Superman and the Legion of Super Heroes #1-2 Review

What Happened That You Have To Know About:

The Legion (Superman, Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, Bouncing Boy, Brainiac 5) is called to rescue a Doctor Londo, who's having trouble with a monster near his research station; apparently it's caused a lot of trouble and even caused the loss of his son. He wants the Legion to catch this monster so he can continue his research safely. While Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad and Superboy make the monster's acquaintance, Brainiac 5 and Bouncing Boy discover that Londo's experiments may not be so cool. Saturn Girl manages to restore some of the monster's humanity, and it turns out to be, of course, Londo's son Brin, the subject of some of these experiments. Londo demands the Legion turn Brin over to him, and there's a lot of fighting. The Legion finishes off Londo's robots and experimented-on creatures and leave with Brin, who joins the Legion as Timber Wolf.

Review:

Perfectly good job. The plot 'twists' seem painfully obvious to longtime Legion readers, but that's okay, they have to start somewhere. Still not sure about Lightning Lad's character; he seems to go out of his way to be antagonistic, although he's not quite bad enough to be called a jerk. Perhaps an upcoming episode will fix this. I liked Brainy's actions in the fight a lot better than I did last episode's; if he has to be an android I'd rather it be this kind (basically he was using his fingers to interface with the Fightin Robots and cause them to malfunction and shut down and stuff). Nice squabbling between Chuck and Brainy. That's the benefit of keeping the cast of characters this small: it's easy to pay attention to all of them.

The planet this episode was set on was called... it sounded like Braal, but I've also seen 'Rahl' cited elsewhere. I'd be interested in knowing why it wasn't called Zoon. I mean, it doesn't matter. Story's the same no matter what you call it. I'm just wondering.

I know you have to keep the plots simple for kids' programming, and I don't have a problem with that. But I think Londo's plan was a little weak. I get that he's crazy and that's why he did genetic experiments on his son. Fine. And I get that he doesn't want the Legion to know all the details of his work. Which makes it risky to ask them to help get his crazy feral son back in his cage, but hey, nobody ever said this would be easy. But why send his robots to attack the Legionnaires when they're looking for him for you? (Unless they were just random 'indigenous' robots, in which case, huh?) And why be so ready for trouble when they do bring him back? Anyway, if the robots and beasts can't catch Brin but the Legion can, what good are the robots and beasts going to be against Brin and the Legion? How did he think this was all going to end?

My favourite line was Timber Wolf, wearing a superhero costume for the first time: "Uh... a little tight."

Membership Notes:

Timber Wolf joins this episode.

As he's taking his Legion membership pledge, the scene rotates around to give us a look at pictures of a series of Legionnaires on various screens around the chamber. In order: Colossal Boy, Triplicate Girl, Blok(!), Element Lad, Phantom Girl, Dream Girl, Sun Boy, Cosmic Boy, Tyroc (!!), Shrinking Violet.

Rating: LLLl