The Mike Grell Extreme Stance

So, okay: last week I was complaining about some of Mike Grell's figure work in an issue of Superboy from 1975. Wikipedia tells me that Grell was in his late twenties when he pencilled this issue, but it still shows some of the quirks of an incompletely developed style.

First, as I mentioned, the men in their spandex have zero body fat, and their outfits look uncomforatbly clingy. I know that hyperfitness is a common trope in superhero comics, but I also know that drawing a figure as pure musculature is easier than putting realistic cloth garments on the same figure. I've often suspected that Superman's skin-tight suit was originally as much an effort to assist Joe Shuster's then-underdeveloped drawing ability as an effort to evoke circus strongmen. But I digress. My point is that Grell's figures are all lanky, taut, and anatomical to the point of awkwardness. Show the readers what I'm talking about, Superboy.


But the thing I want to show you, really, is the weird way that Grell has these guys stand with their feet a yard or more apart when they're trying to look impressive (or surprised). It's all over this story, and it's a pretty weird tic. Here's the opening splash panel, in which Superboy (in his pajamas) is menaced by two ghosts of dead Legionnaires. (This scene does not appear in the plot of the story.)

I hope he hasn't pulled a muscle, jumping out of bed into that pose! (This raises an issue: is Superman strong enough to tear his own ligaments or to strain his own muscles? Surely there's a webforum where people discuss this sort of thing.)

Later in the comic, a mysterious interloper destroys a building (by slamming into it at high speed), then rises from the rubble:


Still later, a second mysterious interloper rescues a sky-diver whose parachute didn't open:


,,, And the crowd below is simply agog:


Hey, that one guy is Clark Kent! And he's managed to assume a pose even more exaggerated than the one in the introductory splash! (To me, this actually looks sort of like "What if Steve Ditko drew The King Canute Crowd?" Because I'm sure that young Clark Kent has been replaced in this panel with the young Alec MacGarry.)

Wow, that's gotta hurt. He "look[s] like [he] saw a ghost," indeed! Apparently, that's the way someone stands when he sees a 30th-century ghost:

(Although, you know, it occurs to me: Superboy has seen these guys die, in the 30th century, but he also knows they're time travelers. Why doesn't he just assume that they've traveled back to his time from a time before they died? Instead, he's all, "But -- you're dead!" ... Couldn't that cause some kind of time-paradox? Ah, Cary Bates: you've done it again.)

Fortunately, Superboy assumes a different stance in the story's final panel, after he and the genetic mockeries of actual life destroy a robot that Superboy built just to test their willingness to die all over again. In this last panel, he casually reveals that he already knew that the interloping Legionnaires were merely auto-destructing 48-hour-lifespan clones.

Chillin' in a secret room in his parents' basement, talking on the "Time-Telephone," without a care in the world, and still looking like he has every single muscle in his body tensed to the point of explosion: that's how a Super-Teenager ends a night of self-imposed robot-fighting.