Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Here’s another Curt Swan Superman issue for the Swanophile: DC COMICS PRESENTS #80 (1984), featuring a Superman/Legion team-up. It features Swan’s take on the 70s-80s Legion look, very different from the one that he created back in the sixties with Jim Shooter. It is also one of the few occasions that SuperMAN, not Superboy, participated in a Legion story, with the exception of the Shooter/Swan Adult Legion tale and the Mordru story in DC COMICS PRESENTS #43, and the team-up with the Legion of Substitute Heroes in DC COMICS PRESENTS #59. It also features one of the few occasions of Curt Swan drawing the “new” Marv Wolfman Brainiac revamp; Gil Kane did the reboot story and most of his subsequent appearances thereafter. Swan, who can draw something really scary if he really wants to, made Brainiac all glowey-eyed and spooky.

Speaking of Brainiac and the Legion, what exactly is his connection to Pulsar Stargrave? Pulsar Stargrave was said to have been a future version of Brainiac, however, Wolfman on more than one occasion stated that he wanted Brainiac’s enemy, the Master Programmer, to be revealed to be a future version of Brainiac.

Things that I have learned looking at Swan’s art in this issue:

Element Lad’s “Jewfro” never looked goofier. I mean, it looks great on a comics page, but in the hands of a realistic artist (or in real life) it would be one big muff.

Swan is the only artist that could make Phantom Girl’s revealing costume look downright conservative.

Ultra Boy, when he’s more mature when this story takes place, looks an awful lot like Superman, doesn’t he? At least that's how Swan draws him. Make sense one would think he's the other in that Roy Thomas Reflecto story.

I'd borrowed a friend's copy of that book a few years back, and loved the line from Jimmy Olson on how the JLA had but a fraction of the Legion's power!