Credits | Characters | Plot Summary | Comments | Reprinted In Editor: Mort Weisinger Writer: Jerry Siegel Artist: Jim Mooney Roll Call: Command Kid (joins and resigns this issue), Cosmic Boy, Element Lad, Invisible Kid, Lightning Lad, Mon-El, Phantom Girl, Saturn Girl, Shrinking Violet, Star Boy, Sun Boy, Superboy, Triplicate Girl, Ultra Boy Reservist: Chuck Taine (formerly Bouncing Boy) Villain: Three jewel robbers, three members of the Interplanetary Crime Syndicate, three terrorists at the atomic generator plant, an evil entity from Taboo Island on Preztor (possessing Command Kid, who was really an innocent youth) Other Characters: Cosmic Boy's ancestors (images projected by an ancestor-visualizer machine), android copies of Jungle King, Zaryan the Conqueror, a floating bust of Molock the Merciless, several Science Police officers, a construction worker at Galaxyland, a construction robot, citizens of Metropolis, Science Police Commissioner Wilson, a leading scientist of Preztor "The Lad Who Wrecked the Legion" (14 pages; Part I: 7 pages) After witnessing a youth capture some crooks using his power to create hypnotic hallucinations, the Legionnaires invite Command Kid to join their team. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that their newest member is a braggart with a bad attitude and he soon uses his power to make fools of the other members. Star Boy expresses his desire to have greater powers and Command Kid promises he can deliver, secretly revealing a darker plot...
Command Kid beats the others to the punch again and again, with a condescending attitude that riles them, yet amazingly each one asks him to give them greater powers. As most of the members fall into a coma, Element Lad and Saturn Girl return from a mission in time to foil Command Kid's evil plot. It turns out that Command Kid was a youth possessed by an evil spirit which gave him his powers. The demon wanted to possess each of the other members with fellow entities but was exorcised from Command Kid by the presence of gold. Command Kid, now powerless and restored to normal, quits the Legion and apologizes for his actions while under the control of the demon. The android of Zaryan the Conqueror refers to himself in the past tense, indicating that Lightning Lad had indeed killed the villain when he destroyed his attacking ship in order to save the Earth. The Monster Master android refers to itself as "Jungle King", which was his applicant name. After he was rejected and became a villain, he called himself Monster Master. Bouncing Boy has his power restored to him by Superboy in this story but in the space of one panel they are lost again, the effect being only temporary.
A villain refers to the Science Police as the "Science Cops" in this story. After Superboy invites Command Kid to join the team, presumably his membership was voted upon by a quorum between this panel and the next one, which shows him being sworn in. It is likely that the demon possessing Command Kid's body and mind exerted a subtle mental power over the other Legionnaires, which is how it was able to gain membership so easily. This also explains how all the normally capable Legionnaires suddenly developed insecurity problems concerning their abilities and why they would volunteer to be experimented on by Command Kid. Star Boy was the first to step forward because he has greater subconscious feelings of self-doubt due to the fact that he once had super-powers on par with Superboy's but suddenly lost them. (Similarly, Sun Boy is the second Legionnaire to give in to this weakness due to once having lost his power and another time getting a bout of space fatigue that resulted in him needing laser-scalpel brain surgery.) The threat to the atomic generator plant is said to have been a threat to the Earth, so no doubt it was capable of providing energy to the entire globe. In this way, it was a precursor to the fusion-powersphere, which later appears in Adventure Comics No. 335/336. The latter facility is considered to be the greatest of the Seven Wonders of the 30th Century, being lined with inertron to contain its great energies. Cosmic Boy is giving his parents a miniature replica of the clubhouse as a "golden anniversary gift". Does he just mean it to be an anniversary gift that is made of gold - or also that it is in honor of his parents' 50th wedding anniversary? If it is the latter, then Braalian women must be able to have children much later in life, either naturally or due to 30th century science. Even if she got married at age 14 (considered adulthood on Braal), since Pol, her youngest son, is about 12 at this time in the lore, she would have had him at age 52. The fact that that would make the Krinns almost 70 when we see them in Adventure Comics No. 357, yet they look barely "middle-aged", is not surprising when you consider that 1,000 years ago the average lifespan was about 30 years of age and that today the average is about 2.5 times this. By the Legion's time, it is easy to imagine that the average lifespan would at least increase again by this factor, especially when you consider the discovery of Rejuvium (first seen in Adventure Comics No. 335) and the fact that extraterrestrial humanoids, such as Brainiac 5 of Yod (Colu), probably have a lifespan closer to 500 years, with a single generation being around 200 years. Due to the cover art, which depicts "Superboy" punching "Ultra Boy" into the ground, the area around the Legion clubhouse goes from being its usual grassy parkland to slabs of a pavement-like material for just a few panels. This can be explained away by virtue of being part of Command Kid's hypnotic hallucination. A variant style of Legion cruiser appears in this story (as in all stories drawn by Jim Mooney), but still in the official color red. The one seen in this story has the ship designation "L.S.H. 2185". Legion of Super-Heroes No. 1 (Feb. 1973) Legion of Super-Heroes Archives Vol. 3 |
Part II: "The Youth Who
Wasn't Human" (7 pages)