Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Karate Kid

"Dr.Venom bade me welcome you to this edition of Gone and Forgotten..."

"I am Jena, villainous lackey with a heart of gold and possible love interest for the hero of the eponymous and godawful story STAR-KING, the backup feature from Amazing Wahoo. I only appeared in the last three panels of the story, and even then I was so strung out on cheap talcum-cut cocaine that I barely remember it at all.

Hell, most of the Eighties are a total blur. I started off as Doctor Venom's receptionist, back when he ran an orthodontics practice in Burbank. We ended up in bed together, and he got me all swept up in his dreams of super-villainy, but he abandoned me on the movie set in Italy where we were doing "Star-King." I kinda let myself go wild, there - did a coupla spreads in European skin mags, ran heroin through the Netherlands. I'm going to night school now, and I've rejoined the Baptist church. I'm trying to find a man who doesn't drink or yell at me."

"Well, enough about me...There's a new comic to review ..."

...except Karate Kid (awww). From DC's on-again-off-again attempts of the Seventies, here's what I believe to be the only comic book featuring a kung-fu artist from the future ... though I expect to be proven wrong.

Our Karate Kid is actually Val Armorr, a citizen of 30th-Century Earth and a member of DC's perennial fan-favorite team book, the Legion of Super-Heroes. Feeling his "powers" don't quite match up to the earth-shattering abilities of his allies -- and how could he compare to super-powered teens who make "zap," "bam," "pow," and "bzzzz" noises with such relative ease -- he hops a Time Bubble and heads for an era where his intensive training in assorted martial arts could be put to better use.

The Boxer Rebellion!

No no, I kid. He goes to (naturally) 20th century Earth* where - instead of having to match up to human-powerhouses like Mon-El, genius intellects like Braniac 5 and energy wielding wonders like Sun Boy - he merely has to compete in the same arena with human-powerhouses like Superman, genius intellects like Batman, and energy-wielding wonders like Firestorm, the Nuclear Man.

Despite his timely themes, the Kid actually predates the martial arts craze that raged through comics in the mid-Seventies; he is far less contemporaneous with Bruce Lee's Enter The Dragon than he is with Bruce Lee's Kato ... Karate Kid first appeared in Adventure Comics' Legion feature back in the Sixties.

However, Lee's seminal Enter the Dragon debuts in 1973 and by 1974 martial arts comic books are beginning to flood the market. As Marvel (and several 'upstart' companies) start to find a sufficiently profitable cult success with martial arts-themed books like Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu, DC promotes Karate Kid to his own title while creating another equally short-lived kung-fu book, Richard Dragon.

Karate Kid sure did try, and there's a few things I enjoyed about it. Like a number of DC's short-lived Seventies titles, the Kid got to test his skills out on perennial bad guys Neo-Nazis - in this case, the thinly-disguised snappy dressers in bright red costumes, the NuRike (One-half the calories of a regular Reich)!

Also - and this is wholly the effect of artists Ric Estrada (no, not that Ric Estrada) and Joe Staton - Val's New York is a cartoony, desolate landscape or surreal proportions. Buildings are terrific monoliths in an indeterminate distance, often lonely pillars against a red background unmarked by similar towers and buildings. And the splash panel of issue two is a dreamy Eisner-esque ... well, sort of, I guess ... liquid landscape that peels itself right off the page and into a Riverdance performance. It's bizarre. I kinda like it.

And although the splash page of the second issue promised "Martial Arts Action like you've never seen before!" it actually delivered Martial Arts diagramming like you've never seen before. Perhaps taking its lead from DC's long tradition of adding "scientific facts" to its stories (Anyone here remember "Flash Facts?" or those Planetary Science bits they used to run in Mystery In Space?), KK:the book doesn't actually so much show the martial arts action as it does an occasional diorama explaining the action

*Seems whenever a Legionnaire gets a mini-series, it's to introduce him to modern day 20th century Earth. Valor (nee Mon-El) started off as a twentieth century hero, and although his fan base was created in the pages of the futuristic Legion of Super-Heroes, his series placed Valor in the early Nineties. Cosmic Boy's mid-Eighties miniseries had him travel to then-modern-day America, and Timber Wolf - in a miniseries which ran shortly after Valor's - ends up in San Francisco, also modern day.

• Martial Arts Mayhem At Its Mightiest!
• Karate Comments? They couldn't come up with a better name?

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: When The Legion Was Innocent

When the Legion was young and innocent

Whoa whoa whoa, Mon-El, who the hell was talking about Hitler?

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #208

Over the weekend, I was reading a copy of Superboy (and the Legion of Super-Heroes) #208, one of those giant-size comics loaded with reprints. They had a story in the very back titled something like "The Evil Hand of the Luck Lords," which is about as obtuse a title as humanly possible, really.

Anyway, it's actually an above-average story for the era, and the Curt Swan art is some top-of-the-game stuff, hands down. The story centers around the often luckless Legionnaires - trust me, even the X-Men take a back seat to the Legion, in terms of hardship and loss. Members keep dying, losing body parts, getting abducted or going nuts, it's fucking endless - suddenly getting clued into some universal trend of good and bad luck of which they're sure they must be part.

Adolescent thoughts began to wander as to the ineffable mysteries of the universe, and specifically as to whether members may have brought bad luck on themselves by making unintended, unlucky portents. For instance, just before Lightning Lad went on to single-handedly fight the skyscraper-sized atomic whale monster from space which claimed his right arm, he stepped on a planetoid with his left foot, and of course that's why he probably barely escaped with his life from a monster that's like twelve Hulks riding Godzilla. BAD LUCK!

Anyway, where I'm going with this: There's a scene where the assorted bad-luck Legionnaires get together and commiserate about their respective problems, and they think to bring visual aids. Seriously, check this out:

Duo Damsel thought to bring three statues of herself, to teach the kids at home about basic math. What's really killing me is Bouncing Boy, who lost his super-bouncing ability (I'm not making this up) and chooses to showcase the fact by bringing a photo of his formerly fat ass. I fucking love this. He looks like the futuristic Jared. (Also, check out Star Boy looking forlornly at his show-and-tell item. "I -- I brought this interesting rock I found.")

Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel are at it again, here on the cover.

At least Duo Damsel's is some sort of memorial to her dead triplet self, I really don't think Bouncing Boy needs to remind everyone how fat he used to be. "Hey guys, remember when you left me at that buffet because I was face-down in the egg salad and I couldn't hear you shouting at me to get my lard butt into the minivan already? Remember? I brought a picture!"

So anyway, at some point, Lightning Lad decides to seek out the mythical Luck Lords on his own, making this declaration:

But when we look at the Legionnaires he actually chooses to take with him, notice who's missing:

Hey, Duo Damsel's there! And all she has is the power to be most guys' fantasy! Why did Bouncing Boy get left out? I suspect several key panels were left out of the story for editorial reasons. I have recreated them as I suspect they must have originally been penned:

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Reader-Submitted Legion Costumes

Reader-Submitted Legion Costumes

Adventure Comics #403 - besides being a giant-size issue reprinting several of the Legion of Super-Heroes' most dizzingly improbable escapades (complete with editorial footnotes gamely attempting to make sense of the mess - these poor old cats would've had heart attacks if they'd had to ride herd on Zero Hour ...) - showcases one of my favorite (and long forgotten) features in old school comics: COSTUMES SUBMITTED BY READERS! These things almost ALWAYS suck!

It's hard to do wrong by the Legion of Superheroes, a team of fashion-challenged tyros who often resorted to writing their names on their shirts, like it was a really retarded space camp. Also, right out of the gate, you've got to beat waist-bearing belly-covering cuts, flared shoulders, short pants with patriot boots and copious pinkness.

Possibly making it worse, the costumes actually got used (See Superboy #183) and at least two of them were used long-term.

We start off with Duo Damsel, who wears a bisected orange-and-purple costume which advertises her love of Nerds candies. When she activates her sole power - which is to say, when there's MORE THAN ONE normal human being where once there was, you know, ONLY one previously - "One of me wears purple," as she explains, "while the OTHER wears orange." This is a costume consciously designed to rub in her face the fact that her THIRD body is dead, dead, dead ...

Paul Decker of Oconomowoc predicts the whims and tendencies of an entire internet subculture by hypersexualizing Phantom Girl. Or, to some perspectives, he crammed her into really unflattering Frederick's of Hollywood fashions. Either way, I really like slowly pronouncing Oconomowoc in my head every time I have to type it.

I'm not sure if it's the stockings or the absurdly gigantic disco medallion I adore more. All I DO know is that this is comics, and so that goddamn medallion would have been stuffed with crime-fighting gadgets and space cameras and nutrition pills and so on. I mean, if Daredevil's cane had a radio transmitter and speed jammed in the handle, this 30th-century eyesore's bound to have a flat HDTV screen, a couch and a butterfly vibrator.

"Light Lass here..." to bring you an in-flight magazine! Here's Ayla Ranzz during her brief stint as the Legion Cruiser's first and only flight attendant. She made the peanuts float! I know that doesn't sound like much, but you really had to be there.

Sockitome, Sacagawea. How do YOU like this way out costume? I kind of don't, a lot!

I guess we're uncovering the greatest flaw with the Legion of Super-Heroes as a concept, endemic to its very nature - how do you create a believable world of the distant future, without defying contemporary concepts of modern fashion, style and design sensibility. Well, I'm sure that requires a complicated explanation, but I know for a fact that at least part of the equation is DON'T MAKE NONE OF THEM A GODDAMN HIPPY!

It's great that Shrinking Violet goes from the character too timid to speak up to being the character who goes on for hours about why brown rice is better than white rice and never stops quoting the Bhagavad-Gita.

Cosmic Boy in uniform looks a lot like Cosmic Boy in forgetting to wear his shoes and shorts. Cosmic Boy cannot win. You remember his first costume, right? The one that included a bubble-helmet and his name on the chest, all compounded by the fact that his original super-power was MAGNETIC EYES OF SUPER POWER which meant you could blind him with a drawerful of forks. Then he got stuck in some stiff-collared dealie which was, I'm pretty sure, the 30th-century equivalent of a sweater vest, AND THEN HE WORE A SWEATER VEST! No joke! Some super black chest-baring short-pants-and-vest combination that ... that ... Jeezy creezy. WITH GLOVES, he wore it!

To me, Cosmic Boy is eternally the guy who "just never gets it." I think this costume sums it up nicely. "Hey guys, this is GREAT, isn't it? My aunt made it for me!"

Here, Karate Kid displays his great affection for Spanish-language pop band Mano Negra. 'Nuff said.

"Someone who calls himself 'Master O'," starts Ultra Boy, "Is cruising for a fucking bruising. Seriously, I'm fucking coming for you!"

No, this is just what he's thinking, to be sure. Was this monstrosity ever used? And ... and if so, WHY? Apparently Master O "dreamed up" the outfit, which is why Master O needs to be taking his medication. Still, if you put an overcoat on Ultra Boy, bam, you've got a true-to-life Jim Lee costume design right there.

Here's Shadow Lass, wearing a "futuristic fashion," which is probably true because it'll be a long time before this eyesore comes into style. Unless you're on the world of Gor, I suppose. Or you're James T.Kirk, in which case this is honey-bait. I also love the comic book design mentality where, when you're composing a costume with one primary color being dominant, you highlight the damn thing with its opposite. Blue and orange? Yeah, that's fantastic!

Here's irony for you: Princess Projectra's costume, what's that look like to you? If you say "The Animated series Supergirl," bam, well done. Also, get out more.

But yeah, it's fantastic that this ghastly design from the heart of the Seventies reassembles itself in the early nineties as, you know, fashionable girl-positive styles. Oh ho.

"I'm Lightning Lad, and Barbara Jean Scott of San Antonio, Tex., thought I should have a more casual uniform." Uh-huh. Look, nothing says "Stick up your ass" like a leisure suit. And one with a cape, no less!

Paul Decker - he designed the Phantom Girl costume - ALSO designed a couple costumes for the Legion of Substitute Heroes! Like this one for Night Girl, which can now be seen on many strippers these days. Paul Decker is truly fantastic. I kind of hope he has a website. (It's not too much of stretch to assume that they're talking about the same Paul Decker here, are they? Matter-Eater Lad/Element Lad slash fanfiction, erotic Phantom Girl and Night Girl art ... HOW WAS THIS GUY THE INTERNET BEFORE THEY INVENTED THE INTERNET??? )

Paul also designed this Chlorophyll Kid costume. You know what I have to say about it? NOT ENOUGH SKIN!

Also, his belt has pouches to hold seeds. That sounds dirty.

And we wrap up with the costume Saturn Girl wears to PTA meetings.

If it gets too hot, I take off my pants. Saturn Girl and I have a lot in common.