Legion of Super-Heroes #7 Review

What Happened That You Have to Know About: Durlan assassins attack the Winathian ambassadors, and a Legion team defends them. They catch one and save one of the ambassadors. Brainiac 5 is frustrated about something to do with time travel, and goes to Naltor to confront Harmonia Li. Chameleon Boy goes too, and Beren has a vision of the other Legionnaires attacking Cham.

Review:

Takes you out of the story a bit to have the issue chopped in half the way it is, but the plotlines continue to develop, and it's not like there's a dropoff in art quality between Cinar and Portela. The story seemed fairly sparse, and I wondered if there had been a dropoff in panel rate, but no; we're actually up a bit from issue #5. Maybe it's because of the split story, maybe it's because there are a couple of pages here and there devoted to... I won't call it inconsequential stuff, but it's stuff that I can't quite see yet how it's consequential.

The confrontation between Mon-El and Earth-Man, for instance. Well, we all knew something like it was coming, but I guess what this really means is that Levitz looks at this Earth-Man/Shadow Lass relationship as a Continuing Plot, with capital letters, that's going somewhere, and not just incidental background stuff. The conversation the two guys were having puzzled me a bit. Earth-Man wants to know why Mon and Shady broke up? Really? That would imply that he actually likes her, which I have a hard time accepting. It also took me a minute to understand just what it was that Mon-El did to Earth-Man and why it was clever, but it actually was pretty good.

Are we to believe that Shadow Lass is going to be the next Green Lantern? She's capable of holding down the job, but it's a bit strange to consider how she'd be the bearer of three great heroic traditions - the Legion, the Green Lantern Corps, and the Shadow Champions of Talok. A neat idea, but also kind of overkill.

I do like this business of having small squads of Legionnaires handling menaces without bringing in the whole rest of the team. Lets us get to know them; leaves the possibility of failure on the table.

At some point, Levitz should start laying the groundwork for some kind of major opponent for the Legion. We've had a couple of small-scale villains in a row, with the xenophobes followed by the Durlans. Gotta keep changing speeds on us. Bring on Continuus, Despoiler of Everything!

Coming up: who's the Green Lantern gonna be, and who's the new Legion leader gonna be? I'll tell you: I'm going to be glad to know both those things, because then it means we'll be finished speculating.

Notes:
- what's with all the Zendak handshakes?
- SimGalaxy!
- Polar Boy has his arm back. I kinda liked the ice arm
- perfectly sensible that they'd think of Chameleon King. Would have been easy for Levitz not to mention it. I appreciate that

Panel Count: First story (Cinar) -- 77 panels/18 pages = 4.3 panels/page; no single-panel pages. Second story (Portela) -- 53 panels/12 pages = 4.4 panels/page; one single-panel page. Anybody else find that the shadows on the side of Tyroc's head occasionally made him look bald? I mean, naturally bald as opposed to shaven-headed. Also, the fight had a couple of confusing parts. Check pages 14 and 15. At the bottom of page 14, does the Durlan that Timber Wolf is fighting change from Timber Wolf's form to some kind of reptile just for the last panel, and then back to Timber Wolf for page 15? Or is it a second Durlan? And then, going from panel 1 to panel 2 on page 15, Timber Wolf's and Tyroc's color palettes are just similar enough (so's Ultra Boy's, for that matter) that the transition is a difficult one; your eye doesn't warn you that we're switching characters.

Membership Notes: Sun Boy says something about "when Star Boy finally gets back." So maybe he is still some kind of Legionnaire.