Twelve Days of Christmas Special Review Series, Part Four, By Johnathan

Only three days behind! I was going to write this last night, but I was distracted by enchiladas and wine. Who could resist that, I ask you?

Back to that super-hero party from Adventure Comics No. 289 (I can't stop plugging Super Future Friends! Go there!) - remember, the whole reason that Supergirl hauled her cousin 1010 years into the future was to get him some future bootie (booty?), and where better to look for a quick hook-up than the super equivalent of a drunken office Christmas party. Hell, there are probably four or five different sets of super-butt prints on the hyperspatial image duplication assembly already. All Supergirl really has to do is point Clarkie in someone's direction and let fly.

So who does she choose?

Saturn Girl! Saturn Woman! Whoever!

Superman has been holding out for a woman with a lot of plaques! Turns out that he only values qualities that have been commemorated by brass plate screwed to wood, which is why to this day he's convinced that Green Arrow is indeed the World's Greatest Sex Machine.

The most important question raised by this panel, though, is just who the hell gave her that plaque? Her mom? Her stalker? Is there a shadowy group of future trophy-makers dedicated to making the folks of the 30th Century feel okay about themselves? Should I expect a tasteful brass-and-mahogany number commemorating my exceptional capacity for beer and nachos?

"Holy poo! You look basically the same as you used to, only somewhat taller! I honestly figured that ten years would have rendered you into a total pooch! Look, I made you a joke dog-collar flight belt and everything!"

I'm pretty glad that 'darts + mistletoe' isn't a cliched holiday recipe for making people kiss. I can basically guarantee that I'd have had a few accidental trepannations by now, knowing my friends. Also, I don't trust their judgement on who I should kiss.

What is the etiquette on this kind of thing? Can you keep kissing someone as long as there's mistletoe around? Do they have any say in the matter or do they have to run and/or start spritzing some Agent Orange ceilingward? I haven't ever actually seen the stuff - anyone from a mistletoe-using part of the world care to weigh in?

It's been said before (though I seem not to be able to find an example): Supergirl watching Superman kiss people is creepy. And happens a lot.

"Holiday Spirit", eh? That smacks of euphemism. Is Superman drunk, do you reckon? Is there a reason that he hasn't seen these people in ten years?

"Hey, where's Superboy? We could really use his help with these Rigellian Spore-Monkeys."

"Uh, we had to leave him back at the Clubhouse. He's a bit too full of the old 'holiday spirit'. I think that we might need to have an intervention."

See? He's fleeing the party rather than admit his problem. Adventure Comics No. 290 is entirely concerned with his subsequent shame-based bender. Actually, much of Superman's Silver-Age behavior makes a lot of sense if you assume that he's smashed out of his gourd half the time ("Whee! Time to dig another tunnel! And then maybe get Batman to help me prank Lois!").

Finally: harsh, Supergirl. What did Phantom Woman ever do to you?

I have a new theory about how being shot through space at a young age promotes social awkwardness.

NOT APPROVED!

"nine Police sciencing,"

High-Tech Tomorrow: Review of The Concentrator, the Exciting Conclusion, by Johnathan

Oof. I meant to write this senses-shattering finale to the sizzling, stunning, uh, saturnine review of the Concentrator earlier this week, but ran up against a couple of stumbling blocks: firstly, I’ve been pretty danged busy at work, so those occasional slow half-hours that were good for a paragraph or two about Saturn Girl’s costume have gone the way of the dodo. Secondly, my evenings have been taken up with Hallowe’en preparation – super-hero boots require a fair amount of sewing, it turns out. If I ever develop fantastic powers you can bet that my costume is going to be off-the-rack. (I wrote this before the previous post, but am too lazy to edit out the redundant information. Instead, I use up more of your neurons with useless info! Ho ho ho! A similar principle applies to the slight overlap between this and Part 3 of the Concentrator saga)

 Home stretch!

 We find the Legion relaxing after a hard day’s being tortured. Tensions, it turns out, are high:

Actually, they probably aren’t. The Sixties Legion, as I’ve mentioned before, weren’t exactly paragons of camaraderie and trust. I’ll bet that if Chameleon Boy lost his wallet and Phantom Girl was walking up to him to give it back he’d have punched her out and had her up in front of the Legion Supreme Court before she could get two words out, though admittedly it might have been a ruse to expose Universo’s crooked law practice or something like that.

“Hey, how does Superboy know that it’s a trick? I’ll bet that he planned all this with the Chief! Get him, everyone – use the kryptonite stilettos!”

Oh, poo, he referenced one of basically three or four panels in this story that I haven’t posted here. In brief, Chameleon Boy was frozen or something, but his hand was still free and he shapeshifted it into something and got away. So, you know, there’s no way that Lightning Lad could ever escape as Chameleon Boy did, if the Chief means “in a similar way” when he says “as”. Fear my pedantry, Science Police Chief! It transcends time, space and relative states of fictitiousness to blast you with the full might of my withering scorn! Your wife shall sleep alone tonight, whilst you cower behind a wall composed of your crystallized tears!

I really wish that this comic had some sort of audio component. I want to hear the voice that does this to people who routinely fight electrically-charged giants with exposed brains and jaundiced Eddie Munsters and so forth. Is it super-menacing, or is it the repetition that breaks the spirit? Is the Legion’s greatest weakness its collective low boredom threshold? 

The Concentrator sounds kind of… lame. Not that I wouldn’t want to have one in my apartment, mind you – I assume that it can concentrate matter into a decent batch of chicken wings – but I can’t really see it as life-imprisonment-worthy. I mean, wouldn’t you have to know how to make a weapon in the first place to make it in the Concentrator? So... doesn’t that really just make it a faster way to get things? Not so good in the hands of a villain, I know, but I can think of half a dozen DC baddies who can do stuff like that without even trying hard. Pre-computer nerd Calculator, for instance, or the entire Sinestro Corps, even that one guy who's a hermit crab.

 The smart thing to do would be to wait until the Chief opened the door and then *WHAMMO!* Lightning to the breadbasket! I mean, the idea is that the Chief is treating them as if he were a super-villain trying to pry info out of their wee brains, so why not respond accordingly?

When she said that, it hurt Chameleon Boy’s feelings.

I can’t say it enough: disproportionate punishment. Also: isn’t there a huge abandoned fortress just going to waste on that planet? Why have the Legion locked poor Lightning Lad in a cage smaller than most bathroom stalls?* I’m pretty sure that I’d go nuts with a great quickness if I were placed in a similar situation, no matter how good the books were.

 *Speaking of bathrooms, where are the facilities in that thing? Is he sitting on the toilet whilst they scold him?

So, the Police Chief (or is he a Commissioner? It's been so long since I read the beginning of this story...), having tortured a teenager into revealing information that he and his friends said was important, orders that same teenager locked in a tiny cage on a deserted planet for the rest of his life. Satisfied after a good honest day's work, he leaves for home.

Damn, it is the Commissioner. How long have I been calling him Chief? No matter, I'll retcon it later on. 

Man, this is a good issue for facial expressions - check out the look of desperation on Lightning Lad. Good job, John Forte.

So, could it be true? Could the man who I have known and referred to as the Commissioner for lo, these many years be some sort of traitorous impostor?

Yes, it turns out. There's the real Commissioner, looking surprisingly comfortable for someone who has spent the last few days tied up in or next to a time bubble. In fact, being kidnapped and impersonated seems to have... mildly irritated him, at the most. I am now concocting a theory about the Commissioner being a worlds-weary, tough-as-nails Slam Bradley of the future, and that if the Legion hadn't caught on to the fake Commissioner's scheme then the real one would have shortly cut his space-ropes on a space-nail and administered a flurry of fistic fury on the felonious face-filcher. And also, his descriptive text is full of alliteration.

But the Legion is watching, and it turns out that the impostor is the *yawn* Time Trapper. 

Actually, this is one of the *y*TT appearances that I'm okay with - it's not really until the Seventies that the Trapper jumps the shark, or interferes with history to cause the shark to become extinct and more swiftly bring about the victory of entropy over Creation, or whatever. Plus, this panel has given me a whole new theory of who the Trapper is. Check out how he has that rubber mask crammed down over his cowl: the Time Trapper is really Batman!

Just what are you going to make, Time Trapper? Does that pistol do anything better than letting you travel through time and preventing others from doing the same? Or does it make a rubber mask realistic enough that it can be worn over a hood and still fool, like, twenty people for a couple of days? Or...

... does it possess the capability to fling what I think are possibly neutron stars around? Man, what more do you need? Dr Doom would quite literally kill for something like that! Does the pistol shoot little stars, so you can use this power on individuals instead of whole planets? Because regular guns work okay for stuff like that. Greedy, greedy boring villain.

So, finally, we get to see the awesome might of the Concentrator. I mean, the narrative practically demands it - I think that if a Silver Age reader had reached the end of this story without seeing it they'd have spontaneously combusted (whereas a modern reader in a similar situation would use all of that energy to write a really scathing blog post).

I like that the Concentrator is visually unimpressive. Oh, it's big, I'll grant that, but stramlined and futuristic it ain't. The Legion's ultimate weapon is far too secret to have the boys down in R&D gin up a really impressive outer casing for it, after all - this is the bare-bones mechanism. But what does it do?

Jeepers? All the power in the Universe? Really? But it's safe, right, due to the fact that you're going to turn it off in a second. But, uh, but what about the electrical impulses in your brain (or whatever - the closest I've come to being a doctor is dating one, and she's long gone)? Don't they count as power, for the purposes of your super weapon? This could interfere with your plan, really.

"And all of the heat energy in the air, and the chemical energy  that powers our bodies, and," *horrible moment as every lifeform in the Universe dies*

But if it was just things like suns and cars and such, extended use of the Concentrator would be pretty amusing: whole planets and galaxies flickering on and off like a city in a movie blackout and entire planets of ticked-off citizenry and the like.

I'm betting that Brainiac 5 invented this thing, as he just can't bear to stop mentioning the "all power from everywhere" thing, possibly as practice so that he can brag about it the next time he tries to pick up Supergirl. 

Now, as much as I'm not fond of the Time Trapper, I've always been partial to the Iron Curtain of Time, especially as the Legion never actually got past it - it just wasn't there, eventually, as far as I remember. Of course I may be wrong, but even if I am I like to think of that Iron Curtain hanging out somewhere with the Source Wall (as depicted in Ambush Bug, Year None), having a drink and talking over old, good times.

Man, the Concentrator... it's possibly the most powerful sci-fi weapon ever conceived-of, really. No contest on a Concentrator/Death Star fight, and the Enterprise would be cinders. But that's the problem - realistically, the Legion should from this point forward be unstoppable. There appear to be no consequences to the use of this thing other than the chance that it'll fall into the wrong hands, so why not bust it out every time the fate of the known everything falls into question? 

Great Darkness Saga: "Oh, shit, it's Darkseid!" *building sounds* ZAPPO!

The Magic Wars: "The disturbances seem to be stemming from that planet." ZAPPO!

The Infinite Man, Mordru, Glorith, Dr Mayavale, etc: "I will rule/destroy creation in mere seconds!" ZAPPO!

The Legion is too big and competent an organization to fall prey to minor threats, and when the Concentrator is there to solve the really big ones that give them the dramatic trouble that we love so much then the whole concept is broken. Legion + Concentrator = no fun, unless the plot involves Brainiac 5 going insane and using the thing to hold the Universe hostage.

NOT APPROVED

This story is JOHN APPROVED, though - it's pretty damn delicious.

Post script!

When the Legion gets back to Earth, they find:

Oh, lord. I love Superboy's lack of impulse control. Big green Iresa simply horrifies him, unless it's his inexplicable resistance to the idea of getting some that's flaring up here. Either way, the Man of a Million Super-Powers has not one iota of tact in his blue-clad body. Man, that Iresa does have a square head, doesn't she?

The only better end to this comic would be Bouncing Boy revealing that he picked Iresa up by impressing her with tales about Legion stuff and asking if he could show her the Concentrator, because he's told her so much about it.

High-Tech Tomorrow: Review of the Concentrator, Part 3, By Johnathan

Wa-ha-ha! I didn't forget about this, nope nope. Wasn't it cute back when I thought I'd get around to doing it all over the Labour Day weekend? Oh, One-Month-Younger John. Such an innocent. 

Oh! This seems to be the appropriate place to report that I picked up Jimmy Olsen No. 72, "The World of Doomed Olsens" last week. In terms of Legion chronology, this is probably as close to owning Adventure Comics No. 247 as I'm ever going to get, so I'm savouring it for all it's worth.

On to the merriment and interrogation!

We open with Saturn Girl, who as you may recall (strain those memories, folks, it was a while ago) had Superboy pretty worried, due to the fact that she had a whole 'nother way to screw up and give away the Legion's secrets... with her mind!

Okay, okay. I guess that the thought-sensing headband validates some of Superboy's kind-of-chauvinistic-seeming fears (though I don't quite see why the Commish didn't just slap that thing on and question Ultra Boy, say. He'd just have to wait for nature to take its course). 

But, surprisingly, Saturn Girl is ready for this particular tactic, and so starts thinking about the fantastic feats of the Legion to keep the oh-so-tantalizing secret of the Concentrator to herself.

(note: the Commissioner has placed Saturn Girl under a Joan Crawford beam)

Let's watch:

Not a bad trick (and look! My favourite gloves!) but I'm tormented by thoughts of where exactly he got that giant net. If this were a Batman comic of the same era I'd guess that it was from a billboard or something - maybe this particular distant world caters to off-planet fishing enthusiasts?

Also, that looks like a really awkward way to stand, particularly whilst straddling a city.

By Jove, is that G'nort?

So is Invisible Kid juggling too, or is he just moving a couple of extra balls in circles in the air? Either way, I guess that it would be a pretty good show, especially if he was trying to make the leap from 'busker' to 'soothsayer' - it's possible that someone flubbed the briefing on that mission, as far as explaining the fact that there are a few different kinds of magician out there.

Note the brilliant, Batman-esque use of disguise, as Element Lad puts on a suit coat over his uniform.

I would bet a hundred dollars that this "feat" was just a ploy to keep these two lunkheads out of trouble. I dare someone to claim that the Legion doesn't have a closet packed full of Meteor Simulation Guns or cages full of Andorran Fireball Hornets or something like that, for just such an occasion. 

The bit with Matter-Eater Lad and the Giant Mouth Creature happens here too, by the way.

Again: Superboy is proven to be a big tool.

Okay, Mon-El! Step up to the torture-plate!

I like Mon-El, but this sort of thing is why I don't think we could be close friends. 

"Hey Mon-El, could you turn up the heat? It's freezing in here!"

"Whoops, sorry. I'm invulnerable to everything - I didn't notice the cold."

"Mon-El, man, your couch is really uncomfortable. I think that every single spring is poking through."

"Damn, John, I'm sorry. When you're invulnerable to everything, so is your ass."

"Ag! Watch your cigarette, Mon-El! You almost set my shirt on fire!"

"Yeah, that happens a lot when you're invulnerable to everything. Shirt-fires are just another part of your day."

Speaking of friends:

I'm guessing that either Planet Zirr is some sort of haven for particularly dull-witted aliens or that Garl and Englen are super high in this panel, because they are way too happy about the situation that they are in. "Mon-El! Word up, brah! I see you're hangin' out in some poison gas - still enjoying being invulnerable to everything, huh? Man, Garl and me, we were just talking about you yesterday, just before we got kidnapped by this orange guy here, and now here you are, in some orange gas! It's like, kismet or something!"

Actually, maybe only Englen is high. Garl looks more scornful than anything else, like he's been kidnapped and used as a pawn to try to get his invulnerable friends to spill the beans about super-weapons dozens of times and they've all been more impressive than this.

I'm choosing to ignore the fact that the Legion has the technology necessary to take photos of the past and am instead picturing Superboy doing a brief photo-essay on his dying friend before sticking him in the Phantom Zone. 

That's just terrible, Superboy.

Good lord! this picture is worse than that one of Shrinking Violet! Mon-El looks like he just saw his puppy get run over by a clone of his puppy, who then got sent to prison, leaving him puppyless. He looks real upset, man.

The fact that he didn't point out their abnormal happiness is proof of everything I said up there. I feel so validated!

Last one for today. Phantom Girl!:

Given the emotional state of most Legionnaires (about as prone to melodrama as any three Dawson's Creek characters, combined), this is a pretty good tactic. Those kids'll turn on each other more readily than they'll make out at the behest of the big computer. It's worse than turning your back on a rooster, I swear.

Et tu, Saturn Girl? 

On the strange note of Superboy being the level-headed voice of trust and solidarity, I leave you. No promises, but I'll try to wrap this interminable review up soon (projected completion date: June 2012).

High-Tech Tomorrow: Review of the Concentrator, Part One, By Johnathan

Hey there, friends - it's time for another review-as-voted-on! Looking way back to Adventure Comics No. 321, we're going to have a look at the fearsome Concentrator, mua-ha. I think, though, that this is one of those times that it's better to look at the whole issue, rather than extracting bits of it for humourous out-of-context ridicule. I estimate... three entries, maybe? And this is a three-day weekend! Keep tuning in to see if I can manage to meet my own very easy deadline! (Ha ha ha! It's Monday already: I fail!)

We join the Legion on page two:

Man, I sure do wish that Phantom Girl had remained all ghostly and pigment-free - just imagine how much weirder her string of peek-a-boo uniforms would have been if the cloth and her exposed bits were all the same colour. Also, think of the savings on ink! Im sure that by now we'd have seen a Phantom Girl and the Phantom Squad, Featuring Phantom Ape miniseries or something, if only because of the rising cost of little pink dots.

"Who is this stranger with Bouncing Boy's haircut, clothes and voice? Dammit, I told you not to let just anyone wander in here! Now, where's my chair? No, that's not it. No, my chair was facing the other way, so that can't be it! Also, this isn't the cactus that was here before - that cactus was shorter!"

See, what I'm trying to hint at here is that Star Boy has poor recognition skills.

Also, he's an A-1 jerk. "No, you can't be Bouncing Boy - he was a fat asshole. "

And I'll tell you exactly what Mon-El - and possibly Sun Boy - is thinking in this panel: I wonder if anyone's noticed the new way I combed my hair?

Bouncing Boy goes on to tell the story of his slimmening, which involves a shrink ray and is patently something that the writer threw together just to get rid of the guy. Not that anyone was listening to him anyway:

They were far too busy voting on whether to toss him out on his ear or not, with maybe a quick roughing up by Ultra Boy to make sure he keeps his mouth shut if any reporters think to ask about the Big Computer Sex Parties or anything like that.

So presumably they send the Reservist out for Astro-coffee or something, and then it's back to the meeting!

Now, this is back from when the Time Trapper was a super-scientist hiding behind the Iron Curtain of Time, thirty days into the future or so. Long, long before he became the Irritating Emo Plot Device From the End of Time that we all know and I loathe, he was actually mildly interesting. He sat behind that curtain and made fun of the Legion and every once in a while he tried some ridiculous scheme involving Glorith or the Molecular Master or someone like that.

Ah, there's the first mention of the Concentrator. Time to find out what it is: speak on, Star Boy!

Aw. I guess we'll never learn what that darned thing is. grumble grumble this is why I have to write such long reviews, damn Legion and their secrecy...

Superboy: Hey, Mon-El's hair looks great. I wonder if I should change my 'do?

Chameleon Boy and Triplicate Girl then show up and completely coincidentally tell everyone about some really lame attempts to wrangle info about the Concentrator out of them. This elicits some fairly elaborate eyebrow-raising and not a little nose-wrinkling, and then, in a completely coincidental occurrence:

Science Police Commissioner Wilson shows up! He's heard some talk of a Concentrator of some kind and he wants the poop! He's... kind of paunchy!

Now, this comes up later, so I'd like to point it out specifically: the chain of events here is that a) This guy hears a vague rumour about the Legion having a super-weapon of some sort. b) He asks them about it and they say that it could potentially threaten the entire Universe. c) He believes them, just like all good people should when a group of teenagers make grandiose claims.

d) Based solely on space-radio scuttlebutt and their collective word, he decides to put them through gruelling psychological torment, with possible life imprisonment waiting for anyone who blabs.

Planet Althar, uninhabited except for strange life-forms! (Space Directive X21v states that planets may be considered inhabited only if the life-forms in question are regular, small or boring. Technically, Althar is considered to be in-friggin'-habited, but the term was coined in the 2530s, and scientists of the Legion era don't talk like that any more.)

A better site for testing astronauts' suitability for space travel, you say? Could it be, just as an example, somewhere that you don't need a rocket ship to get to? I only ask out of curiosity, you understand.

Heh, Matter-Eating Lad. Nice one, Querl.

See, it came up again (sooner than I'd thought, but still): based solely on their word, this man is prepared to imprison these people for life if they reveal a secret that they themselves decided to keep. That's like... ag! I can't even think up a good example! Legion logic hurts my head!

Good issue, though.

NEXT TIME: the Legionnaires get psychologically tortured!

Addendum to the Review of the Legion of Super-Heroes, Part Two, By Johnathan

PHANTOM GIRL

This is another one of those pictures that looks fine at first but has something really weird nestled at its heart, so that the longer you look at it the stranger you find it. As far as demonstrating Phantom Girl's powers, the ol' "jaunty traipse through the atoms of a table" gag is a pretty fair representation of what she's all about. And you can't beat the patented Phantom Girl skin-tight, flared-sleeve, bell-bottomed, cut-out pant-suit as far as costumes go. No, what's bugging m bout this picture of PG is her hair. Why is her hair so big? It's kind of like the artist was determined to draw her with great big glam hair like Dream Girl but then had the law laid down upon 'em re: Phantom Girl having pig-tails but then rebelled against hair-fascism by making giant poofy glam pig-tails. And twenty years later? Twenty years later those things are freaking me out, man.

NOT APPROVED

Aliens and Their Schemes: Review of Adventure Comics No. 337, Part 2

*I accidentally published this before it was even started and I'm far too lazy to upload all of these pictures to another post, so enjoy what I've written so far. I'll be hitting 'Publish Post' periodically as I write.

Update: busy week! Christmas parties and other such social engagements, oh my! Plus I seem to have managed to start dating a girl. Never fear, though: it'll be done before Christmas.

Other update: One last push! damn tiredness! Damn crankyness! Do it, Johnathan! Do it for all those kids out there that won't have a proper Christmas unless they know how the middle part of this comic ends and what your thoughts on that are! Get in there and review!

Fourth update: I am a broken man with a full social calender. Looks like this might have to wait another day or so to be finished. Sorry, forks.

Updated update: bah. time to try something new. See the end of the post.

Here I am, back again to discuss the middle portion of Adventure Comics No. 337. As you may recall, when we left the Legion they were agitated over the threat of a possible invasion of the Earth by sickly-looking aliens. Meanwhile, romance was in bloom at Legion HQ and Brainiac 5 wasn't too happy about it. Awright, let's get back to the action! Er, I mean, the adventure!

So, the aliens are all worked up about a secret 'Plan-R' that the Legion claims is a foolproof fail-safe in the event of a war of the worlds or what have you. Since they have all superpowers, the three orange-clad chaps figure that the simplest way to find out what Plan-R is is to grab a Legionnaire and extract the info.

I've got to say: without the yellow skin these guys look a lot like older versions of Eddie Munster. Maybe their planet is like one of those worlds on Star Trek where the whole society is based around a spy novel or gangster films - maybe these guy come from the Munster Planet and the Eddies are the military branch of their society. They should totally be wearing his short-pants getup instead of orange jumpsuits, though.

And that's why Saturn Girl is the Legionnaire not to ambush. She's always able to call for backup - come on, Eddies, do a little research before you set out to kidnap a lady. Didn't Grandpa teach you anything?

I've said it before and I'll say it again: if I'm ever knocked out I sincerely hope that I'll have to presence of mind to mutter something about how I'm losing consciousness before I go under. Especially if it's something unlikely, as the more information that you manage to squeeze out before going down for the count, the more points that you get. Xaxan there managed an Analysis of What Hit Me followed by a Double Status Report, which is pretty good if this is his first time.

This panel isn't terribly funny but it's kind of important to the plot, so here it is. Yup. Everyone's looking pretty sharp here - classic costumes, real big forehead on Superboy...

Moving on:

One thing about that old rocket-shaped headquarters: it wasn't very big. You were practically guaranteed a crowd for any important announcements you wanted to make, even if it was mostly male Legionnaires with nothing better to do. Take note: it's not explicit here but that old Legion bylaw about married members getting chucked out on their ears is cropping up. Because there's no room for partnerships in a team, right?

That's actually a really lovely drawing of Phantom Girl. Just sayin' is all.

Legion wedding preparations:

Girls' side first: I think that what Saturn Girl is saying that her crazy, mixed-up planet/moon Titan has the way-out, super-alien tradition of... an official of some sort conducting the ceremony. Uh, wow... that's super crazy and futuristic, Titan. Way to try. I mean, you could have went the same way as the Bismollians and had some sort of talking dog do the deed, but you stuck to your guns. Your incredibly boring, individually-numbered, matte gray guns.

Looking forward to seeing Phantom Girl's dress, though. I hear that it's beautiful.

Boy's side: Jewel Painting, meh. Giant pearls (or possibly giant pears), meh. Wait a second...

INITIATE EMERGENCY MINI-REVIEW

INITIATING...

FUTURE ZOO: REVIEW OF HOUSE PET FROM PLANET KAVOON, BY JOHNATHAN

So all kinds of planets sent wedding presents to Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad, eh? Jewel paintings and giant pearls/pears and, uh, golf trophies, possibly. And then Mon-El shows up on planet Kavoom with his arms full of the jeweléd treasures of the galaxy and - and I'm just guessing here - they collectively go "Oh crap, we knew there was something that we had to do today. Uh, hold on." And then they collectively grab the first thing that they can get their collective hands on, toss it in a sack and send Mon-El packing as quickly as possible.

I don't like the looks of this thing, frankly. It's got creepy ears. It's got to be the Kavoomian equivalent of a sewer rat or something, that or Kavoomites are freaky-ass people. Look at the way it's sizing Lightning Lad up. It's getting ready to either eat him or rob him. No, the House Pet From Planet Kavoom (incidentally, the title of a long-running series of holo-horror films on Kavoom's nearest planetary neighbour) is completely

NOT APPROVED

RESUME MAIN REVIEW

Now, the first time that I read this I missed the comment that Saturn Girl made about wedding wands earlier and I thought that the little action-figures-on-sticks thing was some sort of doofy Legion tradition. Not that that didn't make sense, though, what with the Legion's habit of making new statues of themselves at the drop of a hat. In fact, speaking of hats, I am more than a little surprised that there's not a Silver Age tale in which Superboy shows up in the future only to find all of his pals walking around wearing hats that look like themselves for some Holiday of Tomorrow.

Phantom Girl's dress, by the way? Stunning. It's amazing the effect a veil can have on the outfit that you wear every day. Sheesh. Was she afraid that Ultra Boy wouldn't recognize her without a big 'P' on her chest? Actually... it is Ultra Boy we're talking about here. And the official? Didn't disappoint. Dull as powdered fruit punch.

When I get married/if I ever get married I'm going to try my damnedest to have all of my groomsmen carry a little action figure of themselves on a stick and then present them to me at the end of the reception. This will have two effects: firstly, having a wedding tradition that can be traced to a single issue of a 1960s comic book will firmly cement my position as King of All the Nerds. Secondly, the question of what exactly to do with five or six action figures on sticks with no practical use but high sentimental value will be a recurring theme in my marriage, coming up at least as often as we move or rearrange the furniture. Heck, it might come up in the divorce proceedings.

Here's where we get into the original reason for this interminable review. Switching to Super-Human Detritus mode... now!

So, following the double wedding (and double honeymoon? Scandal!) and subsequent resignation of Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, Phantom Girl and Ultra Boy, the Legion finds itself short-handed and sets up a try-out (hooray!)!

This is my favourite thing in the whole comic: that the idea of whole planets dressing in exactly the same clothing had become so accepted in Legion of Super-Heroes comics that the Eddie Munster Squad figured that by turning into three white guys with different hair and clothes no one would ever think to connect them with each other. I bet that there were all kinds of crazy ceremonies and ritual punishments associated with wearing the costume of another world, like how Canadians give a formal spanking to anyone from another country that they catch wearing a toque.

The failing applicants at this try-out are all members of the Legion of Substitute Heroes. My thoughts on this stalwart bunch are detailed elsewhere, so I've omitted most of 'em. As an example, however, I present the panel featuring the love of my life (were I 2-dimensional and nine hundred and some-odd years into the Silver Age DC Universe's future and not in competition with a human magnet and not dating a lovely Nordic lass), Night Girl!

You're a fool, Brainiac 5! A fool!

*ahem*

Moving on yet again:

The aliens-in-disguise show up to show off. First up is Size Lad, who can change the size of things. Hmmm. Um... well, it's a super-power, I guess. Really, though, this guy should be the proud new owner of a Legion Consolation Flight Belt. If my dear Night Girl can't get in, there's no reason that this schmuck should. In what situation (and keep in mind that I will disregard all reasonable suggestions) will this power prove useful to the Legion? Perhaps they will go to the beach and wish to show a little more skin and so ask Size Lad to shrink their bathing suits down for them? Perhaps they'll get an unusually small sandwich at the Food-o-mart? Bah.

Even though he's got an impressive profile, Size Lad is

NOT APPROVED

Well, I can't very well object to Blackout Boy's powers, seeing as how I like Shadow Lass so much. I can, however get all snotty about the fact that after admitting this guy no one from the Legion thought to run out and grab Night Girl. Someone who's super-powers only work in the dark plus someone who makes darkness? Those are what's known as complimentary powers, kids. Grr grr grr. A very spiteful

NOT APPROVED

From what I understand of Magnetic Kid's powers, he's got a pretty limited palatte of solutions to choose from in the event of a problem. Is it time to break up a bar fight? Well, they can't keep fighting if they're in a big pile on top of Magnetic Kid! Fatal Five attacking? Not from on top of Magnetic Kid, they're aren't! Got to stop a giant robot? Don't look at Magnetic Kid, sorry. "Pulling people toward me" really doesn't seem like a Legion-worthy super-power, unless of course they expect to be having a lot of tugs-of-war in the near future.

I do like how he messed with Brainiac 5 there, though. So:

JOHN APPROVED

Well, this isn't working. Much as I hate to bite Blockade Boy's style, the only way that I'm going to finish is by working on a panel or two at a time. Fun!

My behavior: NOT APPROVED

Adventure Comics No. 337: REVIEW DEFERRED