Legion of Super-Heroes #16 Review, and Announcements

Some notes. This is the last Legion comic before the big DC relaunch. It's going to give me more time than usual between issues before the new Legion series start, and I plan to use it to good effect. The Where Should I Start with the Legion post could use an update, as could the Legion Roster and Chronological Legion Roster pages. Plus I want to reread Levitz's section of the retroboot and see how it holds up all together. I'll let you know when I've done those things.

I don't expect a lot of continuity changes from LSHv6 to LSHv7. Flashpoint gives Levitz the opportunity to make such changes, of course, but then he made it clear when he took over with LSHv6 #1 that he felt free to switch stuff around however he wanted anyway, so it's not like he's been waiting for an opening. There could be a couple of things. Superman and the Legion should still have the same basic relationship, give or take, but I guess the whole Supergirl extravaganza is up in the air again; oh well.

plok at A Trout in the Milk is washing his hands of DC and Marvel for reasons he explains himself. I support this. I can't bring myself to join him in his stand, partly because I want to keep running this blog, but I've thought about it, and I suggest that all of you do too. I have not finished with this issue in my mind and I will have more to say about it in days to come.

I'm planning on going to Fan Expo in Toronto at the end of August. Anyone else going to be there? If so, I plan on making myself easily identifiable: I'll be wearing an Ottawa Fat Cats baseball hat (bright red, logo looks like the letter O with a cat's-eye pupil in it). The expression on my face may suggest that I hate all people but that's just how my face works; if you see me walking around, go ahead and introduce yourself.

What Happened That You Have to Know About: Saturn Queen and the blue space dude try to turn Earth-Man to their side, but Sodam Yat (on Oa) and the Legion lend him their willpower and hold them off. Other Legionnaires defeat the rest of the LSV quite handily. Dyogene shows up to confront the blue space dude, and Mon-El and Earth-Man pull a nice power stunt where Mon uses his ring to let Earth-Man soak up the powers of all the Legionnaires, thereby making him powerful enough that he can absorb the blue space cove's powers. I think that's how it works. Anyway, this finishes off the blue space gink, but Earth-Man is killed in the process and the Legion wraps things up. Mon-El quits the GLC and it sure sounds like Harmonia Li's becoming a Legionnaire.

Review:
Even after all this time I can't help but think that Levitz has had to pare down his storytelling to fit it into 20 pages. There wasn't so much going on in this issue that we should have needed more than 20 pages to finish it, but it still seemed like he had to rush through the action to hit all the points he wanted to hit. Just me, maybe.

I'm going to have to go back and check the last couple issues of Adventure and also LSH #15. I want to know how all this fits together. First, there's the whole thing with Cosmic King and the attack on Legion HQ. Then there's this part in this issue where Brainy says he expected Cosmic Boy to arrive; well, where's Cosmic Boy? He doesn't appear in this comic book. I can't keep track of all these freaking superheroes. Why couldn't I have been a Fantastic Four fan instead? You don't have these kinds of problems with the Fantastic Four.

Let me see if I understand this right with the blue space joe. He's what Krona released at the birth of the multiverse, right? Is that what Levitz is implying? When Krona looked back at the birth of the universe, and interfered with it, this blue space chappie is what messed everything up from there? I wish they could have pinned a name on him.

Earth-Man's story seems to have come to an end, and I can't say I'm going to miss him. There were always a few basic ways it could have gone: he backslides and betrays the Legion, he continues as a Legionnaire that they can never be quite sure of, he dies heroically. Levitz picked door number three, which is a resolution if not an innovative one, and now we don't have to put up with Earth-Man in our Legion comics anymore.

Harmonia Li has been an intriguing character since she first appeared, and I've quite liked her. Never thought of her as a Legionnaire before now, though. She's not really the Legion type, you know? Legionnaires are young, one way or another, even Mon-El, and Li is a grownup and has been so for quite a while. Not that I have any objection; it's just different.

Notes:
- sorta looks like the first speech balloon on panel 2 of page 10 is misattributed. Should be Earth-Man saying that, right, not Dreamy?
- it's always fun seeing Brainy punch people out. Not often there's someone he can handle, but that just makes it better
- the stuff on the last page, where Levitz muses at us on the nature of faith, wisdom, and will, is just part of the price we pay for having Paul Levitz write comics for us. Overall we're coming out ahead on the deal
- so who was that villain in the pink pig costume or whatever that was?
- about time Colossal Boy did something right

Art: 78 panels/20 pages = 3.9 panels/page. 2 single-panel pages, 1 double-page spread of 8 panels.

Daniel HDR fills in this month, and does fine. Although. He may have been kinda rushed on the issue, maybe? I think? The reason I say so is that there is not a lot of detail on the backgrounds here. Lots of panels where the background is basically a solid colour. I have to say I'm not really a fan of that, but he does render the characters pretty well, and that's job 1.

Membership Notes: Earth-Man dies, Mon-El comes back full-time, and it seems like Harmonia Li joins up, although I guess we'll find out more about that later.