Adventure Comics 491
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Contents
Background
Adventure Comics, one of DC's very oldest titles, was the series that saw the Legion's debut in April 1958 and was eventually home to its first real series, presenting Legion stories for eighty straight issues beginning in September 1962. However, by the early 1980s, long after the Legion had migrated through several other series to a self-titled one, sales for Adventure Comics were floundering and the title was put on hiatus. It was soon revived in a digest format, primarily with reprinted material from old Adventure issues and other forgotten DC stories. Featured each month was a chronological re-presentation of the Legion's earliest tales, two in each issue, beginning with their first appearance.
Reprinted Legion stories
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3rd reprint of The Legion of Super-Heroes! – Adventure Comics #247 - February 27, 1958 |
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2nd reprint of The Prisoner of the Super-Heroes! – Adventure Comics #267 - October 29, 1959 |
Other Stories in this Issue
This digest also contains additional stories with no Legion content, including:
- Captain Marvel battles “The Confederation of Hell” - new material
- Aquaman confronts “The Sorcerers of the Sea” – Aquaman #40 (July/August, 1968)
- The Black Canary in solo action – Adventure Comics #418 (April, 1972)
- Sandman pitted against “The Man Who Couldn’t Sleep” – Adventure Comics #80 (November, 1942)
- The Spectre wages “The War That Shook the Universe” – Showcase #60 (January/February 1966)
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:
- An important part of the new ADVENTURE COMICS DIGEST series is an ambitious plan of co-editor Carl Gafford: the complete reprinting of the sought-after early adventures of the Legion of Super-Heroes, in chronological order. The Legion’s first stories are probably the most sought-after and difficult to collect DC comics since the Golden Age both because of the group’s tremendous popularity and because of the many different comics the stories appeared in. And as one of DC’s premier fans Legion fans (having completed my collection back before they even began appearing in SUPERBOY & THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES) and as the current writer of the series, I was asked by Carl to do some commentary on the reprints.
- This issue’s two selections are the first two Legion stories published and Carl plans to move ahead in order next month with Supergirl’s first meeting with the Legion and Luthor’s first battle with a Legionnaire. But when “The Legion of Super-Heroes” was first published in ADVENTURE COMICS #247, neither writer Otto Binder nor artist Al Plastino ever imagined the characters would return.
- Otto Binder was a long-time science fiction writer who had worked on many comics. He wrote a couple more stories featuring the Legion after this one, but only one episode of their series five years after it began appearing regularly in ADVENTURE COMICS. Al Plastino, the artist of that first story, was one of the big three Superman artists of the time (with Swan and Boring) but somehow never managed to do another story with the Legionnaires.
- Interesting curiosities about that first story are, or course: Lightning Lad debuting as Lightning Boy, Cosmic Boy’s powers coming from “magnetic eyes”, the never to be seen again original costumes of all three characters, and the Legion’s headquarters being placed in Smallville. Actually, I suspect its not accurate to describe Legion headquarters as being both in Smallville and Metropolis – as the smaller town has probably been absorbed into the larger as a neighborhood in 2959 AD.
- Most interesting (besides the story itself) are the shadowy figures of other Legionnaires… which is one of several historical clues that have led some Legion fans to adopt the theory that Superboy was actually inducted into the Legion after Supergirl. That would identify the other figures as Triplicate Girl, Phantom Girl, Chameleon Boy, Colossal Boy, the original Invisible Kid and Brainiac 5.
- The second story, “Prisoner of the Super-Heroes”, came twenty months after the first, possibly in response to sales of the Legion’s debut. As you can see, the characters reappeared in the uniforms which we came to know as theirs for many years, courtesy of George Papp who illustrated many Superboy stories and went on to draw the Legion a few times. We have never successfully identified the writer of this story.
- The strangest curiosity of this story is Element Sigellian, which seems to be deadly to people of many races (since as we now know, Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl and Cosmic Boy all came from different planets). Perhaps it’s a deadly poison of some sort, but in any case its never been seen again.
- As space permits, I’ll be back from time to time to keep up a running commentary on the Legion reprints. I hope you enjoy them, and I hope you’ll give the new stories in the Legion’s own comic a try too.
- – Paul Levitz
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| Adventure Comics #453 By series Adventure Comics #492
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| Legion of Super-Heroes v2 #290 By publication World's Finest Comics #283 |
