Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
(LONG LIVE THE LEGION)
A Highly Selective (and Shamelessly Biased) Retrospective of the All-Time Coolest Moments in the History of the Silver Age LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES.
(This page is
dedicated to the membership entire of the mighty, mighty AOLEAGUE... who
have also known of betrayals and disappointments, in their collective history,
and [nonetheless] persevered.)
COOL MOMENT NUMERO UNO: "The Death of Lightning Lad" (i.e., "The Stolen Super-Powers"; ADVENTURE COMICS #304)
Yeah, yeah... I know what all of the (relative) youngsters out there are saying, at this point: "So... a team member snuffed it. Big hairy whoop."
Y'all gotta remember, though: back in The Year of Our Lord, 1963 (!!)... the slow dancing of any ongoing comics hero or heroine with The Grim Reaper was a major, did-you-see-that e-v-e-n-t; plain and simple. (The writers of the era were not, after all, so readily given to treating comics characters as simply the spandexed equivalents of soiled tissues as are their modern-day counterparts... nor, of course, were the readers of the day so jaded and cynical as to expect this sort of thing as being "par" for the storytelling course.)
Emotionally "frozen" blonde beauty Saturn Girl (the team's resident telepath) had garnered incontrovertible evidence that one of their fellow Legionnaires was predestined for a dirt nap, and so covertly arranged matters that she might be the only "active" team member in the field, when the Big Moment came to pass. The noble Lightning Lad, however, tumbled onto her little self-sacrificial scheme, and sucked up the rhetorical "bullet" in her stead, regardless. [See pictures, below]
Of course, this leads us directly into COOL MOMENT Numero Two-o; better known as...
"Lightning Lad: He Got Better" (i.e., "The Super-Sacrifice of the Legionnaires"; ADVENTURE COMICS #312)
All but consumed by grief, the remaining Legionnaires devise a scenario by means of which one of them might surrender his (or her) own life-force, in order to re-animate their fallen friend and comrade.
Before very one reading this starts to feeling all teary-eyed and whatnot, however: said resurrection scheme is successfully employed without any of the plucky teens in question being forced to make The Ultimate Sacrifice, due to the willingness of an ambulatory glob of shape-shifting protoplasm -- one "Proty," by name -- selflessly electing to do so, in their stead.
COOL MOMENT (x3): "Attack of the Hopeless Spandexed Goobers" (i.e., "The War Between the Substitute Heroes and the Legionnaires"; ADVENTURE COMICS #311)
The Legion of Substitute Heroes -- unlike their better-known counterparts
and namesakes -- were teen wannabe crime-fighters without enough top-grade
firepower between the lot of 'em to wrestle a particularly determined field
mouse to the ground, without resorting to small caliber hand weaponry.
Their collective membership comprised (initially) by the not-so-awe- inspiring likes of Chlorophyll Kid (who could, y'know, make daisies and petunias grow really, really fast) and Stone Boy (who could render himself completely immobile and insensate; now, there's a "super-power" guaranteed to win the day versus your typical invading alien armada), this intrepid (if misguided) lot dedicated themselves pretty much as their chosen team appellation implied: "standing in" for the absent Legionnaires, if and when circumstances so warranted.
The introduction of this rag-tag, never-say-die assembly of aspirants into the LEGION canon -- believe it or not -- provided the Siilver Age LSH writers of the day (Edmond Hamilton; Jerry Siegel; etc.) with the requisite springboard for some of the most interesting and memorable tales of that period, illuminating the hitherto heretical comic book notion that one need not necessarily have any worthwhile power(s) and/or abilities to "make it" in the super-hero game, so long as one's courage and determination to excel were of the requisite measure.
A particularly well-rendered example of this noble sentiment was...
COOL MOMENT THE FOURTH: "Oh, Well... At Least Their Hearts Are In the Right Place..." (i.e., "The Legionnaires' Super-Contest"; ADVENTURE COMICS #315)
After operating in more-or-less obscurity for a time, the Substitute Heroes are finally "discovered" by the Legionnaires.
So impressed are the latter heroes by the gutsy resolve of their lesser-powered counterparts that they promptly stage the super-heroic equivalent of a combination initiation "gauntlet" and college fraternity hazing, arranging for each of the five "Subs" to demonstrate his/her respective mettle by satisfactorily completing tasks specifically designed to render their individual super-powers (such as they were) all but useless. [See picture, below]
Night Girl, for instance -- whose amazing physical prowess could only be manifested in the total absence of sunlight -- was dispatched to capture a brutal female tyrant, whose own super-powers operated on precisely the opposite principle. Chlorophyll Kid had to split a mountain in two, utilizing nothing save his native ability to accelerate plant growth; and so forth.)
Whichever "Sub" garnered the highest score, in the completion of his/her assigned task, would be rewarded with full and instantaneous Legion membership. When the winning teen (the aforementioned "Stone Boy," believe it or not) realized that accepting such an honor would mean leaving his friends in the Substitute Heroes behind... he gracefully declined, electing to remain with his fellow tyros, instead. A nice moment, that.
Moving onward to COOL MOMENT THE FIFTH, we come to: "So... There Was This One-Armed Man, See..." (i.e., "The Renegade Super-Hero"; ADVENTURE COMICS #316)
It was another comics "first": a super-hero (the hot-tempered and individualistic Ultra Boy, in this instance) being accused of (and tried and convicted for) criminal misdeeds, by his own grim and unforgiving teammates. [See cover reproduction, below]
Desperately attempting to prove his innocence, the now-renegade (and -- it must herewith be granted, in all honesty -- not terribly cerebral) Ultra Boy had to utilize his powers and cunning to remain a constant half-step or better ahead of his former friends and allies, while simultaneously attempting to garner the necessary evidence to convincingly demonstrate his innocence to the satisfaction of his (former) partners in crime-busting. It was the first full issue-length LEGION tale of the ADVENTURE COMICS run, and is -- even today -- still utilized by pressent-day comics scribes as the essential "template" of the Ultra Boy character.
More COOL LEGION OF SUPER-HERO "MOMENTS" of the Silver Age... on the page(s)
immediately following!
Legion of Super-Heroes (History): PAGE TWO
Legion of Super-Heroes (History): PAGE THREE
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