Tag: Vengar

Hi gang, we’re back on the Superboy Starring the Legion of Super-Heroes title after that little detour with the first issue of Karate Kid. I hope you all enjoyed it because I sure did!

And what better way to be back than with Cary Bates taking the front seat and giving us quite a yarn with the The Final Eclipse of Sun Boy. It’s quite heavy on the physics so I hope you can brush off that dusty PhD.

Plus we have a new costume for Cosmic Boy and Colossal Boy with Jim Shooter hitting us with the backstory, literally, which leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Why do you ask? Well read on to find out!

The Final Eclipse of Sun Boy

A Legion Cruiser knifes through space, toward the familiar globe its passengers call home.

Superboy, Sun Boy and Element Lad have just finished a mission and are en route to pick up Phantom Girl who is due for a much needed furlough.

As they approach Earth, Element Lad switches on the Intra-Warp Adapter, causing the Cruiser to shift them into Phantom Girl’s dimension. Sure enough, where our shiny blue ball of Earth once floated, now floats Bgztl, Phantom Girls’ homeworld which shares the same space as Earth but on a different dimensional plane.

Indeed Bgztl, the wonderful planet where everyone has the power to de-materialize into an intangible, phantom-like state. 

We zoom in and find Phantom Girl walking out of the Court Complex with her brother, Gmya. Her brother is quite worried because PG is due to be the star witness against the ruthless paid assassin, Ron-Vizl in about a month. He fears for his sister’s safety and promised their father, before he died, that he would do everything in his power to protect her. 

But why is PG the star witness for the prosecution? I’m glad you asked because we flash back and see Ron-Vizyl taking aim at a scared, lone man who quickly turns invisible. However, the evil Ron-Vizyl took that into consideration and was sure to bring the one weapon that shoots phantom-energy on the same wave-length. As he pulls the trigger, a flying back Phantom Girl witnesses the complete disintegration and death of the poor individual. 

She quickly gets over her shock and charges Ron-Vizyl who gleefully takes aim at her. Pointing the weapon right at PG, he pulls the trigger. But PG quickly turns into solid form and the blast goes right through her since it was only designed to hurt those in phantom form. She swiftly gives him a two footed kick and knocks him unconscious.

We return to the present time and Gmya reminds her that Ron-Vizyl has a lot of friends who would do anything to save him. With perfect timing, Sun Boy and Element Lad arrive and Gmya quickly takes off. Surprised that he’s not as friendly as their beloved Phantom Girl, she quickly tells them he’s just worried and thus a bit grumpy. 

They all board the Cruiser and take off back to Earth, not noticing that one of the onlookers has mysteriously vanished. 

As they leave Bgztl’s airspace and jettison out into the darkness of space, they activate the Intra-Warp Adapter once more and enter Earth’s dimension.

Saturn Girl and Brainiac 5 watch the cruiser make its landing, when the Cruiser suddenly bursts into flames. 

Superboy and Element Lad quickly exit the craft and warn Saturn Girl and Brainy to stay back. Sun Boy’s power went suddenly wild and he’s not able to control it. Sure enough Sun Boy burns hotter and is so hot he becomes a human eclipse.

Superboy flies into action, delivering a Superboy punch in the hopes of knocking him out before he can destroy the citadel. But it’s no use, and Sun Boy appears to have become even stronger.

Brainy quickly figures out why and tells Superboy to stop touching him. Sun Boy is feeding off the super-energy in his body. 

Element Lad has an idea and turns his uniform into our trusty friend asbestos, that will protect him from the fire but kill everyone else in the process eventually (but they don’t know this in the 30th century for some reason because they didn’t realize it then).

He squares up in front of Sun Boy then transforms the air around Sun Boy’s body into nitrogen, which decreases his heat, and gives Element Lad the opportunity to knock him out.

Element Lad doesn’t like hitting a close pal like that, but Superboy says he had no choice and they better get him inside and examine him. 

After running many tests, Sun Boy starts to blaze again. Brainy tells them all not to be worried because as long as he’s unconscious the flame will burn very weakly. However, despite the tests they still can’t determine what is wrong with him.

Phantom Girl peers over Sun Boy and can’t believe that he has to live the rest of his life as a deadly human eclipse. This triggers Superboy to grab some pen and paper and make a presentation to the rest of the group.

When the moon’s orbit crosses the path of the sun, it causes an eclipse. So there must only be one reason why Sun Boy also had an eclipse. Because another body is blocking his. 

Phantom Girl confirms Superboy’s suspicion and tells everyone that it might be the phantom assassin who is out to kill her. And they’re lucky because the killer didn’t know the nuclear accident that gave Sun Boy his powers drastically changed his molecular structure and now the two are fused together and unable to separate themselves.

Saturn Girl busts in and tells them her telepathy just picked up that someone is about to murder Phantom Girl.

They look at Sun Boy who turns normal again and they know that the phantom has left his body. 

Slowly, we see a hand slowly pulling the mega-blaster from Brainy’s holster, when suddenly another phantom appears and quickly disarms the assassin with a solid left hook to the jaw. It’s Phantom Girl’s brother Gmya!

Gmya then tells them that it was in fact himself who was in Sun Boy’s body and couldn’t get out. The ruthless assassin was hiding within Element Lad and after seeing PG’s life in peril, it gave him the extra will power to free himself from Sun Boy and save his sister.

They all congratulate Gmya as Sun Boy slowly sits up and tells the gang that he has never felt so weak before.

Element Lad smiles, puts his hand on Sun Boy’s shoulder and tells him he’s glad to see him again. Because boy, do they have a story to tell. 

The Hero Who Wouldn’t Fight

Kar Zagas…an obscure out-of-the-way planetoid…a speck on 30th century star charts! Current population: 227 cut throats, thieves and villains…and one Legionnaire!

The recruits are given a command to state their name and speciality.

One answers with Radako, expert marksman and assassin for hire.

The recruitment office sneers, we’ve been expecting you Chameleon Boy. And CB is zapped with a fierce ray, exposing his true identity. 

A green shadow falls over Chameleon Boy and none other than the Emerald Empress with her Mystic Eye stands before him. She commands the Eye to pry from his mind the reason Chameleon Boy is here.

The Eye obeys the order and exposes CB’s mission. The Legion heard there was a criminal army being formed on Kar Zagas and he was sent to infiltrate and learn who was behind it. 

Chameleon Boy is then put in handcuffs and wonders where the rest of the villainous Fatal Five could be. Emerald Empress answers that she grew tired of Tharok as her leader, and it’s her intention to take over her home world of Vengar, once all the recruits are properly trained. 

She orders Chameleon Boy to be put in one of her special cells and to take his flight-ring. The other Legionnaires are surely on their way. 

A short while later we see none other than a Legion Cruiser hovering over the Planetoid. Knowing Chameleon Boy is in trouble, it’s time to move. 

But Cosmic Boy is halted by Ultra Boy, the acting leader, who commands him to stay put. He is useless today and must stay behind and guard the ship.

The Legionnaires are transported down, and only a few seconds tick by when Light Lass returns gravely hurt. It was a trap and they were ambushed. All the Legionnaires are down and Cosmic Boy is their only hope.

But CB cannot, because today is the sacred day for his people of his home world on Braal. On this day each year they are forbidden to use their magnetic powers.

Light Lass pleads with him further and tells him that her own brother is down there. Would he sacrifice his friends while he’s safe and sound on the ship for some stupid tradition? Cosmic Boy slaps her in the face, telling her to shut up. He can’t use his powers but he’ll fight and die like a Legionnaire.

Light Lass watches him transport away and knows if he doesn’t use his magnetic powers he’ll be killed as surely the rest of the Legionnaires are.

Arriving on Kar Zagas, Cosmic Boy attempts to infiltrate the fortress where his friends must be locked away. He finds an open door and quickly uses his flight ring to fly inside, avoiding the guard. As he presses forward he is spotted but quickly takes out the guard before he can sound the alarm However, another guard saw him and rushes through a heavy door which must be the prison chamber.

Sure enough Cosmic Boy enters and finds the Legionnaires trapped in what appears to be some weird crystal cells. Ultra Boy confirms as much and tells him these cells are draining their powers, but he can shatter them from the outside. 

CB rushes to an iron quadrostat and intends to pick it up and smash it through the cage but it’s quite heavy. Suddenly more guards rush in and Cosmic Boy just manages to pick up the heavy object and smash it through Ultra Boy’s cell. UB rushes out and is about to be hit by a powerful blast, when CB throws himself in front of it. UB quickly smashes the other cell, freeing Colossal Boy who gives out the mighty command. CHARGE!

The Emerald Empress and her Mystic Eye also arrive but are quickly overrun by the fleeing guards. Ultra Boy chides Emerald Empress and tells her it takes more than money to convince someone to fight, such as courage and honor. Lightning Lad warns her that if she or her eye make a sudden move, he’ll give her a zap that she’ll never forget.

The Legionnaires gather around a fallen Cosmic Boy and Shadow Lass holds him up. She can’t believe he wouldn’t use his magnetic powers to shield himself from the blast. Since he used his abilities to hurl the iron quadrostat so why couldn’t he use them again to save himself?

But that’s not quite the case as Sun Boy demonstrates. He actually inserted his flight ring into the quadrostat and made it fly to break the cell. He kept his honor until the very end.

Shadow Lass gasps as his pulse is almost gone and pleads for Ultra Boy, the acting leader, to do something. 

Ultra Boy solemnly looks at the Emerald Empress. He asks her if her Emerald Eye can save him. She sneers. Of course, it can do anything. If she was free enough to control it that is.

Ultra Boy has no choice. He offers her a deal. Save him and she can have her freedom. She laughs and tells him he must release her first or else he can simply watch Cosmic Boy die. Something she would actually enjoy watching.

Sun Boy tells him not to trust her and the other Legionnaires agree. But Ultra Boy gives them the command to let her go. And as Lightning Lad releases his grip, she fades into nothingness.

They stare at Cosmic Boy with hope in their eyes and in their hearts. And sure enough he slowly comes to. The Emerald Empress kept her bargain after all.

Indeed as Ultra Boy quips,

“I didn’t think she’d understand why a man would face death, like Cos did, for honor’s sake…but I was hoping even she might respect courage that great!”

Creative Team

This issue could have been one of the best. Not only do we have two new costumes to showcase but both stories deliver a lot of action and world building. However, the second story is very problematic. But before we get to Shooter’s contribution let’s first talk about Cary Bates.

Bates delivers another great yarn that shows us why he was one of the best writers in comics at the time. He demonstrates an insane amount of ability to juggle complex concepts in physics and deliver them to a particular audience and all within a Legion of Super-Heroes universe. The Final Eclipse of Sun Boy was a great sci-fi romp that shows a bunch of Legionnaires working together to solve a problem. Also we get more of an insight into Phantom Girl’s world, including her family, which is great world building.

Mike Grell continues to deliver solid story telling and it’s a lot of fun to see, what is now pretty much classic 70’s character depictions. I mean the Ron Vizyl’s look is enough to tell you the time period we were in at the time. But again, Mike Grell is amazing.

So let’s get to Shooter. What starts out as an action packed Legion story spirals down very quickly after Cosmic Boy backslaps Light Lass. I mentioned before in another Shooter story that I do not like to hold today’s lens to the storytelling of the period, but the physical violence administered against Light Lass was incredibly jarring.

Now let’s just get into a little debate here. This is a story of comic books and we do have instances of Legionnaires hitting one another for stupid reasons. A few issues prior, we had a story from Cary Bates where Lightning Lad knocks down Element Lad for getting in his way as he boards a Legion Cruiser. These are basically powered up teenagers, both male and female. And I suppose if we treat all the characters equally then it shouldn’t matter who slaps or punches whom. Regardless of gender.

But still. There was no need for Cosmic Boy to slap Light Lass and this being a Shooter story, I can’t help but think that Shooter doesn’t treat his female characters very well. The last cringe worthy moment was in the story Death Stroke for Dawn in issue #212 where Cosmic Boy was also a complete dick to Night Girl, who ends up still being the trophy girlfriend.

Perhaps Cosmic Boy is simply a narcissistic, chauvinistic asshole and Shooter decided to write him as such and kept the thread here? I don’t know, maybe. But the whole scene felt really out of place and not really needed.

To make matters even more interesting, it just so happened that right after reading this story I was listening to Terrificon’s Power Cosmic Cosmic from Mitchell Hallock and Jerry Ordway. They were discussing a controversial moment, also from Jim Shooter, when Hank Pym slaps Janet van Dyne. My ears pricked up because from their description it was pretty much the same scene. 

Perhaps this is Shooter simply using this type of scenario to instill drama with his characters but I would argue it’s a very weird thing to do and physical violence against women probably shouldn’t be used in a comic book story of this nature, especially if we are not exploring the themes of spousal abuse or something along those lines. But hey, this is my personal opinion.

Either way, the incident took me out of the story, which I would argue wasn’t a very good one to begin with in end. The plot device used mimicked a story from Cary Bates a few issues prior where we have another character acting on some sort of weird little code/tradition that doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Why there is a tradition from Cosmic Boy’s world where they are not allowed to use their magnetic powers for a day is not really well explained. Because in reality, this plot device was used simply to ‘depower’ a Legionnaire. So even with the Light Lass slap, it’s a story that isn’t able to stand under its own weight.

So with that being said, we do have two new costumes by Mike Grell, who really likes to make sure his characters show a lot of flesh, which is very apparent with Cosmic Boy. Now this is the start of Cosmic Boy’s new look which pretty much divides LSH fandom. I’m personally on the fence because I do think it shows too much flesh, and the skin exposed areas make the uniform look a little weird. But then if I look at some of the other characters like Saturn Girl and Shadow Lass, who are also showing a lot of flesh from the Cockrum redesigns, I wonder if I’m being a little biased. As a heterosexual male, am I more accepting of the flesh revealing female characters than with Cosmic Boy? Probably.

The other character design is a blink it or you will miss it moment from Colossal Boy. It’s not really a redesign because Grell simply made the pants and shirt bits disappear. So Colossal Boy like Cosmic Boy is just showing more flesh. These are interesting choices from Mike Grill who just likes his characters to show as little clothing as possible. And as we know, Grell will make a very hefty mark on the comic book scene with Warlord who barely wears any clothes at all. 

To conclude this section, with a great outing from Cary Bates and a very weird one from Jim Shooter, it’s a mixed issue.

Super-Talk

There’s some fun stuff in this issue of Super-Talk.

First off are the reactions to Matter-Eater Lad’s departure from issue #212 and actually fulfilling the prophecy that was stated back in Adventure Comics #354. Reactions were both positive and negative but according to the Boltinoff the majority favored it.

Then it moves into some commentary on the whole set up of being challenged by other individuals with the same powers from the same planet. 

But what I found interesting was the next session when they included some letters from female fans, describing their thoughts on the team-up between Shadow Lass and Night Girl. Apparently it was received with a stamp of approval. Now, as I mentioned in that issue’s write up, it’s difficult to judge a book in the lens of today, but I still found the whole story problematic that put the female characters in a negative light. And I do find it hard to believe that others didn’t see it the same way, even at the time.

But, that story was also written by Jim Shooter and we have yet another incident of Jim Shooter not being particularly kind to a female character in this issue. I already gave my thoughts on that in the above section, but I guess I can conclude that Jim Shooter might not be the best person to put on a book if your intention is to make female characters stand on the same level as the male ones. But again, hindsight is always 20/20.

Then we have something that was pretty neat. they talk about how Jim Shooter attended the Pittsburgh Comix Club and took the stage, which also was a costumed event. So you had some Cosplay even back then. Here is the list of our cosplayers:

Mark (Cosmic Boy) Gaudio, Kurt (Chameleon Boy) Chedatoria, Keith (Element Lad) Mateson, Ron (Ultra Boy) Kienzie, Charlie (Bouncing Boy) Hawse, Todd (Brainiac 5) Clark, Ben (Ferro Lad) Pondexter, and Mercy (Phantom Girl) van Vlack.

That was pretty neat and another showing of how popular these characters were back in the day.

Also, they announce the All-Legion issue of the Amazing World of DC Comics which will feature everything about the Legion. This would end up appearing in issue #9. I did have a look around the internet and these things are pretty expensive and this particular copy will run more than a hundred dollars. But I’ll try to pick one up I think if I can find it and include it in this series of posts at a later date. I hope.

For those of you who don’t know, The Amazing World of DC Comics was a series of publications that gave you some inside baseball on what was happening at DC Comics at the time. Apparently it’s a pretty beloved series from the DC fanbase so I will have to put it on my list of things to look out for when I visit comic book stores around the world.

And finally, we have some more hype about the new character Tyroc who is going to make his debut next issue! Here’s the announcement in full. 

Legionnaires come in all colors–but what shade is TYROC? Is he the newest Legionnaire or is he “The Hero Who Hated the Legion!”? Learn the shocking answers in the next issue of Superboy Starring the Legion of Super-Heroes. On sale January 22nd!

The Legion Medallion of Merit

We have two stories, which always makes this challenging. With the first story we are pretty much flying by the seat of our pants and our characters are reacting to what’s happening from one moment to the next. We don’t really have an example of one particular character going above and beyond other than just being able to survive.

With the second tory, we have Cosmic Boy slapping Light Lass, and Cosmic Boy does what he does in the rest of the story because he can’t use his powers.

However, I can safely say that if there’s one Legionnaire who showed a lot of courage it was Ultra Boy who was acting leader. He could have easily accepted Cosmic Boy sacrificing his life for capturing Emerald Empress and her Eye, both of whom have killed a lot of people. Instead, he took a risk and allowed her to go free in exchange for saving Cosmic Boy. She does end up keeping her half of the bargain and his gamble paid off. It was a gutsy move on Ultra Boy’s part.

Congratulations Ultra Boy! You’ve been racking up the Medallions lately and hopefully they won’t be too much of a heavy burden causing you to continually use your power of super-strength just to hold them and lift your neck, which of course would make you vulnerable to attack.

And that’s it for this week’s entry fellow Legionnaire fans! We do have a bonus section below linking to the above-mentioned podcast episode. And should you listen to the whole thing and get to the part where Mitch and Jerry try to do math when settling the bill (just like in every episode), always remember…

LONG LIVE THE LEGION!

Bonus

Ep 256 TERRICON’S POWER COSMIC PODCAST

About 10 mins in, they discuss Jim Shooter and the scene between Janet van Dyne and Hank Pym.