Legion of Super-Heroes #49 Review

Countdown: Four Legion comics left.

What Happened That You Have to Know About: Saturn Girl and Phantom Girl are worried about Projectra. She sees this as a threat to her plans (which include punishing the United Planets and the Legion for allowing Orando to be destroyed), and attacks Phantom Girl, injuring her seriously. Saturn Girl catches her at it, and Projectra uses her powers to alter both of their memories and cover the whole thing up. Meanwhile, Brainy leads a team to the intruder planet to try to analyze it and find a way to fight the... enemy, let's call them. At the end of the issue, the entire United Planets is attacked by hordes of destroyers.

Review: Francis Manapul's art was up to its usual standard. I particularly liked the sequence on the intruder planet.

It's nice to see that Timber Wolf has not completely lost the plot. (I refer to how he saved Phantom Girl, whom he doesn't like or respect, after her fight with Jeckie.) It's funny, though... Brainy used to trust him, but he doesn't anymore. Yet it was, arguably, Brainy who made Brin like this. And now Jeckie doesn't trust him either? I wouldn't be surprised if Timber Wolf was the key character in the next and final issue.

Speaking of the final issue, the way I see it, there's only one way for all of this to be wrapped up in one comic book, and that's for the Projectra story and the destroyer story to be a single story. There are a couple of ways that could happen. The simplest is for Projectra to be the one behind the destroyers, which sounds stupid but could be easily made to work, given some of the groundwork that's been laid. Second simplest is for Projectra and the destroyers to beat each other. I'm not sure what's third simplest, but I will point out how ironic it is for Projectra to go around wiping Legionnaires' memories because she's mad about what happened to Orando. After all, the destruction of Orando was caused by Lemnos, who was the original memory-wiper.

Until recently I had had little experience with reading a Legion comic as it wound down to nothingness. And I find that as it happens in this title, I'm becoming impatient with aspects of it. Shooter's characterizations of the Legionnaires seem kind of rudimentary next to what Waid did, and there's no hope that they'll ever be developed any further. There was a lot of potential in this title, and we're not going to get the chance to see what can be made of it. This was actually a pretty good issue, but it's hard to keep that in mind when you consider the penultimateness of it. Is that why I don't have a lot to say about this issue? I can think of a few things I want to talk about, but they all feel like I should wait until next issue to start.

I really do want to see what happens next issue! Both Projectra and the destroyers are formidable foes, and it's really not clear what's to be done about either of them, or what might happen along the way. LSHv5 #50 could turn out to be quite a good comic book. And that's important, right? That's the object of the exercise.

Notes:
- I wonder if the anti-energy of the intruder planet has anything to do with Wildfire.
- Aha! Norima! I knew it!
- Okay. Brainy says that his computers couldn't handle all the data about the intruder planet. Telling the truth? Lying?
- Likewise, I suspect Saturn Girl of faking defeat in her clash with Jeckie. It would be just like Imra to do that. Well, original Imra or reboot Imra or animated Imra, anyway.
- Saturn Girl's account of her encounter with Ultra Boy is not consistent with what I read in the comic book.
- Check out Brin's fingernails when he twists Phantom Girl's flight ring. That's some good detail right there.
- President Kieselbach's husband died in the Khund War, huh? What happened to the millennium of peace and prosperity?
- What a weird time to give Sizzle a chance for the spotlight.