A Man With An Agenda

It is difficult to cry foul over spoilers for a 50 year old comic book, but the back cover of this Archives collection features two covers that show the death of a Legion member in no uncertain terms. This was a big deal, as before no Legionnaire has stayed dead before. This character, I believe remains dead to this day in most continuities. He's the Legion of Super-Heroes' Uncle Ben. Some characters need to stay down to inspire the rest.

Anyway, spoiler or not, I enjoyed these issues. Set 1,000 years in the future these teen heroes have crazy gadgets at their disposal, embrace their wealthy benefactor - and even give him special attention, and give only the glimmer of acknowledgement that the girls can have part in story-lines other than fawning over boyz. It's only a glimmer, but it's a start. These issues would mostly have been published in 1966 after all.

My highlight was the issue where Superman is called to the future and visits the grown-up Legion, many members have retired, but we pay them a visit. It's a cavalcade of male pattern baldness and housewives. This had to be another fan-mail inspired issue, but it was pretty funny. Saturn Girl was the only one to refuse to give up her day job just because she got married.

A new team of super-villains, the Fatal Five, are introduced and they offer a lot more possibilities than the Legion of Super-Villains (though they will be back). Interestingly, three major events in Legion history are reversed - not ret-conned, but "fixed" by events in the story for no reason other than the authors and illustrators got tired of reading angry fan mail. The result is three members are returned to the Legion and someone gets their flesh arm back. Fun.

Legion of Super-Heroes

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