Adventure Comics 247

Adventure Comics #247
Preboot » Pre-Crisis

Cover by Curt Swan, Stan Kaye and Ira Schnapp

Story title	The Legion of Super-Heroes
Previous story	Action Comics #276:Supergirl's Three Super Girl-Friends
Next story	Adventure Comics #267:Prisoner of the Super-Heroes
Cover date	April 1958

Creators

Writer(s)	Otto Binder and Mort Weisinger
Penciller(s)	Al Plastino
Inker(s)	Al Plastino
Letterer(s)	Unknown
Colourist(s)	Unknown
Editor(s)	Mort Weisinger
Cover artist(s)	Curt Swan, Stan Kaye, Ira Schnapp

The Legion of Super-Heroes

One day in Smallville Superboy is startled to run across several teenagers who apparently know his secret identity. One boy greets Clark as Superboy even though Clark is dressed in his civilian clothes. Later, as Superboy flys over Smallville in costume, another boy addresses him as Clark Kent. And while he is still dressed as Superboy, a teenage girl asks him to say hello to his parents, mentioning Jonathan and Martha Kent by name. With growing concern, Clark begins to wonder if everyone in town knows his secret identity. Could it be possible?

The Legionaires' true colors revealed

Together the three teenagers reveal that they also have secret identities, changing into their colorful costumes as Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, and Lightning Boy (known in later issues as Lightning Lad). They have travelled through time from the 30th century and want to invite Superboy to visit them in the future and join their super-hero club. Intrigued, Superboy joins his newfound friends in their time bubble, which takes them to 30th century Smallville. He gets a quick tour of contemporary highlights, including a futuristic ice cream shop, a shrine preserving Superboy's Smallville home, and a history class demonstrating one of Superboy's own robots.

Arriving at the super-hero clubhouse, they are joined by other members of the club, and a meeting of the Legion of Super-Heroes is called to order. The first item of business: Superboy's application for membership. According to club rules, Superboy must prove that he is a super-hero in order to be admitted. To do so, a series of three competitions are arranged in which Superboy will take on his three new friends individually in tests of super-skill. Using the Legionnaires' television trouble-finder, the contestants are to respond to super-jobs, with the first one to successfully solve the problem winning the round.

The Super-Hero Clubhouse

Superboy thinks this will be easy, but each time his super senses detect another emergency that needs his immediate attention, allowing his opponent to win the round. He and Saturn girl are charged with recovering a priceless statue that has sunken beneath the sea, but en route there, Superboy notices the Superboy robot seen earlier running dangerously out of control. Next, he and Cosmic Boy must both attempt to prevent a crashed rocket-liner from causing a forest fire, but Superboy spies a falling satellite and must prevent it from hitting people below. Finally, Lightning Boy and Superboy must notify a travelling rocket that it has a leaking fuel tank and must return for repairs. This time, Superboy must rescue an invisible eagle that has escaped from the interplanetary zoo, and loses his third match.

Each time, Superboy accepts his defeat without mentioning the emergency that prevented him from winning, feeling that this would look like he was making excuses for his failure. Having lost all three contests, his membership is rejected. True to form, he takes it with a brave smile, even when he is teased by the Legionnaires for losing. Secretly broken-hearted, he turns to leave, but at the last moment, the Legionnaires call him back.

The real initiation test was in his ability to accept defeat and still be a good sport. In each test he was deliberately decoyed away from completing his mission. Saturn girl used a mental command to control the Superboy robot, Cosmic Boy made the satellite fall from the sky and Lightning Boy used his power to free the invisible eagle. Having passed their real test, Superboy is accepted for membership, and he basks in the cheers of his fellow Legionnaires.

Highest Award

Suddenly, the TV trouble-finder alerts them to another emergency at South Pole City. Rushing to the scene, Superboy uses a magnetic meteor to right a toppling tower, seeds clouds to create lightning that will heat the city while its heat lamp is fixed, and then plays a simple "mind-reading" trick upon his return to the clubhouse. Saturn Girl sees his joke - he has used magnetism, lightning and mind-reading all on one job, duplicating each of his competitors powers and earning him their highest award. Upon his return to 20th century Smallville, he proudly displays the medal he earned to Pa Kent, amazed that he will still be honored a thousand years in the future.

Notes

First appearances

This issue marks the first appearance of the following characters and recurring key Legion story elements:

Cosmic Boy
Saturn Girl
Lightning Lad (as Lightning Boy)
The Legion of Super-Heroes
A Legion time bubble
30th Century Earth
Legion jetpacks - soon replaced with flight belts, and later with flight rings
The super-hero clubhouse, with its classic inverted rocketship design
Legion tryouts
The mission monitor board - called here the television trouble-finder

Costumes

Cosmic Boy's magnetic eyes

Take a quick look at the Legionnaires' costumes, because other than in one or two toungue-in-check references in modern retellings of the Legion's origin story, these particular versions of their fighting togs will never be seen again.

Power oddities

Strangely, Cosmic Boy's power is depicted in this story as radiating from what he calls his "magnetic eyes." These are explained as the result of "special serums" that he has taken. While this is a great departure from essentially every later explanation for Rokk's powers, it has been proposed by some readers that such serums were administered during his youth, resulting in further enhancement of his natural Braalian magnetic powers. In most cases, Cos uses his hands to direct magnetic flows, but there is nothing to indicate that he couldn't do so with another part of his body. Perhaps at this early stage in his career, he was more accustomed to focusing his power with his eyes, although there is no indication of this in other stories, including those which chronologically take place at an earlier time.

Super-lightning clap

Lightning "Boy" also utilizes his powers in a different way than readers would come to expect in later stories. Here he must clap his hands together to generate lightning, rather than simply "throwing" or casting them from one or both hands. This might be an early way that he learned to use his abilities, graduating later to what would become his preferred style. But, once again, no stories prior to these events or after support that theory.

Unnamed members and the Legion fan phenomenon

Although Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl and Lightning Boy [i.e. Lightning Lad] are the only Legionnaires specifically named and clearly depicted in the story, three scenes show several other unnamed members in attendance. None of these shadowy characters are recognizable members who would later play a role in Legion history. Perhaps they are merely unsuccessful membership applicants. However, several can not be seen clearly enough to completely rule out the possibility that they are known Legionnaires.

A flashback in Adventure Comics #323 shows a scene from Superboy's induction at the end of this story that was not included in the original version. Triplicate Girl, Chameleon Boy, Invisible Kid, Colossal Boy and Brainiac 5 are among those present behind the scenes. In particular, if Brainiac 5, who joined the Legion at the same time as Supergirl, is present here, then this story must take place some time after the Legion story in Action Comics #276, during which they were both inducted. For a more detailed examination of all the clues that piece this puzzle together, read the related article on early Legion continuity.

Some Legion fans hold the theory that it was the presence of these mysterious characters in the background that gave the story its appeal. In their essay in the back of DC Silver Age Classics: Adventure #247, which reprints this story, Tom Bierbaum and Mary Bierbaum write that

...if not for these background characters - if the Legion of Super-Heroes were simply a clearly quantified collection of a few kid heroes from the distant future - this group probably would've ended up just another rather obscure gimmick concept from DC's distant past of fondly recalled, but mostly mothballed gimmick concepts.

What made the Legion special was that it was a Legion. Character after character, all spectacularly garbed, fantastically powered and colorfully named. Who would walk on the scene next? A shapeshifter? A phantom? A descendant of the villainous Brainiac? "Superboy's older brother?" A hero who could eat matter in all forms? Anything was possible.

Indeed, curiosity about the Legion and its members inspired the readers of the Superman family titles to write in for more. The artists, writers and editors who put this first tale together had no intentions of ever using the Legion characters again. But the fans kept writing and, 20 months later, they received a second tale in Adventure Comics #267. Slowly but surely, the stories became more frequent, and the mystery of those unnamed characters began to unfold.

The Anti-Lad connection

Unbeknownst to Superboy and the early Legionnaires at the time of this story and something that they would never learn in the future was that another character would become a vital part of Superboy's successful induction into the Legion. The story described in Superboy v1 #204:The Legionnaire Nobody Remembered relates the tale of Anti-Lad, a citizen of the 75th century. In the process of viewing the events of Superboy's first meeting with the Legionnaires via Time-Scanner, he accidentally changes history, and Superboy is rejected from admission to the Legion. Anti-Lad successfully travels back through time to correct this error, interacting with the original 1958 events between pages 10 and 11 of the story as told in Adventure Comics #247. Due to a post-hypnotic suggestion, neither Superboy nor the other Legionnaires have any memory of Anti-Lad's existence.