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Lightning Lad, Pioneer of the Near Miss

Comics readers who have seen anything after the earliest days of the Silver Age may note the cavalier attitude comics have towards the death of superheroes. Everyone who reads about a hero dying knows that said hero will reappear, more likely than not, and more likely sooner than later. Cases like Adam Warlock and Wonder Man, who managed to stay dead over ten years, represent the far end of restraint; the character Bucky Barnes, officially rendered defunct in 1964, probably will hold the record with his 35-year death.

Lightning Lad, however, broke new ground in the premise of a hero dying in comic books. His death represents the earliest superhero demise worth mentioning within mainstream comic books; and his dubious return represents more the constraints of the period's editorial straightjacketing than the weakness of writers. In 1963, especially in the conservative precincts of DC's comics, superheroes did not die.

Owing to the times he moved in, therefore, we may consider Lightning Lad the Godfather of the Revocable Demise.

Playing out the Maudlin Melodrama

In Several elements typical of later temporary deaths would qualify the demise of Lightning Lad. It involved a departure deeply steeped in heroics, with said caped adventurer making the ultimate sacrifice in the name of the greater good (unlike, say, the death of Mar-Vell, who simply succumbed to cancer). Lightning Lad got to enjoy a final soliloquy, in fine theatrical form; and he got to die in front of plenty of witnesses, who could therefore interpret the significance of his passing to the stray reader who might not recognize it as an important event.

Lightning Lad spake "Better me than you" as his last words, demonstrating a corny kind of altruism that barely even acknowledged his imminent demise, proving said hero's perfect adherence to the ethic of the sixties DC hero: The hero placed absolute value on the lives of others and only secondary value on his own.

Yes, you can snicker now. One may speculate that readers even in that more innocent day sometimes goggled in disbelief in the exaggerated heroic airs borne by early sixties DC heroes. Then again, in a literature intended primarily for juvenile readers, heroes behaved in a manner that indicated a sought-after ideal rather than a plausible model which real human beings could somehow emulate.

Innovation Yesterday, Cliche Today

The death of Lightning Lad must have shocked even those readers who suspected that said legionnaire only approached the famed Revolving Door, inasmuch as it broke the tradition of the last-page cliffhanger that the first pages of the next installment of a story invariably set right.

In this light, the stodgy, dated Legion deserves some credit for pioneering. DC clearly beat Marvel to the gun.

DC would evoke a number of recognizable elements of the formula, however. As in the case of the Death of Superman, the amount of fuss that other superheroes dedicate to mourning the passing of one of their own remains directly proportional to the likelihood that someone or some quirk of fate will rescind the death.

So, therefore, in a subsequent issue of Adventure Comics, the Legion would vociferously mourn one of their own. Back in that day, superheroes said "(Choke!)" a lot when they risked bursting into tears, though only children tended to blather out with a "Baw!" or even the hackneyed "boo-hoo" from the repertoire of unconvincing onomatopoeia.

However, the writers did resist the temptation to an easy and immediate solution, preferring to drag the matter out across three separate issues of Adventure Comics. One could have, logically, simply prevented the entire unpleasant business of the death by using one of the ubiquitous time-travel gadgets that infested the Legion's 30th century the way roaches might infest a tenement.

DC had something different in mind, so it let its heroes say "(Choke!)" a bit longer and ignored the wails of a readership that actually resented the death of a character who represented, even in that day, the symptom of an uncontrollable superhero population explosion.

A Bogus Sacrifice

The story continued in its third installment with the discovery that Lightning Lad might return through the Revolving Door if only one of the other Legionnaires would take his place in death. Naturally, the volunteers for this dubious honor formed something of a stampede; and as many as might plausibly surround Lightning Lad's display-coffin each took up individual lightning rods, the tools that would administer one unfortunate's life force into the body of the deceased.

This splash panel depicts the principals willing to sacrifice their lives to bring back Lightning Lad: Mon-El, Sun Boy, Light Lass, Chameleon Boy, Saturn Girl, and Superboy. The whole story built, from this point, to the discovery of which hero would die.

After about five reboots, and as convoluted a forty years of history as one could rightfully expect from any superhero team, one couldn't fairly look at today's version of the Legion and rightly guess which of the heroes depicted received the lightning and died to save Lightning Lad. Can you, from looking, tell which would bear the title "The Bravest Legionnaire?"

What's that, you say? You don't believe any of them died?

Well, here's some credit for your clever analytical wit, then. For, predictably, the whole bogus proceeding ended up with a huge gyp of the reader. The Legionnaire who died did not even appear in the picture that promised the death of one of the heroes depicted therein.

Lightning Lad came back to life thanks to the sacrifice of Proty, a little white blob who served as pet and companion for Chameleon Boy. No Legionnaire died in the production of this resurrection.

The equivalent, in today's terms, might be Superman avoiding his own death because one of his Superman robots decided heroically to sacrifice its life in his place. Proty, an off-white blob of prehensile Silly Putty, didn't even qualify among Significant Pets like Krypto; his sacrifice would evoke heartfelt cries of "Who?" in reprint readers who had never even seen him in a story.

Keeping it Simple

If this story seems simple, and its reversal doubly so, consider that, as the first of its kind, it did not enjoy the later conventions and encrustations that would evolve through the subsequent three decades of comic book history.

The stylistic differences of an altogether different age of comics aside, one may notice that it does contain the minimalist elements from which contemporary death tales may derive, subject to optional embellishment: a dramatic, heroic death, following noble last words; a grieving body of survivors reproaching themselves for the failure resulting in the death; an optional role for the survivors to bring about the revival; and a silly twist that saves any important character from the unpleasant duty of suffering any significant consequences.

Of course, the juvenile readership of that day probably viewed this resolution as anything but a "gyp;" the jaded cynic who peruses today's death-heavy comics has come to expect some small element of mortality occasionally to beset his heroes. In 1963, comics readers enjoyed no such dubious sensibilities, and preferred a Happy Ending to later comics ideals like "logic," "consistency," or the Grandaddy False God of them all, consistent continuity.

After all, that "happily ever after" thing provided the reward readers used to expect for having bought and read the book in the first place.