Groin Injury Saturday: Brainiac 5

Superboy & the LSH #199 (November 1973)

While the old school Brainy wasn't so insufferable as later iterations I still don't mind seeing him getting one in his 12th level 'nads. If this was the current Waid Brainiac I'd help and hold the gun myself.

This cover has some serious subtext, too. But I'll let you imagine what it is.

In this issue of Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes the prosthetic gun hand of the villain Tyr fuses itself to Superboy and controls his mind for a while. Of course, the first target is the smartest guy around and the robot-gun shoots Brainy in the groin. It's like every day of my Junior High School life as rendered by Dave Cockrum.

This is the pre-psycho Brainiac 5, the one who was so mean he shot a girl in a cat-house just because he could. It was Brainy...I ignore the later retcon claiming it was someone else who did the murder.

As great as it is seeing Superboy shoot Brainiac in the pelvis with a gun that can fire energy bolts capable of smashing inertron, let us not forget who else on the cover...

PRINCESS PROJECTRA

The hottest of all Legionaires, decked out in a Dave Cockrum lingerie special of kink and adhesive future-cloth. All the LSH members, the guys and the gals, dressed in sexy outfits, but PP steals every panel she is in. Her costume was even kind of demure, as later it showed even more skin with the slits and openings on the sides. Seeing bikini-clad heroines in skimpy outfits is common today, and was everywhere in the (shudder) 90's comics, but in 1975 it was still a bit risque to have it available for the kiddies. If parents paid as much attention to comics then as they do now there would have been trouble.

She was particularly attractive when Mike Grell drew her....

Dave Cockrum designed some of the best costumes ever to appear in comics, just flip through X-Men and LSH if you have any doubts. I even recall old articles with sketches of character studies where the creative teams asked Cockrum to design the costumes for them. He's that good.