Legion of Super-Heroes: The Life and Death of Ferro Lad by Jim Shooter, Curt Swan, and George Klein

DC Comics Classics Library: The Legion of Super-Heroes: The Life and Death of Ferro Lad

Collection published: 2009
Contents originally published: 1966-67
Acquired: December 2024
Read: April 2026

Writer and Layouts: Jim Shooter
Penciller: Curt Swan
Inker: George Klein
Letterer: Milton Snapinn

DC Comics Classics Library was a short-lived reprint series from the late 2000s. Looking at its offerings, I'm not entirely sure what its focus was supposed to be: clearly Silver Age material, but beyond that it seems a pretty eclectic mix. Some of it was high-profile storylines, such as this volume and Superman: Kryptonite Nevermore, but there was also a comprehensive artist run (the complete George Peréz Justice League of America) and a bunch of Batman Annuals... why exactly? And some of them hadn't been collected before (like Kryptonite Nevermore), other volumes had been collected before—like this one, which reprints issues previously printed in volumes 5 and 6 of the Legion of Super-Heroes Archives.

Still, while my drive to collect all Legion collected editions usually draws the line at collecting the same material twice over (e.g., I have not and will not pick up the Silver Age omnibus volumes, nor any DC Finest collections with only already reprinted material), I thought this volume intriguing enough to pick up. And indeed, it's a nice package, a well-designed hardcover with sharp design and period-appropriate paper. And how often do you get a collected edition of the Silver Age Legion where every issue is from the same creative team?

This collects issues #346-47, 352-55, and 357 of Adventure Comics, which are all the issues by Jim Shooter, Curt Swan, and George Klein focused on Ferro Lad. All of these were rereads, but I hadn't read them in order, since I read volume 6 of the archive editions long before volume 5. The first story is "One of Us Is a Traitor!"/"The Traitor's Triumph!" This is the story where Ferro Lad joins the Legion. It's a solid story—but it's also the story where Karate Kid, Nemesis Kid, and Princess Projectra join the Legion, and it's very much focused on the first of those two; we get little sense of Ferro Lad.

Ferro Lad's big contribution.
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #347

The collection then jumps ahead to "The Fatal Five!"/"The Doomed Legionnaire!" (Ferro Lad only appeared in two of the intervening issues according to the GCD, and I'm assuming he was just one of the crowd.) This is a very famous story, it's what the title of the collection alludes to, and it both works and doesn't work.

What works is the introduction of the Fatal Five. I had forgotten they weren't really a supervillain team on their original appearance, but actually a media nickname for five of the Science Police's most wanted criminals. The Legion gets a briefing on them, but are interrupted when an entity known as the "Sun-Eater" (it does what it sounds like) enters the galaxy, advancing toward Earth. With all but five members of the Legion on a mission to another dimension, they ended up deciding to recruit the Fatal Five for assistance. This is all very well done: the Legion's desperation works, but in particular the Fatal Five really work; lots of comics writers struggle to come up with one good villain, but Shooter comes up with five in one got, with interesting personalities and powers, and Swan and Klein give them all great visual designs. I particularly like both the Emerald Empress (neat visual gimmick with the Emerald Eye, fun personality) and Validus (cool looking, sort of tragic). They bring a lot of spark to the story.

Somehow I feel like she would have gotten out of this even without Superboy's help.
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #352

The shift to the Legion and the Fatal Five working to attack the Sun-Eater is also great, with good use of everyone's powers and a real sense of desperation. Shooter is a smart writer, really thinking through ways to make his story dynamic and clever.

It wasn't until writing up this review that I realized his name was Validus, not Validius. I like my version better.
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #353

Unfortunately, after a great first three-quarters, it all falls apart in the last part. One, Ferro Lad's decision to sacrifice himself just isn't given enough weight; he does it, blam, he's dead, like Shooter ran out of pages after all that impressive buildup. Second, we barely know Ferro Lad! I know the fact that Shooter created him was also the reason he was allowed to kill him off, but he's just been a guy in crowd scenes aside from his initiation scene. I don't feel anything because I don't know this guy from Adam, unfortunately. One wishes Shooter had postponed his idea here, given Ferro Lad more to do in some other stories, then killed him off. Or... killed off someone else! (Sun Boy?) Either way, the story ends with a fizzle.

Doesn't Tenzil actually go into politics later on? Wait, earlier on?
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #354

Lastly, the collection contains two stories dealing with the aftereffects of Ferro Lad's death. One is the legendary "Adult Legion" story, where Superman visits the Legion, and thus it's about twenty years in the future of what we normally know. The villain here is Ferro Lad's twin brother, though he turns out to be the patsy of the Legion of Super-Villains. It's fine, I always find this story a bit silly. (All of the adult male Legionnaires have receding hairlines and smoke pipes.) The other is about the Legion behind haunted by the ghost of Ferro Lad. This one is slight but well done; I like the villain's plan and I like the bit about the actual ghost(???) helping Superboy, though my favorite part is that Shooter correctly identifies that the two Legionnaires least likely to believe in all this ghost malarkey are Brainiac 5 and Saturn Girl. I also really like how Swan and Klein draw the "ghost" of Ferro Lad.

Alas, cooler in death than he ever was in life.
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #357

So, a nice little collection. I want to hunt down some other of these DC Comics Classics Library editions now! On top of that, when I left it lying around, my seven-year-old picked it up; they'd tried to read volume 1 of the Legion Archives and bounced off it in the past, but they sped through this and expressed interest in reading more Legion comics, so mission accomplished! They also saw the ad for Kryptonite Nevermore in the back and were intrigued by the cover image—how could Superman break kryptonite chains!?!—so that's probably in our future as well.

I read a Legion of Super-Heroes collection every six months. Next up in sequence: Legion of Super-Heroes Archives, Volume 8