After two pretty intense outings, Jim Shooter returns to deliver two yarns in the ‘classic way;’ Last Fight for Legionnaire and Death Stroke for Dawn.

But it isn’t without consequences because by the end of one story the Legion may change…forever! So put on your flight rings, make sure the light doesn’t mess with your superpowers, and let’s get cracking.

Last Fight for a Legionnaire

It’s a pleasant morning in the 30th century and a lone figure walks toward Legion HQ and enters. A while later, he walks out, head bowed down in despair for he has just been rejected during his try out for the Legion of Super-Heroes.

He looks up and sees the mighty statue of Ferro Lad looming over him. Suddenly he is overcome with rage and uses his mighty magnetic powers to shoot the statue in the air, with high hopes to shatter it. When suddenly, he is overcome with a sudden urge to bring it safely down on its pedestal where it stood just moments before.

Magno Lad looks around him and sees a group of teenagers standing, facing him with amused looks on their faces. One of the young ladies in the group tells him it was she who used her ESP power to convince him to put the statue down nice and easy. Because if he were arrested for destroying Legion property, they wouldn’t be able to use him for the next step in their big plan.

Meanwhile we shoot over to a distant planet where an Agent Bek pleads his case to no avail. No one is above the law and the Legionnaire must leave the LSH immediately. Agent Bek understands his orders and begins his journey to Earth immediately.

We return back to Legion HQ where our trusty members of the Legion of Super-Heroes, Cosmic Boy, Chameleon Boy, Matter-Eater Lad, Phantom Girl, and Shadow Lass rush in finding Saturn Girl perplexed. They ask her why she called them all here in such a hurry and she replies that she didn’t. She is also wondering why she is here.

Saturn Girl didn’t call because it was actually Esper Lass who confidentially enters the room with her teenage gang. Cosmic Boy instantly recognizes them as all being Legion rejects.

Magno Lad points his finger at CB and gives him the affirmative. They’re all members of the same home world as the six of them, with the same super-powers. And even though they were rejected for having those same powers, they want to challenge the Legionnaires to dual.

Cosmic Boy tells them to forget it, they don’t have time to waste on all the clowns who challenges them, and walks off. When suddenly he is grabbed by Magno Lad who tells him that he has no choice. And the fight commences!

Magno Lad blasts Cosmic Boy with manetic energy, while Esper Lass quickly subdues Saturn Girl.

Phantom Lad takes down Phantom Girl, while warning her to not let him go too far because he doesn’t like hurting girls.

On the micro level, Micro Lad fights Shrinking Violet, who trips and falls down.

Chameleon Kid takes out Chameleon Boy, and Calorie Queen subdues Matter-Eater Lad.

With the entire Legion down by their planet counter-parts it looks like there will be an extensive change of Legion membership. Or perhaps not, because Superboy suddenly bursts through the door announcing his presence.

The Teen of Steel chides the former Legion rejects for their manners, and wraps them up quickly in his super cape and spins them out into the streets. Cosmic Boy and Chameleon Boy are furious that Superboy stepped in. Confused, he watches them rush past them as they point to their challengers and challenges them for a rematch first thing tomorrow morning, to which they agree.

Superboy tells them he was only trying to help but with their pride hurt the defeated Legionnaires storm off.

We return to Agent Bek who has arrived on Earth and greets the President of the United Planets. The President asks if an exception can be made and Bek answers in the negative. The laws of his planet are absolute and tomorrow there will be one less Legionnaire.

The next morning Superboy and Karate Kid watch as the two groups line up for the final battle. Magno Lad taunts Cosmic Boy and tells them to say when. Any time he replies as Calorie Queen shouts to the skies to attack.

The two groups rush each other, while Matter-Eater Lab runs away with Calorie Queen in hot pursuit. She calls him a coward but he quickly eats the pole of the Legion flag, causing it to fall right on top of her. She shouts out to Magno Boy to help her but he is busy combatting Cosmic Boy.

Magno Boy grabs the monument and uses it with his magnetic powers like a baseball bat to swat Cosmic Boy from the sky, when suddenly the monument changes into Chameleon Boy, who punches Magno Boy out cold.

Shadow Lad rushes Phantom Girl who tells her that she was stupid to remain in physical form. When suddenly Shrinking Violet expands herself and hits him with a nasty upper cut. Phantom Girl manages in the meantime to duck behind Micro Lad and hits him with a hefty right cross. Cosmic Boy sees Esper Lass and uses the iron in her body to spin her around until she’s out of the fight. Finally, Matter-Eater Lad is about to take a big bite of a tree when the tree tells him he gives up, revealing himself to be Chameleon Kid.

With the rejects knocked out of commission, Chameleon Boy reaffirms to the group that he thinks they’ve learned their lesson and why they lost. Super-Heroes win because of teamwork!

As they congratulate each other on their victory, Agent Bek arrives and serves Matter-Eater Lad with a summons. He tells him he represents the Selective Service Board of his home world of Bismoll, and he has been drafted as a candidate to run for political office.

He looks at the piece of paper in shock and also at his fellow Legionnaires. But does he have to go now? Agent Bek tells him immediately. As Matter-Eater Lad leaves, he turns around to his dear friends and smiles. He tells them that they should give Calorie Queen another try, because she’s actually not so bad.

Saturn Girl waves in return and quips that this is the mark of greatness. To forgive and help your opponent. They will miss Tenzil Kem, their Matter-Eater Lad, who departs, perhaps forever.

A Death Stroke for Dawn

Late-night blackness shrouds 30th century Metropolis as Shadow Lass soars via her flight ring toward the Legion citadel. She revels in the darkness because it’s her favorite time of the day and suddenly notices a light on in the monorail terminal, which has been abandoned for quite a few years.

She lands on the roof and peers down, seeing Night Girl of the Legion of Substitute Heroes in trouble. Three villains have taken advantage of the light and managed to defeat her.

Shadow Lass, knowing Night Girl’s weakness, blacks out the entire room with her powers. Sure enough Night Girl’s strength is renewed and she quickly manages to stop Hunk’s blow and flips him right into the two standing thugs.

Shadow Lass joins the fray. With Hunk down, Colson instructs Gunner to shoot them where they stand. Shadow Lass taunts Colson telling him he can’t do any firing while he’s blind, but Gunner can because he comes from the deep caves of the Planet Ankar and has radar eyes.

Gunner has Shadow Lass dead to rights and pulls the trigger. Suddenly Night Girl flings herself in front of SL, taking the blast. Shadow Lass pulls her out of danger and ducks behind cover.

The thugs rejoice at their kill but quickly decide to part because they know Shadow Lass is probably calling for back-up. As they take off leaving the Legionnaires behind, they gloat how they were able to shoot Night Girl but lament the fact that that weren’t able to kill the Legionnaire, because that is one of Gunner’s dreams. Colson tells him he’ll probably get his chance because Cosmic Boy will want revenge for Night Girl, since they’re a a couple. But he doesn’t want to give him that chance. They’ll seek them out and kill them first. Who knows? Maybe they’ll end up killing the entire Legion of Super-Heroes.

Meanwhile Shadow Lass is relieved that Night Girl is alive. Even though it was a powerful blast, the darkness probably saved her since she’s more powerful at night. Shadow Lass then asks why she was putting herself in such a dangerous situation, especially all by herself.

Night Girl recalls how she was able to pick up the trail after the three thugs looted the satellite warehouses orbiting Mars and she followed them to this abandoned terminal. They threw on the lights catching her off guard.

We then observe her backstory, how her father was a scientist and gave her super-powers with a vitalizing ray. Since her planet, Kathoon, is a dark planet, she didn’t realize that her powers were defective in the day time until she tried out for the Legion of Super-Heroes and was rejected. She joined the Legion of Substitute Heroes and fell in love with Cosmic Boy.

However Cosmic Boy was frustrated because even though he had a night off, she wasn’t free because she had a mission. In his frustration CB tells her she’s too weak to do missions on her own since everyone knows that she is weak in the daytime and tells her to not worry about it. He has to find another date and storms off.

Having told her tale, Night Girl stands and flies off to find Colson alone. She has a fix on his brain waves with her miniature mento-tracer but has to hurry since it’s only an hour until sunrise.

Cosmic Boy in the meantime is on a date with a lady named Sinde, Night Girl’s replacement, but his heart just isn’t in it. He misses Night Girl too much and decides to leave right in the middle of the movie.

After dropping off Sinde at home, he walks home alone thinking about Night Girl when he is attacked by Colson and Gunner. Gunner was careful and brought a plastic pistol so Cosmic Boy wouldn’t be able to use his powers. The situation looks dire until Night Girl sees him from above and swoops down to attack. However, the sun is starting to rise and her powers begin to fade and she is taken out by a hearty slap from Hunk.

Unfortunatley for Gunner, he’s distracted and forgets all about Cosmic Boy who delivers a mighty left hook right to his jaw, knocking him down. Enraged he tells them that no one can lay a finger on his girl and uses his magnetic powers to blast Hunk away. With the thugs subdued, Night Girl asks him if he meant what he said that she was his girl. He tells her he challenges anyone to say different.

He scoops her up in his arms and flies off to take her to the medi-center. After, he plans to take her on a swell picnic.

During the daytime of course.

Creative Team

After a couple of intense outings Jim Shooter cools things down a bit but we still have some consequences with Matter-Eater Lad leaving the group. This was also referenced in Adventure Comics #356, also from Jim Shooter so he’s consistent.

Despite Last Fight for a Legionnaire being a plot device story that harkens back to the older tales, I still enjoyed it. I must say it was fun seeing the Legionnaires lose their cool when being challenged and it basically reminded us that they are still teenagers. I guess we can all think about that time on the playground or in the neighborhood street, when we had those little rivalries and felt like we had something to prove.

It was also neat to think about because true, with all the people on a particular planet, what if someone had the same power but was more powerful, or ended up becoming more powerful? Why does so and so deserve that spot? Well now we know, because it’s not just about demonstrating power but it’s about working together as a team.

I thought Mike Grell was pretty solid with this one. He was able to portray the powers pretty adequately but it did look like he was pressed for time. I do hope they are able to go back to one story an issue to give him a little bit more room to breath and give us more of those fully rendered characters that we got previous issue.

Sadly, a Death Stroke for Dawn didn’t hold up as a second story. I do think this one came about from the previous Super-Talks when fans were wanting more of a female Legionnaire centric story. Unfortunately Shooter misses the mark quite bad with this. I understand the need to judge comics with today’s lense, but I typically try to avoid it because it’s usually unfair to the creators since they are a product of their time (to certain degrees). But fortunately I don’t have to look at this story through today’s lense because it was just a bad story that doesn’t really have a character resolution.

Shooter didn’t handle the female characters that well, except for Shadow Lass I suppose. But Night Girl really came off as a weak female character because she’s well…female.

Also let’s face it, Cosmic Boy was a complete ass to her and whining that she wouldn’t spend her time off going on a date with him. So what does he do? He throws his little magnetic hands in the air and finds another date.

But what makes this story worse is the resolution of Night Girl’s arc. She shows great courage and determination in wanting to prove herself and takes the thugs out herself, but once she’s beaten again, she still needs Cosmic Boy to save her. And Cosmic Boy doesn’t even apologize for acting like the ass he was, instead he takes her on a date anyway as she succumbs to his ‘masculinity.’

So yes if we’re trying to get more female representation in terms of story time, you can check off the box here, but if you’re looking for some character driven and satisfying conclusions you won’t get it with this one.

Super-Talk

Wouldn’t you know it? There’s no Super-Talk this issue! I wonder why? Was this issue rushed? Will we have a change of leadership soon? What is going behind the scenes? TELL ME!

The Legion Medallion of Merit

This one is going to be tough. In the first story we pretty much have the entire Legion acting like teenage brats and the second story none of the characters really come away with anything.

But I still will have to give The Legion Medallion of Merit to Night Girl. She was knocked down but you know what? She got back up and tried again. Even with the aura of rejection over her head of not making the LSH and her dad probably shaming her for it, she didn’t let that bother her too much and still tried to take down the thugs herself. Sure, she should have asked for help and let’s face it, she should have dumped Cosmic Boy when he acted like an immature prick. But we’ve all been in bad relationships and no one is perfect. Surely not Night Girl and definitely not Cosmic Boy.

Enjoy Night Girl. Your determination and resolve might have given you a rough beating, but Legionnaires do not give up and you sure as heck didn’t. Wear this medal with pride and every time you see Cosmic Boy again make sure to give him a swift kick in the pants.

And that’s it for this week’s entry. May you live your life without being challenged for your position in life by your evil, insecure doppelganger and, as always…

LONG LIVE THE LEGION!