Cover date: July-Aug. 1974, Cover cost .20 Cents, Story: Cary Bates, Art: Mike Grell.
It is dark when 4 black clad individuals approach the wall of the Legion Citadel. Each member of the foursome dressed from head to toe in black spandex, the only identifying marking is a roman numeral on the chest of each of them. A man with the numeral "I" smashes through the wall. In a monitor room else where in the headquarters an alarm goes off. Mon-El tells Sun boy to alert the others.
Number I tells his group to split up and that they only need one of them to get through to accomplish their mission. Number one enters the building through a ventilation duct. A shapely woman with "III" on her chest comments to the man marked with "IV" that no one will expect an invasion from underground. IV touches the ground and an electrical burst digs a whole in the ground. Number II says he will make his own entrance using his special power to turn a section of the wall into sand.
Deep within the ventilation shaft number I is almost home free when a flash of light blinds him, he loses his grip and falls to the floor, and to the feet of Sun boy the legionnaire who generates awesome amounts of light and heat. In the lowermost level of the fortress another electrical burst clears the way for III and IV. Mon-El who is as powerful as Superboy was patrolling the level , uses his super strong and elastic cape to to tie the couple up. The final intruder successfully penetrates the Legions Museum. He takes a small microscopic fuse from a hidden pocket and counts backwards from 5. When he reaches 0 and infra red glow encases the entire edifice. Superboy tells Sun Boy to search every chamber while he heads to the museum. The last man in black tells Superboy he is too late and that he knows what the infra-red effect meant. It meant that number II won and the legion lost. The man in black removes his mask to reveal that he is Element Lad the legionnaire who can transform one element into another by his sheer will power. Superboy congratulates Jan on winning the practice drill, and if this was for real an intruder could detonate a bomb instead of a harmless infra-red cocoon. The pair continues to talk when the other three members of Element Lad's squad enters sans their masks. Karate Kid aka I, Lightning Lad, II, and III the beautiful Phantom Girl. Mon-El enters the room mad as hell demanding to know where the member who was suppose to be on duty in the museum is. Invisible kids materializes in front of the group and collapses to the the ground.
Mon-El rushes Lyle Norg the Invisible kid to the Legion's advanced medical Lab where Brainiac-5 gives a quick examine. The Legion's super genius finds that Lyle is suffering from shock, and states that something must of happened to him while he was invisible. Brainiac-5 uses the Mento-Scanner to probe the memory cells of his patient. On the screen it shows Lyle's recent memories, It shows an invisible world and Lyle meeting with a beautiful ghostly woman named Myla. Myla tells the invisible kid something but all of a sudden the screen explodes. At the same time the mento-screen violently shatters, Invisible kid wakes up with memory of what happens, he drops the subject and leaves the medical lab.Brainiac-5 deduces that what ever Myla told the kid was so startling it sent him into sudden shock, a shock so severe his brain jolted the scanner with an overload. Brainiac-5 diagnoses that the kid is suffering from hysterical amnesia and does not remember what Myla told him that sent him into shock. The next day Invisible kid is back in the museum talking to Phantom Girl. The kid shows Phantom girl how he sees the invisible world of Myla, and that soon he is going to ask her to marry him and come to our world. Throughout the last couple of days the separated parts of Tharoks electronic brain reassemble itself. That night A scream goes out through the headquarters. It is coming from Dream Girl's quarters, her powers gave her a dream of Validus attacking the legion. The only person that could order the mindless Validus is Tharok the Leader of the Fatal Five. Tharok is millions of miles away in a space prison. Saturn girl is picking up thought waves from Tharok summoning Validus. Superboy takes off to check out the space prison while Mon-El puts the headquarters on Red Alert.
Soon on Space Prison complex x33, the warden tells the boy of steel that Tharok is not behind the attack on the legion, Tharok who had been injured in a recent battle with the Legion, (some of his brain components dislodged and are now in Legion custody,) is going through emergency surgery to keep his robot half from breaking down.
Invisible Kids is back on duty in the museum and Brainiac-5, Sun boy and Phantom Girl are in the main control room. They noticed a large blip on the radar, and a smaller blip coming to intercept it. The large blip turns out to be Validus and the smaller blip is Superboy. As Superboy attacks the giant sized monsters he thinks to himself that he knows what is behind the attack. Superboy is stunned by an energy charge and is thrown earthward and crashes through the roof of the Legion's headquarters.
Before the team can come to the aid of their fallen comrade Validus smashes through the wall. Karate Kid and Sun Boy try and hold off Validus while Phantom Girl and Brainiac-5 go and alert the others. Validus makes short work of Sun Boy and Karate Kid and continues on deeper into the headquarters. Phantom girl tries to warn Invisible Kid in the museum but he is no where around. Else where Mon-El tries to stop Validus but is stop by near lethal energy bolts. At the same time an invisible Invisible kid has figured out that Tharoks brain component are still active and is signaling Validus. Just before he can dismantle the brain Validus bursts into the room and picks up invisible kid while the kids holds the glowing brain in his hand. As Validus squeezes the life out the Kid, Lyle cracks the brain in his hand. Moments later the mindless Validus no longer controlled by the brain components flees the citadel unaware of the havoc he had wrought. The team burst into the museum to see Lyle's lifeless body. Myla appears in her ghostly form and tells them that she is from a dimension of the dead and somehow Lyle could journey there while still alive. She told lLyle that she was dead and that what sent him into shock. But now that he his no longer living she will take good care of him in her world. The team is sad for losing a comrade but happy to know that Myla and Invisible Kid will be together for Eternity.
Bits of Legionnaire Business:
ROLL CALL:
- Mon-El (Leader)
- Superboy
- Phantom Girl
- Invisible Kid (Lyle Norg)
- Sun Boy
- Element Lad (Jan Arrah)
- Karate Kid
- Lightning Lad
- Brainiac-5
- Dream Girl
- Saturn Girl
- Legion Museum
- Advanced Medical Lab
- Dream Girl's Quarters
- Main Control Room
- Mento-Scanner
- Radar
- Space Prison x33
- Space Prison.
This has to be the longest synopsis I have written yet, this is a full length 21 page story. The issue really gives Mike Grell a great start to his run as Legion penciller. Nice to see the Legion testing their readiness against an attack, but I wonder why they did not test any of their security devices? Except for Phantom Girl you can tell by the use of powers which of the Legion are in the black suits. As I mentioned a previous blog, Bates teams up Lightning lad and Phantom girl again, still not sure if he was planning to make them a romantic item. I question when Mon-El ties up the disguised Lightning Lad and Phantom girl why Phantom girl did not use her powers to escape, she was not shown using her powers at all in this issue. I liked seeing the statue of Ferro Lad in the museum. The Mindless Validus is a great foe to put against the team, he beats them easily. Validus is a foe that should only be able to be stopped by teamwork of some of the more powerful members. I like that they do not stop him, it shows how unstoppable he really is. Once a gain we get Dream girl in her night gown, not a complaint.
Dream girl's appearance is short and is only there to tell the team about Validus. she only is shown in two panels. Which is the same as Saturn girl.
We see parts of Tharok's robotic brain that came loose in their last adventure against him. Huh? Last time we saw Tharok he was locked in the Legion's brig with out any of the team laying a hand on him. This might of happened in one of the many untold tales that pop up from time to time.
Okay again we combined the word space with another to get a useless term: Space Prison. So far in our coverage we got Space prison and Space Passport.
I do not feel bad about the death of Invisible Kid, this was the best he was used in years and he was not a well drawn out characters, but at this time who was?
Invisible Kid RIP.
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| Lyle Norg Born: ? Died: 2974
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