In the Smallville Mailsack page of Adventure
Comics 304 (Jan. 1963), reader Buddy LaVigne of Northbrook, IL, wrote, “I
suggest a new character, Polar Boy, who has the power of freezing to ice
anything in his area.”
From that suggestion came not just
a new character but a new team based on a fresh and contradictory concept: superheroes
who were inferior.
Winners who were “losers.”
Created by writer Edmond Hamilton
and artist John Forte in Adventure Comics
306 (March 1963), the plight of the Substitute Heroes touched me at once.
Like every high school wannabe who
ever mooned over a quarterback or a cheerleader, the Substitutes obsessed about
the idols who rejected them. I immediately found their adventures more
interesting than those of the super-club they were so desperate to get into
because they added an extra element to the drama: poignancy.
After all, movies and young adult
novels don’t get written about in-crowds, but about the people who are trying
to get into them. In-crowds are,
frankly, kind of boring.
“The Legion of Substitute Heroes
was founded by Polar Boy, Night Girl, Stone Boy, Fire Lad and Chlorophyll Kid,
five young heroes whose powers were not sufficient to earn them membership in
the Legion of Super-Heroes — Night Girl for example could only use her powers
in the dark,” Wikipedia notes.
“After receiving a Legion flight
belt as a consolation prize, the five disconsolate teenagers decided to form a
group that could pinch hit for the Legion. After several failures as a team,
the Subs managed to save the Earth from an invasion by Plant Men while the Legion
was off planet fighting a decoy armada of robot spaceships.
“At first operating in secrecy,
the Legion of Substitute Heroes was gradually recognized by the real Legion as
a valuable asset, most notably after the assault on the Citadel of Throon when
the regular Legionnaires were all defeated and it was left to Polar Boy and
Night Girl to lead an effective attack and end the siege. The Substitute Heroes
saved the Legionnaires from such threats as the Taurus Gang and the lethal
League of Super-Assassins.”
Keith Giffen later treated the
team as a joke, missing the point of their outsider appeal, I think.
This-series-within-a-series originally offered a useful moral: that being
rejected by the people you want to like you doesn’t mean you can’t make a mark
in your own way, and still be happy.
Oddly enough, the “underdog
superhero” theme would also be explored in a comic book character who got his
own title the same month the Subs debuted.
His name? Spider-Man.
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