Steve & The Legion of Super-Heroes

Howard Chaykin and Bob Wiacek.

My familiarity with the Legion went all the way back to its very beginning. I had begun collecting comics not long before Adventure Comics #247 was published. This was the Legion’s first appearance, in a story called, unsurprisingly, “The Legion of Super-Heroes,” written by Otto Binder and illustrated by Al Plastino.

In the story, Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, and Lightning Boy (yes, Boy, not Lad) come from the future to ask Superboy to join their “SuperHero Club.” The future trio wore costumes almost totally different from those worn in their next appearance. Their full super-hero names were printed on the fronts of their costumes. The story was quite typical, wherein Superboy is eventually rejected from the club, but learns that his rejection was just the final test to see how he handled failure. This was a common plot device in Mort Weisinger-edited Superman titles.

In 1978, I was assigned the editorship of Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes

This was not my initial encounter with the Legion; far from it! My first assignment at DC was as assistant editor to editor Murray Boltinoff, and one of the many books Murray edited was Superboy and the Legion of SuperHeroes. I even dialogued one of Paul Levitz’s Legion stories in #240 [June 1978], drawn by

I always believed that the Legion of SuperHeroes was an “accidental” series. They were never intended to be anything more than supporting characters. However, with every subsequent appearance, their popularity grew. After appearances and even their own series in Adventure Comics, the Legion took over Superboy’s title. Superboy was changed to become Superboy and the Legion of SuperHeroes with #197 [Sept. 1973]. 54

My first issue as editor was Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #247 [March 1979]. I had inherited two scripts by Len Wein and Paul Levitz for that issue, but as of the next issue, Gerry Conway became my regular writer, and Joe Staton became my regular artist (with a few fill-ins by others).

Gerry had a heavy, contracted workload of scripting chores. To ease things up a bit for him and for Joe, and to get ahead of deadlines myself, I commissioned a few fill-in back-up short stories. I planned to have these written and drawn by others so my regular creative team could catch up. Giving Staton a break from doing another full issue, Conway wrote a seven-page back-up for #257 titled, “Once a Legionnaire…” featuring Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel.

Bouncing Boy was always my favorite Legionnaire. There were many reasons for this: One, he didn’t look like a super-hero. Two, he had a very visual power, unlike many of the other Legionnaires who just pointed to use their super-abilities. Three, he had a hot girlfriend (later his wife) in the person(s) of Duo Damsel.

I decided to assign the art for this story to Steve Ditko!

Steve Ditko’s personal philosophy is quite well known. Steve believed in a black-&-white world. Everything was either good or bad, wonderful or terrible, benevolent or evil. You had to accept either one totally. You could never compromise. If you claimed to be a good person and compromised, this meant, according to Steve, you would have to accept some aspect of evil! This was best reflected in his ruthless crime fighting character Mr. A, whose fearful calling card was simply a business card, half-white, half-black.

Ironically, this back-&-white attitude was reflected in Steve’s work on the Legion of Super-Heroes; fans loved it or they hated it, no in-between. I had selected Steve for a number of reasons. First of all, I thought Ditko’s figure work was similar to that of George Papp’s, who had drawn many of the Legion’s early appearances after their debut. Secondly, Steve was fast and could turn around a sevenpage story in a very short amount of time.

When I asked Steve if he could do the story, he was pretty busy. He was doing a few Time Warp stories for me, and was drawing Machine Man and Micronauts for Marvel, but he agreed.

After he accepted the assignment he asked, “Do you have reference for the characters? Because I really don’t know them.”

This was immediately a concern because one of the most common complaints from