Subtlety, Invention, PTSD, Compassion & Forgiveness: Some Thoughts On Edmond Hamilton & John Forte's "The Mutiny Of The Legionnaires" from 1964's Adventure Comics #318

1. 

I wonder if the facial expressions in John Forte's many Legion stories were ever as subtle and singular as they are here. On the surface, The Mutiny Of The Legionnaires is a typically charming early LSH sci-fi potboiler. For all of its spectacle and invention, Edmond Hamilton's story appears at first glance no more or less than a playfully overwrought melodrama aimed at pre-teen readers. So it is, and wonderfully so too. Overwhelmed by a catastrophic procession of emergencies, Sun Boy becomes obsessed with saving the people of a planet threatened by destruction. As his laudable intentions shade into mania, The Mutiny Of The Legionnaires tips its hat to Mutiny On The Bounty, the Reed/Milestone film which, with Marlon Brando in the role of Fletcher Christian, had debuted less than 18 months before. For a few pages, Sun Boy appears to distill the imperiously cruel excesses of the movie's Captain Bligh. In their turn, his fellow Legionnaires feel obliged to revolt against his leadership. So far, so obvious. 

But as was often true with Hamilton's LSH tales, there's far more serious matters swimming around under the story's incident-packed surface. On the one hand, there's a Wellsian sense of deep time overwhelming human achievement, as when the Legionnaires build a macabre monument to petrified astronauts from "centuries ago ...in the dawn of space travel". (2:7:1 - below)  On the other, there's an uncommon compassion shown to the clearly traumatised figure of Sun Boy, which transforms an admirably enjoyable romp into something of far greater substance. 

Forte's depiction of Sun Boy's journey from traumatic exhaustion to rueful recovery is, in particular, remarkable, and challenges the assumption that his work always relied upon the broadest of strokes. From Sun Boy's distress upon hearing the S.O.S. from the planet Xenn (1:1:3 - below), through his two-thousand yard stare (1:7:1 - above), his haughtiness when bound by his fellow Legionnaires (1:8:5), and, finally, his regretful reconciliation with Cosmic Boy (2:9:6), Forte's artwork is magnificently expressive. 

It's hard not to wonder why that should be so, given that Forte didn't pay such particular attention to any other character in the tale. Even the Legionnaires facing a terrible doom in Chapter 2 are shown with all of Forte's typical if charming flatness, never shifting from types even as they're facing death. But something about Sun Boy's situation captured Forte's attention and he travelled the extra mile accordingly. For all that his work elsewhere in the story is as idiosyncratically winning - and, when it comes to perspective and spaceship design, as problematic - as it always was, the plight of Sun Boy is portrayed with a notable precision, consistency and sympathy.  

2.

Perhaps Forte was inspired by the way in which Edmond Hamilton's script engages with real-world solutions to real-world problems. For unlike many other superhero stories of the period, and sadly often since, Hamilton uses Sun Boy's "Space Fatigue" as something more than a machismo-threatening challenge. In today's terms, we'd likely assume that Sun Boy was suffering from an extreme form of stress disorder, and, as with conditions such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Hamilton's tale insists that bravery and a good heart in themselves are no guarantee of resistance or recovery. This is of course quite contrary to the traditions of the superhero comic, where psychological suffering is often shown being conquered with a show of bravery expressed, most commonly, in the form of an almighty punchup. Mental illness as a test of individual heroism is a deeply pernicious storytelling tradition, insisting as it does that the maintenance of mental health is no more or less than a matter of will. (This is no historical problem, whether in popular fiction or out here in the everyday world; indeed, my own doctor believes this, as he once confided in me in a rambling and totally irrelevant conversation when I visited him about a persistent hamstring strain. You might think he'd have twigged that a patient with ASD would likely have problems with the likes of anxiety and depression, but then, you'd imagine a doctor in the 21st century would know better about depression full stop. He misdiagnosed my hamstring problem too.)

In The Mutiny Of The Legionnaires, we witness Sun Boy sinking further and further into his suffering, and in the end, it's only medical science in the shape of 'scalpel-rays' that helps him recover. (2:9:5) As Hamilton has a doctor from "a great medical foundation on Earth", Sun Boy had endured "too many missions and became a victim of space fatigue" (2:9:5) How utterly refreshing, to see that no-one blames him for the illness he's suffered. Similarly, it's heartening to note that Cosmic Boy expresses relief at his friend and comrade's diagnosis. In Hamilton's 30th century, science and empathy trump ignorance and prejudice every time. Perhaps even more inspiring is the way in which the Legion learns from Sun Boy's tragic experience and changes its operational principles. (2:9:6) This is, in terms of contemporary social policy, exactly how an institution should approach individual well-being. It's not a common enough practise, but things are, in baby steps, and against a great deal of opposition both conscious and not, improving. 

Hamilton's marvellously humane conclusion to The Mutiny Of The  Legionnaires, with its enlightened approach to the diagnosis and treatment of mental health, marks a rare moment when the Legion's ten-centuries-hence future feels both convincing and inspiring. It's a future to believe in, and to hope for, and to work towards. 

 

3.

As always with the Legion tales of the period, it's shocking how many fascinating conceits are burned through in less than 20 pages. Just about every page contains at the very least a new fantastical plot twist, and many contain more than that. To note that Superboy and Mon-El's rather chilling attempts to "crack the Iron Curtain Of Time" is confined to a single panel is to grasp once again how enervating decompressed modern superhero storytelling often is. (1:2:5) But on the very same side, we also have the never-before seen world of Xenn and its alien inhabitants. Turn the page and there's Science Council members lending a massive Space Ark with a robot crew to the Legion. Turn the page again and there's a discussion of the different classes of robot and their roles, while the fifth side shows the planet Xenn's evacuation. For page after page, The Mutiny Of The Legionnaires presents a dizzying pageant of ideas and events. Little else during the period, or since, can match it.


I wonder if many contemporary artists would - understandably enough - welcome a script which threw such intense and unrelenting challenges at them. It wasn't enough that Forte had to juggle a cast of dozens. He also had to constantly design new worlds and new cultures from scratch. No wonder the likes of Curt Swan, great artists though they often were, did their best to avoid being assigned to the Legion.

Of course, The Mutiny Of The Legionnaires isn't just a parade of backdrops and props. The story is a sequence of ingenious set-pieces. From the rebellion itself - led by Cosmic Boy, of course, even if the concept of The Founders as we know it isn't self-consciously referred to - to the snaring of the Space-Roc, Hamilton's script is a wonder of reader-snaring devices. I wish I knew whether such inventive, incident-rich scripts came easily to him. In many ways, I hope so. I very much like the idea of him throwing around so many beguiling ideas without a disconcerting degree of effort or worry. I hope he thoroughly enjoyed writing stories such as The Mutiny Of The Legionnaires. It seems only fair, being that they're still such fun, and more, to read. 

Hamilton retired from writing comics less than two years after The Mutiny Of The Legionnaires was published. His was a long and impressive career. On the basis of his work on the Legion alone, it seems unlikely he stepped away from comics because of a lack of ideas.

4.

I'd be very much surprised if 1982's Legion of Super-Heroes #289, with its similarly marooned and seemingly hopeless Legionnaires, wasn't inspired in some part by this tale. For all that I very much admire Levitz and Giffen's soap-inflected storytelling from the period, I find, with my fearsomely advancing age, that I enjoy the Hamilton/Forte stories far more. 

 

5.

Finally, it's interesting that Sun Boy disappears from the second, closing chapter of The Mutiny Of The Legionnaires until its final page. The first half of the tale is his, whether in the role of protagonist or, it appears, antagonist. It closes with Sun Boy marooning his fellow Legionnaires far from any hope of rescue. Tradition would surely demand that Sun Boy's overthrow by his fellow superpeople in turn serves as the tale's closing and defining conflict. But of course, that would run the serious risk of implying that Sun Boy was definitively villainous rather than a blameless victim. The whole point of The Mutiny Of The Legionnaires is that Sun Boy doesn't need to be fought so much as helped. In short, Hamilton's story is structured to maximise the thrills on show while completely wrongfooting his readers. The drama of the story's second half comes from the Legionnaire's efforts to survive their exile in space. But when they finally return to the Space Arc, they discover there's no-one there to fight. No longer any shade of Captain Bligh at all, Sun Boy is now completely catatonic. (2:9:3 - see below.) The Arc is adrift, its robots unable to act without human direction, and the Xennian refugees appear doomed. Instead of a super-powered showdown, Hamilton presents his readers with a final enigma, namely, what is wrong with Sun Boy? Is he possessed, poisoned or corrupted? Cunningly, and at a stroke, a supposed villain is revealed to be a faultless victim. In the narrative vacuum left by that exemplary misdirection, Hamilton and Forte then spell the fundamental difference between what society frequently condemns as sinful and the blameless reality of human frailty 

It's a wonderfully abrupt ending. From the Legionnaire's return from exile to Sun Boy's successful treatment on Earth, events take but a single closing page and six panels. Such concision avoids the younger reader feeling puzzled and even disappointed by the absence of superhero-versus-superhero conflict. Instead, the story's conclusion arrives with speed and purpose, counter-intuitively grounded in regret, relief, sympathy and hope. It all works against expectation, but it's all the better for it. 

A version of the above appeared in an APA-247 mailing earlier this year.