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featuring Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes July 1968 |
On the splash page, Pete Ross and Lana Lang, as Insect Queen, hold up Superboy's costume to convince him he's Superboy. The boy replies, "You two belong in a looney-ward! I'm just plain Clark Kent - and I'm not getting involved in anything dangerous!" What's going on here? Rewind the tape back to the end of last issue (Adventure 369)... Four Legionnaires - Superboy, Mon-El, Shadow Lass, and Duo Damsel - have been outed by Mordru. He blasts them with magic. "Down, Legionnaires! Fall at the feet of Mordru as my power crushes you!" The other Legionnaires in the 30th Century "have been taken care of" and only these four remain. "Are we the final hope against Mordru?" |
Superboy has a plan. "Dig - like crazy!" Digging works. Mordru prevented them from going up, not down, and the flying dirt blinds him. |
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Mordru will surely follow them through the tunnel, so now what? If Mordru can use magic to trace their thoughts, says Superboy, "We must stop those thoughts!" The Legionnaires hustle into Superboy's cellar lab. At super-speed, Superboy builds a hypnosis machine. He poises his friends and parents before it. "It'll wipe out our memories of being Legionnaires so Mordru can't find us!" The effect will only last one hour. Quickly the Legionnaires switch to their secret Smallville identities. All get hyno-rayed. Soon no one can remember why they're in Clark's cellar. "Betsy Norcross" (Shadow Lass) and "Marie Elkins" (Duo Damsel) return to stay with the Langs and the Parkers. "Bob Cross" (Mon-El) again visits the Kents. They and Clark are all non-super. High on a hilltop, Mordru broods. He's lost track of the heroes, but they must still be in Smallville. So he searches the minds of the townspeople. "A powerful alien thought touches their brains... and all secrets are laid bare." |
Mordru gets clues: Duo Damsel seen in costume. A blue stain on "Betsy's" arm. Yet the four suspects have no memory of being Legionnaires. So how?... While Mordru frets, his mental probing did have one effect. It erased the post-hypnotic suggestion that memory should return. Non-super Clark has only a mental twitch at the one-hour deadline, then forgets he was ever super! Mordru does the impossible many times over. From the 30th Century, he summons his yellow-clad army to search out the Legionnaires. Weeks pass as the soldiers set up headquarters in caverns in the hills. When they're ready... Mordru seals the time-travel lanes so the Legionnaires can't escape. Then he limits the search area... |
... By ripping Smallville off the face of the Earth and floating it in space!  The citizens feel an earthquake, but soon learn the truth at the new "edge of town". They're cut off, isolated in space! "Jumping Jehosaphat!" barks Jonathan Kent. "If only Superboy were here! But he hasn't been seen for weeks!" |
"As if from nowhere", a cadaverous army swarms the town with ray guns and tanks. Their commander yells, "Spread out... find them! Tear the town apart if necessary!" The army knocks citizens aside, smashes priceless artifacts, and rounds up all the teenage girls in town, including "the prime suspects, Betsy Norcross and Marie Elkins!"
Soldiers scorch death-blasts past the girls' head. Betsy and Marie shrink in terror. Plucky Lana Lang grapples a guard. "Leave them alone, you... you bully!" The commander calls it off. The two cowardly girls "have no spirit like the red-head" and none have super-powers. "Let them go!" In the Kents' store, Clark gets shoved around. He swears he's not Superboy. The soldiers believe the "whimpering weakling." |
Who'll save the day? Who's even left of the Legion? Would you believe Pete Ross and Lana Lang? Pete's been watching. Clark Kent must have somehow forgotten he's Superboy! "I must snap him out of it fast... but I'll need help!" Pete meets Lana. He's an Honorary Legionnaire. She's a Legion Reservist. So Pete raps out a confusing story: Clark is Superboy. No, he didn't confide his secret identity, Pete learned it accidentally. "You're not kidding?" No. "Get your bio-ring and Insect Queen costume and I'll prove it! The trouble is, I also have to prove it to Clark!" To which Lana says, "Huh?" |
But the girl is a Legion Reservist
for a reason, and she acts. Donning her alien bio-ring
and rubbing it, Lana becomes a fly girl who climbs to Clark's
window.  |
Rather than wake Clark's "cousin" (really Mon-El), Lana turns caterpillar and cocoons Clark. Morphing into a butterfly, she flies him to Pete's house. Pete waits with - scissors? Yep, and tries to cut Clark's hair. The scissors break. That means - It all rushes back. "I'm Superboy! Wait right here! I'm going for my costume and reinforcements!" Soon the "Boy Blockbuster" plies his hypo-ray on his friends, who bound out of bed. "Wake up! Remember who you are! Get on your fighting togs and meet me at the Old Hanford Place!" Lana is introduced to Duo Damsel and Shadow Lass as themselves. Superboy has a plan "that involves all six of us!" |
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So who's captured? "Superboy" (Pete Ross), Mon-El, Duo Damsel, and "Shadow Lass" (Duo Damsel II). Mordru gloats. "How long have I waited for revenge!" The Legion attacks! Superboy zooms in. "Looks like you're going to wait a lot longer, Mordy!" Shadow Lass blankets the room in darkness. Most Legionnaires can see in the dark. Mordru can't. And Superboy HAMMERS him! "We did it! We conquered Mordru! The enemy is ours!" On the contrary, Mordru blasts them flat! "Idiots! Did you think our feeble powers could overcome my magical might?" This time Mordru binds the Legionnaires with magic bonds that "appear in the name of Yog-Sothoth! And transport us to the courtroom!" |
"In minutes, the Legion are dragged before "the greatest criminal minds of the 30th Century! Too bad the Fatal Five couldn't make it!" The criminal jurists are Dorzak, murderer; Golgro, assassin, and other dark figures. (As seen on the cover.) A man named Wraithor acts as prosecutor. Pete Ross is the defense attorney, "futile as it seems with the deck stacked against us!" Wraithor condemns the Legion for "anti-crime acts" such as ending the careers of the Time Trapper, Universo, Dr. Regulus, and others. Worst, they imprisoned Mordru in an airless vault. Can Pete Ross deny these charges? "You can bet your crystal ball I won't! The Legion's proud of protecting the universe from fiends like you!" He adds, "If Mordru got control of the universe, everyone would be a stooge... just like every one of you!" And Wraithor jolts. The stooge jury finds the Legion "guilty on all counts". Mordru sentences them to life imprisonment on the Devil's Island of Space! |
Wraithor intercedes. The Legion are special prisoners, so deserve a special doom - such as he can prepare. "Permission granted." Shortly, Wraithor exhibits a vault. Kryptonite- and lead-lined, inertron-sealed. Inside, the six Legionnaires will have ample air to die a slow agonizing death from thirst. The Legionnaires are clapped inside, the door sealed, and the vault lowered "into the pit of Eternal Oblivion!" Meanwhile, inside, Superboy says, "This is fishier than a bowl of guppies! It's not real Kryptonite! Or real lead! He and Mon-El tear through the walls like tinfoil. |
"Somebody likes us, but who?" Wraithor! He was once a powerful sorceror, but Mordru stole his power. Pete's speech broke the spell. With a little power left, Wraithor faked the vault.  Wraithor leads them to an escape route - and is blasted to atoms by Mordru! |
Berserk, Mordru decrees the Legionnaires are powerless - and they are! He seals them in a force field they can't break. Superboy thinks, "We've all faced death before, but this time there's no escape!" Grimacing, Mordru concentrates enough power to destroy a galaxy into a Fireball of Force to hurl at the Legion. But he's gone too far. The cavern walls can't sustain the awesome energies - and collapse. The fireball blasts the floor open. "Aiiieee! I'm being buried... entombed again! No!" "But the Lord of Darkness is entombed again... in Eternal Darkness." And the fury of the fireball fuses the fallen rubble into an impenetrable barrier. While six Legionnaires dig to the surface! Strangely enough, it was Mordru's force field that protected them. And when "he got his", their super-powers returned. Wrapping up, Superboy hypno-rays Lana to forget his secret identity. He aims the ray at Pete Ross - and Mon-El spins it around. Superboy forgets instead of Pete! Mon-El calls it "a reward... for helping us". But in fact, in the future Pete will save Superboy's life with his knowledge of Clark's secret identity. |
"A thousand years later," in the 30th Century, the four heroes find their Legion friends in fine fettle. How? A trick. Dream Girl, Princess Projectra, and the White Witch let Mordru see an ILLUSION that he destroyed Legion HQ! Mon-El laughs. "I'll be darned! To think of all the trouble we had dodging Mordru! How ironic that he was foiled by three girls!"
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Comments Slam-bang action, rapid twists and turns, funny intersecting characterization on the fly, emotions running a roller-coaster, and surprises piled on surprises. They don't write 'em like that any more! Once the dust settles, we are left to wonder. All those weeks during which the superheroes were normal non-super kids, what did they do? Go to school dances and the county fair and picnics? Learn to drive? Try out for football? Flirt and fall in love and get their hearts broken? We'll never know... And just imagine if they'd NEVER regained their super-powers? Would Duo Damsel finally hook Superboy? Or Lana? |
