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| That's actually a futuristic "space-tattoo". |
“Why … uh … I just do my job!”
No sooner does the Boy of Steel, Clark S.Superboy Esquire, long for teenage fellowship to ease the singular superheroic burden of his dual identity than three teens from the 30th Century show up on his doorstep. With their names written on the front of the jerkins like the slowest kids at Summer Camp, Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl and Cosmic Boy – whose “magnetic eyes of super-power” sound like a real menace at the knife shop in the mall – take Superboy on a whirlwind tour of the future, including far-flung ice cream shops carrying all the flavors of the imagination (NINE of them!) and substandard quality control conditions at nearby robot factories.
After an unnecessary hazing ritual, Superboy is made a full-fledged member of the group with which his name would one day become synonymous. Now let’s all get badges that say “Super Hero Club” on them!
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8 comments:
Jon, I've been reading your blogs for the past eight years or so. I know you know how to spell "Calendar".
Whoops! Yeah, I spelled it correctly in the tabs - good catch, thanks!
I liked saying that so much I accidentally sent it to you twice. Sorry about that!
I deserved it!
By the way, thanks for all the work you put in! You never fail to crack me up. You're clearly a very intelligent, witty and creative chap, and you're all kinds of inspirational and all that stuff. I don't know where you get the energy.
My pleasure, thanks for the kind words and for reading!
In the early days of the Legion, especially when Edmond Hamilton was writing it, it seemed like there was a single, unpleasant, stuck-up, judgmental personality split among all of them, with mostly Superboy and Mon-El occasionally being individuals. The Legion Group Mind seemed to hang in there for a very long time. I wonder if Saturn Girl's mind control powers might have had something to do with it?
Ah, yes, the early Legion and their hazing rituals. In the pre-Shooter days, so many Legion plots seemed to be written by middle aged men reflecting on how cruelly they were treated by the Heathers in high school. The most common story was, "I thought he/she was my friend! Why am I being treated so meanly?" (Common answers: Android duplicate, shapeshifting impersonator, identical twin, mind control, a ruse to win the confidence of the villains, it's all just a test, a big misunderstanding, etc.) And the second most common story was, "You may not impressive enough to be friends with us," for realsies. It's a club so exclusive, even Superboy has trouble getting admittance. And even then, there's always a more exclusive circle, symbolized by the endless politicking about who would get to be club president this year. Somebody apparently thought that what kids in junior high wanted to read was stories about kids in pajamas, in junior high.
But then came writer Jim Shooter, an actual teenager who turned out to be far more interested in seeing the team be a team fighting villain teams rather than playing endless internal games of "Do you like me? Circle Yes or No." During his tenure, Legion kept its readership (around 500,000 an issue, unthinkable today) in a period when all other titles were plummeting, so I guess he read the zeitgeist right.
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