This was the second of a two-parter, and a memorable cover, but I still find it weird the Legion story this issue was longer! From 1969,
Action Comics #381, "The Dictator of Earth!" Written by Leo Dorfman, pencils by Curt Swan, inks by George Roussos; and "The Hapless Hero!" Story and layouts by Jim Shooter, pencils by Win Mortimer, inks by Jack Abel.
Superman had committed massive feats of super-vandalism across the world, and considers taking his powers away with gold Kryptonite. Nah! Instead, he smashes the door to his own Fortress of Solitude, then all the flagpoles at the United Nations, putting up a massive super-flag! Then snaps back out of his super-dickery fugue. But, the trial that follows was a trick to catch the real culprits: a husband and wife team from the Superman Revenge Squad! They had put red Kryptonite in the telecom satellite Supes had recently put up; so him smashing the Fortress door was to lure them in. After catching them, he casually sends them back to their homeworld--where they'll be enslaved for life? That seems a bit much, but Supes seems to feel, hey, you join the Superman Revenge Squad, that's what you get!
"The Hapless Hero!" is maybe more interesting, although I'm not sure it had a long-term effect for the team: Matter-Eater Lad is down in the dumps--almost literally, since he lives in the slums of Metropolis with his parents subsisting on his Legion "living allowance." His mom seems a nervous sort, perhaps exacerbated by the dad's gambling habit and crappy attitude. Returning to Legion HQ, M-E Lad finds Shrinking Violet on duty, and also depressed: her long-distance relationship with Lallor's Duplicate Boy was grating on her. Impulsively, M-E Lad asks her out, and kind of blows his check on her: the date goes pretty well, up until the good night kiss when Duplicate Boy shows up in a literal poof! Despite the fact that Duplicate Boy could copy any super-powers and was "a billion times more powerful" than Matter-Eater Lad, M-E Lad still stands up to him: cringing wouldn't do him any good, and if he got beat up, that would only make Violet hate Duplicate Boy. But, everything wraps up really quickly, as Violet still loves Duplicate, and the next day M-E Lad's parents send him a letter (he'd only been gone that evening!) that the dad had quit gambling. Just one thing: what did they need to spend money on? They didn't need groceries,
they could eat anything! Ugh, I'm going back to bed.
This definitely seems like yet another example of the types of story where Supes is smarter than his foe(s), never in any real danger, yet playing along for the fun of it doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteI also find it very unrealistic that the dad just so happens to conveniently just stop gambling like that. Seems like a big intervention was looming.
What was he gambling on anyways? And if he was so hard up on money, why not turn it around and have people pay him to eat whatever for money, unless that sort of thing was so commonplace it wasn't even worth paying to see. How was Element Lad's people not exploited more for entertainment?
Written by Jim Shooter- that explains the Legion story, all right.
ReplyDeleteFor a second, I thought part one of the Superman story was the one with him in the crown and on the throne. I guess that was a good enough Red K story that they basically did it twice. The bad guys got off easy this time though- usually the Revenge Squad goes full Blofeld and kills failures.