A Look Thru the Super-Specs

Welcome back to part II of an in-depth look at the LSH in the Bronze Age: a period when their success possibly rivalled their 60s heyday. Artist Dave Cockrum had devised several new characters to include as  Legionnaires - Quetzal, Typhoon, a blue-skinned demon named Nightcrawler...and Wildfire, or ERG-1, as he was known herein. At this stage I didn't know the Molecule Master was fated to kill Reflecto according to the Adult Legion story. I was more focused on the new costumes: a metallic catsuit for Dream Girl; a stunningly-simple star-spangled bodysuit for old flat-top Star Boy; and Lightning Lad's elegant and archetypal new look. I was also amused to see Porcupine Pete, one of the Bits of Legionnaire Business from the Trial of Star Boy issue.

As I mentioned last time, from 1971-73, DC had stepped up reprints of Golden and Silver Age material. The 100-page Super -Spectaculars were terrific value and in '74, continuing titles went Super-Spec on a regular basis. I remember reading this issue on my way to stay for a week on my uncle's farm outside Galston, around the time Jon Pertwee bowed out of Dr. Who. The Lore of the Legion fact-file by Cockrum was a major draw, as was my first sighting of a feral-faced Timber Wolf, the mystery character glimpsed in Girvan some four or five years earlier. It's funny that sightings of another Cockrum design, the X-Man Thunderbird would also elude me for nearly three years. Another favourite Legionnaire, the sultry Shadow Lass also got a (bat-themed) Cockrum makeover.  The reprinted prison camp two-parter was a beautiful Swan job, with a campy Adam West-Batman tone and a bizarre coda in which M-E Lad was inflated to beachball proportions. The next issue would see a far more grim fate befalling a Legionnaire...

This one was bought in Shettleston, I think; although it was dated August 74, I associate the comic with the winter dark, Xmas tree lights and the first Marvel Holiday Grab-Bag treasury edition. And the darkness is appropriate: the story is a doomed romance for LSH boffin, Invisble Kid (at his most hippy-handsome). When he's crushed to death like Lennie's pup by Validus, his spectral squeeze is revealed to be a g-g-ghost! I didn't know there was no foreshadowing in the Adult Legion story but again, it suggested every member was expendable. The best aspect for me was the artwork of newcomer Mike Grell. Iron Mike has been (fairly) criticised for his grasp of anatomy, his rather static artwork and his infamous "disco" costumes but I loved his Legion as a kid. My next encounter with his distinctive pencils was in this issue- bought alongside Hawkman's sudden return to the JLA- from the bus station in Ayr, my Legion Shangri-La, in the spring of 1975:

Cary Bates was a writing machine- never particularly flashy or memorable and certainly eschewing the character beats of O'Neil or Wein, but capable of producing complex done-in-one stories every month. This workaday issue actually introduced me to two villains I'd only seen named in text pieces or letter cols: Universo, with his flapping purple flares and silver fox Lightning Lord. The next issue promised a clash with the Legion of Super Villains, whom I still hadn't seen. It would be nearly five years before I got my hands on that issue...
I started secondary school in Strathaven in the August of 1975-in 1B2, which we'd now consider to be the next -to -bottom set. Tom Baker was the Doctor and Marvel comics, previously only available in the landward terminals of Prestwick and Glasgow airports thanks to the ubiquity of the b/w reprints, were now appearing in Craigs' newsagent in Strathaven, which meant I alternated with the DCs from Bairds. At 5p or 6p a copy, that was easily affordable. Marvel had always strived to be hip and socially aware; now there was a streak of pop psychology and analysis in the work of Gerber and Englehart. By comparison, DC seemed rather staid, stuffy and out-of -touch:

A new Legionnaire was always an event; a black Legionnaire had been promised for a while ( Cockrum had already designed a black version of the doomed Power Boy) but poor Tyrone-er, Tyroc, with his weird vocal powers, akin to the Scarlet Witch's hexes and kitted out by the House of Grell only appeared three or four more times before being written out of the series.

Meanwhile, the Legion's teen scribe Jim Shooter had returned to comics to pen new LSH stories, which were published alternately with tales by Cary Bates. This is another unremarkable issue: it features three of my favourite Legionnaires of the period but it's only significant because I bought it, alongside Kamandi's encounter with a giant Ben Boxer, on the day I first played truant. School Sports Day, May or June '76. It had been raining and I decided I would skip the afternoon. Just walked out of the gates, went to Baird's and to kill time before the bus, I went for a walk up the Glassford Road. I didn't repeat the misdemeanour for three years but when I did, I went for it wholeheartedly.
Grell's Warlord series had debuted around this time and he reworked Shooter's Khunds as Burroughsian barbarians in battle-harness while devising skimpy new costumes for Colossal Boy and, most comically, Cosmic Boy.I bought three other Grell issues between 75 and 76. This bizarre, chauvinistic tale of seduction and bondage was to be my last full issue of interior art by Iron Mike:

Grell continued as cover artist but he also produced a design for a new Legionnaire who was another well-meaning attempt to introduce ethnicity into the Legion's cosmopolitan future:

I'm not a fan of Dawnstar's character: her Noble Savage aloofness is reminiscent of Storm at her most condescending without the latter's dynamism or regal presence. Owlwoman in the Super Friends trumped her completely in about two pages (more about that another time).Jim Sherman was the new LSH artist and Paul Levitz the writer. I would come to appreciate both far more in later years (although I still have issues with Levitz's dialogue). At the time, though, I was disappointed that Shooter and Grell were no longer the creative team. Although 1977 would see Shooter shake up the Avengers at Marvel, I was also disappointed by this turn of events:

The heroes were seeking vengeance for the death of Chemical King. Yet again, I didn't know he'd been fated to die since his first appearance but the sacrifice of this most obscure and underused of Legionnaires seemed very unfair to me. I hope his modern incarnation- Legion Academy's Chemical Kid- has a happier fate.
A confident DC was flooding the market with a number of new titles and revivals in 1977-many of them evoking Marvel's style and often, their characters. The number of team books had tripled at the House of ideas in the previous two years. DC turned JLA and SLSH into giants. Here's the cover of Grell's first giant (and an older issue for fun, because he draws the Fatal Five so well):

I got the next few giant issues in completely the wrong order, so that's the order I'll post them: This one, from RS McColl in East Kilbride features Walt Simonson's art and a groan-inducing villain called Arma Getten. Brande, who would go on to become a major supporting character in the late 70s and 80s hadn't been seen since the Sixties, I think:

This beauty from Strathaven was a reprint of a Shooter-Swan two-parter but featured a stunning wrap-around cover by Jim "Warlock" Starlin. I would have loved a decent run on the series from him but he'd probably have killed half the LSH and destroyed the universe.

The next issue also came from EK and introduced a mind-boggling new villain, some exotic alien worlds, a cameo by Universo and an outré version of Chameleon Boy by Mike Nasser.

My brother won a school competition sponsored by the police in 1978. We both got a day off school to visit police hq in Motherwell, where this was bought:

The ubiquitous influence of Star Wars can be felt here: "Earthwar" was the first installment of a multi-part epic, just like the modern story-arcs of our waiting-for-the-trade era. It also carried a text feature on Magic in the Legion which made those old stories sound amazing. The next issue's feature, which told of the White Witch, the Hag and the Adult Legion's Mxyzptlk, was even better.
Our summer holiday that year was spent in Morecambe. I got this one in the street market: probably Mon-El's finest hour in the 70s and I also enjoyed the bizarre, cartoony villain Worldsmith.

Here's almost the last giant issue of the Legion I ever got in Baird's. I think the shop had changed hands by the end of the decade. Like the teachers, I used to go for lunch on Fridays to Baxter's original Coffee House on Green Street for a burger and a coke. I read the novel of Logan's Run there and remember poring over the text feature in this issue: The Legion's Allies in the 30th Century, including the Wanderers, Questar, Dev-Em and the Heroes of Lallor. Once again, the Legion had seized my imagination and instigated a passion for locating back issues.

Meanwhile, this is the last giant issue of the LSH  I bought which didn't come out of a specialist shop and the last of the decade, on a trip into Glasgow to buy boots, possibly late 78-early 79. Lewis's department store in Argyle Street had a spinner rack near its delicatessen on the ground floor, where HMV is today! It was still selling DC comics right up until the end of 1981.
The giant-sized era was a bold and confident one for the LSH: the scope of the stories expanded to match the page count; the villains' schemes became grandiose and (space) operatic and elements from the Adventure era were re-incorporated. The ever-shifting art-styles were inconsistent but there were glimpses of real grandeur.
I was about to change secondary schools: a lot of the confidence and the relationships I'd built up in four years were going to be eroded. The whole country was entering an economically uncertain time; the punk and Power Pop of the last couple of years was going to replaced by ska, the Mod revival and the onslaught of Metal. DC was going to suffer its infamous implosion but would return even more Marvel-lous than ever. And the Legion was similarly going to be cut down to size...

Next: Conway's Corner.

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