“SUPERBOY and the SUPER-MOBY DICK of SPACE” — or How Garth Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Whale

By Violeta Léa

Children have a future, but they also have a past: unforgettable events, memories, many hours of essential solitary reflection. Just as we remember and forget, cherish and disdain, logically reason — their errors are also out of ignorance. They weigh carefully whether to trust or doubt.

• Janusz Korczak, A Child’s Right to Respect

These stories had the simple universal appeal of folktales. They never talked down to their intended audience of children or pulled punches on dark matters of mortality, grief, jealousy, and love.

• Grant Morrison, Supergods

From the depths of the purple-hued void of space came a nightmarish radioactive green creature with scales all over its body, a fish-like giant tail and the sharpest bite. This fabled creature would be the only one of its kind, and flew around with the help of two small leathery red-blooded wings coming from its temples. We would later find out that this is a one-of-a-kind creature, escaped from a mad scientist lab who was experimenting with a size-altering-ray — something, I might add, that Ray Palmer could do in his sleep amidst the dense amazon forest in the 20th Century. This colossal being (no, not Gim Allon) would be known forever more as the Super-Moby Dick of Space >thunder and lightning in the background!< and it will also be responsible for another trauma in Garth Ranzz’s, Lighting Lad, life; losing his arm.

On the cover we see Superboy, ever the farm-boy from Kansas, begging for this space whale life, and for Garth to not act in his anger, especially since it’d be >gasp!< against the Legion Code. Yes, the Legion had a code and constitution (who knows where we stand in this current nthboot?). This issue, of course, was penned by the great Edmond Hamilton and penciled by the, in my personal opinion, underrated John Forte. And I say “of course” because not too many years later the constitution would seem to only matter during times of voting, and we would never see a study-group of the legionnaires, sitting in their one conference room in the legendary, albeit small, Clubhouse, reciting the many articles of their laws — more on that later.

Adventure Comics #332 (cover date May 1965) could probably be described as the perfect distillation, by a mad nerdy scientist, of the Hamilton/Forte years with this futuristic team — we have three new planets (each introduced in such a whiplash that not even J.K. Simmons’ character could complain), a weird-looking alien, the fight for justice and a deep respect for a child’s point of view and maturity.

To some this story may be best remembered as a fever dream, where it’s just the brain processing facts from the waking world, in such a way that if any writer wants to recognize it they are able to. But this is not my perspective, this isn’t a throwaway story, it’s a fundamental issue for Garth and the Legion, even if it gives us this weird looking whale. Why? That’s easy: Because I think Hamilton/Forte were able to show how someone reacts to trauma, obsessing over it and losing the trust of your closest friends, only to overcome it at the end. This is a story about a kid who even though possesses the ability to conjure lightning and fight formidable villains, he still feels the pain and failures — something that feels very present in the late issues on this run.

Now, let’s get into the meat of this 17-page space novela (I call it a novela mostly for the way John Forte would draw the panels, with classic novela-like frames — a character crying towards the camera, or looking towards the infinite horizon at the direction of the reader — they always reminded me of the novelas/soaps I’d find randomly on TV here in Brazil). As I said before, we start with the appearance of this great beast who started out as a menace to an innocent crewed interplanetary freightship, and a distress call catches the attention of Garth, who was returning from an off-panel solo mission. This results in the **Monty Python approved* loss of his arm — but tis was more than a scratch!*

In classic silver-age style, when comics loved dry cuts and less was definitely more, in the next page Garth is already inside the Legion Clubhouse with Dr. Lanphier, a great surgeon and a specialist on space creatures (too much of a coincidence, right?), and without any kind of approval from a parental figure, he decides to cut his arm off and in between the second and third panel he already has his iconic bionic arm! But since Hamilton and Forte were big on small moments there’s an extremely funny panel here, where two of the smartest legionnaires, Imra (Saturn Girl) and Brainy (Brainiac 5, a.k.a. Querl Dox), cannot for the life of them realize that Garth frustration is a response to a very traumatic event.

Thereupon our heroes are joined by the good surgeon/space-biologist, Dr. Lanphier, in their pursuit of this whale-like demon. However, before they leave in their shuttle, Sun Boy (Dirk Morgna) shows up with a message in hand from Jo Nah, Ultra Boy (you know the one, who can only use one ultra-ability at a time!), saying that he has gone to battle the monster on his own, for we have already learned that the beast emits Green Kryptonite energy (probably ate it for breakfast that day) and Superboy can’t get close, and Mon-El is already on another offscreen mission! And of course, Hamilton can’t pass the chance to have Jo Nah swallowed by the Whale, so he gets trapped inside the beast’s mouth.

After taking care of that by punching one of the giants teeth’s cavity, in a very subtextual message to kids to brush their teeth after meals, he joins the others, and even though Brainy should be in command, Garth evokes the fabled LEGION CONSTITUTION, CLAUSE 14, SUB-CLAUSE B!!! Which states that since he has a better understanding of the danger they’ll be facing he will be in charge. From this moment on, everyone starts to worry about Lightning Lad becoming too emotionally involved and obsessed (god forbids post-traumatic stress!), but they need to respect their constitution so everyone respects his command or try to at least.

We then watch as they fight Garth’s nightmare first in Thanar, a populated mining asteroid. Everyone starts to talk behind their leader’s back about how he’s unstable or is about to break the code. Meanwhile we see Dr. Lanphier on his bunk bed in the midst of a guilt-trip, revealing that he’s the Dr. Frankenstein to the great cosmic whale — as I mentioned before he uses a size ray to enlarge it, but accidentally uses too much and it escapes.

They then decide to go rogue and defend the asteroid on their own, resulting in a funny and very Forte-like panel of Garth reacting in full as anger, throwing his metallic arm in the air and screaming with every thunder he can muster how his friends are betraying their confidence and, most importantly to Hamilton, Legion Constitution.

I’ve mentioned the great LEGION CONSTITUTION many times already, much like Garth, and it’s not for nothing. At the beginning of this article I quoted a great pedagogue and one of my favorites: Janusz Korczak. His life’s work was in defense of children’s rights, always stating that it’s not the children who need to look up to talk with us, boring old grown ups, but the other way around, we need to respect a child by learning it’s us who look up as their psyche is that much elevated. With this idea he developed in his own school a set of laws that the children would choose, and everyone, including grown-ups, needed to adhere — my favorite one, by far, is that the only way allowed to go down a specific set of stairs was by sliding on the railing. Hamilton and the legion wasn’t that far from this concept, and it’s with this that he’s able to show such respect to this group of children from the future. They would set the rules, and even universe-famous surgeons, who happened to be a respected expert in space creatures, needed to follow them.

But, as they say, this is a story for another time. For now, we go back to the second encounter of the legion and the legendary spacefaring animal.

We’re now introduced to yet another planet, the WORLD OF A HUNDRED MOONS, as Ultra Boy (who can only use one ultra-power at a time) calls it. First, let’s talk about the classic silver age sky, where instead of tiny shiny dots, and a few colorful worlds, it looked like a bunch of colored marbles thrown on top of a royal purple blanket. This design is so full of joy and wonder that it completely justifies how bizarre it looks. It’s childlike, in the best of ways, much like the legion itself — especially at the time. Anyway, as I was saying, they arrive at this planet and as they see the creature on the horizon Garth proclaims with his full chest how his robot arm is even more powerful than his regular one, which to Imra, and almost anyone else within earshot, feels like this legionnaire is about to kill the one responsible for his current trauma. Alas, Superboy gets between the tesla-like superbeing and the gargantuan monster, and even after taking the lightnings with ease, he submits to the green kryptonite still being digested by the whale, leading to another one of his classic faints, and somehow as the doctor tried to rescue the kryptonian he too gets hit by something (probably Clark himself, but it’s not shown) and loses his conscience, letting the creature escape once more.

We’re now back to the planet I first mentioned, populated only by colossal metal giants, now abandoned and without power. However Lightning Lad still has all of his energy, and after a mutiny by his friends, stating that he’s presented himself as mad and incapable of leadership, he manages to escape by a shuttle and arrives before his teammates. The space leviathan easily destroys his ship, but Garth is in the forefront of space teams in the 30th century, he still has the resilience of a child (you know the one, where we can fall down, start bleeding and after a minute or two, we’re already running and jumping again) and the experience of a superhero, so he manages to get safely to the ground and just before the Legion runs interference, he shows his true intent. He holds his head up high, aims his metallic arm at the scary, huge, chtonic figure and as he exhales, a thunder is heard within his body as at least three lightning bolts are thrown with robin hood’s precision, hitting the green monster at 200,000 mph, leaving the whale forever scared of this unrelenting ginger lad.

However, what follows isn’t grim, scary or horrific, it’s healing, peaceful and hopeful in spite of how scared that boy from Winath must have felt. Instead of killing the Super Moby Dick of Space, he actually conducts a shrinking ray with his lightning, revealing that this was always his intent, or at least it was after he discovered the true nature of the beast, which now looked like a radioactive fish with tiny bat wings.

After explaining to everyone what Lanphier did, everyone realizes how stupidly they acted, since Garth wasn’t the mad leader they thought he was. At this moment a realization came to everyone: Lightning Lad had learned to stop worrying and love the whale (well, now a fish as I pointed out before).

What makes this story so special to me is the theme of childhood trauma, because even if I defend the idea that they can more than understand it, but overcome it, sometimes with more ease, I also have to admit that the process is completely different. Yes, as a sci-fi fan I’ll be one of the first to quote “time is relative”, therefore a child’s idea of the past isn’t that different from ours, but ours definitely comes with more experiences. The problem lies within the preconception that they have nothing to show for their time amongst the living. We keep an eye on them at all times, we remind them of how much longer they have in life, about the many mistakes that they might make, we keep them in a tight leash, always under supervision, their opinions don’t matter since they are robbed of the power of societal change, and we only give it back when they are certified grown-ups.

All of that to say that the magical vein that Hamilton and Forte shared (along with Binder, Plastino, Siegel, Swan, et al.) was an extremely simple truth: Children have the True Power of change. They still have lively fantasies, they see a cardboard box and make it a time machine, they see a rocket and call it a clubhouse, and even when life comes with sharp teeth, they stand up and look at it with an inverted telescope, making it as small a problem as it should be. For them life is not something you need to fit into, it’s the other way around, they are sculptors of their realities, and together they can be one of the best teams in history, and the true defenders of tomorrow. But why wait? What can you learn, and teach, after seeing the way Garth managed to overcome his personal fear?