Adventure Comics #247 (April 1958)

This just might be the oldest comic I have looked at on this blog so far. My personal favorite era of comics is the Bronze Age, generally considered the era of comics that went from around 1970 to 1984-86. However, many of comics' most popular characters started out in the previous Golden and Silver Ages of Comics. Among them are the Legion of Super-Heroes.

DC's resident defenders of the future have visited this blog before, in my reviews of Legion of Super-Heroes #290, Action Comics #858, Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #1, and Action Comics #859. I guess you could say I am a bit fond of this group. So, I figured that at some point, I had to look at their first appearance.

Adventure Comics was actually the second comic book series DC had ever published. The first issue was published in December 1935 as New Comics. With its twelfth issue in January 1937, it got renamed to New Adventure Comics. Issue #32 (November 1938) saw the word "New" be dropped from the title, and would remain under that name for the rest of its existence.

The original incarnation of Adventure Comics would last for nearly fifty years, the final issue (#503) being published in 1983. In 2009, the title would be revived. The new Adventure Comics started out with new numbering, but would eventually take up the numbering of the previous incarnation of the title. This incarnation of the series would end with issue #529 (October 2011) because of the reboot of the DC Universe that would be known as the New 52. It originally started out as a humor title, but eventually evolved into telling adventure stories, and then superheroes.

Adventure Comics introduced a lot of characters that would become mainstays of the DC Universe. In issue #12, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster introduced a prototype of Jor-El (Superman's father) as a science fiction detective. Justice Society members Sandman, Hourman, and Starman would debut in issues #40, #48, and #61. Characters like Green Arrow, Superboy, and Aquaman would consider the series their home for periods of time.

In fact, this issue has stories focusing on Green Arrow and Aquaman as well. I won't be looking at them here because...I do not have them. You see, the scans for this comes from the 2018 trade paperback The Silver Age: Legion of Super-Heroes Volume One. It's a collection of the Legion's early adventures, and while it does have the Legion story (naturally), it did not include the Green Arrow or Aquaman stories. It's understandable, as they're not the focus of the trade. Hopefully, they'll do an Adventure Comics collection that does keep everything. So, with that, let's look at Adventure Comics #247!

The cover is a Curt Swan and Stan Kaye piece, and it's become rather iconic. It's been homaged and parodied many times over the years. You have a shocked Superboy staring at an America's Got Talent-style judges' bench. Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad, and Cosmic Boy voting "No". Cosmic Boy's dialogue is hilarious, as he says Superboy's powers are "too ordinary". Yeah, I get that Superboy's "Flying Brick" powerset is one of the archetypical superhero power sets, but he can do things you, Garth, and Imra can't do, Rokk. Heck, he doesn't need to touch you. He can just fly into space and heat laser your face from orbit.

"The Legion of Super-Heroes!"
Writer: Otto Binder
Penciler: Al Plastino
Inker: Al Plastino
Colorist: Unknown
Letterer: Unknown
Editor: Mort Weisinger
Executive Editor: Whitney Ellsworth

The story begins in Smallville, Kansas. A young Clark Kent, aka Superboy, is walking down the street. He's enjoying the beautiful sunny day in the idyllic little piece of Midwest America. A redheaded teenager greets him warmly with a "Hello there, Superboy!" Clark waves it off as a joke. When he gets home, the suspicious lad changes into Superboy and goes on patrol. As he flies, he noticed that the boy he met was new in town, and he somehow knew his secret identity. He'll have to investigate that.

As he flies, he meets another boy, this one with black hair. He greets him as Clark. A blonde girl asks him to give her regards to his parents, the Kents. Superboy is shocked. Was his secret identity leaked out?! How? Well, the three explains that to them, he's ancient history.

Meet Rokk "Cosmic Boy" Krinn, Imra "Saturn Girl" Ardeen, and Garth "Lightning Lad" Ranzz. Or "Lightning Boy" in this case. They're a trio of superpowered superhero teens from a thousand years in the future. And yeah, those costumes did not last very long. They wanted to meet Superboy and make him a special member of their club. Yeah, it's clearly not established that Superboy was their big inspiration yet.

They bring the future Metropolis Marvel to a spherical device known as a Time Bubble. The Bubble allows them to ride the timestream to wherever point in history they pleased. As such, Superboy gets to see the Smallville of 2958. Smallville has undergone a lot of changes. The ice cream parlor now has 9500 flavors, for instance. And the old Kent home has become a shrine.

In a school, a teacher educates his students about the Boy of Steel. He uses a robot duplicate of the young hero to demonstrate his heat vision by melting a block of steel (The comic says X-Ray vision, but I think that's a mistake). Cosmic Boy introduces the teacher to the real Superboy, who melts the block of steel himself.

The three Legionnaires take Superboy to their clubhouse, which looks like an upside-down rocket that was planted into the ground. There are already several Legionnaires in attendance.

Hey look, there's Brainiac 5 in the corner! To prove his worthiness to the club, Superboy must compete against three Legionnaires. Superboy thinks it will be easy, considering his wide array of powers, and each of the Legion generally only has one. The Legion's trouble-detecting TV picks up some trouble at sea. A dredge ship is having trouble finding a priceless statue that sank under the waves.

Superboy and Saturn Girl will see which one of them can dredge it up. Superboy thinks this'll be easy. With his speed and strength, he'll have that statue out before she arrives on her jetpack (The Legion didn't have their flight rings yet). However, some trouble slows the Kryptonian down. The Superboy robot from the teacher's earlier demonstration has run amok.

The Boy of Steel is able to get it to the school's science professor, who is able to shut down the robot so it can be repaired. With that problem solved, Superboy can head out to get that statue. Under the ocean, Saturn Girl uses her power of telepathy to do her best Aquaman impression and command a sea creature to retrieve the statue. Legion 1, Superboy 0.

Superboy returns to Legion HQ, offering no excuse for losing as he feels that telling the Legion about the runaway robot would be seen as a weak excuse. Dude, that is a valid excuse! You had to stop the robot!

Anyway, the Legion's little TV trouble-finder picks up another disaster: A rocket-liner has crashed into a forest. The crew and passengers are okay, but the burning rocket threatens to completely immolate the forest. Superboy and Cosmic Boy are going to handle this one...that is, if that ancient satellite didn't threaten to crash down on Earth.

He finds that it's an ancient Project Vanguard satellite...which the Boy of Steel dumps in a volcano. Dude, that thing was a relic of the early Space Race! Museums would have killed to have that thing! Anyway, Cosmic Boy uses his magnetic powers to make a flock of iron meteors come down in a lake. The large rocks of metal caused the lake to overflow into the forest, dousing the fire. Legion 2, Superboy 0.

Superboy has one last chance to win a contest with the Legion. He and Lightning Boy have to save a passenger ship heading to Mars. The ship's fuel tank sprung a leak, and they'll be stuck in space if they don't get alerted to it. Why not just call them? Well, space static. Yup, that's the excuse. However, Superboy seems to have developed a case of super-bad luck as a strange animal chose now to escape from the zoo.

Superboy can't spare the time to find the alien bird, as it's invisible. So, he has an idea. The young Smallville Sensation grabs a piece of iceberg, cooling the air around it. The bird's feathers start to frost, which allows Superboy to see the bird. Meanwhile, Lightning Boy has formed a message to the ship with electrical power.

You know, I don't think Lightning Lad has ever used his powers like this since. I mean, this potentially indicates that he can form constructs out of lightning like Green Lanterns can with the energy from their rings. That's pretty cool. Anyway, that's Legion 3, Superboy 0. Superboy still refuses to explain why he gets delayed. If I were him, I would get suspicious. I mean, having to deal with an emergency during one of these contests is fine, but all three?! Something funny is going on here...

Anyway, this means Superboy failed the tests, so Legion membership is not for him. Superboy takes it with a smile, as he believes the emergencies he had to deal with were excuses.

"I am so going to beat the snot out of these clowns..."

However, Saturn Girl has a surprise for him. You see, the contests were an initiation. The three Legionnaires used their powers to cause the disasters that kept Superboy from winning his contests. Saturn Girl used her telepathy to command the robot to go wild, Cosmic Boy used his magnetic powers to pull the satellite out of orbit, and Lightning Boy used his electrokinetic powers to create a hole in the dome keeping the invisible bird in the zoo.

More on this later. Cosmic Boy compliments Superboy for being a good sport, when another alarm goes off. There's a city in the South Pole, heated by a cosmic lamp on a tower...that is collapsing. Superboy takes care of it. First, he goes into space and gets a magnetic meteor. The meteor's magnetic field helps keep the tower stable so repair crews can straighten it. He then gets some salt and "seeds" the clouds with it, causing flashes of lightning that will help keep the city's dwellers warm until the lamp is repaired.

Wait...couldn't Superboy just straighten the lamp's tower itself? Well, he could, but he wanted to play a little joke on the Legion back. He saved South Pole City be imitating their powers...although I don't see how he could have duplicated Saturn Girl's, as Superboy is not a telepath. Impressed, the Legion gives him their highest honor: The Super-Hero Number One Award. The story ends with Superboy returning home to his time, showing off his award to his dad.

"I just potentially mucked up the timeline to show you this, Dad! I'm so proud!"

This story...was really not that good. I'm sorry. Yeah, I know it's the Legion's first appearance, and it's an important comic, but it's still not that great. The Legion do come off as rather jerkish to me. I feel like they hazed Superboy. I don't think that's what the creatives here intended, but execution-wise, it does come off like that.

There's plenty of what TV Tropes would call Early Installment Weirdness with this story, what with the three Legion founders' costumes, Garth Ranzz going by Lightning Boy instead of Lightning Lad, and Cosmic Boy's magnetic powers coming from his eyes. Not to mention the Legion using jetpacks to fly instead of their more iconic Flight Rings. The story feels like a hastily-slapped together first draft. I did want to praise the clever use of powers...but, yeah. It does feel contrived. The art is fine, I do think it does seem a bit stiff. But that's the Silver Age for you.

This was a rough start for the Legion, but readers at the time wanted to see more of these teenagers from the future. The Legion would go on to better-told adventures over the years. If you want to read this yourself, I recommend tracking down the 2018 trade paperback The Silver Age Legion of Super-Heroes, Volume One. Thanks for reading this blog entry! If you liked it, spread it around! See you next time, where in celebration of the arrival of 2020, we take a look at an adventure of a unique incarnation of the Armored Avenger...