If you haven’t received your weekly shipment of goodness, and you haven’t read Matthew’s review of JSA #6, then you are missing out on a key moment in Legion of Super-Hero history. Now if you have read JSA #6, but are wondering if the tale Superman tells everyone of the resurrection of Lighting Lad really happened, Major Spoilers brings you a then and now look at the tale in question.
Then
Adventure Comics #312: Months before, Lightning Lad was killed in action, and the Legion of Super-Heroes vowed they would never forget him until they found a way to bring him back to life. The heroes find a way, but it will cost another member’s life.
Now
Justice Society of America #6: Superman recounts the tale. WE ARE LEGION!
What I love about the art by Dale Eaglesham is the slight modifications to Superman in the right side of the split panel that shows the Big S with a build slightly smaller than the modern day version. I also love the fact he placed the characters in the same positions as the original tale. Very well done.
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Lightning Lad had died several months earlier in a battle with Zaryan the Conqueror (later retconned to be a member of the Khund race), but the theory was that, by holding aloft the lightning rods, one of the Legionnaires would be struck, and their life force would jump-start LL’s body again. His beloved Saturn Girl took the fatal shot, but as Lightning Lad awoke, she melted into a puddle of goo… It was revealed that Chameleon’s Boy’s ‘pet,’ Proty (a card carrying member of the Legion of Super-Pets) had taken her place and died.
Later on, in volume 4, Keith Giffen and the Bierbaums gave us the shocking revelation that Proty did it because he LOVED Saturn Girl, and that Lightning Lad WAS DEAD and remained so. All the lightning did was transfer Proty’s essence into Garth’s body, and that it was HE who wooed S.G. and had four kids with her. This, understandably, was a less-than-universally-lauded plot point.
In either case, much thanks to Stephen for hitting on this and saving me a dig through my back issue Legion box (now apparently a permanent fixture in next to my writing chair due to Hero History commitments.)
So PROTY is the one they will resurrect in the Lightning saga :D
As a new reader I find the tale disturbing. Resurrection is a strange idea to begin with and to do so they had to sacrifice another life, this is a zero sum game. And the Proty stuff, well…
Backs away slowly from comics.
Hiya: Well we are talking about the Silver Age of comics here, so resurrection in the form of a lightning strike shouldn’t seem that strange at all. However, the idea of suicide is rather disturbing, so that may be why they decided to pull the Proty card – as it/he was a pet – it doesn’t conflict with human sacrifice. However jumping ahead to V4, things do get a bit strange, that is until Zero Hour rebooted the series mid-stream (issue 61 end of original LoSH, issue 62 reboot) that things started to make much more sense.
Interestingly issue #62 of V4 was were I jumped on board and began to enjoy the tales Waid and McCraw were telling.
Hang in there Hiya, things will make sense eventually – like next summer during Final Crisis.
And remember: Final Crisis will count towards half of your Crisis grade for the semester, so make sure and take copious notes, dammit! :)
OHMIGOD! I need to pay attention or my comics grade is going to suck and Stinky will kill me! :-)
I’m ambivalent about the idea of yet another crisis so soon after IC. I’ve heard that COIE was published twenty years before IC to patch continuity holes. There will always be continuity holes to patch going forward, if the third crisis is really the final one, aren’t DC writers burning their ships by doing that? Oh well, in a few years DC can still publish TCWWNRITTCHRFSOR, The Crisis Which Was Not Registered In The 31th Century History Records For Some Odd Reason.
Ah crap, I forgot that this version of LSH is from the 30th Century!