1971-1977: SUPERBOY era

Six months after the last Legion story appeared in Action Comics, the group was back. In an eerie replay of history, the Legion started as an occasional back-up feature in Superboy, then a regular feature, then finally pushed Superboy out of his comic entirely. By mid-decade, Superboy was "the Legion comic" in the same way that Adventure had been. The Legion even spawned its own spinoff comic in 1976, Karate Kid -- which lasted a little over a year. Perhaps because the Legion itself had survived a brush with literary mortality, death was an ever-present factor in the stories of this period. Three Legionnaires met their doom: Invisible Kid (Lyle), Chemical King, and ERG-1 (who returned as Wildfire). The very titles of the stories were often death-oriented: "Trust Me or Kill Me," "Murder the Leader," "Timber Wolf - Dead Hero, Live Executioner," "The Silent Death," "Massacre by Remote Control," "The Legion of Super-Executioners," "Welcome Home Daughter -- Now Die," "Death Stroke at Dawn," "Trapped to Live -- Free to Die," "Stay Small or Die," "Charge of the Doomed Legionnaires," "This Legionnaire is Condemned," "Death of a Legend," "The City That Stopped Dead," "Hunt for a Hero-Killer," "Death Duel on Orando." The best stories of this period included "War Between the Nights and the Days" in #193, "The One-Shot Hero" in #195, "Brainiac Five's Secret Weakness" in #204, "Soljer's Private War" (#210), "The Legion's Lost Home" (#211), "1+1=3" in #216, and #217's "Future Shock for Superboy."