In every installment of I Love Ya But You’re Strange I spotlight strange but ultimately endearing comic stories. Feel free to e-mail me at brianc@cbr.com if you have a suggestion for a future installment!

Today, we look at the tale of when the Legion of Super-Heroes fought against...Superboy Hitler?!?!

It all went down in Adventure Comics #314 by Edmond Hamilton and John Forte. The Legion reject an applicant named Alaktor because all of his abilities are driven by technology that he developed and not any true powers of his own, but it turns out that Alaktor was really just there planning to scope out the Legion's headquarters so that he could break in later to steal their Time Bubble so that he could go back in time to conquer the world...

Alaktor goes through history to pick the three most evil people in history, which somehow includes John Dillinger along with Nero and Hitler. He shows up in the future and threatens to destroy the Legion if they don't surrender...

Naturally, they turn down this offer, and their three most powerful members head after Alaktor and his time-displaced villains (my pal Commander Benson made an excellent point to me recently where he noted that Ultra Boy was already being treated by Hamilton as one of the Legion's "Big Three" two issues BEFORE Hamilton revealed that Ultra Boy has more powers than just fancy vision. It seems clear that Hamilton was already considering Ultra Boy as more powerful than normal before he made him explicitly so).

Alaktor then uses machines to swap Hitler's mind with Superboy, thus creating Superboy Hitler! Superboy Hitler then makes sure that Nero and John Dillinger take over Ultra Boy and Mon-El, as well...

Somehow, Alaktor never realized that these three evil men would turn on him, but that's precisely what happens...

Things are going terribly until Saturn Girl comes up with a clever idea. She uses her powers to inform the villains of the weaknesses of the other two, knowing that these jerks would invariably turn on each other and that's just what happened...

Good job by Saturn Girl. I assume she was prepared from all the times in the past that the Legion had turned on each other at a moment's notice.

If anyone else has a suggestion for a future I Love Ya But You're Strange, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com! Again, we're going to have a whole month of these, so, well, more suggestions would be great!