Review: Legion of Super-Heroes Archives, Volume 4 by Edmond Hamilton, John Forte, et al.

Comic hardcover, 222 pages
Published 1994 (contents: 1965)
Acquired December 2014
Read June 2017

Legion of Super-Heroes Archives, Volume 4

Writers: Jerry Siegel, Edmond Hamilton, Otto Binder

Artists: Jim Mooney, John Forte, George Klein, Sheldon Moldoff, George Papp
Letterers: David Huffine, Milton Snapinn, Vivian Berg

The beginning of this volume actually sets up three ongoing mysteries for the Legion:

In the introduction, KC Carlson (who edited the Legion in the 1990s) calls the flight rings "bane of Legion artists and editors," but I don't know why. Surely it beats the flying belt anyday! Interesting to note that the flight ring does not yet incorporate the Legion symbol; I wonder when that comes about.
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #329 (script by Jerry Siegel, art by Jim Mooney)

As far as I know, this is the first mention of the "vanishing world" and the "hardened space criminals reforming," but the Time Trapper bedeviled the Legion multiple times in volume 3. The Time Trapper ends up being the only one of these elements to come up again; if multiple recurring plots were being set up, they didn't pay off within the next year despite Saturn Girl's intentions.

Not that intentions count for much. The Legion doesn't finally defeat the Time Trapper because of anything they do here (or any of the preparations they undertook in the previous volume), but because he decides to attack them by sending a minion with a de-aging weapon, from which they are saved by the most contrived of circumstances:

Like, is having a "Fountain of 1,000 Chemicals" even a good idea? What kind of interactions are happening here? If they can interfere with the operation of time devices, what are they doing to the bodies of passers-by?
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #338 (script by Jerry Siegel, art by John Forte)

(This story also establishes that it's Mother's Day on one page and that it's Halloween-time six pages later. Either the Time Trapper is substantially messing around with time but no one mentions it, or Jerry Siegel is a forgetful writer. You decide which is more plausible.)

I guess you have to appreciate the effort, though. This volume also features the first multi-issue Legion stories I can recall: one about the evil Dynamo Boy taking over the Legion from within, with the help from the Legion of Super-Villains (this is the earliest of their appearances that I've read), and one about the mysterious crime lord Starfinger ("more dangerous than Goldfinger," one cover trumpets; the James Bond film would have come out about a year prior).

Like so many Legion stories of this era, they range from terrible to contrived to terrible and contrived. This volume has less dependence on Legion members behaving erratically (though you still have Lightning Lad pretending to be vengeance-obsessed for somewhat ill-conceived reasons), but still multiple stories where someone in a mask is dramatically revealed as someone else, and the reasoning doesn't stack up:

In almost every story in this volume, Mon-El is off in a distant part of space; in this one, he shows up at the end at least (just to make it clear he's not Unknown Boy). I can't decide if this makes him lame (he's supposedly awesome, yet he never contributes) or awesome (he's off having adventures so amazing they can't be depicted).
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #334 (script by Edmond Hamilton, art by John Forte & Sheldon Moldoff)

Like here, Superboy concludes "Unknown Boy" can't be Ultra Boy because Ultra Boy can't see through lead and use other superpowers at the same time, and therefore "he" must be Supergirl... but as acknowledged on the next page, Supergirl can't see through lead at all:

But of course! How could we not have realized?
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #334 (script by Edmond Hamilton, art by John Forte & Sheldon Moldoff)

...which really undermines his supposed deduction. Lucky for him that red kryptonite had this "weird side effect."

The best part of the book is probably the feeling that the Legion is an ongoing saga, where things and people can change. Lightning Lad loses an arm, and instead of being brushed aside, his mechanical arm comes up in multiple stories. In another story, a Hero of Lallor (introduced in volume 3) goes misanthrope and fights the Legion, only to end up dead, the fact that he'd actually appeared before as a (sort of) hero adding a little bit of pathos. In one story, two pairs of Legionnaires even get married and quit.

Brainy really hates public display of affection.
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #337 (script by Edmond Hamilton, art by John Forte & Sheldon Moldoff)

Though this of course turns out to be yet another overcomplicated ruse, it sets the stage for what's to come in the 1970s and '80s, where relationships would increasingly dominate the storytelling.

Next Week: I'm caught up with my Legion of Super-Heroes reviews, so it's time to cycle on to another of my reading projects, my explorations of the adventures of James Bond, picking back up with Diamonds are Forever!