The Great Karate Kid Yada Yada of 2017 (part 2)

Continuing the Great Karate Kid Yada Yada of 2017! Back in 2017, I put this together for a couple of episodes of the podcast, but this blog was on hiatus at that time and I never got around to posting it here. This is (retroactively) number 1b - part 2 of 4 - in a continuing series of Great Yada Yadas, where the motto is “We read them so you don’t have to”. Listen to it at Legion of Substitute Podcasters episode 463.

Issue 6 (Jan/Feb 1977), on sale 10/7/76

Jameson/Estrada/Staton

The Legion shows up – Sun Boy, Star Boy, Cosmic Boy, and Princess Projectra – and stops Val from killing Blud, who escapes. Iris is worried that Val might need her, but she seeks Jeckie cradling him and sulks off. The Legionnaires had detected someone trying to tamper with the time stream and traced it back. Val tells the Legion that they allowed Blud to escape and he sulks off. Jeckie tells Cosmic Boy that he’s not acting the way he normally does, and he replies that he thinks there’s more to him being in the 20th century than he told them back in issue 1. Meanwhile, back at Val’s apartment, his landlady Mrs Geichman turns on the monitor globe that she thought was a TV, and it shows a castle. A voice says she’s seen too much and it zaps her. Val is moping through the streets of NYC when he’s captured and brought to Blud’s underwater HQ, he wants Val to tell him where and when the next world war will be and threatens the members of the Legion who he captured off-panel. Val runs to Jeckie and suddenly the underwater dome starts cracking and letting in water. Nope, just an illusion so Val could rescue the Legionnaires, who destroy Blud’s robot warriors and help Val capture Blud. Jeckie invites Val to come back home, but he tells her his work in the 20th century isn’t done yet. He wanders off and finds Iris, who apologizes for leaving earlier, but when they get to their apartment building, the cops are there and arrest Val for murder.

Continuity: Published same month as Superboy 223. The letters page mentions that Denny O’Neil (who also co-created Richard Dragon, Kung Fu Fighter) has become the new Story Editor of both Karate Kid and Superboy starting with 224 next month, and Paul Levitz will be coming on as scripter for the Legion book starting with 225.

Issue 7 (Mar/Apr 1977), on sale 12/7/76

Jameson/Estrada/Staton

The cops are arresting Val, but a giant tunnel boring machine erupts into the street in front of the Metropolitan Museum (which is on the Upper East Side of NYC, although it was previously established that the apartment was on the Upper West Side, and despite the fact that an elementary school teacher can’t afford a solo apartment on either side, especially not across the street from the museum). The Gyro-Master goes in to steal a gyro, and remembers his origin story which made him able to spin like a top. Karate Kid breaks out of police custody but can’t stop him, and both escape. Meanwhile, family man Benjamin Day gets an ominous phone call. Val and Iris go back to their building, where Val talks to the monitor, which tells him that Mrs Geichman isn’t dead, she’s merely pining for the fjords. It tells Val that his hardships are part of his trials, unless the prize isn’t worth the peril. He fights off a couple of cops, then gets a hint from Iris which explains where Gyro Master has been hiding. Yada yada, they fight and Val wins. Later, Val and Iris stroll through Washington Square Park (because he can hide among all the freaks in weird clothes), while Benjamin Day changes into an assassin named Pulsar.

Continuity: Published same month as Superboy 225. Somewhere in issues 5-7, Karate Kid appears with the Legion fighting the Time Trapper in Superboy 223 and against Pulsar Stargrave in 224. There’s a publishorial in the issue that explains that Jenette Kahn is the new Publisher of DC Comics. And as revealed in the letters page for issue 9, they were originally going to use the Flash villain The Top in this story, but he inconveniently died over in Flash, so the story had to be reworked into someone new.

Issue 8 (May/June 1977), on sale 2/1/77

Jameson/Estrada/Staton

Pulsar blasts Washington Square – but it’s not Karate Kid he’s after, it’s an old guy who ratted on the Mob. He blasts Val, who’s trying to save the guy, but the old man runs into the street and is killed by a horse-drawn carriage. The cops show up and arrest Val, while Pulsar’s costume disappears and he’s just another guy on the street. Meanwhile, in the morgue, Mrs Geichman wakes up. The cops take Val up to Commissioner Banner’s office just in time for the news of Geichman’s non-murder to get there, and he’s released. Over in Long Island, Benjamin Day is visited by his boss, and he tells him that he’s quitting the hit-man game, but the boss reminds him of a dead-man’s switch that will apparently harm his family. At Madison Square Garden, Banner tells a convention of law enforcement officers that organized crime is the greatest threat and he wants to stop Pulsar. Back at the apartment, Mrs Geichman doesn’t remember anything, and Val says his TV must have short circuited and he’ll get it checked out. He hears over the radio that Pulsar is at MSG. Yada yada, he gets there, they fight, and Val stops him from being electrocuted. Pulsar escapes, and later Banner thanks Val for saving him from Pulsar, they shake. Getting back to the apartment, Iris tells Val that she’s stupid for being jealous of Jeckie since she’s in the future and not here now, and she kisses him. Suddenly the light turns on and Jeckie is waiting there for him.

Continuity: Jeckie last appeared in Superboy 226-227 against Stargrave. The letters page has one by future DC writer Mike W. Barr, in which he wonders if “Barry Jameson” is a pseudonym. The editor basically admits it and challenges the readers to guess who it is (but it’s never revealed by the end of the series). Published same month as Superboy 227.

Issue 9 (July/Aug 1977), on sale 4/5/77

Jameson/Estrada/Staton

Pulsar gets the assignment to kill Karate Kid but refuses, because Val saved his life. The boss takes out the remote control and stops Pulsar’s heart before restarting it as leverage. Back at the apartment, Jeckie tells Val that now she knows the real reason he went back to the past, for Iris. The women argue over him, while Pulsar is on a rooftop nearby and blasts Val. He tells Jeckie to stay behind and guard Iris while he goes after Pulsar. Yada yada, they fight and Pulsar wins, but his wrist band starts beeping like back in issue 5. The monitor in the apartment beeps too, and Jeckie recognizes it as a 30th century monitor globe – and it’s her father on the screen! Dun dun DUNNNN! Later that night, Pulsar brings Karate Kid to his boss’s restaurant and threatens to let Val go if the boss doesn’t give him the heart clicker. But the boss is holding Day’s wife hostage, and since he’s no longer loyal, the boss has Pulsar knocked out. He wakes up next to Val inside a giant industrial microwave oven, and while they get ready to be nuked, Pulsar tells Karate Kid his origin story. He was a thug who got experimented on with a new atomic heart, which can be deactivated (looks like a heart attack) or overloaded (looks like a nuclear bomb). Karate Kid breaks them out of the oven, they fight the boss, and Val stops Pulsar’s heart from blowing up. The cops arrest him even though he was forced to commit his crimes. Back at the apartment, Jeckie tells Val that she saw her father on the screen even though Orando is medieval, but Val said that his next transmission wasn’t due for another two days. Voxv appears on screen and says “he has to be stopped, or our planet is doomed! You must help us!” Val tells Jeckie that he has to go back to the future, even if it means giving up everything he came to the past to achieve.

Continuity: Published same month as Superboy 229.

Issue 10 (Sept/Oct 1977), on sale 6/9/77

Jameson/Estrada/Abel

Val and Jeckie take her Time Bubble to Orando. Some foreign soldiers are there, they don’t recognize them, but Jeckie’s powers don’t work. Yada yada, they fight, and Jeckie’s gone. She’s been taken to the throne room, where Sadaharu the Black Dragon sits on the throne. (You might recall that we last saw the Dragon in Superboy 210 in Karate Kid’s origin story, he was trained by Val Armorr’s father who was the first Black Dragon, a villain killed by Karate Kid’s Sensei.) He neutralized the Orandian’s native illusion-casting powers (what?!?) and set a trap for Val. Yada yada 3 pages of fight scenes, it’s a draw between Val and the Dragon, until he picks up a gun. Some random Orandian suggests a man-to-man duel, and the Dragon says that the winner also gets Projectra. In a prison chamber, we finally learn why Karate Kid has been in the 20th century – he is not of royal blood, and as Voxv expects the two of them to eventually get married, he wanted to make sure Val was worthy. “Thus, Armorr agreed to exile himself to his planet’s barbarous past. If he could demonstrate courage and nobility under such adverse conditions, he would be considered acceptable under Orandian standards. He was sworn to secrecy to prevent undue interference from the Legion.” Jeckie realizes that he went to the past for her, not because he chose to. Cut to a nearby icy grotto, which has a pit of liquid oxygen that’s somehow unstable and erupting, and Val will fight Sadaharu on a platform above the pit. Meanwhile, Jeckie escapes, and while the two men are fighting, someone knocks over a brazier of burning oil which melts the ice bridge they’re on. Suddenly the Legion appears, Jeckie called in Superboy, Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, and Phantom Girl. Val convinces Sadaharu to stop the fight so the two of them can both escape, and it turns out that the random Orandian who suggested the fight was the one who knocked over the brazier, he wanted both men out of the way because he was in love with Jeckie. Voxv tells Val that he can visit his friends for a while but still has to return to the past, and Jeckie tells him that she knows he’s been seeing Iris and wants to know if he’s in love. He says he is, with Jeckie. Awww.

Continuity: Published same month as S/LSH 231. Val joins Jeckie in S/LSH 231 as they fight the Fatal Five, you may recall the scene where they’re on the bridge of the Legion Cruiser and she starts climbing all over him. The letters page in issue 12 says they goofed here when they said that all Orandians have illusion-casting powers.