long Halloween, the Scarecrow (both the DC and Marvel versions), Solomon Grundy, Man-Wolf, Lord Pumpkin, Rutland, Vermont’s Halloween parades, and… the Korvac Saga’s Dead Avengers! With commentary from and/or art by CONWAY, GIL KANE, LOPRESTI, MOENCH, PÉREZ, DAVE WENZEL, and more. Cover by TIM SALE!

“Tabloids and Treasuries,” spotlighting every all-new tabloid from the 1970s. Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man, The Bible, Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles, The Wizard of Oz, even the PAUL DINI/ALEX ROSS World’s Greatest Super-Heroes editions! Commentary and art by ADAMS, GARCIA-LOPEZ, GRELL, KIRBY, KUBERT, MAYER, ROMITA SR., TOTH, and more.

Wraparound cover by ALEX ROSS!

“Superman in the Bronze Age”! JULIUS SCHWARTZ, CURT SWAN, Superman Family, World of Krypton miniseries, and ALAN MOORE’s “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”, art & comments

by ADAMS, ANDERSON, CARDY, CHAYKIN, PAUL KUPPERBERG, OKSNER, O’NEIL, PASKO, ROZAKIS, SAVIUK, and more. Cover by GARCÍA-LÓPEZ and SCOTT WILLIAMS! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

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“British Invasion” issue! History of Marvel UK, Beatles in comics, DC’s ‘80s British talent pool, V for Vendetta, Excalibur, Marshal Law, Doctor Who, “Pro2Pro” interview with PETER MILLIGAN & BRENDAN McCARTHY, plus BERGER, BOLLAND, DAVIS, GIBBONS, STAN LEE, LLOYD, MOORE, DEZ SKINN, and others. Fold-out triptych cover by RON WILSON and DAVE HUNT of Marvel UK’s rare 1970s “Quadra-Poster”!

“Bronze Age Backup Series”! Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Metamorpho, GOODWIN and SIMONSON’s Manhunter, PASKO and GIFFEN’s Dr. Fate, “Whatever Happened To…?”, Nemesis, Rose and the Thorn, Seven Soldiers of Victory, art and commentary by CARY BURKETT, JOHN CALNAN, DICK GIORDANO, MIKE GRELL, ELLIOT S! MAGGIN, DAN SPIEGLE, cover

by GRELL and JOE RUBINSTEIN.

“Bronze Age B-Teams”! Defenders issue-byissue overview, Champions, Guardians of the Galaxy, Inhumans, PETER DAVID’s X-Factor, Teen Titans West, Legion of Substitute Heroes, an all-star chatfest of Doom Patrol interviews, plus art and commentary by ROSS ANDRU, SAL BUSCEMA, KEITH GIFFEN, TONY ISABELLA, PAUL KUPPERBERG, ERIK LARSEN, GEORGE PÉREZ, BOB ROZAKIS, cover by KEVIN NOWLAN.

“Bronze Age Team-Ups”! Marvel Team-Up and Two-in-One, Super-Villain Team-Up, CLAREMONT and SIMONSON’s X-Men/New Teen Titans, DC Comics Presents, SuperTeam Family, HANEY and APARO’s Batman of Earth-B(&B), Superman/Captain Marvel smackdowns, plus art and commentary by BUCKLER, ENGLEHART, GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, GIFFEN, LEVITZ, WEIN, and a classic GIL KANE cover inked anew by TERRY AUSTIN.

“Heroes Out of Time!” Batman: Gotham by Gaslight with MIGNOLA, WAID, and AUGUSTYN, Booster Gold with JURGENS, X-Men: Days of Future Past with CHRIS CLAREMONT, Bill & Ted with EVAN DORKIN, interview with P. CRAIG RUSSELL, “Pro2Pro” with Time Masters’ BOB WAYNE and LEWIS SHINER, Karate Kid, New Mutants: Asgardian Wars, and Kang.

Mignola cover.

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Volume 1, Number 68 October 2013 Celebrating the Best Comics of the '70s, '80s, '90s, and Beyond!

1994--2013

Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond!

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow DESIGNER Rich Fowlks COVER ARTIST Dave Cockrum (from Amazing World of DC Comics #9) COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg PROOFREADER Rob Smentek

If you’re viewing a Digital Edition of this publication,

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BACK SEAT DRIVER: Editorial by Michael Eury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 FLASHBACK: Move Over, Superboy! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 The resurgence of the Legion of Super-Heroes during the Bronze Age of Comics FLASHBACK: Making the Teen (of Steel) Scene: The New Adventures of Superboy . . . . . .17 The adventures of Superman when he was a boy—in the ’60s, man!

ART GALLERY: Legion Fantasy Covers by John Watson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25 From the silly to the sublime, variations on a theme by the talented cover artist FLASHBACK: The Honored Dead of the Legion of Super-Heroes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31 Saluting the fallen heroes of the 30th Century INTERVIEW: Paul Levitz: Welcome to the 30th Century—The 31st, Too . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 The Legion’s longest-lasting mythmaker discusses the book—and a few others, too FLASHBACK: Back to the Future: The Legion in the 1980s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50 From multi-part mysteries to the Pocket Universe, it was a decade to remember BRING ON THE BAD GUYS: Too Much Time on My Hands: The History of the Time Trapper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64 Tracking the convoluted yet captivating timeline of one of the Legion’s chief foes BEYOND CAPES: Cosmic Boy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71 This LSH and Legends spin-off brought a Legion founder into the mid-1980s BACK TALK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76 Reader reaction to BI #63 and other topics BACK ISSUE™ is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, 118 Edgewood Avenue NE, Concord, NC 28025. Email: euryman@gmail.com. Six-issue subscriptions: $60 Standard US, $85 Canada, $107 Surface International. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office.

Cover art by Dave Cockrum. Legion of Super-Heroes TM & © DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted.

All editorial matter © 2013 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows Publishing. BACK ISSUE is a TM of TwoMorrows Publishing. ISSN 1932-6904. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

www.twomorrows.com Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

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The Bronze Age Legion in an Alex Ross painting for a 1999 limited edition print. TM & © DC Comics. All rights reserved.

SPECIAL THANKS Cary Bates Aidan Lacy R. J. Brande “Sijo” Art Lapham Tim Brown Greg LaRocque Kurt Busiek Paul Levitz John Byrne Steve Lightle Byrne Robotics Randy Matthews KC Carlson Robin Matthews Mark Ciemcioch Alex Ross Gerry Conway Bob Rozakis DC Comics Philip Schweier Ronnie Deen Anthony Snyder Jim Ford Mark Waid Mike Flynn John Watson Keith Giffen Grand Comic-Book Database Bob Greenberger Mike Grell Heritage Comics Auctions Dan Johnson Jim Kingman Paul Kupperberg

Legionnaire Lost? Nightwing, Lara Londo of the planet Zoon, was a potential LSH member proposed by fan Robert Harris.

She’s realized here by artist John Workman. From “The Legion Outpost” in Amazing World of DC Comics #12 (Aug. 1976).

by

Michael Eury

TM & © DC Comics.

The Legion of Super-Heroes: Chances are, you either love them or you hate (or have ignored) them. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of reactions in between. Since 1958’s Adventure Comics #247, which featured a trio of super-teens from the future time-traveling to Superboy’s era to recruit him to their superhero club, the Legion has attracted diehard fans who have remained loyal to the team as its comic book has flourished and floundered. Other readers have scratched their heads, arguing that The Legion is too dense—with characters, planets, powers, and futuristic science—for them to appreciate.

Creators are fascinated with the promise afforded by Legion’s myriad worlds and super-beings. Adventure starring the Legion featured some of the earliest character deaths in comics. Legion of Super-Heroes was one of the few mainstream comics to allow its characters to age: Readers followed them from teens to young adults, and into marriage and parenthood.

The series offered soap opera long before most other DC titles did—and I can point to tear stains on Duo Damsel’s pillow if there’s any doubt. But as the legend of the Legion grew and its characters matured, the series strayed from its original concept and required rebooting—time and time again.

So this issue, we’ll make it easy for you by spotlighting Legion of SuperHeroes during the Bronze Age, the 1970s through the mid-1980s, a time when the series blossomed. Even if you aren’t a Legion fan, you may find yourself becoming one as you explore the stories behind the team’s resurgence in popularity; the emergence of ’70s fan-favorite artists Dave Cockrum and Mike Grell; Superboy’s struggles to maintain his title and his very existence; the team of Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen, who made LSH DC’s number-two bestseller; the emergence of ’80s fan-favorite artists Steve Lightle and Greg LaRocque; and Cosmic Boy’s foray into the “current” DC Universe. And you longtime Legion fans will appreciate the creators’ behind-the-scenes recollections, our tribute to the team’s fallen, and the history of one of its greatest adversaries, the Time Trapper.

Ironically, this edition of BACK ISSUE is the only new publication this month starring the Legion, as DC Comics canceled the current incarnation of Legion of Super-Heroes with its 23rd issue, which went on sale in August 2013. Helmed by writer Paul Levitz—who discusses the series in an exclusive interview this issue—the New 52’s Legion didn’t connect with enough readers to maintain its continuance. Also, co-plotter/penciler Keith Giffen’s return to the book was short-lived, disappointing many fans.

But shed no tears for the Legion of Super-Heroes. As comics history has shown us—and as the following pages will prove—this futuristic fighting force will one day return. Until then, join us as we revisit many of their glory days.

Long Live the Legion!

BITS OF LEGIONNAIRE BUSINESS Here’s an image we wanted to share: Neal Adams’ wraparound cover to the 100-Page Super-Spectacular Batman #238 (Jan. 1972), featuring the LSH on its back cover—including Kid Psycho and Elastic Lad! 2 • BACK ISSUE • Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

TM & © DC Comics.

TM

To be a true fan of the Legion of Super-Heroes you must endure shock, dismay, and disappointment alongside unconditional love and loyalty for the young super-team of the 30th Century. I learned this as I gradually developed into a dedicated fan of the Legion beginning with “Curse of the Blood-Crystals!” in DC’s Superboy #188 (July 1972). As the series progressed through the Bronze Age of Comics, it was often reinforced that anything could happen with the characters—good, bad, and tragic. Anything could disrupt the consistency of the creators involved, abruptly, albeit effectively. And anything could upend the Legion’s tenancy in any given title they precariously called home: Would they stay or would they go or did they blow; with sometimes all of the above clashing simultaneously. I wasn’t there for the first great shock to the system of Legion fans near the dawn of the Bronze Age, but it was indeed a jolt, the beginning of many to come. It’s where this look back at the Legion from 1968 to 1979 will begin.

FALL FROM GRACE

by

Jim “Comics Boy” Kingman

There was a transition period at the end of the Silver Age, a two-year juncture, 1968 to 1969, wherein dramatic changes at DC and Marvel set the stage for what is considered by many the official beginning of the Bronze Age with the publication of Green Lantern (co-starring Green Arrow) #76 in February of 1970. Artist Carmine Infantino settled into his new post as editorial director at National Periodicals Publications (now DC); Marvel Comics went with a different distribution company, no longer shackled in that respect to its biggest competitor, DC; editor Joe Orlando revamped House of Mystery and House of Secrets; Gardner Fox and John Broome, two of editor Julius Schwartz’s long-standing writers, were dismissed; and Wonder Woman surrendered her powers and costume to become a more down-toEarth, Emma Peel-style crimefighter.

As these and other comics-related events took shape during 1968, the Legion of Super-Heroes feature in Adventure Comics was at the tail end of a creative surge. The series, starring a powerful group of superteens battling evil in the far-flung future of the 30th Century, and also featuring a time-traveling Superboy (Superman as a teen) from the 20th Century, had been going strong for many years, much to the delight of the Legion’s loyal fans (the Legion debuted in Adventure Comics #247, Apr. 1958, and began their ongoing series in Adventure #300, Sept. 1962). The imaginative sparks were fading, however, as the year wore on. Furthermore, 1969 delivered a sudden, drastic change to the LSH, providing a severe letdown to followers of the team.

The Artist Who Saved the Legion A vocal fan base helped nudge a marginally interested editor toward the Legion’s slow climb back into the limelight—but it was the art of Dave Cockrum that galvanized those fans and helped the LSH squeeze the Teen of Steel out of the title he had headlined since 1949.

TM & © DC Comics.

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The Lean Years (right) A mere logo crawl was the only mention the LSH got as the Action backup. (left) Legion fans had to grin and bear it in the early ’70s, but this Giant—Adventure #403 (Mar.–Apr. 1971), with a cover by Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson— was a reminder of better days.

TM & © DC Comics.

It was announced in the letters column of Adventure Comics #380 (May 1969) that the Legion would be moving to Action Comics, beginning with the June cover-dated issue. Along with this shift, Supergirl moved from the back of Action to the front of Adventure, with the Maid of Steel now promoted to full-length starring status. The Legion, with its membership and page count of 23 in Adventure, had in effect been demoted to ten to 12 pages per issue of Action.

“Sadly, the last handful of Adventure stories ‘earned’ that demotion,” explains BACK ISSUE editor Michael Eury, and one-time editor of Legion of Super-Heroes. “By that point, editor Mort Weisinger was tired and marking time toward retirement, and the stories showed his fatigue. Win Mortimer wasn’t a good artistic match for the Legion, although I fondly remember his Tornado Twins tale.”

The Legion appeared in new adventures in Action Comics #378–387 and 389–392, with issues #377 and 388 containing LSH reprints from earlier issues of Adventure Comics. Writer Jim Shooter also shifted over from

Adventure to chronicle the Legion’s exploits, then left the series with #384. E. Nelson Bridwell, Weisinger’s assistant editor and Superman family historian supreme, came on board, while newcomer Cary Bates slipped in a few tales.

Mortimer illustrated all the stories and Jack Abel provided the majority of the inks. As was common practice in Weisinger’s books, no creator credits were provided. A complete list of credits appeared in the contents page of Legion of Super-Heroes Archives vol. 9 (DC Comics, 1999).

While the Legion shared a text banner with Superman above the Action logo heralding the group’s interior appearances, the team never usurped from the Man of Steel his full cover-artwork status. To compensate for potential over-crowding in their own series, under-developed Legionnaires were spotlighted in tightly plotted skits, with the roll call ranging from three to five members.

Saturn Girl, a Legion founder, received a new look with a new costume in Action #392, a harbinger of a racier fashion blitz to come. Invisible Kid, one of the more popular members, saw no action in Action, an ominous harbinger in its own right.

A BOLT FROM THE BLUE When Weisinger retired from DC in 1970, editor Murray Boltinoff took murray boltinoff over Action and gave Superman the © DC Comics. entire book. The Legion of SuperHeroes quietly entered comic-book limbo, much to the greater shock and dismay of the team’s fans.

It may seem a little silly and nostalgic now, this loyalty to the Legion. Even as I write this, I’m having some trouble putting a proper perspective on it. Yet, there is something truly special about the Legion of Super-Heroes.

In those days, they were a team of teens marketed to, mostly, adolescent boys who weren’t quite teenagers

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Ahead of Their Time Original art from “War Between the Nights and Days,” the LSH backup in Superboy #193 (Feb. 1973), where the darling Duo Damsel cuts loose in her new duds. By Bates and Cockrum. Courtesy of Anthony Snyder (www.anthonyscomicbookart.com).

TM & © DC Comics.

yet. They were superheroes each with a unique power (you had to have a unique power to be considered for membership) with the majority of its members from assorted distant planets, christened with tongue-twisting civilian names, gathered together to battle the likes of the Fatal Five, Universo, and Mordru the Merciless.

They were far less stiff and stoic than members of the Justice League of America, while not as awkwardly hip as the Teen Titans. Even a teenager, Shooter, chronicled their adventures. To have them unceremoniously gone for good in the second half of 1970 was too much for their fans to bear.

All was not lost. After a five-month absence, the Legion returned, now in the back of Superboy, where they appeared in issues #172, 173, 176, 183, 184, 188, 190, 191, 193, and 195, ten stories in all, kicking off with a new, auspicious beginning (despite how one might feel about artist George Tuska’s interpretation of the Legion) that quickly deteriorated into erratic, suspicious sequencing.

Initially, though, it was just good to have them back, and they appeared twice in January 1971. The “death” and return of Lightning Lad saga was reprinted in the Giant Adventure Comics #403, along with the new ongoing Legion series debuting in the back of Superboy #172 (Mar. 1972). Editor Boltinoff, who only recently had raised the ire of Legion followers, would now oversee the course of the Legion for almost six years. You had to squint on the last page to see the creator credits of Bridwell and Tuska—but at least they were finally there!

Unfortunately, in the ten issues of Superboy published in 1971, the Legion appeared in new stories in only three of them. Concerned readers wrote in inquiring about the Legion’s status, including Susan Finnegan’s plea in Superboy #181 that spoke volumes to just how distraught a loyal Legion fan could become, where she was tentatively promised a new Legion story in #182.

A backup Superboy short appeared instead. The Legion, not counting the reprints in the expanded 52-page format, had once again become as invisible as Invisible Kid’s appearances … who, by the way, finally landed a spotlight role in Superboy #176’s “Invisible Invader!”

“Bates and Bridwell kept the Legion alive during its most dire era,” comments KC Carlson, who edited Legionnaires in the 1990s, “something that’s pretty hard to do in eight- to ten-page stories that only ran occasionally, and probably seldom knowing who their artist would be.”

The Legion was back in action in #183. Princess Projectra, Karate Kid, and Shadow Lass sported new costumes for this story only, designed by fans and first displayed in Adventure Comics #403 a year earlier.

This was a nice reminder of how close the connection could be between Legion fans and the powers-that-be at DC. It also kicked off a very good year for the

Legion, the best the team had had in years. Cary Bates was now sole writer. Artist Dave Cockrum debuted in “One Legionnaire Must Go!” (Superboy #184, Apr. 1972), with his pencils inked by Murphy Anderson’s (although their credits were reversed on the splash page), and a new chapter in Legion history began.

I stepped into comics collecting in March of 1972.

Soon after, I read my first Legion story in the aforementioned Superboy #188. I didn’t get it—any real enthusiasm for the Legion, that is (I didn’t get Jack Kirby at first, either, but that’s another story), but it was certainly more entertaining than the “Superbaby” feature the team rotated with. Once I realized how vast the Legion’s membership was, that it was truly legion, I became more intrigued. A character barely seen in one story could be the featured star in the next. Also, I was connecting with them all for the first time; they weren’t like most members of the Justice League that I knew of from Saturday morning cartoons. I had stumbled onto something new in the way of sciencefiction/adventure stories (and it also made up for the loss of Rocket Robin Hood on syndicated television).

Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

TM & © DC Comics.

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A Title All Their Own … Sort Of Original Nick Cardy art for Legion of Super-Heroes #1 (Feb. 1973), the first of a four-issue reprint series—and the first-ever series to be titled in the super-team’s name.

Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). (inset) The printed version.

TM & © DC Comics.

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By Superboy #193, Bates and Cockrum had settled into their roles as the Legion’s ongoing creative team.

In that issue’s “War Between the Nights and Days,” in one seemingly uneventful panel wherein members of the LSH were seated and paying intense attention to Brainiac 5, the team suddenly graduated to older, hipper, gaudier, and just plain cool. Cockrum, via an unseen robo-sewing machine, introduced colorful new costumes for Karate Kid, Chameleon Boy, and Shrinking Violet. An unidentified Legionnaire that was actually a miscolored Matter-Eater Lad also appeared, in a red outfit (instead of green) that to this day I wish he had kept. A few panels later, Duo Damsel sported a downright sexy uniform, tailored specifically for the mission at hand (she kept it). The Legion no longer looked antiquated—they looked ahead of their time.

Meanwhile, DC introduced a reprint line in December 1972, part of now-publisher Infantino’s initiative to glut the nation’s comic-book spinner racks with as many titles as Marvel was then churning out. Legion of Super-Heroes #1 reprinted “The Lad Who Wrecked the Legion” from Adventure Comics and a Tommy Tomorrow feature from Action Comics, and also included a Legion Membership List (which was required every few years as new readers came on board and fans needed to catch up) and selected passages from the Legion Constitution, all behind a dramatic Nick Cardy cover, the first all-new cover artwork featuring the Legion since their last appearance in Adventure Comics in early 1968. A good year for the Legion, indeed.

CATCHING ON LIKE … WELL, YOU KNOW

address is revealed to be 344 Clinton Street, where stood the apartment that Clark Kent resided in 1,000 years before.

The good times continued with the announcement of a full-length Legion tale to be published sometime during the summer. What I, and many Legion fans, didn’t see coming was an abrupt, unexpected, and fantastic change to Superboy with #197 (Sept. 1973): The cover title became Superboy starring the Legion of Super-Heroes, and to herald this new beginning was another dramatic Nick Cardy cover, depicting Timber Wolf in battle with his fellow Legionnaires.

“After Superboy/LSH #197, I think I probably felt there wasn’t anything left for Legion fandom to fight for,” recalls Mike Flynn, whose newsletter The Legion Fan Club, first published in 1972, evolved into The Legion Outpost, the premier Legion fanzine of the 1970s.

“Except maybe for respect. I know that the comics professionals of the early-to-mid-1970s looked at us like we were annoying younger siblings. I think individually, many of us continued fighting for better stories.

Boltinoff helped to fight for the Legion based on our whining, but wasn’t a fan of continuity the way many of us were at the time.”

Superboy starring the Legion of SuperHeroes #197–202 comprise the Legion stories I recall most fondly. In #197, a brainwashed Timber Wolf attempted to assassinate the president of Earth, but that was just a decoy—he was also programmed by a new villain, Tyr, to annihilate the Legion. In the

Fan Favorite Lad Detail from the cover of Legion of Super-Heroes Archives vol. 11, featuring (left to right) Karate Kid, Princess Projectra, Wildfire, Timber Wolf, and Dream Girl. These and the images on page 3 (from LSH Archives vol. 10) were produced as single-character renderings by Dave Cockrum and used in print and licensing.

TM & © DC Comics.

dave cockrum

It only got better for the team in 1973.

Okay, so the reprint book lasted only four issues and the Legion didn’t appear in a new story until March, but the story that eventually appeared in the back of Superboy #195 (June 1973) was remarkably good. “The One-Shot Hero” introduced Legion fans to ERG (Energy Release Generator)-1, the newest Legion applicant. In his civilian identity of Drake Burroughs, he was involved in an industrial accident that transformed him into antienergy. Scientists were able to contain the energy in a specially designed containment suit that was colorful enough to blend in with any new Legion uniform.

ERG-1’s power could easily duplicate any single Legionnaire’s powers, but the only power he could call his own he swore not to use.

For that he was disqualified as an applicant.

He later stowed away on a Legion cruiser that had embarked on an important mission. ERG-1’s power was heroically revealed but it cost him his life, punctuated by a dramatic last panel depicting his empty uniform.

There are also some nice subtle touches in this story. A young boy sports an original Captain Marvel costume. Chronos, the longtime Atom villain, can be seen walking the streets of Metropolis. A young gentleman appears to be clad in duds that bear some resemblance to a Star Trek or Thunderbirds uniform. The LSH headquarters’ street

Portrait by Michael Netzer.

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full-length #198, the first full-length Legion tale since Adventure #380, Brainiac 5, Element Lad, Princess Projectra, and Karate Kid travelled back to 20th-Century Smallville to join Superboy in battle with three members of the Fatal Five: Emerald Empress, Persuader, and Mano.

In #199, the villainous Tyr sought to escape the Legion, and almost had Superboy destroy his friends. In #200 (Jan.–Feb. 1974), the extravagant wedding of Duo Damsel and Bouncing Boy (where Chuck Taine married two women and everyone was delighted) received an uninvited and deadly guest, Starfinger (well, almost everybody was delighted). In #201, ERG-1 returned from the dead (well, he didn’t really die to begin with) and joined the Legion after defeating Molecular Master, a rejected Legion applicant who turned out to be an android programmed to destroy the Legion. In #202, Superboy, Mon-El, Light Lass, and Element Lad fell victim to a bizarre (and misunderstood) undersea creature called Devil-Fish, while ERG-1 took the name Wildfire, a tale that Cockrum has stated as his proudest work on the Legion.

The Legionnaires also continued to be featured in backup tales. In #199, Bouncing Boy was hunted by the son of Otto Orion, a one-shot villain from the Legion’s Adventure days, who planned to take down the Legion one by one, beginning with Chuck, who Orion felt was their weakest member (and he was wrong). In #201, Dream Girl had a premonition that one of her fellow Legionnaires was going to die … but which one? In #202, Colossal Boy and Shrinking Violet were returning to Earth from deep space when their spaceship mysteriously conked out on them, leaving them stranded a million miles from home (but not for long).

There was also some good humor. The introduction of Legion applicants Porcupine Pete and Infectious Lass in #201 is still hilarious. On the other hand, there’s a rather alarming scene in #197 where Clark Kent used his heat vision to burn off a couple of apples from a tree that drop and knock Lana Lang unconscious. He does this so he can sneak away as Superboy and time-travel into the 30th Century to join the Legion. He just leaves Lana there, alone, unaided. What if she slipped into a coma?

She doesn’t, of course; in fact, she will have fully recovered by the next Superboy story.

Do look closely for Star Boy in one panel of #201’s “The Silent Death.” When you find him, keep in mind that the Comics Code Authority did not, because if they had they would not have allowed him to be in the position he was in, sleeping in the same bed with his girlfriend, Dream Girl.

The Big Squeeze Begins (top) Superboy starring the Legion of Super-Heroes???

Here’s where the excitement really picked up!

The always-amazing Nick Cardy was DC’s cover king when he produced this Sept. 1973 coverdated illo, which remains a favorite of many Legion fans despite its inaccuracies such as Saturn Girl’s purple costume and Element Lad’s outdated outfit (with flight belt!). (bottom) It’s a good thing Clark and Lana weren’t sitting under a coconut tree! Kent ducks out to join the Legion as Superboy in issue #197.

TM & © DC Comics.

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All this talk of the Legion Outpost reminds us that TwoMorrows still has a few copies of their hit book The Best of the Legion Outpost available at their website: www. twomorrows.com

Transitional Team Original art to the Cary Bates-scripted Colossal Boy/ Shrinking Violet tale from Superboy starring the LSH #202 (June 1974), penciled by outgoing artist Dave Cockrum and inked by incoming Legion artist Mike Grell. Original art— signed by both!— courtesy of Heritage.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Rare Swan Legion Art Curt Swan, arguably the Legion’s most popular Silver Age artist, drew this fanzine cover for 1975’s Legion Outpost #9. It features an early ink job by Klaus Janson. Courtesy of Heritage.

TM & © DC Comics.

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RAISING GRELL The Legion was riding high going into 1974, as good a time as any to deliver another shock treatment to its fans. As had been the case so many times in the Legion’s past, it took all of one issue to change everything. Artist Mike Grell took over from Cockrum with Superboy/Legion #203 (July–Aug. 1974), after having inked an LSH short over Cockrum in the previous issue.

Grell coming on board to replace the uber-popular Cockrum was startling news, to be sure, but not as distressing as what happened to Invisible Kid in “Massacre

by Remote Control.” What could have been—what many of his fans still feel should have been—Lyle Norg’s triumphant return after being practically invisible (sorry, I can’t help it) since the Legion’s move to Action Comics five years before instead took a shocking turn as the Legionnaire was crushed to death in one massive hand of Validus, the most powerful of the Fatal Five.

“Oddly, the death of Invisible Kid story was a favorite of mine,” recalls Carlson, “although I remember thinking that the guy was frequently ignored prior to the story, so due to his disuse, I guess he became expendable.

Frustratingly, he just got himself a girlfriend in this last story, but since she was a ghost, we assume that things will be okay. Except, you know, the dead part.”

While I’m just as fond of the Bates/Grell collaborations that ran continuously through Superboy/Legion #208, after Invisible Kid’s tragic demise I became a little wary of my surroundings while visiting the 30th Century every other month. For example, when Ultra Boy returned in #205 in a more prominent role, the first thing I thought was, hmm, Jo Nah (Ultra Boy) is mighty powerful, almost up there with Superboy and Mon-El; what if Bates decided to no longer keep him around?

Ultra Boy survived his ordeal, however, although his suffering bouts were far from over. Then Bates turned the tables on me in #206 by bringing back not only Invisible Kid but also Ferro Lad, who had sacrificed himself to destroy the Sun-Eater back in the Legion’s Adventure days. I thought, hmm, maybe Cary was planning this all along, just teasing Legion fans with reversible tragedy. Alas, Invisible Kid and Ferro Lad were actually clones, test subjects with a limited life span, sent back to the 20th Century to aid Superboy.

Even as I grew used to the wariness, change was upon the Legion in other respects.

Legion fans can look back at 1975 and 1976 from two intriguing angles: 1) the return of Jim Shooter to the Legion writing fold, and 2) less of Bates’ unpredictable plotlines. Plus, there was a member’s resignation by Shooter and a new member’s introduction by Bates. Grell illustrated all these tales, and explains to BACK ISSUE the differences between the plotting styles of the two writers: “A Cary Bates script was generally about one page for each page of the book. Cary was a very good visual writer. He was a movie buff, very much into cinematic storytelling, and because he was cinematically oriented, he often related to other current or classic movie plots.

He also knew when to call for an establishing long shot or a certain angle and he told you the things that were important in order to tell the story, and then he left everything else pretty much up to the artist.

“A Jim Shooter script was 80 to 90 pages long, and Jim told you everything. Jim was so detail-oriented that I felt that on occasion it got in the way of the storytelling,” Grell continues. “It was a chore to read the script to begin with because it was so long. It was almost like reading a novel. I am not criticizing his writing ability; I just thought that at that time Jim got carried away with a lot of

occasional pointless details when it was not really pertinent to the story. He would often go so far as to draw layouts that I would automatically ignore. Jim also, I think, tended to refer to a lot of classic comic-book stories or stories he had done sometime in the past. Jim had a tendency to write stream of consciousness, so there were quite a few books where the big action scenes were big, they were great to work on, but by the end of the book he had sort of run out of room, and suddenly you had the last three pages where there were seven or eight panels on a page because he really needed an extra page.”

Shooter returned in Superboy/LSH #209 to practically usurp the book from Bates for almost two years. What Shooter brought back to the Legion was an emphasis on characterization of individual members. Karate Kid’s origin was finally revealed in Superboy/LSH #210’s “The Lair of the Black Dragon.” Element Lad’s vengeful side almost made him a murderer in #211’s “The Ultimate Revenge.” Matter-Eater Lad departed the Legion for political reasons in #212’s “Last Fight for a Legionnaire,” and a dropped page published later in the year in Amazing World of DC Comics #9 spotlighted Tenzil (M-E Lad) Kem’s concerns over his worth as a team player.

Cosmic Boy’s religious decree, shared by all on his home planet, threatened the lives of several Legionnaires in #215’s “The Hero Who Wouldn’t Fight.” Colossal Boy’s affection for a distraught Shrinking Violet began to overwhelm his own steadiness in #219’s “Plunder Ploy of the Fatal Five.” And Brainiac 5’s dismay at learning the true nature and identity of his father provided a poignant touch to #224’s cliffhanger. Grell certainly had a job to do with Shooter’s scripts, and he interpreted them well.

FUTURISTIC FASHIONS Cockrum is well known for his Legionnaire costume designs, but Grell also contributed a couple of his own.

“I didn’t like Cosmic Boy’s old costume,” he recalls.

“He was the only one of the principal members— Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad, Cosmic Boy—whose costume still was of the 1950s. It had that old-fashioned look to it. I got rid of the sleeves and a few other things, and I made the costume itself solid black. And it was kind of silly; it looked like a black bustier. Everybody wrote in and said, ‘What’s holding it up?,’ and Boltinoff asked me, ‘What’s holding it up?’ And I said, ‘The fiber is impregnated with metal, and he holds it up by magnetism.’ Well, they couldn’t argue with that.

“Tyroc’s costume was in effect my protest,” continues Grell. “I was disappointed when they came up with the character. I had early on drawn a story called “The Rookie Who Betrayed the Legion” [Superboy/LSH #207], and it’s about a Science Police officer who screws up and creates a big problem for the Legion. He’s a young guy who makes a mistake, but he works to correct it and in the end he’s not the villain of the piece, he’s the hero.

I was keenly aware that there were no black characters in the Legion of Super-Heroes, and I didn’t see any reason why there shouldn’t be, so I made this character black; actually, a positive character. I got the story in, and Murray took one look at it and said, ‘No, no, no, you can’t do that.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Well, you’ve drawn a black guy.’

‘What’s the problem?’ He said, ‘We’ll get letters, they won’t like that.’ ‘Why not? It’s a really positive character.’

And he said, ‘There are no black people in the LSH.’ And I said, ‘That’s my point.’ Finally, he said, ‘We’re in the process of creating a black character. We’re going to do a big roll out and a big promotion, and it’ll be good, believe me.’ Reluctantly I changed the character ever so slightly but left in as much of the features as I could get

The Other Fan Favorite Lad (top) It didn’t take long for new LSH illustrator Mike Grell to build a Legion of fans! The artist’s self-portrait, from Superboy/LSH #205. (bottom) AWoDCC #9, which provided the basis for this issue’s BI cover.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Breaking Color Barriers (left) Editor Murray Boltinoff vetoed artist Mike Grell’s desire to make “The Rookie Who Betrayed the Legion,” shown here on Grell’s cover for Superboy starring the LSH #207 (Mar. 1975), an African American. (right) The Legion’s first black member, Tyroc, premiered in issue #216 (Apr. 1976).

Cover by Grell, who also drew (below) Cary Bates’ Tyroc tale in the issue, the conclusion of which is shown here.

TM & © DC Comics.

away with and still get it through Murray. They colored him pink and they got letters, sure enough, and the letters were mostly in the tone of, ‘You ain’t fooling me, man, that’s a brother painted pink.’

“Six months go by, and I kept asking Murray when are we going to do the black character, and finally they came up with Tyroc, who had, number one, the world’s stupidest power—he can yell things that make things happen. I didn’t really get it. I thought the character would have a more interesting power and be more compelling, but, number two, the problem that I had with the story in general was that their excuse for never having featured any black people in the LSH is that in the 30th Century they had all gone on to live on an island somewhere and the island had gotten cast into another dimension or something like that. We were only a few years past the assassination of Martin Luther King, and I remember what it was like in the late 1950s and 1960s where everybody was yelling, ‘If you don’t like it, go back to Africa,’ so I thought the story was unintentionally racist. My protest in seeing the silliness of this character was that I modeled Tyroc after Jim Kelly, one of the black action-movie stars at the time. He was in Enter the Dragon with Bruce Lee. And I gave him Elvis Presley’s Las Vegas costume with a high collar and chains across the front, symbolic of slavery, and little teeny tiny pixie boots, and tiny little white gloves well before Michael Jackson would put on just one of them. And I thought, ‘Well, this is a one-shot, and I’ll never have to draw him again. ‘Well, wrong! One of those things, you just never know.”

Tyroc debuted in Superboy/Legion #216 (Apr. 1976). His induction into the Legion evolved into Bates’ swan song on the title. Tyroc also appeared in issues #218 and 222 (Bates’ last Legion issue), then pretty much disappeared for the rest of the decade.

SHOOTING STARS With Superboy/Legion #219 (Sept. 1976), Shooter graduated to full-length tales, excepting #220, which allowed him to bring a more epic zeal to his stories until the writer bowed out rather abruptly with #224.

It may not have been abrupt for Shooter, but that issue’s concluding plot twist of Pulsar Stargrave being Brainiac 5’s father sure appeared to this fan as if he had a further story to tell. Alas, Shooter was off to Marvel and the next chapter in his storied career.

Consequently, everything changed again for the Legion in the space of a single issue, this time with Superboy/LSH #225, as Paul Levitz became the new writer and Dennis O’Neil replaced Boltinoff as editor.

Artist James Sherman stepped in for a fill-in, but as Grell had tired of the series and was moving on to Batman, Sherman was tapped as the regular illustrator almost immediately, officially as of the next issue.

Levitz’s first stint on the book coincided with the Legion’s peak in exposure during the Bronze Age. For all the gaps sprinkled throughout his official run—issues #225, 226, 228–231, 233, 235–238, and 12 • BACK ISSUE • Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

240–245 are the actual books he wrote—his was a longer tenure than it seems. Levitz took on more story pages when the book went “Giant” with #231, up from 17 to 34, and even when the title downsized for the DC Explosion in 1978 the comic had a lofty 25 pages per issue.

During his run, Levitz also wrote the Legion tale in DC Special #28, co-wrote the Legion’s appearance in JLA #147–148, and scripted the epic-length Legion tale in All-New Collector’s Edition #C-55 (1978).

Like Bates and Shooter before him, it took Levitz a couple of issues to warm up to the challenge of chronicling and juggling 23 colorful superheroes in a future science-fiction setting. A new member, Dawnstar, designed by the departed Grell, was introduced (Superboy/LSH #226); Chemical King was killed and avenged (Superboy/LSH #228–229), his sacrifice preordained on the cover of Adventure Comics #354, adding emotional weight to a classic cover still; the Fatal Five made an epic appearance (#231) as the Legion strived to save the populace of a doomed planet; the Infinite Man was introduced (#233); and Lighting

Lad and Saturn Girl were married (ANCE #C-55). It was indeed a very happening year for the popular team, although Tyroc, not a Levitz favorite, only appeared in ANCE #C-55.

“I wanted to push away from the more Star Trek-influenced feeling that I got from Cary’s stories,” recalls Levitz. “Sherman is a very talented artist, heavily leaning to the illustrator side of the scale, with a great skill at subtle expressions much like Curt Swan, so I tried to play that.”

Levitz, however, wasn’t impressed by his own contributions. “I felt I did badly on my first run,” he tells BACK ISSUE. “I was overcommitted, so there were way too many collaborative scripts or fill-ins; and unrelated to that, we never managed to keep the art assignments smooth.

When I finished, I was definitely disappointed in myself. My favorite is probably the Infinite Man story. Sherman did a gorgeous on it.”

Meanwhile, filling in those gaps were Gerry Conway, who wrote issues #227, 232, and 234, and Jim Starlin, who wrote and penciled #239. Superboy/LSH contained a reprint of Adventure Comics #459–460, highlighted by an outstanding Starlin wraparound cover.

While the Legion had plenty of exposure in 1977, pretty much every DC title and character peaked in 1977, because in 1978 the DC Explosion and Implosion occurred, dramatically altering and scaling back the company’s publishing landscape. The year didn’t start out that way, however, as the Legion remained on a creative roll.

Superboy/LSH #239 (May 1978) was a dramatic departure from all previous creative styles. There is intensity to writer/artist Starlin’s style that meshed well with his brand of cosmic storytelling. It suited the Legion better than I anticipated. Starlin provided a murder mystery involving an accused Ultra Boy that set the stage for one of the wildest Legion revelations to be chronicled, though that was still several months down the road.

Levitz wound down his first tenure on the Legion with an outstanding epic “Earth War,” that spanned five issues and effectively shifted from intriguing political overtones to a dramatic battle against Mordru the Merciless.

UNSTABLE MOLECULES Levitz’s departure with #245 and the aftereffects of the DC Implosion forced the book into a seemingly directionless period. Al Milgrom, who had come on board as Legion editor in the middle of Levitz’s run to replace O’Neil, was dismissed and replaced by Jack C. Harris. After Milgrom’s departure, four different writers handled the Legion’s adventures over six months. Len Wein came on board briefly, Levitz provided two backup tales, and then Conway was announced as ongoing writer. As 1979 commenced, Starlin returned as “Steve Apollo” (he wasn’t happy with aspects of the finished product) to tie up loose ends from #239. This follow-up was originally slated as a Legion Spectacular under the official DC Special Series title, but was changed to consecutive issues of Superboy/LSH, #250–251. The DC Implosion caused a hiatus of DC Special Series. Starlin’s tale was not destined for the shelf, however. It had shock value and repercussions to rattle even the most hardened Legion fan. It also had competition.

This was the year that very bad things happened to very good people in the DC Universe. Batwoman, Mr. Terrific of Earth-Two, and Iris Allen, the Flash’s wife, were murdered. No Legionnaires died in Starlin’s two-parter, but he took an equally disturbing route: Brainiac 5 was revealed as the mastermind behind Ultra Boy’s murder rap.

He had also gone quite insane, intent on destroying the universe, or ruling it. Legion headquarters was destroyed when Wildfire utilized his own energy in an attempt to destroy Brainy’s creation, Omega, and then Matter-Eater Lad was driven mad when he ate the Miracle Machine, which wiped out Omega’s existence.

Conway then took over as ongoing Legion writer. Most Legion fans are quick to ignore or bury his tenure on the book.

“Conway,” suspects Carlson, “ended up on the Legion because they needed a warm body for a month or three, and not because he had an inherent love for

Spirit of ’76 Neal Adams and Dick Giordano produced this pinup of the LSH for DC’s 1976 calendar. (inset) The art was repurposed (with some character deletions) as the cover of this 1977 reprint paperback from Tempo Books.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Sherman Double-Shot Legion loyalists quickly grew to love the work of artist James Sherman—and it’s easy to see why! (left) Page 20 of Superboy/LSH #241 (July 1978), inked by Bob McLeod (courtesy of Anthony Snyder); and (right) the cover of issue #242, by Sherman and Joe Rubinstein.

the Legion like Shooter and Levitz. I have been in comic-convention hotel rooms with hardcore Legion fans who mocked Conway’s work on the series mercilessly to the extent that it made me feel uneasy. Some folks take their Legion a little too seriously.” I agree with KC, while I also have praise for Gerry’s first phase on the Legion, issues #252–259, and here’s why.

Conway introduced Blok, a member of the League of Super-Assassins, who would later join the Legion.

He dealt directly with Brainiac 5’s mental illness. He had members of the Legion time-travel to Krypton shortly before the planet was destroyed. Finally, he provided Legion fans their last shock of the 1970s.

It was announced in the letters column of Superboy/ LSH #257 that #258 (Dec. 1979) would be the last issue of Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes. The new logo and title was introduced with #259: Legion of Super-Heroes. In that issue, Superboy learned how his foster parents died, an event in his past, now long-ago history to those in the 30th Century. Still, it was obviously distressing to the Teen of Steel. He questioned his presence in this future “playground,” while his parents only had so much time left in the past, a moving touch on Conway’s part. As Superboy returned to the 20th Century on a self-imposed permanent basis, Saturn Girl placed a telepathic-hypnotic suggestion in Superboy’s mind commanding him to remain in his

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time period, just in case, I suppose. Superboy’s present would continue in The New Adventures of Superboy [see article following—ed.], while the Legion would carry on with their future in a book now completely their own.

So the Legion left the 1970s on a higher note than when they entered the decade, capping it off with a fine Christmas tale by Levitz and José Luis García-López in DC Special Series #21 (Apr. 1980) that would garner several reprintings.

“I’m proudest of the friendships we formed in Legion fandom around this silly little comic book,” recalls Flynn. “Many of my best friends came as a result, and I know there are other groups of people with whom I’m friendly who have created their own groups.

Without Legion fandom, marriages would not have occurred. I’m still friends with people I met through the mail 40 years ago, been to their weddings, and they to mine. Sadly, we’ve lost too many of them as well, all of them too early (although we’re getting to that point now where that batch of us is basically in our 50s and approaching our 60s). The list is too long, and not all of them would be familiar to BACK ISSUE readers, though they probably will remember Rich Morrissey— whose letter was the first I received after mine was printed in Superboy—and Neal Pozner, with whom I was lucky enough to work at DC for two years, too.”

AN EASY-GOING GUIDE TO INDIVIDUAL LEGIONNAIRE APPEARANCES The task of notating all Legionnaire appearances during the Bronze Age screamed excess bordering on convolution, but I’ve sought to be sensible while entertaining (hopefully). For this article, I’ve noted the number of appearances per Legionnaire ranging from starring roles, such as Princess Projectra’s backup tale in Superboy/ Legion #206, to minor walk-ons, such as Invisible Kid standing around for a few panels as the Legion leader votes were cast in Superboy #190’s “Murder the Leader!”

Though as much a Legion completist as any fan, I drew the line at a Legionnaire’s face appearing briefly on a monitor screen in an particular story, though I was certainly tempted to make those citations, as there are many. There are five tiers in all to make discussion manageable, starting with he-of-the-most appearances and going in descending order to the most invisible of them all (and it’s not necessarily Invisible Kid).

Superboy, Clark Kent of Earth, Kal-El of Krypton, tops the first tier, of course, with 72 appearances. While the Legion of Super-Heroes certainly took over the Boy of Steel’s book, he still remained its star, appearing in ever issue until after his departure in LSH #259.

Brainiac 5, Querl Dox of Colu, follows with 58 appearances, topping the list of active Legionnaires appearing throughout the Bronze Age. Although the smartest of Legionnaires, being the most active, along with the most easily annoyed and constantly interrupted, may have contributed to his madness.

The second tier consists of three Legionnaires, beginning with Saturn Girl, Imra Ardeen of Titan, a moon of Saturn, at 48 appearances; followed by Lighting Lad, Garth Ranzz of Winath, at 44; and Shadow Lass, Tasmia Malor of Talok VII, at 43. It’s not surprising that Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad, two founding members, would be so high profile, but it’s

Forget Tony Orlando—Here’s Our Favorite Dawn of the ’70s

interesting that Shadow Lass, who made relatively few appearances in Action and Superboy, suddenly blossomed into one of the most consistently appearing members with #200. All three appeared in Justice League of America #147 and 148, and Imra and Garth also appeared in DC Super-Stars #17 (the untold story of the Legion’s first case), DC Comics Presents #13 (teamed with Superman), and DC Special Series #21.

“Lightning Lad is my favorite Legionnaire,” admits Grell. “He’s got the coolest costume. He’s got a great power. If you could throw lighting bolts, wouldn’t you want to? I mean, to throw lightning bolts has got to be the coolest damn thing. In terms of powers and looks, it’s gotta be Lightning Lad.” The third tier consists of Chameleon Boy, Reep Daggle of Durla, with 39 appearances; Cosmic Boy, Rokk Krinn of Braal, with 37; Mon-El, Lar Gand of Daxam, also with 37; Colossal Boy, Gim Allon of Earth, with 36; Karate Kid, Val Armorr of Earth, with 34; Sun Boy, Dirk Morgna of Earth, with 33; Timber Wolf, Brin Londo of Zoon, with 32; and Ultra Boy, Jo Nah of Rimbor, with 31.

Karate Kid did exceptionally well early on, outdistancing everyone in appearances in Action and holding steady in Superboy and Superboy/Legion, well after his own book debuted in late 1975. In fact, he was appearing concurrently in the 20th and 30th Centuries during 1976 until Levitz rectified the inconsistency in 1977. Karate Kid enthusiasts and Legion completists may add 15 additional appearances (covering Karate Kid #1–15) to bump him into the second tier, one ahead of Saturn Girl. [Editor’s note: The Karate Kid solo series was the subject of an article in our last issue.]

Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

Writer Paul Levitz introduced Dawnstar in Superboy/LSH #226 (Apr. 1977), and while Mike Grell drew her on that issue’s cover (left), it was its interior artist James Sherman, who made us fall in love with her. (right) Sherman illustrated this montage of Dawny for Who’s Who #6 (Aug. 1985).

TM & © DC Comics.

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What’s Holding Up Cos’ Costume?

An undated pencil rendering by Mike Grell of the Legion’s three founders, from the collection of “Sijo” Art Lapham.

TM & © DC Comics.

Legionnaires in appearances, and that’s a pretty nifty feat that I wanted to have reflected on this list.

Finally, the fifth tier. The following are Legionnaires who were members as the team shifted from Adventure to Action and in time left for various reasons (death, weddings, politics) and those who came on board during the Legion’s run in Superboy/Legion, Wildfire excepted: Bouncing Boy, Chuck Taine of Earth, leads all, with 12 appearances, closely followed by Dawnstar of Starhaven, with 11; Duo Damsel, Luornu Durgo of Cragg, with ten; Chemical King, Condo Arlik of Phion, with nine; Matter-Eater Lad, Tenzil Kem of Bismoll, with eight; Tyroc of Earth, with four; and last, but never, ever least, Invisible Kid, Lyle Norg of Earth, with four.

Supergirl, Linda Danvers of Earth, Kara of Krypton, remained an honorary member throughout, and that honorable designation netted her a lowly two appearances.

I have a list of the issues each Legionnaire appeared in, but printing that would take up three pages of practically nothing but issue numbers, and I believe only Brainiac 5 would see the entertainment value in that. Still, the list is available, and if you would like to contact me through the editor for it, you are more than welcome. Legion appearances via monitor screens—sorry, you’re on your own.

THE PRESENT: MUSING ON THE LEGION AS THE DEADLINE LOOMS

The most diminutive Legionnaire, Shrinking Violet, Salu Digby of Imsk, kicks off the fourth tier with 29 appearances, followed by Wildfire, Drake Burroughs of Earth, with 28; Princess Projectra of Orando, with 27; Element Lad, Jan Arrah of Trom, with 25; Phantom Girl, Tinya Wazzo of Bgztl, also with 25; Light Lass, Alya Ranzz of Winath, with 24; Dream Girl, Nura Nal of Naltor, with 22; and Star Boy, Thom Kallor of Xanthu, with 19, the lowest number of appearances for a Legionnaire who was an ongoing member throughout the Bronze Age. Although not my favorite Legionnaire (that would be Colossal Boy, Ultra Boy, and Dream Girl), I have a soft spot for Star Boy. He was one of the most under-utilized Legionnaires during the 1970s, despite a stunning costume design by Cockrum and a superlative superpower.

That Thom could make an object, any object—be it an armed, attacking foe or a hovering enemy spacecraft—so heavy that it could drop to the ground and become essentially worthless, was fantastic. Given that he could expend and expand his power seemingly without limit—well, a lot of Legion missions and battles theoretically would be successfully accomplished right off the bat once he entered the fray. However, Star Boy wasn’t around a good portion of the time.

The number of appearances by Phantom Girl came as a surprise to me; I thought she appeared more. But while relatively consistent in appearances from #200 on, she did not appear in any of the Action tales.

All Legionnaires above on all four tiers appeared consistently throughout the time frame researched for this article (1968 to 1979), with one notable exception, Wildfire. Although introduced in 1973, once becoming a member in 1974 he overtook six other long-standing 16 • BACK ISSUE • Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

The Legion era I’ve encapsulated over the last few pages came to an end almost 35 years ago. I would have been 18 at the time. In the present, as I’ve journeyed back and forth in a mental Time Bubble to research and write this article, I’ve felt touched by the ghosts of Legion fandom, stirred by the memory of those creative forces no longer with us, and often distracted by nostalgia. The Legion I knew then and often return to now no longer exists in that form; it has been rebooted and reinvented more in the last two decades than any other superhero team, I believe. As a once proud Legion fan, it’s hard to admit that I’m the ghost.

That ghost nags me: “Where is the introduction of Laurel Kent?

What about the contributions of Paul Kupperberg and Howard Chaykin? Why no discussion of the artistic efforts of Joe Staton and Dave Hunt? Can’t you see it’s incomplete?” That’s one of the interesting side effects of nostalgia: It always feels incomplete; and it’s another hallmark of a true Legion fan, satisfied somewhat, but demanding more.

Still, this concludes my part, at least here, because history requires more room and I’m out of it, in recalling the Legion’s past.

At the end of 1979 the future was still behind a closed door, but today I can look back at what the future wrought for the Legion of Super-Heroes in their own title, and the memories, the reinforcements, begin to kick in. That wasn’t Shrinking Violet? Shock. Validus is who? Dismay. Karate Kid was what? Disappointment. These events would play out in the Legion’s future; for us fans, it happened in the 1980s, as did so much more. (Poor Timber Wolf.) Again, it’s not easy being a Legion fan, it never has been, and never would be. Unconditional love and loyalty comes with a price, a price we fans are willing to pay. Long Live the Legion!

JIM “COMICS BOY” KINGMAN purchased his first comic book, DC’s World’s Finest Comics #211, on a family road trip in March of 1972, and has been reading and collecting comic books ever since (with no end in sight). He is a Legion Reservist living in the 21st Century.

by

Dan

I can still remember seeing the ad that started appearing in the fall of 1979 in all the DC comic books. It featured Superboy holding up the covers for two upcoming books with a banner that proclaimed, “One mighty magazine is now two!” In his right hand, the Teen of TM Steel held the cover for Legion of Super-Heroes #259 (Jan. 1980) and in his left hand was the cover for his all-new solo book, The New Adventures of Superboy #1 (Jan. 1980). The ad announced to the world that Superboy was leaving his friends from the 30th Century behind, but more importantly, he was back in his own title again for the first time in nearly a decade. As a kid, I loved almost everything Superman, but I never really “Kid Flashback” was that big of a fan of the Legion of Super-Heroes. n o s n h Jo As a child, I never really took to the idea of Superman working with a team that wasn’t the Justice League of America (even in this case, when he was just a boy). Having enjoyed Superboy’s recent solo stories in Superman Family, though, this news of Superboy being in his own comic book was exciting to me.

Superboy’s departure from the Legion of Super-Heroes was a logical conclusion for the “Psycho War” storyline that wrapped up in issue #259. As for getting his own, all-new title, that was an even more logical step on the part of DC considering the time when the first issue hit newsstands.

“I can’t say for sure,” says Cary Bates, who was the first writer on The New Adventures of Superboy, “but if I had to guess it might have been a result of Superman’s higher cary bates media profile after the resounding success of the first Superman film. As I recall, Superman II was about to be released around this time, so DC may have figured 1980 was a good year to relaunch Superboy in his own book.”

SIXTEEN IN THE ’60s When I finally saw an issue of The New Adventures of Superboy, which was issue #4 (Apr. 1980), I was excited to see quite a few of my favorite creators working on it. The book was edited of one of the Man of Steel’s greatest caretakers, Julius Schwartz. It was Schwartz who brought Bates onto the book. “It just sort of fell into my lap,” says Bates. “By that time I had been steadily writing various Superman family books since 1967. [That was] three years for Mort Weisinger and then about a decade with Julie Schwartz, so I suppose I was the logical choice. Back then, of course, I had no inkling the Superboy character was destined to play a much more pivotal role in my life later in the decade. In 1989 the Salkinds hired me to work on their syndicated Superboy TV series, which

The Boy is Back in Town Cover to The New Adventures of Superboy #1 (Jan. 1980). Art by Kurt Schaffenberger and Dick Giordano.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Fly Over In addition to the house ad mentioned

by Dan Johnson in his opening, this promo also appeared in DC titles in late 1979.

TM & © DC Comics.

kicked off a film and TV writing phase of my career that lasted a decade and a half.”

Another reason I was excited about The New Adventures of Superboy was the artwork by Kurt Schaffenberger. I had become a fan of Schaffenberger after seeing his work in various Superman books and Shazam!, but I must admit that his work on The New Adventures of Superboy is my favorite series from his body of work.

Schaffenberger’s artwork had an old-school feel to it that especially stood out against the gritty style that too many artists were trying to give their work as the ’80s began. Being set 15 years in the past, Schaffenberger’s artwork gave Superboy a retro feel that worked well in the book’s favor. Except for a few instances, the most notable being when he was sidelined for a few months after a heart attack, Schaffenberger drew every one of the main Superboy stories, right up until the book’s final issue. “Kurt was one of the old pros,” says Paul Kupperberg.

“He was a great artist, one of my favorites.

I got into the business in the mid-’70s and I grew up admiring and reading his work on Lois Lane. Kurt was a gentleman of the old school. He always showed up at the office wearing a blue blazer with a white turtleneck and gray slacks. He always came dressed up to the office. He was a sweet guy.”

One of the first standout issues for the series was #5 (May 1980).

The story, “Secret of the Superkurt schaffenberger Power Failures,” concerns Superboy losing his powers for reasons that no one can explain. Later on, Superboy learns that tomatoes Ma Kent has been growing in her garden have been contaminated with spores that were accidentally left behind by interplanetary farmers from a solar system with a red sun. As he has been eating the tomatoes, Superboy’s powers were affected by the red solar radiation that had already been absorbed by the spores. If the story doesn’t exactly sound Earth-shaking, what really matters is its final page as it led into, and was tied directly with, “The Miraculous Return of Jonathan Kent!,” a story that appeared that same month in Action Comics #507.

“Back then crossovers and tie-ins were the exception, not the rule,” says Bates. “But Julie decided to take advantage of the fact I was writing both Superman and Superboy concurrently, so we came up with a two-tier storyline in which Jonathan Kent would help some alien visitors in the Superboy title, earning their gratitude, which they would show many years later by enabling Jonathan Kent to see for himself, even after death, exactly how his adopted son’s life turned out as an adult. Though the initial Superboy story has long been forgotten, the subsequent Action Comics story has proven to be a favorite of many readers over the years.”

Long-Haired Foe Astralad tangles with the Teen of Steel in NAOSuperboy #4 (Apr. 1980). Cover by Schaffenberger and Dave Hunt.

TM & © DC Comics.

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No-Haired Foe Lex Luthor also frequently got into Superboy’s … oh, you know. Original art, page 8 of issue #11, signed by penciler Kurt Schaffenberger. Script by Cary Bates, inks by Dave Hunt. Courtesy of Anthony Snyder (www.anthonyscomicbookart.com).

TM & © DC Comics.

BACKUPS BEGIN Starting with issue #10 (Sept. 1980), The New Adventures of Superboy, like all DC Comics that were printed in the standard format, was expanded to 25 pages of new material from the previous 20–22 pages. With an additional eight pages to fill each month, a series of rotating backup features were launched, written by E. Nelson Bridwell and Bob Rozakis. The backup features included stories about Krypto, Superbaby, and “Strange Encounters of the First Time.” “The idea [for the backup features] came from Julie Schwartz,” says Rozakis. “What Julie didn’t want was the same feature all the time. He came up with a variety of ideas in Superboy, as well as in Superman and Action Comics. Krypto and Superbaby seemed to be the most logical ones, and ‘Strange Encounters of the First Time’ was one of Julie’s ideas.”

The first Krypto story, which was featured in The New Adventures of Superboy #11 (Oct. 1980), did something that had not been done previously, and that was to give the Dog of Steel his own, all-too-brief secret identity as Skippy, the Kent’s family dog. While it might seem a footnote at best to some fans, someone from the television series Smallville must have read this story. In one of the show’s fourth-season episodes, “Krypto,” Erica Durance’s Lois finds a super-dog that she brings to the Kent farm, and later on the family adopts the dog. When trying to decide what to call this new addition to the household, Skippy is one of the names that is briefly considered.

“I think we were talking about how if you took the cape off, Krypto might still be recognized,” says Rozakis about the origin of Krypto’s flight to California, Clark meets a secret identity. “So we came up with young man named Harold, who he the idea of Krypto spilling paint on ends up saving from smugglers. Harold himself [to give himself a brown spot].

“Hal” Jordan, as we learn at the end Obviously, he couldn’t put glasses of the story, is destined to become on. It was an interesting way for him Superman’s future Justice League bob rozakis to change his look, somewhat. One teammate, Green Lantern. of the things we did talk about was In issue #14 (Feb. 1981), in a how he was going to get that spot backup story called “A Mix-Up in Magic” by Rozakis, on the exact same spot each time. I think Nelson got Superbaby had a run-in with Zatara the Magician, into it about how we needed to have that spot be the where the magician mistakenly believes he has given same each time and Julie said, ‘Nelson, don’t worry the child the power of flight! “In the ’60s, during about it. We’ll just presume it pretty much gets into the Mort Weisinger’s period, Superboy met Oliver Queen, same spot each time.’ [We figured] no one is really Aquaboy, young Bruce Wayne, and Robin came back going to be looking at the dog and saying, ‘Gee, this in time and met him,” says Rozakis. “So what was left? spot looks different than it did last time.’”

I had done one story, when Superboy was running briefly in Adventure Comics, where he meets a very SUPERBOY TEAM-UPS Issue #13 (Jan. 1981) was the first issue that started off a young Barbara Gordon. He was at camp with Tony short string of stories that saw young Clark Kent meeting Gordon, Barbara’s older brother. She was maybe six some familiar faces in the DC Universe. In this issue, years old at the time. We kind of teased the reader until Bates had the Kents heading out to California in a story the end of the story when they discovered who she was called “Superboy’s Wild Weekend Out West!” On the and that she would grow up to be Batgirl. If Superbaby Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

TM & © DC Comics.

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powers and even butting heads with Pa Kent over what he would do with his life and his abilities.

The Superboy backup features lasted up until issue #27 (Mar. 1982). The final story, “Superboy’s Mystery Mission,” retconned one of the most famous Superman stories of the 1960s, “Superman’s Mission for President Kennedy,” from Superman #170 (July 1964). Now, instead of Superman meeting Kennedy, it is Superboy who encounters JFK. “The story was different than the original, which was about encouraging kids to be physically fit,”says Rozakis. “[Our story] gave a wink to the old one since it was originally a Superman story.

Here we were, 20-plus years later, doing Superboy, who was now the character who was around back when Kennedy was president. The premise was that Superboy goes back [in time] and watches himself do something he can’t remember.” As it turns out, Superboy saves a Mercury rocket flight at the request of Kennedy, but hypnotizes himself afterwards because the mission is a matter of national security. “It was fun just to be able to nod to the original story where Superman had revealed his identity to Kennedy, and here the president is one of the people who can signal Superboy by making the light in the Kent house blink on and off.”

DIAL “C” FOR CHANGES

What, No Bike Helmet?

Original, signed Schaffenberger art for the cover of The New Adventures of Superboy #26 (Feb. 1982).

Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com).

TM & © DC Comics.

was going to meet someone, who would be around at that point? I figured Zatara was pretty much the only one who fit that category. Plus we could play off the idea of Zatara actually having magical powers and his powers actually being something that could stop Superbaby.”

Rozakis was also responsible for Superboy’s most memorable team-up during this book’s run, the two-part backup story, “Superboy Meets Clark Kent.” In this story, Superboy meets the young man who is destined to become the Superman of Earth-Two. “We were looking for something for the ‘Strange Encounters’ feature,” says Rozakis. “We thought, ‘What if he met Clark Kent on Earth-Two?’ And what if it was Superboy who ended up training him and gives him the idea to be Superman? To make it work, he not only crossed over dimensionally, but also back in time so they were the same age.” Again, foreshadowing Smallville, this take on the Earth-Two Clark Kent had some elements that ended up being central in the future TV series, including young Clark feeling like a freak because of his

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Starting with The New Adventures of Superboy #28 (Apr. 1982), “Dial ‘H’ for Hero” began running as the book’s backup feature. It is important to note the addition of this series as it would end up playing a key role in a major Superboy story less than a couple of years later.

Bridwell and Rozakis did continue working on Superboy by writing Dial “H” for Hero together. The feature “had been running in Adventure Comics,” says Rozakis. “Whoever was making the decision about who would edit the features decided Julie should handle Dial ‘H,’ and he decided, ‘I’ll put it in the back of Superboy. Then we have the young heroes with the young hero.’ The first one we did [in Superboy], I did the plot and Nelson did the dialogue.

After that, Julie decided he liked my dialogue better, so he let Nelson do the plots and I did the dialogue.”

Issue #33 (Sept. 1982) saw Cary Bates ending his run on The New Adventures of Superboy. “I can’t remember why I left,” says Bates about his departure from the book. “Considering how many books I wrote for DC back then, it’s really tough trying to summon up those kinds of details three decades later. And after writing close to 30 issues of Superboy, which doesn’t include all the Superboy-related stories I did for Mort and Julie in other books, I’m sure I was able to get to all the stories I wanted to tell for the character.”

After a two-part story by Rozakis that appeared in Issues #34 and 35 (Oct. and Nov. 1982) where he introduced the Yellow Peri, Paul Kupperberg came onboard as Superboy’s new scribe and saw the series through until the end of its run. “I had recently started writing for Julie on some of the Superman books,” recalls Kupperberg about getting the Superboy job. “Julie was looking for a replacement writer and he asked me if I would be interested and I always jumped at the chance to work with him. He was the guy who made all the great comics I read growing up. Julie Schwartz was the man.”

Kupperberg’s arrival on the book saw him challenging the status quo that had been the standard formula for Superboy for years. Kupperberg’s intent was to shake things up a bit, which he did in spades. “Coming onto Superboy, I looked at that as an opportunity to play with the long-standing conventions of the series,” says Kupperberg. “There was the whole bit where Clark used

Zip-a-DeeBoo-Boo The Zip-a-Tone used as an effect by inker Bob Smith is partially missing from this otherwise beautiful original cover by penciler Ross Andru, courtesy of Heritage. For NAOSuperboy #30.

Note the published version in the inset.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Big-Haired Foe Writer Bob Rozakis’ Yellow Peri, as illustrated by Schaffenberger and inker Frank Chiaramonte, from New Adventures #34 (Oct. 1982).

TM & © DC Comics.

to be a total klutz and nerd, and that never made sense to me. I mean, why was he any different than any other kid in town? In my very first issue, I started playing around with that. I found, in writing most of the [Superman] eras, that Clark Kent was more interesting to write than Superman. The Clark Kent moments were a lot more fun to write than the rock-’em, sock-’em superhero-fighting stuff. The emotional stuff is where the fun is.”

In regard to changing how young Clark Kent behaved in the comic books, one of the first things that Kupperberg set out to do was make him more of a ladies man by doing something that had not been done previously: giving him a girlfriend. “When I introduced the girlfriend [Lisa Davis], Julie went with it,” says Kupperberg. “He thought it was about time then [for this to happen], for Clark to get more into the game as himself, and not just as a cover for Superboy.”

Early in Kupperberg’s run, he did a story that again saw The New Adventures of Superboy crossing over into the Superman books. Superboy #38’s (Feb. 1983) “The Day That Lasted Forever!” had Superboy being exposed to a Luthor trap that was intended to lock the Teen of Steel in a timeloop that would leave Superboy reliving the same day over and over again. In the story, Superboy and Superman collide while each is traveling in time, and they end up trading minds. In the Superboy story, Superman is sent back to Smallville and manages to defeat Luthor’s scheme.

When he confronts the teenaged Lex, Superman, knowing what at a menace Luthor will become in the future, beats his archenemy severely. Superman is so blinded by rage he has to be stopped by Chief Parker before he kills Luthor. Superman stayed in Superboy’s body for just one issue, but Superboy would be in the future for three issues of Superman in issues #380–382 (Feb.–Apr. 1983). paul kupperberg “That was Schwartz’s idea,” says Kupperberg. “Any number of things could happen while you were plotting a story with Julie.

You could start off with the story you walked in with, and about a third of the way through, Julie would start telling you the story he had in mind. It was time to forget your story, we’re going off in his direction. Or, you could start telling your story, and about a third of the way through, Julie would start changing your story. By the time you got to the end, it only vaguely resembled the idea you had walked in with. Or, you could come in and Julie would just start talking and telling you what he had in mind. It was always a crapshoot. When I first starting working for him, it would mainly be him changing my story as we went along. It would change entirely from what I originally had in mind. After about a year, Julie began to trust me and would let me actually finish telling him my story before he changed it, and sometimes he would just okay it and let me do what I wanted. [The mind-swapping story,] that sounds like something Julie would have come up with. We were reaching the end days of his run on the Superman books, although we didn’t know Crisis [on Infinite Earths] was coming along. He had been editing the books for over a decade at that point, and I think he was looking for ways to make it more interesting and spice things up to keep himself, and the readers, interested.”

END OF DAYS As Kupperberg indicated, Schwartz was nearing the end of his time as the Superman editor, and The New Adventures of Superboy would reach its end even sooner.

The book was around long enough for Superboy to have a proper crossover with Zatara the Magician in issue #49 (Jan. 1984) and to celebrate its 50th issue with a tale called “Dial ‘V’ For Villain.” This is a landmark adventure for the series because it is the only issue that features the Legion of Super-Heroes, and also because it was the final time that the Silver Age/Bronze Age Superboy was teamed up with the Legion of Super-Heroes.

This story ties in with the Dial “H” for Hero feature that wrapped up in issue #49. Superboy’s final adventure with the Legion begins when a thief from the 30th Century steals one of the H-Dials and goes back in time to Superboy’s era with the device. There, he wreaks havoc after finding a way to use the dial for evil. Legion of Super-Heroes artist Keith Giffen provided this issue’s

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cover and the framing story set in the 30th Century.

“I don’t remember specifically where that story came about,” says Kupperberg. “I guess we were looking for something special for the 50th issue, and Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes were well connected. Giffen was always up for doing this kind of stuff, and this seemed like a way to make the anniversary issue something special. We were trying to keep Superboy grounded in its own time period [in his own book]. Legion was always a popular book in those days, when Paul [Levitz] and Keith were doing it, so we were also likely playing off the popularity of that book to boost sales a little.

We were gone a few issues later. This was [one of the] little efforts to get things moving. We were about to be canceled, and these days the numbers we were going to get canceled at would have be enough to make us one of the bestsellers in today’s market. Superboy was probably selling 150,000–200,000 copies in those days. Today, that would make it a bestseller.”

Rozakis returned to the pages of The New Adventures of Superboy for issue #51 (Mar. 1984) via a special reprint issue that served as a tie-in to his upcoming miniseries, Superman: The Secret Years, which was based on a backup feature that Rozakis had written in Superman a few years earlier. “We were having a deadline problem,” says Rozakis. “It was decided that we had to do a fill-in and we had to reprint something. Since we knew The Secret Years was coming, I said to Julie, ‘Why don’t we take three of the stories and put them together and make a prequel for the people who had not read the backup series in Superman?’” As it is, Superboy #51 is a perfect companion book to Superman: The Secret Years, right down to sporting a Frank Miller cover of its own. “Frank and I became friends after spending a lot of time at the Montreal printing plant when he was doing Ronin, and he agreed to do the covers for The Secret Years,” says Rozakis. “I asked him, ‘How about doing this one, too,

Frank?’ So we got, in effect, a fifth Secret Years cover.

Originally I had proposed Secret Years as a 12-issue maxiseries, with three issues devoted to each year in college, but by the time it got on the schedule, they were already working on the deal with John Byrne to revamp the whole Superman story. I was told, ‘We’ve gotta to squeeze this in, so you only have four issues.’”

Rozakis wasn’t the only one who found his plans for the Teen of Steel being curtailed by this point. Indeed, Kupperberg’s final story arc, which dealt with the end of Clark’s relationship with Lisa and Pa Kent being framed for murder, ended on a cliffhanger with The New Adventures of Superboy #54 (June 1984). “A couple of years ago, I got hold of a copy of the script for Superboy #55,” says Kupperberg. “As you recall, Superboy ended with issue #54. I didn’t even remember writing the script all these years later, but Paul Levitz was cleaning out some files of his when he preparing to step down as the president and publisher of DC and he found a whole bunch of written-off scripts from Julie’s files that he had kept, and one of them was that last issue of Superboy.

Jonathan Kent was involved was with trying to stop a Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

Minding the Store (above) Gil Kane had a short stint as New Adventures of Superboy’s cover artist, including this mind-blowing one, seen in original art form courtesy of Heritage. From issue #42 (June 1983). (left) Keith Giffen’s Legionladen cover for issue #50 (Feb. 1984).

TM & © DC Comics.

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double the fun. “[The name of the book would have been] DC Double Comics,” says Kupperberg. “It was going to be 40 pages of story, and one month Supergirl would get the 24-page lead and Superboy would get the 16page backup, and then we’d rotate it. I wrote the first couple of issues for both features. Carmine Infantino penciled the first Superboy story, and it was lettered.”

Much like he did on The New Adventures of Superboy, Kupperberg intended to add some new elements that would have added new dimensions to Superboy’s life, as well as some new friends. “We did get that into production and Superboy was going to be joined by a group of superpowered teens from across time and space,” says Kupperberg. “He was going to get some superpowered pals to play with in the book. They would have been a bunch of aliens, one or two from the future.

There were five aliens of various ages, but all teenagers in the eyes of their various peoples. Some have come to Earth independently, others are seeking sanctuary here. Each adopts a human identity using whatever methods [they have] to appear human and fit in with the humans here.” [Editor’s note: See BACK ISSUE #17 for the full story behind DC Double Comics.]

ALOHA, SUPERBOY!

Get Out of Town!

Yes, that is a Frank Miller cover (signed, too!) gracing NAOSuperboy #51! According to its contributor, Heritage Comics Auctions, the illustration “has a jewellike quality—sinewy lines accentuated with bullets of pure ink—making for an artistic expression all Miller’s own.”

TM & © DC Comics.

shopping mall from being built outside of Smallville and he winds up being framed for a murder, and the murder victim was Lisa’s father. After it is all cleared up, she and her family leave town, and that was how we were going to write her out.”

As it turns out, Kupperberg and Schwartz had some plans in mind for Lisa down the road that might have added some new wrinkles to the Man of Steel’s life.

“We were going to do an issue of Superman where Lisa returns to grownup Clark Kent in Metropolis and tells him that she needs Superman’s help. [When he says,] ‘Well, I can get in touch with him,’ she replies, ‘No, stop it, Clark. I know you’re Superman. I was your girlfriend, don’t be silly,’ and go from there. That whole Crisis thing arose, though, and we never got around to [doing that story].”

Kupperberg reminded me that even though Superboy’s book had ended, DC had originally planned to continue his adventures. He and Supergirl, who had recently lost her own title as well, were going to get a new life in a book that would double the action, and

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The New Adventures of Superboy ended its run after four years. With little fanfare, a chapter in the history of the Man of Steel ended, not just for the time being, but for all time. Superboy adventures had always been the stories of Superman when he was a boy, and when he was just starting out on his career as the World’s Greatest Superhero. But in the DC Universe that arose in the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths, there wasn’t a place for the Teen of Steel anymore. When John Byrne came in to revamp Superman after Schwartz had stepped down, and all his former writers and artists had been dismissed, one of DC’s first decisions was to get rid of Superboy and have Clark Kent be, and always have been, just Superman.

Even though Superboy was no longer canon, the fans still fondly remember his stories. “That’s the thing that works against you when you try to revamp a character’s entire history,” says Rozakis.”The readers don’t forget everything and, in a lot of cases, neither do people working on books. So you find ways to worm things back in, somehow. Some of the ideas that got tossed were not quite as corny and useless as the powersthat-be were led to believe.”

What is it about these tales of Superman’s youth that hold so much appeal? Cary Bates says it best: “For what it’s worth, when I first started reading comics back when I was eight or nine, I was primarily a Superman fan. And yet I was always fascinated by the Superboy concept, which in those days was neatly summed up for beginning readers with the blurb ‘The Adventures of Superman when he was a boy.’ I think the notion that every Superboy story was a secret untold flashback into Superman’s early life was always part of the character’s appeal, at least for me, as both a reader and later, a writer.”

DAN “KID FLASHBACK” JOHNSON is a comics writer whose works include Herc and Thor for Antarctic Press and several books for Campfire Graphic Novels. He is also a gag writer for the Dennis the Menace comic strip and a contributing author to the short story anthology, With Great Power. Dan’s first job was stockboy at the Kent General Store in Smallville.

by

John Watson

[Editor’s note: Artist John Watson is best known for his work, in oils, as a cover artist for both Marvel and DC Comics on such titles as Hawkman, JSA, Son of M, Uncanny X-Men, and Silent War. He has always been a massive fan of the Legion, Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #258 being the first comic he ever bought. This gallery features a selection of fantasy Legion covers created

by John as well as his recreations of pre-existing non-LSH covers, reimagined to feature the Legion while drawn in the style of their original artists.

Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes and all characters depicted in this gallery are TM & © DC Comics.]

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More of John’s cover recreations can be seen in the book Covers That Never Were, available from the artist.

Visit his website and blog at http://johnwatsoncomicart. blogspot.co.uk/ to find out more about John and how to commission work from him.

Lightning Lad, Triplicate Girl, Ferro Lad, Invisible Kid, Chemical King, Karate Kid, Kid Psycho, Supergirl, Superboy, Mon-El, Duo Damsel, and Magnetic Kid: the Roll Call of the Honored Dead of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

by

Jim “GHz Lad”

All died valiantly to protect time and space, save the galaxy, prevent a world war, or stop an alien invasion, but some of these heroes died because a creator did not like his superpower, or because someone had to die, or to make for a good cover, or to clean house, or perhaps to snub fandom. All the Honored Dead have their stories TM of nobility, but the creators behind those stories had agendas more pragmatic.

This survey includes stories up until “The Magic Wars” in Legion of Super-Heroes (LSH) vol. 3 #63 (Aug. 1989).

Take heart that each and every one of these heroes returned in an updated version. It’s hard to keep a good idea, or fan nostalgia, down.

Lightning Lad was the first to die, struck down by Ford a freeze-ray from the starship of Zaryan the Conqueror in Adventure Comics #304 (Jan. 1963). To Paul Levitz, former DC Comics president and publisher and longtime Legion writer, this story, written by Superman creator Jerry Siegel, was revolutionary. “To my mind, I think [the superhero genre] changes with the death of Lightning Lad,” he explained at a convention panel at the New York Comic-Con on April 19, 2008. “I think that is the first incident where you have forward motion. Up until then, comics had really come out of the classic comicsstrip tradition of freeze-frame. jerry siegel Everybody is going to be, whatever photo by Alan Light it is … Charlie Brown will be in first grade or second grade until the end of time … and the Legion, four issues into its own series, just said, ‘Screw this stuff, we’re going to start changing things.

We’re going to kill people. We’ll change relationships, and we’re going to start by killing one of the founding members in a group that had a tremendous amount of unformed characters, characters you hadn’t had a chance to have a great amount of affection for.’

This was as close as you were going to get to a stellar character and, he’s just gone … but they began the momentum of change, and that is where I really think the Legion declared its radical contribution to the business.”

Triplicate Girl died next. She was ruthlessly murdered on the cover of Adventure Comics #340 (Jan. 1966) in the steely, tentacled grip of Computo the Conqueror.

The image, drawn by Curt Swan and inked by

R.I.P. Ferro Lad Legionnaires honor the valiant Andrew Nolan on this Jim Mooney-drawn cover to 1987’s Legion of Super-Heroes Index #4, published with DC Comics’ permission by Independent Comics Group (through Eclipse Comics).

TM & © DC Comics.

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First to Fall Lightning Lad and Triplicate Girl were the first two Legionnaire deaths. (left) The Legion mourns one of its founders (who would soon return) in these concluding panels from Adventure Comics #304 (Jan. 1963), written by Jerry Siegel and drawn by John Forte. (right) The triplicating heroine would live on as Duo Damsel after the horrific murder of one of her bodies in Adventure #340, reprinted and coverfeatured in the Bronze Age in Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 1 #3 (Apr.–May 1973).

TM & © DC Comics.

George Klein, is horrifying. A girl was disintegrated to story. So far as I know, it isn’t much like the movie!

“I thought, ‘If this thing’s such a menace that they dust while her killer loudly announced it in bolded cover copy. Her death, also written by Siegel, is in vivid have to bring in the bad guys to help them, it had contrast to that of Lightning Lad. His was not even better do some damage; somebody’s gotta get hurt announced in the story title, let alone the cover, and here!’ So I killed one of my characters, who I really kind whereas his death (and resurrection) was told over of liked—he was my black character,” Shooter said. Ferro Lad was introduced in Adventure Comics #346 multiple issues, her death was ignorable. She (July 1966), but his origin was not revealed was an expendable character in every until after his death in Adventure Comics sense of the word. With her ability to #354 (Mar. 1967). He was born with the split into three separate individuals, power to change his body to iron, but Siegel could kill her and still have his face was grotesquely inhuman, so two to spare. No Legionnaire is less he wore a mask. Shooter explained, traumatized by her death than “Well, they wouldn’t let me do a Triplicate Girl herself, who casually black character, so I had to put the rejoined her mournful group of guy in a mask, but he was my black teammates and simply announced character, even if nobody ever knew it she had a new name, Duo Damsel. but me.”

There is little doubt Triplicate Invisible Kid was crushed to death Girl died to sell more comics, and by the rampaging monster Validus indeed, that image has appeared on jim shooter in Superboy starring the Legion of as many reprint titles as any other Courtesy of Super-Heroes #203 (July–Aug. 1974), Legion cover, excluding their first.

Glen Cadigan. in a story written by Cary Bates. To It was recently chosen as the cover of Showcase many fans the death of Invisible Kid was a betrayal Presents: LSH vol. 2 (2008) out of 30 possible images. of their support by Superboy editor Murray Boltinoff.

It must still sell comics.

Ferro Lad, who gave his life that the galaxy might Invisible Kid was the best example of Shooter’s efforts to live, died next in Adventure Comics #353 (Feb. 1967), bring individuality to minor characters, taking one destroying the Sun-Eater. Writer Jim Shooter described whose very powers meant he faded into the backin an interview with Hassan Yusuf from fan magazine ground, and bringing him to the forefront as the Interluk 93 The Seven Year Itch (1993), “Sometimes Legion’s leader in Adventure Comics #348 (Sept. 1966).

Mort [Weisinger, editor of Adventure Comics] would ask Fans argued that at best, Boltinoff had no understandme to come up with something, and sometimes he ing of the history of the Legion. At worst, Boltinoff would dictate to me, ‘Do such and such.’ He would was deliberately working to get rid of Shooter’s never give me a plot, but he’d call me up and say, characters, having married off Bouncing Boy and ‘There’s a movie on called The Dirty Dozen. Go see it, Duo Damsel just a few issues previously.

“While Murray had no particular love for the and write a story just like it.’ I didn’t go to see it, because it didn’t sound interesting. So I read the ads Legion, there’s no chance he was trying to ‘get rid for the movie, got the drift, and wrote the Fatal Five of Shooter’s characters,’” Levitz tells BACK ISSUE.

32 • BACK ISSUE • Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

“Murray was oblivious to that sort of issue, and just focused on what he thought could sell more comics.

I doubt that he ever read Jim’s earlier stories, much less focused on a ‘hit list’ of characters from them.

I imagine Cary [Bates] suggested the Invisible Kid death as a dramatic twist, and he certainly wasn’t vindictive to Jim either.”

Legion fan and comics historian Rich Morrissey may have actually sounded the death knell, when in a letter published in the fan magazine Legion Outpost #3 (Jan.–Feb. 1973) he wrote a reasoned argument for killing Invisible Kid, largely based on the fact that he had never been seen in any of the Adult Legion appearances. In this same letter, Morrissey also suggested that Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel could be “dumped” from the team by having them marry, an event that took place a year later in Superboy #200 (Jan.–Feb. 1974). Both Boltinoff and Bates were frequent contributors to the Outpost.

Another character created by Shooter, Chemical King, sacrificed his life to prevent World War VII. He was doomed from his first appearance on the cover of Adventure Comics #354 as a memorial statue in the Hall of Heroes. “I wanted to do a lot more stuff with the characters, but DC was very slow to change, so I had to look at it more as an evolutionary process. I couldn’t progress as fast as I wanted to,” Shooter said in Interluk. The cover of the “Adult Legion” story featured a number of Legionnaires who were destined to die.

“I tried to work in some different stuff, too, like having a dead Legionnaire that wasn’t even in the group yet, a couple of romances that were ill-fated, some stuff that. Actually, if I had explained to Mort [Weisinger] where I was going with it, he probably wouldn’t have let me do it … I did a lot of thinking on that story.

In spite of the fact that I was stuck with a lot of things that I would rather not have had, I planted a lot of seeds in that story.”

It seems writers had little use of Chemical King’s power to control chemical reactions. From his first actual appearance Adventure Comics #371 (Aug. 1968) as a cadet in the Legion Academy to his death in Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes (SLSH) #228 (June 1977), Chemical King only played a role in some six stories. Levitz fulfilled the character’s destiny, and as an editorial comment in the letters column of SLSH #233 (Nov. 1977) explained, “Frankly, we think it was a good idea to get rid of Chemical King for several reasons: his powers were unclear to most readers, he was not a well-developed or pivotal character in the group, and he was doomed already, thanks to an earlier writer and editor.”

Karate Kid died to save the planet Orando from being savaged by the newly reformed Legion of Super-

Villains in LSH vol. 3 #4 (Nov. 1984), in a story by Levitz and co-plotted by artist Keith Giffen. “I hate the character,” Giffen said at a 2008 New York Comic-Con panel. “I agreed to stay on the Legion as long as I did if Paul would let—would kill Karate Kid.” Why does Giffen hate Karate Kid? “Why not?” Giffen answered. “Okay. Okay, just put the two words together, ‘super-karate.’” Even if Karate Kid did prove his karate was super time and again, like when he fought Superboy to a standstill in Karate Kid #12 (Jan.–Feb. 1978), or pinning him to the ground in SLSH #245 (Nov. 1978), Giffen will continue to make sure that Karate Kid stays dead.

Kid Psycho died in Crisis on Infinite Earths #3 (June 1985), as did so many other heroes. Aside from his first appearance in Superboy #125 (Dec. 1965), he only ever appeared with the Legion during the wedding of Duo Damsel to Bouncing Boy in Superboy #200 and the group image in LSH #300 (June 1983).

His death, assisting in the evacuation of the British region, was as noble as his life.

TM & © DC Comics.

Hall of Heroes Jim Shooter’s legendary “Adult Legion” story first mentioned heroes yet to be introduced who were predestined to die. Note that Shadow Woman’s skin would be colored light blue when we met her as Shadow Girl shortly after this remarkable Swan/Klein cover to Adventure #354 (Mar. 1967) was published.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Ghosts of Legionnaires Past Original Nick Cardy cover art to Superboy starring the LSH #206 (Jan.–Feb. 1975), featuring the “returns” of deceased Legionnaires Ferro Lad and Invisible Kid. Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). (inset) The published, color version.

TM & © DC Comics.

Supergirl was another casualty of Crisis on Infinite Earths. She died in issue #7 (Oct. 1985) fighting the Anti-Monitor. Supergirl was always right at the top of the list of characters to be killed during Crisis. “To give Crisis resonance, somebody had to die,” Dick Giordano told Michael Eury in his biography, Dick Giordano: Changing Comics, One Day at a Time, published by TwoMorrows Publishing (2003). That “somebody,” as suggested by Crisis series writer Marv Wolfman, was to be Supergirl. “I brought that in to Paul [Levitz] and Jenette [Kahn, then DC Comics publisher],” Giordano said. “They turned white,” but Giordano argued, “Let’s be realistic. Supergirl is Superman with boobs. She has no reason for being here. This is a dramatic story to offer.” That DC Comics’ sister company Warner Bros. had only just released a Supergirl movie and were awaiting box-office returns delayed and complicated the decision, but in the end were insufficient to sway the creative argument of her death.

Superboy was the final Legionnaire to fall victim to the Crisis on Infinite Earths, but only in the most

34 • BACK ISSUE • Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

indirect way. In LSH vol. 3 #38 (Sept. 1987) he sacrificed himself to save his world, created by the Time Trapper in his Pocket Universe, from destructive waves of anti-matter.

Superboy was removed from continuity in the rewrite of the DC Universe following the Crisis. Legion fans still complain that writer and artist John Byrne’s Superman destroyed Legion history. “It wasn’t John Byrne’s,” Levitz said at the 2008 New York Comic-Con panel. “The company decided at that point to ‘fix,’ quote-unquote—modernize, whatever you want to call it—Superman. There were several pitches in … but John doesn’t deserve any particularly blame for that.

It was an enormous pain in the ass for the Legion book and a loss for the Legion book.”

Byrne provided greater details in a letter to the editor published in Comics Buyer’s Guide #997 (Dec. 25, 1992).

“No, it wasn’t ‘a parallel universe or Earth-2 or just lack of continuity’ that necessitated the death of Superboy in LSH #38. Actually, it was that ol’ hobgoblin of small minds, an excessive allegiance to continuity which triggered this tale. Especially ironic, given that the prime mover in all this was Paul Levitz, he who has sneered his very best sneer at the Marvel mentality which demands canonical continuity.

“Here’s what happened: Early on in the genesis of the ‘new’ Superman, I went into the DC offices for a conference with Jenette, Paul, Andy Helfer, and Dick Giordano. We were getting, at that point, very close to the moment at which my pencil would actually have to touch paper for the first time, and we all wanted to be sure we knew where we were going.

“One of the points I kept coming back to at this meeting was the matter of Superboy. We’d agreed there would be no Superboy in the new chronology (Confession: I now consider this a mistake. Ah, well...) and several times during this one meeting I addressed myself specifically to Paul, who, as scribe of Legion, would be most directly affected by the ‘removal.’

“Paul nodded sagely at this and said he had his own solution and I should not worry,” Byrne continued.

“I didn’t worry—until I got a panicked call from Andy Helfer, a few months after I started the project. ‘There’s no Superboy!’ Andy exclaimed.

‘That screws up Legion continuity!’

This was followed by a hollow *thunk* as my forehead hit the drawing board.

“Short form: Something had to be ‘done’ about Superboy, and the story which saw print, replete with its pocket universe and villainous machinations, was the ‘solution.’ I still think my idea—retrofitting the legend—would have been better, but at least I got to draw Krypto, and that alone was worth the aggravation.”

Byrne later wrote on his forum at Byrne Robotics: The Official John Byrne Website in a post dated Feb. 21, 2005, “There’s hardly a [former] job out there that I would not tweak in some way if I could. As you may know, I dumped Superboy from the Superman mythos largely because I did not see him as a necessary character, and DC had agreed to allow me to show Superman ‘learning the ropes’ after the reboot. Unfortunately, once the contracts were signed, they backed down on

Death of Karate Kid Nemesis Kid offs Karate Kid in this brutal battle from Legion #4 (Nov. 1984). By Paul Levitz (plot, script), Keith Giffen (Karate Kid death wish, plot, breakdowns), and Steve Lightle (art). Courtesy of Anthony Snyder (www.anthonyscomicbookart.com).

TM & © DC Comics.

this and insisted we do Man of Steel [#1–6, Oct.– Dec. 1986] so that Superman would be ‘up to speed’ by the time the new first issue came out. (Eventually I would realize that they wanted Superman rebooted without him actually being, you know, rebooted. Odd, indeed, since I had said from the start I was perfectly prepared to work from within continuity, and the reboot was their idea.) So, since I did not have a Superman who was still ‘figuring it out,’ I wish I had had Superboy to fill that role.”

For the record, both Mon-El and Duo Damsel were killed during the climactic battle with the Time Trapper in LSH vol. 3 #50 (Sept. 1988), in a story by Levitz and Giffen. Duo Damsel’s death was instantaneous, while Mon-El lingered near-death until LSH #61 (June 1989). They both got better during volume 4 of the series.

As co-plotter and visual designer, Giffen played a vital role on the series, but it was always Levitz who made the final creative decisions. “[Levitz] comes in and sort of shakes his head and with this horrible look on his face and lets me know I’ve gone a bit too far. I blew Mon-El’s left hand off [in LSH #50],” Giffen told Harry Broertjes during a May 1988 interview at www.herald.infi.net/~harrybro, “and he said, ‘Now, that’s a bit too much.’ In a way, I did push it too far, but he’s never really come back to me and been really pissed off about anything that I’d done that he wasn’t expecting … we have a real good give and take.”

Mon-El was problematic, tied as closely as he was to Superboy’s history. During his first appearance in Superboy #89 (June 1961), Superboy mistook the amnesiac teen for his older brother and named him Mon-El, for the Monday he was found and his own family name. Mon-El’s death opened the way for Ultra Boy to become the Legion’s most powerful character, as Levitz suggested was the goal in LSH #61 (June 1989).

Ultra Boy’s connection to Superboy was forgettable, and the limitation that he could only use one power at a time made for more dramatic storytelling opportunities.

Duo Damsel, who still had one more life to spare, died for much the same reason as did Magnetic Kid, who was also redundant. Magnetic Kid sacrificed himself to unlock the magical barrier that obstructed the Sorcerer’s World in LSH #62 (July 1989). As Levitz tells BACK ISSUE, he killed Magnetic Kid for “some of the same reasons as any Legion death—add drama and suspense to the series by reminding readers of the potential for their favorite characters’ death—and then the specifics that he was more ‘disposable’ because his powers duplicated his brother’s.”

Magnetic Kid was accepted from the Legion Academy to join in LSH #14 (Sept. 1985) as a replacement to his brother Cosmic Boy. He was the second sibling to follow a brother into the Legion, the first being Lightning Lass. From his first appearance as a kid in Adventure Comics #335 (Aug. 1965), excited to have a superhero as an older brother, to his acceptance into the Legion Academy in LSH #304 (Oct. 1983), Magnetic Kid had a unique role in the Legion as an ordinary younger brother.

Inspired by a lifetime of stories of heroes like Lightning Lad, Ferro Lad, and Chemical King, as have so many of us, Magnetic Kid willingly gave everything he had without a moment’s hesitation. For us, we can be heroes by helping and caring in some small way every day. We owe the memory of those who would inspire us, both heroes and creators, nothing less.

JIM “GHz LAD” FORD was saddened by the death of Superboy, but continues to argue that the incredible stories told after Superman’s revision were worth the cost.

Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

TM & © DC Comics.

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While several writers have made significant marks upon Legion lore, none can match the contributions of THE Legion of Super-Heroes scribe, Paul Levitz.

From realistic characterizations to gripping multi-part sagas to unmatchable multiple records for consecutive issues, Levitz—among his myriad achievements in the comics industry—has become so identified with the Legion that one wonders if the team’s “L” icon isn’t actually their writer’s monogram.

Significant changes have occurred since Paul and I sat down for this chat in late June 2012, most notably the return (albeit brief) of Keith Giffen to the title and the unfortunate cancellation of Legion from the New 52 lineup. That knowledge certainly should not affect your appreciation of Mr. Levitz’s insight into the futuristic super-team provided on the pages that follow.

– Michael Eury by

Michael “Editor Boy” Eury

conducted Saturday, June 23, 2012 at Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC transcribed by Brian K. Morris

MICHAEL EURY: My name’s Michael Eury. I’m the editorin-chief of BACK ISSUE magazine from TwoMorrows Publishing, and it’s my great privilege today to welcome to North Carolina a gentleman who’s here in our beautiful state for the first time. How many actual Tar Heels are there in the room? Not the college, but residents of the state? [audience chuckles, many raise their hands] Good… I want y’all to give Paul Levitz a big North Carolina welcome. [audience applauds] PAUL LEVITZ: Thank you, Michael.

EURY: You’re welcome.

Twenty years ago, I worked for this man. I edited a series you might have heard of called Legion of SuperHeroes. [applause] But 30 years ago—and I bring this up because it’s the 30th anniversary of this convention—I was buying comics here in Charlotte at Heroes Aren’t Hard To Find, and 30 years ago this week, one of those comics was Legion of Super-Heroes #291. That was the issue where Mordru got his butt kicked [audience chuckles] during “The Great Darkness Saga.”

And I would like to start this conversation, Paul, by talking about that. That is probably the greatest Legion story of all time, and it’s one of the best comic stories of all time. So tell me how that idea came about to bring Jack Kirby’s Darkseid into the Legion as an adversary.

LEVITZ: Well, I think there’s a couple of pieces to the puzzle. My memory on most of these things is pretty foggy, but one, I really liked—still do like—building stories that have a puzzle element to them. And one of my real regrets from my first run on the Legion in the mid-’70s—besides the fact that I regretted that I had overcommitted myself to too many different projects that it opened up to too many fill-ins—my other one was the Earthwar, which I thought was the best story

Darkseid Lives!

One thousand years (continuity-wise) after plaguing the New Gods of New Genesis and the superheroes of Earth, creator Jack Kirby’s despot Darkseid brought the Legion to its knees, courtesy of writer Paul Levitz. Cover to Legion of Super-Heroes: The Great Darkness Saga: The Deluxe Edition (2010). Cover art by Keith Giffen and Al Milgrom.

TM & © DC Comics.

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I had plotted and designed to that point, ended up getting screwed up because it went through multiple artists. So it really just never, never held together as well as it should have as a story.

And in coming back to The Legion, it was sort of on the checklist that one of the sins to make up for from last time was, “There’s not going to be one fill-in!”

I don’t care what I have to do, I’m doing every issue of this book ’til I’m done. I want to do another long story, I want to hold all the parts, and I’m doing it in a way that it can all be held together.

I was an enormous fan of Jack’s New Gods. That was some of the first work that I got to see in progress when I was doing the early fanzines and was wandering around the DC office. Jack was always both an enormous favorite artist and somebody that I personally liked a great deal when I got to know him. He and [his wife] Roz were very, always very kind, not just to me, but really, to everyone.

And I’m a lousy villain creator. It’s not one of my strengths as a writer—Legion has some really good villains, but not a great deck of them, the same way Batman has. So the idea that I could borrow, really, one of the great villains of all time and bring him into the 30th Century—because he could be in any century … this was the god of evil, appealed to me in many ways. [“The Great Darkness Saga”] sort of came together very naturally. It may have been Keith’s suggestion, too, because Keith [Giffen] was an enormous Kirby fan and he, even in those days, would always be popping his head [in my office] and going, “Why don’t we do this?” “Why don’t we do that?” About a third of Keith’s suggestions, no one should ever listen to [audience chuckles], and about a third of them are really, really, really good … the others, they’re okay.

You know, as good as anyone else’s that day. But he has an extraordinarily fertile mind, and in those years, he didn’t think of himself as a writer, but he already clearly showed that he was, and could be, and I’m so glad he’s gone on to be a writer for many, many of the years since.

And that’s how that happened. We certainly didn’t realize that we were creating something anybody would talk about 30 years later. In looking back, I realize that it was the first time ever where DC had really—we talked about this at dinner the other night—only the second

38 • BACK ISSUE • Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

time in comics history that one of the mainstream publishers made an issue longer because of the story for that final chapter. Chris [Claremont] had pulled it off with the end of [X-Men’s] “The Phoenix Saga” about six months or a little more than half a year before, and it’s like, “Yeah, we could do that.” And that’s how we got to that extra-long final issue, too.

EURY: I recently re-read it in the deluxe format and the mystery aspect holds up even though, of course, I knew who the mystery villain was. But do you remember the buzz it received? At that point, were fans playing a guessing game, or were they figuring out that it was Darkseid?

LEVITZ: Yeah, we had one or two who figured it out.

My goal as a mystery writer has always been to design the mystery novel so that the reader gets it a page before you reveal it. You want the reader who’s really working at it to be able to figure the puzzle out and to have sort of that joy of triumph over the writer, but not to insult them if they don’t get it, but when they turn the page, they feel stupid for not having figured it out.

There should be kind of that glow of amusement, and we certainly had a fair amount of that going on.

The issue of who the servants were—I remember there was an enormous amount of speculation about who the servants were early on, and one or two letter writers, early on, who’d guessed the first couple of servants, I don’t think there was anyone who got it all.

EURY: Well, refresh our memory. Tell us, who the servants?

LEVITZ: Oh, God. I gotta remember now? [audience chuckles] We had the Oan, we had Shadow Lass’ greatgreat-grandmother or whatever that was. We had Orion. We had Superman clones … [distracted by someone off-mic] … oh, Kalibak? Okay, it’s been a while. I mean, I’ve read it once in 30 years. I also, at this point, have a memory that’s used up too much of its knowledge on remembering home planets of Legionnaires and their real names. [audience laughs] That’s why I have to wear a Paddington Bear sign at the airport, “Please ship me back home…”

EURY: “The Great Darkness Saga” was a very effective use of Darkseid, but that character had been dormant in print for a couple of years at that point, right?

LEVITZ: Actually, the gap wasn’t really as long as we think it was. There was a JLA/JSA team-up in the year or two before that, and there was another run of New

Gods when I was editing it, so that was ’79, maybe, just three years or so before [“Great Darkness”]. So it wasn’t like he was dormant, but he certainly wasn’t as omnipresent as he would be.

EURY: Good way of putting it. You wrote another of the great Legion mysteries, “Who is Sensor Girl?” Tell us about that.

LEVITZ: Well, we were coming off of the Crisis stuff and for a while, we were debating, could we figure out a way to get Supergirl back in the Legion, somehow get around her death and her revision? Could she have survived in a period in her earlier life when she’d been there [in the 30th Century]? And we started to develop a storyline around that, and then got vetoed in some

Next Best Thing to Being There (bottom of spread) Levitz (photo left) and BI’s Eury.

HeroesCon 2012 panel photographs

by Robin Matthews.

Courtesy of Randy Matthews. (opposite page) The merciless magician Mordru is wiped out in the Levitz classic “The Great Darkness Saga.” Original Keith Giffen/Larry Mahlstedt art from Legion of Super-Heroes #291. Courtesy of Anthony Snyder (www.anthonyscomicbookart.com). (this page) LSH #291 cover.

TM & © DC Comics.

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The Girl of Steel (bottom) A gorgeous sketch of Supergirl

by Leonard Kirk, courtesy of Tim Brown. (top) Supergirl and Superboy punch Darkseid. From LSH #294.

TM & © DC Comics.

40 • BACK ISSUE • Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

fashion or another. So we worked with it, and came up with Sensor Girl over the better part of a year, the storyline, before we got to the reveal.

EURY: “Sensor Girl” was really packaged more as a mystery, whereas “Great Darkness Saga” was a mystery, but wasn’t— LEVITZ: It wasn’t marketed as a mystery.

EURY: —yes, exactly.

LEVITZ: [Mystery novelist] Brad Meltzer, first time I met him, he was wandering through DC. He started talking to me about the Legion stuff that he grew up on. And Brad’s wonderful, a much better mystery writer than I am, and we started immediately a conversation: “Well, ‘Sensor Girl’ was one they said was your best mystery, but I really think it was ‘The Universo Project.’

I think that was a better-structured mystery.” And I had to say, [meekly] “Yes, sir.” [laughter] It’s wonderful meeting with readers and seeing what they’ve gone on to do with their careers.

EURY: You grew up reading Jim Shooter’s Legion, right?

LEVITZ: Yeah … Ed Hamilton’s, Jim Shooter’s, Jerry Siegel’s.

EURY: I remember reading in a few introductions you’ve written that Shooter’s Legion had a special connection to you because of his age and yours at the time.

LEVITZ: Yeah, well, I remember sitting on my stoop in Brooklyn, reading the letters column where they talked about Jim being 13 years old. I was nine—13 was like an age people actually got to be, “So maybe I can grow up to do this.”

EURY: How old were you when you actually started to work full-time at DC? LEVITZ: Sixteen when I started freelancing. I’ll be finishing up 40 years there this Christmas [2012].

EURY: Congratulations. [audience applauds] LEVITZ: Thank you. [to audience] You guys have let me get away with avoiding honest work for a lifetime. [audience chuckles] EURY: Let’s talk about how you started on The Legion, and your first work as its writer.

LEVITZ: Well, my first touch of the Legion was getting to do Karate Kid. In the ’70s, the way DC was structured, it was a very small company. Thirty, 35 people working at DC when I started there, but it was the last years when an individual editor pretty much owned a property and owned a set of freelancers.

So the office next to Joe Orlando’s—Joe was my boss and my mentor—was Murray Boltinoff’s, and among the things Murray owned was the Legion of Super-Heroes, and he sort of owned [Legion writer] Cary Bates and to a large extent, [Legion artist] Mike Grell.

And then, in one of the usual moments of DC’s history where, as it legendarily was put in the industry, “So as DC jumps on the trend, you can guarantee the trend is over,” Carmine [Infantino, editorial director] came around and said, “This martial arts stuff is hot!

Do something on that.” And Joe suddenly had a book that was due in two minutes, having something to do with martial arts [audience chuckles], and nobody knew anything about martial arts in the room. Denny [O’Neil] was doing [Richard Dragon,] Kung-Fu Fighter down the hall. Denny actually knew something about the subject. And I piped up and said, [enthusiastically] “Well, there’s this Karate Kid character in the Legion and The Legion’s doing all right. Maybe we could spin him out.”

And somehow, we got that through, and I got to write an issue, plot another one, and then Carmine sort of noticed that I hadn’t yet learned how to write. [audience chuckles again, then meekly] He said, “Let’s not use this kid as a writer for a while until he starts to figure out what he’s doing.” So Dave Michelinie ended up finishing up that series, or finishing up the second issue and staying on the series for a bunch of issues.

And about … oh, I guess about six months later, Carmine had departed and Murray was invisibly retiring. Murray was a very young-looking 65. Nobody knew he was 65—he was determined that nobody would know.

These were the years when mandatory retirement was still a legal thing in this country and he had hit 65 and retired, [but had] books coming in every day, working from nine to five, and freelance-editing all the books he’d been doing the day before.

And nobody but Carmine and the human resource department knew that he had retired.

But then Carmine was gone and Jenette Kahn arrived and she started to juggle things around, and they noticed that Murray really wasn’t retired. They started to ease off his workload a little bit and they moved Legion over to Denny to edit.

And right about that same time, Jim Shooter had been writing Legion and came back and Jim got the offer to be the associate editor at Marvel. Associate editor at Marvel, in those days, was a very serious job. It was the #2 editor in the shop, as opposed to today when that sort of means, “Well, you’re not an assistant editor any more. You now have to do more than Xerox, but we’re not going to allow you any sharp objects.” [audience chuckles] But anyway, it was a very good job offer for Jim, so he goes off to do that and Legion was available.

EURY: Who were you paired with, artistically, at that point?

LEVITZ: I was doing the book with [penciler] Jim Sherman, who’s a wonderfully talented artist. At that point, Jim could have grown up to be the next Curt Swan—he’s very much in Curt’s school, a very good illustrator of human emotion. And Mike Nasser.

He was one of the “Crusty Bunkers” in Neal’s [Adams] studio, as a Crusty Bunker, one of many hands, but a wonderfully dynamic artist.

EURY: When did that first stint come to an end? And then tell us how you got back onto Legion later.

LEVITZ: Oh, I guess the first stint ran about two, two and a half years, something like that. And then DC was going through what became known as the DC Implosion, a tremendous shrinkage of the line, and we really had a nasty game of triage to play. It was almost Musical Chairs, because we had a lot of guys who had freelance-writing contracts—the freelancers were just trying to make a living. Of course, I had a day job, my salary, and I was freelancing on the side, so I couldn’t keep doing as much stuff as I’d been doing before. It’s not right or fair or sane.

So when the dust settled, I’d given up Legion. I was stuck with some of my other assignments, but it lightened my schedule an awful lot at that point. Very well, I had my shot, I screwed it up, that’s that!

And then, a couple of years later, Mike Barr took over as editor of Legion. Mike came to me and asked me if I’d like to go back on the book. Roy [Thomas] was writing the book, and Roy was never a big Legion fan, so he was looking to get off it, and we did some kind of strange, complicated trade when Mike came to me and asked me if I’d like to go back on the book. And I said, “I screwed up once.” He said, “You love the characters,” and talked me into it, thankfully. Somehow or other, Gerry [Conway] was writing something and Roy was writing Legion and I don’t even remember what the hell I was writing … maybe the [World’s Greatest Superheroes] newspaper strip. Yeah, it was the newspaper strip.

So maybe Gerry got the newspaper strip and Roy got Wonder Woman, and from some kind of bizarre trade like that I ended up getting Legion, and I guess I was determined not to screw it up that time. So I stuck it out for a hundred issues in a row and cleaned up my reputation a little bit.

EURY: Well, you worked with quite a few talented artists during those years, but I think that for many

Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

Kneel Before ’Seid Darkseid hogs the cover of the 1989 trade paperback, The Great Darkness Saga. Art by Keith Giffen (pencils) and Larry Mahlstedt (inks). (inset) Cover to LSH #293 (Nov. 1982),

by Giffen.

TM & © DC Comics.

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folks, the book really clicked with you and Keith Giffen together. You had great chemistry and you helped elevate Legion into what, the #2 title at DC during the early ’80s, just behind The New Teen Titans?

LEVITZ: For most of my run—most of my second run—it was DC’s second most profitable title. There was always the blip like The Dark Knight or something like that, but basically the bread-and-butter titles were Teen Titans and the new Legion.

EURY: Please toss modesty out that exit door to your right and tell me what it is that you think that you brought, and Keith at that time in particular, to Legion of Super-Heroes that made it such a strong fan favorite. Because as many people in this room know, Legion has a very loyal readership, but it hasn’t always been a large readership. And you were successful at increasing the numbers on that book.

LEVITZ: Well, bear in mind that in Shooter’s day and Curt Swan’s day, [Adventure Comics with the Legion] outsold Batman in those years. Those were the days where if you had a Superman “S” on a DC book, it’d bounce off pretty much

anything else. Lois Lane outsold Batman for a lot of years. As much as I love Kurt Schaffenberger and Leo Dorfman, I don’t think anybody’s ever going to claim that [Lois Lane] was a matter of Fine Art. When I look back on it, I think a lot of what was going on there was simply that we were at a moment of change in what was going on in the audience. Both Keith and I had, as natural tastes, things that were a hair ahead of our time for DC. It’s not that we were doing that fabulous a comic book, I think. In many ways, Teen Titans was a much better-written and -drawn book, the characters were better delineated in many, many ways, more revolutionary. But the style of what we were doing, the kinds of stories, were ahead of their pace, and I look back with a lot of pride at the things that went on in the book, the level of maturity of the characters, the level of some of the themes that we’ve talked about, the fact that the actions of the characters was powerful.

When I was signing some giant stack yesterday, I was looking at the moment where Projectra kills her husband’s murderer—I think that’s the first time in a superhero comic in America that a superhero kills the villain in a sort of “justice” fashion. That happens a lot these days. I’m not sure that should happen a lot, but it made sense in that story. You had a character who was regal, who had historically the right to dispense royal justice, and certainly had to watch her husband get beaten to death before her eyes. It wasn’t really surprising when she choked that bastard. [Editor’s note: Projectra avenged her husband’s death by executing his killer, Nemesis Kid, in Legion of Super-Heroes #5, Dec. 1984.]

Is that great writing? I don’t know that it’s great writing, but it was a kind of moment you couldn’t do, certainly, at DC and couldn’t, basically, do in American superhero comics before that moment. It was four months, five months into our doing Legion as a direct-only book, so it was the first moment, really, the first superhero comics to be done without the [Comics] Code, and we took advantage of that moment of opportunity and did bunches of things, whether it was that or we’d go back and the relationship that developed between Shrinking Violet and Lightning Lass in those years, which I’m still not entirely sure whether I wrote deliberately or whether the characters decided that themselves and sort of put it there. But it’s stuff that today you can do routinely, thank God, despite the Million Moms and all their stupidity arguing about it. But we began to be able to deal with a wider range of subject material than a lot of the DC books were doing.

EURY: I think you’re selling yourself short if you don’t think that you delineated those characters as well as Marv did in Titans. He had seven, you had 70. [audience chuckles] You were successful at more clearly establishing the personalities of many of them. Some of them always had stronger personalities, but then some of them were added because of their power and never had an opportunity until you were at the helm to be fleshed out as real characters.

Avenging Val Detail from the Giffen/Mahlstedt cover of LSH #5 (Dec. 1984), the issue featuring Queen Projectra’s “justice” for her husband’s murder.

TM & © DC Comics.

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LEVITZ: I think the combination of Marv and George were ahead of us, and some of it, yes, they had seven, we had about 70—way too many. But some of it is also both of them were really, really good at the small moments, the human, natural moments, and that really fleshes a character tremendously, and that was not nearly as much our strength over at Legion. But they were certainly more human when we were done with them than they were when we started, and I’m proud of that.

EURY: Another parallel between Legion and Titans in the early ’80s was the relationship between the writer and artist, because Keith Giffen evolved from being a penciler to a co-plotter, as George Pérez did on New Teen Titans.

LEVITZ: Well, Keith’s description of a lot of how he worked in that period is, he’d read my plot on the bus back to Jersey and crumple it up, and throw it out [audience chuckles] and draw the book. And often, Keith would draw … mmm, mostly draw it as plotted, but he’d come back and he’d do a two- or three-page scene that was nothing whatsoever to do with what we’d plotted for. And then often I would dialogue and write something over it that was nothing to do with what he had in his margin notes. [audience chuckles] But we agreed enough on a sense of who the characters were and the tone of what we were going to do, that there was a natural chemistry to it. When you know who the characters are, then the rest can go in many, many directions and you feel pretty good then.

EURY: What are good experiences you had with some of the artists that followed Keith?

LEVITZ: It’s so ridiculous, the talented guys I had gotten to come to do the books. Here’s one with Gene Colan, here’s one with Carmine, I got Joe Orlando to do an issue, so many greats that I grew up with.

All the jobs I got out of Curt Swan, who would say, “Oh, Paul, you’ve gotta give me Legion again?” [audience chuckles] “I swear, Curt. I’ll only use three characters, not too many aliens, not too many spaceships.” I mean, I grew up loving his work on the Legion. I’d always try to go ahead and schedule to get him to a fill-in.

Steve Lightle, who’s back doing a little bit of Legion work. Now he’s doing some covers for us, just the short-story format issues.

Greg LaRocque, who was on it for a long stretch, is looking at one of the fill-in issues.

I remember Erik Larsen drawing a story with me, so many great people who’ve gone onto other interesting things: Colleen Doran, that great Element Lad issue she did. If you haven’t checked out Gone to Amerikay, the graphic novel that she did for Vertigo—it came out a little earlier this year—you should. Really strong art

and a good story, too.

EURY: In the late 1980s, you gave up writing Legion of Super-Heroes and devoted your time to your day job as DC’s publisher, and ultimately, its president.

But recently you retired from that position, and things have come full circle again.

LEVITZ: You know, we got to the point where I’d been in the day job long enough and I was getting up from the big desk. And the Warner Bros. executives and I were in the process of working that out, and they said, “So, what do you want to do next?” I said, “Well, I’m going to write, I’m going to teach.” And so the company was stuck with me writing a couple of books a month. And it happened to be exactly the moment when Geoff Johns had brought back the Legion, sort of recognizably as my Legion, because that was the [version] he’d grown up on. And they needed a new writer for it, which was almost perfect timing.

EURY: And now you’re writing the New 52 version of Legion of Super-Heroes.

TM & © DC Comics.

A Promise to Curt Each time Levitz persuaded legendary Superman and LSH artist Curt Swan to pencil a Legion issue, it came with Paul’s pledge to feature an easier-to-draw truncated roll call.

Original cover art by Swan and inker Al Vey to Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #5 (1987), signed by Swan. Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com).

TM & © DC Comics.

Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

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Francis Portela’s Legion (left) Cover to LSH #23. (right) Scene from Legion of Super-Heroes #1 (Nov. 2011), by Levitz and Portela. No matter how many times the LSH is rebooted, Brainiac 5 is always the smartest guy in the room.

TM & © DC Comics.

LEVITZ: Mm-mm.

EURY: What challenges does that present to you? The overall tone of the line tends to be darker than DC’s previous universe. One of the magical things about the Legion is, even despite the chaos and the murder and the horrible things that were happening then in stories, still, there was always hope, that a thousand years from now, people have got some of the things right that they can’t get right today.

LEVITZ: You know, it always seemed to me as a writer that rationally, the only way to write about the human race being here a thousand years from now is the assumption that we stop being the great assholes. You know, I’m a great believer in the power of science to fix things. I don’t know how we fix global warming, but I have optimism that we will, either by behaving better or some scientist somewhere in some basement will come up with the magic potion that does it. But in terms of being human, if we keep saying, “Blue people and gray people, all blue people have to try and kill all the gray people now,” whatever labels we’re sticking on people, we ain’t gonna make it—we have to solve that. We have to … God bless Rodney King. You know: “Can’t we all just get along?” Poor man passed away this week.

So I guess I can’t envision a future where we haven’t figured out some of our problems. It doesn’t mean there still won’t be issues… One of the challenges of my coming back to The Legion, Geoff [Johns] had just done the “Earthman” story that was driven by xenophobia, and how to kind of work my way through that.

With the New 52, the guys wanted the book to be a little younger, so we folded in the Legion Academy characters and we’re giving them maybe a little more screen time than otherwise I might have. That’s made for some interesting stories with different characters.

EURY: What’s your relationship like with the current Legion artist, Francis Portela? He’s doing beautiful work.

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LEVITZ: Well, he’s a wonderful talent in Spain. You know, the big change from when I was a kid, when I came into comics, [is that] everybody had to be within a few miles of Manhattan to work in the comics business.

The invention of FedEx changed that a little bit, and then the invention of digital transmission changed it enormously. In recent years, I can open morning email and there’s something from Istanbul from Yildiray [Cinar] and there’s something from Francis in Barcelona and that stuff just flying around and something.

George [Pérez] was saying, “I’m off to the convention tomorrow. This page is a little rougher than I expected it to be, but I’ll finish up Worlds’ Finest so it’ll just make it. Here you go.” Very, very improved.

So I don’t get to know Francis the way I did Keith, who was in and out of the offices. But last time [Francis] was in New York, we had a nice meal and I said, “You know, you really should be in charge of Spain in the 31st Century [in Legion]. What would you like it to be?

What do you want Barcelona to be in the 31st Century?”

He said, “Well, there’s a legend that the Gaudi Cathedral will never be finished. It will just keep getting built.

Maybe that will be all of Barcelona by the 31st Century.”

So when an artist puts his drawing hand in his mouth [audience laughs], I do my best to close it on him.

EURY: You’re also writing Worlds’ Finest and have returned to the Huntress, a character you developed, as well as her teammate Power Girl. Let’s talk about that a little bit.

LEVITZ: Okay.

EURY: The Huntress is another character that you’re very identified with, from your backup series in Wonder Woman and her appearances in your Justice Society stories in All-Star Comics. I’ve only read the first issue of Worlds’ Finest—the second one just came out—but there are a few nuances, nods to the previous incarnations.

How do you work through trying to synthesize some

All This and Earth-2 Decades ago, Levitz co-created the Huntress as the daughter of the

things from the past and creating something that is new that still has that same smell and taste for the readers who have been with the character for a long time?

LEVITZ: Well, you start out, I think, trying to think about what people loved about the character. In Worlds’ Finest, can you violate a … can you make a story that somebody loved 30 years ago not count? Yes, I think you can. But can you make the emotional moment of that not count, or what can you violate without offending that sense of somebody’s inner 12-year-old.

That’s really the balance in the process.

So in the case of The Legion, because it’s the New 52, we’re going to have the Fatal Five coming up, but the Legion will not have met the Fatal Five before. But there’ll have been a Fatal Five that has been around in the 31st Century for awhile, so some of the things [from earlier continuities] may have happened. “Well, so Adventure #352, 353 happened, but it was just the Sun-Eater that ended up getting Ferro Lad, and they don’t have to have met the Fatal Five.” And it’s really if you take the Fatal Five out of that story, the story still, sort of, would work with a couple of adjustments.

So that’s how that history worked. I don’t know if that will ever be mentioned in any of the comics, but you sort of do that kind of edit so that’s one part of the process. The other part, when you look at something like Power Girl and the Huntress—what did people love about those two characters? Well, I think they loved the Thelma and Louise approach. That book is really a buddy comedy in many ways. Is it a Cagney and Lacey? Is it a Thelma and Louise? And you can argue what model you’re at, but these are two very different women with very different takes on the world who are really, really good friends. And they’re dealing with all of this weird sh*t. And you should be able to recognize them in many ways if you loved them before … kind of. If you’re had a relative or dear friend who you haven’t seen for ten or

pre–Crisis EarthTwo’s Batman and Catwoman. Post– Crisis, the heroine’s background was adapted to fit continuity changes, but despite 2011’s line-wide New 52 reboot the Huntress has returned to her roots as another Earth’s Bat-offspring.

Levitz is the scribe of Worlds’ (that’s plural for two Earths!)

Finest, which started in 2012 and features Power Girl and the Huntress—originally the new Earth-2’s Supergirl and Robin—making their

20 years and then you meet them again, their life has changed, they’re in a different role. They’re now a parent or a grandparent, they’re a professional, but do you see what you loved about them and that you cared about? Or are they still the practical joker or are they still the warm, cuddly person? What carried you forward, then how do you extract that piece of them?

If Dick walked into the room—[to audience] Michael worked for Dick Giordano for a bunch of years and ended up being very close to him. If Dick walked in the room today, what would we expect to see? Well, the Dick you worked with in the ’80s and early ’90s was a little different than the Dick that I hung around with in the ’70s or that I worked with in later in the ’90s because his life was at different stages. But the warmth of him as a human being, the upbeatness, was always there. And the Sweet Rob Roy, straight up, he had each day at lunch.

EURY: Two Rob Roys, actually. [laughter] LEVITZ: Maybe when I was there, he was on his best behavior. [Michael chuckles] You know, with the consistent little trademark. What I said of the little things and the emotive things become the consistent hallmarks that help us define character.

EURY: Before we open the floor to questions, we must talk about your big book.

LEVITZ: It’s a big book.

EURY: It’s larger than a dorm refrigerator. [audience chuckles] LEVITZ: But you can’t microwave it. It’s definitely an un-microwavable book. All you’d get is spoiled pages, and it would screw up your microwave really badly.

EURY: Of course, we’re talking about … please help me with the full title … DC Comics at 75— LEVITZ: Seventy-Five Years of DC Comics, The Art of Modern Myth-Making.

EURY: That’s it! Thank you. How did that book start?

Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

way on the new DC Earth. Covers to issues #0 and #1 by George Pérez.

TM & © DC Comics.

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That’s One Big Book Cover to Levitz’s massive tome, 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking, published by Taschen. © Taschen. TM & © DC Comics.

LEVITZ: Well, about two years before DC’s 75th, Cheryl Rubin, who ran our licensing department for many years, and her team began figuring out some stunts we could do to celebrate. And they went out and they pitched four or five very high-end publishers on doing a book on DC’s 75th.

One of them was Taschen, which is a very quirky art-book publisher, and Benedikt Taschen, who founded the company, actually started running a comic shop, in Cologne, Germany, many, many years ago when he was a kid, so he’s loved this material. He’s an Uncle Scrooge guy and a Superman guy, but still loved comics as a medium, still is a very hands-on publisher. He still approves every visual that goes in the books. So Cheryl and her team did the winning proposal for the book and came up with this vision for doing this monster physical project, because Taschen has a history of doing colossally expensive, gorgeous books. Taschen did a famous book on Ali, Greatest of All Time, that is also a dorm-refrigerator-sized book, a humongous monster of a book.

Steve Korté, the guy on Cheryl’s staff who’s the editor responsible for the project, asked me if I would like to write the written part of it. I said, “I can’t. I’ve got a day job.” So the art director, Josh Baker, and Steve and Taschen went to work on the book, then he spent about two years assembling all the visuals—some great searching—and went to England to photograph from the collection of Ian Levine, who’s one of the five or six people in the world who’s got a complete set of DCs. A little side-story on Ian: As Ian was closing in on his full set of DCs, he used to run little ads in things like The Buyer’s Guide, listing the handful of things that he still needed, and he was looking for the weirdest stuff. A lot of them were the custom comics that DC had done, like the Black and Decker Dust Buster comic, but not things that anyone necessarily wanted to read. One of those ads appeared one Christmas week when I was in the office and I was utterly bored.

There was nothing much going on, so I said, “I’ve got tons of [the Dust Buster comic]—why don’t I see if it’s worth anything?” So I went digging in my files for a few minutes, threw a dozen of them together,

46 • BACK ISSUE • Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

stuffed them in an envelope, and mailed them to Ian with a note that said, “Buy 40,000, get 12 free.” [audience laughs] It just happened to be the right day. It seemed he deserved it.

Anyway, so they had all this incredible stuff put together [for the 75th anniversary book] and then again, I was walking away from the big desk and Steve said, [singsong] “We still haven’t found our writer. It’s due in about two minutes. You can do this faster than anybody else on the planet because you know it better. [audience chuckles] How about it?”

“Okay.”

It was a lot of fun. It was a great chance to revisit some of the people, like Sheldon Mayer, just immerse myself in their stories a little bit. I couldn’t do justice to anything because we only had threequarters of a word per issue that DC had published. It was a wonderful debut as a prose writer.

EURY: Great!

We’re going to let some folks in this room ask you some questions, Paul…

FIRST QUESTIONER: Big fan of your work, sir. I’m just curious, and Michael’s hit all around it, because he literally opened the panel saying, “You wrote the best Legion story ever,” and that’s a very true statement.

But my question is, how is it to literally be competing with yourself?

LEVITZ: Um, I don’t think of it that way. The things that made “Great Darkness,” if it is the best Legion story, was in large part the moment that came out, and I don’t know that I have it in me to be ahead of the curve again in that kind of fashion. A lot of forces came together at that moment. I’m just really happy that nobody’s telling me, “Would you go back to the Old Timers’ Day Game and get off the damn field?

Let the new kids really play baseball, because they’re in shape to do it.”

So as long as you guys are still letting me play, that’s just fine.

SECOND QUESTIONER: What do you think about the Legion in DC Animation?

LEVITZ: We tried to sell Legion for animation for about 30 years, and I think the first time we developed it for animation, there really wasn’t a big Warner Animation unit. It was ’77 or ’78, I remember doing some work with Jean McCurdy at that time. Eventually, we got the series on the air for about three years. Kinda cute, never took off enormously, but it was kind of nice to see it happen.

THIRD QUESTIONER: What about a Legion epic movie like the JLA, Batman, and Superman movies made by Warner Bros.?

LEVITZ: Yeah, I don’t think we get there easily. I mean, the way Warner Home Video works—which makes very good business sense—is very definitely driven by market research. To finance these projects, they have to be able to sell humongous numbers of them. So they go out and they market research and they test the moms who buy for the kids for recognition, and they test the kids for what they’re screaming for their moms to buy, and the answers keep coming back Superman, Batman, and Justice League. Look, I never would have envisioned a lot of what’s happened with the characters. Not just my characters, but comic characters in general. You know, if you had told me, the 12-yearold me, that there would be an Avengers movie, all the characters doing all that great stuff and grossing a billion dollars, or whatever the inflation equivalent of it would have been in those years, I would have said, “No, this is impossible, no.” On the other hand, if you told me I would live to hold in my hand a palm-sized computer that could do more than the IBM 360 I learned to program on, I’d have said you’re nuts. So who knows what the hell will happen?

FOURTH QUESTIONER: This is more in the line of a suggestion, or a question as to the future direction of the Legion comic. Given the current high-profile discussion of gay marriage, are Vi and Ayla ever going to get married?

LEVITZ: You know, I don’t know what marriage will look like a thousand years from now. Again, if we’re going to be alive, we’re going to stop

having stupid rules about who can marry who and we’re going to just be really pleased that people actually love each other and don’t want to kill each other.

I don’t know, we don’t have any current plans for it. They’re very happy they’re a couple. I don’t know, that in 31st-Century terms, they’re not as married as they need to be. I wouldn’t have any problems doing a same-sex marriage in Legion as a writer.

FIFTH QUESTIONER: Being a writer and an editor, what’s one thing you regret an editor didn’t let you do, and what’s something you regret now that you didn’t let a writer do?

LEVITZ: Geez, my main regret—not so much an editor, but the editorial direction, was—and it’s not anybody’s fault—was the need to get Superboy out of the Legion, edit that out, when John [Byrne] was doing his revision.

I still think there was a way to solve that I couldn’t sell to my peers.

As an editor … better work, you know. It’s just when I look back on the run of stuff that I did as an editor, I think they are as solid books as DC published in those years, but there’s very little that I worked on as an editor that survives the test of time 30 years later—somebody’s looking back on it and wanting to read it, and that’s true of the vast majority of comics. I’m not saying my batting average wasn’t even better than average, but it didn’t stand up to the best days that people have. I kind of wish I had more of Archie Goodwin’s batting average, where a higher proportion of what he worked on in those years of his life survives.

SIXTH QUESTIONER: You mentioned Geoff Johns’ Earthman story … I wonder if you were surprised by the fact that he was such a major character.

LEVITZ: Well, I thought it was a way to introduce the issue of xenophobia to the main storyline and have someone grow out of it. One of the wiseass lines about writing is the argument, there are really only two stories: a good man turns bad and a bad man turns good. I don’t really buy that, but it still is one of the fundamental themes, so that being able to take someone who was fundamentally, catastrophically wrong and take him past his racism seemed to be a potentially important story to do.

And that, in part, was why the payoff with the Shadow Lass process is a wonderful body of research that’s been done by a Harvard professor on a concept called “implicit bias,” and what she does is she gives you these little tests: “Here’s a list of 20 things, two columns. Check off all the things you associate with boys, column A; the girls, column B.” Oh, okay, that’s going to be 11 seconds.

“Now check all the boxes of things that historically were associated with boys, but check then under girls and vice versa.” That took 25 seconds.

It should take the same amount of time, same thing when you do it on a racial issue. And she uses this testing method to really show you, in fact, to reveal your built-in biases. And society is so powerful in how it socializes us, that often people take in some society’s biases against their own group, associated negative qualities unfairly within their own racial or ethnic group. The one thing that she’s found that statistically predicts lack of bias is dating across the racial borders. It doesn’t matter how damned enlightened you are as a human being, you probably still demonstrate some of the same bias. But if you’ve gotten to the point that your wife or someone you’ve been romantically involved with is someone of another group, that seems to break down.

SEVENTH QUESTIONER: You mentioned earlier the cast of the Legion being so large earlier, which is one of the things that drew me to the book as a young child, and I was wondering if you could say a little bit how you went about, or even how to go about, shining the spotlight on certain characters. Some of them come, some of them go—it’s all been a very rotating cast in the Legion of Super-Heroes.

LEVITZ: Well, it is, I think, one of the fundamental strengths of the book, the fact that we can screw with their different lives and have more change and more transition than you can have in many titles. For instance, it’s strongly challenging to write a book like Superman, where you just sort of know Superman and Lois will be alive at the end of the book, so how do we show change? How do we show development? I keep a notebook that just keeps getting rewritten, where I last saw the characters, and you go through sort of like, “Hey, used them a lot lately, used them a lot lately … hmm, haven’t done anything to him in a while. Maybe we

Levitz’s 31st Century Two Levitz-written issues: (top) Legion: Secret Origin #1 (Dec. 2011). Cover by Tom Feister. (bottom) LSH #6 (Apr. 2012), featuring Dragonwing. Cover by Chris Sprouse and Karl Story.

TM & © DC Comics.

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The ’80s Team Reunited Keith Giffen rejoined Paul Levitz for a few issues beginning with Legion of Super-Heroes #17 (Feb. 2013).

Shown here is #17’s first page, featuring Phantom Girl, inked

by Scott Koblish.

TM & © DC Comics.

should try to remember him.” It’s never a fair balance, but try to work your way around the room.

EIGHTH QUESTIONER: There’s never really been a bad Legion book— LEVITZ: Really? If you come downstairs, I can find you a few [audience chuckles] and I’ll watch you read them and I’ll watch the pain. [audience laughs] EIGHTH MALE QUESTIONER: —but for me, Legion has always been a fun book. Every incarnation of the Legion, I’ve enjoyed. There’s always new characters.

Do you have any upcoming new characters, any that you think will really be a big player in the book?

LEVITZ: I think I’ve got a lot to work with at the moment. There’s a couple of new characters—Mwindaji and Otaki—who show up, and they’re around for a storyline or two, so we see where they go from here.

There’s a lot of stuff there. I’ve gotta mine that for a while. There’s a new twist on some of the old villains and things coming, too. That should be fun as well.

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NINTH QUESTIONER: Is there any chance that the Clark Kent version of Superboy returning to the Legion timeline at all?

LEVITZ: Not for a while. I mean, I’m sure he will eventually, but Grant’s [Morrison] just done so much work altering that character [in the New 52’s Action Comics] that I think it’s a difficult time to play with him in The Legion.

TENTH MALE QUESTIONER: When it comes to things like character deaths or turning Laurel Kent into a Manhunter, is that kind of thing handed down from editorial, or do you get an opportunity to say, “Well, we can use this character,” or, “We can kill off this guy.”

LEVITZ: It’s depended over the years, obviously, when many different people have run DC through that time in many different circumstances. Generally speaking, the more valuable to the company that a character is, the higher up the food chain he goes. So, if you’re affecting someone who has been a movie, has been a TV show, has been a licensed toy, you need seven signatures. If you’re doing something to someone who nobody’s ever heard of outside your title, maybe you need one signature…

ELEVENTH QUESTIONER: If I understand correctly, the corporate structure that you’re working under now, you’re kind of over a lot of these guys, and yet you’re working for them.

LEVITZ: I’m not over nobody no more. I’m hired help right now. But for much of my career, I was part of the senior staff of the company.

ELEVENTH QUESTIONER [continued]: Okay, but it’s just kind of the—for lack of a better word—schizophrenia of being there, and then having to say, “I have to announce to the editor…”

LEVITZ: Absolutely. It all comes out of the pulp business—you know, the pulps of the 1920s and 1930s, traditionally. They would say, [to Michael] “Mike, you know, it’s five bucks a week editing Batman. Oh, you need ten bucks to eat? Doesn’t Rose have a job? All right, then, every week, you’ll sell me a Superman story. You’ll freelance for me. By the way, I’m not making a decent living, either, so every week I’m going to be selling you one of those Batman stories because I could also use the five bucks.”

And that was really the tradition of the business for decades, much less so today than in the years I was growing up. It was occasionally weird.

TWELFTH QUESTIONER: You and Jenette Kahn changed how people are paid in the industry. I’d love to hear—I know we’re about out of time, but any comments you had on just how, what went on there.

LEVITZ: Oh, it was a combination of things. We did some stuff and we were lucky enough to be running the company in the years when the industry was improving— maybe partly our doing, maybe partly dumb luck— so over a period of time, we were able to improve what people were making to the point where people didn’t need to be moonlighting to make a living. Assistant editors are still pretty badly paid, but real, full editors make a decent living these days; lots more decently paid staff on the whole, purportedly, than there were when I was a kid when pretty much everybody needed a second job. And partly, I think we worked really hard to have the roles of being a freelancer and editors separated, and both of us had different concerns and feelings about the issue, somebody being a writer and editor on their own material. But in the end, we had both come to the conclusion that was not the best way to do comics and moved away from it.

EURY: I’d like to add that in the current issue of BACK ISSUE [#57], there’s a lengthy interview with Jenette

Kahn that was conducted by Bob Greenberger. It’s available at the TwoMorrows booth. At least I hope it is.

LEVITZ: A really good issue.

EURY: It’s a fabulous issue, thank you. I’m very pleased with it.

One final question…

THIRTEENTH QUESTIONER: This is more of a comment than anything else. When Michael asked you earlier what you felt you brought to the table, you know, to throw modesty aside. As a reader who’s been around since Dave Cockrum was doing the artwork—so that tells you how long I’ve been a Legion fan—your dialogue and interplay between the characters is better than anybody who’s writing, except for maybe Chris Claremont. But the beautiful part about it is, you finish up a storyline. [audience laughs and applauds] LEVITZ: If you want to list the ones I’ve left hanging, or that I’ve still got hanging out there—there’s a few—but yes. Chris is a dear friend, and I do think I have a better batting average about cleaning up after myself that way, but I think he’s certainly a better dialogue writer than I am.

THIRTEENTH QUESTIONER [continued]: The final part of the question is, is there any story that you’ve really wanted to tell with the Legion that you never got to tell, and maybe like Jim Shooter, you’ll finally get to tell that story one day?

LEVITZ: There’s stuff left to do. I wouldn’t still be playing with the characters if I didn’t think there were tales to tell. I’ve never been the kind of writer who had a big book of ideas scribbled there of things I want to do.

But their lives are rich lives as characters, there are more stories to tell of them, so I’d like to get to do some of that. I’m not one of the great dialogue guys of this business, so I try reading some of it aloud one of these days. There were moments, but I’m a plot guy.

I’ll hold my plotting up against pretty much anyone in the business. But I’d gotten in a discussion with one of

the Warner execs at one point. He was trying to talk me into doing some film writing. I was like, “Um, it’s just not going to be my medium. I’m just not good enough with dialogue to be a spoken dialogue guy.”

I don’t think that’s an issue with modesty. We need to look at the fact that you can remember the “Darkness” story as my prime contribution, and that, fundamentally, was a plot thing. It was a melodramatic moment that you remember—the planet turning into Darkseid’s face, you remember the complexity of the servants. It’s not “the line” you remember. Like, “It’s an Imaginary Story … aren’t they all?” [audience chuckles] That’s a quality of writing as pure writing that Alan Moore can do, one he’s done many, many times—I ain’t never gonna have that, so I respect guys like Alan, Alan and Neil Gaiman, who have that level of brilliant command of the language.

Levitz’s Latest (right) Detail from the Ken Lashley cover of Earth-2 #15.1: Desaad (Sept.

2013), featuring Power Girl and the Huntress and written

by Paul, with Yildiray Cinar interior art. (left) Giffen/Milgrom cover art intended for LSH #19 but scrapped when Giffen left the title.

BACK ISSUE editor-in-chief MICHAEL”EDITOR BOY” EURY is a former editor of DC’s Legion of Super-Heroes and was fundamental in the development of Legionnaires and other LSH spin-offs. He currently resides in the Bottle City of Kandor.

Special thanks to Chris Sprouse for the caricature, which he drew in 1991.

Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

TM & © DC Comics.

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Welcome to the 2980s Some of the many highlights in Legion lore published during the 1980s. (this page, left to right) Superboy says goodbye in Legion of Super-Heroes #259 (Jan. 1980; cover by Dick Giordano); Superboy returns in Legion #280 (Oct. 1981, cover by George Pérez); and Darkseid is revealed as the menace behind “The Great Darkness Saga” in Legion #294 (Dec. 1982, cover by Keith Giffen and Larry Mahlstedt). (opposite, left to right) DC’s second bestselling title becomes two: the deluxe-format Legion of Super-Heroes #1 (Aug. 1984, cover by Giffen and Mahlstedt) and the standard-format Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes #314 (Aug. 1984, cover by Terry Shoemaker and Giordano); and Legion #38 (Sept. 1987, cover by Bill Sienkiewicz), featuring the conclusion of the “Pocket Universe” Superboy saga.

TM & © DC Comics.

The decade known as the 1980s began with a monumental event for Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes. The January 1980 issue (#259) of the long-running series was retitled Legion of Super-Heroes, displacing Superboy from the title in which he’d been starring since 1949.

The explanation was that too many trips to the future had eroded the post–hypnotic suggestion that prevented Superboy from remembering details of his future. As a result, the Legion was forced to expel Superboy from its ranks.

THE GERRY CONWAY ERA At the time of Superboy’s departure, the title was edited by Jack C. Harris and written by seasoned scribe Gerry Conway. “I had a fairly good relationship with Paul Levitz and Paul had been the Legion guy for a number of years,” Conway says, suggesting Levitz recommended him. After a handful of stories, Conway had become the regular writer beginning with Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #252 (June 1979).

Conway had been writing Justice League of America for several years, so he seemed the logical choice to take on another team book. “From my point of view, I just enjoyed writing groups,” he says. “I enjoyed the natural potential for conflict and the drama a group book can offer.”

According to Conway, there’s almost an inherent conflict in having Superboy— a resident of DC’s past—appear side-by-side with a team of the 30th Century: “Superboy, whatever you want to say about his adventures in the Legion, when you come right down to it, he’s part of history rather than events that are occurring right now because he is from the past. Our past, but appearing in the future. So it’s kind of bizarre.”

The Conway-suggested Superboy departure from the Legion may have been a move to create a more unified DC Universe. “The notion was, they wanted to try to integrate these characters in a way that their stories were ongoing and there was some sense of consequence between events,” he says. “That becomes difficult when you’re writing a character who appears in more than one title and may even have his or her own series.

So I think the notion was that we really wanted to focus on characters who were not appearing elsewhere or didn’t have stories that we already knew.”

The Boy of Steel would then relaunch his own title [see article beginning on page 17], featuring his adventures in 20th-Century Smallville, while the super-teens of the future embarked on a new series of adventures that would eventually make them one of the DC Comics’ bestselling titles of the 1980s.

50 • BACK ISSUE • Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

by

Philip “Interview Lad” Schweier

“While I always loved the Neal Adams stuff, I enjoyed working TEEN BEAT Conway credits the Legion as an influence of his early career. Jim Shooter with the artists who were more cartoony,” says Conway. “[‘Cartoony’ was a teenager when he began writing Legion stories for Adventure is] probably the wrong word to use because it implies humor, but it’s Comics in 1966. “Shooter is my age, maybe a few months older, maybe a larger-than-life, detached-from-realism approach to storytelling, and I think that’s what somebody like Joe Staton has. He brings that a year older at the most,” says Conway. “He was writing Legion at to the table and it’s something I really enjoyed working on.” the age of 13, and I remember reading in some letters column Jimmy Janes followed Staton as the regular artist that this guy was writing these stories, and these were beginning with Legion of Super-Heroes #263 (May stories I was particularly excited by. Some pretty classic 1980). However, juggling the many characters stuff he’d been doing, with some emotion and feeling. proved a challenge, especially with the three-issue You never got that in a DC comic unless it was miniseries Secrets of the Legion of Super-Heroes written by Bob Kanigher. But Shooter managed to thrown into the mix, and the main Legion book get this sense that the story he was telling was eventually fell behind schedule. about people whose lives were actually in danger, A highpoint of Conway’s run on the Legion was people you could care about. I really liked that.” the Dark Man saga (Legion of Super-Heroes #270–273, To the teenage Conway, the Legionnaires were Dec. 1980–Mar. 1981), in which a mysterious evil young people. “[It was] the only real teen book at the mastermind manipulates the villainous Fatal Five. “The time, other than The X-Men, but you never got the idea of a mysterious figure in the background, the sense that the X-Men were actually teenagers. They Dark Man, that’s a trope that I used in a lot of stories seemed more like young adults. The Legion seemed gerry conway over the years,” says Conway. “It didn’t necessarily like kids, and that was because Shooter was a kid mean I had something in mind when I started it. and he was writing the way a kid would write.”

When Conway’s tenure as Legion writer began, Joe Staton was the Sometimes I would force myself into a crisis situation that I would artist on deck. Staton was no stranger to the Legion, having inked several ultimately have to deal with. I would create a mastermind behind the issues of the short-lived Karate Kid series published in the late 1970s. scenes, and that would allow me to build up some suspense or tension “I loved working with Joe,” says Conway. “He was one of these in the stories. And in the process, I would figure out who it was.”

Conway says that when he started on the Legion, Levitz gave him great cartoony artists that is able to convey emotion and drama.

I always liked the way his stuff ended up looking; it looked great to me.” a binder full of his notes about the characters and their storylines.

Conway believes there was a kind of division between artists “It was huge, at least 100 pages, maybe more, of very detailed whose work was more realistic, such as Neal Adams, and those whose material that Paul had extrapolated from the stories he had done, work was more cartoonish, such as Staton or Steve Ditko, the latter and that he intended to do himself in the future. It’s wonderful as a of whom drew Legion of Super-Heroes #268, 272, 274, and 276 writer to be coming onto a book and have that kind of material thrown in your lap. It’s terrific.”

(Oct. 1980, Feb. 1981, Apr. 1981, and June 1981).

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Superboy’s Pal, Jimmy Janes Janes’ stint on LSH was short but sweet.

Original cover art to Legion #270 (Dec. 1980), penciled

by Janes and inked

by Dick Giordano, courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com).

TM & © DC Comics.

The Dark Man is later revealed to be Brainiac 5, his 30th-Century intellect turned to evil purposes, building on ideas from the Paul Levitz run. “Because Paul had given me that material, it played out naturally for it to be Brainiac 5, and that was the direction I went.”

Conway adds, “Where you get the ideas almost doesn’t matter as much as what you do with them.

And hopefully I explored some of the ideas fairly well.”

Beginning with Legion of Super-Heroes #277 (July 1981), Mike W. Barr took over editorship of the title.

This issue would also mark Conway’s final contribution to the Legion canon, the four-part Reflecto saga, in which he explored another mysterious figure whose roots lay in the Legion of the 1960s.

Reflecto first appeared in Adventure Comics #354 (Mar. 1967), in which he is seen as a memorial figure when Superman visited the adult Legion in the 30th Century. It wouldn’t be until Legion of Super-Heroes #277 (July 1981) that Reflecto would make his Legion debut. Regretfully, the handwriting was already on the wall: Reflecto’s days were numbered.

Conway’s plot was fleshed out in script form by his longtime friend and collaborator, Roy Thomas.

Throughout the story there were allusions that he might actually be Ultra Boy, whom the Legion believed to be dead at the time. In the end—Legion of Super-Heroes #279 (Sept. 1981)—Reflecto turned out to be Superboy.

Conway left the Legion title officially as of Legion of Super-Heroes #278 (Aug. 1981). “At that time I was writing, like, five or six titles a month,” he says.

“Sometimes I was writing a couple of issues ahead, and you could never do the kind of stories we did back then today because everything is codified into a structural science for a year. That wasn’t how we operated back then.”

The New Teen Titans, launched in 1980, had become DC Comics’ bestselling title, and had become the standard against which other team books were measured. “What made Titans so strong and so commercial was the core characterization of that team,” says Conway, “that strong sense of continuity and the strong relationship of that team. I think that was what people at DC wanted to see happen with other teams.

So it became something of an unspoken mantra— at least it was understood—that that was the template.

And I agreed with that personally, that a team book should be about the relationships between the characters, otherwise, what are you actually writing? You’re just plugging characters into a plot.”

A Rocky Start Writer Gerry Conway brought soon-to-be-popular Legionnaire Blok into the series in Legion #272 (Feb. 1981). Cover by Janes and Giordano.

TM & © DC Comics.

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The Gang’s All Here Joe Staton drew The Legion for a while, including this double-page pinup—inked by Bob Smith—which ran in issue #280.

Original art courtesy of Heritage.

TM & © DC Comics.

Conway believes much of his work at the time was written under the frequency of fill-ins due to my then over-commitments. I wanted the pressure of a deadline, leading to uneven quality. “When you are to do a good long, uninterrupted run … and I’m thrilled it’s as doing a couple of group books,” he says, “it becomes difficult after a fondly remembered as I could have ever dreamed.” while to find enough variations in the storylines and techniques to Jimmy Janes left as of Legion of Super-Heroes #282 (Dec. 1981), make it work. So I don’t know that I was asked to go. Usually they were initially replaced by penciler Pat Broderick, joined by inker Bruce fairly happy with what I was doing because the bar was not set as high Patterson, but Broderick soon left to take over art chores on The Fury as it later became. I think I probably got to a point where I was tired or of Firestorm. Legion of Super-Heroes #290 (Aug. 1982) saw the debut had said as much as I could about the Legion at that point.” of Larry Mahlstedt, who would remain on the feature for the Conway departed to become the regular writer on next four years. both Batman and Detective Comics, and Roy Thomas Keith Giffen signed on as penciler, beginning with took over, fleshing out Conway’s plots. However, Legion of Super-Heroes #287 (May 1982). “I wanted it Thomas’ time on Legion lasted only a handful of since the day I walked into DC,” Giffen says, “for the issues. Thomas is well known for his interest in reason that I actively campaigned for any book—and superheroes of the Golden Age, so it’s easy to that is when I see an incredible amount of potential surmise that superheroes set in the 30th Century going to waste, either due to the interpretation or just wasn’t his type of material. visual representation or whatever, it just drives me According to Conway, Thomas took on a number crazy and then I want to get my hands on it. ‘We can of assignments at DC, filler material between the do this, we can do that. Look at all this cool stuff. Why books he genuinely wanted to do. “The things he aren’t you doing this?’ The Legion was rife with that.” probably wanted to do the most at DC just Giffen felt Levitz was writing some very interesting weren’t in the cards for him, which is kind tragic. stories with a lot of layers and working the characjoe staton I would have loved to seen Roy’s Captain Marvel. terization. “I didn’t think some of the artists that That and Justice Society, those were the books he were doing it back then were on the same page as most wanted to do in comics, period. Everything else was just filler.” Paul,” he says. “When you shift from the planet Bismoll to Rimbor and the background doesn’t shift, nothing’s different, there’s no stylistic PAUL LEVITZ RETURNS cue, no visual pop that you’re in a different place, you’re really letting Legion of Super-Heroes #284 (Feb. 1982) saw the return of Paul Levitz, down your writer, especially on a science-fiction book.” who had crafted many of the team’s most popular storylines in the What Giffen expressed to Levitz when he joined the book was that latter half of the 1970s. Levitz had been a big fan of the Legion growing Legion needed spectacle, a sense of wonder. “I was much more up, so he welcomed the opportunity to return to writing the team. concerned with the visual, the world-building, and how the characters According to Levitz, the glory of writing the Legion was the interrelated to one another,” Giffen says. “I encouraged Paul to work opportunity to do things that were real change. Many concepts of on what would be used in the 30th Century, and Paul was interested the DC Universe were beholden to long-term continuity, but the in what Marv [Wolfman] and George [Pérez] were doing [in New Legion exists in a continuity all its own, which opens the door to a Teen Titans], but people would say we were Marvelizing the books. great deal more creative freedom.

We didn’t look at it that way. We looked at it as trying to make the Levitz says, “I really wanted to make up for what I felt were the characters as interesting as humanly possible, filtered through our shortcomings of my first run,” which ran from Superboy and the perception, of course.”

Legion of Super-Heroes #225–251 (Mar. 1975–May 1979). “Principally Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

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A Horse is a Horse…

Another Legion artist of the 1980s was Pat Broderick, inked here by Bruce Patterson.

Original page from LSH #285 (Mar. 1982).

Courtesy of Anthony Snyder (www.anthonyscomicbookart.com).

TM & © DC Comics.

TM & © DC Comics.

The result was the five-part “Great Darkness Saga” (Legion of Super-Heroes #290–294, Aug.–Dec. 1982), which helped restore Darkseid as one of the preeminent villains of the DC Universe.

“I’m a great fan of Jack Kirby’s work, and particularly of his groundbreaking New Gods material,” says Levitz. “So I took the opportunity to imagine Darkseid living on into the next millennium, since he was, after all, a god. When Keith came on board, as he was a great Kirby fan, too, it was easy to agree on how to make this into a major story.”

The scope of the story encompasses virtually every living past and present Legionnaire up to that time, as well as most of the team’s 30th-Century allies, such as the Legion of Substitute Heroes, the Wanderers, and the Heroes of Lallor. The heroes battle a quartet of mysterious beings, all whom serve a dark “Master.”

After absorbing the powers of Mordru the Merciless and the Time Trapper—arguably two of the Legion’s most powerful foes—the master is revealed to be the Darkseid, the 20th-Century despot of Apokolips.

Darkseid then transposes Mon-El’s homeworld, Daxam, with Apokolips. Doing so endows its billions of inhabitants with abilities that match those of Superboy. They are all devoted to serving the dark god.

The leaders of the Sorcerer’s World attempt to cast a spell to help defeat Darkseid, and in doing so conjure a human child that ages at an accelerated rate. The child is later revealed to be the reincarnation of Darkseid’s nemesis Highfather. Distracted in battle, Darkseid’s mental control over the Daxamites loosens. Unable to win against an entire world of superpowered beings, Darkseid concedes defeat and vanishes. He leaves the Another factor that led to Giffen Legionnaires with the “curse of wanting The Legion was that nobody darkness” which will destroy them else really wanted the book: “There’s from within, promising “that which something like, 36 main characters. is purest of you shall be the first to go.”

I just thought the way Paul was The curse manifested itself a telling the stories, I’d never get bored keith giffen couple of years later (Legion of because by the time I’d get really Super-Heroes Annual #3, 1984) when tired of Ultra Boy, he’d move on to Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl are maybe Phantom Girl. So there’s a lot of things about about to deliver their first child on the hospital satellite the Legion that appeal to me on a basic level.”

Medicus One. The satellite is momentarily shrouded in “THE GREAT DARKNESS SAGA” darkness during the delivery, and Saturn Girl gives birth As the Levitz/Giffen era continued, the writer had to a healthy baby boy. She is puzzled. As a telepath, she an ambitious story in mind, one he knew would often sensed two brain patterns during her pregnancy, as please his collaborator. During his first run on The twins are very common on Lightning Lad’s homeworld.

Legion, Levitz had very positive responses to his Unknown to anyone, there was a second child.

Earthwar story (Legion of Super-Heroes #241–245, During the delivery, Darkseid secretly kidnapped the July–Nov. 1978), which had been one of the infant and used his power to radically transform the longest stories done at DC to that time. “I wanted child and send him years into the past, where he to try to replicate that experience, with an artist would encounter the Legion as Validus, unrecognized who could do the full run of the stories,” Levitz by his parents or anyone else. Thus, Darkseid declares says. “I’m glad we succeeded.” triumphantly that his curse is fulfilled.

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In a prior interview, Levitz and Giffen explained where the idea for Validus to be the son of Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl originated. In BACK ISSUE #22 (May 2007), Levitz stated, “It was one of the longtime Legion fans in one of the fan magazines who suggested the idea that since it isn’t natural that lightning from the brain, he must be their kid.”

Giffen added, “Legion fandom back then was very small and very vocal. And Paul and I had a very good relationship with Legion fandom. We would include them in certain aspects of the book, making them feel appreciated. That doesn’t mean we bled anything off of them, it was just that the fans were just so intense and just so ‘out there’ that not to enjoy this, and not to make this part of the creative process in terms of just getting that instant response … This was before the Internet and every so often we’d go, ‘You know what? Maybe we should capitalize on this,’ and I think Validus was one. God, it was a fun time to be doing the Legion.”

1984 As Legion of Super-Heroes approached its milestone 300th issue, Karen Berger took over as editor.

Meanwhile, within the book itself, a budding romance grew between Colossal Boy and Shrinking Violet.

However, when Violet’s long-term beau Duplicate Boy confronted her, he realized the girl he knew as Violet was an imposter. The real Shrinking Violet had been kidnapped by radicals from her native world, Imsk.

Taking time out to celebrate its 300th issue, the Legion starred in a story that spanned the entire history of the team. Not only were the Legion’s various periods portrayed, they were drawn by their original, era-appropriate artists, such as Curt Swan on the 1960s version and Dave Cockrum on the early-1970s era.

In Legion of Super-Heroes #304–305 (Oct.–Nov. 1983), Brainiac 5 and Chameleon Boy were able to rescue the real Violet and expose the fraud. The bogus Violet was actually a Durlan actress named Yera. However, the passion between Colossal Boy and Yera was genuine, and he remained with her despite her initial deception.

In the aftermath of the Great Darkness Saga, the White Witch was inducted into the Legion, while Light Lass decided to quit. Also leaving were Karate Kid and Princess Projectra, whose wedding was featured in Legion Annual #2 (1983). Afterward Jeckie ascended the throne of her homeworld, becoming Queen Projectra of Orando, and she and Karate Kid became reserve members of the Legion.

Beginning the August 1984 cover-dated issues, DC Comics retitled its two bestselling books—Legion and New Teen Titans—as “Tales of…,” while launching new ongoing series starring each team using higherquality Baxter paper and better printing. These books retailed at $1.25 and were available only through the direct market or by subscription.

The plan was for the Baxter book and the regular ongoing series to run stories concurrently for one year.

After 12 months, the Baxter stories would be reprinted in the Tales of series.

Naturally, this added significantly to the workload of the creative team. “I coordinated closely with Karen Berger on the additional stories,” says Levitz. “I wrote some, plotted others, and read and commented on all the work.”

Mindy Newell, new to the comic-book industry at the time, was chosen by Levitz to script his plots for the Tales of series, allowing the novice writer to cut her teeth on the Legion and develop her skills as a writer.

Artist Steve Lightle hadn’t been drawing comics professionally for very long when editor Karen Berger asked if he would be interested in drawing The Legion.

He had contributed to a few issues of New Talent Showcase and a single issue of Batman and the Outsiders. “Keeping in mind that DC’s top-selling titles were The New Teen Titans and Legion of Super-Heroes, this was monumental!” he says.

Lightle cites his interest in the TV show Lost in Space, as well as the fact that America was in the midst of a “space race” with the Soviet Union, for his appreciation of the Legion’s futuristic setting. “We lived and breathed outer space in the mid-’60s,” he says.

There seemed to be a sense of teeming possibilities just beyond Earth’s atmosphere, which helped set the stage for the Legion of Super-Heroes.

According to Lightle, “Back when I was in first grade, one of my classmates told me about the Legion. He did such an incredible job of arousing my interest in the series and its unusual characters that I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the comics. I remember pretending that I was Brainiac 5 as I made my way home from school that day. The only thing that seemed odd to me was that these characters should have as much in common as they did. At first, I latched

Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

The Curse Darkseid’s big “bwah-ha-ha” moment, from Legion of SuperHeroes Annual #2 (1986). Original art page by Giffen and Mahlsted, courtesy of Heritage.

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onto the more unusual-looking Legionnaires, Chameleon Boy and stories from the Baxter series—Shoemaker left following Tales of the Brainiac 5, because they looked like they could be from other planets.” Legion of Super-Heroes #319 (Jan. 1985).

Berger explained to Lightle that there would be an audition According to an interview with Glen Cadigan for The and that other artists would also be trying out for the book.

Legion Companion (TwoMorrows, 2003), Shoemaker was “That seemed reasonable to me, and I was excited for upset that some of his artwork was modified prior the opportunity,” he says. “My audition was to draw to publication without his knowledge. “They had three pages from an unpublished Paul Levitz plot. changed some faces on some of my characters,” he It was called ‘Omen and the Prophet,’ and it featured told Cadigan. “I took it too personally … and I quit.” several familiar characters, as well as a couple of Replacing him was Dan Jurgens, who had cut his new antagonists that needed to be designed. teeth working on The Warlord, created by former “Sadly, I failed to secure the job,” Lightle says.

Legion artist Mike Grell. Both Shoemaker and Jurgens “Ms. Berger was very kind to explain that the were provided layouts by Giffen, who had intended decision was in no way a judgment on the quality of to step away from The Legion with the debut of the my work, but was based on the belief that my work Baxter book. However, he was convinced to stick was too dissimilar to that of Keith Giffen.” Instead, around through the Baxter book’s first story arc, Terry Shoemaker was chosen for Tales of the Legion which featured the death of Karate Kid. steve lightle of Super-Heroes.

“The decision to kill him off came when I was Courtesy kansascitycomics.com.

Shoemaker, like Newell, was also a newcomer leaving The Legion,” says Giffen, “just going into to comics, and took over art chores beginning Tales of the Legion of the Baxter book. His death was one of the conditions for me staying Super-Heroes #314 (Aug. 1984), inked by Karl Kesel. Though originally on the book at all. If they had told me, ‘No, we’re not going to kill contracted for 12 issues—until the series would begin reprinting him,’ I would have left The Legion four or five issues earlier.”

Number Two with a DC Bullet Writer Paul Levitz and artist Keith Giffen (with inker Larry Mahlstedt) made Legion of Super-Heroes DC’s second bestselling title in the early 1980s, after New Teen Titans. Here are (right) the cover to #289 (July 1982), penciled and inked by Keith; and (left) original art to a Lightning Lad/Lightning Lord battle from #301, courtesy of Anthony Snyder.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Artistic Jam Chaykin, Swan, Oksner, Simonson, Kane, Orlando, Duursema, Cullins, Colan, Bender—just a few of the many artists who contributed to the star-studded cover of Legion of Super-Heroes #300 (June 1983).

TM & © DC Comics.

For Giffen, the death of Karate Kid was a long time coming: “Something about the Kid just rubbed me the wrong way across the board. Still does. I guess everybody has a character—maybe it’s a chemical reaction in your head—but you just don’t like the character for whatever reason.

“I always tried to keep in mind that maybe to me the character is stupid and the most wretched character ever, even that character has fans,” Giffen says. “Somehow, with Karate Kid, he had to die. I can’t think of a single comic-book character that I reacted to as negatively as Karate Kid.” Levitz states, “Just as any police force, fire department, or military force has casualties, I always felt it was important for the Legion to have some to show its risk level. Once we made the decision who would die, the story was naturally shaped a bit around that.”

In the story, the Legion of Super-Villains invaded Princess Projectra’s homeworld of Orando, where Nemesis Kid kills Karate Kid in personal combat. Projectra, claiming royal privilege, executes her husband’s murderer even though it violates Legion code. She then resigns from the Legion, coinciding with Giffen’s official departure from the Legion following the conclusion of Legion of Super-Heroes #5 (Dec. 1984).

However, his departure had little to do with Karate Kid. “The poster was what killed me,” he says, referring to a poster published

by DC in 1984.

“To this day, I don’t know what possessed me to think, ‘Let’s do a poster featuring every single character that ever appeared in the Legion,’” Giffen admits. “But by the time I was done with it, I was fried. I just didn’t want to do it anymore. I’d stayed much longer than I should have. In doing that poster something broke in my head.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to; it was that I couldn’t. I’d go and look at the page and sort of veg out. I was incapable of doing any more good, and that’s when it’s time to leave.

“Paul got Steve Lightle,” Giffen adds. “He got the better end of the deal as far as I’m concerned.”

OF LIGHTLE AND LEGIONNAIRES Steve Lightle came aboard the book beginning with Legion of SuperHeroes #3, working from layouts provided by Giffen. Since his tryout for the Legion, he had busied himself with an issue or two of World’s Finest Comics before getting another offer from Berger.

“She asked if I’d be interested in doing the Legion book, but I just assumed that she was looking for a fill-in, since my earlier tryout hadn’t gone so well. I said that ‘I’d love to, but…,” and she explained that she was actually offering me the main title. I was a little bit stunned, but not too stunned to accept the offer!”

Fortunately, as a longtime fan, Lightle knew exactly what he was getting into: “Hey, it’s called the Legion—I always thought that it should be a huge organization. That aspect of the series is part of the appeal,” he says. “I’m not saying that I don’t understand how daunting a task it can seem. There are surely easier books to draw. The Legion requires a certain type of artist—a glutton for punishment.”

When Lightle started (Legion of Super-Heroes #3, Oct. 1984), the series was already in a bad situation. “The book was seriously behind schedule by two or three issues and everyone knew that there would have to be fill-in artists brought in to get the book out of a pretty deep hole. When I told Paul and Karen that I was concerned about keeping up with the deadlines, Paul said that The Legion was ideally suited to multiple artists and that any time that I needed a break they’d simply plug in a guest artist.”

Lightle says that many people assumed that Keith Giffen was more involved with Steve’s early issues than he really was. As with Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes, Giffen provided breakdowns of the pages, but that involvement quickly diminished as he stepped away from the book.

“It was kind of humorous to read fan letters that commented on the quality of the art, while complimenting Keith on his developing artistic skills,” Lightle says.

Lightle recalls bringing new characters and story ideas to Levitz, and the thrill of developing those ideas with him: “I’ll always be thankful that, at that time, Paul was very open to my creative input. Sometimes it worked out well, such as the Mon-El story, ‘Back Home in Hell’ (Legion of Super-Heroes #23, June 1986), or moving Polar Boy from the Substitute Legion to the official team. Other times the story ideas were not as universally loved—like my attempt to honor Val (Karate Kid) Armorr’s legend by bringing in a new Karate Kid. But it was always exciting for me and always a sincere effort. If anything, I think that sincerity is what made my contribution those issues memorable.

“There were, of course, dramatic moments that stick in people’s minds,” he says, citing the death of Karate Kid and the introduction of Tellus and Quislet. “I tend to remember the little character bits— like Shadow Lass casually growing her hair out from a black skullcap to a shaggy mane without any mention of it in dialogue. I remember trying to make every moment count on a personal level. If a character had only three panels in an issue, I tried to say something about that character’s individuality in those panels.”

According to Lightle, he’s always been a bit surprised to find that people do seem to remember his time on The Legion: “I know that I Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

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Mirror, Mirror Adventure Comics digest #500 (June 1983) featured this clever front/ back cover variation by Giffen and Mahlstedt.

Original front cover art courtesy of Aidan Lacy.

came to the series with a great deal of admiration and respect for many of the creative people who had worked on the book before me. There was a genuine love for the characters and their history.”

Lightle loved researching the characters and their various histories. Helping him were two very valuable resources. “A good friend of mine was the proud owner of a complete Legion of Super-Heroes collection which he would allow me to reference. There was also a large volume of photocopied pages that we referred to as the Legion Bible.”

The Legion Bible was an incredible reference tool, containing a list and description of all the noteworthy characters and their home planets, including comments from creators such as Jim Shooter and Paul Levitz on major events and Legion minutiae. “Of course, that was back when the Legion had a single, coherent history,” Lightle adds.

NEW BLOOD Nevertheless, throughout the 1980s, there seemed to be more new names in the pages of Legion of SuperHeroes than ever before, and not just in terms of creative personnel. New members were added with a growing frequency, beginning with a new Invisible Kid in the pages of Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #1 (1982).

“Invisible Kid II was an effort to diversify the human mix in the Legion,” says Levitz. “I thought it would be fun to make him a Francophone, as a comment on the massive efforts the French make to preserve their language in their own country and their former colonies. The

TM & © DC Comics.

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irony of making a man of color ‘invisible’ a la Ralph Ellison, didn’t occur to me consciously until well after.”

Comet Queen, who first appeared in Legion of Super-Heroes #304 (Oct. 1983), was intended as a comic-relief character, capturing the Valley Girl-speak of the early/mid-1980s. “She managed to take on a life of her own and last far longer than I ever expected,” comments Levitz.

Two other Legion recruits—Quislet and Tellus— were more alien in design. “In a far future, wouldn’t there be more alien types in the mix?” suggests Levitz.

Their creation started with the realization that the United Planets was inhabited by many sentient beings other than bipedal humans. As a Legion reader, Lightle had noticed that the Legion was having ever-increasing dealings with lifeforms that were decidedly non-humanoid.

“Pat Broderick would draw these background characters that looked like giant lobsters or snails,” recalls Lightle.

“It was very obvious that the universe the Legion inhabited did not discriminate on the basis of species.

So when Paul told me that he wanted to introduce new blood into the Legion, I made the argument that it was about time that the team became more diverse.

Fortunately, Paul was open to the idea, and more or less gave me his blessing to go off and create the Legion’s first non-humanoid members.

“I had this idea that the characters should have appearances and powers suggested by their environments,” continues Lightle. “My first thought was that these characters would probably not have a simian grip—no opposable thumbs. That suggested that they

Legion Poster of 1984

MEANWHILE…

“The poster is what killed me,” says Giffen of this character-saturated monster, inked by Mahlstedt, that led Keith to burn out on Legion. Of course, he got over it…

had to have an alternative way to reliably manipulate their surroundings.”

With that idea in mind, Lightle’s original thought on Quislet was that he would literally shape his surroundings to his needs: “Once I started thinking that way, I realized that mobility and even a protective anatomy might be unnecessary for a creature like this. Quislet (unnamed at this point) began to take shape as a small, soft collection of sensory and reproductive organs.

He wasn’t a pretty sight, let me tell you. I knew that I wanted him to cast his spirit into inanimate objects and that he would manipulate these objects to suit his every need.”

Quislet’s actual appearance was never fully revealed. He was depicted as a small, football-sized spacecraft, and possessed the ability to inhabit and manipulate objects for a limited time. “Somewhere along the way,” says Lightle, “I realized that Legion readers might have a very hard time relating to an entity that looked so inhuman, and so I decided to encase him in a shiny little flying life-support unit.

After all, it stood to reason that someone this alien probably couldn’t survive in our unfiltered environment.”

When Lightle submitted his creation to Karen Berger and Paul Levitz, he suggested the name Dybbuk, a name drawn from Hebrew folklore that referred to a mischievous spirit that attaches and inhabits. While the name may have suggested his personality and style, both Berger and Levitz disliked it, possibly because it also had connotations of demonic possession. “Paul

TM & © DC Comics.

TM & © DC Comics.

One aspect of the Legion is that it functions fairly independently from the rest of the DC Universe. While there may have been continuity concerns arising from various other characters intersecting throughout the 20th-Century DC Universe, the Legion had its own little corner in the 30th Century from which it rarely strayed.

However, because time travel is a common theme in science fiction, it was inevitable that members of the Legion might encounter present-day heroes.

Perhaps the first crossover of the 1980s was alongside Batman in The Brave and Bold (B&B) #179 (Oct. 1981). “Time-Bomb with the Thousand-Year Fuse” was written by Martin Pasko, with art by Ernie Colón and Mike DeCarlo. The Caped Crusader later teamed with solo Legionnaire Karate Kid in B&B #198 (May 1983).

The Legion guest-starred opposite Superman in DC Comics Presents #43 (Mar. 1982) in a story written by Paul Levitz and penciled by Curt Swan, who had drawn Legion adventures in the 1960s and later became recognized as THE Superman artist. The Legion and Superman—and Swan—would reunite once more in DC Comics Presents #80 (Apr. 1985).

DC Comics Presents #59 (July 1983) featured the Man of Steel teaming with the Legion of Substitute Heroes. Written and drawn by Levitz and Giffen, this may have led to the Legion of Substitute Heroes Special (July 1985), a very tongue-in-cheek story featuring a bunch of would-be heroes who hoped to someday become full-fledged Legionnaires [see BI #65]. Polar Boy eventually did graduate to Legionnaire status, while the other members of the team disbanded and went their separate ways.

The Legion also encountered another hero from the future (25th Century), Booster Gold, in the pages of his own book. Booster Gold #8–9 (Sept.–Oct. 1986) featured members of the Legion is a story written and penciled by Booster Gold creator and one-time Legion artist Dan Jurgens.

Brainiac 5, Chameleon Boy, and Ultra Boy travel to the 20th Century to investigate how Booster acquired his 30th-Century technology [see BI #67].

Finally, the August 1987 issues of Action Comics #591, Superman #8, Legion of Super-Heroes #37 and its follow-up, #38 (Sept. 1987), all intertwined to resolve what had become a DC continuity conundrum. When John Byrne completely revamped Superman in 1986, he did away with Superboy as part of the Man of Steel’s history. As a result, it threw the Legion’s existence into disarray. In a four-part story written by both Byrne and Levitz, this conflict was explained as a “Pocket Universe” of the Time Trapper, where a version of Superboy existed. After Superboy sacrificed himself as only a hero can, the Legion tearfully laid him to rest.

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offered the name Star-Worm, which I hated,” says Lightle, “and eventually we settled on another name that he suggested—Quislet.”

Around this time, according to Lightle, Levitz was intending to retire the three founding members—Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, and Saturn Girl—from active duty. Now married, Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl were living in semi-retirement as Legion reservists. Lightning Lass took over for her brother, and the creative team behind the Legion felt that Saturn Girl’s telepathic abilities had really served the group well in the past, so it was decided that one of the new members should be a telepath.

“I really didn’t want to just create a duplicate of Saturn Girl,” says Lightle.

“We did create a character called Mentalla, more or less as a red herring, to mislead readers into believing that Saturn Girl would be replaced by someone from her homeworld of Titan. Mentalla was visually inspired by my wife, Marianne, and she wore a redesign of Saturn Girl’s original green and yellow costume.”

Mentalla earned her place in Legion history, but it was Tellus that became the Legion’s new telepath. “Tellus was intended to be a very alien, very complex character,” says Lightle. “To this day I question whether it’s proper to use a masculine pronoun to describe him because Tellus probably doesn’t really fit neatly into human gender categories.”

Tellus comes from the planet Hykraius, which has an atmosphere consisting of liquid methane. “I gave him a long, muscular, finned tail for swimming.

Since the Hykraians spend their lives immersed in liquid methane seas, it seemed logical that they would not communicate through an audible language.” Lightle believed they might have a visual language, augmented by telepathy. “How would a visual language work in an aquatic environment?

I thought that the obvious answer would be through light, and I came up with a series of sensor nodules that would be attached to the face and body of the Hykraians. My intention was that we could suggest the language by showing a consistent series of color changes that would reflect Tellus’ emotional state. It was a simplified code that I hoped that the readers would learn to identify. Unfortunately, it must have been too complex for my co-workers because the colors stopped changing after Tellus’ first appearance.”

Another detail that changed is that originally Tellus had small, somewhat shriveled vestigial hind legs, unneeded in his home environment and used only for balance. “In 2011, Tellus somehow grew large, heavily muscled legs that would make the Hulk proud,” Lightle says with dismay. “The first of the Legion’s non-humanoid members has been rendered entirely mundane— a bipedal humanoid in the tradition of Blok, the Thing, or the Abomination.

It’s common for comic-book artists to change the appearance of characters, but this usually goes no further than a costume change.” But Lightle is very glad that the one thing that has remained unchanged about Tellus is that he is still portrayed as basically naive and honest.

Tellus and Quislet made their debut in Legion of Super-Heroes #14, alongside a couple of somewhat familiar faces. Polar Boy graduated from the Legion of Substitute Heroes, while Magnetic Kid joined the ranks as a potential replacement for his older brother, Cosmic Boy. The fifth recruit, Sensor Girl, also joined, shrouded in a great deal of mystery that was revealed after Lightle’s departure from the book.

FROM LIGHTLE TO LaROCQUE Lightle’s tenure came to a close with Legion of Super-Heroes #16 (Nov. 1985).

This occurred when the plan to feature guest artists to help maintain the book’s publishing schedule hit a snag. “I was being told that the readers wanted to see my work every issue and that they were becoming disappointed with issues that featured guest artists. I was a 24-year-old comic-book fan, working on my favorite series, and I really wanted to do my best work.

Unfortunately, I was feeling the pressure and had begun to suspect that rushing through 22 pages every three weeks was causing the quality of my artwork to suffer. I would look at a page and wonder if it was really the best storytelling and art that I was capable of, and with increasing frequency,

Calling All Legion Fans!

Two mid-’80s Legion house ads, for (top) the new 1984 series (art by Giffen and Mahlstedt) and (bottom) “a new beginning” in LSH #17 (art by LaRocque and Mahlstedt).

TM & © DC Comics.

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New Kids on the Block A changing membership kept the book fresh during the ’80s. Legion #14 (Sept. 1985): Can you name the five new members from this gorgeous Lightle/Mahlstedt/Anthony Tollin (colors) cover?

TM & © DC Comics.

I was feeling that the answer was no. At the same time, my editor was encouraging me to give less than 100 percent, and I was getting instruction on how to cut corners from company executives.”

In retrospect, Lightle feels he should have stood his ground and reminded them of the plan to use guest artists when necessary. “I certainly didn’t resign from the book because I was exhausted, burned out, or bored,” he says. “It was really very much the opposite. I had so much enthusiasm and was feeling that I was at the height of my creativity.

My collaboration with Paul Levitz was a source of great excitement. There were so many story ideas and characters that I wanted to develop on the book. But in the end, it wasn’t enough to be doing The Legion of Super-Heroes. I really wanted to do the best work that I could do.”

Lightle’s tenure on the Legion lasted approximately a year, ending with Legion #16. As with many fans given the opportunity to work on the Legion as professionals, he remained somewhat involved, contributing many covers for the run of the series.

Artist Greg LaRocque came aboard with Legion of Super-Heroes #15 (Oct. 1985). LaRocque had started his career with DC Comics in 1981, his first regular job being “OMAC,” a backup feature in The Warlord.

“It was Marvel that kept me busy over the next few years and the series work there was as much as I could handle at the time,” he says.

“I decided to leave Marvel for personal reasons, and the first person I called for work was Karen Berger. She handed me the next available Legion script, and the day I handed in the work she offered me the book.”

Though LaRocque mostly a Marvel fan in his younger days, Legion was one of the few DC titles he picked up regularly. “I am constantly amazed at Curt Swan’s work,” LaRocque says. “So being given the Legion assignment was a dream for me. Artistically, Swan established the Legion universe; anyone after is just following his lead.”

As the title progressed, the mystery surrounding Sensor Girl increased. Her powers hinted to readers as well as some members of the Legion themselves that she was a clone of Supergirl, which had been the original plan, according to The Legion Companion. However, Supergirl’s death in the pages of Crisis on the Infinite Earths made it impossible for her to be resurrected in the 30th Century. During a battle with the Fatal Five (now led by the Emerald Empress) in Legion #25–26 (Aug.–Sept. 1986), she was instead revealed to be former Legionnaire Princess Projectra, whose powers had been altered.

Beyond her initial ability to cast illusions, she now displayed enhanced senses and the ability to manipulate those of other beings.

Not one to ease up, Levitz followed the revelation with an ambitious four-issue story arc entitled “The Universo Project,” published in Legion of Super-Heroes #32–35 (Mar.–June 1987). In the story, longtime Legion foe Universo manages to radically influence the president of Earth, who then orders the Legion disbanded and places Earth under quarantine. Reservist Saturn Girl is instrumental in exposing Universo’s plot, and in the end returns to active duty.

The two Legion titles continued side-by-side until the final issue of Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes #354 (Dec. 1987). LaRocque, often inked by Mike DeCarlo, stepped down after Legion of SuperHeroes #48. (July 1988), when he was offered The Flash and the chance to work with writer William Messner-Loebs. “How could I turn that down? I’d done The Legion for quite a long run and I knew that Paul wanted to do another few stories with Keith Giffen, so it was an easy decision,” he says.

GIFFEN RETURNS, LEVITZ LEAVES Originally, Legion of Super-Heroes #50 (Sept. 1988) was intended to be Levitz’ swan-song as Legion writer, but he was convinced to stick around for another year. By now, he had a achieved an executive

position within DC Comics and the workload of writing Legion was cutting into the precious family time he could be spending with his two preschool-aged children.

Instead, that issue saw the return of Levitz’s long-term collaborator, Keith Giffen, and later, the Emerald Empress (Legion #57, Feb. 1989).

In the ensuing battle, Quislet’s containment shell was damaged and he was forced to return to his native dimension. He had instructed Wildfire on containment fields, enabling him to form a temporary corporeal body that eliminated his need for a containment suit until Quislet’s departure. However, without Quislet’s guidance, Wildfire soon returned to his familiar containment suit.

As the 1980s waned, such losses seemed out outweigh the Legion’s wins, culminating in Paul Levitz’ final storyline, “The Magic Wars,” (#60–63, May–Aug. 1989). In addition to the demise of Cosmic Boy’s brother, Magnetic Kid, science is pitted against the supernatural, and sorcery rises to displace technology. This radical upheaval left the creative field wide open for those who would follow Levitz in the Legion’s next era, while he moved on to be named publisher of DC Comics.

“I’d finished off a hundred consecutive issues, which was sort of an emotional target that I had for myself because that made it one of the longest runs in DC history,” Levitz says.

“I got to work with some good people. Greg LaRocque is a very solid guy,” said Levitz in an interview for BACK ISSUE #22.

“Steve Lightle, I think, came probably the closest to Keith in becoming a collaborator and a contributor to the writing as well.”

Of their time together working on the Legion, Levitz remembers the fun he and Giffen shared. He enjoyed “seeing Keith add elements to my stories, and then twisting them into things neither of us initially Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

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Popular Legionnaires by a Popular Legion Artist Sketches of Mon-El (drawn in 2000) and Timber Wolf (undated) by Steve Lightle, courtesy of Heritage.

TM & © DC Comics.

intended but both of us enjoyed. And seeing that people remember the stories, so many years later.”

According to Giffen, for many years the Legion evolved very little since the feature debuted in the pages of Adventure Comics #247 (Apr. 1958), in an era when stories could be told of a superhero who was the paragon of truth and justice. A few years afterwards, Marvel Comics introduced superheroes who have liabilities and problems and the need to be more relatable.

“There’s no emotional connection for the fans,” says Giffen. “If you look at early stories of the Legion, their headquarters is always the lap of luxury. They go out every so often and put their lives on the line, but it’s almost like they’re D&D kids in high school having fun.”

Despite such hurdles with the Legion, Giffen is quick to say that Levitz has been at the forefront of trying to overcome such obstacles: “I think the fans never felt more connected to Sun Boy than when Paul killed his parents. It was a tragedy happening amidst this almostperfect life. In a way it’s almost like Paul brought to The Legion the awareness that comic books had evolved, and even though Paul had picked up all these new comicbook tropes and laid them on the Legion, they’re still the cool kids in high school and the club you can’t join.”

Steve Lightle says, “The ’80s Legion had a sense of family. These people were bonded by their dedication to a cause, but that dedication united them in a way that few other comic-book teams are united. Where the members of the Avengers or the Justice League are co-workers, the Legion of Super-Heroes is a family.

They live amongst each other and share love and loss in a very intimate way.”

Lightle goes on to suggest the Legionnaires come from diverse backgrounds and are stronger because

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of their differences. “They may argue amongst themselves occasionally, as all families do, but they must always be an example of how we are at our best when we are dedicated to working on our problems together,” he notes.

Lightle says, “To this very day I still believe that the appeal of the Legion lies in the optimistic subtext that diversity is both a virtue and a strength. Through respecting our differences and working together, we can accomplish amazing things! The future can be full of hope and awe and discovery!

“To me, the lasting appeal of the Legion is that they represent an optimistic vision of the future of the DC Universe,” he adds. “When comic creators forget that the message of the Legion is a positive one, sales inevitably suffer. It might seem hopelessly corny to some—but that optimism is an integral part of what this book is about! It’s there in the motto—LONG LIVE THE LEGION!”

WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS… Such enthusiasm for The Legion is common among those who have written or drawn the book. Both Levitz and Giffen agree that once a creator gets into the Legion, it’s impossible to ever truly leave. “I think there was also the knowledge in the back of everyone’s mind that the Legion of Super-Heroes is a book that exerts a siren–like call for people,” says Giffen. “I can’t stay away. I can stay away for long periods of time, but I can’t stay away.”

Giffen cites Legion as one of the few books he’ll be returning to from time to time for the rest of his career.

“Whether the fans like what I do when I get in there, we’ll see.

FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY… Not only was the Legion popular enough to support two ongoing series (at least for a time), it also starred in a handful of other formats, beginning with Secrets of the Legion of Super-Heroes miniseries in 1981.

Paul Kupperberg and E. Nelson Bridwell co-authored the three-issue series that relates how Legion benefactor R. J. Brande is stricken with a rare disease. His only hope lies with his unknown child, presumably a Legionnaire. In an effort to learn who it might be, the history of the Legion is recounted, until eventually the identity of the Legionnaire in question is revealed.

Beginning in Adventure Comics #491 (Sept. 1982), the Legion began appearing regularly in flashback form. The title had been repackaged as a digest and contained seven or eight features reprinted from the 1960s. The earliest Legion stories featuring the artwork of John Forte and others from that era were regularly published until the title ended with Adventure Comics #503 (Sept. 1983).

“When I came on The Legion,” he says, “most fans reacted with, ‘What the hell is he doing here? He’s no Pat Broderick.’ Then when I left the book, I was talking to either Steve Lightle or Greg LaRocque, one of the guys who came on the book after me, and they got the same reaction, and I told them, ‘Relax, relax. It’ll be fine.’

And then when I took it over again, even though I was Keith Giffen, I went through two months of, ‘You’re no Greg LaRocque.’ So, yeah, Legion fans, once they realize you’re going to be on the book and do your best, once they realize you’re palatable, you’ll always be somebody whose work they’ll check out and you’ll always be a part of Legion history.”

According to LaRocque, comments, critiques, and comparisons are all part of the business: “I’ve found Legion fans are the best in the business and I enjoy my interaction with them. Being a part of Legion history and having the opportunity to work with so many other talented creators on a long-respected series like The Legion is the reward.”

There is no doubt among the writers and artists who have worked on Legion of Super-Heroes that it stirs deep emotions within its fanbase. “For me,” says LaRocque, “the core is that there is a Superman among us, whose heroic exploits will survive the test of time, and his example will still shine and lead a group of heroes in some far distant future to live by his example, to step up and carry the torch and continue the fight.

“That message, that what we do now, has meaning and will remembered, and will indeed be felt and have impact is the emotional hook that drew me to the book,” LaRocque explains. “As a creator, I think of that when I do my work. How will it affect the reader, for good or bad, now and in the future?”

Gerry Conway remarks, “I think Paul Levitz was the best writer for that book. He had the capacity to keep all those balls juggling.”

According to Levitz, different takes on the Legion have added different elements or simply taken it in interesting directions. “I’ve enjoyed some of their tales,” he says, “but mostly I’m just glad they kept my old friends alive and in readers’ minds.

The Legion’s too much fun to fade away.”

Another miniseries, Legionnaires 3, went on sale in late 1985, plotted by Keith Giffen with dialogue by Mindy Newell, with art by Ernie Colón and Karl Kesel. When longtime foe the Time Trapper kidnaps the infant child of Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl, Cosmic Boy joins them on a journey to the future to rescue the child. “[In] Legionnaires 3, I had an idea, I wanted to work it through,” says Giffen. “Ernie Colón agreed to draw it, so it was a done deal, just sell it to DC. I was sort of stretching the writing muscles.”

Approximately a year later, Cosmic Boy received the spotlight with his own four-issue limited series written by Levitz and penciled by Giffen [see separate article]. Cosmic Boy and his girlfriend, Night Girl of the Legion of Substitute Heroes, find themselves trapped in the 20th Century while on vacation. They manage to escape, only to find themselves sent to the surreal world of the Time Trapper at the end of time. The series ran in conjunction with the Legends crossover that was taking place throughout various titles of the DC Universe.

Legionnaire LaRocque Legion lost no steam after the mid-1980s departures of Giffen and Lightle once Greg LaRocque joined writer Levitz on the title. Here’s the original art (courtesy of Anthony Snyder) for Atmos’ entry from Who’s Who Update ’87 #1 (Aug. 1987).

TM & © DC Comics.

A comic-book fan for more than four decades, PHILIP “INTERVIEW LAD” SCHWEIER once wanted to be Superman. As an adult, he settled for Clark Kent, working as a journalist for more than 20 years. He lives in Savannah, Georgia. His descendent, Interview Lad XIV, will one day be rejected from the Legion of Substitute Heroes.

Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

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Time travel was essential to the Legion of Super-Heroes from their first appearance in Adventure Comics #247 (Apr. 1958) when three teenagers, Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, and Lightning Lad, went back in time 1,000 years to meet Superboy. Their Time Bubble transported them effortlessly through both time and space, and with their Time Scanner, they knew every detail of Superboy’s life. The Legionnaires made many more trips, but always into the past. The future was the domain of the Time Trapper.

The Time Trapper either plotted to bring about the destruction of the Legion or was the architect behind the team. He also did the impossible: He killed Superboy. He was a thief intent on stealing the most miraculous of devices, a thug who bullied the team from behind his “Iron Curtain of Time,” a god who created his own universe, and stunningly was revealed to be the Legion’s most treacherous member.

THIEF. THUG. The Time Trapper was introduced in a trilogy of stories written by science-fiction author Edmond Hamilton, beginning with Adventure Comics #317 (Feb. 1964) and continuing into the next issue. Superboy and Mon-El, Legionnaires able to travel through time under their own power, were stopped from chasing a scientific criminal by a mysterious barrier 30 days into the future. Superboy called it the “Iron Curtain of Time,” a phrase Hamilton no doubt chose to strike a resonant chord with Cold War tensions. Returning in Adventure Comics #321 (June 1964), the criminal provoked them from behind his Iron Curtain as he contrived to steal the secret of the Legion’s greatest weapon, the Concentrator. Disguised, the criminal subjected the team to ruthless physiological examinations, but was unmasked by Lightning Lad. In retaliation, he unleashed a barrage of dead, dark stars against the Legion, forcing them to build the Concentrator. Its power concentrated all the energy of the universe into an instantaneous blast.

He failed to kill the Legionnaires in Adventure Comics #338 (Nov. 1965), and inadvertently devolved them into children.

The story was written by Jerry Siegel, who not only created Superman but also many of the Legionnaires. “Jerry was very proud of his Legion stuff,” then-DC Comics president and publisher Paul Levitz said at a convention panel at the New York Comic-Con on April 19, 2008. “I think Jerry’s contribution was the wit of the early Legion, and when you look at things like Matter-Eater Lad and Bouncing Boy, there’s a direct link to that to some of the series he had done post–Superman with a lot of charm, less-successful stuff, but he saw what he was doing and he kept the tongue firmly in cheek and he was having fun with it.” The Time Trapper became stranded on a distant planet, his craft eaten by the Super-Babies. The whimpering criminal struck a bargain with Brainiac 5, who trapped the villain in the force of his own barrier ring.

His pitiful display of weakness and ignominious defeat spoiled the Time Trapper as a respectable foe. He did not appear again for almost 15 years, except in an easily overlooked Superman story in Action Comics #385–387 (Feb.–Apr. 1970),

Time Bandit Chronal chaos-maker Time Trapper in a rare Bronze Age cover appearance, on Mike Grell’s cover to Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #223 (Jan. 1977).

TM & © DC Comics.

64 • BACK ISSUE • Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

by

Jim “GHz Lad” Ford

written by Cary Bates. There, the Time Trapper was more a plot device to keep a 100,000 year-old Superman trapped in the distant future than a character. As though the artist had no reference material on the obscure villain, the Time Trapper’s face was concealed by a half-mask, reminiscent of Batman’s cowl, rather than a full hood as he was first depicted.

The Time Trapper returned in proper regalia in Superboy #223 (Jan. 1977) as writer Jim Shooter took a try at the character. The villain had calculated that five Legionnaires stood in the way of him ruling the universe.

He stole those five, and in a complete reversal of type, fought the Legionnaires in hand-to-hand combat. As always, the villain was reliant on one of several timetrick devices. Once it was destroyed, the Legionnaires returned to their proper point in time.

Cary Bates had introduced the android Molecular [sic] Master in Superboy #201 (Apr. 1974). The android nearly succeeded in killing every Legionnaire and stealing the Miracle Machine, a construct that transformed thought into reality. The Legion did not learn until The Legion of Super-Heroes (LSH) #281 (Nov. 1981) that the Time Trapper had created the android in a story that took three writers. Paul Levitz wrote the dialogue over the plot provided by Roy Thomas. Thomas in turn was concluding a storyline developed by writer Gerry Conway, who had only just left the series.

Levitz was returning for his second tenure. His legacy on the Legion included the creation of the Infinite Man and the wedding of Saturn Girl to Lightning Lad. Rond Vidar, an expert in time travel rivaled only by Brainiac 5, invented the hyper-time drive in Superboy and the LSH

#233 (Nov. 1977) that shattered the Iron Curtain of Time.

His discovery that time was circular had disastrous consequences when it drove a volunteer mad with the power to harness infinity. Using the hyper-time drive, the Legion attacked the Time Trapper directly in All-New Collector’s Edition #C-55 (1978) after Superboy proved the villain had altered key events in the late 20th Century leading to global nuclear war. The Time Trapper ruled the new timeline from his citadel on a burnt-out husk of the Earth in the distant future—a world that would become increasingly familiar. [Editor’s note: More on this tabloidsized Legion edition can be discovered in BACK ISSUE #61.]

With the Legion at his mercy, the Time Trapper revealed himself to be one of the Controllers. “The Ferro Lad story arc, including the ghost story, blew me away when I was a kid,” Levitz tells BACK ISSUE, and it was in the “Ghost of Ferro Lad” story from Adventure Comics #357 (June 1967) that writer Jim Shooter introduced that race of extra-dimensional beings. The Miracle Machine was their gift to the Legion in Adventure Comics #367 (Apr. 1968). The Time Trapper had stolen the Miracle Machine from its vault of impervious inertron secured inside Legion Headquarters during his transformation of the timeline. He would use its power to disorder time and destroy the galaxy, but first he would use it to destroy the Legion. It was only the combined force of their will directed against the Time Trapper that saved them from final annihilation.

Conway introduced Reflecto in LSH #277 (July 1981), one of the Adult Legion’s Honored Dead from the cover of Adventure Comics #354 (Mar. 1967) whose memorial plaque read, “Killed in a Duel with the Molecule Master.”

Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

“Infant-ry”?? (left) And you blamed Adam West’s Batman for campy puns at DC. Splash to Adventure #338 (Nov. 1965). Script

by Jerry Siegel, art

by John Forte. (right) Bates and Cockrum’s Molecular Master from Superboy #201 (Mar.–Apr. 1974) ultimately became part of Time Trapper’s history.

Original art courtesy of Heritage (www.ha.com).

TM & © DC Comics.

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The Time Trapper had sent his recreated android Molecule Master to destroy a team stranded in 20th-Century Smallville in LSH #280 (Oct. 1981). The Time Trapper had divided the Legion as part of a scheme to conquer the 30th Century, but his defeat was swift and unceremonious.

Again, he disappeared into the time stream as he had so many times before, but his next appearance was in a cellblock on the prison planet Takron-Galtos in LSH #294 (Sept. 1982), where Darkseid drained the last remnants of his power during “The Great Darkness Saga.”

Legion artist Keith Giffen, with Mindy Newell providing dialogue over his page designs, returned the Time Trapper to prominence. “It’s like Legionnaires 3—the idea hit and we asked permission to do it, and we got it,” Giffen said in an interview with Harry Broertjes from May 1988, at www.herald.infi.net/~harrybro. In the first issue of Legionnaires 3 (#1–4, Feb.–May 1986), the real Time Trapper had the defrocked Controller brought before him. Speaking of games, the Time Trapper disintegrated the Controller that had been assuming his role.

Recast, the Time Trapper was no longer a simple crook with aspirations of omnipotence, but something more. His attacks against the Legion became more malicious, more personal, as though he held a vendetta forged from years of rivalry against the founding members.

The psychological torment of Lightning Lad began when the Time Trapper kidnapped Graym, his and Saturn Girl’s newborn child.

Some at DC had other plans for the scientific criminal, “…that was seeing as how we took Legionnaires 3 to revamp the Time Trapper … to salvage the character, to undo the whole—with Paul’s blessing, by the way—to undo the whole Time-Trapper-as-Renegade-Controller storyline,” Giffen continued in his interview with Broertjes. “Paul had to nix them; they wanted to turn the Time Trapper into Rip Hunter. Paul said, ‘…We go through all this stuff to give you a good villain again and now you want to do this?’ God bless you, Paul, for killing that one.”

The Time Trapper appeared in a single panel of the 12-issue Crisis on Infinite Earths series, which was concluding even as Legionnaires 3 was being published. It would not be for another six months, during a time when editors, writers, and readers alike knew that everything had changed but no one knew how, that Man of Steel #1 (Oct. 1986) was published.

Artist and writer John Byrne recreated the character of Superman, restoring the basic concept that had made him unique. Byrne wrote in a forum post at his website Byrne Robotics: The Official John Byrne Website, “Man of Steel was meant to clean house, to get rid of all the barnacles that had attached themselves to Superman’s ship of state. Thus, he became once again the sole survivor of Krypton. There was no Kandor, no Kryptonian Supergirl, no Krypto, no Beppo, no Phantom Zone, no Jor-El and Lara floating in space in suspended animation,” the latter remark referring to Superboy #158 (July 1969). Everything was new again.

“When I was first asked to reboot Superman,” Byrne wrote, “my intent was to do a story arc within existing continuity. Take five or six months and reshape his world into what I thought it should be, but leaving all the existing backstory intact. It was DC’s decision to blow it all up and start over—to which my reaction was ‘Well, that would be easier for me!’”

Paul Levitz told Philip Schweier in an interview in BACK ISSUE #22 (June 2007), “Well, there were a number of issues as John was doing the re-do of Superman—the relaunch, whatever you want to call it— what the ramifications of the changes he was making, wanted to make, were, and we just worked each one of them out.” Most importantly to the Legion of Super-Heroes, Byrne thought Superboy was a needless character, so he had Superman begin his costumed career as an adult. Superman was never Superboy.

Superboy was the foundation of the Legion. Virtually every story told about the Legion for its first 20 years of publication featured Superboy as a lead character, and now he no longer existed as a part of Superman’s canonical history. Levitz admitted, “It was a serious creative problem.”

“No kidding!” Byrne wrote. “One of the points I hit most relentlessly during the editorial meetings leading up to actually starting work, was that of all the books in the DCU the Legion’s was the one that was going to be directly impacted by Man of Steel. ‘Don’t worry,’ I was told, with a metaphorical pat on the head, ‘we’ve got it all worked out.’”

“I didn't think not mentioning Superboy was appropriate,” Levitz tells BACK ISSUE. “Given my day job, I was aware fairly early in the process of John Byrne’s revisions in his Superman relaunch, and we began discussing how to reconcile them to the Legion, which was then one of DC’s bestselling titles.”

In an effort to both preserve the Legion’s history and to adhere to the revision of Superman’s personal continuity, Levitz devised a story that included both concepts. Levitz told Schweier, “We came up with that whole cockamamie ‘Pocket Universe’ thing.”

Levitz set the stage for defining Superboy’s place in the new post–Crisis DCU in the Cosmic Boy miniseries (#1–4, Dec. 1986–Mar. 1987; see article following). Controlling events from the wings until the final act, the Time Trapper was now an almost unimaginably powerful foe, able to not only prevent time travel into the future, but all time. He threatened to unleash entropy backward through time, annihilating everything, unless Cosmic Boy won some mad game.

The villain obliquely warned Cosmic Boy, “Rest assured that you are damned, Cosmic Boy—or at least doomed to a painful eternity from which death will be no release.“ Making good on his threat to end all time travel, the Trapper destroyed the Time Beacon in the final panels of LSH vol. 3 #36 (July 1987). An invention of Brainiac 5, along with the Time Bubble,

At the Trapper’s Mercy Saturn Girl gives Superboy a telepathic hand on this spectacular Mike Grell/Bob Wiacek page (with script by Jim Shooter) from Superboy/LSH #223. Original art courtesy of Heritage.

TM & © DC Comics.

66 • BACK ISSUE • Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

Time for Trouble (left) The LSH’s “Big Three” are manipulated by the Trapper on the cover of Legionnaires 3 #2 (Mar. 1986).

Cover art by Ernie Colón and Karl Kesel. (right) He’s back again in Legion vol. 3 #50 (Sept.

1988). Painted cover

by Ken Steacy.

TM & © DC Comics.

the Time Beacon was first introduced in LSH #300 (June 1983), also written by Levitz. As Brainiac 5 described, the Time Beacon made time travel possible by guiding travelers away from the alternate universes and the impossible paradoxes that were the real time barrier.

The Time Trapper was visually different in LSH #37 (Aug. 1987).

His robes were not regal but tattered, ravaged by time. His hands are not gloved, but monstrous. Gone were any affectations of humanity.

No longer a being, the Time Trapper was a metaphysical entity, the living embodiment of time, as Byrne described him in Action Comics #591 (Aug. 1987). His citadel at the End of Time was no longer a physical location, but an abstract concept.

In LSH #37 and Superman #8 (Aug. 1987), the Legion quickly rebuilt the Time Beacon and mounted an attack on the End of Time, only to find themselves in Smallville. The Time Trapper extorted Superboy into doing his bidding and captured the Legionnaires while the villain held the whole of Superboy’s world ransom. A team escaped into the future. There, they all learned, as had Cosmic Boy, that Superman did not know them.

“Then about six months into the project I got a panicked call from the Superman editor [Andy Helfer], ‘Oh my God!! Oh my God!!! This messes up Legion continuity!!!,’” Byrne wrote on his forum. “And that was what led to the most unsatisfying (for me) ‘Pocket Universe’ storyline.” In Action Comics #591, written by Byrne, the newly revised Superman was shown to exist in the “real” DC Universe (DCU) created by the “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” whereas Superboy existed in an alternate “pocket” universe created by the Time Trapper. “It wasn’t a proper parallel universe,” as Byrne described. “It was a tiny slice of the post–Crisis DCU removed and reshaped by the Time Trapper, as opposed to a separate universe born at the Dawn of Time which developed independently of the DCU. The Pocket Universe existed within our universe. That’s why it’s called the pocket universe. It is not separate and detached.”

The Time Trapper was intrigued to witness the Legionnaires prepare to use their new Time Bubble to visit a “Superboy” that had never existed. He captured a sliver of time containing an entire universe and reshaped Krypton and Earth to suit his purpose: He created a Superboy more powerful than his adult counterpart, able to break the time barrier on his own. The Legion had never truly traveled back in time, but had always been pushed by the Time Trapper into a

universe of his own creation. It was a game of confusion and of misdirection, with the inevitable end game being the death of Superboy in LSH #38 (Sept. 1987). “Sometimes,” Levitz confessed in BACK ISSUE #22, “you put a Band-Aid on the kid.”

Byrne offered an alternative suggestion on how to rationalize Superboy’s existence: “If there was no Superboy—and never had been— how did the Legion come into existence? What was their inspiration?

Hadn’t the original Legionnaires created their club as kind of a tribute to Superboy?” he wrote in a letter to the editor published in Comics Buyer’s Guide #997 (Dec. 25, 1992). “My suggestion was simple enough: When I was a child in England I had a book about the adventures of ‘Young Robin Hood.’ Like the Disney Kids or the Muppet Babies, this little tome presented the adventures of Robin and Marian, Little(r) John, and Tuck … with no regard to the mangling this caused to the original legend. And that, of course, is the best thing about legends: Since little or nothing is really real, it doesn’t much matter what you shovel into the box… This seemed to me the solution to the Superboy problem: Superman himself had become legendary by the time—Superboy was simply retrofitted into the legend.” In Adventures of Superman #444 (Sept. 1988), Byrne scripted out this idea when Superman returned to the Pocket Universe in a story that began in Superman #21 (Sept. 1988).

Superman explained to the mournful survivors of Smallville that Superboy was based on a 22nd-Century holographic TV series.

Superman witnessed the horrendous end of life of the Pocket Universe Earth in Superman #22 (Oct. 1988). With Superboy dead, there was no hero to protect them when three Kryptonian criminals escaped from the Phantom Zone.

Levitz fine-tuned the concept of the Time Trapper to be the living embodiment of “entropy” in LSH vol. 3 #38, the process of universal decay as all energy leaves the system. That was not the only possible future. Another had also been proven to exist, and it, too, had a living incarnation, the Infinite Man. In a final showdown against the Time Trapper in LSH #50 (Sept. 1988) to avenge the death of Superboy, the Infinite Man forced the Time Trapper to experience the Dawn of Creation, but not before one of Duo Damsel’s selves was killed.

Saturn Girl peered into the mind of the Time Trapper.

“No, it can’t be,” she whispered, before darkness took her.

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Mr. and Mrs. Legion Husband-and-wife Legion writing team Tom and Mary Bierbaum, as cartooned by Tom in 1992 for the HeroesCon convention program.

TYRANT. TRAITOR. A succession of creative teams wove the Time Trapper ever more tightly into the tapestry of the Legion’s history. Giffen had become the new creative force behind the Legion following Levitz, and he brought with him a team from out of Legion’s fandom, Tom and Mary Bierbaum, to script dialogue and co-plot story ideas.

Just four issues into the controversial Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 (starting in 1989), which took a radical leap five years into the future from the previous series, the creative team was forced to make more drastic changes. “In a nutshell,” writer Tom Bierbaum wrote on his blog It’s OK, I’m a Senator, “our editor and the Superman editor had a disagreement and the result was the Superman editor saying we could no longer use any of the Superman mythos in The Legion.

That was to include any Kryptonian references (even Mon-El’s name).”

Mike Carlin, the editor for the entire line of Superman titles, wanted no mention of Superboy nor Supergirl in any story, this keeping with the acknowledged goal of returning Superman to the unique position as Krypton’s Sole Survivor.

“And then the Superman Ripple Effect hit,” writer Mark Waid, then-editor of Legion, told Glen Cadigan in an interview appearing in The Legion Companion (2003, TwoMorrows Publishing). “What killed us, killed our momentum, and killed any chance Legion vol. 4 had a linear narrative that might have actually brought readers in was the Superman Ripple Effect. Because of inter-office politics and machinations that make no sense to me to this day, it was decided that not only was there was no Superboy, but we weren’t even allowed to reference him at all. We were not allowed to make a reference to the Pocket Universe that he came from and we were ordered to rewrite Legion history to eliminate his presence from it altogether.”

“That left us with a few logical options,” Bierbaum continued.

“We could have just never touched on any Legion history that related to Superboy—which is most of the Legion’s established past—and in retrospect that would have saved us a heck of a lot of trouble. But we had all kinds of ideas, some of them pretty good, that involved the Legion’s history, so we opted to come up with a story that took Superboy out of the continuity and made the history once again accessible to the Legion creative team.

“We were already working out a story in which we established that the Time Trapper had manipulated events to create the Legion (giving some purpose to his creations of the Pocket Universe and Superboy) and our next thought was: What if destroying the Time Trapper would destroy all his creations and return the timeline to whatever universe the Time Trapper was working to avoid.”

In LSH vol. 4 #4 (Feb. 1990), Mon-El returned from the dead, a casualty of the battle with the Time Trapper in LSH vol. 3 #50. “Keith’s idea,” Bierbaum said, “was that the Trapper had left a seed of himself in Mon-El and that seed would allow the Trapper to raise up Mon-El’s 68 • BACK ISSUE • Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

body as the Trapper’s new invulnerable vessel,” but Mon-El was uncontrollable. He annihilated the Time Trapper in LSH vol. 4 #4 and with it his Pocket Universe. Besides creating Superboy and Mon-El, the Trapper had also brought R. J. Brande into the 30th Century. Brande, the Legion’s benefactor, was an invention of writer E. Nelson Bridwell in Adventure Comics #350 (Nov. 1966). Bridwell, along with writer Paul Kupperburg, made Brande a Durlan who could no longer shapechange in Secrets of the Legion of Super-Heroes #3 (Mar. 1981). Giffen transported that Durlan from the 20th Century in L.E.G.I.O.N. ’89 #9 (Nov. 1989). The Bierbaums detailed in LSH vol. 4 #8 (June 1990) how Brande instilled long-forgotten heroic ideals into a group of teenagers.

The Time Trapper needed an army of heroes to oppose the intergalactic rise of Mordru the Merciless. A wizard of ultimate power, Mordru had conquered his home planet of Zerox, the Sorcerer’s World, before seizing most of the planets in his galaxy, as shown in Adventure Comics #369 (June 1968). Mordru had invaded Earth and was imprisoned by the Legion in an untold tale. If not for the Legion, Mordru would have ruled the universe.

Without the Legion, events turned out very differently. “Then in the following issue,” in Legion #5 (Mar. 1990), as Bierbaum explained, “we’d have the Mordru Universe assert itself and, through the course of that issue, be undone with substitute pieces that would put history back together as close as possible to how it existed when the Time Trapper had influence the timeline.” Glorith of Baaldur, who the Time Trapper killed during her first appearance as his lackey in Adventure Comics #338, usurped the role of her former master.

“But as complicated as the original story was, I always felt like it had an integral simplicity to it—the Time Trapper creates the Pocket Universe, Superboy, and other events to create the Legion and stop Mordru from conquering the universe,” Bierbaum wrote. “The Trapper is destroyed, his machinations go away, and the original timeline, with Mordru conquering the universe, re-asserts itself. Glorith is granted the Time Trapper’s powers, she recreates the Trapper’s machinations with Valor in place of Superboy, and a close approximation of the Time Trapper’s timeline re-asserts itself. That seems like a strong, straightforward concept that isn’t that hard to understand.

“Knowing what I know now and with the perspective and experience we’ve picked up since then,” Bierbaum concluded, “I doubt I’d have the courage to advocate trying something this complicated and ambitious (and controversial and impolitic for the DC of that era). But it was a hell of a great story and I’m glad we were dumb enough to go for it.”

The Time Trapper returned in a brief epilogue in LSH #13 (1990), with Giffen revisiting the Pocket Universe to establish Glorith as its creator. Despite all efforts to cleanly resolve Superboy, existence of the Pocket Universe was now a necessary component of Superman and the new Supergirl’s (a.k.a. Matrix) continuity.

Neatly tying together old storylines in LSH Annual #1 (1990), the Bierbaums further detailed how Ultra Boy had suspected the Time Trapper (now replaced by Glorith in this “Glorithverse” continuity) of manipulating events to create the Legion, but oddly, the Legion never fought Mordru in this newly created timeline. Instead, Ultra Boy convinced Mordru to attack Glorith directly, irreparably weakening them both.

The Time Trapper was also responsible for driving Brainiac 5 insane to hide his involvement, leading to the traumatic events of Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #239 (May 1978) when Brainiac 5 killed Ultra Boy’s girlfriend, framed Ultra Boy for the murder, and ultimately attempted to destroy the galaxy in SLSH #250–251 (Apr.–May 1979).

The continuing existence of Superboy remained ambiguous. In the Glorithverse, Valor replaced Superboy and Laurel Gand, a new character introduced in LSH vol. 4 #6 (Apr. 1990), replaced both

Supergirl and Mon-El, but Superboy appeared in a single panel in LSH Annual #1 depicting a hypothetical battle that never occurred.

Glorith became the all-purpose villain, variously cast as the Demon Mother of the Khund Empire in LSH vol. 4 #17 (Apr. 1991), the force that drove the shape-changing Protean race from their home world of Antares II in Legion #33 (Sept. 1992), and finally as the vengeful arch-foe in LSH #42 (Apr. 1993). Glorith as the Time Trapper had not killed Duo Damsel’s second self in Legion vol. 3 #50, but conscripted the most vulnerable Legionnaire to kidnap her teammates. Glorith was forced to let those captured Legionnaires retreat in exchange for being released from Brainiac 5’s impenetrable force field.

Mark Waid began writing the Valor monthly series with #11 (Sept. 1993), fleshing out the relationship between Glorith and Valor that the Bierbaums had introduced in LSH Annual vol. 4 #2 (1991). If the Time Trapper created Mon-El to be his invulnerable suit of armor, Glorith would use Valor as her sword. Over the next few issues, Glorith guilefully led his hand to seize the throne of the planet Baaldur for her in the past.

When he would not become her consort, she killed him in Valor #17 (Mar. 1994), creating an impossible paradox.

Legionnaires whose ancestors owed their lives to Valor began to dissolve into non-existence. Into this turmoil, the older “Batch SW6” Valor arrived from the future.

The Batch SW6 Legionnaires were a Silver Age version of the team that first appeared in LSH #24 (Dec. 1991) and eventually settled into their own companion series entitled Legionnaires. “My big contribution was the true origin of the SW6ers,” writer Kurt Busiek tells BACK ISSUE, and as he wrote in Valor #23 (Sept. 1994), the Time Trapper divided time to create Batch SW6. He created his Pocket Universe to protect them from the future, but the Crisis destroyed his plan and drove him crazy.

Busiek took over writing chores with Valor #20 (June 1994). Valor accepted his responsibility to the future and took the place of his deceased counterpart, condemning himself to another thousand-year imprisonment in the Phantom Zone, renamed the Bgtzl buffer zone.

Superboy was re-introduced into continuity in LSH #53 (Jan. 1994), written by Tom McCraw, who had joined the Bierbaums as writer on LSH #42. McCraw laid out a revised specific circumstances and under that history that stitched the Glorith kurt busiek specific editorial management, we timeline into the longer Time really felt as if we had no choice.

Trapper timeline. While Glorith was weakened in a battle with the Legion, the Time We spent, literally, dozens of hours over many, many weekends in Tom McCraw’s home office throwing ideas Trapper vanquished her.

Then a creative decision was made to end the Legion around to save/rescue Legion continuity—but between of Super-Heroes. Writers Mark Waid, Tom McCraw, and the Byrne Superman reboot, the subsequent removal Kurt Busiek heralded the “End of an Era” storyline that of Supergirl, Superboy, Mon-El, Rond Vidar’s Green spanned the Zero Hero: Crisis in Time five-issue crossover Lantern connections, and a dozen other smaller pieces event (#4–0) and the three Legion companion titles, of continuity that had been nuked by other offices— all published in September 1994. One-time Legion artist every idea we had was just us refurbishing on shifting Dan Jurgens conceived Zero Hour. The story began in sand. Ultimately, we elected to pull the trigger and try LSH #58 (June 1994), written by McCraw, with an desperately to give a fitting, heroic end to the Legion alliance between Glorith and Mordru, and ended with a we loved rather than let it continue to be beaten white-out event in LSH #61 (Sept. 1994) that left only (continuity-wise) like a redheaded stepchild.”

Glorith and Mordru seized the Time Beacon in one Legionnaire standing. “Like everyone who loves the Legion,” Waid tells BACK ISSUE, “I hated passionately that Legionnaires #17–18 (Aug.–Sept. 1994), written by circumstances shoved us inexorably in the direction of Waid, to summon the Infinite Man, even as their ending Legion continuity with Zero Hour. But I said it timeline unraveled from the approaching Zero Hero. then and I’ll say it now—at the time, under those Heroes long dead replaced their living counterparts,

The Worst of Time… …for Legion’s harried creative personnel, forced to reinvent continuity amid an unstable DC Universe and combative editorial fiefdoms. This late-1993 house ad featuring Glorith repurposed LSH #53’s (Jan. 1994) cover

by Immonen and Boyd.

TM & © DC Comics.

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TRAPPERS: OTHER TIMES. OTHER PLACES. Other writers used the Time Trapper before the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Writer E. Nelson Bridwell portrayed the Time Trapper as a common criminal in Super Friends #17–18 (Feb.–Mar. 1979), a series not set in DC’s Earth-One continuity. Joining common threads, Bridwell identified the Time Trapper as Wonder Woman’s one-time foe Time Master from Wonder Woman #101 (Oct. 1958). All resemblances must be coincidental. Later, Mayfair Games Inc. featured the Time Trapper in a series of four noncanonical licensed Legion of Super-Heroes adventures beginning with Pawns of Time for their DC Heroes Role Playing Game.

After his starring appearance in the Zero Hour: Crisis in Time, the Time Trapper gained new prominence. Writer Marv Wolfman used the Time Trapper in New Titans Annual #11 (1995) to explain the

A Trip to the Pocket Universe John Byrne original art (courtesy of Heritage) from DC’s post–Man of Steel explanation of the Legion’s Superboy.

Page 13 of Action Comics #591 (Aug. 1987), the Superman/Superboy team-up.

TM & © DC Comics.

existence of the Team Titans. The Time Trapper appeared in Legion of Super-Heroes’ and Legionnaires’ rebooted continuity to bewilder and baffle the LSH. Writer/artist Kyle Baker used the Time Trapper in Plastic Man #8–9 (Sept.–Oct. 2004). A new version of the Time Trapper attacked the Legion in Action Comics #864 (June 2008), written by Geoff Johns. In that “Lightning Saga” version of the Legion, Superman had always been Superboy. In Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds (#1–5, Oct. 2008–Sept. 2009), the Time Trapper is revealed to be the outcast Superboy of Earth-Prime. Brainiac 5 conjectured that the Time Trapper had always been a sentient alternate timeline rebelling against the Legion’s own. And more recently, writer Paul Levitz reintroduced the Time Trapper in Legion: Secret Origin (#1–6, Dec. 2011–May 2012).

and even Superboy returned in Valor #23. Heroes who had not existed appeared while others vanished. It was an opportunity for the creative team to pay tribute to the history of the Legion.

“Remember, at that point,” Waid says, “I knew more about Legion history and continuity than anyone alive not named Levitz, and on a pop quiz, I’m not sure he could have beaten me. Just a few years earlier, I’d spent an entire month doing nothing morning, noon, and night but compiling the Legion Index published by Eclipse, and I’d been the editor and [a] writer on the Legion Who’s Who. And [Legion editor] KC [Carlson] and Tom, likewise, had a breadth of Legion knowledge just barely more shallow than my own.”

The Time Trapper stood on the barren Earth of his Pocket Universe and lowered his cowl in LSH vol. 4 #61. Behind the darkness was the face of Cosmic Boy. The Hag had foreseen Cosmic Boy’s dreadful future in Adventure Comics #351 (Dec. 1966). “Honestly, truly?,” Waid asks. “The Hag connection was not where we started. The Legion team (Tom McCraw, KC Carlson, [assistant editor] Mike McAvennie, and myself) hit upon Cos as the Cloaked One because it so sweetly bookended the series—it started with him, it ends with him—but once we remembered the Hag’s prediction, it was like kismet—a blessing that we were headed the right direction, creatively … I think that Tom was the one who un-mothballed the Hag’s prediction. Pieces slowly came together, and when Dan Jurgens elected to use the Time Trapper as one of Zero Hour’s main players, we stayed in that direction.

“So as I recall, we started making a list of each and every ‘dangler’ in Legion continuity—all the little tiny unanswered questions—and began to spin out of that to see what that would give us. I was big on being hung up on the specific purpose of the Iron Curtain of Time, which had never been explained to my satisfaction,” Waid says. Cosmic Boy had read about the sweeping wave of destruction Zero Hour brought and had constructed his Iron Curtain as a bulwark against it. He had been trapped in the Infinite Library, the archive of all chronal knowledge and the source of Glorith’s magic. There his knowledge of time expanded as eternity passed over him. Cosmic Boy wanted to help, but all his efforts in time were as twisted as his mind.

The Time Trapper was killed in Zero Hero: Crisis in Time #4 at the End of Time by a man who, with a wave of his hand, unleashed entropy backward through time.

Parallax did what the Time Trapper only conceived. Zero Hour destroyed the Legion.

JIM “GHz LAD” FORD would like to thank writer Cary Bates for his stories “Superman Battles the War-Horn!” and “The Betrayer from Beyond!,” which launched him into a life of comics. He once owned a Time Bubble but sold it after complaining of fingerprint smudges.

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TM

by

Mark “Mild-Mannered Lad” Ciemcioch

When the Legion of Super-Heroes title is popular, DC often expands the franchise with additional series, so when the Legion became one of the company’s bestselling titles in the ’80s, it made sense to have one of its founding members branch out into his own miniseries.

And if that series is tied into a line-wide event, which publishers recently discovered made them a lot of money, all the better.

The year was 1986. DC Comics had just completed the biggest and most ambitious event in its publishing history, Crisis on Infinite Earths. Now the company was in the process of revitalizing many of its main titles.

John Byrne was set to revive Superman in the post–Crisis era, while Frank Miller was opening a new chapter in the Batman mythos with The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One. Beyond those individual efforts, the company was also devising a follow-up to the massive Crisis crossover event. Originally, DC was looking to publish Crisis of the Soul, a tale that saw a being named the Corruptor come to Earth, followed by a wave of evil.

The new maxiseries was to be written by Legion scribe Paul Levitz, drawn by Jerry Ordway, and edited by Robert Greenberger, but for several reasons, DC decided to go in another direction for its Crisis follow-up [see the full story in BACK ISSUE #9].

The Crisis follow-up eventually morphed into Legends (Nov. 1986–Apr. 1987), a six-issue miniseries that featured Darkseid hatching a plan to turn American citizens against their superheroes. The creative team changed as well, with John Ostrander and Len Wein handling writing duties, John Byrne and Karl Kesel on art, and Mike Gold editing.

Luckily for Levitz, he wasn’t left completely out in the cold, as he was tapped to write a miniseries featuring Cosmic Boy that would tie into the Legends series.

The series would span throughout time and lead into another story that was arguably more memorable than Legends itself. Popular Legion artist Keith Giffen would share penciling duties with Ernie Colón, Bob Smith and Pablo Marcos would ink, and Steve Lightle would provide cover art.

Levitz has very little memory of the four-issue miniseries 25 years later. Using Cosmic Boy outside the Legion series was on his mind, as the character was part of the Crisis of the Soul pitch. He recalls DC trying to develop crossovers that would give the Legends event the same weight as Crisis. Fortunately, a potential story with weight fell into his lap thanks to what the company was doing with Superman.

At the same time he was working on Legends, Byrne was revising portions of Superman’s origin, such as Ma and Pa Kent living well into Clark’s adulthood and

Magnetic Personality Spinning off from DC’s Legends crossover event was a miniseries for Cosmic Boy! Detail from the issue #1 (Dec. 1986) cover by Steve Lightle, who drew the mini’s four covers.

TM & © DC Comics.

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Earth Hates Heroes!

Glorious Godfrey of Darkseid’s elite misled America into regarding its superheroes as enemies in 1986’s “Legends” crossover. (top) Look closely and you’ll spot Cos on the John Byrne-drawn cover to Legends #1 (Nov. 1986). (below) Original art to the splash page of Cosmic Boy #1, courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com).

TM & © DC Comics.

downplaying Superman’s powers from the Silver Age stories.

Another change—Superman first debuted in costume as an adult in the post–Crisis universe. The adjustment impacted the Legion of Super-Heroes, as Superboy was instrumental in their origin.

“By spring, it was clear there was this nagging issue about how the reboot impacted Superboy and the Legion,” says Greenberger, who, as an editor at DC, recalled much of the background. “After several heated dinners, it became clear something had to be done, and the entire Pocket Universe notion came up and would be addressed late in the first year of the reboot.”

“We had to find some plausible way to deal with it,” Levitz says.

Thanks to the time-spanning events of Crisis, it wasn’t hard to include the Legion into that maxiseries and cross over into the main title. But since the main Legends series took place entirely in the present, creators needed to figure out how to organically include the Legion in to the crossover.

“We were trying to find a way to tie the Legion franchise into this 20th Century storyline,” Greenberger says. “After all these years, I can’t remember if it was Paul or someone else who realized a Legionnaire in the 20th Century, caught up in Legends, could be used to foreshadow the Pocket Universe storyline.”

According to Legends editor Mike Gold, the Cosmic Boy miniseries was always set to start off in the main series, then spin off into his own story. As Gold wrote in the introduction of the Legends trade paperback, the tie-in books to were labeled either “spin-off” or “crossover” based on how closely the book influenced the main storyline. Books like Justice League of America and the new Superman line of titles wove in and out of the main series, so they were listed as crossovers, while Cosmic Boy, who walked out of Legends and never looked back, and Secret Origins were labeled spin-offs.

When asked what the goal of Legends was, Levitz replies, “To make a buck. It’s not much more complicated than that.”

Levitz enjoyed writing Cosmic Boy in the miniseries. The character had been moved to the sidelines during the then-current Legion of Super-Heroes series, as founders Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, and Saturn Girl stepped away from active duty, although they came together in the 1986 series Legionnaires 3 to battle the Time Trapper.

As the Legion’s first leader, Cosmic Boy is a “responsible, overburdened character,” bob greenberger according to Levitz.

“I always loved writing for him, because he’s one of the ones that I read when I was a kid,” Levitz says.

“He has an interesting personality mix with the team.”

The addition of Night Girl, who was dating Cosmic Boy, allowed Levitz to further develop that Substitute Legionnaire.

She also played a role in the follow-up story with Superman and the Legion that concluded the entire epic.

“It’s an interesting personality in that mix,” Levitz says.

“There wasn’t a lot of material on her before.”

Given the disruptions in time faced by Legion members, it was clear which villain would tie the story together. Levitz thinks the Time Trapper is one of the villains that established how powerful the Legion was. He calls the Trapper a “force of nature” who represents “entropy.” “[The Time Trapper] has been a pretty major villain from the beginning,” Levitz says. “He’s arguably their first supervillain.”

Cosmic Boy’s role in Legends begins in the first issue, when Darkseid sends a techno-seed into a nuclear fusion generator located in New York City. Thanks to Professor Martin Stein being on site at the time, Stein calls upon Ronnie Raymond to become Firestorm in order to stop Brimstone’s rampage through Manhattan. Brimstone makes short work

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Bubble Trouble Rokk’s future-tech is as puzzling to 20th-Century Americans as their culture is to the Legionnaire from the future. Page 13 from Cosmic Boy #3 (Feb. 1987), penned by Paul Levitz and illo’ed by Keith Giffen (layouts), Ernie Colón (pencils), and Bob Smith (inks). Courtesy of Tyler J. Nygaard.

TM & © DC Comics.

of Firestorm and moves on, leaving the former Justice Leaguer in desperate need of backup.

It is at this point when Cosmic Boy (Rokk Krinn) enters the scene.

He’s sitting at a greasy diner in New York wearing a simple brown jacket over his Legion uniform, because when you travel 1000 years into the past, you want to remain inconspicuous. Just as a server is getting a coffee refill for Rokk, an explosion demolishes the front of the diner, and Cosmic Boy flies into action to face Brimstone.

“Good God, look at the size of that thing,” Cosmic Boy thinks.

“Makes the Infinite Man seem like an infant by comparison!”

Quickly realizing he has to keep his distance because of Brimstone’s heat, Cosmic Boy fires some metal wreckage at the fiery giant, but the barrage melts before it makes contact. Brimstone punches through the side of a building to demolish Rokk, who barely manages to get out of the way of the avalanche. Bruised and battered on the ground, Cosmic Boy looks up to see the Justice League of America has come to his aid—which in this era is the Detroit incarnation, with Firestorm providing backup, as issue #1 comes to a close.

Legends #2 picks up immediately where we left off, as the JLA and Rokk take on Brimstone. Vibe—of all people—is the only one to have success against the giant, tripping him to the ground. Brimstone creates a sword of fire and levels another building, and this time, Rokk and the JLA are trapped underneath it.

Sometime later, Cosmic Boy is healing in Titans Tower with the Flash and Changeling. Rokk reports the JLA had disappeared after he pulled himself out of the rubble. The Titans question Cosmic Boy about Brimstone (who is ultimately defeated by the new Suicide Squad in Legends #3), but Rokk demurs and flies off to track down Night Girl.

That’s when the storyline finally leads into the Cosmic Boy miniseries (Dec. 1986–Mar. 1987), which opens with Rokk walking around New York City still in a daze after his battle with Brimstone.

By this point, the civilian population has turned against their heroes, thanks to television pundit Rev. G. Gordon Godfrey’s (a disguised Glorious Godfrey from Jack Kirby’s Fourth World) public campaign.

A crowd threatens to turn into a mob before Night Girl arrives to carry off Cosmic Boy. When Cosmic Boy regains his senses, he recalls encountering Superman shortly after getting thrashed by Brimstone, but Superman doesn’t remember ever meeting Cosmic Boy. Furthermore, Rokk and Lydda watch the news to discover it not only ignores Superboy’s public history, but the trend of using nuclear power as a weapon, the latter of which conflicts with Cosmic Boy’s recollection.

“Whatever wiped out Superman’s memory of the Legion—and me—must also have caused this,” Rokk says. “But how? And is it just Superman’s history that’s been tampered with?”

Another historical fact Cosmic Boy remembers is the safe space travel of the 20th Century, but as the couple review tapes of recent news, they see footage of the Space Shuttle Challenger exploding, a real-life event that occurred on January 28, 1986. Night Girl wonders if their trip into the past disrupted history, especially after “the great Crisis,” but Cosmic Boy intuitively knows there is something else responsible.

The news then reports that the American public has not only turned against its superheroes, but also regular heroes, as mobs protest the launch of a new payload orbiter (the news-framing segments, similar in function to the broadcasts seen in The Dark Knight Returns, tie Cosmic Boy to the events of the main Legends title, even as the miniseries story veers off in another direction). Shortly after launch, the

orbiter shuttle malfunctions, but Cosmic Boy arrives in time to save the payload. Flying the cargo back to the base, Cosmic Boy is confronted by high-tech security forces that open fire. Although Rokk deflects most of the bullets, one strikes his leg and he flies off, dejected.

The second issue opens with Rokk trying to figure out why history as he knows it is wrong. Lydda (Night Girl) is fed up, as all this is happening during their “vacation,” and books a trip to Houston, where authorities have taken the shuttle payload. Once they arrive, Cosmic Boy and Night Girl break into the facility where the payload is being held and run into someone named Jason, who designed the payload. Jason is quite welcoming to the strangers, having watched the news of Cosmic Boy saving his project.

As the three talk, another anti-nuclear protest outside the facility turns into a riot. Tired of hiding, Cosmic Boy uses his full abilities to chase the crowd off. Jason thanks the Legionnaires for their help as they depart. Despite Rokk finding no more information about the changes in history, he is comforted that a man like Jason is dedicated to space travel. As the couple discuss how both of their families descended from Earth’s first space migrants, we see a close up of Jason’s full name—Jason Krinnski.

The third issue finds Rokk and Lydda back in Metropolis, uncovering their Time Bubble to head back to the future. But time travel is not as easy as it sounds, as they fail repeatedly to get out of the year 1986. “It’s as though there was a barrier between the 20th Century and the future, and we simply don’t have enough power in the Bubble to smash through,” Cosmic Boy says.

As the heroes try to overcome their Bubble’s power problem, the repeated attempts to smash the time barrier has drawn attention from the news media and public. Lydda complains about vacationing on Earth, of all planets, when Rokk suddenly remembers the combination Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

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Showdown at the End of Time (left) Lightle’s stunning cover art for issue #4, courtesy of Heritage. (right) The Time Trapper shows his face (well, not really…) as the mastermind of Legion-related time alterations. Original art to page 5 of issue #4, courtesy of Aidan Lacy.

TM & © DC Comics.

of the planet’s magnetic field and his own powers might be enough to break through the time barrier. Straining himself to fly the Time Bubble around the planet at ever-increasing speeds, Cosmic Boy is finally able to break through, only to encounter another problem … they can’t stop themselves at 2986. Flying further and further into the future, the Time Bubble finally crashes at the very end of time when Cosmic Boy realizes who is behind all of their problems. “He’s the one tampering with history—the Time Trapper,” he says, as the Trapper and his minions approach the heroes.

In the final issue of the miniseries, the Time Trapper declares his intent to extend the “End of Time”— the entropy of the universe—back through history until there is nothing left. He offers the heroes a deal: Find a way back to their present within an hour, or suffer as his slaves. As the couple battles their way through some of history’s greatest villains (including what appear to be Stormtroopers from Star Wars) in the Trapper’s Citadel, the Trapper offers commentary: “If [the heroes] knew how long I have been playing with them, even their youthful exuberance might not sustain them.”

Rokk and Lydda finally break into the Trapper’s throne room and find a Time Bubble there. However, the Trapper appears with an hourglass he’s been timing the heroes on, noting there are only a handful of grains left. Cosmic Boy improvises, using his powers to twist the metallic glass to prevent the last grain from flowing to the bottom.

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Amused, the Trapper allows the heroes to leave but declares time travel off limits. Rokk and Lydda arrive in 2987, and Cosmic Boy decides to recruit the rest of the Legion to investigate the Trapper’s threats. Meanwhile, the Time Trapper monologues that Cosmic Boy is falling into his trap, as he glances at statues of Superboy and Krypto. A blurb tells readers the story is set to continue in Legion of Super-Heroes #36.

The Cosmic Boy miniseries used the anti-heroism themes established in Legends, but further developed them to include anti-space-travel protests. Godfrey complains about NASA workers like Krinnski in Cosmic Boy #3: “It’s another example of how we demean people by personalizing one man as a hero. Without Dr. Krinnski, everyone else can succeed and be heroes.

Without our so-called super-heroes, ordinary people can take care of society’s problems.”

Again, Levitz doesn’t recall why exactly he included the NASA subplot, but he certainly remembers the Challenger explosion that was referenced in the miniseries.

Many staff members watched the event on TV while working at the DC offices.

“That was a tough day,” Levitz says. “Very sad.”

If the Cosmic Boy miniseries felt like it left readers hanging, it was on purpose. The ultimate resolution came in a four-part crossover that saw the post–Crisis Superman encounter the 30th-Century team for the first time. Levitz concurs with Greenberger that there was a debate about how to address the Superboy problem.

Levitz followed Byrne’s lead in crafting the story.

“It was a fairly mild collaboration,” Levitz says. “[Byrne] built his agenda in his books, and I had to find something that didn’t trip up John.”

Levitz’s original idea on explaining how Superboy was in the Legion was based on how the culture of a time period had different interpretations of what was a “man.” Just as a 13-year-old boy may be considered a man in the Middle Ages, then the people of the 30th Century may think of Superman as just a boy. However, it was a plot point that Byrne didn’t care for.

Levitz believes he came up with the “Pocket Universe” solution.

“It’s a little too convoluted for me to blame it on anybody else,” he says.

The story picked up in the Legion series, #36–37 (Aug.–Sept. 1987), and tied into the John Byrne Superman reboot series with Superman #8 and Action Comics #591 (both Aug. 1987). The Legion attempts to travel to the End of Time to confront the Time Trapper, but disturbances in the time stream send them to the Smallville of Superboy’s era instead. Several Legionnaires visit Superboy at the Kent home, but he traps them in a stasis beam. The rest of the group escapes through the Time Bubble, this time ending up in the post–Crisis Smallville with Superman. Together they confront Superboy, significantly more powerful than the post–Crisis Superman.

The other Legionnaires are quickly captured and taken back to Superboy’s Smallville by the younger Kryptonian, but Superman gives chase. After a prolonged battle, Superman realizes this younger version of him is throwing the fight, and Superboy comes clean. It’s revealed that during the Crisis, Superboy was so desperate to save Smallville from destruction that he cut a deal with the Time Trapper to keep his world in a separate Pocket Universe free from the Anti-Monitor’s chaos. Superman is sent back to his own Smallville, lest anything happen to him that would affect history even more.

Superboy and the Legion head to the Pocket Universe’s Smallville High School, where the Time Trapper awaits. The villain reveals that every time the Legion visited the past, they traveled to Superboy’s Pocket Universe instead of the real DC Universe timeline. Superboy attacks the Trapper, but accidently damages the device keeping Smallville safe. He uses his own body to connect the machine’s electrical current as his Smallville is transported into safety. But Superboy himself is mortally wounded from his efforts, and after he transports the Legion back to their own timeline, he dies in Mon-El’s arms. During his funeral, Cosmic Boy calls Superboy the greatest hero of them all.

The Cosmic Boy series sold well to Levitz’s recollection, selling similar numbers to the Legion series. Legends had good sales, too, but it didn’t reach the heights of Crisis numbers.

However, the Cosmic Boy miniseries remains a small footnote in the history of DC Comics 25 years later.

The Legends series itself is less regarded than the titles that sprung out of it—the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League, Ostrander’s Suicide Squad, and the Wally West Flash series that lasted almost the entirety of the post–Crisis DC timeline. Another spin-off title, Shazam!: The New Beginning, didn’t fare as well.

The main Legends series was reprinted in a trade paperback, as was the Superman/Legion crossover in Superman: The Man of Steel vol. 4, but thus far, DC has never collected all the crossovers together, so anybody hoping to read the Cosmic Boy series today is going to have to get creative.

Don’t even start wondering if the miniseries is still in continuity. Since Cosmic Boy was published, the Legion title has been rebooted twice, then reverted back to its original history. By that time, Superman’s post–Crisis origin was altered so he did team with the Legion as Superboy. Then DC launched the New 52 reboot in 2011 that rebooted Superman’s history once again, but the Legion’s history remained relatively stable, thanks to Levitz, who returned to the title after retiring from his position as DC’s president and publisher.

“In the end, this was really several different corporate needs being addressed in as entertainingly commercial a way as was practical at the time,” Greenberger says.

“I suppose it could have been a stronger tie-in. It worked better than Shazam! did creatively, [but] since it used Legion talent, that made sense. It certainly set things up for our flagship title, but you’ll notice it has never been collected, while it could easily be part of a Legends tie-in Omnibus or a Pocket Universe Omnibus event.”

The Edge of Night Girl We’ll blow you a goodbye kiss with this awesome Legion/ romance comic commission, drawn

by Franco di Amorim and based on DC’s Girls’ Romance #133 (poor, poor Night Girl!). Thanks to Mark Ciemcioch for including this beauty!

MARK “MILD-MANNERED LAD” CIEMCIOCH is a freelance writer who’s thrilled to be writing his first TwoMorrows story. He became a close bud of Rokk Krinn during Cosmic Boy’s visit to the mid-1980s.

Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

TM & © DC Comics.

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Email: euryman@gmail.com (subject: BACK ISSUE) Postal mail: Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief • BACK ISSUE 118 Edgewood Ave. NE • Concord, NC 28025

Find BACK ISSUE on

HOWARD BENDER’S CAPTAIN BRITAIN The artist of the awesome Captain Britain centerspread produced for Marvel UK and appearing on page 23 of BACK ISSUE #63 unfortunately was not credited in its caption. That was the work of Howard Bender, to whom we apologize for omitting the credit.

(And a thank-you to Robert Menzies for bringing this to our attention.)

© 1976 Universal.

THE BEAR NECESSITIES I caught one minor error in your “Tabloids and Treasuries” edition of BACK ISSUE [#61]. The King Kong treasury-sized edition from Whitman (Western Publishing Co.) which you date as from 1968 actually went on sale in late 1976 (or possibly early 1977). It bears a 1968 copyright date only because it reprints the Gold Key 68-page giant (regular-sized dimensions) comic from that year.

The treasury reprint was published to cash in on the release of the 1976 King Kong movie remake. Since that movie came out at Christmastime of 1976, I strongly suspect that this treasury edition went on sale around then as well, although it not listed as being available until the Feb. 1977 issue of The Comic Reader fanzine.

I assume that you derived the incorrect date for this particular issue from the Overstreet [Comic Book] Price Guide, which is also incorrect in dating it. Actually, the $1.00 cover price gives away the fact that it is not from 1968. That price would be much too high for that time period.

Although Western Publishing did not issue King Kong in the treasury format in the late 1960s, they did indeed issue a treasurysized comic book during that time period. Walt Disney’s The Jungle Book movie adaptation came out in that size in October 1967 (on-sale information according to the code contained in the panel at the bottom of page 1 of tis comic; it was also date-coded Jan. 1968 in accordance with Western’s policy of dating one-shots three months beyond their on-sale dates). The suggest retail price on the cover was 59 cents and it contained 68 pages, counting covers.

As with the later King Kong treasury, this was sold at toy and department stores rather than at newsstands. A Gold Key newsstand edition (regular-sized dimensions) did arrive two months later in December 1967, with a date code of March 1968. It was an exact reproduction of the treasury edition with the exception of the four inside and outside covers, which contained different material.

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John, thank you for setting the story straight! I editorially inserted the King Kong treasury listing into Chris Marshall’s tabloids checklist after discovering its existence online, and had limited data at my disposal; BACK ISSUE regrets the error—and appreciates your informative letter!

– M.E.

IT’S A TRANSWORLD AFTER ALL Many thanks for organizing and mailing me the latest BACK ISSUE via Rob Kirby. A really fine mag, and a super feature on British Marvel. I’ve learnt much from that, and of the history of Transworld before I joined. A fine piece of work from Mr. Kirby.

Thanks again and best regards, – Alan Murray

THE THIRD TIME’S NO CHARM I wanted to comment on Michal Jacot’s letter on The Dark Knight Rises in BI #64.

Mister J. said he found the film to be a letdown, and couldn’t seem to find anyone else that shared this opinion.

Well, he needs to look no further, as I was very disappointed in it as well.

It seemed to slog on forever, and the film as a whole never really picked up the pace.

Tom Hardy’s Bane was the biggest letdown for me, as his character was basically what you’d get if the Joker worked for the League of Shadows, and his master plan really only worked due to the oppositions stupidity as opposed to his own brilliance.

Plus, it is very tough to take him seriously when he sounds like a Sean Connery-voiced Darth Vader!

The Miranda Tate character was too predictable as well, as from the moment she shows up on screen, you know how her entire story arc will go, especially if you’ve ever seen Inception.

The few bright spots were Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle (strangely, never called Catwoman in this) and Joseph GordonLevitt as the young, hotheaded cop John Blake, though they were not enough to save it.

Over all, this was the biggest letdown as a concluding chapter of a series since Spider-Man 3.

– Mike McCullough Well, don’t forget Superman IV: The Quest for Peace! (Actually, you should forget that stinker…)

– M.E.

© Walt Disney Corp.

Send your comments to:

The Overstreet Price Guide also lists a 1978 treasury reprint of The Jungle Book, but I am without such a copy in my collection and see no mention of it in The Comic Reader. However, it may very well existed given that The Jungle Book movie was re-released that year (the comic-book version also having been reprinted in Gold Key’s Walt Disney Showcase #45, July 1978).

Mention should also be made of a set of four earlier treasury-sized comics put out by Western for toy/department store sale way back in 1961. They were called Golden Picture Story Books, consisted of 52 pages counting covers, and sold for 50 cents. The stars of the four were Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Walt Disney’s Babes in Toyland, and the Disney Ducks.

The official publisher was listed as Racine Press, Inc., a subsidiary name for Western that I have not seen used anywhere else. These treasuries were drawn in the experimental style to be used by Western in its earliest Gold Key comics issued a few months later, in the latter half of 1962. I own three of the four and find them quite interesting.

– John Fishel

ORDER IN THE COURT!

MARVEL UK APPRECIATION

To the Honorable Judge Eury: In BI #63, Robert Greenberger, as an “Eyewitness To the British Invasion,” testifies, of Len Wein and Dave Gibbons’ term on Green Lantern: “…the final result was a far cry better than what preceded their tenure.”

Objection, Your Honor! As one of the writers whose term on GL preceded that discussed, I must point out that Br’er Greenberger (the “eyewitness” who by definition is supposed to report only facts) is giving his opinion of the stories produced by me and others. The opinions of other readers would, of course, vary (and did). I move to strike this portion of his testimony.

May it please the court, Mike W. Barr

I just thought I’d drop you a line to say “well done” on the most recent issue of BACK ISSUE, number 63. Being from the UK, I was very pleased to see an issue devoted to British comics and creators.

It’s one of my favorite issues of the title as well.

I first got into comics through British comics, including Marvel UK titles like Transformers, so I really loved Rob Kirby’s article on the history of Marvel UK. I’m looking forward to his book on Marvel UK as well.

The rest of the articles, and the quadra-poster cover, of course, were excellent, with a special mention for the interview with Brendan McCarthy and Peter Milligan. It was great to see two of my favorite creators featured in BACK ISSUE, and I really dug seeing all the great examples of Brendan McCarthy’s remarkable artwork.

It’d be nice to see an issue devoted in the future to 2000AD and related titles. As well as all the creators who went on to work in the US and notable characters like Judge Dredd, Slaine, Nemesis the Warlock, and Rogue Trooper, you could cover lesser-known series and creators who could do with exposure in the USA, like one of my all-time-favorite artists, the late, great Massimo Bellardinelli.

Keep up the good work! I’m looking forward to all the future issues on subjects I’m interested in (backup features, Bronze Age B-Teams, Team-Up Titles, and the Legion of Super-Heroes).

– Matthew Jones

While’s Bob’s testimony has been etched into the annals of BI-dom, Mike, I’m inclined to agree with you, and fondly recall your Green Lantern stint, and the artwork of Keith Pollard—material we will one day explore here in BACK ISSUE. Presented below is the cover to one of the issues written by Mr. Barr, GL #157 (Oct. 1982).

– M.E.

Matthew, all of those themes are now past tense—hope you enjoyed them. And we will feature more British comics characters and creators in future issues.

– M.E.

NOWHERE, MAN Loved the British Invasion theme of BACK ISSUE #63 magazine.

I was looking forward to reading about The Beatles in Comics article, but it was incomplete (which is surprising for this magazine, since your team is usually so thorough).

The Beatles Experience miniseries published back in the ’90s by Revolutionary Comics was not included (and it was recently republished by Bluewater Productions). There were also a couple of biographic comics on the individual Beatles that were missed (also published by both Revolutionary and Bluewater). Any idea why these were not included? The Experience comic was not that bad and it was nine issues—longest-running title ever produced about The Beatles.

Still love your magazine, just disappointed with that one article.

In the future I hope you can devote a column to forgotten black heroes like Lobo (Western), Steamboat (Captain Marvel sidekick), and All-Negro Comics.

– Nelson Jimenez Thanks for the Beatles correction, Nelson. The author’s focus was primarily on the Bronze Age, and Marvel’s Beatles Story, but you’re right, the more recent comics should have been mentioned at least in passing.

Speaking of the Bronze Age, we’re obliged to avoid most Golden and Silver Age material due to our gentleman’s agreement with Roy Thomas and Alter Ego magazine, which covers those eras. Those forgotten black heroes you mention predate our purview—but you might want to pick up one of our earliest issues, BI #8 (Feb. 2005), our “Black Super-Heroes” issue, which opened with an essay about African-American Heroes and included explorations of Bronze Ageborn characters like Storm, Black Lightning, and Luke Cage.

I appreciate your support of BI! – M.E.

TM & © DC Comics.

SUPER-SPECS AND DIGESTS, PLEASE! I’m a big fan of the magazine. I was wondering if you had any plans to cover DC’s 100-Page Super-Spectaculars in much the same way you covered Treasury Editions? I loved the issue you did on Treasury Books. I remember those fondly, and would love it if the 100-Page Super-Spectacular got the same treatment.

Also, remember when DC published digests? You see them every now and then, and the story of treasuries always seems to be

Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

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Jeff, re 100-Page Super-Spectaculars: That’s a really good idea! We did an homage to them way back in BACK ISSUE #13, with its Nick Cardy cover spoofing the Super-Spec layout, but we’ve never given the 100-pagers a thorough examination. I’ll add it to our to-do list, although it won’t happen for a while, since 2014’s issues are planned.

Re the digests, we’ll be covering them in an issue in late 2014, as part of a theme called “Let’s Get Small” (small heroes and comics formats).

We’d considered publishing that issue in digest size like we did our treasuries issue in the tabloid size, but decided against it because (a) we didn’t want the issue to be lost on the stands or under-ordered because of its size and (b) the smaller size severely limits how our text articles would be displayed (and hey, my aging eyes are challenged enough by the magazine’s regular size!). Still, there will be an overview of DC’s Bronze Age digests late next year. And to whet your appetite for it—while appeasing the Legion fans joining us this issue—(inset) you’ll find a teaser: the cover to DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #1 (Apr. 1980), featuring art by Dick Giordano.

Thank you for supporting BACK ISSUE! – M.E.

THE MISSING LINK BACK ISSUE #63 (British Invasion) was another great issue, as usual.

The articles on the history of the Marvel reprints in England were quite fascinating, although I must admit I do wish you had done more on the early Odhams Fantastic weekly. Yes, I know that the ’60s stuff is more in Alter Ego territory, but I think Fantastic is important because it contains the first British attempt to do their own original Marvel-style comic character.

Starting out as a very Hulk–like, super-powerful Neanderthal known as the Missing Link, the prehistoric powerhouse was captured in his jungle home and brought to London where he, of course, promptly escaped.

After a few issues of doing the feral fugitive bit, however, he was trapped in a faulty nuclear reactor and exposed to leaking atomic radiation that caused him to literally evolve overnight into a being on the other end of the evolutionary spectrum, the more traditionally superheroic, caped-and-costumed Johnny Future, who used his new psionic powers to battle evil forces that included kidnappers, killer robots, and even, in what is either a bizarre bit of prophecy or only a wonderfully silly coincidence, a supervillain called Animal Man! A couple of years back, Bear Alley Books had big plans to reprint the complete Missing Link/Johnny Future saga in a two-volume hardcover set, but unfortunately, according to publisher Steve Holland, the deal with original copyright holders fell through when they started to demand a higher print run and higher cover price than he knew the marketplace could stand (last I heard, he still has hopes, though…).

I also enjoyed the other great articles and interviews with the British writers and artists who helped revolutionize comics today, especially the one with Brendan McCarthy. I’ve been a big fan of his ever since the Freakwave/Paradax/Mirkin the Mystic days, and I greatly enjoyed his recent Zaucer of Zilk, which shows that he’s lost none of his over-the-top and around-the-bend creative magic.

Speaking of magic, if you get the chance check out the Captain America: Who Won’t Wield the Shield? one-shot from back in 2010.

In it McCarthy and Matt Fraction team up to present the psychedelic 78 • BACK ISSUE • Legion in the 1970s and 1980s Issue

’70s surreal satire that is “Doctor America, Occult Agent of Liberty,” where the title supernatural super-soldier and his literal kid sidekick, the Bucky-costumed Baal the Goat Boy, battle his archenemy Richard Milhous Manson, a.k.a. the Crimson Euphemism, at the infamous Altamont concert, armed only with his magic shield the Eye of Amerigatto and a mystic chant of “Ditkirbanko!!!” as the cosmic kitten Kithotep watches all from above… (I’d say more, but it would only come across like the ravings of some poor, deluded madman, and my doctors say I really should stop doing that in public!)

Anyway, looking forward to the next issue, as always. Have a good one!

– Jeff Taylor Jeff, you’re right, 1960s (and earlier) material is the purview of our (big) sister magazine, Alter Ego, but your mention of the Missing Link is so intriguing, we couldn’t resist including a peek at the character, below.

– M.E.

© Odhams Press.

TM & © DC Comics.

tied in some way to the digest books. I would also love a look at DC’s digest books.

Thanks for your time, and keep up the great work!

– Jeff Small

BACK ISSUE IS A KEEPER I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy BACK ISSUE. A year and a half or so ago, I had a leak which ended up ruining everything in one closet in my apartment. The water spread through the rug and I had to throw out four longboxes of comics. Very unpleasant for someone who’s been in this hobby for more than 40 years.

But I consider myself a fortunate fan, because I realize it is just a hobby and they are just books. I’ve stopped buying everything out of habit and now only spend my money on things I really enjoy.

The point is that faced with the lost contents of four longboxes and the magazines that were in the closet, all I’ve chosen to replace since then are The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One, The Killing Joke … and those copies of BACK ISSUE that I just ordered [from TwoMorrows.com].

So for what it’s worth, I hope you appreciate that you turn out a magazine that people who love this hobby and love comic books really treasure. Thanks!

– Patrick McArdle Patrick, TwoMorrows publisher John Morrow forwarded your letter to me, and I wanted to share it as I believe it will be of interest to like-minded readers. Sorry to learn of the water damage you suffered, but we are honored to have BI included in your replacement library.

Our goal—in addition to mining comics history—is to fan the flames of nostalgia. Glad we’re doing that for you.

– M.E.

A WORD FROM A BRITON I can’t tell you (but will try anyway) how much I look forward to receiving BACK ISSUE. When it first appeared, I loved it but was afraid that it might have limited readership and, as a result, a short lifespan. I could not be more delighted by the fact that the title has reached number 64 (and counting) and seems to get better and better. A heartfelt thank-you to you and your colleagues for continuing to put out such a quality publication, and an equally

big expression of gratitude to all my fellow readers for showing such excellent taste and continuing to invest their hard-earned dollars, pounds, etc.

As a Briton (I’ve told you before that I hate the term “Brit” with a vengeance), I was obviously looking forward to #63, and you didn’t disappoint me (apart from not using the scans I sent you— I assume that Robert Menzies supplied better copies and, after all, he did write the article, and it was excellent). For some time now I’ve had the pleasure of corresponding with two gentlemen who are familiar to you personally, Michael, and to a lot of readers: Pierre Comtois and the UK’s own Rob Kirby. The latter provided a superb overview of Marvel UK in #63. I can’t wait for the book, Rob, and kudos again for getting Ultravox name-checked in BI. One of the most enjoyable facets of my email chats with Pierre is being able to look at our shared love of comics from trans-Atlantic viewpoints. We’ve had very different lives, but it’s incredible how much we have in common. I was pleased to be able to send Pierre copies of a few UK mags, including one or two issues of The Titans.

Obviously he’d never seen anything like it before, and I’m thrilled that you’ve been able to introduce your readers to the format.

I can’t wait to hear what my American friends think about it, not to mention the peculiarly British concept of merging struggling titles with successful ones.

The hard copy of #64 arrived on the same day as the PDF, and I just had to read it immediately. And what a joy it was!

One of the best editions of BI so far, in fact.

I was always more of a Marvel fan than DC, though I enjoyed both. This was a DC-based issue, of course, but I didn’t mind a bit (I know that the next issue will reset the scales, not that a balance is needed. By the way, that’s not intended as a Nemesis pun).

I became totally immersed in the issue, and every article held me enrapt. I just find it so fascinating to hear the background to all those cherished strips (and even, on this occasion, Metamorpho, who always left me cold, I’m afraid).

I’m looking at the advert for the upcoming issues and can barely contain my excitement. I wish I could read them all now. Perhaps it’s best, though, to Justice League of America TM & © DC Comics.

BACK ISSUE TM & © TwoMorrows. All Rights Reserved.

spread my reading pleasure throughout the year, so as to avoid any possibility of spontaneous combustion. You would lose a reader, and I would miss out on all those fantastic articles that I KNOW are in the pipeline as we speak.

Very best wishes to all BI contributors and readers.

– Dave Barker Wakefield, England Thank you, Dave! Robert Menzies did indeed supply me with a treasure trove of high-resolution scans of Marvel UK covers, which bumped the ones you had submitted—still, your contributions were sincerely appreciated and I’m happy to take this opportunity to once again thank you for them.

I also appreciate your being a BACK ISSUE reader since the beginning. Can you believe we’ve been in print since 2003??

Thanks for bringing that up and allowing me the opportunity to plug…

Next issue: BACK ISSUE celebrates its Tenth Anniversary by revisiting the 100th, 200th, 300th, 400th, and/or 500th issues of ’70s and ’80s favorites: Adventure, Amazing Spider-Man, Avengers, Batman, Brave & Bold, Casper, Detective, Flash, Green Lantern, Showcase, Superman, Thor, Wonder Woman, and more! Plus: Marvel’s 25th Anniversary Month, a Batman: The Long Halloween interview with JEPH LOEB, a BI cover gallery, and we close out the Man of Steel’s 75th Anniversary with a guest editorial by LARRY TYE, author of the critically acclaimed book Superman: The High-Flying History of America’s Most Enduring Hero! An all-star lineup including JIM APARO, MIKE W. BARR, CARY BATES, TOM DeFALCO, STEVE ENGLEHART, MICHAEL KALUTA, STAN LEE, RALPH MACCHIO, MARK MILLAR, DOUG MOENCH, KEITH POLLARD, MIKE SEKOWSKY, WALTER SIMONSON, JOE STATON, ROGER STERN, ROY THOMAS, LEN WEIN, MARV WOLFMAN, and many more. Cover by DAN JURGENS and RAY McCARTHY, featuring TEN Bronze Age Justice Leaguers—one for each year of BI. Super-sized anniversary edition: 100 pages, full color, $9.95. Don’t ask—just BI it! See you in sixty!

Michael Eury, Editor-in-chief

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES BACK ISSUE is on the lookout for the following comics-related material from the 1970s through the 1990s: • • • • • • •

Unpublished artwork and covers Commissions (color or B&W) and professional-quality specialty drawings 1970s–1990s creator and convention photographs Character designs and model sheets Original art: covers and significant interior pages Little-seen fanzine material Other rarities

If you have any of the above materials, please query the editor via email prior to submission. Art contributors will be acknowledged in print and receive a complimentary copy of the issue.

Since BI is a full-color publication, preference is given to color artwork.

Random convention sketches and “quick sketches” that do not reflect an artist’s best work and were not intended for print will no longer be considered for publication.

BACK ISSUE does not read or consider unsolicited manuscripts. However, we routinely welcome new writers to our magazine, and have done so since day one!

If you’re interested in writing for BI, please request a copy of the BACK ISSUE Writer’s Style Guide by emailing the editor at euryman@gmail.com.

Contact BI at: Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, BACK ISSUE 118 Edgewood Ave. NE Concord, NC 28025

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(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships April 2014

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships June 2014

ALTER EGO #122

ALTER EGO #123

ALTER EGO #124

ALTER EGO #125

ALTER EGO #126

Farewell salute to the COMICS BUYER’S GUIDE! TBG/CBG history and remembrances from ALAN LIGHT, MURRAY BISHOFF, MAGGIE THOMPSON, BRENT FRANKENHOFF, “final” CBG columns by MARK EVANIER, TONY ISABELLA, PETER DAVID, FRED HEMBECK, JOHN LUSTIG, classic art by DON NEWTON, MIKE VOSBURG, JACK KIRBY, MIKE NASSER, plus FCA, Mr. Monster, and more!

DENNY O’NEIL’s Silver Age career at Marvel, Charlton, and DC—aided and abetted by ADAMS, KALUTA, SEKOWSKY, LEE, GIORDANO, THOMAS, SCHWARTZ, APARO, BOYETTE, DILLIN, SWAN, DITKO, et al. Plus, we begin serializing AMY KISTE NYBERG’s groundbreaking book on the history of the Comics Code, FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), Mr. Monster, BILL SCHELLY and more!

We spotlight HERB TRIMPE’s work on Hulk, Iron Man, S.H.I.E.L.D., Ghost Rider, Ant-Man, Silver Surfer, War of the Worlds, Ka-Zar, even Phantom Eagle, and featuring THE SEVERIN SIBLINGS, LEE, FRIEDRICH, THOMAS, GRAINGER, BUSCEMA, and others, plus more of AMY KISTE NYBERG’s Comics Code history, “Sea Monkeys and X-Ray Specs” on those nutty comic book ads, FCA, Mr. Monster, and more!

Golden Age “Air Wave” artist LEE HARRIS discussed by his son JONATHAN LEVEY to interviewer RICHARD J. ARNDT, with rarely-seen 1940s art treasures (including mysterious, never-published art of an alternate version of DC’s Tarantula)! Plus more of AMY KISTE NYBERG’s exposé on the Comics Code, artist SAL AMENDOLA tells the story of the Academy of Comic Book Arts, FCA, Mr. Monster, and more!

Second big issue on 3-D COMICS OF THE 1950s! KEN QUATTRO looks at the controversy involving JOE KUBERT, NORMAN MAURER, BILL GAINES, and AL FELDSTEIN! Plus more fabulous Captain 3-D by SIMON & KIRBY and MORT MESKIN— 3-D thrills from BOB POWELL, HOWARD NOSTRAND, JAY DISBROW and others— the career of Treasure Chest artist VEE QUINTAL, FCA, Mr. Monster, and more!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Dec. 2013

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Feb. 2014

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships April 2014

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships May 2014

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships June 2014

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