The Stop Button

Ah, yes, the valiant superheroes of the future… who are willing to sacrifice a little kid’s life because they don’t like him. Well, not all of them, but definitely Wildfire and maybe Karate Kid. Thank goodness Superboy (with his forty-five-year-old Grell features) is there to remind them they’re not supposed to let innocent people die just because they’re unpleasant.

The Legion’s on an automated factory planet. The planet’s been attacking ships trying to land, including one after the Legion arrives. Superboy saves the ship’s pilot before the planet’s lasers zap it. Turns out the pilot is an obnoxious little kid (who barely seems aware of the Legion, which ought to be interesting but isn’t), son of the planet’s owner.

Too bad the villain turns out to be a fired overseer who hates the planet’s owner and would kill the kid at the first opportunity. So Superboy does his best to try to keep the kid safe, even as the kid thinks the heroes are just trying to cramp his style. Wildfire takes a different approach—let the kid die so the Legion can escape.

Maybe if writer Jim Shooter had a better moral compass, the story would read better; as is, the reader’s supposed to identify with Wildfire but eventually agree with Superboy, who’s actually not showing all his cards. So… the needs of the few only outweigh the needs of the many when you’re playing with marked cards.

At the very least, there are a couple okay big action splashes from Mike Grell. They’re usually cushioned with some strangely distorted human faces or whatever’s going on with Wildfire’s helmet, but there are at least a couple okay visual moments.

The backup—Grell on pencils, Cary Bates writing, Bill Draut on inks—is about Brainiac-5 trying to help Shrinking Violet with a mental health issue. She’s just had a nasty near accident with another Legionnaire in the gym—she almost got stomped on—and now she can’t shrink any more. Brainy ignores Saturn Girl’s “professional” psychiatric advice on how to deal with it and pushes forward with an extreme treatment.

It’s a terribly plotted story—the first few pages are all talking heads about Violet’s problems (talking about her, she’s not conscious for it because she’s so near her mental breaking point), then there’s some setup of Brainy’s treatment idea. But then the actual action of the story is barely a page and a half, and it’s… about getting stuck in a big ball of wire.

Once again, Brainiac-5 doesn’t seem very smart at all.

Overall, however, the issue’s nowhere near as bad as its creators can get. Unless, of course, you want your superheroes helping people instead of pushing them under busses.