The Original Legion: Who Joined When? (Part One)

By Emsley Wyatt

Who joined when?

When the Legion of Super-Heroes first appeared in Adventure Comics #247 (April 1958) it was as a group without a history.  They were just sort of there.  

The story was intended as a one-and-done, as most comic stories were in those days. But it didn't stay that way.  Readers wanted more and what readers want, they usually get. More and more Legion stories were written and more and more members were created.  Then, readers started to demand a history for the group.  What was their origin?  When did the various members join? This two-part post will attempt to answer that question! 

For the first ten years, fans wondering about the order of admittance to the Legion basically had to figure it out for themselves. Fans had to play Comic Detectives, as it were, relying mostly on publication dates and who was in the background at various inductions and in other scenes.  

It didn't help that initially, the writers didn't seem to know, either! We readers had to deal with all sorts of incongruous clues. For example, in Adventure Comics #308 Cosmic Boy describes Lightning Lad's encounter with the lightning beasts of Korbal in an attempt to gain super-powers in order to join the Legion...and the panel shows LL, alone (no Ayla or Mekt),  already in costume! 

Fans had speculated that since Lightning Lad, Cosmic Boy, and Saturn Girl had been featured most frequently in the earliest  stories (published in the Superman line of magazines before the Legion had their own series) that they were the charter members. That speculation was finally confirmed in Superboy #147 (May 1968) when, ten years after their first appearance, the Legion was finally given a proper origin story.

And, as a bonus, the induction of the next two Legionnaires is also shown: Triplicate Girl (later Duo Damsel) and Phantom Girl.

Their swearing-in was shown MANY years later in a scene from Secret Origins #42 (July 1989).

For a brief moment, then, the girl Legionnaires outnumbered the boys.  But that would soon change as the next three inductees were males: Colossal Boy, Chameleon Boy, and Invisible Kid.  They are shown here in a panel from the story of Supergirl's first Legion tryout in Action Comics #267 (August 1960).

Incidentally, the induction ceremony for the two “CBs” was eventually shown in Legion of Super-Heroes (v3) #39 (October 1987).

The narration here firmly establishes that the two "CBs" are the sixth and seventh Legionnaires to join.  Also note  Brainiac 5 and Shrinking Violet sitting on the bench observing the ceremony.  Perhaps they are there as rejected applicants, thinking to themselves, “Maybe next year....”  Invisible Kid probably came in next time.  Perhaps that was the point at which they adopted the one per year rule, which was then modified into the “Noah's Ark” rule (one male and one female), then dispensed with entirely as try-outs seemed to be held with much greater frequency than yearly.

As for Supergirl, old-time fans know that at her first try-out she was rejected because Red Kryptonite exposure had temporarily turned her into an adult.  

First of all, I call BS on this.  Sure, the Red K made her look like an adult, but her age in elapsed actual time was still fifteen.  Might as well reject her for being a thousand plus years old since she was born in nineteen-whatever.  

But read what Cosmic Boy has to say here. His remarks raise another interesting question: who got the nod when Supergirl was rejected?  It couldn't have been Brainiac Five, Shrinking Violet, Bouncing Boy, or Sun Boy because they are shown during Supergirl's second tryout, in Action Comics #276 (May 1961) as fellow applicants. Perhaps it was Ultra Boy or Star Boy, despite the official order which lists them coming in after Supergirl. More on this later.

As stated above, Supergirl got her second tryout in Action Comics #276. Here she is with Violet, Bouncing Boy, and Sun Boy.  While Cosmic Boy doesn't specifically classify them as applicants here, later panels identify them as such.  “But they've got placards,” I hear you saying. Yes, they do, but so does Brainiac 5, who is clearly an applicant at this point.  

But this is the year that Supergirl gets approved, along with Brainiac 5. Their induction is celebrated at a stadium.

I love this scene.  It makes it clear how much the Legion is loved by the public: they fill a stadium just to see the new members.  And you know there have to be Legion groupies (looking at you, Night Girl).  The charter members fly on mechanical jet-horses.  That's cool, wouldn't you like to have one of those?  Phantom Girl and Triplicate Girl zip around on their jet packs, while the prom king and queen, er, the new members, ride on the Thirtieth Century equivalent of a parade float, complete with a model of the clubhouse.  So where are Colossal Boy, Invisible Kid, and Chameleon Boy while this is going on?  As the rookies, they're back at headquarters stuck with monitor duty.

Next up is Superboy.  People had initially presumed that since the story in which Superboy joins (Adventure Comics #247 April 1958) came out years before the one in which Supergirl joined (Action Comics #276 May 1961) that Superboy joined first.  But, of course, when factoring in time travel that doesn't have to be the case.  This is where playing detective comes in. 

But the bane of all detectives, professional or otherwise, is evidence tampering.  The initial appearance of the Legion of Super-Heroes has been reprinted a number of times.  Here is a panel from the original comic: 

Notice the four individuals with their backs to the reader.  Who are they?  Here is the same panel reproduced in Adventure Comics #491.

The female to the left is most likely Triplicate Girl, while the guy to the far right is undoubtedly Brainiac 5.  The middle two are harder to ID, but the brown-haired fellow is probably Colossal Boy or Invisible Kid.  When the story appeared in Blue Ribbon Digest, the character on the right was cropped out entirely.

This phenomenon also happened with the panel later in the story where the Legionnaires cheer Superboy.  Here is the version in the original printing: 

Notice the two characters to Saturn Girl's right and the guy in the foreground.  Who are these guys?  At this point there are only two male Caucasians in the Legion aside from Cosmic Boy and Lightning Lad, who are clearly depicted: Colossal Boy and Invisible Kid.  Is the third guy Chameleon Boy just doing his thing, or is it someone else????

Well, here is that same panel reproduced twice: First from Superman Annual #6 on the top, then from Adventure Comics #491 on the bottom. 

In the first panel “leaning on chair guy” has been recolored to represent Colossal Boy; in the second to represent Brainiac 5.  That would work.  (By the way, in the Blue Ribbon Digest version, this panel was reconfigured to eliminate both “seat guy” and the guy on the far right.)  Also, note that in the earlier reprint the uniforms of the charter members have been recolored to more closely resemble the versions we're most familiar with.  

We get to see Superboy's swearing-in ceremony in Adventure Comics #323 (August 1964). Everybody's there but Supergirl and Phantom Girl. 

An additional word on Superboy's admission. In the Legion back-up story in Superboy #173 (April 1971), there is an illustration of what is supposedly Superboy's inauguration ceremony into the Legion. However, in the panel of Superboy being sworn in you can clearly see later members Matter-Eater Lad, Mon-El, Bouncing Boy, and Light Lass. To compound the error, Light Lass is wearing her "feather" uniform rather than her "cloud" symbol, which places this much later in the Legion time-line. Small wonder that this panel is simply regarded as an error and universally disregarded.  

So now we come to Ultra Boy and Star Boy.  The official “proclamation scroll” shown in Legion of Super-Heroes (v2) #300 (June 1983) shows them joining in that order.  Here it is.

But the story that introduced Star Boy, Adventure Comics #282  (March 1961), appeared 16 months before the one that introduced Ultra Boy, Superboy #98 (July 1962).  The Ultra Boy story is pretty devoid of clues, given that all the action takes place in the 20th Century, so we'll look at Star Boy first.  Here he is from his debut story, meeting Superboy for the first time.

And here he is meeting the Legion, from that same story.

Again we're looking at the backs of heads.  The guy with the reddish-brown hair is probably either Colossal Boy or Invisible Kid.  But the female has to be Supergirl, the only other blonde in the group as of that time.  So, clearly, Star Boy is admitted after Supergirl and, therefore can not be the guy selected the year that Supergirl was rejected.  Here is another take on this meeting from Legion of Super-Heroes (v2) #306 (Dec 1983).

The presence of Brainiac 5 also establishes that this is occurring after he (and Supergirl) joined the Legion. Superboy's inclusion is interesting as well.  Could it be that the first time Superboy met Star Boy wasn't the first time Star Boy met Superboy?  Time travel, it gives me a headache.  (The whole concept of meeting someone before they meet you was pretty effectively lamp-shaded in Karate Kid #13, when Val met Superboy years before Superboy met Karate Kid...)

So why, if they have met before, is Superboy acting so surprised at the extent of Star Boy's powers? Because, that's just it: he's ACTING. He can't let Star Boy or, for that matter, his fellow Legionnaires, know that he has met Star Boy before, AFTER he becomes a Legionnaire. Similarly, when Star Boy travels back to the Twentieth Century and "meets" Superboy, he can't let on that, from HIS perspective, they already know each other. 

So, in the absence of a credible theory to explain otherwise, I'm going to have to say that the official order (and incidentally, the Legion of Super-Bloggers side panel which is based on that) is wrong and that Ultra Boy is the member who was approved when Supergirl was initially rejected.

Or not.  You want a credible theory, here's a credible theory.  What if the person inducted instead of Supergirl is someone who isn't talked about?  Someone whose membership was stricken from the Legion's own records.  Could it have been the character fans refer to as “False Pretenses Lad"?

Shown here is his only appearance, in a single panel from Adventure Comics #327 (Dec 1964).  It does seem like a long time from when he might have been admitted (1961) to when we see him here, but we know nothing about him, what his power is, how long he was in the Legion before being detected, if he had eluded capture for awhile after exposure, how long he'd been incarcerated before being sent to the prison planet, etc, etc.  

However, if he were the Legionnaire admitted in Action Comics #267 it would resolve the nagging question as to who got the slot meant for Supergirl. In fact, one of the unidentified Legionnaires in the “Hooray for Superboy” panel in Adventure Comics #247 may well have been “False Pretenses Lad!”  I don't know about any of you, but I will never look at that panel the same way again.  If this theory is true, I bet Supergirl had a bit to say about it.  “So, that guy you took instead of me?  How'd he work out”?

The next three Legionnaires are pretty straightforward.  Sun Boy and Bouncing Boy were active by Action Comics #287 (about a year after the Supergirl/Brainiac 5 admission).

Violet was nowhere to be seen here, but she was clearly a member when Bouncing Boy was sworn in, as Adventure Comics #301 (Oct 1962) clearly shows her standing with the active Legionnaires.  It is also worth noting that this scene is the first time we actually see the Legion oath being administered.  

So my assumption is that Violet and Sun Boy came in together under the “Noah's Ark” rule and that Bouncing Boy was admitted shortly thereafter in recognition of  the valor and effectiveness he shows in that story.  Cosmic Boy and Saturn Girl must have felt pretty bad about the way they dismissed him because it seems that his admission occurred contrary to the normal rules.  

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the Legion has no rules that they're actually obligated to follow and are able to waive them simply by majority vote.  The age limitation was waived for Mon-El, as it was again much later when Polar Boy was admitted.  The initiation tests were also waived. 

This completes all the admissions that took place prior to the Legion getting its regular series in Adventure Comics #300. Part two will cover the members who joined after the Legion got their own series!