Adventure Comics 503
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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 material
Original publication source is noted for each.
- The Legion in "The Mutiny of the Legionnaires!" – Adventure Comics #318 (March, 1964)
- 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 Legion in "Elastic Lad Jimmy and His Legion Romances!" – Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #76 (April, 1964)
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:
