This weekend’s escapist, lighthearted superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog will take a look at the 30th Century Legion of Superheroes. DC fans are still saying I don’t cover enough DC characters, so here we go.
LEGION OF SUPERHEROES (Superboy starring the …) Vol 1 #203 (August 1974)
Title: Massacre by Remote Control
Legion Roster: Sun Boy, Phantom Girl, Invisible Kid, Superboy, Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad, Mon-El, Brainiac 5, Dream Girl, Karate Kid and Element Lad
Villain: Validus
Synopsis: Mon-El, the current leader of the Legion, is outraged that Invisible Kid has been letting his relationship with a woman from the invisible dimension – Myla – interfere with his obligations to the team.
Eventually, Dream Girl has a dream foretelling an imminent attack by Validus – the huge, mindless monster who is strong enough to take on entire teams of Legionnaires at once. Because Validus is usually harmless unless controlled psychically by its fellow Fatal Five member Tharok, the Legion makes sure that the cyborg Tharok is still safely incarcerated at Space Prison Complex X33.
Not only is the villain still in custody, but he has been undergoing repairs to some of the cybernetic devices in his brain, meaning he cannot be mentally controlling Validus at all.
When Validus ultimately attacks Legion headquarters in future Metropolis, he is routing the heroes while withstanding all their counterattacks. Invisible Kid at first seems to have abandoned his post to dally with Myla but it turns out he actually solved the problem at hand.
In the Legion trophy room, the Kid has deduced that components of Tharok’s brain that are on display (These are the good guys, right?) have activated themselves and THEY have summoned Validus to attack them. Continue reading →