Friday Fun: The Legion of Super Potatoes

By John Freeman on May 2, 2008

With all the interest in potatoes as a potentially better crop than rice in terms of round the year food source (last August, Chinese farmers were being urged to grow spuds instead of rice, for example), what better time for comic creator Martin Hand to finally find the answer to the age old question: what if the Legion of Super-Heroes were potatoes…?

Martin presents a slew of Super Potatoes on the web for your enjoyment, on his Flickr and LiveJournal sites.

• The humble spud is more drought-resistant than other crops grown in many developing countries and it would make a more practical alternative to rice, as well as wheat, although the Sydney Morning Herald reported back in January that there are concerns that potato peel often discarded during cooking creates waste rice growing doesn’t. East Timor is developing its own variety of sweet potato in response to drought concerns.

John Freeman

The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.

He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.