Review: Legion of Super-Heroes Archives, Volume 6 by Jim Shooter, Curt Swan, George Klein, et al.

Comic hardcover, 221 pages
Published 1997 (contents: 1966-67)
Acquired March 2016
Read December 2017

Legion of Super-Heroes Archives, Volume 6

Writers: E. Nelson Bridwell, Jim Shooter, Otto Binder

Pencillers: Curt Swan, George Papp
Inkers: George Klein, George Papp
Letterer: Milton Snapinn

This volume sees one of the first attempts at an ongoing story for the Legion. The Fatal Five are introduced as deadly enemies for the Legion, recruited in a Suicide Squad-esque thingy where the Legion needs the help of the worst of the worst to defeat a Sun-Eater on its way to the Earth. Famously, it kills Ferro Lad; I might have cared if Ferro Lad had every done anything other than get killed. Unfortunately, he was introduced in volume 5, which I don't have, so he seems pretty much like a nobody here. The Fatal Five is potentially interesting, but like a lot of 1960s Legion concepts, I think later writers will do more with it than its originators do themselves.

Outside of Ferro Lad, it's the usual stupid Legion hijinks. The famous "adult Legion" story comes in this volume, which should really be famous for Cosmic Boy's hairline, and the fact that apparently the marker of adulthood in the 1960s was pipe-smoking:

Cosmic Man's hair loss is matched only by my scan's gutter loss.
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #354 (script & layouts by Jim Shooter, art by Curt Swan & George Klein)

There's also a story where five of the Legionnaires end up as babies, who get adopted by parents from a planet with sterile inhabitants. Even by Legion standards, it's contrived.

But of course!
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #356 (script by E. Nelson Bridwell, art by Curt Swan & George Klein)

I don't really get how Jim Shooter got a reputation as a great Legion writer based on this stuff. I mean, it's great for a thirteen-year-old, and it's okay for the 1960s Legion, but that doesn't mean I'd hire him at age 57 in 2008 to make a new, more appealing version of the Legion, yet DC did so for some reason. Curt Swan and George Klein draw the hell out of the Legion, though, especially its pretty ladies, so there's that.

Dream Girl, Insect Girl, Princess Projectra, and the Emerald Empress. (The last is not a Legionnaire, I know.)
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #355, 352, and 353 (scripts by Otto Binder and Jim Shooter, art by Curt Swan & George Klein)

Next Week: More of the Legion, in Archives, Volume 7!

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:

Review: Legion of Super-Heroes Archives, Volume 3 by Edmond Hamilton, Jerry Siegel, John Forte, et al.

Having reached the most recent unread Legion of Super-Heroes collection in my possession, it's time to loop back around to the earliest:

Comic hardcover, 222 pages
Published 1993 (contents: 1964-65)
Acquired December 2014
Read November 2016

Legion of Super-Heroes Archives, Volume 3

Writers: Edmond Hamilton, Jerry Siegel

Artists: John Forte, George Papp, Al Plastino, Sheldon Moldoff, George Klein, Curt Swan, Jim Mooney
Letterers: Milton Snapinn, Joe Letterese, Vivian Berg, David Huffine

Whenever I dip back into the pre-Great Darkness Saga adventures of the Legion of Super-Heroes, I'm like, this is what people look back on so fondly? Even by the standards of 1960s superhero comics, I would argue, most of these stories are dismal and dull and daft.

A subtle critique of 30th-century gender roles.
from Adventure Comics vol. 1 #326 (script by Jerry Siegel, art by John Forte & George Klein)

The dominant writers of the period, Edmond Hamilton and Jerry Siegel, are obsessed with plots where it seems like the Legionnaires have turned against one another: the stories collected in this volume include leader Sun Boy* going nuts from space fatigue and the Legion having to take him down, the Legion imprisoning Lightning Lad for revealing their secrets to their enemies, the female Legionnaires seducing and eliminating the men under the influence of evil women from the planet (I shit you not) Femnaz, five Legionnaires traveling back in time solely to screw over Superboy by revealing his secret identity, and short-lived member Command Kid turning the Legionnaires against each other. Each plot is more contrived than the previous, and the Femnaz one is ridiculously awful: the women of Femnaz destroy their planet's men because the men try to clamp down on violent arena games and won't let them shoot rockets at the moon. They see the error of their ways when they crack their moon in half with some of their rockets, and the male Legionnaires put it back together for them. Uh huh.