Monday, June 09, 2014

An election, a misleading cover, a teammate thinking another's gone bad...traditional as fireworks on the Fourth!


Mon-El gives Superboy an epic slapping--and then pretty much disappears from this issue. From 1977, Legion of Super-Heroes #225, "And Who Shall Lead Them?" Written by Paul Levitz, pencils by James Sherman, inks by Bob Wiacek.

As Wildfire is sworn in as the newest leader of the Legion, Superboy shows up mid-ceremony to throw down, claiming Wildfire cheated him out of the spot. Dream Girl (who should've seen this coming) explains that although Supes received more votes, since he only spent part of his time in the 30th century, they needed a full-time leader. As Superboy leaves in a huff, Shadow Lass asks him what's really up, knowing he's far too nice to throw a fit like that, but he won't say.

Wildfire's tenure as leader begins facing off an attack by the Resource Raiders, alien pirates. But Superboy stops Wildfire from blasting their ship, since he could see explosive powder they'd left behind. Later, Ultra Boy tells a group of Legionnaires he didn't see the powder before, leading them to wonder if Superboy planted it, to discredit Wildfire. Elsewhere in the Legion Headquarters, Wildfire catches Superboy stealing one of his spare costumes and they fight. Only one leaves, but you can't see which one.

Later, Wildfire leads the team against the Resource Raiders again, but is seemingly blown apart when he saves Dream Girl from an alien ship. The ship fires at her again, and this time Superboy saves her, and explains what happened since this was the last page of the story: the Legion's computer predicted the team leader would be blasted on their first mission, and Supes figured he'd be the most likely to survive. He tried to overrule Wildfire and replace him, but their fight made him realize Wildfire would probably survive being blasted. Wildfire says the computer (which shouldn't be making predictions, that was Dream Girl's job!) miscalculated: the blast had Kryptonite in it, and would've killed Superboy. Wildfire gets a new costume, and it's all good.

2 comments:

SallyP said...

Wouldn't that young lady get a bit...cold with her arms and legs exposed like that?

googum said...

Ah, the Legionnaires have transparent spacesuits! Probably because they're easier to draw. They also had emergency ones in their flight rings, that would activate if they were suddenly thrown into space or something; which probably happened all the time, so yeah.

It kinda kills me the Legion hasn't really clicked in years...