Blog of Geekery: One More Try-Out for the Road

Friday, September 12, 2008

One More Try-Out for the Road

ADVENTURE COMICS #305, DC Comics, February 1963

By popular demand (well, one person asked), here's one last Legion try-out before we leave the 30th centurty for a while. Remember the rules?

a) A hero with a really lame power will be rejected.
a2) Said hero may or may not prove his worth and be accepted after all.
b) A powerful hero will be rejected for having the same powers as another member.
b2) Said hero may or may not turn out to have one lame power no one has and be accepted after all.
c) A hero will turn out to be a villain and will be rejected.
c2) Said "hero" will instead be accepted and THEN show his or her true colors.
d) The established Legion will be real jerks to the hero trying out (hey, you think the cool kids are bad, imagine if they had super-powers).
And let us add e) A hero will be rejected for having mechanically-assisted powers.

Our eye falls on the Tales of the LSH story in Adventure Comics #305, which I have in both Archives and Showcase form, but not in the 1963 original, though I am of course interested in that Superboy - He-Man story. Among the applicants, Callous Boy:

Actually, that's Dynamo Kid, but we'll get to him in a second. First: Anteanea Boy, later to be called Antenna Lad. His powers definitely have potential.

What teen superhero clubhouse couldn't do with a radio? But unlike Bob Haney's Teen Titans, Jerry Siegel's Legion is filled with squares. But beyond that, couldn't you use a guy who could hear radio news reports from the FUTURE?

And from the looks of it, from ALTERNATE TIMELINES? But this is before Wildfire was appointed head of the Membership Committee, so Antennae Boy gets a jerk-ass rejection.

Next up: Dynamo Boy, who has pretty much the power set to replace Lightning Lad, but Saturn Girl takes wire-cutters from her utility belt (Batman survives in spirit) and snips a wire in his back proving his powers were mechanically-assisted. REJECTED!!!

Next up: Legionnaire Lemon AKA Marvel Lad. The first name is not very marketable. The second might cause problems down the line. His powers?

Wow, Shrinking Violet is easily impressed. He's also got super-strength and speed, invulnerability, heat vision, etc. How is he doing all this? Time to take the metal detector out to make sure he isn't a filthy robot.

Cosmic Boy knows his Silver Age.

But no, he's not Superboy in disguise. He can stand to be near kryptonite and lead alike. Passing the first stage of the job interview, they then send him on three assignments. The first has him get a load of "fluvium" (ewwwwwwww) from another galaxy, and the second has him fight a rather more humanoid than we're used to Sun-Eater.

For his third trick, he must create a new element. I mean, how would an Antenna Lad EVER make it into the Legion with those standards? In case you ever WANT to create a new element, here's how it's done:

To be fair, Nth metal already exists in the DCU, but the Legionnaires are suitably impressed by all the super-rubbing and they allow Marvel Lad to join.

The next day, the truth is revealed. He's actually Mon-El, returned from the Phantom Zone and trying Brainiac 5's new and improved lead poisoning serum. So why the charade? See, they didn't want to get everyone's hopes up until they knew the serum was good for more than a day. Ah. But why didn't he just go somewhere for that day instead of destroying every new applicant's chances of making it into the Legion?