Legion of Super-Heroes (v2) #259

Legion of Super-Heroes (v2) #259 (January, 1980)
title: "Psycho War"

writer: Gerry Conway

penciller: Joe Staton

inker: Dave Hunt
letterer: Milt Snapinn
colorist: Gene D'Angelo

editor: Jack C. Harris
cover: Dick Giordano (signed)

reviewer: Russell "Bilingual Boy" Burbage

Mission Monitor Board:  
Superboy, Wildfire, Karate Kid, Shrinking Violet, Chameleon Boy, Shadow Lass, Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad, Sun Boy; cameo by Mon-El?

Guests: 
RJ Brande, Ma & Pa Kent (images)

Opponents: 
Rejis Thomak, aka Psycho Warrior

Synopsis: 
At the ruins of Legion HQ, ambulance workers prepare to take away Lightning Lad, Sun Boy, and Saturn Girl after they were put in catatonic states by the Psycho Warrior. He prepares to take on Superboy next when an air-ship from the St. Croix Medical Center arrives, scaring him off.

Medical staff from the psychological hospital approach the three fallen Legionnaires. Using an Electron Disruptor, they cure them. They explain to the other Legionnaires that they know who attacked them and why.

At RJ Brande's penthouse, the doctors explain who and what Rejis Thomak has become. He had escaped from St. Croix earlier in the day, and they strongly suspected that he was after the Legion.

They tell the Legionnaires that Thomak is from the planet Bunyon's World, a hellish colony where life is hard. He and his girl-friend were on their way to Earth to study at college when they fell into the gravity of an uncharted star that was going nova. When Thomak turned to help his girl-friend get into the escape pod with him, he bumped the automatic eject button. The escape pod blasted off without her, saving him but killing her.

The moral: Ladies First. 

Eventually Thomak was brought to Earth and assigned to St. Croix. Once there he saw Sun Boy, Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, and Superboy visiting the ill Brainiac 5. He then transferred his irrational hatred of himself to them. He broke out, but before leaving the island read the psychological profiles of the Legionnaires stored on the island.

Suddenly, he attacks, using a concussion bomb as a diversion. Then he uses an optic detonator, paralyzing the optic nerves of all of the people present except for Superboy.

Superboy chases after Psycho Warrior, who blasts the Teen of Steel and makes him see how his parents died (will die?). Initially overcome with grief and guilt, Superboy is eventually able to shrug the pain off and grab Psycho Warrior. He then forces Thomak to face *his* enemy: the sun! Thomak realizes that it was his carelessness that cost his girl-friend her life, and he becomes rational again.

Later, Superboy tells his friends that he is upset, but will learn to live with the pain of the knowledge of his parents' death somehow. However, the Legionnaires conferred and had agreed that Saturn Girl would give Superboy a mental command to stay in the past. They didn't want him to have to deal with the pain of losing his parents every time he came into the future. As he flies way, they think they will never see him again.

Commentary: 
As Colonel Sherman Potter often said: Horse hockey!

This story is just bad. So let's start with some random badness....how does Psycho Warrior, a college boy on a "hellish" colony world, suddenly know how to use neural detonators and optic detonators and what have yous? This seems awfully convenient to me.

Also, why in the world does he hate the Legion in general and these five Legionnaires in particular? It's not like they had anything to do with the death of his girl-friend. I can understand Thomak hating Sun Boy, symbolically, but the others seem....irrational. Oh, wait, is that the point? Never mind. By the way, we never saw these particular five Legionnaires visiting Brainiac 5. (We only saw the Legion visit St. Croix three times, and these five were part of a larger group in S/LSH #252, but that's it.) I'm assuming Thomak saw them in some visit which was never shown to us, but still, it's a bit odd.

Totally different question: am I reading too much into it, or did their space accident happen because he and his girl-friend were distracted while having sex? You know, instead of actually driving their space-ship? Looks that way to me.

Of these four Legionnaires, Superboy is the only one with a strong enough will to break free of the Psycho Warrior's power? How awfully convenient. And the others are letting him quit!?!

That brings us to the ending, or the cover: the reason this story is on the Milestone list. Here we have Superboy having a bad experience in the future, and his friends basically telling him they would rather never see him again than have him deal with it.

Uh...okay......I guess....if this was a future universe where nothing bad ever happened!!! Superboy (and every member featured in this story) has had to deal with the death of actual Legionnaires; did Saturn Girl make any of them forget Chemical King or Invisible Kid? In fact, Lightning Lad by this point had to deal with the deaths of HIS parents (see S/LSH #207) but did Saturn Girl make him or his sister forget *their* pain? Of course not!

Besides the basic immaturity of this idea.....it's the 30th Century, for crying out loud! Ma and Pa Kent (and he, himself) are LONG DEAD. Why is that a shock to him? What did he expect?!

Now, I don't disagree with the idea that Superboy should not be in every issue of Legion of Super-Heroes. However, the worst thing about this ending is that Superboy is well on his way to dealing with his loss in a mature and responsible way when his friends sabotages him. If he had just said, "I have some things to think about. I'll be back....someday" and flown off...that would have been great. This is what almost did happen, until the immature Legionnaires had to stop him from grieving naturally. This is just stupid, stupid, stupid.

Well, what's done is done. On the bright side, we do get a Legion without so much Superboy every issue starting next month! To celebrate, next issue we get...to go to the Circus of Death? Uh-oh. Maybe not.

With this review, the series Superboy/Legion (label SLSH) is officially over. However, instead of just continuing on with weekly reviews of Legion of Super-Heroes (vol 2) (label LSHv2), I'll be taking a break from weekly reviews for a little while. This is partly because I'm a little burned out on the sheer effort required, partly because of the quality of the upcoming stories (Circus of Death, indeed), and partly because I want to try to fill in some of the other gaps in our coverage first. Don't worry, Jimmy James and Blok fans, we will be back to this future eventually!

Next week join me here for a look back on the Superboy series and character. Then for the rest of April I'll be co-opting this space to finish my *other* series of Legion reviews (LSH v3), coincidentally ALSO coming to an end....and then we will have all sorts of new and different stuff for you in May!!

Science Police Notes:  

• This issues features the debut of a brand-new Legion logo. It was used on this series for the next twenty issues. 
• Although Mon-El does not appear at any time during the course of this story, he is inexplicably present at the good-bye scene. The majority of Legionnaires featured on the cover waving good-bye to Superboy do not appear in this story. 
• Three doctors arrive from St. Croix to help cure the Legionnaires, but only two are paralyzed by the Psycho Warrior on page 12.  

Status: 
This issue has not yet been reprinted.

Milestone: 
With this issue, the official title of the book becomes The Legion of Super-Heroes. The Legion's conquest of Superboy's book is now complete. Meanwhile, Superboy, at the end of this story, returns to Smallville and a brand-new solo series called The New Adventures of Superboy. It would last for fifty-four issues.