The Continuing Dilemma of Brainiac 5

Mort Weisinger and his writers had continual problems with the Legion of Super-Heroes.  In a way, this is not terribly surprising.  The Legion was initially intended for just one story, the original tale in Adventure #247.  But a few issues later, Mort began putting letters pages in Adventure, and while I haven't been able to locate any letters that were actually published, it seems logical to assume that at least some fans wrote in requesting a return of the superhero team.  And so, over time, they became a regular part of the Superman family, eventually supplanting Superboy himself as the cover feature in Adventure.

But the process was not without some growing pains.  Because the stories had been written on an ad hoc basis, there were contradictions here and there.  For instance, in the initial story, the Legion was set 1000 years in the future:

But in some stories, the Legion was set only 100 years in the future.  This seems like a minor problem, except for one thing.

In Action #267, Weisinger gave Supergirl a tryout with the Legion.  However, either he or his writer for that story, realized there would be problems with having Supergirl and Superboy in the same club.  After all, wouldn't Superboy then know that a Supergirl would arrive on Earth several years later?  So they made the Legion that Supergirl tried out for the descendants of the original LSH:

As I have discussed in the past, when DC reprinted that story years later, they edited the text, so that Supergirl was joining the same Legion.  In the interim between the two appearances, Weisinger had come up with a solution to the dilemma of having Superboy know of the existence of a Supergirl in the future.  Supergirl had hypnotized him into forgetting her except when he was in the future.

But there was another problem that popped up that never was resolved in the Silver Age. Supergirl actually was rejected for membership in the Legion in that first story, although there was a reason.  She had been exposed to Red Kryptonite, which turned her temporarily into an adult.  Since the Legion was for teenagers only, she was unable to join that time.

She finally made the grade in Action #276.  In that issue, she met another applicant, with a strangely familiar appearance:

Note that the coloring in that panel is in error; for most of the story, Brainiac 5 has a green face, like his ancestor (and like his hands).  Also note that the numbering appears wrong; Brainiac's son would be Brainiac 2, his grandson Brainiac 3, his great-grandson Brainiac 4 and his great-great-grandson would be Brainiac 5.  So his great-great-great-great-grandson should be Brainiac 7.  Of course, the possibility exists that only male descendants of Brainiac inherited the name. 

But the problems don't end there.  Remember, this story is supposedly taking place 1000 years in the future.  Unless the Brainiac clan has an extraordinary lifespan, wouldn't his great-great-great-great-grandson be living more like 150 years in the future, rather than 1000?  A likely explanation is that the writer thought the Legion was only 100 years in the future.  A generation is usually considered to be 20 years, Brainiac 5 (ignoring the great-great-great-great grandson mistake) would be around 100 years after his ancestor.

A further dilemma was introduced in Superman #167, when we learned:

Weisinger and his writer had a ready explanation for Brainiac 5:

Except that doesn't really explain anything.  For starters, if Brainiac II escaped and despised the original Brainiac, why would his descendants continue to be named after the computer?  So maybe they did find him and brainwash him into thinking that Brainiac was indeed his father.  But there's still a problem. Remember, Brainiac 5 supposedly had a super-genius mind; that was his super-power that got him into the Legion.  But Brainiac II was just an ordinary boy (from a planet where the inhabitants had green skin).  How did his descendants get so smart?

By the way, DC has now apparently decided to ignore the story in Action #276.  Remember, this was the story that showed Brainiac 5 and Supergirl getting inducted into the Legion:

But in modern reprintings of Adventure #247, the original Legion story, one of the characters in several panels has been recolored to look like Brainiac 5.  For example, in the Millenium edition:

But in the original there was no green-skinned lad:

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The Curious Case of the Time Trapper

Faithful readers of the Legion of Superheroes must have been confused at this sequence, which appeared in Adventure #317:

Why confused? Well, it turns out that this was the first mention of the Time Trapper in a Legion story. At the very end of that story (which mostly did not concern TT) came a semi-explanation:

In the next issue, we got our first glimpse of the villain:

Note in particular his physical appearance there. Over the next year or so, we'd see more futile efforts by the Legion to break through:

The Time Trapper turned out to be working behind the scenes in that story, trying to find out the secret of the Legion's super weapon, the concentrator:

But it turns out that he does not have the real secret of the concentrator and flees into the future again. Amazingly, the Time Trapper story would not be resolved until Adventure #338, almost two years after he was first mentioned:

In that story, the Time Trapper has recruited an evil female, Glorith of Baalour, to help him doom the Legion. We get a strong indication of the plot here:

However, when she tries the trick on several members of the Legion, they do not regress in age past babyhood:

Frustrated in his plot to turn the Legion into blobs of protoplasm, he joins Glorith, after first letting Superboy and Brainiac 5 through the Iron Curtain of Time. He leaves them trapped in the future and sets about training the baby Legionnaires to rob for him:

Then he brings them to a planet where elements in the atmosphere will resume their devolution. But this causes problems, too:

But one of the babies has spotted the Time Trapper's ring, which is responsible for keeping Superboy and Brainiac 5 in the future. He switches it off, allowing them to join the group. The Trapper makes a proposal:

Brainiac 5 agrees, but there is a trick:

End of story? Well, yes and no. Yes, in the sense that it quite literally is the end of the Time Trapper in the Silver Age; he did not appear again outside of a hallucination sequence in Adventure 363. Which, if you think about it, is very odd. Here's this villain whose confrontation with the Legion had been built up over the course of two years, and yet they dispose of him in a single 16-page story? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So I began digging for clues and speculating a bit. The first clue is that initial mention of the Time Trapper in Adventure #317. It appears obvious that there was supposed to be a Time Trapper story which appeared before that, but which was bumped for some reason. And if we look at the cover to Adventure #317, we get a pretty good second clue:

Speculation: Perhaps the Time Trapper story which appeared in Adventure #338 was intended to appear just before #317, but editor Mort Weisinger belatedly realized that this would give him two consecutive stories featuring Legionnaires turning into babies? This fits, especially when you consider that Adventure #338 was written by Jerry Siegel, while #317 was written by Edmund Hamilton. Weisinger could have instructed Hamilton (or artist John Forte) to include a couple panels mentioning the Time Trapper.

There are certainly still some problems with this speculation. For example, the story does not end with the Time Trapper in the future, creating the Iron Curtain of Time. But this objection is easily overcome; Weisinger simply had the ending of the story rewritten because now it took place after the events in #317, instead of before. Note as well that the story in Adventure #338 did not explain what secret the Time Trapper was supposedly concealing from the Legion in the future.

So my best guess is that the Time Trapper story that was supposed to be published before Adventure #317 was in fact the story that ended up being published in Adventure #338, with some changes. Incidentally, the Time Trapper himself may have been based on the Time Master, a similar character that appeared in Wonder Woman #101:

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Legion of Super-Heroes #5

Legion of Super-Heroes #5
Nov 2010 | 31 pages | CBR | 15.9 MB
Download MIRROR #1

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The Legion of Super-Romances

In their first several appearances, the members of the Legion of Super-Heroes were somewhat asexual. This is not that surprising, since they initially encountered Superboy, who almost never acknowledged an interest in girls.

However, we learned over time that they could be just as hormone drenched as real teenagers. The first hint appears to be in Action #276, where Supergirl and Brainiac 5 are inducted into the Legion together. Later:

In Action #289, we learned that at least one Legion romance led to the altar:

In Adventure #311, we learned that Night Girl, a member of the Legion of Substitute Heroes was sweet on Cosmic Boy:

In #316, Phantom Girl expresses her admiration for Ultra Boy:

The very next issue of Adventure features the first appearance of Dream Girl, and all the boys go gaga over the platinum blonde:

Especially Star Boy (with fateful consequences much later).

In Adventure #321, Bouncing Boy loses his powers, slims down, and picks himself up a plumper:

Of course, much later he'd, err, pair up with Duo Damsel.

Shrinking Violet didn't shrink away from Duplicate Boy, even though he was supposedly the leader of a gang of crooks:

In actuality, however, Duplicate Boy and the rest of his group had been duped into attacking the Legion, and in the end of the story, Violet and he appear to be starting a romance.

Adventure #326 featured The Revolt of the Girl Legionnaires, a zany story where the girls are hypnotized into destroying their male counterparts. As part of their plot, the gals pretend to be interested in some of the boys. For example:

But the romances are all phony, and none of the gals were later romantically linked to their chosen victims in this case. In fact, Light Lass (shown kissing Element Lad there), met her chosen beau in the next issue:

In Adventure #329, a reader wrote in requesting more romance:


That takes us through the first 30 issues of the Legion in Adventure, and seems like a good breaking point. Still more Legion love to come!

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The Death of Lightning Lad

One of the more interesting sagas in the DC Silver Age was the death of Lightning Lad. Although these death and resurrection stories have been overdone since, back in the 1960s this was definitely something quite new and exciting.

The death takes place in Adventure #304. As the story begins, Saturn Girl observes a small capsule arriving near Legion HQ. She picks it up and reads it, then destroys it so that the others cannot learn the message. Next, she uses her power of super thought-casting to compel the other members to elect her leader of the Legion. Oddly, she then becomes a tyrant:

It turns out that the medallions siphon off the powers from the Legionnaires undergoing the tests, which Saturn Girl unreasonably declares they have failed. She demands that each of them refrain from using their powers for at least a month. Then, the Legion receives an urgent bulletin:

But Lightning Lad, learning of the message Saturn Girl received at the beginning of the story, disobeys her orders and heads into space with her, where:

Back at HQ, we learn that Mon-El, still in the Phantom Zone (he would emerge in the next issue), had seen the message, which revealed that a Legion member would die in the battle with Zaryan. Hence Saturn Girl's tyrannical behavior was intended to ensure that only she would die in the battle. We see Lightning Lad's last words:

And his funeral:

And in the next few issues, there was usually some mention of Lightning Lad's bravery:

As well as hints that he might be revived:

Of course, those who had been paying close attention knew that Weisinger had to bring back Lightning Lad, because in a story published about a year earlier, we learned that LL and Saturn Girl had married.

Finally, in Adventure #312, the story was resolved:

In Adventure #304, Mon-El had mentioned that he might be able to find a way to restore Lightning Lad to life on his home planet of Daxam. When he returns, he claims that his trip was in vain, but Saturn Girl senses with her telepathic powers that he's lying. Eventually she learns the secret; while there is a way to revive Lightning Lad (through lightning as shown on the cover), inevitably it kills the person who brings him back to life. So one of the Legionnaires must die. They decide the only fair way is for all of them to take the risk. Saturn Girl apparently gets the short straw:

But it turns out to be Proty:

And a few issues later:

Of course, Lightning Lad's trials and tribulations were far from over in the Silver Age.

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Edited Reprints: Supergirl and the Legion

I just noticed this today due to a discussion at Commander Benson's Deck Log about Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes. In Action #267, Supergirl first meets the Legion, although not that Legion:

As I remarked a few years ago, Weisinger obviously recognized the problem with introducing Supergirl to the same Legion that Superboy belonged to; that would mean that Superman would not be surprised when Supergirl landed on Earth, since he'd known of her eventual arrival since his teenage years. So he took care of the problem, except that when the Legion became a continuing series he and his writers obviously wanted to include Kara in their adventures. So, as discussed by Commander Benson:

Weisinger’s explanation became official with the next issue, # 334 (Jul., 1965). “The Unknown Legionnaire” was one of those rare Legion adventures in which Supergirl played a large part, and it didn’t take long after the super-cousins appeared side by side that a footnote was inserted, establishing that Supergirl had implanted a post-hypnotic suggestion in Superboy’s mind so that he would forget her existence when he returned to his own time. Thus, paving the way for his total surprise as an adult when cousin Kara landed on Earth.

And so, when Weisinger reprinted this story in Action #334, the dialog was rewritten:

Note that this also gets rid of a bit of Lysenko-type science. Lightning Lad acquired his powers after a run-in with a lightning beast; there would be no reason to expect his son to inherit that genetically. Of course, there are many examples of this assumption appearing in the comics, but realistically the only parents who could give their powers to their offspring are those that have them from birth.

Some other examples of edited reprints in (or of) the Silver Age:

The second origin of the second Two-Face. The second Two-Face was Paul Sloane. In his original appearance in Batman #68, the hideous side of his face was the result of a jealous husband; when the tale was reprinted in Batman Annual #3, it was caused by an accidental explosion. I suspect that the CCA wanted the love triangle edited out of the story.

The Death of Ma and Pa Kent. When the story was originally published in Superman #161, the Kents were an elderly couple. But in Superboy #145, the Kents were transformed into thirty-somethings by a bottle of youth elixir. Thus, when the story explaining their deaths was reprinted in Superboy #165, their bodies and faces were redrawn to make them look younger.

Anybody aware of other changes? I seem to recall that the cover of JLA #2 was redrawn for the Archive Edition.

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The Legion Rejects: Part II

In Part I of the Legion Rejects, I noted the four basic reasons that the Legion rejected applicants:

1. Fake powers.
2. Undependable powers.
3. Useless powers.
4. Limitation on powers.

Bizarro Superboy was rejected in Adventure #329 for reason #2. Of course, it wasn't so much that his powers were undependable as that he himself was undependable.

The next group Legion tryout after Adventure #325 came in #330.



Ethel was an eyeful, alright! And the Mess seems obviously a rip-off of the old Charlie Brown character, Pig-pen. Both were clearly rejected for reason #3. Update: Norman points out in the comments that the Mess probably took his rejection with a "What, me worry?" attitude. ;)

In Adventure #331, Dynamo Boy (a villain) has successfully gotten rid of all the members of the Legion, and conducts his own tryouts. He adds a reason #5 for rejection:



5. Incorruptibility.

Obviously, this is not normally a disqualifier for the Legion. I'm not sure if Animal Lad (whose powers were changing humans into animals, and taming animals) ever came back for a tryout after Dynamo Boy was captured and expelled.

However, Dynamo Boy does use the normal criteria for some of the other applicants:



Golden Boy is a reason #3 reject, as is the Polecat:



The Tusker:



Rejected for reason #2 after he found himself unable to withdraw his tusks from the tree.

The next Legion tryouts came in Adventure #337. Four Legion members had gotten married (Lightning Lad/Saturn Girl and Ultra Boy/Phantom Girl), and replacements were needed. This was all a plot to get three evil aliens to join the Legion, and so the rejects were just Night Girl and Chlorophyll Kid again being rejected for reason #4 and #3 respectively:



In Adventure #342, Calamity King got gonged for reason #2:



While Color Kid was a #3 reject:



He later proved that his power had some value. In Adventure #351, a green Krytponite cloud surrounded earth during the Legion era and Superboy and Supergirl were forced to resign temporarily. However, he came up with a solution in #352 by turning the cloud to blue Kryptonite, which only affects Bizarro.

Adventure #346 introduced a new wrinkle.



Qualifying tests presumably meant that there would be fewer rejects, and indeed the four applicants show above (Princess Projectra, Ferro Lad, Karate Kid and Nemesis Kid) were all accepted into the Legion, although Nemesis Kid could arguably have been rejected for reason #4:



Indeed, I remember one occasion where he was captured by Duo Damsel, precisely because while he could defeat any one opponent, he was a wimp when facing multiple foes.

That takes us through Adventure #350, another good breaking point.

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