The Legion of Super-Heroes started as a one-off Superboy story back in 1958, but they slowly grew in popularity and were featured many times in Superboy, Supergirl, and even Superman stories through the early 1960s. Starting in Adventure Comics #300 (July 1962), they replace “Tales of the Bizarro World” as the back-up feature to Superboy in Adventure Comics. In this issue, they are still in the 21st century and have yet to be ret-conned to the 30th century.
It’s clear in this very first story that the creative team is being influenced from other recent super-hero teams by having their characters fight and argue with each other. Sounds familiar, no? For instance, Sun Boy appears to be a “hot-headed” teenager in the above panel, apparently accusing Cosmic Boy of deliberately destroying equipment with his magnetic powers. Haven’t weird things happened to you before, man? Where’s the team loyalty, bro?
Another telltale sign of Marvel influence is that these Legion stories will be “getting into the heads” of each of the members, I guess in an effort to flesh them out into distinct characters. For now, the internal monologues consist of a lot of shocked expressions while they «choke» and «gulp» and «gasp» and «ulp» their way through their crude emotions and expound on their superhero origins. But it’s a start!
The storyline is pretty forgettable – apparently a teenage Lex Luthor creates a robot that he sends into the 21st century with his “Time-Ray Projector”. The robot wears a lead-lined mask, is able to shoot “green kryptonite vision”, and is able to nullify super-hero powers at will. How did Lex Luthor never succeed against Superboy/Superman again? Anyway, Superboy whisks off to the future when he gets a signal from the Legion that they need his help.
Saturn Girl gets the idea to bring Mon-El out of the Phantom Zone. Mon-El was put there when Superboy accidentally fatally poisoned Mon-El with lead, and apparently he’s lived there for 100 (1000?) years and still maintained his grip on sanity. Superboy reluctantly agrees, but when Mon-El experiences the first bout of pain, he resorts to lashing out and calling Saturn Girl names until Lightning Lad says that Superboy should trust Saturn Girl:
Saturn Girl has a serum that temporarily halts the lead poisoning and Mon-El easily dispatches “Ulthro”, where his identity is revealed as the afore-mentioned robot with Lex Luthor’s adult face… so teenage Lex sent a robot into the future, but first designed it with what he thought his adult face would look like?
The Legion inducts Mon-el into their club, even though he goes back to the Phantom Zone after Saturn Girl’s serum wears off.
Anyway, these “personalities” are even cruder than the Fantastic Four’s original personalities, but it’s very cool to see the influence pointed in the other direction for once (from Marvel back to DC). I look forward to their continued swapping of ideas.