Adventure Comics 267

[knight_moves]

Geez, what is this, the Marvel Universe?





Okay, I know this is going to go south on him, but it'll have to be something a reasonable person would be able to see coming, right, and not some obscenely improbable coincidence?



Not his dog. NOT HIS DOG!





They're headed for a planet dedicated to venerating Superboy, which turns out to be a trap!



Okay, who would've guessed that Manchester Black's whole shtick is just a pale reflection of what Saturn Girl pulled on him? She made his parents say they wished they could send him back to the orphanage! That girl is sick, man, wrong!

Fortunately, a disaster occurs which threatens the lives of the Legion of Superheroes. Clark, now freed, saves them.



I noticed no one actually apologized for their little adventure in profiling. Especially not Saturn Girl. Do you think someone is capable of doing those things without getting a sick kick out of them? Oh, sure, I bet it was all in the line of duty for that little sadist.

Comments

[scorntx]

So, the Legion of Super-Heroes decide to utterly psychologically destroy Superboy, mess with the minds of his parents, his dog, and everyone in Smallville, simply from a few minutes of footage on a machine that isn't working properly.
...
Why do I get this feeling that, rather than hurling that thing into the nearest volcano, they just kept using it?

[john_drake1964]

Isn't this the same team that sometimes uses a device that flings miniatures of planets at team-members to decide mission lineups?

[iamrman]

Then there's all the mind wiping the Legion did to Superboy. Who did they think they were, Professor Xavier?

[cygnia]

And perhaps these are the roots of later Superdickery, when the pattern of abuse is taken up by the victim to become the tormentor himself...

[mastermahan]

Kal-El was inspired to commit Superdickery by the Legion, who were themselves inspired by historical records of Superdickery. It's the cycle of abuse, only time travel makes it an ouroboros.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Yeah, I don't think I'd be so quick to forgive...

[tcampbell1000]

You might think this is an especially weird take from Superman's original co-creator, but by this point, Siegel was not the driving creative force on Superman. Mort Weisinger was firmly steering the ship, and there was one story type he loved above all others: "People acting assholishly out of character for reasons that we'll explain in the last few pages." Much of what was later called "Superdickery" was directly tied to Weisinger and his influence.

Sadly, there was no eleventh-hour explanation for why Weisinger was so mean to everyone he worked with. Turns out he was just a dick!

I sometimes feel like Weisinger's approach was a forerunner for a lot of comics-arc writing today, the kinds of stories that fans complain about the wrongness of but can't stop buying. But that's more of a topic than I can really get into tonight.

[knight_moves]

I actually find some Roald Dahl darkness to this that I think explains why it was so popular with kids. When you're at a certain age sometimes it really does feel like everyone just hates you for no reason.

A bit like a horror movie Final Girl, Clark (or Lois or Jimmy) endures everything that's thrown at him, then the ending reveals that everything is really fine and he gets rewarded for being such a good egg. Combine that with the clickbaity covers and this stuff must've been like crack to your average twelve-year-old.

Of course the "actually Superman would never do such a thing without a good reason" and "everything goes back to normal with the hero getting rewarded" is now left out of the formula, which makes it all just kinda depressing.

[knight_moves]

I mean, I make fun of how this would play if it were happening to real people, but as a fairy tale for ten-year-olds, it's a great vicarious little thrill ride. Like a bite-size, age-appropriate Grey's Anatomy.

[tcampbell1000]

Oh, agreed. It did get formulaic in Weisinger's day, but it's a formula that really worked.

[huntleyhaverstock]

These old Superman stories fascinate me because they're full of adults acting like children. I think I read somewhere that the writers were deliberately trying to emulate the psychology of kids so that kids would relate to the stories. Or maybe, like T said, Weisenger was just a jerk.

Also, it's interesting how they gloss over the fact that the U.S. government manufactured, apparently in large quantities, a poison gas so terrible it must never be used.

[metadronos]

Golden and Silver Age writers definitely knew their audience, which was indeed mostly (though by no means exclusively) young kids back then. It's the same reason that Superman, though attracted to Lois (and, early on, very much showing that attraction as Clark), would always flee or at least resist whenever she tried to get kissy-huggy, or to talk marriage. It's as though Superman feared catching cooties from her!

[superfangirl1]

Tech malfunction or trickery? Good logic guess by Superboy at the end. lol