Trivia Answers #44

Answers to the special road-trip edition...

1. What did the Legion do when they used the Time Bubble for the first time?

As explained in various retcon stories, they wanted to go back in time to visit Superboy and ask him to join. But they didn't want to mess things up with the Boy of Steel, so they first went back 1000 years to visit Supergirl instead. Once they were able to control their stopping points, then they went back for Superboy.

2. Why did the Legion switch from flight belts to flight rings?

Vibrex, master of vibration, disabled the Legion's flight belts (see LSH v2 #267, which takes place immediately prior to Adventure 329), so Brainiac 5 used an experimental flight ring he'd been working on, made of Element 152 that Mon-El created. (Here's a "Not Approved" look at Vibrex from Living Between Wednesdays.)

3. What was the 11th version of the Legion Cruiser known as?

Not the Mark XI, as you'd suspect (which was actually the 12th version), but the Mark 494. See Get-a-Life Boy's history of the Legion Cruiser for the details.

4. What was the name of Captain Frake's space pirate ship?

She commanded the Antares.

5. The "Secret Origin of the LSH Clubhouse" story that introduced Fortress Lad was a last-minute replacement for a story which showed a different origin, one in which the clubhouse really was a rocket. Where did that rocket originate?

As seen in a number of places, the original story had the spaceship coming from Krypton. See page 10 of the story for the details; it's a cute story and I don't want to spoil it further.

6. What was the name of the ship that Garth Ranzz, Imra Ardeen, Rokk Krinn, and R. J. Brande were travelling on when an assassination attempt was made on Brande's life?

I thought I knew the answer but I can't find my copy of Superboy 147 to double check, and the Sannings' Silver Age Legion page doesn't specify the ship's name. Was it it specified? The Legion Wiki doesn't have an entry for that story. I'll update this if someone can verify. The original story in Superboy 147 didn't say, but in a v4-era retcon, the ship's name was the Nova Express - which was also the same ship that was shown to have a fuel leak in Adventure 247 during Superboy's recruitment.

7. What are the names of Metropolis' two Spaceports?

The smaller of the two was Grand Central Spaceport, located on what is now Staten Island. It was primarily used for industrial and government traffic. The bigger, more well known one is the Metropolis Spaceport.