Comic Book Review: Adventure Comics #500 edited by Nicola Cuti
For this milestone issue of the anthology comic book in digest form, DC decided to go with the most popular feature, all Legion of Super-Heroes stories!
“The Secret of the Mystery Legionnaire” story by Jerry Siegel, art by John Forte, opens with a reminder that our heroes are still mourning for their comrade Lightning Lad. Then it’s tryout time. Antennae Boy can’t properly control his ability to pick up and broadcast random radio transmissions from across time and space, so he’s out. Then the Dynamo Kid, who supposedly has lightning powers, turns out to be a fake using technology. He’s not being invited back.
More promising is “Legionnaire Lemon”, who has an array of powers similar to Superboy and Mon-El, but without their weaknesses. Lemon, who also goes by “Marvel Boy” (no relation), passes a number of initiation tests. Finding a rare mineral, defeating a sun-eating monster, exposing a holographic hoax, and creating a new anti-gravity material, he’s a talented guy!
This convinces the Legion to vote him in. The next day at the swearing-in ceremony, Lemon reveals that he’s actually Mon-El. Brainiac Five had developed a longer-lasting antidote to lead poisoning so the Daxamite hero no longer has to be exiled to the Phantom Zone, and the two had come up with this prank to allow Mon-El to test to make sure it worked properly and not raise too much hope.
Mon-El allows himself to be projected into the Phantom Zone one last time to taunt the last of the criminals imprisoned there who had tormented him for the last millennium. Free at last, he pledges to someday find a cure for Lightning Lad’s death.
Mon-El’s antidote serum wearing off at inconvenient times would be a major plot beat going forward, and he retained a flinch reaction to lead objects.
“The Legion of Substitute Heroes!” art by John Forte, set up another long-running piece of Legion lore. Brek Bannin of the planet Tharr arrives in Metropolis, hoping to try out for the Legion of Super-Heroes. While his power to project intense cold is…cool, it covers too wide an area to be safe for other people in the area, so Polar Boy is given a consolatory flight belt and shown out the door. Since Brek spent his entire savings on the ticket to Earth, and had no backup plan, he’s kind of stuck.
That night, he’s approached by a young woman in a black costume. This is Night Girl, who has superstrength approaching Kryptonian levels and the toughness to match…but who loses her powers in sunlight (or other bright light.) She too was rejected. She introduces Brek to other rejects, Stone Boy (who can turn himself into a nearly indestructible stone form, but can’t move during that), Fire-Lad who can breathe fire and is kind of redundant to Sun Boy, and Chlorophyll Kid, who can make plants grow fast (but can’t control what they do afterwards.)
Polar Boy rallies the other kids. Even if they can’t be super-heroes, they’re still people with nifty powers. He convinces the others to become the Legion of Substitute Heroes, ready to pinch-hit any time the regular Legion needs help or is otherwise occupied. They build a headquarters and spaceship (not as good as the official team’s, but still impressive for five broke teenagers.)
Of course, the LSH is super awesome and normally doesn’t need help, and easily solves two major crises before the Substitutes can even get there. But then there comes an invasion of robot ships on the edges of United Planet space. The entire Legion is needed to battle this menace, and they brush off an offer of help from Polar Boy. (Technically, the Legion doesn’t even know the Subs exist!)
The Subs are about to give up as dry seeds drift from the sky. But Chlorophyll Kid hasn’t seen this kind of seed before so makes it grow to find out what it is. It’s a plant alien that’s extremely aggressive and hostile towards humanoids. After stopping it, the Subs realize that all these seeds will grow into invaders.
It turns out the robot ships are a decoy for this real invasion, with the plan being to have the Earth overrun with plant people before its defenders can return. The Subs go to the hostile planet and figure out a way to stop the invasion, but of course keep it a secret as the LSH should not have its triumph over the robot fleet diminished.
The Substitutes were usually played at least a little for laughs, but they were often the margin of victory for the Legion and some of them even got to be on the main team eventually. We’ll be seeing them again soon.
“The Secret Power of the Mystery Super-Hero!” art by John Forte, introduces another new Legionnaire. The action begins when space raider Roxxas and his men come out of seemingly nowhere in their fast one-man rockets and raid an isolated world. They’re looking for something specific, but opportunistically steal the planet’s “cold light globes.”
The Legion is alerted to the threat, and Brainiac Five is delegated the task of devising vehicles to catch up with the speedy raider rockets.
Back on Earth, it’s tryout time again. The rejects are someone who can color anything green and a fellow who can project images of anything he’s ever seen. Then we meet Jan Arrah, whose costume has a question mark chest symbol. His power is secret, and he will only reveal it to one person. Saturn Girl, who could after all just read his mind, is that person. She assures the rest of the team that “Mystery Lad” does indeed have an awesome power.
A series of confrontations between the Legion and the forces of Roxxas follow. Mystery Lad acquits himself well, but his power remains unknown, and Roxxas keeps getting away. Perhaps there’s some connection?
Eventually, Jan decides to confront Roxxas directly. It turns out he’s who Roxxas has been looking for all along. Roxxas had learned that a small colony had developed the ability to transmute elements by force of will, but his raiders had been overly enthusiastic in the attack, so only Jan survived to escape. Roxxas wants to use Jan to make himself even richer.
Jan refuses and creates a hole to vacuum in an effort to commit suicide (Roxxas and his crew are wearing spacesuits so they’d be fine.) It’s at this point that the rest of the Legion shows up and captures the criminals. Oh, and Jan’s okay because he was secretly followed by Invisible Kid, who saved him. Jan becomes Element Lad and is formally inducted.
Element Lad’s tragic backstory lent itself to some interesting characterization later.
“The Return of Lightning Lad!” (no credits) starts with the introduction of the official Legion of Super-Heroes flag. Now that they have one, a delegation of Legionnaires goes to drape it over Lightning Lad’s transparent coffin. As they’re doing so, Bouncing Boy notices the corpse twitching. No, it’s not just decay–Lightning Lad is moving!
Sun Boy hypothesizes that the constant flow of electricity from the “eternal storm” above the coffin has slowly re-energized the lost Legionnaire. Lightning Lad claims partial amnesia, and Cosmic Boy worries that the youth may also have lost his awesome lightning powers.
Cosmic Boy recaps what he’s been told about Lightning Lad’s origin. How his spaceship was forced to land on the planet Korbal due to a power failure, how he was attacked by the local lightning-monsters, and how this somehow gave him lightning powers even greater than those of the beasts. Those of you who have read previous reviews or even the earlier comics will notice that LL’s brother Lightning Lord is conspicuously absent from this retelling.
Lightning Lad goes along on a couple of missions, but it’s not proven his powers are working as Sun Boy keeps secretly “assisting.”
As part of a mission against animal smugglers, the Legionnaires find a shape-shifting alien, the Protean Beast of Antares. It and Chameleon Boy take a liking to each other, and it becomes Chameleon Boy’s pet Proty. They are able to find a lead to the mysterious Thieves’ Planet.
Bizarrely, despite disguising their ship so it will pass as criminal, the Legionnaires don’t bother disguising themselves (even Chamelon Boy!) when they land. The guard robots aren’t programmed to recognize them though, so they manage until reaching the electric mind creature that runs the place. It reads their minds and has them imprisoned.
Most of their powers won’t work against the cell (Sun Boy tells Lightning Lad not even to try) but Proty shapeshifts into a ray gun to trick the guard into opening the door. The escape is momentarily thwarted when the electric brain paralyzes them with super hypnosis, but Lightning Lad is able to zap it into submission.
It’s then explained that Sun Boy had realized from nearly the beginning that Lightning Lad is an impostor, a female lookalike! There was a conspicuously light patch of skin on the back of the neck where long hair had previously covered, and the Adam’s apple was much less prominent than the real Lightning Lad. (Presumably the costume had padding to disguise the actual body shape.) This is the first time Sun Boy is noted to have a special interest in the difference between boys and girls.
The impostor reveals that she’s actually Lightning Lad’s twin sister, who was also there on Korbal when the lightning monsters attacked, and gained the same powers. This was kept secret so that criminals wouldn’t come after her to use her powers, but after LL’s death, she decided on this scheme to replace him as the Legion’s electrical hero. (She also conspicuously does not mention Lightning Lord.)
Lightning Lass is admitted to the Legion in a more feminine costume.
“The Legion of Super-Monsters!” art by John Forte, starts another LSH tradition. Even though they’re superheroes, the members of the Legion are teenagers, so they have to get an education. We see scattered members across the galaxy getting remote lessons in tenth-order equations of the fourth dimension. Then we check in to show that various characters who won’t be important in this story are doing other heroic stuff elsewhere.
And Legion tryout time! Rainbow Girl graciously accepts her consolation prize. The next applicant walks in with a borlat. a six-legged tigerlike creature. This is considered dangerous, but Jungle King assures the Legionnaires everything is fine. His father altered his brain structure so that he has mental control over all animals.
But while Jungle King is distracted boasting about his prowess, he lets his control over the borlat slip and it becomes hostile again. Once Sun Boy subdues it, JK is informed that he’s obviously not ready for the team. Unlike previous rejects, Jungle King takes the Legion’s refusal as an insult. He loses his temper, and vows vengeance. (It’s suggested that the brain alterations may be partially responsible for his emotional unbalance.)
Jungle King heads to Monster World, known for its many savage creatures and considered uninhabitable by humans. There he assembles his Legion of Super-Monsters. Earthquake Beast! Eye Monster! Mirror Monster! Drill Beast! and the shapeshifting Omnibeast! He dismisses Gas Creature’s ability to assume gaseous form as weak and refuses to take it into his team. As a final step, he renames himself Monster Master.
Monster Master and his LSM proceed to wreak havoc by committing various robberies. Chameleon Boy manages to infiltrate the enemy by impersonating the Drill Beast, but before he can signal the others, Bouncing Boy accidentally gets seen and the Monster Master pulls a strategic retreat.
Having tracked Monster Master back to Monster World, the Legion draws lots as to which of their members will take the lead (“excluding Saturn Girl because it’s too risky of a mission for a girl!” which later stories just kind of pretend never happened) against the exceptionally dangerous Earthquake Beast. It’s Bouncing Boy, who redeems himself for the earlier mistake by using his “weak” power of super-bouncing to defeat the monster.
Monster Master is momentarily distracted by this, and the Gas Creature attacks him for rejecting it. Turns out it consumes prey by turning it to gas as well. Karmic fate!
Legion rejects becoming villains is another recurring plot beat started here.
“The Doom of the Super-Heroes!” art by John Forte, begins with the Legion doing maintenance and safety checks on their equipment before assembling for an annual rededication ceremony. Shortly after the ceremony, the Science Police report that someone with supermagnetic powers like Cosmic Boy’s is attacking Metropolis. There are as yet no known Braalian criminals in this continuity, so this is a surprise.
Superboy and Mon-El rush over to find a fellow in a lead-lined mask using magnetic powers to loot steel vaults. But that’s not all! The stranger Mask Man seems to have all the powers of the Legion of Super-Heroes combined. While he’s showing off his vast array of abilities, Superboy realizes that only the mask is lead-lined and checks out the rest of the body.
Mask Man is using prosthetics to disguise his actual size, and Superboy takes them away, revealing the large criminal to actually be a little person. Everyone laughs (wow, Legion, way to show how progressive you are) and Mask Man is humiliated. He vows to murder the entire Legion one by one, and starts by freezing Ultra Boy to death.
This story turns into a “slasher” movie as the Legion tries various ways to evade or stymie Mask Man only to fall prey to his powers one by one until only Superboy is left. Finally the Boy of Steel realizes the true nature of Mask Man, who’s a descendant of one of his old enemies. He tricks Mask Man into reversing all his damage done, and time resets to the dedication ceremony. Superboy decides not to tell anyone what happened.
I imagine some of the kids who bought this comic back in the day must have felt a bit cheated.
“The War Between the Substitute Heroes and the Legionnaires!” art by John Forte, brings back those plucky underdogs. We open with a reminder that the Legion is so awesome and beloved that they just get sent random cool presents, to the point it’s become a bit of a burden. Then the Legionnaires get a distress signal from a distant star sector and all available members rush to the rescue.
Cut to the Subs, who are chomping at the bit for the chance to protect Earth while the Legion is away. Polar Boy notices that Night Girl seems to care more about Cosmic Boy than the other members of the more famous team. (I didn’t mention it before, but in the previous story he had met her at the Cosmic Boy statue in Legionnaire Park.) She confesses that she has a huge crush on the magnetic hero.
This becomes Night Girl’s big subplot going forward, and it’s kind of disturbing how much of her personality this becomes for a while.
The main Legion has been gone a couple of days when a large machine of unknown origin lands on Earth. The Subs go out to investigate. By the time they arrive, it’s already digging into the planet. Stone Boy, who happens to have knowledge of mineralogy, deduces from the geology of the area that it must be after a rare mineral found in this kind of formation. And since the machine isn’t registered with any known entity that might legally be mining, this is a criminal enterprise!
It’s a struggle, but the Substitutes are able to disable the machine. Even after examination, they still can’t figure out where it’s from, so send a signal to the far-off star sector the Legion went to advising of the threat. After a few hours, they get a reply from Sun Boy acknowledging receipt of the message, and saying that the Legion will return to Earth, but he seems oddly hostile and orders the Substitute Heroes to stand down and do nothing until the Legionnaires arrive.
When the Legion of Super-Heroes comes back, Sun Boy takes the report of the Subs. He’s very hostile, calling them “ridiculous” and “incompetents.” Polar Boy sees Brainiac Five about to reconnect a cable on the digger machine and tackles him to stop the dangerous device from reactivating. Brainy insists he was only examining the circuit, and the Legion orders the Subs to leave the site as the “failures” are interfering with their work.
This is a huge blow to the Subs, who hero worship the Legion, and it affects their self-esteem.
Sun Boy goes on the news and announces that the LSH is creating protective devices to guard against further resource raids. The Subs decide to create their own guard machines to offer the Legion to help out. Just as they’ve developed their first, a communication comes from the Legion. The Legionnaires scoff at the “childish” attempt and declare that the Substitutes can only “help” by disbanding and shutting down their clubhouse. Within twelve hours or the real Legionnaires will use force.
The Subs are shocked when the time limit expires and the Legion really does send a force vortex to destroy their headquarters, with them inside it. They narrowly escape with their ship.
Finally it gets through to Polar Boy that something’s wrong. Not only have the Legion of Super-Heroes been acting like assholes (I mean, sure, they’ve had their moments of teenaged cruelty or insensitivity, but this is above and beyond) but none of them have used their superpowers, relying only on devices. It’s time to treat them as hostile!
The Subs take refuge inside an abandoned alien city on the interior of the Moon. Night Girl decides she needs to try one last time to get a peaceful resolution. She leaps back to Earth and sneaks back to where the Legion is camped (which is not their headquarters) to see Cosmic Boy. She makes her case, counting on Cosmic Boy’s fine and noble soul to realize that this feud is stupid and convince his friends to call it off.
Cosmic Boy promises not to track her when she leaves but he lied to “the silly girl” and immediately tells his partners to track her, finding out where the Subs have hidden.
The Legion decides to send a centipede-like robot machine after the Subs, so they don’t have to expose themselves to danger. Stone Boy appears to die, but it’s actually a decoy so that the Subs can go to the distant star-sector the Legion was in to do some investigation.
Except that no, that ship was also a decoy as the LSH follows that ship and destroys it, allowing the Subs to sneak back to Earth and discover that the “guard machines” are actually more mining equipment. This confirms what Polar Boy was thinking, the “Legion of Super-Heroes” they’ve been dealing with are nothing but imposters!
The returning resource raiders drop their disguises, relieved to finally have it out in the open. They’d lured the Legion to the distant area so that the heroes would be trapped in a space warp long enough for the Zyzans to loot Earth. Earth’s climate is unpleasant for Zyzans, so they’d initially sent a remote control mining machine, only to have the Subs show up out of nowhere and interfere.
Thus the criminals, realizing how gullible the Substitutes seemed to be, concocted the idea of using projected disguises and escalating methods of trying to rid themselves of the troublesome heroes. This time they’re going straight to matter-destroyers. Except that Polar Boy has realized the aliens are susceptible to cold and renders them helpless to pull the triggers.
The Subs free the real Legion secretly and their song remains unsung…for now.
I’d like to see a Legion of Substitute Heroes movie, honestly.
“The Super-Sacrifice of the Legionnaires!” art by John Forte brings us back to the death of Lightning Lad. Several Legionnaires are at Legion HQ, waiting for Mon-El to come back from a mission. For a moment, it appears that he has, but it’s actually just Proty who’d picked up the mental image and shapeshifted to match.
Mon-El returns and sadly reports that the super-scientists of Daxam had not developed a cure for death during his thousand-year absence. They travel to the world of constant lightning where Lightning Lad is currently entombed, and Saturn Girl is on vigil. While Proty is Chameleon Boy’s pet, it also very much likes Saturn Girl due to their shared telepathic abilities. SG is saddened by Mon-El’s report of failure, but catches a flicker of something hidden from her, some faint hope that he’s holding back.
Superboy notices Lightning Lass’ grief, and he decides to organize one last effort to discover a way to beat death. There are three leads to “revival of life” in the records, and the team splits up to check them.
Superboy heads to “the world of the Blue Sun.” It’s in a binary star system, and has a complex orbit around both the blue star and an orange one. The people living there go into death-like comas when the orange star is closer, then revive once the blue sun shines brighter. Superboy posits that the blue sun radiation may have a revitalizing effect, and siphons off a piece of that star to try to revive Lightning Lad. It doesn’t, so Superboy returns the energy ball to its parent star.
Mon-El and Saturn Girl have flown to the homeworld of the Taroc, a gigantic flying reptile that allegedly dies and then lives again. It turns out that the species reproduces by growing a new Taroc inside their bodies until it is capable of living on its own, dying, and then the young Taroc tears its way out of the corpse. (Presumably feeding on it.) No help there, but Saturn Girl is still getting flashes of Mon-El’s thoughts and the solution he’s refusing to reveal.
Lightning Lass, Sun Boy, Chameleon Boy and Proty are headed to the planet Skor, but have to detour as the Interplanetary Post Office is being attacked by space-serpents. The heroes are able to drive off the monsters, but two of the postal workers were frozen by exposure to space. The corpses are taken to Skor, where it turns out their scientists can use “radium capsules” to revive the recently frozen. Yay! But apparently, the atoms in Lightning Lad’s body are too badly damaged for this method to work.
Superboy and the Legion try to track down unlikelier leads, but Saturn Girl has had enough and tricks Mon-El into taking her to Daxam. There, it’s revealed that Daxam does have a method of reviving the dead, and Mon-El is shamed into saying that he’ll reveal it back on the lightning world.
The heroes are assembled, and Mon-El uses two androids for a demonstration. By means of a special rod, lightning passes through a living being, stripping them of their life force and implanting it in the dead body to bring it back to life. Sadly, an artificial life form won’t be usable to bring back a human being. Someone will have to die (or go into a death coma in the case of Kryptonians or Daxamites) to revive Lightning Lad.
Each of those present is willing to make that sacrifice for Lightning Lad, so the only “fair” way to choose is to all raise their rods at once and let nature determine who perishes. Saturn Girl, still blaming herself in particular for Lightning Lad’s death, plans to rig the contest with a rod made from an even more conductive metal. But first, she has to find Proty, who’s wandered into a cave.
The ceremony begins, and Saturn Girl is struck, her rod revealed for the cheat it is. Lightning Lad revives, but doesn’t want to live at the expense of Saturn Girl. At which point her corpse reverts to the form of Proty, who’d decoyed Saturn Girl away so it could sacrifice itself for her. Bittersweet ending!
Chameleon Boy would very shortly get another pet Protean codenamed Proty II. A much later retcon would claim that Proty’s mind had also transferred into Lightning Lad’s body and no one noticed. Since this had really icky implications, no other Legion story has acknowledged that notion.
“The World of Doomed Olsens!” story by Jerry Siegel, pencils by Curt Swan and inks by George Klein, switches moods entirely. It’s a tale of Jimmy Olsen, Superman’s pal. In the Silver Age, the young reporter was known for his many odd transformations.
We start with Jimmy showing off his Elastic Lad and werewolf transformations for a television appearance, then a slideshow of some of his other greatest hits, such as Giant Turtle Olsen, Human Porcupine Olsen, and Fat Olsen.
Suddenly a transparent globe appears with an alien-looking fellow inside. He claims to be the Collector, and he’s here to punish Jimmy Olsen for a crime against his planet. A tractor beam captures Jimmy, who is taken to an island with weird unearthly vegetation.
The Collector then fastens Jimmy’s feet to the ground with roots and summons duplicates of Jimmy’s transformations. They taunt our young fellow for a bit, but Jimmy convinces them that as they are, in some sense, him, they should be on his side. The Collector rewards this betrayal by also rooting the other Olsens’ legs.
Jimmy uses his signal watch to summon Superman, but to his surprise, the Man of Steel refuses to interfere on the grounds that a single life, even his best pal’s, isn’t worth risking all humanity for.
Desperate, Jimmy throws the lead microphone he’s been wearing at the Collector, who flinches. Now Jimmy realizes what’s going on. The Collector is actually Mon-El of the Legion of Super-Heroes and the transformed Olsens are other Legionnaires using their powers to look like his altered egos. Including Proty II–wow that was a fast replacement.
It was all a prank to initiate Jimmy as an honorary member of the Legion of Super-Heroes for all the times he’s helped them in the past.
Jimmy would appear rarely in the actual Legion stories, but this connection would persist.
“The Condemned Legionnaires!” pencils by Curt Swan, inks by George Klein, is Supergirl’s first appearance in the Legion feature as her previous crossovers had all been in her own stories.
A strange affliction is affecting several of the Legionnaires. The one common characteristic of the Crimson Virus is that all the victims are female. Their skin becomes bright red, they’re running a high fever, and feel too weak to properly move or use their powers. Despite the “virus” name, no microorganisms have been detected.
Superboy and Mon-El would like to help, but two distant planets are about to collide so they’re needed out there. Night Girl of the Substitute Heroes volunteers to help nurse the afflicted (without mentioning her team) but is almost immediately infected herself. The girls are sent to Quarantine World for isolation and treatment.
Some questions are almost immediately answered when a masked woman calling herself Satan Girl arrives. She offers to join the Legion as a replacement for the soon to die girls, as her powers are greater than any of them. She’s turned down for arrogance and in the hope that a cure will be forthcoming on Quarantine World. Satan Girl reveals that she herself is responsible for the Crimson Virus, and disables the Legion’s starship before heading to Quarantine World to finish the job.
Supergirl, who had been expected to visit about this time, shows up. Once filled in, she repairs the Legion’s ship and they take off to try to stop Satan Girl.
On Quarantine World, where curative rays are not helping, Satan Girl disables the robot-nurses and shoots a ray at the girl Legionnaires that intensifies the effects of the Crimson Virus. Supergirl shows up and learns that Satan Girl’s mask is lead-lined. They tussle, and are evenly matched, with Satan Girl perhaps having a little edge due to ruthlessness. Supergirl starts to melt Satan Girl’s mask, and the villainess decides to retreat for now.
Supergirl reasons that the most likely explanation for Satan Girl’s powers being identical to hers is that the villain is also Kryptonian (Daxamite is ruled out because of Satan Girl’s lead mask) so gets some green Kryptonite powder and attempts to use it to weaken her foe. Kryptonite has no effect on Satan Girl, and she escapes while Supergirl has to hesitate due to residual radiation.
We learn that despite her arrogant facade, Satan Girl has a deadline. If the female Legionnaires are not dead within 48 hours, Satan Girl will be!
Supergirl now believes Satan Girl is a superpowered gynoid of some kind, and takes the Legion to a hidden planet inside a space cloud that only she knows of due to a mission in the distant past. The bouncing animals of this world are friendly so the Legion can continue to work on a cure while Supergirl develops an anti-mechanical life gas gun.
Satan Girl shows up very quickly, and the gas gun does nothing to her. However, the bouncing animals appear to be immune to Crimson Virus and for some reason, the villain can’t just squish them, so the Legion is able to retreat.
They wind up on the Puppet Planetoid, which Supergirl has never told a soul about after her accidental discovery of it. There is no freaking way Satan Girl could possibly know she’d come here. Except that no, Satan Girl totally knows about the Puppet Planetoid and dumps a bunch of green Kryptonite on Kara to weaken her while she finishes off the girl Legionnaires with Crimson Virus.
Lightning Lad clears the K, but Supergirl is too weak to move yet. She instructs her friend to travel through time to collect the Legion of Super-Pets and bring them to help. He does so while Satan Girl casually fends off the remaining male Legionnaires.
The animals are immune to the Crimson Virus radiation and are able to subdue Satan Girl. It turns out that when Supergirl traveled to the 30th Century, she emerged near a Red Kryptonite asteroid, which split her into two beings, her normal self and the evil Satan Girl. This knocked regular Supergirl out. Satan Girl didn’t want to re-merge with her original when the Red K effects wore off, so came up with a plan.
She used super science to come up with a ray that would siphon off the Red Kryptonite radiation from her body into other humans, and if enough was drained, it would prevent the merge effect. The Crimson Virus part was just a bonus. And only affecting the female Legionnaires was a bid to make Supergirl think it was gender-specific.
Satan Girl merges back into Supergirl, ending her short life., and the afflicted Legionnaires (and Night Girl) are restored to health.
Versions of Satan Girl have shown up from time to time as Supergirl villains.
There is a text piece by E. Nelson Bridwell about the history of Adventure Comics, which started as New Comics in 1935, before switching to New Adventure Comics with #12, and then dropping the “New” as of #32 in 1938. The first “official” superhero series in Adventure was the Sandman, starting in #40 in 1939. Superboy was the lead feature from 1946 until the Legion took over. Then Supergirl had a go, and then various features until it switched to the digest format.
Last, there’s a look at the stories in this issue by Paul Levitz, most of which I’ve folded into my descriptions.
This issue is one of those much-sought after anniversary numbers, and contains several very important Legion stories, so it’s a must-have for Legion collectors. Less affluent or fanatical Legion fans might want to read the Legion Showcase volumes instead as all these stories are reprinted there. Check your library!
