Well, it looks like the paper crunch is taking its tole because we have our first twenty-five cent issue. A whole quarter! Plus we have two stories by Cary Bates and Mike Grell, with the first one being more or less a Superboy story. But why talk about talking about it, when we can talk about it. Put your Legion flight ring on your trusty ring finger and let’s get going!

The Legionnaires Who Haunted Superboy

Superboy is fast asleep, or so he was as he starts to moan and turn. He sees Ferro Lad and Invisible Kid standing before him. But how can that be because they’re both dead?

Presumably the next day we arrive in Smallville where Superboy is swooping overhead, heading toward a condemned building. He lands and the construction workers tell him everything is arranged as promised and the building is ready to be demolished.

As he’s about to get to work, the building starts to crumble and out shoots a mysterious figure. The figure whirls around the building, and methodically strips its reinforcements until it collapses inward. Impressed Superboy realizes that he couldn’t have done a faster or better job himself.

He peers at the lone figure and as the smoke clears away, Ferro Lad appears, the dead Legionnaire, killed by Jim Shooter himself. Superboy is shocked and as he approaches, Ferro Lad shoots up in the sky leaving a bewildered Superboy to his thoughts.

The next day Clark Kent is walking Suzy, a classmate, to school. He isn’t paying attention to what she’s saying as he’s deep in thought to yesterday’s event. How could Ferro Lad be alive?

Suddenly they see another group of teenagers pointing upward. Clark and Suzy follow their direction when they see a sky-diver plummeting to Earth, whose parachute didn’t open.

Clark Kent starts to unbutton his shirt, revealing his Superboy costume inside, when suddenly the skydiver stops falling and is being carried to safety by some unseen force. Clark uses his x-ray vision to see what it could be, and out appears Invisible Kid. The bystanders are shocked, proving to Clark that I-K must be real even though he is the second Legionnaire he saw who is supposed to be dead.

That night Superboy is speaking into his diary, recording his thoughts and concerns in seeing two of his dead comrades. He wonders if he should contact the Legion in the 30th Century when a voice rings out telling him they wished he wouldn’t.

SB spins around and standing before him is Ferro Lad and Invisible Kid. Quickly SB scans them with his X-Ray vision and sees that they are not robots but the real thing. But how could this be? He had witnessed both their deaths afterall. Ferro Lad when he sacrificed his life to destroy the monstrous sun-eater with an absorbation bomb. And Invisible Kid, when he also made the ultimate sacrifice and was crushed by Validus just two issues ago.

FL and I-K ask Superboy to not inquire too much in their reappearance because they are not ready to tell him the full story. Instead they ask Superboy to test them both, to see if they still have what it takes to become full fledged members of the Legion of Super-Heroes. If they pass his test, they will gladly rejoin their Legionnaires in the 30th Century. If not, they will agree to exile, in another era in time, forever.

Superboy ponders his response when his crisis-alarm starts to ring, alerting him that an emergency is happening in town. The trio jet off toward the crisis and arrive on the outskirts of Smallville at a large field. They see a large ring hovering over the ground, and slowly the earth crumbles and falls, giving way until a large robot slowly emerges.

Superboy commands them to scatter and get ready for an attack. But the robot simply stands there, its components clicking and clacking. Superboy realizes it must be calculating its next move and sure enough the robot throws an energy ring, entangling Superboy. He tells his fellow past-Legionnaires to be careful, the energy ring is paralyzing him, even with his vulnerability. He must assume that should one of the rings hit them, they would be done for.

Invisible Kid and Ferro Lad ignore his order and simply tell him they sacrificed themselves before and they are willing to do it again if necessary. They both then go into attack mode.

Ferro Lad transforms his body into super-hard iron as the robot flings an energy ring right around Invisible Kid. FL on the other hand slams right into the robot’s back, taking him apart. As soon as the robot is destroyed the ring around Superboy disappears. But what about Invisible Kid? As soon as SB asks I-K reappears, telling him he rendered himself invisible so he could slip out of the ring before it killed him.

Later Superboy sees them off in a time-bubble, telling them that their acts of courage against the robot is convincing enough. They are both ready to rejoin the Legion of Super-Heroes. Ferro Lad and Invisible Kid thank him for his faith in them, punch the coordinates for the 30th Century, and the time bubble disappears.

As it reappears in the 30th century, the time bubble suddenly explodes. Mon-El, Saturn Girl, and Brainiac 5 stand over the remains. Mon tells Brainy it was just like he predicted. Saturn Girl agrees, saying that Ferro Lad II and Invisible Kid II could only survive for forty-eight hours. Which is a flaw in their cloning process for duplicating Legionnaires of course.

The three walk the halls in Legion HQ until they come across a door marked “Legionnaire Cell Bank.” Brainiac 5 remarks that they will keep trying and points to a wall with cabinets, housing the individual cells of each Legionnaire. Someday they will perfect the method that when a Legionnaire falls, they will be able to create an exact replacement that will be just as reliable as the original.

Later, Brainy uses his time-telephone and rings up Superboy. He thanks him for constructing that robot and putting the two Legionnaires to the test. Superboy is glad it worked and does hope that someday, someway, they will be able to bring their old friends back to life again.

Welcome Home Daughter…Now Die!

This is a new Legion featurette where Princess Projectra is speaking into her diary tape #35G and recounting a story when she tried to return to her home planet Orando.

We go back in time and find PP waiting for a cruiser to take her away. Brainiac 5 gave her permission to take some time off after battling a pretty nasty bout of Rigel Fever. Because of this the, apparently insecure, Karate Kid wishes that she would spend time with him instead of jetting off to see her parents. PP projects an image of her family on the wall, trying to show KK how important her royal duties are and this necessitates her taking her leave. KK storms off, showing that he’s too insecure to have a girlfriend.

Our Princess takes off into space in the cruiser and wonders if there is any trouble and perhaps that is why she feels the need to visit home again.

After about a million miles later she arrives and is quite surprised because she remembers the trip taking longer. Oh well. She lands the cruiser right in front of the palace and after fending off a tiny dizzy spell, proving that she is not totally over the fever, she disembarks. Immediately she is met by two knights who tell her to not resist or they will slay her where she stands.

They take her into the palace and immediately to the King, who is no longer her father. The nameless King tells her that as a Legionnaire she is far too dangerous to allow to stay alive. Instead, she will also be sent to the dreaded Morgu, an ominous creature that met her parents as well. The knight takes off her Legion Flight-Ring and PP is escorted outside to meet this mysterious dreadful creature.

Suddenly she hears a sound and a monstrous, spider-like demon creature with three eyes stands before her. Not wanting to shake hands with it, she attempts to fight back with an illusion. But it is futile, for some reason she can no longer tap into her projection power. The Morgu edges closer and is about ready to eat her when she is suddenly swept away by none other than Karate Kid, whose confidence grew three sizes that day.

He takes her away and gives her a slap, telling her to clear her head and look around. Suddenly the palace, the paths and even the Morgu are gone. Karate Kid confirms they were never there in the first place. In fact, PP had landed on an empty planetoid.

PP begins to unravel the mystery and realizes that the dizziness she experienced was simply an after-effect of the Rigel fever, which distorted her projection power. This distortion caused her to conjure everything up. This makes sense for the palace and the knights, but what about the Morgu? There is no way she could think up anything so horrifying as–

When suddenly the Morgu reappears, which was real this whole time. The Morgu attacks and KK attempts to give it some well placed karate chops to disable it. But the beast shrugs it off and grabs Karate Kid in its large hands. Princess Projectra hastily creates an illusion, transforming KK into something so horrible, it shocks the Morgu, forcing it to release Karate Kid. Not wasting any time, PP rushes over to KK, activates his flight ring, and flies off to safety.

As they return to the cruiser and head back into space, Karate Kid apologies for being a real jerk. He understands her need to see her parents and asks her for forgiveness. But PP does him one better. She agrees to take him with her to her own planet, this time the real Orando.

Creative Team

After ignoring the death of Invisible Kid last issue, the creative team decided to address it a bit here. Albeit in a really weird way.

I don’t know. I’m quite torn on how I feel about this issue.

What makes this issue the most interesting is that the first story kind of makes it a full blown Superboy story. It’s set in Smallville, and the Legion pretty much take a back seat in this one.

Mike Grell probably saves the day here. He continues to show why he’s the best artist for Superboy and the full scale rendition of Ferro Lad was really good. Plus we have a lot of really nice shots here. The most memorable being the robot slowly rising from the ground. And then Grell finishes it off with the incredible battle between the robot and our three Legionnaires.

But the whole thing unravels when the big reveal came in the end. It was the Legion who was behind this and that just didn’t sit right with me. It’s probably because they decided to clone their best friends while nonchalantly not being so disturbed when they died again. It was not only a bit creepy but it definitely wasn’t ethical or moral. In the end, I had the feeling that the Legion of Super-Heroes were the bad guys in this tale and that’s something that I didn’t like. Plus bringing back Invisible Kid just to kill off his clone again was definitely a bit too soon.

The second story fared a little better but I’m not sure we needed it. Having this little insight into a day of Princess Projectra didn’t really give us any real insight into her motivations or place in the Legion, and didn’t do much to develop the character. It just felt like a whole lot of filler.

But again, Mike Grell shines because those knights he drew were fantastic and it gives you that first glimpse in his future greatness, such as his epic Warlord that would appear in a few years.

Also, whatever happened to PP’s flight ring? If anyone stumbled on that planet and can get past the Morgu, your treasure just could be your very own Legion flight ring. So it might be worth the look.

I’m wracking my brain here and I’m not sure I want to say that this was the weakest story so far…but both of them just felt really out of place. I think the saving grace is definitely Mike Grell and possibly the standalone Superboy story to give us a bit of nostalgia, especially when we see that red light bulb go off. But that’s about it.

I do want to see a bit more world building and I want to see more of an overall threat or goal. But we’ll have to wait and read some future issues to find out whether or not this happens.

Super-Talk

There wasn’t anything revealing in this issue’s Super-Talk, though we do receive some interesting commentary and feedback on the death of Invisible Kid. And of course more praise for Cary Bates, who many agree, Massacre by Remote Control, was his best Legion story yet.

The fans seemed to accept Invisible Kid’s death and reaffirm this is what makes the book so great. As I mentioned before because main characters and Legionnaires do die, you really feel a sense of anxiety when reading these issues because anything could potentially happen.

The only thing of interest in this section, at least for me, was a bit of Marvel bashing, or at least acknowledging the rivalry.

Gary Corrick from Fairbanks Alaska writes in:

“A final note to all of you at National Periodicals. Of late, your biggest competitor has been calling you by such names as our Discombobulated Competitor. I’m glad you people at DC don’t stoop to such childish name-calling. As they say on the boob tube, ‘DC gives you more for less!’”

To which the editor responds:

“We wouldn’t even dignify their immature, irresponsible and nauseating name-calling by responding. We’d rather spend our energy on churning out good comics, and let our sales speak for themselves.”

I always find it amusing when this happens. But, this could be a simple, albeit indirect response to the five cent price increase, which isn’t directly acknowledged here. They just simply reinforced that DC does give you some good content at a good price. But I’m probably stretching here and looking too much in the tea leaves.

The Legion Medallion of Merit

Even though we have two stories here, this one was difficult. The Legion cloning dead team-members and sending them off to Smallville is not only creepy but weird and dark. And when we find out that Superboy was pretty much in on it at the end, makes it hard to give him a medal.

In the second story Karate Kid comes off as an insecure a-hole and PP fights off her own demons, which is commendable, but does it deserve the medal?

So instead, I’m giving the Legion Medallion of Merit to Ferro Lad II and Invisible Kid II who were both willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. Again. They couldn’t help that they were clones nor could they help the cold hearted nature of their comrades back home who knew they would simply die upon arrival and didn’t care when they did.

So not only should we give them both the medal, but we should make statues of them, to remind the Legion of Super-Heroes that ethics do have a place in their little club and to try to stop being so creepy and inconsiderate a-holes.

So even though you blew up, Ferro Lad II and Invisible Kid II, wherever you are I hope you can at least know that there was at least one person who wanted you to live. And we have no choice but to put shame on the rest of the Legion as your medals shine brightly around your statue necks, statues that are hopefully strategically placed by your number one counterparts. Because darn-it, you were people too.

And that’s all folks. I do know that it would make sense and save me a whole lot of work and time if I simply cloned myself and forced said clone to hammer these things out on a weekly basis. But luckily I have a heart so I won’t.

And in any event, please remember…

LONG LIVE THE LEGION!