Legion of Super-Heroes Club: Weekly Reader for May 15th 2019

[Don-El]

For this week’s Legion of Super-Heroes Club weekly reading fun, we’ll be reading the all-important starting run of Jim Shooter, Boy Wunderkind!

At age 13, in mid-1965, he wrote and drew stories featuring the Legion of Superheroes, and sent them in to DC Comics after a hospital stay got him back into reading comic books. On February 10, 1966, he received a phone call from Mort Weisinger, who wanted to purchase the stories. He liked DC of that time, but also enjoyed the drama going on in the new Marvel storylines of the early to mid 1960s. So he mashed it all up, and changed history!

This week’s main selection:

Adventure Comics (1938-) issues 346-348

#346: Beginning full-length Legion of Super-Heroes tales and featuring the first appearances of Karate Kid, Princess Projectra, Ferro Lad, and Nemesis Kid. The Legion inducts new members, but one of them is secretly a spy for the violent alien race the Khunds! DC Universe

#347: The Legion of Super-Heroes prepares for an attack by the Khunds, assigning four new members to guard important towers. But when someone starts destroying their defenses, it becomes apparent a traitor stands among them! DC Universe

#348: The Legion of Super-Heroes faces off against the menacing Doctor Regulus, who shares a shocking connection with the Legionnaire Sun Boy! DC Universe

Our “extra credit” reading this week by request is: Legion of Substitute Heroes Special (1985)!

https://www.dcuniverse.com/comics/book/legion-of-substitute-heroes-special-1985-1985-1/e7a0633b-eeef-47d4-bd83-6f3455f251a6

Let us all know your thoughts please in the thread below!

Questions to use as a guide to your reflection on these storylines:

1. How are these stories different from our first reading selection of the very first Legion stories that were written 5 to 7 years prior?

2. In what ways do you feel these three issues from 1965 set the tone and feel of the Legion for decades to come?

3. What do you like about this version of the Legion?

4. What do you prefer about the more modern stories of the Legion of Super-Heroes?

5. Are you a Jim Shooter fan? Why or why not?

6. Bonus question: what do you love about the Legion of Substitute Heroes?

If you want to talk about the Legion Club and discuss what you want this Club to be, you can sure do it here or also many members are on this Discord channel: https://discord.gg/SUs87JP

Next week we turn the Legion Club Chairperson role over to one of you (just like the Legion of Superheroes rotates the chair) for another three weeks (this is already in the works, sit back and enjoy the ride)!!!

We’ll plan to come back soon to most of these storylines we have started, month to month, so stay tuned!!!

[Don-El]

Thoughts?

[Vroom]

I’ll try and squeeze these in =)

[Don-El]

Thanks Vroom!

[trustymutsi]

YAY!! LEGION OF SUBS!!!

Thanks for putting that in there!!

[Don-El]

@trustymutsi Your wish is our command!!

You are a valued Legion Club member, so we want to make sure to include your suggestions where we can!

[Don-El]

Over here, @WVP

[Don-El]

Adventure Comics 346 One of Us is a Traitor!!!

While the story starts out a little weak at the very beginning, like the first couple panels, it takes off from there really nicely with lots of great drama and tension! It really pulls you in with lots of emotion in the issue, as well as giving each character a unique voice. it turns out Superboy leans a little towards the bossy know-it-all when he’s the Chairperson (“skip the alibis, Cosmic Boy”).

As they discussed the threat of the Khund invasion, the talk about discovering a Galaxy not seen before is very reminiscent of the kind of headlines we get today where our own telescopes and ability to see into space keeps giving an exciting headlines about new planets being discovering and even new galaxies that we didn’t know about … so pretty cool that the thirteen-year-old Jim Shooter would include something that insightful back in 1966.

But then Master Shooter allows the telescope to not just finally somehow reach out and see that distant galaxy in recent weeks but next panel there is a close up of a surface and the Legion can see the missiles on the ground,… which of course totally negates how cool the last thing was with how ridiculous it would be that they could suddenly see that cloee up tye thing that couldn’t even be detected like a week before!

To me, that’s a lot of the fun of reading these older Legion stories, seeing where the story and art do predict the future really wonderful, and then those other times where they just seem to be kind of silly and short-sighted in what they think life on planet Earth a thousand years from now would be like.

Concerning the plot of the rest of the issue, the whole aspect of the pain of new teams getting to trust each other is brilliantly done by Jim Shooter here as he sends everybody off into smaller subteams. in the following decade, Steve Engelhart would prove to be a real genius with this team dynamics element if exciting storytelling, both in his work with the Avengers where you eventually had the Scarlet Witch and Vision getting married but also with what Mr. Englehart did with Justice League of America and Batman!

The mistrust the Legion team has here of the new members to do their roles is very similar with what regularly happens in the workplace or on a sports team. It takes time for new members to prove their worth and build trust. In the business world, we talk about teams going through four stages of : 1) forming 2) storming 3) norming and then 4) performing! I guess that’s why I always enjoy it when there’s a new team book -the Terrifics is a great example of this tension that makes for exciting storytelling. We’ve seen this here in the DCU Community also where we get used to each other and learn to understand each other’s communication styles and basic intent.

[Don-El]

Issue 346 Exhibit A

Superboy being a big Meany when he has the gavel.

[Don-El]

Issue 346 Exhibit B

Last week we couldn’t even see the Galaxy with our telescopes, but this week we can get a close-up and can even see the serial number on the missile weapon…uhhhhhh

[Don-El]

Issue 346 Exhibit C

Fantastic cliffhanger ending to the first issue! Great storyline, great mystery and you really want to read the next issue! This issue starts a whole new era for the Legion.

Jim Shooter is deliberately using that new at the time Stan Lee soap opera type ending to entice you to keep getting involved with the comic and with the developing characters and their relationships, something else he grabbed from the 1960s Marvel Comics, tricking us the readers to just keep buying and to become hopelessly addicted!

[Don-El]

Sorry exhibit A shows the wrong thing …let me go grab the right exhibit A

[Don-El]

Okay …Exhibit A Take 2

Superboy being a grumpy leader

[Vroom]

Superboy obviously hadn’t had his Weetabix yet.

That, or his Legion ring fell behind the credenza, and he ran out of time to look for it as he didn’t want to be late to the meeting, so he huffed and puffed his way over to Legion HQ.

[biff_pow]

So Matter Eater Lad’s planet is called Bismoll. I get it!

[Vroom]

It’s the sister planet of Pepto.

[Don-El]

I think the planet that spins exact opposite of it in the solar system is called Ah Bismol

[Vroom]

rimshot

[Don-El]

(bows appreciatively to the audience)

[Vroom]

Hey, thank you.