Adventure Comics #313 - The Legion of What the Fuck?
What's the deal with these guys? Well back in the 1950's, science fiction comics were still popular, but were slowly being phased out due to the resurgance of super-heroes in the comic book medium. DC Comics had the answer: take the two genres and put them togeather. Hence the Legion of Super-Heroes were born. They were super-heroes from the 30th Century (or 21st century, depended on the writer at the time.) that all had at least one super power. They would fly around and solve crimes. In space. But they also enjoyed traveling back in time to fuck around with Superboy. They were so carefree about time travel, and must have been totally ignorant of any potential for creating time paradoxes. All the Legion members had to be teenagers under the age of 18, and they had a club house and they all had a charter and rules and everything. They were a bunch of elitist bastards with lame fucking names like Sun Boy and Matter-Eater Lad and Saturn Girl. According to the writers of the early Legion of Super-Heroe stories, the 30th century was a place of technological wonderment and universal peace and understanding. However, some of the tride and true stables of "family values" prevale in the 30th century. Like girls aren't allowed to go on the really dangerious missions, and have to wait in the ship to monotor the radio. And every teenager is a well groomed estethically pleasing white kid. Yeah, for a bunch of characters that exist in the 30th century, they have all the societal pit-falls and dogmas of the 1950's, and that's what makes reading these old Legion of Super-Heroe stories so funny. Like, how in 10 centuries into the future we'll be technologically advanced enough to travel the cosmos, and yet socially we haven't gone farther than "A womans place is in the kitchen." It's kind of sad when you're a character named Lightening Lass, or Triplicate Girl, and you get out ranked and ordered to stay on the ship to monitor the radio over a guy named Matter-Eater Lad who's really good at eating anything, and Bouncing Boy, who's the fat kid. Amung everything else that is wrong with the Legion of Super-Heroes (and let me tell you I have three particular items all lined up to comment on so far) the one constant problem with the Legion comics is the blatant sexism. Yeah, it was the sign of the times, but I present to you Adventure Comics #313 which is so over the top, I don't even know where to begin even trying to discribe the writers probably hostility towards women (because there is no way this wasn't unintentional.)
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