Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes: The Early Years by Paul Levitz, Kevin Sharpe, et al.

Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes: The Early Years

Collection published: 2011
Contents originally published: 2010
Acquired: May 2019
Read: August 2022

Writer: Paul Levitz

Pencillers: Kevin Sharpe, Eduardo Pansica
Inkers: Marlo Alquiza, Marc Deering, Eber Ferreira
Colorist: Blond

Letterers: Sal Cipriano, Travis Lanham, Steve Wands

I am working my way forward chronologically through all the Legion of Super-Heroes collections I own but have not read; that brings me to this, which (mostly) takes place during the Legion's early years (duh) but was written much later, during the so-called "deboot" era, when the continuity of the Legion was reset to circa 1989. (As Mark Waid once said, the creative impetus here seems to be, "Why can't comics be good the way they were when Mommy was still alive?") This collects five issues of Adventure Comics vol. 1, which jump around a bit chronologically. This is the order they are actually set in:

• Legion Year One
  
• #517: "Saturn Rising" (shortly after the foundation of the Legion, during events chronicled in Legion: Secret Origin #1)
  
• #515*: "Playing Hooky" (young Clark Kent's second trip to the future, shortly after the Legion's original appearance in Adventure Comics #247)
• Legion Year Two
  
• #518: "Whispers of Doom" (some time before Adventure #300)
  
• #519: "Playing Hooky II" (shortly after #518, still before #300, I think)
  
• Legion Year Three
  
• #520: "Tragedy: The Death of Lightning Lad" (immediately after Adventure #304, the story where Lightning Lad dies)
• Legion Year Fifteen (?)
  
• #516: "Brande Speaks" (the frame is set during what was the Legion's present day as of 2010, though most of the story is a flashback to the Legion's early years; Superboy appears in the frame, but he's out of his normal sequence relative to the Legion)
  

(Thanks to Cosmic Teams for helping me figure this out; it's the only website that cares about this miserable period of Legion history enough to do a detailed breakdown for it. Once I have every Legion comic, I plan to read them all in order; maybe I'll go a little nuts and read these where they take place, not where they were published.)

I'm a big fan of Dream Girl... but was her appearance here in any way meaningful except to foreshadow something that happened in a comic from 1964?
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #518 (art by Kevin Sharpe & Marlo Alquiza)

Like a lot of stuff from this era of the Legion, I have to wonder who it's really for. Part of the marketing makes it seems like a way for new readers to get caught up (the back cover calls it "The Secret Origin of Superboy and the Legion!") but it also really requires you to already know your Legion history to comprehend it. I was very confused about the chronological placement of issue #516, for example, and only looking the book up on Cosmic Teams explained it was set much, much later than everything else here. There are bits of the stories that don't seem to go anywhere (a mysterious ghost in Legion HQ in #518, for example), and only by looking them up on-line did I realize they're there to foreshadow things that happened in comics published fifty years prior (the ghost is Mon-El, trapped in the Phantom Zone). In a lot of the stories, the Legion is after someone called Zaryan, and I didn't realize he was the guy who killed Lightning Lad until I got to the last issue; that would have made the foreshadowing work better, to be honest, because I couldn't figure out why were so focused on this seeming non-story. I know my Legion history pretty well, but my earliest Legion of Super-Heroes Archive is volume 3, meaning my knowledge really begins with Adventure #318, and so all this mucking about with the Legion's early days is pretty confusing.

I would have liked more culture clash, to be honest. Cut the Brainiac Zero stuff.
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #519 (art by Eduardo Pansica & Eber Ferreira)

Which is a shame, because there is some good stuff here: young Clark getting a time and place where he can just cut loose and have fun and not hide himself, but which also contains dark hints of his own future; the Legion coming back to Superboy's own time and having to goof around. 

I like a bit of Brainiac Five being awkward...
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #519 (art by Eduardo Pansica & Eber Ferreira)

On the other hand, most of what is here is fragmentary and uninteresting, or plain misguided. I don't think adding a secret Saturn Girl/Cosmic Boy one-night stand is a very good idea; it all comes across as slightly skeevy. #518 isn't really a story, just hints at other stories, and thus provides no reward to the reader. #520's impact is muted by the fact it needs to be told as flashbacks in order to fit continuity. The story of R. J. Brande given here totally contradicts the history the character received in L.E.G.I.O.N. and the "Five Years Later" era of the Legion... which is totally fine, retcon away, but my rule of retcons is the new version must be at least as interesting as the old one, if not more... and this is considerably less interesting. The old Brande was fascinating; this one is a generic inspirational guy.

Is this supposed to vaguely justify why this isn't consistent with previous accounts?
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #516 (art by Kevin Sharpe & Marlo Alquiza)

So, alas. Thankfully this and Secret Origin are all I have to catch up on from this era from now; I'm next jumping ahead a bit to read a new collection of a classic Legion story...

I read a Legion of Super-Heroes collection every six months. Next up in sequence: Legion of Super-Heroes: The Millennium Massacre

* Technically, this is Adventure Comics vol. 3 #12. In 2009, DC relaunched Adventure Comics with a new #1, but each issue also had a secondary number, continuing the numbering of Adventure Comics vol. 1 from where it had left off in 1983, #503. So, this issue was both Adventure Comics vol. 1 #515 and Adventure Comics vol. 3 #12. But with #516, they dropped the vol. 3 numbering, and used only the vol. 1 numbering. Totally straightforward. (The intervening vol. 2 was a one-issue revival in 1999, part of The Justice Society Returns, fact fans!)