Tag: Karate Kid

Jim Shooter is back! And what a surprise too as this one came pretty much out of left field. I knew he would make an appearance at one point in the series but I at least expected some sort of buildup and announcement. Nope. He’s just here. But hey I’m not complaining! Though if I were a Legionnaire I would be concerned because Shooter is known to be a Legionnaire killer, having bumped off Ferro Lad for instance. I shudder at the possibilities.

So what are we waiting for fellow Legionnaires? To the Legion Cruiser!

Who Can Save the Princess?

The year is 2074 and Timber Wolf is standing on the deck of Legion HQ, watching Princess Projectra’s Space-Buggy starting to land. However TW quickly notices the ship is not decelerating and is about to crash. Too late to activate the tractor beam, he quickly grabs a tow-hook and manages to wrap it around the cruiser and with his great strength, pulls it literally to a standstill.

Karate Kid comes to his help and Timber Wolf manages to shout off a wise crack that even Princesses are women drivers. The stairs are lowered and out stumbles Princess Projectra who passes out in Karate Kid’s arms.

They rush her inside and, sensing something was wrong, Saturn Girl has already contacted Brainiac 5 who has set up an Analyscope to determine her affliction.

Brainy concludes that she has the pain plague. It’s a fever that causes pain so intense the victim always dies at the end. And what’s worse is that there is no known cure.

He quickly commands Saturn Girl and Timber Wolf to grab some equipment and for Karate Kid to put her on the pain monitor.

They do as instructed and Timber Wolf realizes what Brainy is planning. By adapting the transceivers to the pain monitor, they can divert Projectra’s pain onto their own bodies. The idea being that each Legionnaire will take one hour of pain from her. As she’s already went through almost two hours of intense pain, that leaves about four hours left.

Luckily Brainy finally tells them that he’s on the Planet Fangmar with Superboy. But if Superboy can jet out at top speed, he can make it for the final and most intense hour.

Saturn Girl quickly scans for other Legionnaires that are perhaps closer by in case Superboy won’t make it in time. But it’s no use, everyone is currently off planet.

Timber Wolf approaches the controls and places both hands on the electrodes. He waits with great anticipation until the pain hits him like a dump truck. His screams fill the halls of Legion HQ. In fact the pain is so unbearable that it drives TB mad. He knocks Karate Kid to the side and continues to pound down on him. Karate Kid manages to quickly dodge one of his punches but still hesitates. If he decides to use Super Karate it might just hurt TB too much.

He asks Saturn Girl to quickly use her mind-control power. SG scans his mind but all she can feel is pain. However, she temporarily numbs his optical lobes and manages to subdue him just enough for Karate Kid to engulf him in a tight judo grip. He quickly places TB in a super-powered cell that will hold him until his hour’s up and the pain is released.

Karate Kid stands, his uniform completely tattered to pieces from Timber Wolf’s ferocious attacks. He finds a new uniform from the locker and as he changes, Saturn Girl was able to deduce that the pain will constantly become worse. Meaning that as each Legionnaire takes over, they will have to deal with pain that is far greater than what the one before experienced.

With Karate Kid’s brand new uniform in place, they both understand that Saturn Girl is next and the consequences that could occur if she is not able to handle it. If the pain overcomes her, she is way too powerful and may subdue Karate Kid and force him to destroy everything around him. Worse, in her madness, she might use her powers and order Karate Kid to kill her or even his beloved Princess.

Saturn Girl finds a solution and forces Karate Kid to place the Anti-Encephalo Helmet on her head. This helmet will not only stop her thought waves but it will also gag her so she won’t be able to convince Karate Kid in freeing her.

He places her hands on the electrodes and carries her to a couch. The seconds slowly tick by as she withers in pain. Meanwhile Superboy is blasting through outerspace with great speed to get there as fast as he can. He reaches Legion HQ, blasts through the Medical Laboratory door and finds Karate Kid in deep meditation, taking an incredible amount of pain. KK is using his training to subdue it and finally the hour is up and Superboy takes his place.

However, Superboy’s invulnerability prevents the pain from entering his body. If it’s not redirected in 30 seconds, the pain will go back into Princess Projectra and she will die. He has an idea and quickly flies into the next room while Karate Kid slowly stirs back to consciousness. He slowly crawls to the electrodes. He raises his hand over the metal sphere, his hand trembling with fear on the amount of pain that he will experience, when he’s suddenly stopped at the very last moment…

It’s Duo Damsel! She quickly makes a duplicate of herself effectively splitting the pain in two. However the pain is so intense that it also causes the two Damsels to go mad with rage and fight each other. Superboy quickly steps in between the two and keeps them separated until the hour is finished.

When the whole ordeal is over, Karate Kid comforts his beloved, who tells her to get some rest after the ordeal she has been through. If were not for the combined might of the Legionnaires she might have died this day.

Hero for a Day

Sun Boy congratulations Flynt Brojj while Star Boy and Cosmic Boy quickly jump in to assert that out of the thousands of fans who raised money for the United Planets Charity drive, Brojj won the right to be the Legion’s honored guest for the day. This also proves that despite the advancements of the 30th century, charities are still around to make up for the lack of adequate social services provided by any government, united or not.

Sun Boy and Cosmic Boy pick him up and fly him over to the next station, where they present him with his very own Legion Flight Ring. Brojj puts it on and Wildfire remarks that even though it’s too big for his finger, it’s the smallest size they have. But Saturn Girl puts any worry to rest as she reassures the newest member that he won’t let the ring out of his sight for a second.

So what does Flynt Brojj want to see? The Legion Museum? The famous Medical Lab where the Brainiac 5, among other things, is able to detect Rigel Fever? Or how about the monitor center?

Brojj says everything! Then let’s start in the most exciting area of all. The Parcel Receiving Dock…

Sun Boy describes the awesome power of the Federal Postal Satellite and how it’s able to scramble the molecules of any package and send them down to a receiving machine that then re-assembles in its original form. Of course it does fully screen the parcel first for any possible threats.

But whoops, as Comic Boy interjects it looks like it missed one, because lo and behold, sitting in a cage is a very strange animal. In fact, it’s not just any animal, it’s a Tulvanian Witch Wolf, which just so happens to be the deadliest beast in the entire solar system.

Quickly, CB and SB grab Brojj and fly him to safety as the warning alarms sound. CB puts a hand on Brojj’s shoulder and tells him that he thinks he should know something about the Witch Wolf. Brojj carefully looks CB back and assures him that they already learned about the Witch Wolf at school. Its hide gives off an invisible poisonous radiation that has surely doomed them all.

But, Brojj reassures them both that he will try to be as brave as a real life Legionnaire.

That a’boy sport.

Sun Boy becomes inpatient and tells his team that they need to think fast. Not even the walls of Legion HQ will be able to stop this radiation and slowly it will seep out and destroy all of metropolis.

Their only chance? To reset the controls of the teleportation dock and blast that brute to a deserted asteroid. But sadly this is one smart wolf, and it will know what they’re planning. They have no choice but to each take a turn and hope someone can subdue the wolf in time.

As Cosmic Boy is the senior of the group, he volunteers to go first. Cosmic Boy carefully enters the metal walled room, and attempts to use his magnetism to operate the controls from a distance. But the discharge goes wild and ricochets off the metal walls, slamming Cosmic Boy against the door.

Indeed as Brojj remembers, a Witch Wolf’s greatest instincts is to sense out a being’s greatest ability and turn it against him.

Not deterred, Wildfire declares it’s his turn and moves in to engage the Wolf. Meanwhile, in his nervousness, Brojj doesn’t realize that his Legion flight-ring slips from his finger and hits the floor.

Sure enough, as soon as Wildfire enters the room and tries to blast the wolf, his blast is boomeranged back at him, taking him out of commission. Sun Boy starts to get nervous but Shrinking Violet is confident. Meanwhile Bojj can’t believe his eyes and tries to speak up but Sun Boy shushes him.

Shrinking Violet enters the room and shrinks down to minuscule size. But as she nears the wolf it reverses her power and she quickly grows big again hitting a console and blacks out.

Saturn Girl returns to let everyone know that Mon-El and the others should be here in minutes. But Sun Boy doesn’t want to waste any time and is about to go in.

Bojj tells him not worry, to let him go first, and then darts into the room. Sun Boy tires to stop him but Saturn Girl restrains him.

Bojj quickly approaches the cage much to the horror of Sun Boy. He lifts the lid and and sits exactly where the Witch Wolf was, who suddenly disappears. Saturn Girl tells a bewildered Sun Boy that the spell has been broken. And instead of explaining it to SB, she’ll let Bojj tell him how he found the solution.

As the other Legionnaires regain consciousness, Bojj tells them they were simply fighting an empty case. That the wolf was never there and they were all victims of a hypnotic spell. But he still hadn’t figured out why he wasn’t affected.

Saturn Girl reappears and tells them it’s probably because he was the only one not wearing his flight ring, holding up the one Bojj had dropped. The hypnotic illusion must have been transmitted through the filaments in their rings. And since Bojj didn’t have his on, he wasn’t susceptible to the spell.

The other Legionnaires catch on and go as far to assert that the reason their powers backfired was because they believe they would due to the wolf. And what’s worse, if they believed the wolf would have killed them too, they might have died from make-believe radiation poison.

But that’s okay because instead of trying to figure out who would be behind or even capable of such a scheme, they decide to carry on with the tour. And to demonstrate Bojj’s continued good fortune, Saturn Girl and Shrinking Violet plant a big fat kiss on each side of Bojj’s cheek. Lucky dog.

The Creative Team

We have the return of Jim Shooter, which of course is a very big deal. His run on Adventure Comics was not only legendary, but he was thirteen when he did it. We’ll go over this a bit more in Super-Talk but suffice it to say, when you talk about the Legion of Super-Heroes, you are also talking about Jim Shooter.

So how did he do with his return story?

It was okay. It’s a lot more situational story-telling rather than moving the mythos forward as we were doing previous issue. But it was entertaining none the less. By far the most momentous occasion of the story was when Karate Kid dons his new uniform, courtesy of Mike Grell. It’s a vast improvement and we’re starting to set up Karate Kid for an event at the end of 1975. One can only assume that Karate Kid’s popularity was starting to take off, much in line with Martial Arts and the so-called “Kung-Fu Mania” of the time.

The Hero of the Day, the second story, was a bit of an oddity I thought. At first I thougth Flynn Bojj was some fan who won a contest that wasn’t advertised but that wasn’t the case. We’ll go over this in greater detail in Super-Talk but it’s actually a combination of two individuals who were running the fanzine, The Legion Outpost at the time.

The story fell out of place and there were just too many gimmicks and plot devices to make things convenient. Unfortunately it was definitely a step back from the all-out brawl and greatness that was the battle between the LSH and the Legion of Super Villains. Just when we were gaining momentum in order to gauge an overall threat, we’ve taken a step back. Perhaps it had something to do with Jim Shooter so I’ll be curious on where we go next issue.

I hate to say it but I think this was probably Mike Grell’s weakest issue so far. The character designs were nice of course and you could really feel the pain that was coursing through Karate Kid, but the rendering wasn’t as polished as it has been in previous issues. I wonder if his work load was too great at the time or juggling two stories at once with two different authors rushed things a bit. I’m mean don’t get me wrong, the art is still great, far surpassing a lot of what came out at the time, but it still wasn’t the Mike Grell we’ve been used to.

So with the art not at its usual optimal level and the stories just being kind of meh, this issue was a bit too bland, despite the momentous occasion that was Jim Shooter’s return.

Super-Talk

It’s a short Super-Talk but it’s full of fun stuff.

First off and with no surprise, we have an Editor’s Note welcoming back Jim Shooter to the Legion. It’s a neat little note because he describes how DC was trying to lure him back for a long time and it took the combined efforts of Harry L. Broertjes, who publishes the fan magazine “The Legion Outpost”, Jay Zilber and Duffy Vohland to win him over. In fact as mentioned above, the character Flynnt Bojj is a tribute to both Harry L. Broertjes and Mike Flynn, creators of the Legion Outpost. Though interestingly Mike Flynn is not mentioned.

In addition Boltinoff does reassure fans that this isn’t the end of Cary Bates on the title but that they will simply share writing duties. I do wonder how long this will last as if you know any writers at all, they’re not very good at sharing anything. BAZINGA.

But what’s a lot of fun is that Jim Shooter gives his own little biography, which is astounding because he reminds us how young he was, which is quite a theme in his life. For those of you who don’t know, Jim Shooter was actually a writer of the Legion of Super-Heroes in Adventure Comics at the age of thirteen! This is literally everyone’s dream. He did this for about four years and then described how he underwent some “personal problems, difficult choices, and impossible demands from all side, so I did the only reasonable thing. I buried my head in the sand.”

And when you bury your head in the sand and then pop out what do you do? Well he went into advertising for the next two years, which, if memory serves from some of the interviews I’ve listened to and read from time to time, this period in life taught him a lot about business stuff, which would come in handy later. Why you ask? Because after he jumps from LSH to Marvel, writes the Avengers then actually starts running the whole company!

All in his twenties. He certainly was a wunderkind at the time.

Then Boltinoff ends Super-Talk with a bit of praise for issue #206, the Legionnaires Who Haunted Superboy and Welcome Home Daughter–Now Die! I wasn’t a fan of these stories but they did find some people I guess who did, mentioning one by name, Bob Rodi of Oak Brook, Illinois (whom I assume is Robert Rodi and who also became a comic book writer!) and alluding to ‘others’ who aren’t specifically credited at all. So let’s just say that one person actually liked the story.

The Legion Medallion of Merit

This one is an easy one. The Medallion easily goes to Karate Kid who was able to take that second to final hour of pain that must have been excruciating. I mean this was Superboy level pain that he had to endure, and he sat there in deep meditation, proving that he would do anything for his love. This is definitely a step up from his previous bout of insecurity when he was upset with Princess Projectra wanting to visit her home world, causing him to sulk way.

And with a new uniform to boot, this Medallion will definitely upgrade the wardrobe even further.

So wear it proudly Karate Kid. May this Legion Medallion of Merit be a symbol for your redemption from displaying so much insecurity and proving that you have the skill, resolve, and willpower to take any amount of pain for the people you love.

Well that’s it folks. Let’s give Jim Shooter a hearty handshake and a pat on the back as we join everyone in that fabled chorus that will forever ring out through the galaxies…

LONG LIVE THE LEGION!