The Unknown Legionnaire is a Legion of Super-Heroes story published in Adventure Comics #334 (July, 1965), written by Edmond Hamilton and penciled by John Forte.
The Legion of Super-Heroes travels to a weird, desolate world in search of a dangerous fugitive called Norm Eldor. Right after landing on the planet, though, they are attacked by shape-shifting Proteans, who seem to be working with -or at the very least protecting- Eldor for some reason.
The Legion decides to split up to cover more ground more quickly, but each team is ambushed by Proteans, and several Legionnaires are captured. Cosmic Boy and Phantom Girl are running away from a group of Proteans when a costumed, faceless stranger suddenly shows up and drives the hostile shape-shifters away. The stranger claims to want to help the Legion out, but he will not tell his name. Saturn Girl's telepathic scan confirms the stranger -whom Cosmic Boy provisionally calls Unknown Boy- cannot reveal his identity simply because he has no one. His mind is a complete blank slate.
Guided by Unknown Boy, the Legion heads into a vast network of caves below the planet's surface to rescue their friends and capture Norm Eldor. However, they have several more mysteries to solve in addition to Eldor's nefarious plans and the Proteans' surprisingly hostile behavior: Who is Unknown Boy? Why has he lost his memories? Can the Legion trust and rely on someone who doesn't even know his own self?
Tropes:
- After the End: A long time ago, the Protean world was settled by an alien race called the Llorn. A sequence of brutal climatic changes, violent quakes and environmental changes caused by a lengthy cycle of sunspots brought the colony down. Their original city was destroyed by super-storms, and their second underground city was torn apart by an earthquake. At the end, the Llorn were forced to leave the planet, leaving crumbling, empty ruins in their wake. However, the Proteans survived thanks to their shape-shifting abilities (a final gift of the Llorn's science to ensure their species' survival).
- Alien Sky: The Legion travels to the Protean homeworld in pursuit of a dangerous criminal. When the team steps out of their ship, Superboy takes notice of the orange sun, feeling relieved because it will not take his powers away.
- Amnesiac Hero: The mysterious masked hero nicknamed Unknown Boy turns out to be Supergirl, who lost her memories when she flew into a cloud of Red Kryptonite dust.
- Amnesiac Resonance: Even though Supergirl forgets her identity completely, she remembers and is able to use her powers instinctively.
- Anti-True Sight: Played with. Superboy cannot see through Unknown Boy's eyeless lead mask to figure his identity out, and he cannot find Eldor because he is hidding in lead-rich subterranean caves. However, Supergirl can both see through her helmet and through the lead rocks because her powers have been altered due to Red Kryptonite exposure.
- Appropriated Appellation: Since the masked hero will not tell them his name, Cosmic Boy decides to call him Unknwon Boy for the time being. Since he has not his own identity, the mysterious hero has no issue going by that nickname.
- Armored Villains, Unarmored Heroes: Subverted, since Supergirl hardly wears armor, but she feels a compulsion to protect her identity when she loses her memories, so she quickly makes an armor suit, complete with a full-head helmet. She ditches her armor as soon as she remembers who she is.
- Badass in Distress: Three members of the Legion of Super-Heroes -Saturn Girl, Brainiac 5 and Sun Boy- are ambushed by Proteans manipulated by the main villain and imprisoned in his lair.
- Beneath the Earth: While exploring the Protean homeworld, the Legion discovers a large underground ghost city, lit up by artificial suns, and built by the Llorn when climatic change rendered the planet's surface inhabitable.
- Benevolent Precursors: Many ages ago, an advanced civilization known as the Llorn established a colony in a homeworld inhabited by a primitive but friendly intelligent alien species called Proteans. The Llorns were forced to abandon the planet when a chain of environmental disasters destroyed their city, but before leaving they made sure that their Protean friends survived the devastating climatic changes which were beginning to ravage their world by using their science to turn the Proteans into shapeshifters.
- Casual Time Travel: Supergirl loses her memory, and her only clue to her identity is one piece of paper in her pocket stating her presence might be needed in the 30th century. Hence, she decides to travel to the future, never questioning or wondering how can or why she can accomplish such a feat; and she has no trouble pulling it off despite being amnesiac.
- Chained to a Rock: Saturn Girl, Brainiac 5 and Sun Boy are captured by the Proteans, brought to the Llorns' underground city and chained to a cave wall to serve as hostages.
- Combat Tentacles: When fighting the Legionnaires, the shape-shifting Proteans often grow multiple tentacles to tackle, seize and constrain their enemies with.
- Continuity Nod: The Legion uses Cancelite, a gas invented by Supergirl in Adventure Comics #326, to identify Proteans.
- Covers Always Lie: The cover has Brainiac 5 to figure Unknown Boy's identity out. In the actual story, it is Superboy who solves the mystery.
- Crystal Spires and Togas: Inverted. The first planet colony built by the Llorn aliens featured metallic, corkscrew-shaped, brightly-colored towers. When their city was destroyed, the Llorn built another city, opting for nondescript cubic buildings which resembled Earth's ordinary apartment blocks.
- Deadly Environment Prison: The Prison Planetoid, a maximum-security prison for the system's worst criminals, is located on a tiny, barren planetoid surrounded by a huge electric eye halo which can only be crossed by a special supply ship.
- Deus Exit Machina: Subverted. As usual in Legion comics, the story starts by finding vague excuses to write off all Kryptonian-level characters minus Superboy (Supergirl cannot take part in the mission because she must return to her own time NOW -and nobody points out she is that not in a hurry because she is a time-traveller-, Mon-El is away on a never-revealed mission, and Ultra Boy is away on space for some unspecified reason) and make Saturn Girl unable to read some stranger's mind. However, Mon-El eventually shows up, and it is revealed that their unknown ally is an amnesiac Supergirl.
- Earthquakes Cause Fissures: In a flashback, strong earthquakes strike the underground city of the Llorn, opening up massive rifts and swalling up many buildings.
- Evil Plan: Norm Eldor deceives the peaceful Proteans into believing that he is a descendant of their ancient Llorn allies so that they give him a forgotten super-weapon (left behind by the Llorn when they left the Protean homeworld) which Eldor thinks will let him conquer the galaxy.
- Flashback Within a Flashback: Superboy's flashback where he narrates the Legion's past adventure includes Supergirl's own flashback where she explains how she lost her memories and created a second secret identity.
- Fungus Humongous: Subverted. As exploring the Protean homeworld, Cosmic Boy and Phantom Girl find an area filled with man-sized, purple mushrooms. However, the "mushrooms" turn out to be metamorphosed Proteans waiting in ambush.
- Ghost City: The Legion explores several cities built and abandoned by the Llorn civilization many centuries ago, taking notice of the collapsed towers, cracked buildings and decaying ruins.
- Ghost Planet: The Legion travels to a remote planet which was colonized by the advanced Llorn civilization in the past; climate change and several worldwide natural catastrophes and environmental disasters, though, resulted in their civilization's collapse. Nowadays, there are only ruins littering the planet.
- The Greatest Story Never Told: Supergirl helps save the Protean homeworld from mad scientist Norm Eldor, under the identity of masked Legionnaire Unknown Boy. Later, the Proteans built a statue to honour the memory of Unknown Boy, but they never found out her real identity, so they simply engraved "To the Unknown Legionnaire" on the plaque.
- Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Subverted. Supergirl hardly wears a helmet, but she builds and wears a lead helmet when she loses her memories due to her instinctive need to protect her secret identity.
- Hostage Situation: After managing to get Cosmic Boy captured, Norm Eldor holds him hostage to prevent the Legion from ruining his plans.
- Human Aliens: The Llorn who briefly settled in the Protean homeworld looked exactly like humans.
- Inconsistent Coloring: One panel shows Brainiac 5 with blue face and green hands.
- Kryptonite Is Everywhere: When Supergirl leaps out of the time-stream, she flies through a ring of Red Kryptonite dust which has come from nowhere but is massive enough to surround Earth.
- Master of Illusion: Saturn Girl proves she can create illusions which only telepaths can see by projecting the image of a eight-tentacled, three-mouthed giant monster into the minds of a pair of Proteans in order to frighten them away.
- Morphic Resonance: Proteans taken human shapes to stalk the Legionnaires. When they turn back into their original forms, the Proteans keep the heads of whoever they were impersonating sticking out of the top of their lumpy, blob-like bodies.
- Put on a Prison Bus: Dr. Norm Eldor is not seen again after being turned over to the police.
- Rewatch Bonus: The introductory dialogue leads to believing that the Legionnaires never learned the identity of the unknown Legionnaire...but reading again after the reveal makes you realize what they never said they never figured it out, and Sun Boy never said that "Uknown Boy" was a "him".
- Rule of Perception: So that readers realize that Unknown Boy is using his x-ray vision, a -invisible to the characters- cone of yellow light sprouts from his eyeless mask whenever he is scanning something.
- San Dimas Time: Supergirl says she has to return to her classes in the 20th century right now, or else someone could suspect she is Supergirl. After a chain of events have conspired to keep her in the future, her cousin points out she does not need to hurry back because she is time-travelling.Supergirl: "I have to return to Stanhope College in the 20th Century, as Linda Lee Danvers, or my secret identity might be suspected!"
(later...)
Superboy: "You can still make that appearance as Linda Danvers, by emerging from the time-barrier in 1965, moments after you last left that time period!" - Second Super-Identity: Supergirl became "Unknown Boy" as posing as a nameless Legion's ally.
- Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Brainiac 5 accidentally sprays Chameleon Boy and his pet Proty with Cancelite (a chemical invented by Supergirl which prevents Durlans like Chameleon Boy from shape-shifting), making them unable to change shape during their current mission.
- Spotting the Thread: Superboy spends the whole story trying to figure Unknown Boy's identity out. He cannot be a robot or android because it would remember being built. So he is a humanoid being, he has a Kryptonian-like power set and considers himself bound to the Legion code. Though, it cannot be Ultra Boy because he can use several powers at once; and it cannot be Mon-El because Unknown Boy wears a lead mask which he can see through of. So the list of possible candidates has been narrowed down to one.
- Starfish Aliens: The Proteans are alien creatures who looked like yellow balls with a face. After getting hit with an evolution ray, which gave them the ability to shape-shifting, they look vaguely human-shaped, faceless blobs of lumpy yellow matter. Nevertheless, they are friendly, highly intelligent and some of them have psychic powers.
- Sweet Polly Oliver: Unknown Boy, a masked super-being who shows up all of sudden to help the Legion turns out to be an amnesiac Supergirl disguised as a male.
- Taken for Granite: The super-weapon coveted by Eldor is a giant petrifying beam cannon.
- Taking the Bullet: When Norm Eldor attempts to gun four Legionnaires down, Unknown Boy flies into the way and shields the group of his gunshots.
- Time Travel: The Uknown Legionnaire is revealed to be a time-traveller who came to the past to help the Legion.
- Tornado Move: In order to drive a herd of ambushing Proteans away from Cosmic Boy and Phantom Girl, Unknown Boy creates a miniature cyclone by whirling at super-speed.
- Transformation Ray: The Proteans were exposed to the Llorn's evolution ray which changed their spherical bodies into humanoid blobs with the ability to shape-shifting.
- Trigger Phrase: Superboy triggers Unknown Boy's memories back by stating her real codename: "Supergirl".
- Unwitting Pawn: Norm Eldor tricks the Proteans into helping and protecting him by claiming he is a descendant of the Llorn who is searching for his ancestors' old super-weapons in order to protect the Proteans from his enemies.
- Ursine Aliens: The Protean aliens turned into animals resembling pointy-snouted furry polar bears to survive their world's ice age.
- Villain: Exit, Stage Left: The evil scientist Norm Eldor tries to flee when his plan to seize a super-weapon which lets him conquer the galaxy fails, but Brainiac 5 makes sure that he does not go too far.
- We Need a Distraction: Norm Eldor has taken refuge in a maze of caverns and the Legion does not dare to approach openly because he is holding Cosmic Boy hostage. So Unknown Boy uses his super-strength to simulate an earthquake, causing Eldor to panic, ditch his hostage and flee back to the surface, where the Legion is awaiting him as Unknown Boy rescues Cosmic Boy.
- Whole Episode Flashback: The story starts with Superboy showing everyone the Unknown Legionnaire statue and asking if they remember how they met the nameless, masked hero. Superboy's flashback lasts until the second-to-last page.
