The Stop Button

Mike Grell gets an inker for his pencils on the feature, but Bob Wiacek doesn’t bring anything to improve on them. In fact, the figures might be worse. Some of the close-ups, from certain angles, are better than usual for Grell. Not so the rest.

Cary Bates contributes the script, which has Tyroc rampaging around Metropolis, angry the Legion doesn’t want to move its headquarters to his island. Even without the later clarifying details, it’s an incredibly thin setup. We get the science police complaining to the Legion, the Legion revealing Tyroc’s having a tantrum, and then the Legion going after him. They catch up to him at a park, where they capture him.

Not the end of the story by a long shot because then the Legionnaires show up at the jail with another suspect and a whole story about how Tyroc has been framed. If only it weren’t a way for Bates to kill two pages before wiping the stakes and loosing Tyroc back onto the unsuspecting populace. What could be causing the Legion’s latest member to break so badly? Just hang on for two more narrative feints, and Bates will explain everything!

The remainder of the story is then Bates backfilling on the reasoning for a bunch of other details throughout. The whole thing’s set up to have the reader, the public, and some of the Legionnaires convinced Tyroc isn’t Legion material (seriously, he was the first Black guy on the team, and they gave him this story). It’s unremarkably bad, except in the historical sense. And to see how an inker can somehow make Grell’s figures worse. Superboy goes from having a bulky torso and skinny legs to a skinny torso with skinny legs.

Jim Shooter, Mike Nasser, and Bob Layton contribute the backup. Superboy, Timber Wolf, and Lightning Lass are going to a faraway planet for some celebration. The president of Earth couldn’t be bothered to attend. On the way, they watch their favorite superhero movies starring Questar, who will also be at the ceremony.

I assume Shooter didn’t know he’d be following up a feature with a multiple narrative switchbacks, so when he does two of his own… well, it rounds out the issue overall, I guess.

The art’s not as good as the feature, which isn’t a particularly high bar, but either Nasser or Layton doesn’t understand how fingers look. There are other things they don’t understand, but not knowing how fingers look….

It’s a particularly bad finish for Superboy, too. He comes off like a callous prick.

The feature’s tedious and unrewarding. The backup’s more of the same.