^^^EXTRA^^^ Superboy # 147, May/June, 1968

Here's the one-off LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES 80 Page Giant that appeared under the SUPERBOY banner. I mentioned it yesterday and got everything about it completely wrong so I thought we should take a closer look at it, starting with the absolutely lovely faces on the cover drawn by the unlikely team of Curt Swan and Neal Adams.

I had said yesterday that this reprinted the Lightning Lad Saga but that was actually later. This one was highlighted by an all-new attempt at the Legion's origin, written by DC's continuity king, E. Nelson Bridwell and drawn by Pete Costanza. The rest of the issue is rounded out with pre-LEGION series that tie in to LSH continuity. These include some Superboys, a Supergirl and a Supermanfeaturing the first, almost throwaway, Adult Legion appearance.

Adventure Comics # 368, May, 1968

More coasting, more revolting girls, another nice Adamscover  and some nice interior Swan/Klein art. 

Since ADVENTURE never did get its own 80 Page Giant in the Silver Age, it was left to a SUPERBOY 80 Page Giant to reprint the Death of Lightning Lad saga previously published here.

Ultra Boy proves to be the winner of the election for new Legion leader amongst the fans in the letters column of recent issues. 

Unfortunately, 1968 would prove to me to be the year that many DC titles "jumped the shark."Among those I found myself liking less and less were the two seen here, THE ATOM and CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN.

Even the TV shows weren't quite as good as they had been just a season earlier. I was not a big fan of THE INVADERS.

Adventure Comics # 367, April, 1968

Another Neal Adams cover for another important but not exactly well-done issue. This ish introduces not just the new LSH headquarters but also The Controllers and that great Deus Ex Machina of future plotlines, The Miracle Machine. 

Adventure Comics # 366, March, 1968

Another great Adams cover. By this point, Neal was becoming the main cover artist at DC although Infantino has been said to have continued most of the designs for the covers. The story itself, although featuring the first return of The Fatal Five, is pretty threadbare. We do see Shadow Lass as a full member, though, and the destruction of the Legion's distinctive rocketship clubhouse, setting up the upcoming appearance of their impossible to draw the same way twice HQ.

Adventure Comics # 365, February, 1968

A nice Neal Adams cover but another lackluster issue, made memorable by the debut of Shadow Lass who was foreshadowed in the Adult Legion story. This story came in short, even, leading to eight pages of yet another "Meet the Legion" kind of thing.

Adventure Comics # 364, January, 1968

Here's another issue where, in my opinion, the ads were better than the story, an old-fashioned Super-Pets tale. Pete Costanza just never seemed to fit the Legion to me, although I enjoyed him at ACG and Fawcett and even at DC on JIMMY OLSEN.