With the mourning period over from the loss of our beloved Chemical King, we return to the two-story format. Though this may feel like a filler issue (it is), rest assured its ‘filler’ is simply meant to keep us entertained until next issue, when we are back with a Giant-Sized Spectacular. The powers that be have promised more pages of new story in this wonderful lore that is the Legion of Super-Heroes and I do hope they are as good as their word.

But even if we have a lot of filler, we also have a bit of joy because the ever lovable Chuck Taine, aka Bouncing Boy, is back! And he gets back his powers in a way that will make Brainiac Five scratch his head in disbelief before his lips are able to get out that tried and true sentence: “I should have thought of that!”

So settle in folks, grab a cup of whatever beverage you are drinking, put your feet up, and be whisked away to the Thirtieth Century as we continue our coverage of Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes.

The Creature Who Conned the Legion

Superboy, Sun Boy, Dream Girl, Brainiac Five, and Element Lad are thrust into action and have not been able to enjoy the ceremony bestowed upon them by the Planet Remor. Because the planet feels like it is being pulled apart!

Before the first earthquake shocks can pass, the Legionnaires are in the air and searching for the cause. Element Lad reminds the gang that Remor is solid bedrock so there should not be any Earthquakes. He quickly changes the lava flow to gas by altering its elemental composition in order to buy the Remorians some time. Superboy assists Element Lad in the rescues while Sun Boy reports to Brainiac Five. 

Brainiac Five is as perplexed as everyone else. He notes that even though Thirtieth Century technology is quite advanced, it still has not found the cure for earthquakes, especially if a whole planet should be immune to them. But he still has an idea and he instructs Sun Boy to use his solar powers to fuse the rifts shut that will hopefully stop the shocks.

Without a word, the golden-haired youth Marshalls his energies, the peculiar powers acquired when he was imprisoned in the inferno of a nuclear reactor and channels his flaming heat deep into the fissure with explosive results. 

Moments later with the shocks ended, the Remorians are concerned that maybe the planet has turned on them, even if they were able to carefully take advantage of the vast amount of minerals they were able to mine. But Element Lad promises the crowd, including Governor Humph, that as deputy leader they will try to find answers and hopefully prevent the event from ever occurring again.

But suddenly a dark, ominous voice rings about behind him, warning him not to promise what is beyond his ability. They look behind them and an evil looking alien, encased in a robot like torso with grotesque tentacles emitting forth, promises them that the quakes will return. The Legionnaires quickly spring into action in order to subdue the perceived new threat. But as they approach creature disappears, only to reappear directly in front of them. Dream Girl closes her eyes and goes into deep concentration mode in order to use her power of prophecy. She instructs Superboy to try to snatch the being while telling the others her prediction in where it will reappear. And sure enough, Brainiac Five and Element Lad manage to capture it. 

But it quickly tells them that it means no harm and it came to this planet to protect the Remorians and they must listen to him. Realizing that they might have acted a bit hasty, the most powerful teenagers in the universe allows it to continue in order to figure out who it is and why it is here. And it explains:

“I have journeyed here for good and honorable reasons! I am Sden, and I am what you would call a sorcerer from the Galaxy of Trevenon. I came to get the Crystal of Catastrophe, a mystic talisman we sent into the intergalactic voice, only to discover that it had used its enchanted energies to drift back towards inhabited planets, seeking new worlds to destroy!

“The crystal thrives on disaster, and will soon shake this planet apart! You have only felt its first effects!”

Brainiac Five then asks Sden why he had not simply destroyed the crystal or at least teleported it away. With sadness Sden relays that he is not that powerful. But if the Legionnaires could use their powers to recover it, then he can take it back to the void. He then points to a volcano yonder, the resting place of the crystal. If they could only fetch it and bring it back, he can save the planet.

Element Lad gives the command and the rest follow. But Dream Girl is suspicious and believes her intuition is warning her that Sden might be more than what he is simply saying. And to confirm our suspicions, we go back to Sden who has an evil expression on his face. Should the Legion successfully fetch what he craves, the crystal will give him enough power to make him the supreme being.

MUHAHAHAHAHA.

Meanwhile the Legionnaires find themselves in the volcano with Superboy while Brainiac Five uses his Force Field belt to shield the others from its tremendous heat. Superboy punches his way through and Element Lad senses the composition of substances within the volcano in order to pinpoint the crystal’s position. He quickly identifies the crystal and Superboy rushes in to take it.

Superboy takes the crystal and sees that it is encased in a very sophisticated looking box and manages to open it. He tells Dream Girl that he finds it hard to believe that such a small item could cause so much damage and Dream Girl agrees. In fact she does not believe it at all and tells him she has a plan.

We move ahead and rejoin Sden as he is overjoyed that they returned with the prize. He begs them to hand it over quickly but Superboy tells him the quakes have stopped. Sden gets nervous and anxiously snatches the box out of Superboy’s hands. Then with an evil glee he tells the Legionnaires how fools they have been and with the crystal now in his possession he will be able to create even more devastating quakes. He summons one giant quake that knocks the Legionnaires to the ground. With the Legionnaires out of action he holds tighter onto the box, telling them all that he will bring the entire galaxy to its knees…after he destroys them of course.

Sden turns his attention to undoing the complex locks on the ancient chest. But with his sorcerous power, the locks are no barrier and the chest opens, only to explode in fiery fury causing Sden to be engulfed in flames. Superboy delivers a punch and tells Dream Girl she was right, he is weakened by fire. And Element Lad did a perfect job encasing the box with a phosphorus coating that would burst into flames when exposed to air.

Sun Boy encases Sden in a fire cage and Dream Girl reminds the Legionnaires that they should trust her premonitions. She envisioned that with the crystal Sden would challenge and defeat both Mordru and the Legion. And with nothing standing in his way, possibly the universe. Sden tells them they will regret what they have done but Brainy tells him he doubts it. Sun Boy adds that the fire cage should hold him until they transport him to Takron-Galtos and allow the United Planets to design a special cell just for him.

Superboy smiles and takes off with the crystal in hand. He will take it back to his time which will make the crystal around a thousand years out of Sden’s reach. And this adventure continues in Adventure Comics #453 should you like to follow what happens next. 

Next issue: Legion becomes a 60¢ giant monthly—and the Fatal Five return in a. New 34-page star-spanning epic starring 11 Legionnaires! “A Day in the Death of a World!” On sale June 21st!

The Day Bouncing Boy Bounced Back

Weeks ago, all Legion members within light years gathered on Shanghalla, the cemetery asteroid, to witness Chemical King’s funeral. The assembled might of the Legion also took time to visit the graves of other departed comrades, Ferro Lad and Invisible Kid. While on Earth, Legion headquarters, Chuck Tain, our beloved Bouncing Boy, stands on guard should anyone take advantage of the situation.

And take advantage they do, for the red alert shrieks through the halls of Legion HQ, alerting Bouncing Boy of an intruder. He runs through the halls and traces the shrill to the Entrance Corridor and believes the automatic defenses should have already stopped the intruder. A member of the Science Police steps out and tells him he is wrong and points his blaster at Chuck. Chuck ducks and delivers a mighty two fisted punch, hitting the Science Police intruder squarely in the gut. And a fight continues as both individuals struggle against a swiftly-rising mist that fills the hall, a defense triggered by a control the intruder was unaware of. You guessed it, it is knockout gas!

Within seconds the combatants are both unconscious only to awaken moments later, encased in spheres of pure energy. The Science Police intruder surmises that he must have missed a couple of defense controls and Chuck demands to know who he is and what he is doing here. He answers that his name is Dvron, and he really is a Science Police Officer and worked with the LSH before (back in Superboy Starring the Legion of Super-Heroes #207). He was ordered to keep an eye on LSH headquarters while the members attended the ceremony. Chuck reminds the officer that the Legion Reserve actually takes care of that. Dvron asks what they should do now and Chuck responds that they have no choice but to wait. The cages can only be deactivated by a hidden control which is, of course, out of reach.

Chuck immediately wishes he still had his bouncing powers, which he had lost just a year ago (back in Superboy Starring the Legion of Super-Heroes #200!). Dvron also comments that he dropped his blaster, so the situation is quite dire. Out of frustration Chuck punches the cage and his hand begins to sting from the pure energy that powers the cage. However, his hand begins to swell, much like a balloon. In fact, he starts to even feel like he has his powers again. The energy from the cage must have recharged the elastic serum in his cells that restored the bouncing power to his hand. Now he surmises that if he puts his whole body into contact with the energy cage, he will get his power back completely! But Dvron warns him that it might kill him. Chuck shrugs it off. It is better to die a hero as…

Bouncing Boy!

And he slams his body against the energy sphere and his body swells, completely restoring his powers.

Chuck wastes no time and with his newly-restored inflated body absorbing the enormous energies, Bouncing Boy ricochets back and forth in the cage and, pushing the bars to their limits, breaks through. He stands looking at Dvron and tells him he wants to make a deal. He will help him get out of his own cage if he promises not to tell anyone that he has his powers back. He is a happily married man and he wants to stay that way. If Duo Damsel hears that he has his powers back, she will always be worried that he will sneak off to go on adventures. Dvron heartily agrees.

Later, Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad relieve Chuck of his duty and thank him for covering for them. Lightning Lad also remarks that with him on guard duty it almost feels like he must have his powers again. Bouncing Boy smiles and agrees it was fun, but his super-powered days are gone—forever.

Or are they?

Creative Team

We return to the two-story format with issue #230 after wrapping up a very strong and dynamic storyline. Basically it is a filler issue to pave the way for the Giant Sized issue the following month. And even though I am not a fan of the two-story format, I must admit that this was pretty good. The first story had an interesting story and Levitz did infuse a bit of tongue in cheek throughout. I looked at this one as a day in the life when the Legion had yet another baddie or two to put down who was obviously punching above his weight. While it did not really make any significant contribution to the Lore of the Legion, Levitz still used Dream Girl, which just happens to be one of my favorites, so it definitely was marked up because of that in my eyes. In fact, to conclude my thoughts on it, if you closed your eyes and did not look at the credits, you would probably think Cary Bates wrote it, which is not a bad thing. In short, it was classic LSH story-telling.

As for the art, Sherman continues to shows us why he is a good replacement for Mike Grell, very aptly assisted by Jack Abel’s inks. His character design of Sden was well done and he allowed the villain to show a variety of emotions that helped deliver the story. Sden went from being helpless and empathetic, to diabolically evil, revealing his true intent to take over the Galaxy. If you had a lesser artist on the book, the story would have dropped in quality. 

As for the second story, we actually have something that changes the team. Chuck Taine has his bouncing powers back. And if you are fan of Bouncing Boy (which I am), then this whole story probably put a smile on your face. He continues to be misunderstood and underestimated, much to the detriment of whoever challenges him. The only slight annoyance is that he wants to keep it a secret so he is not persuaded to join adventures at the behest of Duo Damsel, his wife. With the Treasury Edition coming up that will feature the wedding of Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad, it will be interesting to see if Chuck continues to slide more toward an active member. Time will tell.

As for the art, Mike Nasser is hitting his stride. I was not too much of a fan of his first outing, but he handled Bouncing Boy very well here and he does give his figure work a sense of realism. Perhaps this is also Jack Abel who inked both stories but there really was not much to complain about here. With Bouncing Boy you have to instill a lot movement in order to complement and display his bouncing power effectively, and Nasser did it very well.

So really, nothing too incredibly revolutionary in these two stories except for the backup finally restoring Chuck Taine’s bouncing powers. It is a solid issue that helped cleanse the pallet from the epic Stargrave saga and prepare us for things to come. If this is the bottom rung of quality from this creative team, I think we are in very capable hands.

Super-Talk

We have some fun stuff in this issue’s Super-Talk.

First there is well-deserved praise of James Sherman from Rick Taylor who lauds his ability to depict the physical diversity and futuristic backgrounds from various angles. And I have to heartily agree. James Sherman is quickly becoming one of my favorite Legion artists.

Then we have an interesting letter from Robert Kinzel who criticizes the use of violence, mainly in #225, when Mon-El hit Superboy. He believed it to be both irrational and inconsistent, considering that they were like brothers. He goes further and states that “Legionnaires should have differences of opinion, sometimes extreme ones, but this excessive violence is contrary to the notion of teamwork, and Legion comradeship.” He obviously failed to read any of the Jim Shooter stuff. Regardless, it gets more interesting because Paul Levitz not only responds, but he apologizes.

“The Mon-El/Superboy sequence in #225 didn’t work for most of our readers, so I now consider it a mistake. My thought at the time was that Mon-El’s relationship to Superboy was an older brother’s, and therefore he might have lost control and tried to bring his kid brother into line. Unfortunately, I couldn’t communicate that—for which I apologize.”

Levitz is killing it on this book but he is also listening to his readers.

For the third letter from Carol A. Strickland they further remind everyone that starting next issue the book will finally change to Superboy & the Legion of Super-Heroes with #231, at least officially. And then there is another plug for the Giant Size and they will continue to do that monthly, both straining Sherman and Nasser to their limits while giving Paul Levitz space to do his full-length tales.

I am not a fan of the two-parters as I divulged, yet again, in Creative Team. So if they do use the extra pages to make sure they have full-lengthers, I will welcome it. But remember, we are no stranger to the powers at DC doing the Giant-Size formats, I just hope it lasts a little bit longer than it did the first time around. 

Finally at the bottom of the page department, yet another reminder of the crossover between the JLA, JSA, and the Legion, which we will of course cover right here in our ad interim series!

The Legion Medallion of Merit

We have two stories yet again, which may make it difficult to pick out one Legionnaire who is deserving of the Legion Medallion of Merit, an acknowledgement of how they went above and beyond in the line of duty. 

This time, which I think is rare, I am giving it to the backstory. Because of course I would give our medallion to the one, the only, and highly cherished, Chuck Twine, aka BOUNCING BOY! He was not only a good sport and agreed to miss Chemical King’s funeral, whom I am sure he was friends with, but he also guarded Legion HQ AND showed determination and courage. And would you not know it? He even gained his bouncing powers back in the process. In other words…

BOUNCING BOY IS BACK BABY!

And though Chuck, you still want to keep it a secret, I hope you can take this Medallion out from time to time, when no one is looking, and smile at the good fortune that fell upon you, even if you think being married to someone who can duplicate herself is not enough. You lucky dog you.

And that is it for this week’s installment of the Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes blog! Be back next week for the next issue of our spin-off series, Karate Kid! And remember, if you find yourself in an energy sphere that may kill you or could give you actual super-powers…before you do anything, give that battle cry that always rings out through the galaxy…

LONG LIVE THE LEGION!!