Brainiac and the Legion of Super-Heroes, Part 2 Review
Adventure Comics #10
Supergirl #52
Superman #699
Superman: Last Stand of New Krypton #3
Adventure Comics #11
What Happened That You Need to Know About:
The fighting against Brainiac continues. It's kind of hard to follow all the different parts and stages of the fight; you've got various groups of Legionnaires and Kryptonians, plus Luthor, all after different things. It turns out Supergirl does have some kind of relationship with the retroboot Legion. Unsurprisingly, Brainiac is defeated and Superman doesn't die. The Legionnaires seed various planets with the bottled cities Brainiac stole, return Mon-El to the Phantom Zone, and head back to the future.
Review:
I don't remember the last time I had this little to say in a comic book review.
I didn't like the second half as much as I liked the first. The art seemed less consistent and the story wasn't too much more than connecting some dots that we already knew were there. A lot of this story was setup for the new Legion series and for "War of the Supermen". You know what it's like? It's like DC has adopted Dr. Manhattan's philosophy with regard to their stories. "Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."
Not that there were no decent moments; there were. I have no problems with the details. It's the broad strokes that put me off. I guess, from a Legion point of view, I wanted this story to do more than clear the decks for Paul Levitz. I dunno. What did you think of it? Maybe we can get some better analysis going in the comments.
Labels: Comic Book Reviews, Legion of Super-Heroes
posted by Matthew E @ 10:51 PM
12 Comments:
Yes, I found the story less than satisfying. I had originally chalked it up to only reading (purchasing) a few of the issues, but it sounds like the whole arc was similarly disjointed and somewhat ho-hum.
I await the Levitz run, starting next week.
Madman2001
As I had commented on in a previous posts comments section, looks like I was correct regarding Supergirl and the Legion ;)
No I think your review was spot on. This was pretty much just a connect the dots story. Or maybe that isn't the right analogy. I get the sense that when they were planning this story way back when, they had big goals. We got to see a bit of those plans on the "coming attractions" page in the first issue of Adventure.
But then, somewhere along the way, things changed. Geoff Johns became CCO of DC and left Adventure for Flash... Levitz got put on the book and a secret origin type of storyline was planned.
It feels like whatever energy was going to be put into the original story (and let's be honest, it's not like the Legion was ever going to be more than supporting characters in the Superman story) evaporated when Johns left Adventure. Without Johns around to tell the tales that he had planned in that book, it was left to others to sweep up, clear the decks and get things ready for Levitz.
I'm just happy that in another week we won't have to be in a holding pattern anymore and can dive into some new stories.
Madman: Best of all, Levitz seems to have a Legion story coming up for us, as opposed to a story with the Legion in it. Been quite a while since we've had one of those that wasn't qualified in some way.
Darrell: I remember. One point shall be recorded for you wherever we record these things.
Murray: One thing I'm hoping for from this Levitz run is that he'll be able to finish what he starts. Chances are somewhat reasonable; what do you do with Paul Levitz if not have him write the Legion? But DC's track record of finishing Legion stories (since Levitz's last run) is terrible. Look:
- Geoff Johns was distracted by another shiny object and wandered off before finishing his Legion story
- Torres and Briglio and the other LSH31C writers had the title cancelled out from under them while they still had stories brewing
- Jim Shooter had LSHv5 cancelled on him before his story was due to end
- Mark Waid and Barry Kitson left LSHv5 before they finished what they were up to
- DnA were kicked off the book before they told us what the deal was with Cub or put Garth back in his own body
- I guess you could say that the other reboot writers, Stern and Peyer and McCraw, were able to finish what they were up to, but then again I'm not sure they had a longer-term destination in mind
- Giffen and the Bierbaums didn't get to do their hat trick, or whatever else they had in mind
Surprising we got as many good Legion comics as we did in the past fifteen, twenty years.
Matthew E said... "Darrell: I remember. One point shall be recorded for you wherever we record these things."
Aw man! Can't I have a Brownie's button instead? Or a cookie? LOL
The points are redeemable for merchandise at all participating locations.
"Last Stand of New Krypton/Brainiac & the LSH" would probably have made a fairly good story for a single oversize issue...stretching it out across so many comics made it pretty thin.
And it had gorillas. When is DC going to learn that putting a gorilla in a story never improves things?
"Last Stand of New Krypton/Brainiac & the LSH" would probably have made a fairly good story for a single oversize issue...stretching it out across so many comics made it pretty thin.
This is about what I said about "Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes". To a certain extent it was also true of Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds. And then there was the Lightning Saga, which would have worked best if it was stretched out over no comics.
Paul Levitz was also in the habit of going for a long time without delivering a satisfying ending, but I don't think anyone's ever accused him of padding.
"Padding" is called writing for the trade now(see also: decompressed storytelling)
Whatever DC has in mind for the Legion as far as crossovers and guest spots in other books,I hope they use the same version that is to star in the Legion's own title.Having the retroboot pop up undermined the threeboot and I'd hate for something similar to happen again with Levitz's run.One Legion per Legion,please.
That's fine, except in this case, we just had a high-profile miniseries that established that all three Legions existed in continuity. There's no question about which Legion is real and which one isn't; if the Justice Society appeared in a comic in 1980, it didn't undermine the Justice League. I'd enjoy seeing the other two Legions every now and then, if it was done in a sensible way.
Do we know which Legion is real? Well,I do:All of them.The 60s version,the 70s version,the reboot,the threeboot,the retroboot,even the animated version,they're all the same Legion at heart.I wish Legion fans realized this;all the squabbling about which is "the TRUE Legion" makes us all look like Trekkies.
Do we know which Legion is real? Well,I do:All of them.The 60s version,the 70s version,the reboot,the threeboot,the retroboot,even the animated version,
...Superboy's Legion, the SW6 batch, the Adult Legion...
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