I remember 1968, and I remember that I was into comic books at that age…but I sure don’t remember that the patriarchy was this dominant, and clueless.
Remember, kids, be nice to your girlfriends so that they’ll squelch any uppity feminists who threaten your dominance!
They actually did that story twice…Adventure #326 and #368, IIRC.
After all, the Legion of Super-Heroes did feature someone saying “This mission is too dangerous for a girl!” in about half their Silver Age stories, in spite of the fact that one of their girl members was, well, Supergirl.
That is why I read Marvel comics. DC was for Republicans. Actually, I dont know why I read Marvel comics over DC back then, but I think they were a bit more cutting edge.
I didn’t have a lot of choice in what comics I read — I got most of mine from the Goodwill and Salvation Army. That was back in the days when moms would throw out a kid’s comics, which were usually just piled loosely in a dresser drawer. You’d go down to the local thrift shop, where there’d be a grouchy old lady who’d say, “gimme a dollar, kid, and you can take that whole box o’ crap away,” and you’d get to come home with a whole orange crate stacked full of tattered, well-read comics. And we’d read ’em all.
I don’t get the whole plastic sleeve, price proportional to age scene in modern comic book shops.
In Jim Shooter’s defense, he started writing for LSH when he was 13. Even if this wasn’t a reprint, he would have been 16 at the time the comic was released. Heh I sort of miss the silliness that was LSH (sob!).
My exposure to the Legion of Superheroes was the mid-late ’70s version, starting during Mike Grell’s run as artist on the series. I was just thinking you could call this the bathing suit era of the Legion, since a lot of the female costumes, and Cosmic Boy’s, looked very close to ’70s swimwear. Saturn Girl’s pink bikini type outfit is a classic example.
A big conceptual problem with the classic Legion(I won’t comment on the later reboots since I know nothing of them) was that many of its members had powers that were common to all people of the planets they came from. So the only thing that actually made them superheroes is that they weren’t lazy like the rest of their fellow citizens!
As noted, when Shooter started selling to DC, he was 13, and wrote the Legion for years after.
And Saturn Girl was the leader during most of that time.
But dissing the LSH in the early Sixties for being silly: this was a group whose “clubhouse” was an upsidedown rocketship stuck in the ground. It had Bouncing Boy and Matter-Eater Lad.
What wasn’t effing idiotic about it?
(Not that I didn’t love it; but to point out that it was childish isn’t exactly an insight; the readership was age 7-11.)
Now, the Legion reboots in the Eighties: try those.
If you haven’t seen Alan Moore’s (et al) graphic novel Supreme, you should! He revisits the whole Superman archetype over the decades, (up to the 90’s or so) with much loving teasing.
(“Supreme” goes in search of his roots… he eventually finds them tied into a Mobius strip!).
At one point, his JLA-analogue is flying through mindspace, passing the time by discussing their past adventures. At one point his black/peer-female analogue Suprema comments about the fifties “got tied up too often… that whole decade, every other month, somebody trying to enslave me. Anyone else get that?” “Umm… no.” Another teammate comments “old days, not so good. Too many changes. Got turned into statues, bushes, empty suits…”. (both approximate)
The really impressive thing is while Moore matches the plot styles, his drawing team matches the drawing styles, for all the decades from the 40’s up through at least the 90’s. Each in the appropriate “flashback” and “historical” episodes, including several “side branches”. Much meta-commentary throughout….