Who's This? A boy with a green thumb.
The facts: First appearing with the rest of the Legion of Substitute-Heroes in Adventure Comics #306 (1965), Chlorophyll Kid was a member of every "Continuity-1" version except Cosmic Boy's Subs in the Baxter series. But Silver Age, Bronze Age, 5 Years Later (where the Subs are competent resistance fighters), and the Retroboot all made use of his services. He was a reject in the Reboot, and redesigned as Plant Lad (a member of the Wanderers) in the Threeboot.
How you could have heard of him: Well, he does get a couple appearances in the Legion animated series (voiced by Alexander Polinsky). But Geoff Johns' cred being what it is, the young comics reader might know him from Retroboot appearances in Action Comics where he's a bit creepy and thinks plants talk to him.
Example story: Secret Origins #37 (February 1989) "The Secret Origin of Legion of Substitute-Heroes" by Ty Templeton and Anthony Van Bruggen; but also Adventure Comics #306 (March 1963) "The Legion of Super-Heroes" by Edmond Hamilton and John Forte
Ty Templeton's retelling of the origin long ago convinced me that he should have been tasked with writing and drawing a whole Subs series. For our purposes, it's also interesting to note that Chloro is the POV character. We start on his planet where his mom isn't too happy about his grades. In academia, sports, family life, Ral Benem is a loser. He goes out to get some fresh air, gets lost in this thoughts and the agricultural planet's countryside, until comes across some vats and comes to the absolute wrong conclusion.
In the original story, he was much younger and beloved, but since he's the one telling it, he may be embellishing.
When he wakes up from his toxic hot tub adventure, he's got super-powers... and plants growing out of his scalp!
He's sometimes been shown with green hair, but this is more extreme, and kind of explains why he needs to wear a skull cap. Perhaps over time he learned to make it grown like thin grass, who knows. Oh, and he's also got the power to make plants grow faster, or hilariously, SLOWER. What do you think his chances are of getting into the Legion?
It took them less than a minute, and you'd think Bouncing Boy, sitting on that panel, would have been more of a booster to the little guy. Personally, though Ral might not have been able to jump through some of the selection process' hoops (he's not very bright), I think the Legionnaires showed a real failure of the imagination by rejecting him summarily. It's kind of an Aquaman situation. Like, "well what if there's no water component to this mission?", "what if there are no plants around?". Just have the guy carry seeds in his belt, like he eventually would. Their mistake was wanting the power to be a certain way (control over vines and such) and it failing to meet their expectations. What's random growth good for? (I can think of many uses.) So Chloro joins Polar Boy's new Legion of Substitute-Heroes (his own pitch for team name: The Lawful League). But every time they try to do good, the Legion scoops them, or refuses their help. Then one day, it rains acorns. Obviously, that piques Chloro's interest and he uses his powers to grow the full tree. Let's see it two ways:
And that's how the Subs get an advance warning of an invasion by tree-men. The Subs hitch a ride on the acorn-seeding ship and follow it to its home planet where Chloro is instrumental in stopping the plan in its tracks. He uses more power than he ever has before to "hatch" the seedlings in their silo, creating a sudden population explosion!
Of course, they won't get any credit because the acorns on Earth DID sprout and the Legion had to defeat them, making THEM the heroes of the situation. That's how the original story goes anyway. In Secret Origins, it's revealed the Legion tracked the source to that planet and took the battle there. They almost lost as, to quote Sun Boy, "if only there hadn't been so many of them!". Oops!
The lesson isn't that the Subs are goofballs or that Chloro's an idiot. It's that the Legion should have opened and maintained productive communication between their team and the Subs. Had this mission been co-op, and had the Legionnaires respected the rejects who nevertheless tried to make good (as they would in later stories), Chloro could have made sure the acorns DIDN'T hatch on Earth, with the assurance that the enemy ship could be tracked later, etc. What can I say, I'm a Sub stan.
Who's Next? The master of time... -related gimmicks.
Comments