Legion of Super-Heroes #44 Review

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

On Velmar, Invisible Kid defeats Ikilles and frees Light Lass, who takes care of the rest of the marauders. On Rimbor, Saturn Girl's team fights back against the Science Police and wins. On Earth, M'rissey (the Legion's new business affairs manager) reveals some legal mumbo jumbo he arranged that essentially makes all the Legion's bureaucratic trouble go away. They're now funded by the licensing rights for their flight rings, and independent of Earthgov and the U.P. As the Velmar and Rimbor teams are about to come home, the president calls for help: a huge planet has appeared and is disrupting the solar system.

Review:

There are things to like and things not to like here. Sanford Greene fills in on the art. He's drawn a couple of issues of LSH31C, and well, but his style isn't as suited for this book. He does a good job of continuing Manapul's kinetic style, and his backgrounds and action and stuff are fine, but his characters' features are too exaggerated. Fine for a fill-in, but I wouldn't want a regular diet of it.

The thing I liked best: we get some resolution. The Velmar plot ends, the Rimbor plot ends, the government-versus-Legion plot ends (at least, I hope it's ended). And we get a new plot thread: the appearance of this mysterious planet. (For those keeping score: we've still got the destroyers thread and the Projectra thread going on. And we don't know where Karate Kid and Triplicate Girl went, although Val left behind the message 'OKKK' to reassure them, which is a nice callback to Shooter and Manapul's first issue.)

Other than that, the story didn't take many turns. I guess that's typical, with endings (which this partially was): the complications are in the setup, and the endings are simple. I wonder if it has to be like that, or if there's a better way of doing it...

I wasn't impressed with Invisible Kid's denouement. Straight out of an after-school special. But then, maybe that's appropriate for his character. Similarly, Ikilles. I guess Shooter meant for him to be all over the map like that...?

Atom Girl's characterization was pretty good. It matched what I think of her and the way Waid and Bedard portrayed her. But don't mistake her fight against the SPs in this issue with her annoyance at Colossal Boy's brother back in #14; two entirely different things.

Notes:
- makes perfect sense that the Legionnaires' uniforms would be rip-resistant like that
- still no real screen time for the Peril Men. I was looking forward to a Legionnaire named Peril Boy
- again, too many pretend swears (however, Ultra Boy's exclamation of 'Holy Ni Neveh' was completely appropriate)
- Norima: recurring character, or not?
- I was hoping M'rissey would have some actual superpower besides just being smart in a special way

Membership Notes:

M'rissey becomes a... I don't know if he's a Legionnaire or not, but he's affiliated with the team. We'll see.