Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st Century #2 Review

What Happened That You Have To Know About:

This issue follows the second episode of the cartoon. After Timber Wolf is inducted into the Legion, they set a course back to Legion HQ, but run into some problems along the way. Timber Wolf isn't used to spaceflight, and he isn't used to the dangerous Legion lifestyle, so he's feeling out of his depth and insecure. When the Legion cruiser touches down on an asteroid to give him a break from space travel, though, he gets the chance to help out by beating up a lunar leech, and that restores his confidence and his sense that he belongs in the Legion.

Review:

See, that's more like it!

This should have been the first issue. It's a fine introduction to six of the major characters, and Timber Wolf's induction ceremony is as good a way of establishing what the Legion's all about as I can think of.

Not much plot, of course, but that just makes it read like an episode of the cartoon, which I suppose we have to regard as a good thing by definition. Simple recipe: several action scenes, sprinkled with character moments and assembled into a straight-line plot (with a minimum of exposition) that's just complicated enough to get us from the first page to the last. It'll keep working as long as they want to keep doing it.

The art this time is brought to you by Sanford Greene, who likes drawing people with twisted-up mouths and showing a lot of teeth. Like Chynna Clugston last issue, it's a perfectly good translation of the look of the show into comic-book form. In fact, I think I like Greene's work a little better.

Good comic book. If they're all like this from here on in, I won't complain. I bet DC can do better, though... the best episodes of the cartoon were better than this was, so I will project that the best issues of this series will be better than this one too. Looking forward to it.