Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
... or: "How Can You Be In Two Places At Once, When You Aren't Anywhere At All...?"
(PART FOUR)
In one respect, picking on DC's Legion of Super-Heroes
franchise for playing inordinately fast'n'loose with the concept of A Straightforward
and Sensible Chronology is very nearly beside the point. Conceptually
speaking, I mean. 
For those scant few of you out there who might be a tad "under-
familiar" with the baseline conceit: the series details the serial adventures
of a simply gargantuan assortment of variously-powered super-teens in
the 30th Century. Give or take a Ray Milland-ish "Lost Weekend"
or two.
Said assemblage of action-oriented adolescents have -- over the several decades of the franchise's existence -- treated the temporal notions of Past, Present and Future with pretty much the same cavalier disregard as you or I might display towards a department store revolving door. The team has boasted any number of members-in-good-standing from the 20th Century (Superboy; Supergirl; Jimmy [Elastic Lad] Olsen; Lana [Insect Queen] Lang; etc.); long featured one "core" member who spent over one thousand years as a living "phantom" (Mon-El); regularly engaged in the usual sorts of rough-and-tumble versus the villainous Time Trapper; and -- as we shall soon see, a little later on in the proceedings, hereabouts -- even had a member or three set up ongoing monthly storytelling "shops" back in our own century, every now and again.
First things first, however: I just absolutely have to tell you
all about this tawdry little terror of a tale entitled "The Face Behind the
Lead Mask." I just have to, is all.
As the story opens, assorted and sundry Legionnaires are experiencing... ummmm... "technical difficulties" (if you will) with their respective super-powers. (Cosmic Boy's super-magnetism, for instance, inadvertently shreds a harmless robot into so much scrap metal; Lightning Lad's electrical powers bring the team's clubhouse tumbling down about their heads; etc., etc.)
The Science Police of this far future era -- basically, a bunch of glorified beat cops who get to zip about in rocket packs; exclaim "Sizzlin' Satellites!" whenever the urge to do so hits 'em; and (basically) get in the Legion's way as frequently as is humanly possible -- inform the perplexed teens that: "Unless you regain mastery of your super-powers within one hour, you will be exiled from Earth!"
(This seems a rather extreme reaction, surely, upon sober reflection.
I mean... say that Bouncing Boy or Invisible Kid or Dream Girl
DO all lose control of their powers, all at once? What's your worst
case scenario, here? A fat guy who keeps rebounding against the invisible
lecher who -- in turn -- is busily copping free "feels" off the unconscious
chick. Oh, yeah: there's the collapse of Western Civilization.
Throw in an amok Shrinking Violet, as well, and half the bloody hemisphere
might well end up in flames.)
A few panels later, this total fashion victim by the wildly improbable name of "Urthlo" drops in, and informs the eerily calm uberteens that he is (in point of fact) the author of their current miseries. [See panel reproductions, below]
"You fiend!" Saturn Girl emotes, facial expression wildly out-of-synch with her dialogue.
Superboy, in the meantime, is dismayed to discover that: "I can't see
his face through that lead mask! My x-ray vision can't penetrate lead!"
(Apparently, the notion of simply yanking that ridiculous faux
Stonehenge-type thingie from this goober's head -- the Teen of Steel, in the
scene reroduced above, is standing close enough to this "Urthlo" to ascertain
whether or not the latter flosses on a regular basis -- never even so much as
occurs to Our Hero. And you all wonder why Lana Lang was
able to give him such a rough time of it, cat-and-mouse-wise, in all of those
old SUPERBOY stories.)
Well: a super-powered tussle eventually ensues, with the Legionnaires -- their control over their respective powers and abilities still falling, in the main, somewhere in the dread borderlands between Not So Good and Sucks Outright -- taking rather the worst of it. Fortunately, Time-
Honored LEGION Maneuver Numero Uno (i.e., "There's Always One More Legionnaire With Which To Confront and/or Confound An Otherwise Unbeatable Foeman At the Very Last Moment. Always.") is brought into play, and (then-)Phantom Zone resident Mon-El steps in to kick himself a little green-and-purple hinder.
The downed Urthlo is revealed to be (work with me here, people) a robot duplicate of none other than noted 20th Century no-goodnik Lex Luthor. [See panel reproduction, below]
"I should have guessed the name 'Urthlo' is the name 'Luthor' with the letters scrambled!" an incredulous Superboy gasps. (Which doesn't really make a whole heck of a lot of sense, when you stop to think about it. I mean: are Legionnaires always supposed to assume that This Villain or That One is gadding about with an anagram for a nom de guerre, now? Boy... just imagine how that First Principle might play itself out, most issues:
(SUPERBOY: "Brainiac V! Look out! It's The Time Trapper!"
(BRAINIAC V: "Good Lord! Tim, the Pet-Raper! I should have guessed -- !")
(SUPERBOY [crushing his teammate's head like a grape]: "Don't.
Do. That.")
The absolute pinnacle of Sheer, Unrelenting Comics Goofiness, however, is achieved when the stunned Legionnaires crack open their (ostensibly) high-tech opponent's chest compartment and find a collection of reel-to-reel tapes ensconced within, helpfully bearing designations such as "HATE SUPERBOY"; "HATE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES"; and (my own personal favorite) "HATE HATE HATE."
"Criminal super-genius," it says here. Shyeah. Right. Like
a real super-genius wouldn't have opted for eight track tape cartridges,
instead. I'm just sayin', here.
... and -- while we're (nominally) on the subject of Things Too Mind-Bogglingly
Stupid To Merit Deeper Contemplation -- I might as well bring up the unpleasant
subject of DC Comics' (mercifully) short-lived KARATE KID series.
Karate Kid (a.k.a. the terminally impetuous "Val Armorr") was the Legion's resident master of hand-to-hand combat. (See The Legion of Super-Heroes: PAGE THREE for how that all came about.) As such, he was -- for the better part of a decade or so, anent his introduction into the LEGION canon proper, back in the pages of ADVENTURE COMICS #346 -- just another face in the populous spandexed crowd of same...
... until, that is, Bruce Lee's classic ENTER THE DRAGON made its noisy initial
"splash" in this country; the entire thirty-and-under segment of the population
went "kung fu" crazy; and the mainstream American comics industry -- for the
next year, year-and-a-half -- went and lost its collective marbles.
Spun-off into his own tiresome title, Karate Kid was sent back into our own epoch (i.e., the mid-1970's: disco and The Dukes of Hazard; platform shoes and The Partridge Family. God help us all.) in order to prove his essential "worthiness," as per the royal edict and decree of the mildly crazed father of his long- time paramour, fellow Legionnaire Princess Projectra.
Said solo series -- as written (variously) by Jack C. Harris and Bob Rozakis; and penciled by such lackluster artistic journeymen as Ric Estrada and Juan Ortiz (among others) -- was conceptually hamstrung from the git-go. The Kid's adventures never seemed as if they had much (if anything) to do with the baseline premise -- i.e., Futuristic Suitor Attempts To Prove Himself Worthy of the Love of a Princess -- and, thus, tended to meander all over the storytelling map and back again. That's one.
For regular (and I do mean regular; as in "practically every bloody issue") sparring partners, the writers stuck The Kid with two of the least interesting of all of DC's spandexed baddies: the startlingly ineffectual Major Disaster, and the self-aggrandizing total cipher known as The Lord of Time. That's two.
Immediately upon finding himself shunted from the There and Then and into the Here and Now, The Kid immediately went and snared himself a 20th Century "love interest" (the freckled and bespectacled Iris Jacobs) which, obviously -- to everyone but the writers, it seemed -- all but devastated the series' baseline premise (HINT: it had something to do with a princess), while simultaneously leaving the readership with the unmistakable impression that the title's putative protagonist was a lothario and a lout. And there's Strike Three.
Needless to say: not even the wild-eyed "kung fu" mania of the day could Heimlich a series as ill-conceived (and shabbily-executed) such as this into anything better than a brief, shambling sort of half-life, sales- wise...
... and, besides -- as should be readily apparent, from the (sadly) all-too-typical
samplings accompanying this text, throughout -- it's not as if the combined
efforts of the book's creative team were in imminent peril of being mistaken
for those of (say) Grant Morrison and Jack Kirby, in any event.
I'm just sayin'.
Still: as plainly awful as everything I've shown you concerning this title has been, thus far...
... look: maybe you'd better think about sitting down for this next feature
in the atrocity exhibition... 'kay?
In a story arc so spectacularly stone-brained and inept that even the mentioning of it in front of small children, pregnant women and the elderly is prohibited by the threat of federal prosecution under the same laws utilized in the conviction and sentencing of Jeffrey Dahmer and the Unabomber... Karate Kid "crossed over" into KAMANDI (a.k.a., "The Last Boy on Earth").
No. Seriously.
[See cover reproduction, below]
For those of you who may be less than wholly conversant with that latter series: KAMANDI (created by undisputed comics legend Jack "King" Kirby) was the eponymously-titled comic concerning the ongoing odyssey of its long-maned lead character across the wasteland and rubble of a post-Apocalyptic Earth.
As extrapolated by its creator for the first forty issues of its run, the series was -- and remains, to this very day, in retrospect -- brisk, solidly-crafted fun. Fabulous "lost" empires people by giant, mutated half-animals; high adventure; and dizzying, hairbreadth escapes were the storytelling order of the day.
So long as Kirby's was the guiding intelligence behind the series, that is.
Now, then... for our Bonus Round question, and all of the "Rice-A-
Roni" you can cart away and eat: who do you suppose was granted conservatorship of the series upon the completion of The King's three- years-and-some-change tenure on same...?
I take it from the sudden ghastliness of your collective pallors that you're
all -- as usual -- trotting merrily right alongside me.
In a story involving (may the Good Lord strike me dead if I lie):
*** a race of mutated, '70's "mellow"-speaking "lobster men" who worshipped at the "altar" of a giant drive-in movie screen;
*** Karate Kid's quest for a cure for his 20th Century "squeeze" (she'd been transformed, months earlier -- for no readily apparent auctorial purposes -- into a mindless, rampaging "diamond" creature ;
*** ... and yet another fabulous joint appearnce by that ridiculously ubiquitous duo: The Lord of Time and Major Disaster...
... no. No. I'm sorry... but: I honestly don't see how any of you can reasonably expect me to be any more nimble or lucid in attempting to describe the "plot" than were the original writers in seam-stitching it together in the first place.
It was A Very Bad Thing, all right? It was the comic book equivalent
of an involuntary anal probe by particularly near-sighted and malicious alien
proctologists. An evening of "sweatin' " with a grinning Richard Simmons...
only sans any accompanying "oldies" music. Nekkid.
We'll move on to something appreciably less excruciating on the following page of our lengthy TIME TRAVEL IN THE SILVER AGE DC UNIVERSE retrospective.
Okay.
Okay, so I lied.
It's going to be every last bit as painful and awful as was the stuff on this page.
I blame society.
"Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART ONE"
"Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART TWO"
"Time Travel On the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART THREE"
"Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART FIVE"
"Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART SIX"
"Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART SEVEN"
"MORE COMIC BOOKS," YOU SAY...?
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