Lack of chemistry.

Today we take a moment to remember a superhero with a genuinely unique superpower, one I believe led to his undoing, and not in the canonical way. I refer to Chemical King, a youngster associated with DC Comics' Legion of Super-Heroes, whose adventures take place a thousand years in Earth's future. 

Poor Chemical King was doomed before he even first appeared. 

When readers first met the Legion in 1958, it was because Superboy (Superman in his youth) met them on a time-traveling trip. There were only three members in the so-called Legion at first, but since readers liked these teenage heroes of the future, more adventures were written and more members joined. 

Then Superman made a trip further into the future in 1967 and met members of the Legion when they too were grown up. He found some sad memorials to members of the Legion who had died in action, including some that readers had not yet seen, including Chemical King. We would not meet the character until a teen Legion story more than a year later, in 1968. Confused yet?

The point is, readers at the time had not even met the character but knew he was fated to die in battle. Whatever else they were told in that 1967 story, they knew he would not make it to adulthood. 

But I think there was another reason he got bumped off. 

When we finally got to know CK, we learned he had the truly unusual power to control chemical reactions. He could speed them up, slow them down, and make them pause. And at this juncture I would like to remind readers that in those days the editors of DC Comics liked to slip educational facts into their books (especially legendary editor Julius Schwartz), either in the stories or in little did-you-know type features. A superhero whose usefulness depended on the writer's knowledge of chemistry would definitely fit that description, even if the means by which the powers worked were pure fantasy. 

Alas, there's the rub. For I think Chemical King was doomed anyway. Because who wants to do homework? 

Green for chemistry!

Other members of the Legion were generally straightforward. Colossal Boy: Gets big. Shrinking Violet: Gets small. Sun Boy: Gets hot. Brianiac 5: Super smart. Lightning Lad: Shoots lightning. Karate Kid*: Martial arts expert. And so on. Not too hard to knock off a scene for any of these characters to take on their adversaries. But control over chemical reactions? This is homework! 

As silly as comics of the Golden and Silver Age could be, they were largely written by guys who also wrote science fiction stories in that industry's Golden Age, so they were interested in science. Starting in the seventies you had comics writers who were more often interested in comics themselves than science, which could bring a new depth to storytelling but were not always great at dealing with sci-fi concepts. And in 1968, Jim Shooter, a young writer himself at the time, dumped this chem-homework-laden superhero on the team.

I used to collect comics from the Silver and Bronze ages quite a bit, and as I recall, Chemical King was rarely seen in Legion stories. Back then he might pop up and rust some iron or make a guy pass out from indeterminate biochemical process fiddling, but that was about it. It would be easier to deal with the character now, I think. You just hit the Googs for "chemical reactions" and you learn in a flash that there are six main types and what they are, and suddenly you can make a big list of things CK can do. But back in 1978, when Paul Levitz was the editor and writer for the Legion's series, the Internet was itself barely more than science fiction. So Levitz brought Chemical King's career and life to a close, the hero sacrificing himself to save others.** 

Did Levitz decide it was time to kill off the character because his powers were too annoying to write about? I was discussing this with a friend of mine who reached out to the comic book legend via social media and got a response -- Paul remembered bumping off Chemical King soon after being assigned to write for the Legion, but did not mention why. All I can say is: If Paul did kill the King because his powers were annoying, I would not blame him. 

I've written before about a character who was a pain in the butt to draw, so now you have one who was a pain to write. But Chemical King did get a good honorable death, and for the most part -- through reboots, threeboots, and noncanonical adventures -- writers have let him rest in peace through the forty-five years since. That's a rare thing in comics. 

🦸💀

* No connection with The Karate Kid movie, except that the producers did reach out to DC Comics to clear the use of the name. 

**I would never badmouth Paul Levitz, mind you, whose Great Darkness Saga was not only the best Legion story I ever read but also among the very best comics stories I ever read.