Legion of Super-Heroes #9 Review

What Happened That You Have to Know About:

The Dominators send a couple of monsters or something to raid the Time Institute and capture Brainiac 5, and they get away with Dream Girl too. The United Planets won't let the Legion violate Dominion space, but Star Boy quits so that he can do it.

Mon-El confirms that Validus is still safely locked up on Takron-Galtos.

Review:

The Dominators' actions this issue, as always, are an amusing mixture of sensible and ridiculously foolhardy. It makes all the sense in the world to try to get a sample of Brainy's genes so they can breed superintelligence into their own people. And it's ridiculously foolhardy to antagonize the Legion in this way. It's probably even more ridiculously foolhardy to bring Brainy to your planet; who knows what he could get up to. The Dominators continue to be screwups of the highest order.

But why did Ultra Boy and Harmonia not go through the portal themselves? I mean, I wouldn't have, but I'm too sensible to be a Legionnaire. You'd think Jo at least would have been all over it.

I was wondering what Circadia Senius was doing during the fight, and finally located him heroically cowering behind a chair in panel 1 of page 12. Hey, I'd leave stuff like that to the Legionnaires, too.

Notes:
- are those just special Science Police boots or does Gravity Kid really have feet like Bugs Bunny?
- the idea of genetically analyzing food and matching that to the alien race that eats it was also used in Illegal Aliens (Pollotta and Foglio), an excellent novel
- what's that symbol on Comet Queen's costume? Doesn't match any of the Interlac symbols in Wikipedia. Some nonstandard Q or something?

Art: 82 panels/20 pages = 4.1 panels/page. 1 splash page.

Portela returns!

Membership Notes:

Star Boy quits this issue, but I don't really get the vibe from it that this is supposed to be a permanent thing. We'll see. Also we get a couple of headshots of prospective Legionnaires who seem to be named Otaki and Mwinadji.