Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!

... or: "How Can You Be In Two Places At Once, When You Aren't Anywhere At All...?" (PART FIVE)

As should be manifestly obvious to anyone who's given this site even the briefest, most cursory of once-overs: I am a major fiend for DC Comics' LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES franchise.

It's been that way for me ever since I first encountered 'em, way back in the earliest days of their initial, groundbreaking stories within the pages of the late, lamented ADVENTURE COMICS. The Justice League may have been (and remains) my all-time favorite comics series; The Batman and Captain America, the two heroes I idolized the most shamelessly (and still do); post-Silver Age titles such as GRIMJACK, THE QUESTION and Grant Morrison's DOOM PATROL have all "spoken" to me more personally and more profoundly; and so on and so forth, and yadda yadda yadda...

... but: gimme a brand-new Legion comic book, and I am -- invariably -- One Happy Camper, you damn betcha...

... except, that is, for ADVENTURE COMICS #354 and #355.

These two issues aren't merely bad...

... they're downright evil.

These two comics -- oh, I get around; I hear things -- have been utilized by war criminals in the course of peculiarly painful and protracted POW interrogations. They are two of the more vital (and noxious) components requisite to the summoning and control of various and sundry greater demons. Rumor has it that the original penciled pages are currently being kept under twenty-four hour armed guard in a sealed concrete bunker, deep within the ebon, adamantine bowels of Area 51.

Blink twice if I'm going too fast for any of you out there... 'kay?

As our story opens -- and, admittedly, calling this unholy auctorial offering a "story" is rather analogous to referring to the television series Baywatch as "a gripping nautical narrative" -- Superman decides that it might be kind of... you know... kicky to take a quick jaunt into the far future, and scope out the pre-destined outcomes and whereabouts of his (once-)teenaged uberpals, the Legion of Super-Heroes.

As we've all doubtless learned by now, the Silver Age Superman could (and did) navigate the whirls and eddies of the time stream as smoothly and readily as might a three-bean burrito through the colon of John Goodman. Therefore, we're still on Page One by the time The Big Blue has made his happy-go-lucky way to the Metropolis of one thousand years from now...

... only to encounter the very first of what quickly promises to be a veritable Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade of horrors: the sight of a fleshy (and slightly balding) Brainiac V, puffing away professorially on a pipe. [See panel reproductions, below]

Look: either you instinctively understand why this is evil and wrong... or you don't.

There are a few pages with brief (but not brief enough) "Whatever Happened To...?" sequences detailing the future situ of such longtime (and now retired) Legion stalwarts as Bouncing Boy (married); Matter- Eater Lad (President of homeworld "Bismoll"); Light Lass (happy little hausfrau); the Mole Lasses (slowed down considerably); and Cheryl Ladd (really bad made-for-television movies).

As wretched (and unintentionally hilarious) as revelations such as these indisputably are, however... even they must pale, inevitably, alongside such retina-scarring sights as a balding, vaguely Richard Nixon-ish Cosmic Boy; Timber Wolf, sporting a gigolo moustache; an almost-too-chunky-for-his-own-spandex Element Lad; Polar Boy, still wearing that dopey, fur-lined atrocity of a costume of his (which, by the way, looks bloody ridiculous on a putative "adult"); and other horrors of a similar stripe.

Oh, yeah: and, in the meantime, A Shadowy Figure of Menace Watches From the Shadows, Swearing Vengeance Eternal, and you are getting sleepy... s-l-e-e-e-e-e-e-p-y

In what I'm fairly certain must have been intended as an exciting action sequence, Our Mystery Villain later engages several of the geriatric gladiators in a brief (and fairly pointless) bit of hand-to-hand.

(... and it's well worth pointing out, at this stage in the autopsy, that -- given the absolute inanity of what he'd been given to work with, script-wise -- artist Curt Swan makes a valiaant effort, in scenes such as this one, to lend the story a measure of legitimacy it cannot otherwise claim on its own merits.

(Curt Swan was a bloody pro, children. Never forget that.)

The tiny, mewling thing attempting to pass itself off as an actual, for real plot in all of the foregoing, at this juncture, takes a harebrained turn for the storytelling worse (assuming that's even possible), and we are blandly informed that the mysterious hooded menace masterminding all of this fooforaw is -- great day in the mornin'! -- a Legionnaire! [Insert Dramatic Organ Music Here]

The Legion of Super-Septuagenarians manages, at deadly length, to effect a stratagem by means of which the mystery man is effectively bamboozled (and which would not, I assure you, have hoodwinked even a moderately bright ten-year-old). Once snagged and secured, the phantom felon is summarily unmasked, and revealed to be...

... Ferro Lad?!?

Well... yes and no. It seems that the Legion's short-lived martyr-in- residence, the original Ferro Lad [see The Legion of Super-Heroes: PAGE THREE for a full recounting of the Whys and Wherefores behind all of that], had this hitherto-unknown twin brother, y'see -- with the same super-powers and everything, by jingo -- and the latter was all choked up over the untimely demise of the former, and Swore Vengeance Eternal at his dead brother's graveside; but, see, he later found out he was all wrong about that, and decided to become a super-hero, only then he had his mind taken over by yet another, even MORE shadowy and Machiavellian menace, and...

... look. Just put your head between your knees and rest for a moment or two, all right? We're only now just halfway through; from this point onward, things really get silly in a tearing hurry.

Stop crying.

Okay... so: issue #355 opens up with a shot of the Legion of Super- Villains, shaking their collective fists at a video monitor and cursing the adult LSH for being smarter than they are (which tells you pretty much everything you really need to know about these hopeless goobers, come to think about it).

"Don't give up, Cosmic King!" a grinning Lightning Lord rasps. "I've already planned our next battle... it can't fail! The power we have added to our ranks will prevent that!" Which makes one wonder why the villainous triad (now a quintet) hadn't gone with the really good "master plan" to begin with, then. I'm just sayin', really.

Be that as it may: Plan "B" is promptly initiated when the adult Brainiac V finds himself being rudely abducted by A Very Silly-Looking Mechanical Device, complete with obligatory "dead giveaway" Legion of Super-Villains insignia.

"Much later, inside Legion headquarters" [the following caption exposits, helpfully] the wattled and liver-spotted Lightning Man; Cosmic Man; and Saturn Woman are confronted by a drive-in theatre screen- sized tramsmission of the villainous Lightning Lord's smug, supercilious puss.

He informs the startled seniors that -- unless they trot off obediently to their respective dooms, at the hands of the various super-villains -- they plan on taking Brainiac V's pipe away from him and smashing it. Or else maybe just forcing him to puff a lesser quality brand of tobacco. Or something. (Remember: this was the better of the two plans.)

(There was also -- as careful perusal of the original script, years later, informs us -- a "Plan C," involving the villains repeatedly ringing the doorbell to Legion Headquarters and then running away, laughing their fool heads off. That's the one I would have voted for.)

Well: a quick quintet of fairly pointless (and enervating) one-on-one melees follow -- with the dust-up betwixt (*snicker*) Polar Man and the rather unfortunately appelated Beauty Blaze being as representative as any of 'em, really -- after which, the scattered Legionnaires manage to track down the location of their kidnapped colleague.

... only to discover, to their collective dismay, that they'd never actually engaged their villainous counterparts in pitched battle at all.

("They don't even suspect," a preening Lightning Lord smirks, "that they didn't really defeat us... but solid, life-like images, created by the machine that cast my face on their wall!"

("Thinking we're already beaten," Beauty Blaze continues -- obviously anxious to demonstrate that she can exposit a plot point with the best of 'em -- "they'll walk right into our clutches!"

(... all of which, obviously, begs the question: "Then why bother meeting the heroes in for-real combat at all, f'chrissakes...?!?" Plan "C" is looking better and better all the time, here, by way of actual comparison I'm just sayin', is all.)

The by-now-exhausted Legionnaires are, in plain point of fact, suckered by the ruse, and -- blithely waltzing their way into ambush -- proceed to get their greying, wrinkled hinders well and truly whupped by the triumphant super-villains.

Were this a poorly-conceived and/or -crafted story, it would be at precisely this point that the reader would be "treated" to a particularly ham-fisted deus ex machina of some sort, the better to clumsily extract Our Heroes from the ravening jaws of disaster.

Boy. Color me stunned.

Out of nodamnwhere at all, a pair of mysterious armored figures -- one of them either a child, or else a dwarf of some sort -- burst into the room and (in the course of a scant two panels) mop up the bloody floor with the stupefied super-villains. The battered and grateful Legionnaires inquire as to the identities of their steel-clad saviors, and --

[WARNING: the final page of this wretched little tale is so unremittingly bone-headed and awful that I am taking the I'm-only- telling-you-this-once opportunity to shield the more fragile and/or susceptible of you from Serious and Possibly Permanent Psychic Injury. You really, truly do not want to see this, folks. No foolin'. Any of you elect to venture onward beyond this point... it's all on your heads, and yours alone.

All right. Fine. Fine. Just so you don't all come sniveling and whining to me later on, then. My conscience is clear.]

The armored duo remove their visored helmets and reveal themselves to be --

[Last Chance. Stop Reading. NOW.]

-- Lex Luthor and Mr. Mxyzptlk.

No. I gave you every opportunity to bail, dammit. You just didn't listen, is all.

In actuality (as if it made any conceivable difference at this late date in the dire proceedings), it is the 30th Century descendants of Luthor and Mxyzptlk, eager to make amends for the black deeds and reputations of their long-ago ancestors. Given that the both of them are either bald or balding... they adduced (one may only assume) that the most expedient means by which this might most readily be accomplished would be in hooking up with a whole lot of other wrinkled warriors. Or something. If only the angry, piping voices in my head would just... shut... UP -- !!

In any event: this two-part terror stands virtually unrivaled, in my estimation, as one of the true storytelling nadirs in comics... then, or now.

God alone knows how bloody awful I feel, having subjected the lot of you to same.

Look: Unca Cheeks is gonna make it alllllllll better.

Some really good "time travel" stories... on Page Six of this entry.

Promise.

"Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART ONE"

"Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART TWO"

"Time Travel On the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART THREE"

"Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART FOUR"

"Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART SIX"

"Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART SEVEN"

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