The fourth volume of Showcase Presents Legion of Super-Heroes gathers together the Legion's final appearances in the pages of Adventure Comics where they'd debuted a decade earlier, created by Otto Binder. Thanks to the writing of Jerry Seigel, Edmond Hamilton, E. Nelson Bridwell and Jim Shooter with art by John Forte, Curt Swan, George Klein among others the team had found brilliant success in the fan community. But apparently sales were sluggish as the 60's wore on and the wacky Silver Age nonsense of the DCU was waning in appeal to readers wanting a richer experience such as supplied by Marvel. The team would find success in the coming decade, but in the interim they were consigned to back-up status first in Action Comics and later in Superboy, a title they'd overtake just as they'd done with is feature in Adventure Comics. But that's for next time.
I try to be gentle in my reviews about artists, but there's just no way to say it other than Win Mortimer's arrival on the Legion scene indicated a severe downturn in the quality of the images. His first few issues are dreadful, but later the arrival of inker Jack Abel helps things enormously. The Legion features a lot of characters and making them recognizable is key to good storytelling and Mortimer fails that test in his first few issues. He's not helped by Shooter's increasingly wonky stories which seem more interested in finding new settings than developing characters. An exception to that would be Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel, two of the sillier heroes who eventually seem to find comfort in each other's company. Shooter also focuses a lot on heroes he'd created, which is not unusual, but some of the classic heroes suffer. Karate Kid gets a lot of attention. Things in that area are not helped by the introduction of Chemical King and Timber Wolf. As good as these heroes might be, they become just more for the fire in the melee of these last Adventure Comic episodes.
The Shooter-Mortimer-Abel team move over to Action Comics where the Legion becomes a back-up feature switching places with Supergirl who took over the cover feature in Adventure Comics. The Legion stories ranged from seven to twelve pages and given the limitation began to focus more on a few Legionnaires at a time. We learn about Matter-Eater Lad's unfortunate family life, we learn of Duo Damsel's lack of confidence and see her find comfort with Bouncing Boy for the first time, Shrinking Violet has boyfriend problems as her beau Duplicate Boy is always away, and we see Duplicate Boy seek love again, among other stories. Superboy takes on Reserve status when the ranks of the Legion grow too large to keep a tax-free status. One story uses the Legion Espionage Squad in a style reminiscent of Mission Impossible.
E. Nelson Bridwell takes on the writing chores and is joined by Cary Bates. George Tuska becomes the artist when the strip moves to the back pages of Superboy. We begin to see new costumes for some of the heroes and heroines using designs sent in by fans. (See the bottom of the post for more on that.) Saturn Girl is the first to feature a fresh new look. And then the most momentous event occurs when Cary Bates is joined by the art team of Murphy Anderson and Dave Cockrum. Soon the art is just by Cockrum and the Legion is on the verge of its next bright era. More on that next time as I take a gander at the fifth Showcase volume,
Here are the Adventure Comics covers in this volume and the Action Comics and Superboy covers which featured the debut of the back-up Legion tales. Most of these are by the late great Neal Adams.
Adventure Comics interrupted the Supergirl feature to give us a Legion reprint volume. These are all classic Legion tales, but there were some fascinating pages featuring outfits designed by fans. Some of these would actually make their way into the comic.
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