One of the earliest comic book stories I can remember from my youth is a two-part story in “Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes”, which was one of the first series that I read after graduating from the Harvey comics that are all I was allowed as a very small lad.

Hang with me, I’ll get to the point eventually.

Anyway, the gist of it is that the Legion are targeted by a “League of Super-Assassins”, who have certain grievances with the Greatest Heroes of the 30th Century, and issue 253 is all about the Super-Assassins coming to kill legionnaires and being very successful at it, to the point where issue 254 opens with most of the legion in coffins.  The task of saving the day, then, falls to a murderously-insane Braniac 5 and the Legion of Substitute Heroes, a sort of side-group to the regular Legion who weren’t quite powerful enough to make the cut.

I will point out, here, that one of the active Legionnaires was Matter-Eater Lad, whose power was the ability to eat anything.  That is a pretty low bar to step over, and the subs were the heroes who somehow managed to trip.  Color Kid, for example, had the power to change the color of anything into any other color.

Anyway, since there was an issue 255, I assume it no longer counts as a spoiler to say that Brainiac and the subs managed to win the day.  None of this is particularly relevant except to lead up to the part of the comic that has been stuck in my head for four decades, where the last standing Super-Assassin realizes that they have lost, and that they brought it on themselves by poking the wrong anthill.

For some reason, reading my twitter feed recently has reminded me a lot of poor Blok, here.  I think I need to just unfollow everything except for pictures of cats and sugar gliders.