Adventure Comics 503

Adventure Comics #503 Preboot » Pre-Crisis Reprint Cover artwork by Howard Bender and Pablo Marcos Story title Various Previous story Adventure Comics #502 (previous chronological reprints) Next story The Best of DC Blue Ribbon Digest #44 (next chronological reprints) Publication date June 2, 1983 Cover date September 1983 Creators Writer(s) Edmond Hamilton, Jerry Siegel Penciller(s) John Forte Inker(s) John Forte Letterer(s) Milton Snapinn Colourist(s) Unknown Editor(s) Nicola Cuti (reprint), Mort Weisinger (original material) Cover artist(s) Primary art: Ross Andru, Joe Rubinstein, Border art: Howard Bender, Pablo Marcos

Background

Adventure Comics was the birthplace of the Legion and its longtime home. After almost 500 issues of publication, it became primarily a series of reprints. Featured each month was a chronological re-presentation of the Legion's earliest tales, two in each issue, beginning with their first appearance.

This issue marks the end of the Adventure Comics series, at that time DC's longest running comic title. However, the Legion reprints were continued in scattered issues of The Best of DC, another digest format comic.

Reprinted Legion stories

	1st reprint of The Mutiny of the Legionnaires! – Adventure Comics #318 - January 30, 1964
	1st reprint of Elastic Lad Jimmy and His Legion Romances! – Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #76 - February 27, 1964

Other Stories in this Issue

This digest also contains additional stories with no Legion content, including:

• Plastic Man, untitled story - Adventure Comics #471 (May, 1980)
• Aquaman in "The Big Pull" – Aquaman #51 (May/June, 1970)
• Aquaman in "The Traders' Trap" – Aquaman #52 (July/August, 1970)
• Zatanna in "The Tower of the Dead" - Adventure Comics #414 (January, 1972)
• Zatanna in "Kill Or Be Killed" - Adventure Comics #415 (February, 1972)

The covers of New Comics #1, New Adventure Comics #12 and Adventure Comics #15 are also reproduced in this digest. Those are the three first issues of each different name that the Adventure Comics series went by in its early development.

The Story Behind the Stories

The two Legion reprints included in each issue of the digest-sized Adventure Comics were the feature attraction. As an added bonus to Legion fans, a running commentary about that issue's reprinted Legion stories was provided each month by Paul Levitz, who was the writer of the Legion's current series while the Adventure digests were being produced. Years later, these commentaries are the primary point of interest (other than the reprinted stories themselves), so the full text is provided below:

The chronological reprinting of the Legion's adventures rolls onward this month, and we come to one of the more difficult columns of commentary to date in this series. And the reason for that is a simple one...there isn't all that much to say about this issue's tales.

"The Mutiny of the Legionniares" from ADVENTURE COMICS #318 (March, 1964) was standard fare for the Ed Hamilton-John Forte period of the LSH. It is perhaps most noteworthy for beginning the tradition of "adapting" classic novels premises to the Legion, and giving significant roles to a number of Legionnaires who had played relatively minor roles in most stories. Part of the reason for this is that Superboy doesn't appear at all in the story, a fairly rare event now that the Legion had become the regular lead/cover feature in ADVENTURE. In the early sixties, any comic with Superman in it far outsold any other DC, with LOIS LANE in her own comic outselling the nearest non-Superman title by almost two to one, for example. Therefore Superboy had been on every ADVENTURE cover since the Legion series started - either as one of the most prominently featured Legionnaires or with a scene from his own story from that issue.

Now, however, the Superboy tales were reprints, and therefore presumably editor Mort Weisinger was not anxious to put them on the cover (in fact, he only did that once - with #327). This meant that Superboy would have to play more prominent roles in the Legion stories, and that began to change the tenor of the scripts - making villains more powerful and generally enlarging the scope of the stories. But that change was in the works but not ready, and this story sort of snuck in...leaving Superboy condemned to appear in a small caption on the cover pluging his "Hall of Fame" reprint.

Two other items of note: the shadowy figure of the Time Trapper hiding behind his "Iron Curtain" of time is revealed here for the first time (ouch), and the story's missionary theme of saving the population of a world about to be destroyed would be echoed later in the LSH canons, as this writer used it for the basis of "A Day in the Death of a World" in SUPERBOY/LEGION #231 over a decade later.

"Elastic Lad Jimmy and His Legion Romances" from JIMMY OLSEN #76 (April, 1964) by Jerry Seigel and John Forte is almost a "survival" of earlier, pre-series LSH guest appearances in Superman family titles. There's no fascinating secrets behind this story, at least none that I can discover.

Our first baker's dozen ADVENTURE DIGEST issues have now taken us through the first 34 Legion tales, firmly entrenching the group in its universe, establishing the logic of the 30th Century and inducting 20 of the 33 members introduced to today.

And if you haven't already, please check out the Legion's current epics in their own title.

– Paul Levitz

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Reprint
Adventure Comics #502  By continuity The Best of DC Blue Ribbon Digest #44
Adventure Comics #502  By series Adventure Comics v2 #1/Adventure Comics #504
Legion of Super-Heroes v2 Annual #2  By publication Legion of Super-Heroes v2 #304